Transcripts
1. Introduction: Photography doesn't end
with a click of a button. The editing process is where your images truly come to life. In this course, you will master advanced and professional
editing techniques that will make your
photos stand out. Wherever you are preparing them for social media or print. The good news is
you can download the raw files and edit alongside me for faster and more
efficient learning experience. See you in the course.
2. Composition and a Few Important Things to Know: Hey, everyone, Zoltans here, and this is the image. We will edit to date. So this is the end result. And let me show you
this is the before. So this is the end, and
this is the before. This is just one image of the three photos I took at the same night
from the same spot. So we will use free images
to get the end result. One of them is for
the darker parts, one actually two
for the highlights, and one of them was
used for the sky. So we try to use the best of everything. Many
times, it's just really hard to do
with only one image. So with one photo, you have to sacrifice something or shadows or the highlights
or the sky or something. But if you work with multiple
images, you won't have to. The composition here
is just super basic. I was focused on
the main elements. I didn't include too much
unnecessary stuff on the frame. So here is the city, the port, the two
peninsulas over here. Actually, this is fra Com
in North Devon in England. And this is a really,
really nice place. So what you need to do is to be in position in time and
waiting for the lights. I tried to do a frame like here, I left some water on the
bottom and the right, and I didn't cut
everything on the left. So it's like a frame, let's say, I left some
sky, but not too much. As you can see, the
horizon is fairly high. So you can follow the rule
of thirds, if you like that. Many times I end up
with higher horizon. Actually, if the horizon
on the lower end, the lower horizon
then rule of thirds, it depends on the scenario. I think even this amount of sky is a bit too much
for me, to be honest, but I didn't want to cut off
cut in half these clouds, so that's why I
ended up with this. But sometimes I override this a couple of days
later and I just edit a bit differently
or cut a bit different.
3. The Location and Settings: So here are the images we
use in this tutorial and the good news is that you can download all of them and
follow all the steps. So you can learn much
faster and you will be able to use all these techniques on your own images quicker. If you do that,
download the images, follow the steps, and
you won't regret it. Let's open these in Photoshop. I usually open all my
row files in Photoshop. If there are not many
images from the same scene, if there are plenty
of more images, I open in light room. But the good news is if you
open raw images in Photoshop, Como will open them, and we have all the tools, the same tools we could
use in light room as well. So as you can see,
there are three images. The first one is an early one, then one much later and
another one at the same time, but one of them is over exposed, and one of them is underexposed. So the first image
is for the details. So what you need to do
is go to the location, set up everything,
find your composition, put your camera on a tripod and turn off any kind
of stabilization, ibis or lens stabilization, turn that off because it's
going to render your image. We need a stationary camera
with no movement at all. Actually, I screwed this
up on the location. So I turned off
the stabilization, but probably I
moved the camera a little bit when I was
playing with the setting. So there are just a couple of pixels shifts
between the images, but at least we're
going to learn how to fix it in this tutorial. That's a good news. Um, okay, so the first image
is for the details. The first image
should be taken when roughly when the city
lights already turned on, but we still have plenty of natural lights, if
it makes sense. So as you can see, there are these city lights but really, really weak city lights because we have plenty
of natural lights. And because of this, we have
plenty of details as well. So as you can, so let's
see the settings ISO 100, which is very important, you should use the
lowest ISO as possible, which is for most cameras, it's usually ISO 100. So if you have enough light
and it's a landscape, there are no much movements. You can use a low ISO, so you can preserve the
details in this way. 63 millimeters and f8f8 is usually a good number
good F stop to start. So most of the cameras and lenses performs really
well on F eight, if FAD is good enough, everything is in focus,
you should use FAD. But if you need more light, you should lower the F number. If you need more depth of
field, you should higher. You should choose
a higher F number, but FAD is a good start. And in this case, I used half a second of shutter speed to capture as
much details as possible, which is enough for this thing. Okay, the second
image was this one. This is an overexposed image. So almost the same settings. I saw 100 F eight, 30 seconds. So only the shutter speed was changed because it
was taken much later. We had much less natural light, but the goal for
this image is to capture all the
highlights in the city. So it's usually an
overexposed image. So I usually over
expose my highlights. As you can see here,
the red part is so this shows you how much how much highlights
are over exposed, probably there are
not much data. We cannot save all these details over there. But it's okay. All we need is to capture
as much light as possible, even if we over expose the highlights because
we have the third image, which is for the highlights, so we can save all
the blown up parts, or mostly we can save
it with an image. And sometimes two
image like here is plany but sometimes
we need more images, but in this case, I think
two images enough for us. So this is good news. We
don't need more images, and we don't have to spend more time to blend these free together
because that's a plan. We're going to blend these free together and we're going to just we're going to build a perfect image from these free. Before we start to edit it, I have to mention these
settings here on the bottom. So I use an Apple laptop, which uses B free color palette probably that's the right
terms, color palette. So if you have let's say, Microsoft or another
laptop or computer, probably you should
use the Pro photo RGB. If you are on an Apple,
use display P free. If you are on any other
kind of computer, probably Pro Photo RGB
is the best you can use. The weakest I have an Apple one, I use display P free, and you should change it to 16 bits channel if
it's on the 81. So let's press Okay.
4. Preparing Images in Camera Raw: Okay, let's edit
our first image, which is the base
image over there. I have a routine. I do all the same first few
steps on all my images, usually, which is the following. So choose the profile, which most of the time
is landscape for me because I'm a
landscape photographer so choose landscape, press auto, open the light, and I usually just zero out the black one because I
don't want to go to black. So zero it out and go to the colors and zero out all the saturation
and vibrant as well. So this is how I usually
start all my editing. The next step is to have a look on my image and
change the settings. So I'm sure I need more shadows. The first goal is to
bring out the details. I need less contrast now. So when we work with
multiple images, like here, we're going
to use free images. The goal is to bring
out the details, lower the contrast, blend them together without
the strong contrast and bring back the contrast. Then after we blend
all these free images, because it's going to be so
much more natural and nicer. And you will see it's just
so much easier as well. So I bring up more
shadows like 75 is good. Let's say, I go bit maybe
higher with an exposure. Let's say, 0.2. I zero out the contrast. And this is just so blue. So let's go to the color
and bring some warmth, maybe some tint, not much. Let's let's zoom here. And check out this part. So I don't really care much
about the surrounding, the water, the sky. All I'm looking
at now looking at now is the city and these parts, which I will use probably from this
image. And that's all. As you can see, the water is
not really interesting here, so we will use the
water from this image. So that's why I just just focusing on the land
part of the image. Alright, it's roughly good maybe we've got to
come back later. And the next one
here is the detail. So what I usually
do? Because there is sharpening, as you can see, sharpening is already up on
40, which is usually good. I'm happy with the 40, but the masking
should be adjusted. If you use Microsoft computer, every time I say option, you press the Alt and
when I say command, you should use the control. So I have an Apple computer, so I press option and
I move the slider to the right until only those
parts are bright or white, which I want to sharpen, which I want to sharpen, yes, which is around
80 is fine here. If you have an image
with, let's say, taken with a high SSO and you have too much noise
on the image, you should use the
denise function here. We will use it on
this image for sure. So here we don't have any noise, so it's fine. Let's
skip this part. The next step is to
go to calibration, move the bottom slider. So this is, I would
say magic slider. So for landscape photos,
it's just magic. Pure magic, you won't
see on this image because this is a
dull, not really nice. We haven't got nice lights. But generally speaking, this
slider is just pure magic. So I bring it up to 60 roughly, I'm looking at
these parts again. So this is before,
this is after, as you can see, it
looks much nicer. The only downside of this slider of this
effect is the blue. Blue will be too saturated
most of the time, so we have to go back to
color mixer, saturation, blues and lower the
blues to to the normal. Let's say -30minus -30 is fine. So this is a before
and an after, before and after, this
is absolutely fine. Brought out all the details, fix the white balance, and as you can see, I didn't change the vibrant
and the saturation. That's going to be one
of the last steps. Okay, let's go to
the second one, do the same profile landscape, press auto, zero out the blacks, zero out all the colors. Go to the details
present hold option. Let's say the same 80 is good. Oh, I almost forgot the optics. Always press the
chromatic aberration and use profile correction. I forgot to do the same here. So I just fix it. Go back to the calibration, bring it up to, let's say, 60 as well. And as you can see, we have
too much blues going on here. So I go back to color
mixer saturation, blues and bring it back
to something reasonable, let's say, -30 as well. So now we need more details
actually here in the town. So let's go back here. Me shadow let's say 75. Try to save some highlights, 65 and whites as well. Don't want it to be too strong. All right, so let's
compare these two, maybe a little bit
more of the exposure. I try to match these. Actually, I think
it's called matching. So the goal is to try
to match the brightness of the two images or actually
the three images here. But it should be a
little bit brighter. This is a little bit
darker on the dark part, and the third one
should be a little bit darker than the other two. So now because
these two pictures were taken at the same time, now we can actually just just copy and
paste the settings. So I highlight this one, press and hold, shift,
click on the other one, then click on these three dots and let's say sync settings, check all, press okay. So all the settings are
now copied to this image. Now we have to match as well, so this is the matching part. So I have to change the
exposure quite dramatically. So yeah, let's say, a little bit darker. Bring all the shadows back. So now we can lower the
exposure a little bit. So as I just mentioned,
this is the brightest one. It's slightly similar
but slightly darker. And this is, again,
slightly darker than the other ones like this one. Okay, this is good. Now we have to focus on the highlights here. So highlights, whites. They shouldn't over
exposed because that's the goal here to save
those highlights and whites. Just like that. Okay.
Little bit down. Alright. And we can
compensate with the black. I know that the image here
now, it's super ugly, but don't it's not
a problem at all, because we're going to only use the brightest parts
of the image, just a few pixel, not much. And also, if you check, we have the nicest
sky on this image. So this is not very nice. I mean, it's a low of
exposure, I understand. But these clouds are just
not for me. I don't like it. These clouds are much nicer, and these one just too early, the colors are not
matching the scene, so I pick this sky. So I'm going to try to save it because it's really
underexposed image. We have so much noise going on, as you can see, it's
just super noisy now. But if you remember, on the details, we had the
choice to noise reduction, so I click and here's a pop up. And usually the
denoise is on 50. I think that's the
default settings. It's just too much
for me, usually. So I just changed it to 40, and you can call
and have a look. As you can see, it's
just pure magic. No noise, perfect sky. You know, it works perfectly
on skies because it's just, you know, not much details going on on the sky
most of the time. So it fixes the sky perfectly. But on these parts, usually not that perfect. So it doesn't mean you can just underexpose an
image and, you know, just brighten it in
photoshop without any consequences because
of the noise reduction. It just doesn't work like that. That's why we use three
different images, actually. And now we are waiting
for the image to be made and as you
can see, it's done. Here, the name suggests
enhanced N dot DNG. So this is the
image we will use, and this is the old image, which is super noisy,
so we won't use it. So now we are done. We have to highlight these
free images and press open
5. Blending: And here we go. Here
are the images. So this is the base image. When you open free
images in Photoshop, images still have the metadata, so all the settings
and everything. So you should use that image
as a base where you want to use the metadata like shutter speed and aperture
and stuff like that. So this is the best
image for that. So let's bring the
other two here. You press and hold shift
when you let it go, it always puts to the middle, which is a nice feature. So I bring it here, press
and hold shift, let it go. It's on the middle now. And now we can close the other two. Don't need those. So I open it. Let's
name the layers, it's going to be the base. And this is city lights. And this is highlights. And these are the highlights. The first thing you should do is to make sure
everything is aligned. So let's zoom in.
Turn on and off. And as you can see, there is
a little bit of movement. And here, again, a
little bit of movement. So probably when I was
playing with the settings, I just moved my camera
so there are a couple of pixels movement going on. We should fix it. So
the easiest way to fix is the one that usually
doesn't work properly. So if you just highlight
all the layers here, go here and edit and how to align layers and try to play with the
settings, press okay. Sometimes it does a really
good job, and not this case, it didn't work for
me, but you can try, but it didn't work for me. So let's do the other way, which is turn off the top layer. We have only two layers here. Choose the top one of the two, which is visible and change the blending mode to difference. Now what you will see
is an aura thingy. When I move the top layer
here, as you can see, it's easier to spot any
kind of differences. It's just a couple of pixels. That's why it's just so ty. But the goal is to move
the pictures, probably, it's the easiest
with a cursors on your keyboard and try to move
it on top of each other, which is perfect here, go back to normal and turn on the next one
and do the same. Go to different, check out here. Probably this is the best part to S. It looks much better. But maybe here it's
better like this. Okay, so this is called, go back to normal. So now we fixed the shifts
between the layers. The next is to blend
these three together. So how do we do that? So usually what I do is just to put the
base image to the bottom, put the light on top of it, and change the blending
mode to lighten. The problem here is the water. As you can see, it's super ugly. So we want to use the water from the middle middle layer and
not from the base layer. So if there's no water or both are good, you're
absolutely fine. This is just an easy
one click lighten, and you can mask everything
in and out what you want. But now it's a bit different. So let's put the lighten here. But additional
additionally, go to the base layer and put
a black mask on it. So press and hold option,
click on the mask. Everything has been masked
out on the base layer. So what we can do now
is click on the mask, choose the brush to white color. And as you can see, I can just mask in everything
I just want. So right click. Usually the hardness go to zero and choose the
soft brush, go to zero. And now, we have to mask in those parts we want to
use from the base image. So for example,
these parts here. So the problem with
this, if I go over, it's going to be super ugly. So the best you can do actually is just press on any
images, actually. Press and hold this
icon and choose the quick selection tool and select the parts you
will work with now. So there's some part.
Yeah, it's great. That's it. So I want to bring some details back here
and here for sure. And now, if we go
back to the mosque, pick the brush tool, and now if I go over here, it's not gonna affect everything outside
of the selection. So now I can just easily mask in everything I want
from this layer. Right. I'm gonna fix it later, so it doesn't matter
if it's not perfect, don't worry about it at all. Alright, maybe here are
some more parts. Kids. Good. All right. So now we can
deselect everything. The easiest way to do that is command and D D for D select. And now we have to
zoo in and just check if there is an hour or something if the
selection wasn't perfect. So what you can do is
change your color to black. I just choose a smaller brush, and you can brush over the
edges just to make sure nothing is too bright or we didn't make a
mistake over here, just gently All right. Maybe here, I just
don't want these parts. It's gonna it should be darker. You haven't got much light
going on over there. Same applies here, same
applies to the building. Okay, maybe I bring
some of it back here. Alright. Same here
with the black brush. Go through the edges. That's Actually, it was good. All right. Now, the next
one is maybe a little bit, it's a little bit too bright. So now we have to
adjust this layer. The easiest ways to use a curve. And now I can just
lower the curve, and as you can see, I can
brighten and darken the part. So I just a little
bit darken it. It's a bit too bright for me. Alright, looks great. So this is the before,
this is the after. So much nicer, so
much more detailed. So let's do the same here. I selected the mask again. Zoom in here, white brush
and let's brush here. Let's try to bring
back more details, nice details on
these dark parts. With the buildings, it's
just really not nice, so I don't want to
bring much light back on the buildings. But these dark parts, we can save it. I know it's just maybe too
much effort sometimes, so you don't have to bring
back all the details, but some of them, if you like, it's really nice
to have this tool and do the same bring
back some details. Now we do the same here. So click on the image, select select these parts, go back here, brush, and now I can actually just
go over these parts and fix. Command and D for this
select, check out here. Go back to black, and I can just fix
this part over there. I don't want to be make any
hour, any problems here. Good. Looks good to me. All right. So maybe do
the same here as well. So with the white just
bring back some details. It looks much nicer
and the other image. Good. That's it. We're going to lower
the exposure here, so don't worry if it's too
bright, don't worry about it. Alright, so before after
before after looks great. So much more details. Maybe I don't like
this part here. So let's change it back. Good. So before after
great more details. We should skip this part. If you think it's too much hustle,
that's absolutely fine. On this image, I
think so actually. On this image, I agree if you
say it's too much hustle, but many, many times, without the base layer, it's going to end up
just not really nice, not really detailed, so you
really need this base image. But actually, this image would be absolutely
fine without it, but you need to learn
these techniques anyway. Okay, the next step is
to fix the highlights. So there is a combination of
techniques I usually use. The first you need to do is a so called Blend If technique. So press twice on an empty part of the layer
here and on the pop up, choose blending options, and
we have here some sliders. So what we need to do
is to, as you can see, the slider has two parts on
left and the right parts, and we need to grab
the right part and bring it all the
way to the right. So press and hold option Alt on the Windows and
just the right part, bring it to the right
and press okay. And if I turn it
on, as you can see, we actually roughly
fix the highlight, but everything else
is a bit dull. As you can see, it's
just, you know, all the nice lights and everything's just
gone from the image, which we absolutely don't want. So now we need a
black mask again. So press and hold Option, click on the mask icon, and now everything is hided. So let's zoom in. Let's start here on the bottom
right and choose, again, a soft brush, 0% of hardness, and opacity
should be changed lower. The lower the number, the
more precise you will be, are going to be a bit
you the faster way now, so I just pick 30% on opacity. Bigger bigger brush,
white color with a brush, and just click on
the highlights. And as you can see, actually, we can fix the highlights. Just click on a couple of times. And we can fix the
highlights here as well. Here. Nice. And here
are more highlights. Here. It's just too bright. On the water. As you can see, we can bring back some
really nice details. It's not over exposed anymore. Some of them will be a bit overexposed, but
don't worry about it. There are just so much
intricate details here, so small and tiny. If you just zoom out,
you won't see it anyway. But you'll learn
these techniques. But these techniques is awesome. Actually, you'll be able to
use it in so many occasions, just to fix the
highlights and preserve all the details. Like this. So it is a bit time consuming, but in my opinion, it worth it. And most of the time, this is this is another
level of perfection. Of course. Okay, these
lights were probably moving. Probably it was a windy
day or something. I don't know what it
is, actually, I think. It's just swinging
around. I was windy. Anyway, gonna fix it
as much as we can. And here are some
awful highlights. Oh, my gosh. Oh,
it's so much better. There are changes.
So lights were on the first image and some were
not or other way around. So here, probably, if you
just press multiple times, it's going to be
gray, it's ugly. You can't fix those parts because they are not the
same on both images. So usually I just leave those in and I fix all
those highlights, I can actually fix because
they were present on both images or same here, as you can see, it's not nice. So fix all those you can
and don't worry about those you can't Okay, it's ugly here as well. Oh, so much nicer. Beautiful. Good. Fix everything you can. Oh, this is a good
example again. This boat was moving.
It's on the water. Of course, it's floating. So it has these
effect ghost effects. You shouldn't go
through that part. I just fix where you can. Good. So here. Oh, yeah, I can fix that. Actually. Alright, we have more lights
here. So you get the idea. I won't fix everything
now because it's just too time consuming
and I don't want to, you know, just it's going to
be boring for you, probably. So let's say I'm happy. I probably would do
some more fixing, but it's just much
better, after this. And now we are almost
done with the blending. Do you remember I
just told you we need the sky from this image, and actually, I forgot to duplicate this image
at the beginning, but don't worry because we just open this image,
which is this one, bring it here, press okay, and press Enter again. And maybe we need
to adjust again. Do you remember it was a bit shifted or it was aligned perfectly, so
we have to fix it. First, the same Okay. Actually, this is fine.
Go back to normal. And now, all we need is the sky. So the easiest way to mask in the sky is
to press the mask, go to the gradient to choose so your colors
should be white and black. Go here. And choose the one when the first color is white and the
second is black. And now we just to
create the end here. So we just mask the sky
in from that image. But we need to fix it because we mask some of the towns as well, and I just want to preserve all the details
from other layers. So what we need to
do is to choose any layers where the town
and the lend is visible, select it and go back here. And with the brush tool
with the black color 100% brush and black. You shouldn't use that part. And if we go here, you can see, we just
black that out. If you press press Command D, the selection is gone, and now you can see nothing
is used for the town. So we only fix fix the sky. The sky looks okay to me. Maybe it's a little
bit too dark, so we can fix that with
the curves. As well. So the problem with the curve, if I change the curve, everything will be changed on the image. We
don't want that. We only want to be the sky layer to be
affected to be changed. So what can we do? There is a clipping mask.
This is the button. If you press it. Icon
will be shown there. This is the clipping mask icon. So now, all we can
change is that layer, which is the sky now. So I can just a bit
brighten the sky. So it's more natural. So before or after, it's just a tiny, tiny change. That's it. So now we are
done with the blending. So what I usually do is
I select everything and I put it in a folder
and I call it blend.
6. Cleanup: The next step would
be is some cleanup. So new layer, cleanup and go to the
spot healing brush tool. Zoom in. And we have
some spots here. I probably my lens lens was
were a bit dirty or maybe. Okay, I try to fo,
here's another spot. And on the sky, that's it. It looks good. Here is I don't know
what it is, actually. It's just it shouldn't
be there, I know. And we have these rocks. I don't like distracting elements on the
edge of the image, so I usually fix those as well. So I try to select everything. Actually, it's good. It's really good. Alright,
so everything is fine. I don't know what
that is. I fix this. Oh, that's actually
people over there. But anyway, they're too
they they were on the edge, so I'm going to fix it
and I think that's it. That's enough for the cleanup.
7. Channel masking and curves: Actually, we have
two choices now. Go back to the
camera row and edit the image and do the
final editing there, or we can use some
other techniques, which is I think on this image is not really
important to use, but I want to show you because
you're going to learn it, and you will be able to use these techniques
on other images, and they are super powerful. So let's do the hard way first. We're going to use
some channel masks, and I go to the channels and
I click on those red, green, blue channels, and you can
just try to find the best one. With the nicest contrasts
on these parts. And actually, the
green looks great. Maybe the RGB is good as well. So click and hold command or press and hold
command, click on RGB. There is a selection. If
you press the mask button, you will see how
the RGB looks like. So press Command D now. So this select everything. So these are the
retinal, the green, the blue, and RGB. So the green and RGB are
actually both really good. But I go with the RGB, so I do this. I don't need this. Press and hold
command, click on RGB. So we have a selection,
go back to layers. Click on curves, and
now we have a curve, but already we have
a mask next to it. So the selection is gone, and the selection
become actually a mask, you can enter the mask. You can have a look
on the mask if you press and hold option
and click on the mask. Now it's a black
and white image. But actually, it's
not the image. It's the mask we just made. So let's change the mask. The goal here is to select
everything we want to change. So go to the image
adjustments and curves. And these curves won't change
anything on the image. It only will change the mask. So what I need to do is
to hire the contrast. So because it's a mask, everything is black or dark, we won't be able to change
everything on those parts, and everything is bright. We will change it with
the with the curve. So no, so all the I focus on these part
only, nothing else. So what I can do is try to make a really high contrast
selection of this part, which is nice here.
I press okay. Now, if we do anything
on the other curve, it will affect all the image. So what we need to do
is the same as before, you need another mask, so
I put it in the folder. Make a selection of these parts, so I go to the quick selection
to select the image, so it can sample. Now I have a selection, so I go back here to the directory, just made and press
press the mask. And now, as you can
see, the selection is gone, again,
we have the mask. So now, actually, if I
play with this curve, I only play on those parts, and we just want to change. So if I just raise the exposure, go to the blue channel. If you move it up, it's
going to be more blue. If you move it down, it's
going to be more yellow. So the opposite color
of the blue is yellow. So if I lower it, it's
going to be a bit warmer and I go to
the greens as well. It's a bit too green. If I move it down, it's
going to be less green, actually, which is
good for us now. Okay, it looks actually good. Okay. I like it. Actually, I like
it here as well. I don't think it's
strong enough here, so we need to do the
same for this part. So let's go to the channel. Press and hold command, click on RGB and
do the same here. So curves, press and hold
option, click on the mask. Image adjustments,
curves, and do the same. So I just try to make a mask with a nice contrast the selection of these parts. Press okay. Again, put it
in a directory or group. Click here, make a
selection of these parts. Good, and make the mask here. So now, again, if I
play with this slider, I only affect that parts. So I just higher it,
make it brighter, go to the blue channel, lower the blues, go to the green channel,
lower the greens. Okay, looks actually
looks much better. We need to fix some part, so go back to the mask. Brush to black. Oh, it's much smaller. Brush, and I just don't want
to brighten everything. So actually, this is
fine before and after. Good. It looks actually good. It's a bit funny here. Okay, here as well. Just to make sure I have a
look here. That looks good. All right. So that's done. So just to be able to follow
everything, I name these. So curve one curve two
8. Edit the Final Image in Camera Raw: Step is to make a copy of
everything is visible here, which the easiest way is to press and hold Shift
Option Command and press E, and we have a layer of
everything visible. Or the hard way is to
select everything, make a copy, right click
and go to merge layers. So it's the same actually. I call it Camara filter. And go to the Theater
and Camaro theater. Now, so now we have
almost perfect image. Nothing is too bright, nothing is too dark,
but a bit tall. Everything is just washed
out, not much contrast. So the goal here is to
bring back the contrast, the colors we like
and try to try to highlight all those parts you want to showed
to the people. So the best way is actually
to start with the masks. And let's start with
the radio gradient. I select the main
subject of the image, which is down and the
lights and I select it. I press on the
inverse or actually, the feather is 90 somewhere
90 to the hundred, it's fine. I choose 90. And lower the exposure on the
outside of the selection. As you can see,
now, we just move. We just actually highlighted the main subject of the image. I think it just looks
so much better. Okay, create a new
mask, linear mask, and I want to darken
the top part of the image just -0.40 it's fine. Make a new mask again, linear mask, select
the sky again. Go down to the effects Dehaze. I usually use dehaze on the sky. So what happens here is we
higher the contrast here, and the other side
effect of the dehaze is to get more blues, which is usually
not good for us, but that's an opportunity. If the sky, the dark parts of the
image becomes more blue, that means we can go up and higher the
temperature and the tint. So this way, it's going
to be more punchy, sunsetty warm colors because we can just balance the
blues, which is good. It's a bit too dark for me. So the other thing we do
is to hire the shadow, bring back some shadows
and blacks, actually. Let's say plus 40 shadows, plus 12 blacks, and this
is a before, after. As you can see, it just
looks so much nicer. On the sky, it looks
great, actually. The other thing I want
to do is here that part. Let's go back here. So this part is just too
bright, too washed out for me. So let's create a new mask and select an object,
select these parts. Good. And I want to soften the bottom part because
if I do everything here, it's going to be just so rough. It's not really nice. So what we can do is
just refine our mask. So press on sub track
and linear gradient and just consume in
here. Oh, oh, wow. And just to a gradient here. So it's going to be just not
that rough on the bottom. It looks actually
much, much better. And now if I lower the exposure,
it's going to be fine. It's going to be
absolutely fine. -0.75 maybe it's fine. Good. Okay, go
back to the masks, create a new linear
gradient again. I can talk in these
parts as well, so lower the exposure
by 0.4, it's fine. And maybe this is
too bright as well. So create a new
mask radio gradient because I think it's better here and lower the
exposure as well. Great. All right. Now we can
Oh, one more thing. These parts, they probably have different lightbulbs here. So these yellows and oranges are much
nicer than this one. This is just too much for
me. So let's fix that. New mask again, and I select
this part of the image, and I lower lower
the saturation here. It's just too much. -20 is fine. Good. Looks much
better for me to me. Alright. Okay. The
next one is curves. So it still needs some contrast. So let's go to the curve. So of course, the easy way is
just to hire the contrast. Easy one move, and that's it. But I think you can be much more precise on the curve
with the curve. So what we can do is hire the overall
exposure a little bit. And on the bottom left part, we just bring it a bit down. And now we have nice
contrast before or after. It's just night and day. Oh, it's actually night. But anyway, it's just better. Also, as you can see, there are some over
exposed parts, so it's probably too much. So on the high top
right, actually, we bring back some
highlights and some whites Walla it
just looks great to me. Okay. So before
after before after, as you can see, we just changed
the dynamic of the image. Now, so much more obvious
what you see on this image. It's just we really
needed that contrast. And maybe we need some vibrant, not much, maybe ten, and I think that's it. Then actually, I really like
the colors on the image, so I don't want to push
it too far before, after. That's it. I press okay.
9. Sharpening and Orton Effect: Next step, we have to
duplicate this image twice. So one and two. And this layer will
be called sharpening. And this is called Orton effect. So let's turn off,
sorry, Orton effect. Let's start with sharpening. So now, so I help you. So I zoom in, so you will see all the details.
I zoom in here. Go to view OR filters, and high pass. Press high pass. And now the radius should
be one. Press okay. So as you can see, we
have the details here, but it's super gray,
so it's not very nice. So to get the gray disappear, we need to change the blending
mode to sorry, overlay. And now if I zoom in, you can see this is the before, and this is the after,
this is the before. This is the after. It's just
so much, so much sharper. It looks so much better. If it's not sharp enough, you can just double the
layer for infinitely. Actually, it's going to
be super over sharpened, but you can see it's
super sharp now. So if I did this,
as you can see, this is the one
layer sharpening, so it's sharp enough for me, so it's absolutely fine. Okay, sharpening is done. You can actually
mask out the sky. So if you don't want to
sharpen the sky or the water, you can make a skin
and sharpen it out. Let's say, I want to
sharpen these bottom parts. So these parts are sharpened
and the skies is just not. So it's cute like this, I think. Okay, the next step
is Aton effect. There are many different
ways to do the Aton effects. I'm going to show
you the easy way, which I like the most, actually. So press on Orton effect, go to the filters, blur and tion blur, and I usually choose a number a little bit
about my megapixels. So my camera is 24 megapixels, so I choose usually around
28 or 30 pixels here. So 28.9, let's say 28 is fine. So now, this is
just a blur image. So what you need to do is to change the blending
mode to lighten. And now we have these
glowing effects. It's too strong, I know, but now all we see is the glow of the bright
parts of the image. So now we need to
lower the opposite to somewhere 10-20, usually. Let's say 50. Oh, sorry, 15. So if I zoom in, you can see
there is this extra glow. Here, which I really like, you lose a little
bit of contrast. So if you like the kind of photographer who likes
strong contrast, you can, of course, use a curve or
actually duplicate the orton effect and change
the blending mode to overlay. And now as you just
hire the opsiT, it's going to be more
contrasty, more punchy. I don't like it to be
a miss, so I deleted. All right. So actually,
we're almost done. The final step is crop. I usually crop it
to 16 by ten ratio. I prefer this over
to 16 by nine, but it's up to you. So I use 15, 16 by ten, and actually I cut down
some of the right part of the image let's
check the horizon. So this is the straighten. Let's say, here to Oh. Okay, it's straight.
Surprising. It looks a little bit off to me, but it says it's
okay, so it's fine. And that's it. I press
10. Conversion and saving: A Last step is to save it. So if you remember, I just told you at the
beginning to change the color palette we use to
P free or Pro Photo RGB. But those two are not
compatible with the Internet. So Internet runs on SRGB. So we need to save this image. If you want to of course, upload it to somewhere, your own images not this fun. This is only for
learning purposes. But if you save your images, you need to save it as SRGB. So let's go save it. File Export. And you can choose
Export or Save for web. Doesn't matter to be Nissa
I choose Save for Web now. And now the settings
are super important. So if you upload it to the web, usually you use JPEG. Quality. I usually use 95, so I save some space, but I don't lose
much quality anyway. Um, and the really important
part is to check in to check the Embed color
profile and turn on convert to SRGB and choose
the Internet standard RGB, no color management or
no color something. No color management.
So choose these ones. You can lower the size
or actually higher it. I don't want to. So
let's go back to sorry, to 100 and press save
and save it you like it.
11. Summary: So let's go through that.
Here is the original image. So this is where we came from, and this is the end result. This is the original.
This is the end result. I hope you like it and you
think it's an absurd upgrade. So let's go through what we did. So this is the original image, and we brought in three images, actually, and we
blended them together. So this is the so
this is one image, and we brought two more
and blended them together. So we made three images,
blended together. Then we cleaned up
the imperfections. Then we did some changes on this part of the image
and some changes here. So we upgraded those
parts a little bit with advanced
channel masking, and we edited the image as
a whole in Camaro filter, then we sharpen, then we
put some Oton effect on it. So that's how we made
from this image to this, from this to this. And actually, one
of my best practice is to save this image, wait a couple of hours or a day. Let's say tomorrow, come back to the image, do some refining, some small edits because usually at the end of
1 hour of editing, your eyes are just so tired and you're just
so off from reality. You need some time
off from the screen. Go back later and do your
really fine editing, and I'm 100% sure you
can make it a little bit better after a couple of minutes of editing in camera
or light room. And that's the one you
can post on the Internet. It's going to be so much better. I hope you like this tutorial, and please download the roofs to the steps I just showed you. You will learn so much
quicker and so much more, and I hope you're
going to meet again in the next tutorial until then have a nice day
and have nice slides.
12. Good Bye: Hey, everyone. Thanks for watching my tutorial
until the end. I hope you learn
some new techniques. Now, I want to ask you a favor. Please download the Ro files, follow the steps in the course
if you haven't already. And the end result, the
image you just edited, upload here as a project. I promise you, if you
follow the steps, you will learn
much, much quicker. Also, don't forget to
subscribe here on Skillshare. I already have some
other courses. Maybe you are interested
in those as well, and I will upload a few
more in the near future. Thanks for watching again and
see you in another course.
Zoltán Nagy, Olympus and Manfrotto ambassador
