Transcripts
1. Intro: As a photographer,
capturing my subjects in their most truest form is the most important
part of my job. I want the people I
photograph to look at the images and truly see
themselves for who they are. My name is Idara Ekpoh, and I am a portrait
photographer, creative director, and educator currently based in
Phoenix, Arizona. I've been shooting for
over seven years now, and my art is mainly
centered around storytelling,
identity, and healing. As early as I can
remember in my career, I really wanted to make
sure that people that look like me were
properly represented. I remember a lot of
my friends saying that there weren't
any photographers on campus that were able to
capture the way they look. Despite having competent work, they struggled with
capturing people who have darker complexions. For example, changing skin tones or in a lot of cases using presets that didn't consider the nuances and
different complexions. I want it to be the photographer
that you could go to and trust that your
image will be honored. In this class, we'll be covering how to shoot and edit a range of skin tones to ensure
that your subjects are properly lit,
photographed, and edited. You'll learn how to identify the skin tone and undertones of your subject's complexion, properly light your subjects in both indoor and
outdoor environments, the best settings for
shooting whether you're using a DSLR or an iPhone, and best practices for
color correction and color grading in Adobe
Lightroom and Photoshop. This class is suitable
for beginners, but really is recommended
for all levels. I believe that this
information is so important regardless
of where you are in your photography journey. I even created a class guidebook that you can
reference throughout the class and use as a tool
in your future projects. As photographers,
we have the ability to capture the world
through our lens. There is a social and
professional responsibility to properly represent
people of color. My hope is that
with this course, you become more competent in
honoring your subjects and fostering trust in the work that you're capable
of creating. [MUSIC]
2. Your Project: [MUSIC] Today we're going
to learn about how to edit different skin complexions. In the end, you'll be able to
confidently shoot and edit your subjects to ensure that you're properly
capturing who they are. So in this class, we'll cover how to use color grading as
a tool in your storytelling, the basics of how to properly
light your subjects, how to understand skin
tones and complexions, and how to properly
edit your photos through Adobe Lightroom
and Photoshop. For this class, you'll need any DSLR camera or
even an iPhone, and then of course,
you'll also need access to Adobe Lightroom
and Photoshop. You'll be tasked to
go out and shoot with your own subjects or if you don't have anyone to shoot with, I will be sure to share all
the raw images from my shoot. That way you'll
be able to follow along with the editing
throughout the course. Also be sure to download
the class guidebook to make sure that you're
getting the most out of every lesson. As a photographer, capturing my subjects and ensuring
that their skin is accurately shot
and edited has become a huge
component of my work. I have dedicated my
work to ensuring that black and brown
people are properly represented and shot to be seen as the radiant people
that I believe us to be. How I shoot and edit my subjects is really extremely important when it comes to the
confidence that my clients have in the work that
I'm able to produce. I remember in college
that there were a lot of photographers
that were not capable of capturing black
or brown skin properly. I would have friends
that would come to me and talk about how they felt those photographers
made their skin look too orange or too dull, so I decided that I would
step in and fill in that gap. I really made it my goal to make sure that regardless
of who came to me, they were able to feel confident in the skills that I had, and making sure that they were properly represented
and captured. Honestly, just wanting
my subject to fully trust my ability when
they booked with me. Until this day, I
oftentimes receive compliments about
how I capture skin. In the end, I hope that you're inspired to go out and capture the world and its people
through your own lens. [MUSIC]
3. Color Grading as a Storytelling Tool: To go ahead and get
us started with this course, in this lesson, we're going to talk about
how color grading can be utilized as a tool in
your storytelling. Now I won't talk about this too much throughout
the entire course, but if you want
more information, you can refer back to my
past Skillshare class where I talk about
color grading, color theory, and all
of that great stuff as it relates to storytelling
and photography. Color grading to me is an essential tool when it comes to storytelling in your work. How you edit a photo is
going to directly impact how your audience is going to feel
when they view that image. For example, if I want my
image to fill moodier, I might go for a darker
and more contrast-y edit or if I want my image
to feel more airy, I might go for more
of a bright edit. Understanding how colors and
tones work in your photo's really important to the story that you essentially
want to tell. To get us started,
I'm going to go ahead and show you a
couple of examples of my work and what I love
about the color grading. In this first example
that you see, it was really
important for me to create a scene that I felt was dreamy and a big part of
that was coloring the sky. I remember when I shot
this image at the dunes, I didn't see much color
in the sky and that was because at the time of
day we were shooting at. I felt a big part of my editing
was to focus on the sky, to have that whole dreamy aspect of the shoot that
I was going for. In this case, when coloring
the sky I made sure to include colors that made
me feel most at peace. These were colors such as
blue, pink, and purple. Adding these colors to
the sky were to create a very peaceful
and dreamy image. This next image I love so much because of
the rich coloring. Green, for me, is
a color of wealth and I feel like it adds so
much richness to this image. I loved the depth that
you see in the curtains behind the subject because
it adds so much dimension to the photo and it also
helps to really make sure that subject is popping
up in the image as well. Lastly, I wanted to give
you guys an example of what it looks like to
color grade a portrait, especially as we talk
about skin tones. In this image specifically, I really loved the richness
in my subject's skin. For me, it's really
important to ensure that when I'm editing
my subjects that they look as rich and as beautiful as I see
them in real life, and in this photo, I really love how vibrant the colors are, but also how the skin tone
is very much true to life. Color grading is
a powerful tool. It can change the way that your audience views your images. How do you think you'll utilize color grading as a tool
in your storytelling? Throughout this
course, we'll discuss different tools that
you'll utilize to create powerful imagery while also maintaining skin tones. I'll see you all on the
next lesson. [MUSIC]
4. Understanding Skin Tone & Complexion: [MUSIC] In this lesson we're
going to talk about understanding skin
tones and complexions. Like I told you all before, it is really important for
me to make sure that I'm maintaining the skin
tones of my subjects. A huge component of that
is making sure that I'm prepping them for success when I'm first
shooting with them. What I mean by that is
understanding their undertone, so then that way I am placing them in settings that I
feel like it's really going to bring out their natural beauty and ensuring that I'm
capturing that properly. Understanding
undertones is great because it can help you decide maybe what background you want
your subject to stand by, maybe what outfits you feel
like you want them to wear. I want to talk a
little bit about that and how I
utilize or identify undertones for my
subjects and how that impacts the rest of my
process and my shoots. When we talk about undertones, people can have warm, neutral, or cool undertones. I'll give you guys some examples
of what that looks like. If somebody is more so warm, I don't want to
cool them down in my editing or if
someone is cool, I don't want to warm
them up in my editing. I want to make sure that
I am maintaining what their undertones and
overall skin tones are so that way they are looking the same way they
look like in real life. How do you know what
someone's undertones are? One the ways that I've been
taught is to check the wrist. If you look at your wrist and you mess around with
your wrist a little bit, you'll be able to
see some veins. If somebody has veins
that are more so green, they're considered to be warm. If the veins in the
wrist are more so blue, then they're
considered to be cool. If you can't tell if this
is more so green or blue, then maybe they fall
in that neutral space. For example, my veins I
feel like are more so green and so I tend to say
that I have warm undertones, which is more so of that yellowish that I feel
like I see my skin. Another great way to
tell is what kind of jewelry do you feel
like you look better in? I personally feel
like I look good in gold jewelry because I just feel like it
helps me pop more. Usually having warmer undertone, I tend to go towards gold, but I also know people who have cooler undertones that like
to wear silver jewelry, so that's another great
indicator as well. Here is spectrum that you guys can utilize to help identify if somebody is warm or cool or maybe they fall
in that neutral space. Utilize that spectrum when you
are going out and shooting with your subject so that
you can really identify where they fall
in that spectrum. Overall, take some time to identify what your
subjects undertones are. If they are warm, you want to make sure
that you are maintaining that warmth that they have
throughout your editing. If they are cool, keep their cool tones
so that way you're not adjusting them too much and changing the way that
they ultimately look. You really want
to make sure that overall you're just
enhancing your subjects. I really focus this in my
HSL sliders in Lightroom, so we'll talk about
this later on. But when I'm editing
in Lightroom, I focus on the HSL
sliders because they tend to impact the
skin the most. I'll talk about a
little bit what I do in photoshop when I'm
editing skin as well. But the colors that
tend to really impact skin are red,
orange, and yellow. When I'm messing around
with those sliders, and I've put an example of
what this can look like, as you're messing around
with let's say the hue, the saturation, or luminance, I usually sit in that
saturation or luminance space. You want to be
careful that you're not making someone too orange or too red or too yellow or
whatever the case might be. Be mindful, play around with those sliders because
they're going to help you maintain your skin tones
throughout your editing as well. Overall, understanding
the undertones of your subjects are really
going to help you understand how you want to
shoot them as well as just making sure that you
are maintaining the way they look throughout
all of your editing. In the next lesson, we're
going to talk about how I like to light
subjects as well. We've talked a little bit about understanding skin tones,
understanding undertones, but we're going to talk about
how do you light subjects of different
complexions as well. So I'll see you guys in
the next lesson. [MUSIC]
5. Outdoors: Lighting Your Subjects : [MUSIC]. Now we're
going to talk a little bit about how to properly let your subjects for both
outdoor and indoor settings. We're going to break this up
into two different lessons. I'll also show you
all a demonstration of how I shoot in both
of those settings. Lighting is a huge
component of photography. In this lesson, we're going to cover a few things that you want to keep in mind when
lighting your subjects. First off, you want to determine what source of lighting
are you going to use. Do you want to use
natural light? Do you want to use
the diffused light? Do you want to use
artificial lighting, maybe more so if you're
shooting in a studio? You want to identify what
you want to shoot with. Now, I personally, I do a lot of my work
with natural light. I think I just find it
to be a lot easier. I like to use the sun and even in my last
Skillshare course, I talked a lot about
natural lighting just because the sun is free
and accessible to us all. If you're going outdoors
and shooting your subjects, that's likely going to be the source of light
you're going to use. I love to shoot with
natural light because depending on the different times of the day that you're shooting, you can get different types
of looks with your lighting. If you're shooting maybe
early on the day where the lighting is more so
even you get that soft, even look on your
subject if you are shooting when the sun is
more so out and harsh, you can really get some
really great shadows in your work as well. I love to do that, to
just play around with different looks in my photos. Or a lot of people love to do this option where they
shoot during sunset, when the sun is
going down because you get that really gold, yellow, golden hour look
on your images as well. When I'm shooting outdoors, another thing to keep
in mind is that you can use maybe diffusers or reflectors to play around with how the light is hitting
your subject as well. The next thing you
want to make sure that you're always doing once you figure out what
your lighting setup is. You want to also make
sure that you are properly exposing your
subject in your camera. Make sure you're looking at
your shutter speed ISO and f-stop to make sure your
subject is properly lit. Then also paying attention to the white balance
of your subject. You don't want to have your
white balance too high and maybe it's making your image
look more warm or cool. Just decipher where you want
that white balance to fall. The other thing I want to
make sure is well is that when you are exposing
for your subject, you want to make sure that
they are not overexposed, just so that way that
you can make sure that you're capturing
enough information. You can always go back and post and bring up the exposure, bring up the shadows,
whatever you might need to do to properly see your subject. Now that I've shown you guys
some examples of my work, I also want to
show you what this might look like in person. For the last portion
of this demonstration, I'm just going to show you guys, I'm sorry about all
the cars [LAUGHTER]. But I'm just going to show
y'all how I shoot outdoors. We have a lot of light today. I'm going to focus more so on my exposure and my ISO and I'll show you guys
what those settings are. Because I have the sun, I have to match my
settings to that. I'll show you guys what the
settings are and yeah, cool. [BACKGROUND] Let me see
where I can come closer. It is way too overexposed and these are the settings that I
had in the studio. I'm going to first bring my ISO down to 100. That's
already better. Because it's a porch,
I am going to bring the f-stop to let's do 3.5. I don't need it to be a two. Then I'm going to come
here to my shutter speed and I'm just going to
bring that up until I feel it's where I want it. I'm going to start with 640 and then if I make any changes,
I'll let you all know. We're making hella changes.
It's too bright [LAUGHTER]. [NOISE] Too bright here. [inaudible] [BACKGROUND]
Yeah I'm ready for you [NOISE] and that's perfect [BACKGROUND] [NOISE]
right there hold that. What I actually [NOISE]
ended up doing. My ISO still 100, my f-stop is at 5.6, so I ended up bringing that
up because of all the sun, and then my shutter speed
at one of 1,000 right now. [MUSIC] One thing that I'm doing when I'm shooting, especially outside, depending
on where the sun is, I usually like to
have my subjects facing the sun if possible, if it's too harsh
like this right now, you can try to see if
you can move around or you can use my diffusion,
you have one as well. One of the things I
want to show y'all is. I'm going to have you turn in a circle and
I'm going to follow you. You'll see how right here in the center faces side
how bright she is. She's turning let me follow her. You'll see how the
light is now changing. Now half of her face is
lit, now she's backlit. I can actually work with
her being backlit as well. I probably would
adjust my settings for her and then try to take
care of the rest in post. I'll take some examples of that actually and I show you
what it looks like, with direct sunlight and backlit [BACKGROUND] let's
do this [inaudible]. Stay here [MUSIC]. I also wanted to show you guys an example of what this
looks like on my iPhone. The great thing about
an iPhone is that my settings are already
really taken care of. I'm not really exposing
my shot here as you can see already it looks
really good on the screen. All I'm going to do
is just make sure my subject face is in focus. The way that you are able
to do that is by looking at the yellow box that
is surrounding her face and you'll see
that she's now in focus. Then at this point, I just focus on my angles and
how I'm shooting. These are the before and afters of these shots [MUSIC]. As you can see with the examples
that I showed you really they're both compelling images regardless of the tool
that I was using, whether I was using
an iPhone or DSLR. It's not necessarily the
tool that you're using, but more so paying
attention to the lighting, the composition, how
you're setting up your subjects essentially
before you actually shoot them. Then of course, how you
decide to edit them and post. Understanding light
is a key component to setting yourself up for
success as a photographer. In the next lesson, we're
going to talk about how I like to prepare for
shooting in studio. I just show you all a
quick demonstration in this lesson about
how I shot outdoors. But I also want to
show you all how to shoot in studios one, how I like to prepare
my lighting in those cases. I'll see
y'all there. [MUSIC]
6. Indoors: Lighting Your Subjects : [MUSIC] Although
natural light is great, there are also other options
when lighting your subjects. Let's say you are in a studio space and you want
to use artificial lighting. I have done that as well. It tends to be well, I
won't say it's scary. It's scary for me
because I'm new into this lighting world it's just really another thing to learn. You just really have
to understand lighting and understanding the tools
that you're utilizing. If you're using
maybe strobe lights, I love to use the pro photo
lights because they are a lot easier to operate I
personally believe them to be. I love to shoot with
those and sometimes I'll even mix artificial
light with natural light if there is a window in the studio that's bringing
in natural light as well. I'll go ahead and show
you guys some examples of what studio lighting
looks like in my work. This is a bit of a teaser
for the rest of this lesson, but I wanted to
quickly also share that when I'm going
to go into the studio shoot I am going to shoot with a green backdrop
just because I find that green is a
really good color for black skin in my opinion. You'll see that when I'm
shooting my subjects, that the backdrop is very good with each
of those skin tones, their complexions
and tones, etc. I just wanted to point that out before we go ahead and get
started with this lesson. You also want to be mindful of your ISO shutter speed and aperture while you're
shooting in the studio. I tend to have a higher aperture when I'm shooting and then I adjust my ISO and shutter
speed according to each image, and then also focus on
the color temperature. I usually keep my color
temperature between 4-5,000. You can manually do that
in your camera or you can go ahead and just put it on an auto editor will pick the best setting
for you as well. With all that being said, let's go ahead and hop
into our demonstration. Hey you guys. We are here today to shoot with a
couple of friends. I'm going to talk you through a couple of my lighting setup, so shoot indoors and studio
and then outdoors as well. Today we have Shantel we'll settle her first
she's sitting here [LAUGHTER] and what
we're going to do is I really personally
loved to go for earth tones so
we're going to use this olive green backdrop and then we have this
Einstein light, that's going to be our main
light and then we have this continuous light in the background just
to light the back. I'm going to go ahead and just take some portraits of her. As I'm shooting I'll show you guys the different settings. Right now I'm at 1/200, F of eight and ISO of 400. I'll shoot with that. I will
give you guys a warning. I'm not a studio photographer. I barely know what I'm
doing with these lights, but [LAUGHTER] play around with them until you get
some that you like and then once we go into editing, I'll show you guys
how I manage to keep skin tones throughout
the entire process. Let's go ahead. [MUSIC]. Right now I'm going to go ahead and
shoot our second model. I'm not going to change
anything with our lighting. I actually really love the way it looks
with the test shot. You can see how
beautiful and rich your skin is just
like in real life. [LAUGHTER] We're
going to go ahead and just keep shooting and then if I should
make any changes, I'll make sure to tell
you guys on the screen. [MUSIC] I'm going to go
ahead and shoot with our third model here. The only thing that I did because it was a
little bit bright I did bring down my ISO to 320. It was at, I think 400
before. I brought it down. But I'll make sure
the settings are on the screen so you guys can
see what it is accurately. Perfect. Let's go ahead. [MUSIC]. We're on our fourth model. The only thing that I changed, actually, let's see
what I changed. I brought the ISO back to 400 the range I think between the last two
have been around three 40-400. F-stop is still 6.3 out
of 1/200 and then this, I cannot really tell you
what this is set to. Just play around with
the light settings until you get something
that you like. This is right because
I'll show you off. I feel like that's very accurate to what she looks
like in real life. Beautiful. Let's go ahead.
[LAUGHTER] [MUSIC]. For our final shot, I'm going
to take some group photos. I'm not changing
much of my settings. I'm going to go into
that right now, but I will share the
screen what my settings are, and yeah. [MUSIC]
7. Lightroom: Color Correction: [MUSIC] We're going
to go ahead and talk about color correction. To go ahead and get us started, I really always start
utilizing the Basics tab. Color correction before
we start actually, it's just really prepping your image for all the
editing that you want to do. So you really want
to make sure that your image is fully prepped, and that you have a
solid foundation, that your exposure is
where you want it to be, your contrast's where
you want to get, your temperature as well. That's what we're going
to go ahead and get started with doing. I want to go ahead and
also show you guys some certain areas when it
comes to my color correcting. One tool you can use that I don't use often is
the tone curve, and this is really
great to go ahead and add colors and remove
colors from your image. Here you're seeing that
if you add more science, you're removing the reds, if you add more reds, you're removing science same thing with the purple and green. That can be really good with color correcting in your image, especially when it comes to correcting the
colors in your skin, but I don't personally
use it because it's a little bit complicated, but I do use, like I'm showing you here
the saturation sliders, which are really great to just focus on the
colors in the skin, which are usually red,
orange, and yellow. Oftentimes I'll look into the HSL sliders and I might
go into luminance like I just did reduce the orange
to add some depth into the skin and maybe
touch the saturation a bit. You can already see
that before and after. We're going to go ahead
and start with this image and go ahead and color correct
it from the beginning. The first thing I'm going to
do is pick my color profile. I usually oftentimes
look at faithful, standard, or neutral. So for this image, I believe I'm going
to go ahead and look at adding neutral. I really like the way that
that looks on the skin. Then I'm just going
to go ahead and make some adjustments
in my basic tab. I'll start with exposure, look at contrast, maybe the whites, blacks, and just really, like I said in my previous
Skillshare class, just mess with the sliders until you get what you think
looks good to you. You can always refer
back to your before and after to make
sure that your image, especially the skin is still looking the way
it's meant to look. I might increase a little
bit of the temperature, but that's about it. I think this image for
right now should be solid. I don't think I have
anything else I want to add. I like the color of her skin and the way
that she is exposed. I'm doing the same thing here. Just going to go ahead
and add my color profile. This is really great to hover over and see
what the effect is and compare it to the original as well as
you can see me doing. Let's see what I'm
going to pick. I really liked the way
that standard looks. We're going to go back to my Basics tab and
go ahead and adjust the temperature to
slightly look at the exposure, contrast. I usually add a little
clarity for sharpness, not too much because
it can become a lot. But just make your
adjustments here. Again, compare the
before and after to make sure that you like the
way the image looks. I'm also going to do this
for this image as well. I think for this one, I'm going to go with faithful. I really like the way
that looks on her skin. I'm going to reduce
the exposure just because I feel like her skin
was a little overexposed. You can see as I'm doing this, the depth and
richness of her skin is really coming
back into the photo. I'm making the same, similar adjustments that I
was doing before, just tailoring it to this image and you can already see what her skin is looking
like it I think it's really nice, deep and rich. Just zooming in so you
guys can see that. I'm going to go ahead
and leave that for now. Then we also have this
group image for this photo. I'm going to do the
same prep work. I'm just going to
pick my color profile after I decide what
my color profile is, I am going to go back
to my Basics tab and adjust the
exposure temperature. But this one is a little
tricky when we get into some further steps of what I will do
because we have multiple people I want to
edit for each individual. Lightroom is really great and I might be getting
ahead of myself. I'll compare it to
the screen recording, but Lightroom is really
great because you can create a mask for
each individual process. That was the before and after. What I'm doing right now is
I'm going in and I'm clicking on mask then people and I am adjusting each
individual person. This is really great to
have a bit more control. You can see that I just
took care of a Person 1, I'm going in for
Person number 2, and I'm just going to go
in for each individual and just make edits to their skin to make sure that they are
exposed correctly and that the image is looking
how I want it to look. You can see what the
third individual I did feel like she
was a bit overexposed, so I brought her down a
bit and I also gave her a little bit of warmth
as well because I feel her skin
was missing that. All of this again
is just by I. I just like to make some
adjustments stopped where I feel satisfied and
then also compare that before and after to make sure that I'm maintaining
those skin tones. There's that before and
after for you guys. Let's also try this on one
of our outdoor images. I'm just picking
my color profile. My process is not
change whether I'm working on an image that's
indoors or afterwards. I still pick my
color profile and then go in with the Basics tab. Then here I'm going
to go back to my HSL sliders and edit
those slightly as well. Same thing with this image. I want you guys to see how
it impacts each photo. But the steps are
still the same. Pick your color profile and
then go into your basics tab, adjust your exposure,
contrast whites, blacks, et cetera,
your temperature. Then compare that before and
after to see how that looks. You see what that looks
like from this image. Especially when there's
so much sun I find that I already like how
the skin is looking. I don't want to make
too much adjustments. But I'm going to go
ahead. What I'm doing here is creating a mask. I like to target the background, especially if I
feel that backward is a little bit too overexposed, I'll bring it down,
so then that way it adds a little bit of depth
to the image as well. I think you guys can see the
pattern with my editing. Again, just starting with
this color profiles and then going into
adding those basics. Then the other great thing, this is just a bonus to Lightroom does have
adapted presets, which are great to
quickly whiten teeth, darken eyebrows, enhance eyes. I really like to
add those because I just think it makes it
easy to add the mask. Then here I'm
adding a little bit of warmth to the
background because I think it just really
helps with her skin. It helps her pop a
little bit more. Love it. There's that
before and after, very subtle changes,
but you can see again the deep and
richness in her skin. Then our last image, this one I think will be fun
to color correct because of that blue in the sky really love to play well with my blues. But I'm doing the same thing, adjusting my exposure contrast. I will say that again, it was really harsh lighting. I think that this
is the shoot in such harsh lighting
is a specific choice. I know a lot of photographers
wouldn't want to do this. They tend to shoot when it's more so overcast
so then that way you don't have shadows and you can see some
shadows around her eyes, but I still think it will
make for a great style photo. Awesome. Now that
we have done that, the next step is to go ahead
in color grader image. In our next lesson, we're going to talk about
color grading and the steps I take for each photo.
See you there. [MUSIC]
8. Lightroom: Color Grading: [MUSIC] Welcome back you all. In this lesson, we're going
to go ahead and talk about color grading and the steps I take to color grading
in Lightroom. We are really going to
pick up exactly where we left off and talk
a little bit about the different tools I use
in Lightroom and really see how that image is really
starting to progress. We're going to go
ahead and start with doing some masking. What that looks
like is usually I try to start with
masking the background. I really find that
adding color and reducing the exposure of
the background really helps to bring out the
subject a bit more. You can see that I
reduced the exposure, I added a little bit of warmth. I'm just playing around
with the other side just to see what that
impact is going to be. I really like adding a
little bit of contrast, because you can see what that is already doing
to the before and after of our image and it really helps to have our subject
pop a little bit more. I really love how
easy it is to create mask in Lightroom so
that is our first step. Then I'm also going to use those Adobe presets that I
messaged in the last lesson. I'm going to go ahead and
enhance her eyes and darken her eyebrows and
you can see what those before and afters are. The AI in Lightroom is so good to where it
just does that so easily and I don't have to struggle with
creating mask at all. Now we're going to go down
to our color wheels so this is where the bulk
of color grading occurs. You can add colors
to your shadows, mid tones and highlights. I just play around
with the wheels and see where I want
the color to fall. Usually I stay into that
yellow, orange, red area, especially when
it comes to skin, but just play with the sliders. If you feel like it's too much, you can reduce the opacity of that color in that certain
area of the photo. Again, while you're doing this, just focusing on the before and after and making sure
you're just maintaining complexion so you're not changing the way your
subject looks drastically. That's what this one
is looking about. I do find that she's
a little bit too red, so we're going to
fix that later on in Photoshop but I like
that foundation for now. For this image,
we're going to go ahead and play around with the tone curve to see
if it helps to add a little bit more magenta
to the photo which I like. They're very, very
slight but just a bit. I think I'm going to go head and worry about this slide
just real quickly so just some basic
color correcting that I still wanted
to do on this photo. You can see that reducing the saturation a little
bit skin is not too orange and just playing around
with those sliders a bit. Just like we did
in the last image, we're going to go
ahead and just color grade a bit and adding
colors to our shadows, mid tones and highlights. Again, you can
increase or decrease the opacity to see how it's
impacting the photo as well. Like I mentioned before,
there really isn't any science that I
have behind this, I just like to go
around the wheel and just see what my
eye is attracted to. That is really nice and
you can see the way that these wheels are just
toning the overall image. I think I like the
way that looks, so I'll move to our third image just like I did
in the first one. I'm going to start with
creating a mask for the background and just having my subject
pop out a bit more, which you guys will
see that already creates such a drastic change. Then I'm going to go
to my color wheels and see what color I may
or may not want to add. Like I mentioned before, you can blend or check the balance of the colors as well and that's
our before and after so I'm really happy with
all that right now. With this photo we're
picking up where we left off and I'm adding a little
bit of warmth to her skin. Again, just making some basic corrections before
I go into my color grading. Like I did before, I'm going to start with the background, decrease the exposure,
add some warmth, and you can already
see how drastic of a change that is between what we had and
what we have now. Just move next slide
as you can see what happens to the background. I really like that. Honestly, I'm really happy
with this image as it is. I don't have much more
that I want to do. I might go to my color
wheels but we'll see, I am going to reduce
the luminance a bit so you can see
that richness come back into her skin
and I really love that so it's not too
much highlights. Then we're going
to also see what else needs to be added to this image as well
like I mentioned. I might come down to
the color wheels to see if I like to add any
colors to my shadows, mid tones or highlights. I think that's really
all I want to do. Yeah, I'm going back and
forth between the two. Then I just want to show you one edit of the outdoors photo because the steps
are relatively the same for all outdoor
images I shot. But for this one I'm color
grading the sky first because I love to
change the hue and saturation of blues and then I'm going to just
go in and I'm going to mess around with the
color wheels to see how that adds a little bit more
of style to the image. I think that when
you have shots that are shot with harsh sun, those are really great
opportunities to just create some images
with a bit more edge and style and so I really like the way that edit
is coming together. I think I'm actually
satisfied with this, so I'm going to leave it as is and in the next lesson
we're going to talk about any last-minute touches
that I make in Photoshop. Some color grading that I do in Photoshop and some of
the adjustment layers that I focus on. Yes so I will see you guys
in the final lesson [MUSIC]
9. Photoshop: Adjustment Layers & Finishing Touches: [MUSIC] Welcome back
to our final lesson. We're going to go ahead and
talk about Photoshop and the adjustment letters
I use in Photoshop and the final touches
on these images. You'll see here that
we're going to go ahead and export our photo
from Lightroom to Photoshop. What I'm going to
do do with some of the example images
are going to be consistent throughout all of the final images that
I'll show you at the end. Even if I don't go through
it on my screen recording, just note the steps
are the same. What we're going to
start off by doing is, we're going to start
with an adjustment later and I love to use
selective color. I love this because selective
color allows you to target certain colors in your image
and add or remove cyans, magentas, yellows, blacks, etc. I'm just here starting off on my reds and seeing how
this impacts my photo. If I don't like what it's doing to certain
areas of my photo, the great thing is that
because there is a mask on it, I can just take my eraser
tool and erase the parts that I don't want that
adjustment layer to show up on. I did that for the reds. I'm going to go to green, I'm trying to see
what will impact the background and it's
likely going to be yellows. Yes, so it's yellow. I'm just adjusting the
colors in the background to see what I'm
aiming more towards. Do I want more of a green? Do I what more of
an olive color? You can see how that is
looking with my subject. It did change a little bit
of her skin so I'm going over with my eraser tool just to remove that mask from her face. That way it's only impacting the other areas of the
photo and not her face. That's that before and after. I really love this image
so far, so beautiful. I'm trying [NOISE] to
see if I want to use the clone stamp tool to clean up the background
a little bit. I might not do that
because I find that it's creating
more of an issue. Here I'm using the Healing Brush or what I think [LAUGHTER]
is the Healing Brush. There I grab the round brush, I'm looking for the
Healing Brush now. I'm I going to use that. You know what, I think I'm
going to leave that for now and now I mess with that. I think the only thing I'm
going to do in Photoshop is that adjustment layer where
I did the selective color, and I'm going to go
ahead and click "X", save the image, and it's going to import the
image back into Lightroom. What we're going to go
ahead and deal with this final image is just
some finishing touches. You can work on editing skin, either Lightroom or Photoshop
but for the purpose of time I'm going to
utilize Lightroom, and I think I'm going
to go ahead and use one of the Healing Brushes. I'm going to go in over the
parts that I want to fix. You can see that it's just
picking up from other areas of her face to fix the
areas that I'm stamping. Now since I'm satisfied with that and I'm just
going to go over a few spots on her face just to clean up her
skin a little bit, I don't tend to do too
much skin editing just a little bit especially if my models already
have great skin, I really want it to look
as natural as possible. I'm still going in stamping. This is actually the content aware tool that
I'm using which is really great for other reasons but I do use it on skin just because wherever I stamp it's using AI content awareness
to pick from other areas. This to tell me what the best
clone is for that stamps. I'm just going in and
cleaning all that up. She does have some small
lines on her up face, so I'm trying to
see if I like it. If I take those out I might not. I feel stuff like that are so natural and I don't want
it to look unnatural, so yeah, I'm removing that. [LAUGHTER] I'm going to remove that from her face and
leave that for now. Again, I don't want to do
too much skin retouching. Then I'm just going back
over with exposure, see if there's anything
else I'd like to do but I think I'm happy
with this image. That is the before and that
is the after of this photo. I'm going to go ahead and
export that and yeah, we're going to move
on to our next image. Awesome. Here I'm going to
take this photo straight into Photoshop where I'm going
to do the same thing. I'm going to go and utilize
my adjustment layers, and I'm going to use the
layer selective color. Selective color, we'll
start off with my reds. See what I want to add
if I want to add cyans, remove cyans same
thing with magenta. All of this is really just
for you to play by eye. [LAUGHTER] and so I'm just really focusing
on my subject, I will toggle
before and after on that adjustment layer
just to see how it's impacting the photo
to see if I like it. I'm solid with that, so I'm going to go back into Lightroom and see if I need to do any healing on the skin. I'm going to go ahead
and enhance her eyes, whiten her teeth with those adaptive presets that
are there and ready for you. Again, those are
really great to use in Lightroom because you just see how quickly it
worked on her eyebrows, her teeth, her eyes, and so that's a little before
and after we ought to see. Then I'm just going to use
the same content aware tool to go ahead and just clean
up her skin a little bit. Helps to zoom in a little bit. I don't zoom in too much but just a little bit so you
can see what you're doing. I think I'm okay, there's one spot that I
want to fix. There we go. Awesome, so I'm
pretty happy with that image just going to
mess up the exposure a bit, see if I want to use
that and there you go, that's the before and
the after for us. Awesome, for this image
I might just go straight into healing and just doing some final
touches on our skin. I'm not too sure
if I'm going to go into Photoshop for this photo just because I really love how the image is colored graded. We're just going
to go in and clean up some spots on her face
and those blemishes, and trying to find the right size brush and
make sure you zoom out and zoom in so that way
you can see what the edits are on your
photos thus far. Actually I'm really
satisfied with that, so I'm going to leave that
photo as it is and that's the before and after such
a drastic difference. No, I'm not doing that. Then our last photo, we're just going to
go straight into healing and just taking
care of her skin. I'm not going to use any adjustment layers
on this photo just because I'm really happy
with the color toning. Really I only go into
Photoshop if I need to. If I'm going into Photoshop
maybe because I want to target the colors a bit more, but sometimes I'm able to just do this fully in Lightroom. This just goes
back-and-forth and sometimes my workflow will
change depending on the image. You saw the first image where I need to go
into Photoshop, the second images too
and the last images, not too much just really happy with how they look
like in Lightroom. That's the before and after. I'm going to go ahead and show
you all of the before and afters of all the
images [LAUGHTER] that we have edited today. I'm going to show you
all the images from the first editing video
because I know I didn't show all of the
editing that I did step-by-step for each image because the steps
tend to be the same. For the sake of time
I wanted to just show some example images
but here are the before and after of
all of our images. We've focused on color
correcting in Lightroom, color grading in Lightroom. Some edits and photoshops with those adjustment layers
and final touches as well. Just to make sure that your
image is fully finalized, good to go, you're
ready to export. I really hope that you
all liked this lesson. Again, looking at these
before and after as you can see the drastic difference
between the edits, but also see how
their skin tones are maintained throughout the
entire editing process. [MUSIC]
10. Conclusion: [MUSIC] Congratulations,
you've made it to the end. We learned that
understanding how to edit different skin tones
will allow you to become a more competent
photographer and ensuring that your subjects are properly represented in your images. We talked about different
lighting techniques that can be used to make sure that your
subject is properly lit. Lastly, how color correction
and color grading can be used to enhance your image and help tell the story
of your subject. If there's one thing I hope you take away from this course, it's remembering that there is a social and professional
responsibility that we have as photographers. Although we have the ability to go out and capture the world, it's really important that we're making sure
that people are properly represented in how
we shoot and edit them. Really take the time to
understand your subjects, understand their skin tones, their undertones, their
complexions to really make sure that they're properly
represented in your work. Now that you have
completed the class, I do want to encourage
you-all to do the following. Post the final images
that you edited in this course in the
project gallery. Leave a review on this
class if you did enjoy it. Share it with a friend, as well as following
me so that way you're notified of
my future classes. Lastly, if you do
upload your images, go ahead and tag me on Instagram @ohyeahitsidy
as well as use the #IdyTaughtMe so that way I can interact with
your post as well. Thank you all so much for
finishing this course. I truly hope that
you enjoyed it, and I hope to see you guys
in my next one. [MUSIC]
Idara Ekpoh, Photographer
