All language subtitles for 08 Natural Reflectors.mp4

We've moved locations, and we are
actually under the interstate right

now.

And there's awesome composition.

Opportunities there's huge pillars.

There's a lot of lines and patterns
here that make great symmetry for a

great composition.

It provides a really unique background.

So the image we're creating here right
now is still using this hard, harsh

sunlight with that red rank sort of
style and technique.

But the immediate problem I see when I
just took this photograph is that his

clothing is actually just

blending into the background of this
overhang.

So one thing I did early in my career,
and actually still do today, is use the

environment and used natural
surroundings

as a fill.

So as you can see, there's all these
vertical lines and walls that are

neutral gray, that are going to provide
the perfect fill for our shot.

If you remember from the previous
lesson, we use the reflector to bring

in that fill.

And the positioning of that reflector

is very important.

So where we stand right now we're just
too far away from the wall, and you can

see this in the model's face.

But if we are to move and shift

two to three feet to our left here,

then suddenly all that strong contrast
would be reduced,

and then we're just going to have a
little bit more detail in the side of

the face, and of course, the outfit.

So I'm going to shift curt about a
foot, just to see if that makes any

difference at all.

It's going to shift this way,

perfect.

So right now, curts about three feet
from the wall, and I'm going to go

ahead and take a photo and see if it's
made any difference.

So if you look at these two photos side
by side, I'm not sure that we're quite

there yet, and it's not really doing
enough and not doing what I want to do.

So we're going to shift him another two
feet

to the left

and see what that looks like.

So now that we've shifted curt another
two feet closer to this wall, it's

pretty much where we want to be.

But if you want to reduce those shadows
even more, you can almost get them less

than a foot away from the wall and
really see the difference.

So one thing that's really important to
remember is

that these pillars in this wall is sort
of a neutral white or a neutral gray.

And if you introduce color, you
introduce green, red, yellow, anything

like that it's going to really give off

a nasty colorcast that you might just
not want.

If you find yourself in or around town
shooting on the street,

they'd just be cognisant of those
painted walls.

So I actually do prefer to use white
film cards or that diffusion disc that

you saw the last lesson.

So in that curtsm position, and we're
using this wall as a natural fill, I'm

going to get to work and try to get a
good shot

perfect.

I like that ker's

chin up a little bit

great.

So I'm really keeping in mind these
vertical lines

for a really unique composition here.

And one thing you also want to remember
is to really keep that highlight on

this cheek as apparent as possible.

Fortunately, we have this natural fill
to really provide ample light, ample

fill on

that side of his face.

But we still want to have his cheek a
little bit to the right in order to get

that perfect light.

So you can sort of get two different
types of lighting here.

If Curtis rotates his chin this way,
then all those shadows are completely

reduced.

And then if he looks towards me,

it's going to come back to that
Rembrandt style of lighting that we

talked about earlier.

And it's going to be a lot more
dramatic.

So I think in this situation,

I really like Kurt looking straight at
me, because it's just a lot more dramatic.

So having a diffusion disk or a filcard

is

really the most versatile way to fill
shadows.

But just keep this technique in mind

for when you do find yourself in urban
areas or surroundings that do have

these white walls, gray walls,
something where it can really reduce

those shadows.

So this is an awesome shot I really
love.

So we're going to take this into post
processing and see what he's been doing.

Play.

Just finished up with Kurt leaning
against this wall.

I've already brought it into Photoshop,

and I've done my capture one process.

I've brought up the shadows and even
doute the exposure a bit.

I did a quick healing session to remove
some of the distractions on the wall

and on his face.

And I've gone ahead and done some
dodging burn to his face, just to even

out those transitions of light.

Let me zoom in quick and i'll show you
exactly what I did to his face.

There's with the healing,

very minimal,

and here's dodge and burn.

I didn't feel like there is a need to
do any global dodge and burn, just

because the light was already nice and
contrasty, and contour it on his face.

Let me zoom out a little bit.

And for this lesson, I wanted to focus
on minimizing or removing distractions

using color adjustments and different
selection techniques.

The first thing that I want to work on
are these bushes here in the background.

They're calling the eye a little bit
too much.

They're a little bit too saturated.

And there are different colors, so they
really pop out.

One way to make it blend a lot better
with the rest of the image is to give

us some warm tones and kind of
desaturate that a little bit.

We're going to click our top layer so
that when we choose our color

adjustment, it makes it on top of all
of the work we did previously and

affects everything below it.

Next, we're going to choose selective
color to deal with this problem.

We're going to make sure that we're in
the yellow tab, because I think the

issue with these bushes is restricted
to only the yellows and greens.

We're going to use the magenta slider
to reduce those green tones and

introduce some warmth.

We'll slide it a bit to the right.

About right there, I think, is good.

Next, I think we should add a little
bit of yellow.

So we'll drag that slider to the right
as well.

Not too much.

Now, on the Sion slider, we're going to
drag it a little bit to the left to

introduce some reds.

Now, if we toggle our select of color
adjustment on and off, we can see that

it's affecting some other areas in the
image.

So we're going to want to limit it just
to these bushes by making sure that we

select the layer mask

and command I to invert it.

Or you can go up to image adjustments
and hit invert.

Remember that where your mask is white,

the effect is showing through, and
where it is black, it is not.

So we're going to make sure that our
mask,

it starts out black, so none of the
effect is showing.

We're going to use our brush tool by
heading b on the keyboard,

make our brush a bit smaller.

I'm going to be using flow at around
fifty percent.

We're going to make sure that white is
also selected.

If it's not, you can hit d on your
keyboard and it'll reset it.

And we're going to paint in the effect
over these bushes.

And now you can see that the effect is
only showing through on that area.

I think the bushes are a little too
saturated now.

So we're going to use a hue saturation
adjustment to reduce that color a

little bit.

You can find the hue saturation
adjustment right here on your

adjustments panel.

We're going to click that, and we only
want it to effect

where we masked in our selective color
adjustment.

So we're going to clip the hue
saturation adjustment to the selective

color one.

You can do this by hitting command
option g on your keyboard,

or you can hold option

and hover your mouse between the two
layers and click,

and it'll clip it to the layer below it.

What clipping does is make sure that
the clipped layer is only applied to

the layer right below it.

I think that the yellows are just a
little bit too saturated.

So in the properties panel for hue
saturation,

we're going to go down, click on master

and then yellows.

And we're going to pull this saturation
slider down a bit.

And you can see that it mutes that
yellow color just enough so that it

blends really well

now that we've taken care of the bushes
the sky is calling my eye just a little

bit too much.

I feel like it's a little bit too
saturated and just a little touch too

blue for this image.

I think the simplest way to just affect
the sky is to use a huge saturation adjustment.

And since the sky is the only cyan part
of this image

in hue saturation, I can click on the
master, drop down,

choose sions,

reduce the saturation,

and you'll notice that it doesn't
affect anything else in the image,

because there's no other area with cyan
in it.

Now that we've taken care of that
saturation, we just need to shift the

hue a little bit to the warmer side.

We're going to do that by using the hue
slider in the hue saturation adjustment panel.

We're going to take it a little bit to
the left.

Now I still think it's a little bit too
saturated, so we're going to pull that

down even more.

It's a very subtle change, but I think
that blends a lot better with the rest

of the image.

The last thing I want to fix in this
image is this wall

it's a little bit too bright.

So it's pulling our eye away from curt
and to the left of the image.

And the fix for that is to darken it.

I think the easiest way to select this
wall and darken it is to use our mark

key tool by hitting m on our keyboard.

We're going to select a large portion
of this wall.

You'll see that the selection method
isn't perfect,

because it didn't select this area
right here.

So to fix that, we're going to use our
lasso tool.

You can get to your lasso tool by
heading l on your keyboard or hitting

right here.

If it's selected on a different tool,

you're going to need to click and hold
on this button

and select lasso tool.

To add to this selection, we're going
to hold our shift button on our keyboard,

click right along the edge, drag it to
the left,

take up as much of this as we can,

and kind of stop our selection up
higher along the same edge of this wall.

We're going to let go,

as you can see, Photoshop intuitively
filled in the rest of our selection for

us because we left that gap between our
start and end points.

How this selection method works is that
Photoshop automatically fills in the

rest of our selection for us and draws
a straight line between our beginning

and end points.

Let me just show you another quick
example of how this works.

I will click

and drag

and watch how Photoshop automatically
draws a straight line between my

beginning and end points, if I let go.

Obviously, we don't want his shirt
selected, so I'm going to undo that.

This tool works particularly well
because we're dealing with a very

straight edge

to continue on with selecting the wall.

We'll do the same thing up on this top
section, because we missed a little bit here.

So we're going to hold our shift button,

click

and drag all the way down to the bottom
of this edge.

And now it drew that straight line and
has that area selected for us.

The area around his shoulder is a
little bit trickier, because we're

going to have to manually draw the line
around his shoulder,

but it's not too difficult.

We'll just zoom in,

we'll hold shift, click where we
finished last time,

and start selecting areas that we want
to include into the selection.

We actually included a little bit of
his shoulder in our original marquise selection.

So to remove that area from our
selection,

we're going to hold option

click, where we finished on our last
selection

and just

drag along his shoulder

as closely as we can.

So now that area is removed from our
selection, and we can move onto the

next part.

We need to continue adding on to our
selection all the way down

his arm

until it meets

right here.

We're going to hold our shift button
again,

click

and start following the line of his
shoulder.

And if you need to stop the selection
at any time, just drag away from that

edge and let go.

And it'll add to the selection for us.

Notice that we're keeping his shadow in
this selection, because it's still part

of the wall.

And we want to darken that as well.

Let's continue working on this last
little area.

We're going to hold shift

and drag along the edge of his sweater

all the way down to where we finished
right there.

We're going to drag away from our edge

and let go.

Now I think we have a pretty good
selection here.

The way that we're going to darken the
wall is with the curves adjustment layer.

So we're going to go to our adjustment
panel,

click on the curves button,

and you'll notice that it automatically
used our selection to make a layer mask

for it.

We want to darken the wall.

So we're going to click a point on the
curve

and just pull it down until we think
it's at a good point.

Now that we've darkened it, I think the
color doesn't look quite right.

So we're going to use another hue
saturation adjustment layer.

And again, we're going to clip this
layer to the curves layer below it

by heading command option g.

The issue is only in the reds and the
yellows.

So we're going to the master, drop down,

click on our reds,

pull the saturation down a little bit,
and you'll notice that it's affecting

this area of the wall.

And now we're going to choose yellows

and pull that down a little bit as well.

And now I think that the saturation is
looking really good

now that we have the hue saturation
adjustment clipped to the curves below it.

We're just going to pull this master
saturation slider down

until we think that it looks good,

right?

There is a good point, I think.

So we're going to take all of these
color adjustments we made and put them

into a group.

We're going to click on our top
adjustment,

hold shift and click on our bottom
adjustment,

and then click command g to make a
group for them.

I'm going to name this group c, c for
color correction.

Now there's still one big distraction
that we have to deal with.

And it's this big dark spot on the
wall.

I could have taken care of this during
my healing and cloning process, but I

actually knew that I was going to make
a selection of this wall, and I could

deal with this in a different way that
would be much easier.

The first step to deal with this area
is we need to disable our top two

layers and make a clone stamp visible
layer

right above our healing layer.

We're going to do this by holding
command option shift e.

The reason we disabled these top two
layers is so that we didn't include

those in our stamp visible layer.

So now we can actually turn those back
on.

I'm going to hit m on my keyboard and
make a selection of a clean area of the wall,

right to a boat there.

I'm going to hit command j to duplicate
that area.

And now we can delete our clone stamp
visible layer.

Now we need to move this clean section
over to cover it up.

This area.

We're going to hit v on our keyboard
and drag it over until it covers that up.

But you'll notice that it's actually
covering up things that we don't want

to remove.

This is where we can use the mask that
we created to darken the wall to limit

our new layer

to the same area.

We're going to go into our color
correction folder,

hold command

and click on the layer mask that we
made for that.

We're going to select a layer that has
our new piece of wall on it and click

the make new layer mask button.

That'll automatically apply the same
mask to our new layer.

Now the first big problem is that we've
covered up his shadow.

So I think the easiest way to fix that
is the double click on this layer.

And under blend, if we select this
black point for underlying layer

and drag it to the right,

you can see that it limits our layer to
everywhere, but the shadows

it's a little bit of a harsh transition
for what we want.

So if we hold option

and click on that black point,

we can break it apart, and it actually
blends over

that range of light.

So we're going to drag it to right about

here, I think, is a good spot

hit, ok.

And you'll see that we have our shadow
back.

There's one more harsh transition we
need to do with.

And that's right here.

The best and easiest way to deal with
this is to just draw in our mask and

blend the two pieces together.

So we're going to click on our layer
mask for that layer.

Make sure that we're using black,

make our brush larger.

We're going to make sure that it's very
soft, so it's a very slow transition.

We're going to reduce that hardness a
bit.

And now we can paint on our layer mask

to ease that in.

I'm thinking, that's looking really
good texturewise, but I'm noticing a

slight exposure shift.

And I wish that this area right here
was a little bit brighter.

So I'm going to click on our layer.

We're going to use a curves adjustment
for this.

I'm going to clip it again to our new
section of wall by hitting command

option g.

And I'm going to bring this curve up
just a little bit

to reintroduce the nice gradient that
we had before.

I think that that's looking great.

Let's just clean up our layers a little
bit.

We'll minimize that group.

And since this is dealing with texture,
I'm actually going to group it with our

healing layer, clicking on our curves
layer, holding shift,

and clicking again on our bottom layer
that we want in the group.

Hick command g.

And I'm going to name this

clean up.

You can see that with a few different
selection techniques and color

adjustments.

We were easily able to take care of
some issues with color exposure and a

big distraction.

I think this is ready for clay.

So let's send it over to him.

We've got another awesome shot and
another awesome retouch here from

Jordan.

So now we're going to dive right into
the color grade.

To keep this consistent with some of
the other hard lit shots, we're going

to go to the warm side of this.

So the first step is to create our base
layer.

We're going to stamp all these layers
down into one.

So let me show you a pretty unique tip
here.

And this is something I actually
recently learned.

You know, we've been applying that
camera raw filter, that clarity filter

to some of our shots, either beforehand
or after, when all the sharpening and

all the color is applied.

But if we apply camera beforehand and
want to go back and reference what we

did in camera, we can simply change
this base layer to a smart object.

And to do that, we simply right click

and go to convert to smart object.

Once this layer is a smart object, we
can apply an adjustment to it up here

in the filter tab, and it will create a
new filter as an adjustment layer on

top of this base layer.

So we're going to go to filter,

and we go to camera raw,

and we're going to apply this clarity
beforehand unlike the last two where we

applied it after.

So I'm just showing you a variety of
options and showing you that there's

many ways to do just one thing in this
color grading process.

So we're going to change this clarity

to fifteen.

We're going to really bump it up, add
some punch to this shot.

That's all I'm going to do for now is
simply change the clarity.

We're going to work with vibrance and
color with adjustment layers.

So we hit ok.

And now you can see that by converting
this to a smart object, we've created

an adjustment layer of camera raw.

Filter to this base layer.

It's a nondestructive workflow.

So later we can go back and open this
up and we can see all the adjustments

we've made in camera raw.

And once we have our base layer, we
have that clarity applied, we're going

to add our color contrast.

We're going to hit a curves adjustment
layer.

We're going to rename this to color
contrast.

We're going to go to the red channel

and we're going to bump these rods up a
little bit,

because this was shot at a later point
in a day.

The sun is already lower and it's
adding a little bit of warmth to this

shot already.

So we really don't need to add too much
more red.

And because the shot is so warm and
already has a lot of magenta in it, we

simply need to just add a little bit of
green into this shot, both in the

shadows and the highlights.

So we select this marker line,

and we're going to move this point

to the top left corner.

Then we're going to do the same

with the highlights.

Awesome

let's move on to the blue channel.

With the blue channel, we can add even
more warmth by pulling the blues out of

the shot.

So take this marker 0

and pull this down,

and take

the top right marker 0

and pull that down as well.

Now you can see we've added a ton of
warm contrast to this shot.

It's looking really good.

Now we need to move on to the midtones.

So we select the color balance.

We're going to change this to color.

And now we start shifting these sliders
back and forth to really try to find a

nice mid tone balance.

That's not too warm or too cool.

So first we're going to start moving

with this blue and yellow slider.

We move on to the green amenda,

adding some greens back in,

and then finally the red and Sion
slider.

So I like with this is heading, but I
think we need to shift these sliders

even more so that we balance this whole
shot

perfect.

All right.

Now that we have our color contrasts
and our color, we're going to add an

additional step here, and I'm going to
reduce the vibrancy of the entire frame.

Once we've desaturated the image, we've
applied contrast and we've applied our

mid tones, we're going to flatten all
this back down and move on to our

sharpening process.

Our sharpening is applied.

Now now we're going to move on to our
noise and our final touches.

Now that our noise is applied,

I want to go into camera and mess with
these temperature sliders, just to have

a final touch to this shot.

So we're going to convert this top
layer to a smart object, just like we

did before.

Now we can apply a smart filter of
camera without affecting this noise layer.

The first thing I would hit are these
temperature sliders.

So what I've done here is I've altered
the temperature and the white balance a

little bit.

I've brought this exposure down
slightly, and have added some blacks

into these shadows.

Just to add a little bit more contrast,

I think this is a great image.

And we're all wrapped up