Lessons

Lesson Info

Color Correction in Expert Mode

So now we're going to get into some seriously useful color correction tools a little bit more powerful than what we saw over there in quick edit mode. And by more powerful, I simply mean that you have far more control over it. Okay, so we're going to start doing all this kind of color correction stuff in expert mode. So I've got several images for you to play with them on a pop up in my foot of in, and we're going to start out with this guy right here. San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. Another crappy shot by yours. Truly, I take bad pictures on purpose so that I could fix him. It's not like you can download bad stock imagery, right? There's nothing to cover for it. Okay, so collapse our little photo been here first. I want to start by showing you the new auto smart Tony feature that I talked about at the beginning of the day. In expert mode, this is only an elements 12 and it is pretty amazing. So let's go up to the enhanced menu. And here's the new magic right here. Auto smart term. I...

'm gonna go ahead and duplicate my image layer first, Present Commander Control J now enhance Otto Smart tune. So here's the dialog box that I was alluding to trying to explain what it looked like earlier. So what elements is doing is it's applying one kind of correction here, another kind of correction here, another kind of correction here and another kind of correction Here. You're going to use this controller right here, and you're simply going to click and drag towards the thumbnails. I said towards Didn't as the Texas thing toward the thumbnails of the correction you want to make. It's a brand new interface, brand new, kind of on image tool. And look at that big old paragraph of instructions right there in elements. You are not going to see that kind of thing in Photoshopped. Photo shop does not have this tool, but also foot a shot would never help you like this. So we're gonna go ahead and click in drag and when you soon as you click and hold down your mouse. But that's when you get this kind of grid interface. So let's say I want to darken my image. Well, then I would drag towards one of the darker some nails and that would be applying more of that particular correction when I dragged toward Well, if I want to do a little bit of lightning to see how, as I drag in the direction of that thumbnail, then we begin applying some of that particular correction. So all you do is drag until it looks good to you. Isn't that incredible? I mean, this is really a groundbreaking kind of interface, So let's say this looks pretty good to me. Something down in here, then I release my mouse button. I've got a nice slider down here. I don't know if I could make this dialogue any smaller. I can't so at the very, very bottom of your screen, you've got a before and after switch. So if I click on that switch, I can see the before in the after. That's a pretty significant change. Just by dragging a little who hot around on the image before and after. If you want to reset, start over without closing the dialogue box and having to reopen it and just click the reset button. But let's just click OK, so by duplicating our image layer the change wasn't applying to our original. We've still got it hanging around here. But look at that. That's a pretty significant difference. Anybody can do that. So what if now that we're evaluating it, we think, Ah, a little bit too strong of a change. I wish I could just back off of that little bit. Well, you can, because since we duplicated the layer, we've got opacity control. So if you wanted, you could drop the opacity of the changed layer until it looks good to you. So now we're applying 85% of that, a change that we just made using that SmarTone future. So now here's our before and our after, So that's pretty amazing stuff. So I'm gonna delete that, and we'll do it one more time. So open the image expert mode, duplicate the layer. If your image is comprised of multiple layers, then there's a keyboard shortcut that will take all that layer content and jump it up onto a new layer. And that is shift option Command E on a Mac or shift Ault control E on a PC, so that will look through your layers panel in all the layers that have the visibility I turned on. Elements will look at him and it will create a brand new layer that contains all the content on all of those layers. So that would be useful. Let's say if this were a collage in our image over here was really made up of several different layers, you know, like the cat with the witches hat or that ad that we made that had a 1,000,000 different layers. If I wanted to then run this command. I'd need to create another new layer onto which I could do that, and that command will get it done and again, shift option command E on a Mac or shift all to control E on a PC. And if you look at your keyboard, your hands on your keyboard, three fingers are gonna be pretty much right next to each other, so you can kind of remember the position of the keys that way. So since we're dealing with one layer in this document, let's go ahead and duplicate it and not come back up to the enhance menu. Choose auto smart tone again. That's new elements. 12. This might be a reason to upgrade just right here. I mean, between this the filling in the edges with the straighten tool, the content aware move, tool. The new puzzle guided it. That's some good stuff on Virgin 12. So now you're just gonna drive the controller toward the image thumbnails of the correction that you want and you can see they're all different. So as you drag that controller around to get a little bit of a different look when you're satisfied with the way it looks, go ahead and drop down here to the bottom of the dialogue box and toggle that before and after switch. And even after you do that, you can still come back up here and continue to fine tune even after you've taken a peek at the before and after and then click OK dropped layer opacity if you need to. Now let's take at look at another way to correct your image is an expert mode that does a pretty amazing job of you don't have to really do much to it. So here's the image we're going to create together. This is Hey Adrian's Fountain in Tivoli, Italy. So there's the before there's the after. Not too bad. It's kind of flat lacks a little bit of contrast, but depending upon the image, this might get you where you need to go. So I'm gonna go ahead in delete that layer, duplicated or create a stamped copy with that keyboard shortcut. We talked about a moment ago. Go up to the edit menu and choose Smart Fix. So this is the same smart fix that we saw over in quick mode. Depending upon the image that may be all you need, close these guys up. Now let's talk about the most powerful way to color or Kurt the color and lighting in your image, and that is to create a levels adjustment layer all by yourself right here in expert mode. It will give you the most control, so we're going to do that by opening the image. No need to duplicate a layer or create a stamped copy because we're going to use an adjustment layer for this technique. And using an adjustment layer just tells elements. Hey, let's make this next adjustment or change on its very own layer, giving you infinite editing flexibility. So we're gonna try it up to the top of the layers panel and elements and choose the half black, half white circle and then come down and choose levels. When you do, this panel is going to pop open looks a whole lot like the Properties panel Over and Photoshopped CC. So what we've got here is a visual representation of the brightness values or the levels of brightness. Hence the commands name levels of brightness represented in a bar graph here. So this is what was captured in our image. What does that mean? Well, if we draw a straight line down from, let's say this really tall mountain peak draw a straight line down to that gray scale bar underneath it. That's telling you that you have that many pixels at this level of brightness in your image. The taller the mountain is, the more pixels you have at that particular brightness level, the wider the mountain is, and that just means the larger the range of brightness levels that you have. So I can look at this history Graham and see exactly what's going on in my image. So let's start from left to right. So if I come over here all the way to the left of my hissed a gram. That's what this thing is called. Really, This is serious and microscopic bar graphs. The shorter the bar graph, the fewer pixels you have at that corresponding level of brightness. So you'll notice over here on the left hand side. I don't have any mountains. It was like a big old prairie. So if I draw a straight line down to that great skill bar underneath it, I can see that I have no true blacks in that image whatsoever. Now here is where my mountain range starts, and it's perfectly finally think about history. Um, is mountain range so right in here? I'm starting to get a few pixels of what level of brightness draw a straight line down. So I do have some shadows, but I don't have any true blacks in the image keep going across. There's not even very many, even at that kind of charcoal gray level of brightness there, because how do I know that? Because the mountain is really, really short. So the taller the mountain, the more pixels at that particular level of brightness that you have. So as I move over here, I've got some pixels in this range level of brightness in this area, but still not a whole lot, because those mountains air really short. They're not really tall. Now, as we keep moving across the gray slider right here represents my midterms. This represents your shadows still with black. This one represents your Midtown's filled with gray. So midway between black and white and now we start getting into some really tall mountains right here, really tall bar graphs that tells you you've got a lot of pixels at that particular range of brightness, which is if we draw a straight line down. We're talking in this realm right here. And if we look over at the image will, that indeed is true. Our images filled with pixels of that brightness level. Then we come over here, these air still pretty tall mountains. So we've got a lot of pixels in this range right here. Now we come to the edge of our mountain range and again we're dropping off and we go into a prairie situation. Well, that white slider right there represents our highlights. They're the lightest parts for image. So if we look at the width of that area, that really has hardly any bar graphs, and it all meaning we have very few, if any, pixels at that brightness level. Draw a straight line right down here and we see that gosh darn well, I mean anything in this range right here. Well, that's why our image looks so crappy because we've got no true shadows. And then we've got most of the pixels in our imager at this mid range of brightness level, and then we've got no upper and high lies at all. So the easiest way to use this adjustment is to simply drag the sliders into the foot of your mountains. And it's fine to think about it that way. You don't want tell your photo shot buddies who have low self esteem that you fix your images by dragging the sliders to the foot of your mountains. They'll think you've lost your mind, but it's fine to think about it. So all you have to do is if you create a levels adjustment and you've got a gap on either side of that history and or a big old flat prairie next to your mountains. Then just drag those sliders into where the data stars now where exactly do you stop sliding those sliders when the picture looks good to you? That's one of the great things about doing it this way is you can scoot this panel around. If you've got another monitor, scoot that panel on another monitor. Make the preview images large, is your screen will allow. And, boy, it's a great way to really be precise about color crashing your images. So stop dragging the sliders when the image looks good to you can. There's no history and police that are going to show up on your doorstep. Now, once you've done that, you can come in and start adjusting the contrast with the mid tone slider. So we're gonna grab that gray slider, and if you want to increase contrast, you're gonna drag it to the right. If you want to decrease contrast, you're gonna drag it to the lift. That's it. Now, if we scoot this panel out of the way, you can see here in the layers panel there that all of this has happened on a whole another layer so we can toggle the visibility eye off and on to see how far we came. Unfortunately, there's no before and after menu here in expert mode, you only get that candy preview in these two other modes. But isn't that incredible? So now let's say that it was a little bit too overdone. Then you can simply back off the opacity of that adjustment layer until the image looks good to you. Just really, really powerful. Now, there are two other ways to use this levels adjustment. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and pump the opacity back up on this particular layer, and I'm gonna hide its visibility, and we're gonna go create another levels adjustment layer, and we're gonna use the controls in a little bit of a different manner. So let's come back up here to the half black, half white circle, the top of your layers panel choose levels. And so here's our second levels adjustment layer. When I do this for clients and on my own image, especially ones I submit for stock, I take a moment and I look at the individual, hissed a grams that comprised the image because right now you can see that we've got a little poppet menu here named Channel, and it's set to RGB. That means what you're really seeing here is a composite history. Um, of the red channels hissed a gram plus the green channels hissed a gram plus the blue channels hissed. Agreed, Um, in some images, if the history grams differ quite a bit from each other, you're gonna produce, um, or a better correction if you adjust them individually in exactly the same way we did. So what I do when I do this at home is I take a moment and I make a beverage and I go through this channel menu and I just trot through the different history Grams and I just looked to see if they're vastly different. If they're not vastly different, don't waste the time adjusting the individual Instagram's Just adjust the composite and collar today. But let's just take a peek so it doesn't matter where you start. Well, let's go one down. So let's look at the red, hissed a gram, see how it's different. Okay, so make a note of the gaps on either side if there are any. If you got a good exposure in camera, you're likely not to have gaps. But apparently I did not. So if you've got a gap. Make a note of how big it is in the Red Channel. Now it's Compare that to the Green Channel and see if they're vastly different. They are. I've got a hawk and big gap on the left hand side of this, about the same size gap on the right. Now let's take a pic of the Blue Channel. Now I've got a serious difference over here on the right side, not too much different from the Green Channel on the left. But if you're seeing that much of a difference between the channels and gaps on either side of your history, and then it will behoove you to drag the sliders in individual channels instead of adjusting the Composite Channel. So since we landed on the Blue Channel, we may as well start there. So let's go ahead and click and drag the shadow slider indoor. The information starts air into the foot of your mountains, and then we're gonna come up to the Green Channel, and we're gonna kulik and drag that over roughly around where the information stars. That's a little bit dicey because we've got, like, a microscopic bar graph right there. So there's not very much data there, so that would just be a visual call on your part, whether you would keep dragging a little bit further or if you would stop way over here. And now, let's do the same thing to the Red Channel. Drag that in. Now we go back to the Composite Channel. That's where you just your mittens. You don't adjust your mid tones in the other ones. So now, if we want to increase contrast, will drag to the right. Dickie. Decrease contrast a little bit. Then we can drag to the left. But this one looks pretty good to me. Now let's scoot this panel out of the way. And now let's compare the differences between adjusting the composite and the individual, Mr Grams. So this is what the image would look like if we adjusted them individually. And that's what the image would look like if we adjusted just the composite on my screen to my eye. That one looks true to the colors that I saw when I shot that image, which happens to be the Vasko to Ghana Monument in Lisbon, Portugal, with the sister bridge to the San Francisco Golden Gate bridge in the background. Same designer did brokerages. The only difference is the one in Lisbon has ah, uh, train tracks underneath it so the trains run under where the cars drive. Maybe so moral. The moral or the lesson of the story here is that take a moment and trot through the history ums when you open a levels adjustment, if the image is really important to you and when would that be? If you're selling it, or if it's like the cream of the crop image and you're going to print it, let's say for a gallery showing, then I would really take the extra time and talk through those individual historians. And if they're different, quite a bit different with those gaps, then adjust the the history games individually. If they're pretty much the same, you're not gonna be able tell the difference, So just adjust the composite. And of course, you don't remember any of that just opened up a levels adjustment. Click auto button. Now, one more way to use the levels adjustments, so we're gonna turn off the visibility eye on that one. We're gonna do it again because the half black, half white circle with top of the layers panel. Choose levels. Now you may have noticed these ally droppers hanging around on the right hand side. There. We're not gonna click the auto, but you guys can do that at home. But these little eye droppers let you reset the black point, the great point in the White Point. Do you remember us doing that at all earlier in the day over there and guided edit mode, where we chose the color caste correction guided edit? That's exactly what elements was doing in the background was grabbing these sliders and doing that or grabbing the eye droppers. Rather, So all you have to do is click on the black eye dropper or the wider on a dropper doesn't really matter which one you do. First, I always save the midpoint a great point eyedropper toe last. So either do the black one first or the white one first. Once that button looks like it's pressed in, there's even a mouse over to your image, and you're going to click on what really should be black within the image, and you can zoom in while you are doing this adjustment. And just from experience. I know that one of my darkest points is either up here or down here somewhere. The good shadow. Just keep clicking until it looks good to you. Now we can go grab the white eyedropper mouse over to the image and clicking area that really should be white. And I'm gonna try clicking somewhere within this round. But again, I could just keep clicking around until the image starts looking good to me. And then last but not least, you can click the great eyedropper. And for this one, you really want to click somewhere that the about 50% gray, those areas can be hard to spot. So, really, what I do is just look around and look. There is a trick for displaying the darkest shadows and the lightest highlights, uh, in this adjustment, and we'll do that in in just a second. But let's just take a peek. I'll zoom back out, my person, Commander control minus. And so that's the result of using the eye droppers versus adjusting individual history, EMS versus adjusting the composite history. Um, so, depending upon your eye, your personal preference one of those methods is going to feel easier to You're gonna produce better results gonna be different across different images. So just so you know that that's the way that you can use levels three different ways, not counting the auto button. So now I mentioned that there was a way to see the darkest areas of your image and the lightest highlights of your image. So I'll go ahead and turn off that levels adjustment layer. We'll do it one more time. So if I can't tell where my darkest darks are, I can press and hold the option key on a Mac or all on the PC. And as I dragged that shadow slider inward, the first areas of color that start to appear are my darkest points in the image. So you really just kind of have to eyeball it and remember where those are. So what I'm seeing is areas between those statues so that when I had dragged that slider back and release that modifier, key images really supposed to come back. Oh, my shadow sliders. Wherever. Here. Oh, that's funny. It's attached to my moving with my mouth. That's exciting. Okay, so now program my black eye dropper, my shadow eyedropper and I could come in here in one of those crevice areas and do that same thing. Works for the highlight slider option or Ault. Click it on the PC, and as you drag that slider to the lift, the first areas that appeared in color are your lightest highlights. So you just just have to eyeball it again. So what I'm seeing is about on that one statue's arm right there. So you drag the slider back and then grab that white eye dropper and then come over here and click that area in Reset Your Black Point so different ways you could use the tools. Any questions on levels isn't exciting. That is so a couple questions. The 1st 1 is from Blogger Gal. Does it happen if those gaps are in the middle in the big towns where there's just I have not seen history and like that have either? Yeah, but if you don't have gaps than you would probably want to use the eye droppers, OK, but if you've got gas, that's just uneasy, fail safe. I mean, you can remember that. That's kind of like a no brainer. Oh, drag my sliders to the foot on my mountains kind of thing. But if you don't have gaps on the sides like that, then you might want to have a go with eye droppers. Excellent. I know we were talking a little bit, I believe, earlier this week on photo shop and the auto button and how you were. I think we're saying we felt like it much better math, you know, if it's the same thing for the new elements, that's a fantastic question, Jim. I honestly don't know if there's new math behind the auto button or not. But just for the sake of experimentation, let's create another one. And let's just click the auto button. That's not bad, you know, compared to some of the other methods that we use. Let's compare that one with, Let's say, the one we got from adjusting the individual hissed a grams. So that's adjusted individually versus an auto levels adjustment. So not too bad. It's gonna very on image for image basis. But I don't know if it uses the new math that we got in CIA six or not. Great questions. All right now, you may have noticed we scoot this levels panel out of the way and again, if you want a dock, that thing you've got to come down here to the Mormon, you and click custom work space, and then you get the ability to dock more than one panel over here on that right hand side. But if you've got another monitor, I'd skewed it way over there. So you'll notice that with these levels adjustment layers that we've been making, what the heck is that big? A white rectangle that's sitting over there to the right of the layer thumbnail, which lets you know what kind of adjustment went on and that adjustment layer. So it's shown you hissed a gram. Other adjustment layers give you different layer thumbnail so you can tell at a glance what that is. Oh, that's a levels adjustment and also its name levels.