Lesson Info

Dodge and Burn Using Quick Mask Mode

Let's fix an issue with this picture, and I will probably end up using curves to do it, cause it's just the thing that gives me the most control. There's a picture of a trailer, and if I zoom up, you notice there's an area here that bright that doesn't look like it belongs. That's a lens flare. It's usually happens when, whatever the light sources in your scene, you end up pointing your camera right at it. In the actual light source itself hits the front element of the lens that's there. That's why you have lens hoods on your camera lenses, and they try to avoid that. But if you take your lens hood off where you point your camera too much straight into a light source, you'll get these to show up, and I want to see if I can reduce or eliminate it now. So far, we've used curves with adjustment layers. We ended up making the adjustment first, and then afterwards we painted with black or white to control where it is applied Well, now what I'd like to do is show you how to choose where it's...

applied first in, then make your adjusted now, you could do that with a selection. If you grab the lasso tool, the marquee tool or any other selection tool, you could make a selection. And then if you end up applying an adjustment layer, it would only affect that area that is selected. The problem is, most selection tools are designed to create hard edged selections, and they're designed to go around the edge of the relatively well defined object. What I have here is not a well defined object. It's not like the doorway where you concede an exact end to it, and it also has a soft edge. So let's figure out how to select it. If you have a selection like this one, I just use the marquee tool. You can either type of letter Q or click on this icon to get to quick mask mode, which I just did. Quick mask mood converts your selection into a red overlay where the red indicates what's not selected. Then you could grab your paint brush tool, and you can modify your selection. But just painting like this, and if you do when you turn quick mask off by typing cube, you just change the shape of that selection. I'll take you once again. When you're using a brush, you have hardness. Setting determines how hard the edge of your brushes, and if you bring it down, you end up with a soft edge brush. If you use a soft edged brush here, you get what's known as a feathered selection, where doesn't abruptly end. Instead, it can softly fade out when I type. Q. You can't tell that that's got a soft edge on it, but it does. If I were to paint in it right now, you can see that part of its hard edged at the top and part of its soft edged choose undo. Well, when you use quick math mode, you don't have to start with a selection. That's just how usually demo it. You can start with no selection whatsoever, so I'm gonna come in here and type the letter. Q. Then I'm just gonna paint with Black right where the area is. I want to adjust, and I have to make sure my brush has just the right softness on it to match the softness of that edge that was there. The only problem is with painting like this is in quick mask mode. The red overlay usually indicates what's not selected, and right now that means that I've selected almost the entire picture except for that area. Well, that's when I can come up here and use the same thing that we used on a layer mask, which is invert gives you the opposite. That should make the red switch. Word shows up. So now if Red indicates not selected in the area that looks normal is selected. When I turned quick mask Modoff by typing letter. Q. We should have a general selection of that area. So that's how I end up selecting things before I go in and use curves. I just type of letter Q for quick mask. And if it's a large area that I want to change, I just paint with Black on the areas that I don't want to change. If, on the other hand, it's a small area that I want to change, I'll paint just where I want to change the happen. And when I'm done, I'll end up choosing Invert, which switches where the red shows up. And that's what we have here. All right, let's go into curbs in curves. I'm gonna just click on this area right here, and I want a dimmer switch for it. I want to darken it Any time you just want to brighten or darken, it's usually one dot you just click, and you don't have to move the dot up and down in curves like in that little part of your screen. You can stay right on top of your picture. And if you just click the mouse, just keep your mouse button held down and drag up if you want to brighten and down. If you want to darken, it'll move that dot for you. So I'm just gonna move that down until it seems to be about the same. Brightness is its surroundings about there, and then the transition doesn't quite look right. So I just grab my paintbrush tool. I probably didn't have a soft enough edge of my brush or I might not have painted far enough out. Well, white is what allows an adjustment to apply when you're working with a layer mask. I just need to make sure I'm painting with White can now extend how far out that goes. It seems to be going out all right, But then I think the frame around the door, it's just a little bit too dark. Well, if it is different in brightness than the screen that we were attempting to adjust, then we can adjust it separately. I just go into curves and make sure that hand tools turned on. I move my mouse on top of the frame for the door, and if I looking curves in the circle that appears is in an open area of the curve, an area where I haven't added a dot yet that means it's different in brightness to the other. Areas have adjusted, so I can easily click, and it's just like having a dimmer switch in my hand. I'm just gonna bring that up until it's about the same brightness as the area above and below it. There we go. I'm not saying my adjustment is perfect here, but if I turn this off and back on again, it ain't bad. That might need to make that, um, area right here just the tiniest bit brighter. I think there, but I think I'm doing all right with that adjustment. It's easy to see when you turn on and off. But if you've never seen it before, I don't think you'd notice that area so much. But it's on Lee with curves that I'm able to do that if I use levels. It only has controls for working with the extremes of brightness. The brightest part of your image in the darkest if I work with brightness and contrast is generically making bright things brighter and dark, things darker when I do contrast. But here I can dial in exactly the brightness level I want to adjust, and therefore I can have precision.

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