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Black, White, and Monochrome

Lesson 97 from: Adobe Photoshop CC Bootcamp

Blake Rudis

Black, White, and Monochrome

Lesson 97 from: Adobe Photoshop CC Bootcamp

Blake Rudis

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Lesson Info

97. Black, White, and Monochrome

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Bootcamp Introduction

16:22
2

The Bridge Interface

13:33
3

Setting up Bridge

06:55
4

Overview of Bridge

11:29
5

Practical Application of Bridge

27:56
6

Introduction to Raw Editing

11:00
7

Setting up ACR Preferences & Interface

07:39
8

Global Tools Part 1

16:44
9

Global Tools Part 2

20:01
10

Local Tools

22:56
11

Introduction to the Photoshop Interface

07:13
12

Toolbars, Menus and Windows

25:07
13

Setup and Interface

11:48
14

Adobe Libraries

05:57
15

Saving Files

07:39
16

Introduction to Cropping

12:10
17

Cropping for Composition in ACR

04:44
18

Cropping for Composition in Photoshop

12:40
19

Cropping for the Subject in Post

03:25
20

Cropping for Print

07:34
21

Perspective Cropping in Photoshop

07:11
22

Introduction to Layers

08:42
23

Vector & Raster Layers Basics

05:05
24

Adjustment Layers in Photoshop

27:35
25

Organizing and Managing Layers

15:35
26

Introduction to Layer Tools and Blend Modes

21:34
27

Screen and Multiply and Overlay

09:15
28

Soft Light Blend Mode

07:34
29

Color and Luminosity Blend Modes

12:47
30

Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes

07:43
31

Introduction to Layer Styles

11:43
32

Practical Application: Layer Tools

13:06
33

Introduction to Masks and Brushes

04:43
34

Brush Basics

09:22
35

Custom Brushes

04:01
36

Brush Mask: Vignettes

06:58
37

Brush Mask: Curves Dodge & Burn

06:53
38

Brush Mask: Hue & Saturation

07:52
39

Mask Groups

05:52
40

Clipping Masks

04:11
41

Masking in Adobe Camera Raw

07:06
42

Practical Applications: Masks

14:03
43

Introduction to Selections

05:42
44

Basic Selection Tools

17:41
45

The Pen Tool

11:56
46

Masks from Selections

04:22
47

Selecting Subjects and Masking

07:11
48

Color Range Mask

17:35
49

Luminosity Masks Basics

12:00
50

Introduction to Cleanup Tools

07:02
51

Adobe Camera Raw

10:16
52

Healing and Spot Healing Brush

14:56
53

The Clone Stamp Tool

10:20
54

The Patch Tool

06:38
55

Content Aware Move Tool

04:56
56

Content Aware Fill

06:46
57

Custom Cleanup Selections

15:42
58

Introduction to Shapes and Text

13:46
59

Text Basics

15:57
60

Shape Basics

07:00
61

Adding Text to Pictures

09:46
62

Custom Water Marks

14:05
63

Introduction to Smart Objects

04:37
64

Smart Object Basics

09:13
65

Smart Objects and Filters

09:05
66

Smart Objects and Image Transformation

10:57
67

Smart Objects and Album Layouts

11:40
68

Smart Objects and Composites

10:47
69

Introduction to Image Transforming

04:34
70

ACR and Lens Correction

09:45
71

Photoshop and Lens Correction

14:26
72

The Warp Tool

11:16
73

Perspective Transformations

20:33
74

Introduction to Actions in Photoshop

09:27
75

Introduction to the Actions Panel Interface

05:06
76

Making Your First Action

03:49
77

Modifying Actions After You Record Them

11:38
78

Adding Stops to Actions

04:01
79

Conditional Actions

07:36
80

Actions that Communicate

25:26
81

Introduction to Filters

04:38
82

ACR as a Filter

09:20
83

Helpful Artistic Filters

17:08
84

Helpful Practical Filters

07:08
85

Sharpening with Filters

07:32
86

Rendering Trees

08:20
87

The Oil Paint and Add Noise Filters

15:08
88

Introduction to Editing Video

06:20
89

Timeline for Video

08:15
90

Cropping Video

03:34
91

Adjustment Layers and Video

05:25
92

Building Lookup Tables

07:00
93

Layers, Masking Video & Working with Type

15:11
94

ACR to Edit Video

06:10
95

Animated Gifs

11:39
96

Introduction to Creative Effects

06:08
97

Black, White, and Monochrome

18:05
98

Matte and Cinematic Effects

08:23
99

Gradient Maps and Solid Color Grades

12:20
100

Gradients

04:21
101

Glow and Haze

10:23
102

Introduction to Natural Retouching

05:33
103

Brightening Teeth

10:25
104

Clean Up with the Clone Stamp Tool

08:07
105

Cleaning and Brightening Eyes

16:58
106

Advanced Clean Up Techniques

24:47
107

Introduction to Portrait Workflow & Bridge Organization

14:47
108

ACR for Portraits Pre-Edits

21:27
109

Portrait Workflow Techniques

18:46
110

Introduction to Landscape Workflow & Bridge Organization

12:17
111

Landscape Workflow Techniques

37:36
112

Introduction to Compositing & Bridge

06:59
113

Composite Workflow Techniques

34:01
114

Landscape Composite Projects

24:14
115

Bonus: Rothko and Workspace

05:15
116

Bonus: Adding Textures to Photos

07:05
117

Bonus: The Mask (Extras)

05:18
118

Bonus: The Color Range Mask in ACR

04:54

Lesson Info

Black, White, and Monochrome

In our example images here, all of these example images are for you to play around with as well, so feel free to beat them up, break them, do whatever you want with them. One thing that you see here, though, is this thing called Test Chart. I use this test chart quite a bit. It doesn't look very technical, but it is. When I'm testing my own custom creative effects, I will often use this test chart to see what's happening to different types of photographs from the effects that I'm creating. So if I like the effect that I've created on one image, I can then drag that effect over to this image, or repeat that process on this test swatch to see what it's gonna look like on a sunrise shot. It doesn't have a whole lot going on with the bursting sunrise. A regular lit day shot, a kind of a creative outdoor tree shot, an interior shot, and then a portrait. And it's my ugly mug there, so you got it forever. Now up here, you see I've got the colors. I've got magenta and green. And they're next t...

o each other because they're complements. Now on those, there's a graduated spread, and there's also individual little boxes that make up the zones of that color. You're gonna see that with magenta, you're gonna see that with green. You've got your blue and your yellow, your cyan and your red, and then across the top and the bottom, or across the top on the right-hand side, you have your gradient going from black to white. So, as I'm building my custom creative effects, if I like the way it looks on one image, but I'm like, you know, I'm not sure how that would look on a portrait. Well, instead of opening up 15 different images, this is my test file that I use to test those things. And this is also available for you, so you don't have to build one of your own, it's already built for you. If you'd like to replace these pictures with yours, feel free to do so, especially this one right here. But all the rest, you know. So. When I go into making my custom creative effects, a lot of times I'm really just focusing on things like adjustment layers. So I know we've talked about black and white conversions quite a bit here. It's kind of been speckled throughout this. But the black and white conversion that I wanna create is gonna give me a lot of control over the image. And there's a couple different things I can do to add into that black and white custom creative effect to get a custom creative black and white image. That can also very easily transition into a monochromatic image just at the click of button, and we're gonna take a look at that. I also said something about working with actions here. So at any time as you're building these custom creative effects, it's a good idea to open up your Actions palette, start a new set of actions and just say Custom, or My Creative Effects. They're mine 'cause they're on my computer, but they'll be yours because they're on your creative effects. And from here you can create a new action and start building actions with these custom creative effects. Now since we've already covered actions, this is gonna be one of those things where I'm gonna tell you a best practice now as you're building these things and following along with me. Challenge yourself to record these things as actions, and play them back as you go through. Now I'm not gonna record them right now as we work on this. I want this to be something that you do in your best practice to see if you can recreate these same custom effects with your actions. And by the time we're done with this, you're gonna have a list of actions that you've created. So I challenge you to go back to that actions that we talked about and look at, and really, if at this point you need to stop and maybe look at that, go ahead and look at that and then continue on. Or if you just wanna see how I make these custom effects, that's cool too. So any time I'm gonna do a black and white conversion and test my theory of black and white conversions, I always start with a color wheel. The color wheel's the start for every thing I do when it comes to tonal adjustments. And if we were to come down here and click on just the regular black and white adjustment layer, the regular black and white adjustment layer, as we've talked about before, is a great adjustment layer because it takes my image and makes it black and white. It doesn't necessarily map out my colors so the darkest color becomes the darkest tone, but it does allow me to go through and add a higher luminance value for that color of blue, or yellow, but it's only the luminance. I can't adjust the hue, I can't adjust the saturation, and I can't adjust the lightness at this point. So I like the black and white adjustment layer, but when I'm talking about my own custom unique creative effect for a black and white toning, that is not necessarily gonna do it. That's something that's accessible to everybody. So one of the things I might do is look at something like the gradient map, and have that gradient map set to black and white. And from here, I'll just double-click this and call this BW Conversion. This is the basic black and white conversion that I do, that I always start with. I love this black and white conversion. This black and white conversion is controlled by this gradient map. The gradient map can be used for many things outside of just a black and white conversion, which we're gonna talk about that when we talk about color grading in this segment, but if I click on this and I click on the color black here, this is saying that the darkest colors in my image are gonna get the tonal values that are black. I don't necessarily have to keep this as black. If I don't want them to get pitch black, I can just come up here and bring this up just a little bit and make that 10, instead of pure black. And then I can come over here to the whites, and if I don't want those whites to blow out when I do that, I can bring this down and make that 245, which would be 10 on the whites. I know that because if you look at red, that's red 245, green 245, and blue 245, which'll create the color white. If I don't wanna go straight to 'cause I look at that yellow and I see that it's not quite, it's a little too, I don't know, far away from white, I can change this to 250, 250, and 250. And that's up to you completely. And that's just changing the colors and alternating the colors with that black and white conversion. I press Okay, it's good to go. Now, underneath that, I would put something like a hue saturation adjustment layer, or even something like maybe this selective color adjustment. The selective color adjustment's really cool and something we haven't really talked about yet. Let me go ahead and put a hue saturation adjustment layer underneath there, and I'll talk to you about the difference between those two. The hue saturation adjustment layer underneath this black and white conversion will allow me to use the targeted adjustment tool that's right here to click on any color and change the hue, the saturation, or the lightness of those colors. So if I'm building a custom creative effect from this, I might call this Black and White Conversion, and then I might rename this one Color Modifier. And I might click on both of these layers, press and hold Shift, right-click and call them Violet, 'cause they're effects. So that would set me up for creating this color conversion, or this black and white conversion on this color wheel. Because adjustment layers know no bounds, they don't have any pixels that are identifying them as being the space that they exist in, other than their mask if I press and hold Shift and drag these onto this image, It's gonna go ahead and use that and convert that. So that's a way that I can test those adjustment layers on another photograph. I could drag in a bunch of different ones and do that. So if I look at this color modifier and I click on something like the blues that are back here, like that, I now have the ability to manipulate the color underneath that black and white adjustment. And this is where we get black and white tuning that is just absolutely phenomenal. So if I were to bring up the hue of that, makes it a little bit darker. Saturation, make that almost pretty much go to black back there, like very Ansel-esque style. And then bring this over and kind of feather in those colors a little bit to grab more of the cyan. So now if we look at the before, the black and white conversion, and it's really just taking the blues in my image, just ramping them up a little bit. Why I like this is nothing is restricting me with this black and white conversion and this black and white creative effect. Nothing's restricting me and telling me that you have to use this certain parameter and this certain layer and this certain program in order to make this effect. I'm using all the stuff that exists in Photoshop to give me the toning that I need for that black and white effect. And black and white images are really, this is where we start to get into not just using the black and white conversion but the color modifier. Start adding things in here like dodging and burning. Maybe setting yourself up with the curves layer dodge and burn to go above that. So not only are you affecting the colors of this, now you're also modifying the tones in this outside of just a regular curve, but maybe the curves layer dodge and burn. So if I were to build a new curves adjustment layer on top of this, bring that down to burn that down, let's burn that down really deep. And then we'll click on that mask, Command or Control + I. We'll call this Burn. Make a new one, curves, bring it up, make it bright. Call this Dodge. Control + I. So now with my brush, if I click on the mask and I paint with white on top of that mask that we converted I can then start adding a lot of that tone back into that image. Really refine some of that, make it a lot more dramatic. Especially highlight underneath these shadows. Really push and pull the eye between these shadows. Paint that under there. Deep there. One thing that I had a professor tell me, it's a print-making professor. She taught me that if I ever wanted to emphasize an area in the photograph or in the drawing that I was drawing, to make lines that meet, make them darker where they meet. So if you want to really push and pull the eye through this where this line meets this area right here, if I start painting right there, see how it starts to separate that from the rest of it by just adding a really intense amount of shadow underneath there. Deep shadow on this side. And with this, we want it a little bit brighter and we want it a little bit darker than we normally would with the other curves layer dodge and burn, because we're working with black and white conversions here. If I wanna burn in this back area here, make it a little bit darker, I can do that as well. Really get that deep, deep look going on in the image. And that would be using things like the black and white conversion. Now I did say that we could use a different type of color modifier underneath here, and that would be something like the selective color adjustment. The selective color adjustment is something that we haven't talked about yet, but this is where you become a painter with color, really. So you would think with HSL, with hue saturation and luminance, that that's kind of becoming a painter because you're changing the hue, saturation, and the luminance of that color. This is actually set up like a color palette would be for a painter. So if you can imagine yourself clicking on the color reds, this is adjusting the percentage. Now, we've talked a little bit about complementary colors and color theory and how the curves adjustment layer on one side is red in the red area, and cyan on the bottom side. Think about that the same way here. If we increase the cyan, we're adding cyan to the color red. If we decrease cyan, we're essentially adding red to the color red, 'cause that's on the opposite side of the color wheel. It's not telling you this here. It will never tell you this anywhere. Magenta, if we increase the percentage we're getting more magenta, if we decrease the percentage, we're getting more green. Yellow, if we increase the percentage of yellow, we're getting more yellow. If we decrease it, we're essentially adding blue. So if I look at something like the color blue in this image that's back here, we have a lot of that. We could go to the color blue, and if I increase this it's gonna add yellow to that blue area, but see how it's just so subtle? It's just increasing the percentage of yellow that exists within the pixels of the color blue. If I drop this down, it's gonna make them more blue. If I bring this up it's gonna make those pixels a little more cyan, bring this down, it's gonna make those pixels a little more red. Bring the magenta up, it's gonna add some intense magenta color to those colors of blue. Bring it down, and it's gonna make them more green. So that could be a really intense way to get the color blue. It's a really nice color blue, actually, for that sky. It's actually a little bit more refined. So I have a couple of these selective color modifiers that I use to ramp up the foliage in an autumn scene, where maybe I had some yellows there, but I want those yellows to look more orange. So I'm gonna add a little bit more red to those yellows. I'm gonna remove the blues from those yellows, and I might even add a little bit of magenta to those yellows to make those autumn, and this happens all the time. I don't care where you go in the United States when the fall is happening in Vermont, New England, those New England States, that beautiful autumns. I don't care who you are or what camera you have, you take a picture of that, it's not going to look like you want it to look. And there's many reasons for that. And without going too far into it, our cameras can only see one instance of color at any given time. They can only see one instance of light at any given time. We get to manipulate that light, and a lot of times we think about manipulating that light very well because, what do we do? We break down highlights, mid-tones, and shadows. We're so comfortable with breaking down light. But how comfortable are we at breaking down color? How often do we do it? How often do people step into the HSL adjustment layer? How often do they step into Selective Color Adjustment? These selective color adjustments allow you to jump into a different world, the artistic creative painters world that allow you to take that one instance of light that our camera sees and manipulate the color within that one instance of color and that one instance of light at the same time. If I turn on my black and white conversion, we can even add black to that blue area. And this can be a way that we can add to that black and white conversion as well. So we can use that selective color by itself just to ramp up and amplify those colors. We can use it underneath our black and white conversion and even turn on that color modifier conversion too, to see if it's gonna make a difference under there, and it does. Go to that selective color and go to the color, maybe yellow. Make that yellow a little bit brighter, a little bit deeper by adding some cyan. And brighter there. So you see, just by using what's right there available to us just in our adjustment layers, we did a curves layer dodge and burn. We'll just put this in a group, Control + G. That's our curves dodge and burn. That's our black and white conversion. That's our color modifier. That's our selective color. Check this out, look what happens when you turn that off. You get a pretty interesting, kind of cool-looking effect, huh? Again, something I shouldn't be afraid of just navigating through my layers, turning some previews off and see what I get. This is what I do when I'm working on my workflow. This is a lot of times what I do with my experimentation process. Now on the flip side of black and white, we don't just have to be black and white. Black and white is also another word for monochromatic. It's monochromatic in a way that is just adding the color black to the color white to this. But because this black and white conversion is set up right here, going from black to white, if I click on this, change this color to like a cream-ish, orange-ish color somewhere around right here, now we get kind of a sepia-toned kind of effect. Now because it's lighter, it's gonna make everything brighter, and that's not exactly what I'm going for for this. So what do I have to control that? I have everything else here. I've got my passive, I've got my fill, I've got my blend modes. And if we ever want to allow the underlying layers' luminance to show through any of our layers, all we wanna do is apply the color to this. So now we get a monochromatic, almost sepia-toned style effect. Maybe with that curves adjustment layer, it might be a little too much up there. But that would be a monochromatic look at a black and white image. If we change this color to even a cyan color, now we're getting what's kind of like a cyanotype, or some kind of platinum-type look on our image. If we reduce the saturation on this, or opacity on this, we start to allow some of the underlying color to show through. Now we're creating some really interesting effects with this image, all with using our black and white conversion as a base, and then going in another direction after that by maybe looking at just the color of it. If I press Alt or Option, look at that. That now looks like a snapshot. You know, this has some artistic flair to it, has some artistic styling to it, and something I actually kind of enjoy. I just encourage you really to just play with your black and white conversions. Play with the black and white conversions that you make, maybe some of your favorite programs or plugins that you're currently using, and see if you can replicate that in Photoshop. 'Cause I guarantee you can, and then you won't wanna take a detour from here, especially when you can see you can take that black and white conversion and drop the opacity a little bit, let some of that color show through, and get a different style and a different effect.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Photoshop Bootcamp Plug-In
Textures
Clouds
Painted Backgrounds
1 – Intro to Photoshop Bootcamp
6 – Intro to Raw Editing.zip
11 – Interface and Setup
16 – Intro to Cropping and Composition.zip
22 – Intro to Layers.zip
26 – Intro to Layer Tools.zip
43 – Intro to Selections.zip
50 – Intro to Cleanup Tools.zip
58 – Intro to Shapes and Text.zip
63 – Intro to Smart Objects.zip
69 – Intro to Image Transforming.zip
74 – Intro to Actions.zip
81 – Filters.zip
88 – Intro to Editing Video.zip
96 – Custom Effects.zip
102 – Natural Retouching.zip
107 – Intro to Portrait Workflow.pdf
110 – Intro to Landscape Workflow.zip
112 – Intro to Compositing.zip
115 – Rothko and Interfaces (Bonus Video).zip
33 – Intro to Masks and Brushes.zip
106 - Frequency Separation.zip

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Amazing course, but don't be fooled into thinking this is a beginner's course for photographers. The problem isn't Blake's explanations; they're top. The problem is the vast scope of this course and the order in which the topics are presented. Take layers for example. When I was first learning Photoshop (back when we learned from books), I found I learned little or nothing from, for example, books that covered layers before they covered how to improve/process photographs. These books taught me how to organize, move, and link layers before they showed me what a layer was actually for. Those books tended to teach me everything there is to know about layers (types of layers, how to organize them, how to move them, how to move them two at a time, how to move them two at a time even if there are other layers between the two you're interested in, useful troubleshooting tips, etc. ) all before I even know (from a photographer's point of view) what it is the things actually do. The examples of organizing, linking, and moving mean everything for graphic designers from Day One, but for photographers not so much. Blake does the same thing as those books. Topics he covers extremely early demand a lot of theoretical imagination for a photographer who doesn't already know quite a bit about what he is talking about. Learning about abstract things first and concrete things later only makes PS that much harder to understand. If you AREN'T a beginner, however, this course is amazing. I thought it would be like an Army Bootcamp, taking you from zero and building you into a fit, competent Photoshop grunt. Now I think it's more like Army Bootcamp for high school varsity jocks. It isn't going to take you from the beginning, but the amount you'll get out of it is nonetheless more than your brain can imagine. I've been using PS for years to improve my photographs, and even to create the odd artistic composite or two. The amount I've learned in the first week is amazing, and every day I learn something -- more like many things -- which I immediately implement to improve my productivity and/or widen the horizons of what I can achieve. If you ARE a photographer who's a Photoshop beginner, I'd take very seriously the advice Blake gives in the introduction: Watch one lesson, and practice the skills and principles you learn in that one lesson for two weeks. THEN watch the next lesson. You can't do that of course without buying the course, so it's up to you to decide whether you'd like to learn Photoshop and master Photoshop all from the same course. Learning it first and mastering it later will cost more money, but I think you'll understand everything better and have a much more enjoyable ride in the process. As for me? I'm going to have to find the money to buy this course. There is simply way too much content in each lesson for me to try to take on all at once, but on the other hand I don't want to miss anything at all that he has to share.

Robert Andrews
 

Blake Rudis is the absolute best in teaching photoshop. His knowledge and how he presents the instruction is clear and concise - there is NO ONE BETTER. Yes, his classes require some basic skills, and maybe I'd organize the order of (or group) the classes in a different order, but, let me be clear - if anyone is to be successful or famous in the Photoshop world, it should be Blake Rudis. I strongly recommend his teaching. I started photography and post processing in 2018, and because of this class, I'm know what Im doing. The energy you get when you create something beautiful is profound, it makes you bounce out of bed (at 4AM) like a 5 year old, to go create. It's a great ride! Thanks Blake, & Thanks Creative live.

Esther Gambrell
 

WOW!!! I've been purchasing CL classes for several years now and have watched HOURS of "How-To Photoshop" classes, but this is the first one I've actually purchased because of the AWESOME BONUS content!!! SERIOUSLY??!!?!? A PLUG-IN??? But not only that, Blake is SO easy to understand, and he breaks down concepts in different ways to connect with different people's learning styles. I REALLY appreciated this approach because I am a LEFT-BRAINED creative that has an engineering background, so I really connected to what Blake was saying. THANK YOU FOR THAT! There are TONS of Photoshop courses out there, but I found this one to be the most helpful in they way Blake teaches concepts so that you know WHY you're doing what your doing. I feel like he taught me how to fish with Photoshop to feed me for a lifetime instead of just giving me a fish to feed me for one day. This is the BEST overall PS course out there!!! Thank you!!!!

Student Work

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