Adobe® Photoshop® CC® Bootcamp

Lesson Info

Building Lookup Tables

One of the things that I wanna show here specifically is what we call a Color Lookup Table. A color lookup table is a very special type of adjustment layer in Photoshop that allows you to access things that have happened through multiple adjustment layers that have been clumped into one adjustment layer. Hard to wrap your head around. You'll see where I'm going with this in a second. I'm gonna go ahead and grab a new adjustment layer down here and right here it's called Color Lookup. You may have clicked on this before but I did nothing; I'm not going anywhere with this. I got nothing. Well, there's color look-up tables that are already preloaded with Photoshop and you can access them through here. If I click on this one right here that says load 3D LUT. If I click on this one it's gonna give me a look and feel to the image and change and alter that look and feel. You look at these 3D LUTs and you're like, man that's cool. Look at how it's altering, you know, the feel of this photograp...

h really quickly with one adjustment layer. What's happening there is a lookup table is a predefined set of actions that happen whether through luminance or contrast, color, blend if. All those things play into a lookup table. It's all these things that would happen in an adjustment layer but you just clump them into one and put them into something called a Color Lookup Table. This can be a really quick and fast way to color grade images. I have three places in my office that I shoot when I shoot my my videos in my office, if you ever see any my sales' videos, as I call them, or my couch videos where I'm sitting on my couch trying to tell you about a new course that I've created. What I do is I record the whole thing with the same camera with all the same settings. I come over to my computer, I have all the same lighting, all the time, it's a very stable light, come over to my computer, plug it in, drag and drop that video into Photoshop, I edit my own videos in Photoshop, and I add a color lookup table that I call "couch videos". That way I know that that's the one that I use to get the look that I have for my videos and it's always gonna be the same across the board. How do you make those though? Well, a Color Lookup Table best practices don't use masks. Don't use any masks. Don't do anything painted with a mask. You see these three files right here, I need to put them into their own group. They're basically a series of adjustment layers that need to go into their own group to be called a Lookup Table. What I'm gonna do for this because it's very difficult to do it on a video, I'm gonna show you how to do this by going on to just a regular photograph. So let's just pull in. We're gonna use this photo anyway. Let's pull this photo in. I'll go back over to here. I'm gonna take these three layers, I'm gonna press and hold Shift on these layers. Grab all of them, and when I grab all of them, I'm gonna press and hold Shift and move them over to this stagnant image. It's not a video, it's a stagnant image. That essentially is gonna be the color lookup table that we build for this video from the adjustment layers that we used. If I press Command + Control + G to put them into a group, that's gonna make sure that this becomes the color lookup table that I want and then I'll go up to File, I'll go to Export and right at the bottom of the Export you're gonna see right here, Color Lookup Tables, just go ahead and click on that. It's gonna ask you a series of questions, what do you want to call this? Let's just call it Test Lookup. Make sure you highlight all of that, just press Control + A, highlight all of that and press Control + C to copy it, this will come into play in a second here. If I wanted to copyright this I could put my name on it and copyright it to Blake Rudis. The quality is based on the grid points and basically how high of a quality you want this color lookup table to be. I usually just set it to high quality. You don't necessarily have to have all four of these checked. You can just make it just an ICC profile if you'd like, and press OK. It's gonna ask me, where do I want to save this to. Well, I'm gonna save it right here into the folder that I already have where all of this video information is. If I go ahead and just press Control + V, right there, I'm gonna call that Test Lookup because I'm not quite sure which one it is but one of these actually dictates what its gonna be called in Photoshop, and I'm not sure if it's what we called it or what we title it. So, I just make sure whatever I title it and whatever I put as .LUT and whatever I put as my description, they're both the same thing, OK. Press save. It's gonna do this weird thing where you don't see exactly what's happening. If I go ahead and delete this and go down here to color lookup and go to load from device link, if I click on this, it's gonna ask me where do I want to load this from. I'm gonna go over into our folder that contains our videos and we'll see inside the layered video this test lookup table? after I found it, I can double click it and now I've got that lookup table loaded. So, you might be wondering why you're gonna have to find it every single time. Not necessarily, you don't have to find it every single time. There is a place on your computer that's different whether you're using a Mac or Windows PC that is going to house all of your color lookup tables. These color lookup tables are not just things that get used in Photoshop, these get used all over your computer actually. So, what I do to find that, is I go to whatever my master area is on my PC, so that'd be the C Drive and I just do a search for something that I see inside here. I know for a fact that nothing else on my computer is gonna be titled, 2Strip.look. All we're gonna search for 2Strip.look, 'cause it's pulling this from somewhere right, and that's where I'll put those lookup tables. It ends up being like windows32/color/profiles/spool/ who knows if you can even find this place/ glad you made it here/ put this thing here. It's really, you know you just gotta kinda find these things but if you do a search for it whether you're on a Mac or a PC search for something that's a color lookup table somewhere else in here and then when you drag and drop that new color lookup table that you made it will show up under device link after you reload Photoshop. So right now you see it loaded right here under device link that's because I found it. If I were to turn this color lookup table off, it's not all three layers it's all the information that happened within those three layers. Can you use color lookup tables on other things, other than other than video? Absolutely, you can use color lookup tables on a regular still photograph. I do it all the time. I tend to use them a lot in my video process that's why I'm showing them you here in this portion of boot camp.

Adobe® Photoshop® CC® is a valuable tool for photographers, but it can also be intimidating. In this all-inclusive 20 lesson course, you’ll go from opening the program for the first time to creating images that really stand out. Join Blake Rudis, Photoshop® expert and founder of f64 Academy, as he shows you how to maximize your use of Photoshop®. Topics covered will include:

Week 1
• Class Introduction & Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw, Setup Interface, Cropping and Layers
Week 2
• Layer Tools, Masks, Selections, Clean-Up Tools and Shapes & Text
Week 3
• Smart Objects , Transforming, Actions, Filters and Editing Video
Week 4
• Custom Creative Effects, Natural Retouching, Portrait Workflow, Landscape Workflow, and Composite Workflow

Don’t let the many aspects of Photoshop® prevent you from maximizing your use of this amazing app. Blake will help you develop the confidence to use your imagination and create the images that you will be proud to share with your clients.

Software Used: Adobe® Photoshop® CC® 2018

Lessons

Bootcamp Introduction
The Bridge Interface
Setting up Bridge
Overview of Bridge
Practical Application of Bridge
Introduction to Raw Editing
Setting up ACR Preferences & Interface
Global Tools Part 1
Global Tools Part 2
Local Tools
Introduction to the Photoshop Interface
Toolbars, Menus and Windows
Setup and Interface
Adobe Libraries
Saving Files
Introduction to Cropping
Cropping for Composition in ACR
Cropping for Composition in Photoshop
Cropping for the Subject in Post
Cropping for Print
Perspective Cropping in Photoshop
Introduction to Layers
Vector & Raster Layers Basics
Adjustment Layers in Photoshop
Organizing and Managing Layers
Introduction to Layer Tools and Blend Modes
Screen and Multiply and Overlay
Soft Light Blend Mode
Color and Luminosity Blend Modes
Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes
Introduction to Layer Styles
Practical Application: Layer Tools
Introduction to Masks and Brushes
Brush Basics
Custom Brushes
Brush Mask: Vignettes
Brush Mask: Curves Dodge & Burn
Brush Mask: Hue & Saturation
Mask Groups
Clipping Masks
Masking in Adobe Camera Raw
Practical Applications: Masks
Introduction to Selections
Basic Selection Tools
The Pen Tool
Masks from Selections
Selecting Subjects and Masking
Color Range Mask
Luminosity Masks Basics
Introduction to Cleanup Tools
Adobe Camera Raw
Healing and Spot Healing Brush
The Clone Stamp Tool
The Patch Tool
Content Aware Move Tool
Content Aware Fill
Custom Cleanup Selections
Introduction to Shapes and Text
Text Basics
Shape Basics
Adding Text to Pictures
Custom Water Marks
Introduction to Smart Objects
Smart Object Basics
Smart Objects and Filters
Smart Objects and Image Transformation
Smart Objects and Album Layouts
Smart Objects and Composites
Introduction to Image Transforming
ACR and Lens Correction
Photoshop and Lens Correction
The Warp Tool
Perspective Transformations
Introduction to Actions in Photoshop
Introduction to the Actions Panel Interface
Making Your First Action
Modifying Actions After You Record Them
Adding Stops to Actions
Conditional Actions
Actions that Communicate
Introduction to Filters
ACR as a Filter
Helpful Artistic Filters
Helpful Practical Filters
Sharpening with Filters
Rendering Trees
The Oil Paint and Add Noise Filters
Introduction to Editing Video
Timeline for Video
Cropping Video
Adjustment Layers and Video
Building Lookup Tables
Layers, Masking Video & Working with Type
ACR to Edit Video
Animated Gifs
Introduction to Creative Effects
Black, White, and Monochrome
Matte and Cinematic Effects
Gradient Maps and Solid Color Grades
Gradients
Glow and Haze
Introduction to Natural Retouching
Brightening Teeth
Clean Up with the Clone Stamp Tool
Cleaning and Brightening Eyes
Advanced Clean Up Techniques
Introduction to Portrait Workflow & Bridge Organization
ACR for Portraits Pre-Edits
Portrait Workflow Techniques
Introduction to Landscape Workflow & Bridge Organization
Landscape Workflow Techniques
Introduction to Compositing & Bridge
Composite Workflow Techniques
Landscape Composite Projects
Bonus: Rothko and Workspace
Bonus: Adding Textures to Photos
Bonus: The Mask (Extras)
Bonus: The Color Range Mask in ACR