Helpful Practical Filters

Let's go ahead and take a look at some more practical things. Those, I would say, are probably more of your creative effects, but let's take a look at some practical effects with filters. And more specifically, let's do noise reduction and sharpening. We're gonna do the same on this one image. So if I zoom in to this photograph, we can see that this is a relatively noisy image to start with right there. And I wanna fix up the noise on this. Noise reduction and sharpening are some of those things that, there's always the "When do you do them?" Do you do it first? Do you do it last? Do you noise reduction first and your sharpening last? I'm kind of a person who's like "You know what? I do it when I do it." There are people that avidly say "No, no, you can't sharpen that now, you've gotta sharpen that at the end." Well, maybe, but you can wherever it fits comfortably in your work flow is where you can do these things. If you're doing a lot of pixel-based things during your work flow, then...

yes, sharpening at the end is probably a good idea. If you're compositing and adding all these pixel-based layers on top of layers, you would do your sharpening at the very end of that whole stack. But if I'm just starting this off and I'm gonna be doing adjustment layers on top, adjustment layers don't technically care about the sharpness that's underneath because they're just calculation layers based on gradients, or gradient maps, or curves adjustment layers that aren't really gonna affect the sharpening of my image too much. So, I guess it just depends on your work flow and where you want to use them. For our sake, I'm just gonna do it right now at the very beginning of this work flow before we would move on. I'm gonna press Command or Ctrl + J on the background and I'm gonna start with noise reduction first. If we click on this, we'll just say "Noise Reduction." Go up to Filter, and go to Noise, and go to Reduce Noise. And you're gonna see something that looks totally different from Adobe Camera Raw. It's not the same engine. It's a different engine. You could, however, if you really like Adobe Camera Raw as a noise reduction engine, use that now instead of the Noise Reduction filter. There's nothing wrong with that. This is all just a matter of what you want to use in your work flow. Looking at this, there are two settings here, Basic and Advanced. You have your preset settings that you can create and then Remove JPEG Artifacting are your main tick boxes. Strength is gonna be how much of your sharpening are you doing and Reduce Color Noise is gonna be how much of that color noise gets reduced. As we've already talked about color noise when we talked about Adobe Camera Raw, if we boost up that color noise, if there is color noise in this image, it's gonna reduce that color noise. There's not a whole lot in this one. So, as we increase the Strength though, take a look at areas in the image that need noise reduction, like back here in this area. If I bring this strength up to something like 10, it's gonna be a lot of noise reduction happening really fast on the photograph and really hard. The one underneath it is called Preserve Details. If you move the Preserve Details up, it's going to try to preserve the detail areas within the image with that Strength setting that you have set. A strength of 10 is typically something that you're not gonna see too much, so I'm gonna drop the Strength down to something like seven and then bring down the Preserve Details a little bit here. What you'll find in here, also, is that there is, in the Advanced Settings, this would be just about it. I mean, it's pretty much that simple and it's pretty powerful when used in conjunction with Blend If and I'll show you that in a second but if you put Advanced on, this allows you to go into each individual channel within the image. So you have channels like your red channel, your green channel, and your blue channel. Typically, a lot of your noise is gonna exist in the blue channel. The blue channel just carries a lot of that data in with it. Green channel is typically gonna be more of your lighter, brighter areas, and then your red channel is kind of like a blend between the two of them. It just depends really, but typically, where I'm gonna find a lot of that noise is gonna be in the blue channel. So, I could go into the blue channel. It's gonna show you a black and white version of the image. If you bring up the strength on that, it's going to happen just in that channel, so essentially what it's doing is it's taking that channel that we have and we've showed you channels before, it's going into the channel of blue and blurring a little bit of that to make that noise reduction happen. In years past, noise reduction in Photoshop was not a very valid place to do it; it really wasn't. It was just that the engine that they had in there before would just blur the junk out of your photographs, and it didn't really look like it was reducing noise, it looked like it was just smudging your image and smearing your image a little bit. But now, it's awesome, so much so that I don't find myself ever leaving Photoshop. It has everything that I need, even now with the noise reduction being so great in both Adobe Camera Raw and the filter. So if I press okay here and commit to that, it might be a pretty heavy-handed noise reduction and that's okay because we still have all of our settings to use with that layer. It's its own layer, right? So we can use things like Opacity. We can use things like Fill. We can use things like Blend If and Blend If is definitely something that I do when I reduce my noise. Typically, noise reduction needs to be done on dark areas, right, because that's where a lot of our noise tends to live. So if I wanna protect my highlight and midtone areas from that noise reduction and allow that midtone and highlight area underneath my image to show through, if I double click on this Noise Reduction and I look at my Blend If settings, let's go ahead and turn on our Color Overlay to make this easier to see. I'll turn on Color Overlay, go back to Blend If, and move this down. Now, what that's telling me is "Hey, anything that's magenta right now, "that is where our noise reduction is happening." Everywhere else on this photograph, these areas that are showing through, no noise reduction is happening there. And that's ideally what I would like. I don't want noise reduction to be a global thing. I want noise reduction to be a local thing. So as we talk about noise reduction in Adobe Camera Raw, on your raw file, the noise reduction in Adobe Camera Raw is global. The sharpening is local. Here, we're making a very local noise reduction on just the areas that are dark, and not the areas that are light or midtone. And if I wanna clean that up a little bit, Alt or Option to split and feather that, and now we've got a really nice noise reduction that's pinpointed on our shadow areas. If you don't wanna see the magenta anymore 'cause we're done with our Blend If, just turn that off, press okay. Now if I zoom into this image, turn this layer on and off, especially right back in here, look at this area and then look at this area. Very little noise reduction is happening on here, and the only noise reduction that's happening on here is the noise reduction that needs to happen because this dark area matches the profile of that dark area. If I turn that back on, nice, smooth noise reduction there, that's something I can live with. I don't tend to be very heavy-handed with my noise reduction. I tend to be very delicate with it. I don't like going too far.

Class Description

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

1Bootcamp Introduction 2The Bridge Interface 3Setting up Bridge 4Overview of Bridge 5Practical Application of Bridge 6Introduction to Raw Editing 7Setting up ACR Preferences & Interface 8Global Tools Part 1 9Global Tools Part 2 10Local Tools 11Introduction to the Photoshop Interface 12Toolbars, Menus and Windows 13Setup and Interface 14Adobe Libraries 15Saving Files 16Introduction to Cropping 17Cropping for Composition in ACR 18Cropping for Composition in Photoshop 19Cropping for the Subject in Post 20Cropping for Print 21Perspective Cropping in Photoshop 22Introduction to Layers 23Vector & Raster Layers Basics 24Adjustment Layers in Photoshop 25Organizing and Managing Layers 26Introduction to Layer Tools and Blend Modes 27Screen and Multiply and Overlay 28Soft Light Blend Mode 29Color and Luminosity Blend Modes 30Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes 31Introduction to Layer Styles 32Practical Application: Layer Tools 33Introduction to Masks and Brushes 34Brush Basics 35Custom Brushes 36Brush Mask: Vignettes 37Brush Mask: Curves Dodge & Burn 38Brush Mask: Hue & Saturation 39Mask Groups 40Clipping Masks 41Masking in Adobe Camera Raw 42Practical Applications: Masks 43Introduction to Selections 44Basic Selection Tools 45The Pen Tool 46Masks from Selections 47Selecting Subjects and Masking 48Color Range Mask 49Luminosity Masks Basics 50Introduction to Cleanup Tools 51Adobe Camera Raw 52Healing and Spot Healing Brush 53The Clone Stamp Tool 54The Patch Tool 55Content Aware Move Tool 56Content Aware Fill 57Custom Cleanup Selections 58Introduction to Shapes and Text 59Text Basics 60Shape Basics 61Adding Text to Pictures 62Custom Water Marks 63Introduction to Smart Objects 64Smart Object Basics 65Smart Objects and Filters 66Smart Objects and Image Transformation 67Smart Objects and Album Layouts 68Smart Objects and Composites 69Introduction to Image Transforming 70ACR and Lens Correction 71Photoshop and Lens Correction 72The Warp Tool 73Perspective Transformations 74Introduction to Actions in Photoshop 75Introduction to the Actions Panel Interface 76Making Your First Action 77Modifying Actions After You Record Them 78Adding Stops to Actions 79Conditional Actions 80Actions that Communicate 81Introduction to Filters 82ACR as a Filter 83Helpful Artistic Filters 84Helpful Practical Filters 85Sharpening with Filters 86Rendering Trees 87The Oil Paint and Add Noise Filters 88Introduction to Editing Video 89Timeline for Video 90Cropping Video 91Adjustment Layers and Video 92Building Lookup Tables 93Layers, Masking Video & Working with Type 94ACR to Edit Video 95Animated Gifs 96Introduction to Creative Effects 97Black, White, and Monochrome 98Matte and Cinematic Effects 99Gradient Maps and Solid Color Grades 100Gradients 101Glow and Haze 102Introduction to Natural Retouching 103Brightening Teeth 104Clean Up with the Clone Stamp Tool 105Cleaning and Brightening Eyes 106Advanced Clean Up Techniques 107Introduction to Portrait Workflow & Bridge Organization 108ACR for Portraits Pre-Edits 109Portrait Workflow Techniques 110Introduction to Landscape Workflow & Bridge Organization 111Landscape Workflow Techniques 112Introduction to Compositing & Bridge 113Composite Workflow Techniques 114Landscape Composite Projects 115Bonus: Rothko and Workspace 116Bonus: Adding Textures to Photos 117Bonus: The Mask (Extras) 118Bonus: The Color Range Mask in ACR

FOR ON-DEMAND ACCESS

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.

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!!!!

Sonya Messier

I'm been using Bridge, Adobe Raw and Photoshop for 12 years. I thought I knew those programs until I started to follow Blake and do this Photoshop CC Bootcamp. This course is AMAZING. I love the way Blake teach, brakes down concepts and tools... excellent teaching qualities! I'm half way in this course and I change all my workflow already. Much better results and better use of what Adobe offer me. This course is an investment! When I will be done, I will listen it again. Great job and congratulations on your success Blake!

1,500+ classes ranging from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

Helpful Practical Filters