Introduction to Creative Effects

Lesson Info

Introduction to Creative Effects

Now we're talking about custom creative effects. So it's all coming together now. We've talked about a lot of stuff, and we're getting into one of my favorite things, which is the workflow portion of our series that we're doing here. And this is where we get to jump in and take, just, put all the basic, beginning stuff to the side for a little bit, breathe a little bit, and allow our creative energies to flow. Creating your own custom effects, this is really important. We get to combine layers, layer masks, blend if, opacity fill, filters, adjustment layers, and, if we wanted to, even incorporate actions with all of this. So we're combining all this stuff that we have talked about to create things that make us unique in our workflow. And I have to talk about that uniqueness for a second here. I have this thing that I call tone, color, and artistic effects as a workflow. And this is exactly how my workflow starts every single time. You're going to get sick of this, because we're gonna t...

alk about it quite a bit over the next four lessons after this. Tone is just getting, making sure your shadows, your highlights, your mid-tones, all jive well. Color is making sure that your colors look good when they're on that canvas, that reds look like reds, yellows look like yellows, and maybe, you maybe adjust some tonal contrast in those colors. But artistic effects, this is where you come out. This is where you become unique. Anyone can do these things; anyone can do that. A trained technician of photos can do this. But this part right here, this is you. This is where your style lives. Now just to take a little aside here, I used to do this thing called an HDR concert on my website called Everyday HDR. And what the HDR concert was is this is where I would take a bracketed series of images, I would put them into a zip file, I'd post them on my website, and anybody who wanted to process them could download them, send me their version, and I would compile a post of all the people who built an HDR photograph from the series of bracketed images. It was probably around, I stopped doing this probably around 2015 or so. Well, what happened was, no matter who got those bracketed photos, everyone would come back with a wildly different image. And HDR is one of those things where, yeah, we could all take a little turn for the worst on some of those things, but they were really good. It was just really good works of art that I think the HDR process would force people more into this direction than into just this direction. And every one of those images, if it was from Germany, France, Italy, America, Wisconsin, no matter where that thing came from, they all had their own unique artistic expression in there. Some of those individuals would, they participated in every one of those HDR concerts that I did. I think I did like 15 of them. And what you saw from that was I could look at them without even knowing who the individual was, I'd be like, "That's a Jim, that's a Matt, that's a Blake," and I could see their artistic approach coming through in that image. This stuff anyone can do. This stuff is where I want you to start heading towards now. I don't care who you think you are as a photographer, you are an artist first, okay? I have a t-shirt that I wear. It says, "Hello, my name is artist. I am a photographer." (audience members giggle) As it's mind-boggling stuff, because if you think of yourself as, "Oh, I'm just a photographer," I hear that all the time, "Oh, I'm just a photographer." Really? Then that's all you ever will be. I am an artist first, and then I'm a photographer. That lets me play in this artistic realm a lot and have a lot of fun, and be a little bit more free with my creative expression. This is what's helped me develop a style. This is what's separated my work from all the other people. This would be an image that I would say tone and color-wise, is done. It's in the inside of the Notre Dame. Gotta love that 10 millimeter lens. But, in the inside of the Notre Dame, this is what I would say is technically probably good on tone and color. And I could've stopped there, but the next transition was my artistic effect, changing that image just so slightly to have my style and my unique flare added to that. Subtle, but it's a big difference. If you saw these, actually looking at them on a computer screen, you'd be like, like I'm looking at it here, I'm like, "Oh man, that is wildly different." Here's another image. This is what I would say probably technically, this is another one from Grinter's Farm, technically, for tone and color it's probably pretty good. But look what happens when I put my artistic flare on it. That's uniquely and innately me. Nobody else can create this style image in this exact same way, and I know that because all of this was actually done in Adobe Camera Raw. But putting radial filters here to pop this one. Put a radial filter here to pop this one. Drop a graduated filter here to pop the background. All of those adjustments that you make, think about the exponential amount of possibilities there are when you start combining all those things together. But this is uniquely me, and I'm the only one who could've done this to this photograph. If I gave you these bracketed photos and had you work on this, you're gonna come up with something completely different that's uniquely you and that only you can create. So what we're gonna do in this segment is we're just gonna take a look at all the things that we've talked about so far and start looking at ways that we can combine adjustment layers together to create our own artistic styles. Now we've talked about filters, so this is kind of gonna feel a little bit like what we did with filters, but we're not really gonna be using that many filters for this. We're really gonna be using adjustment layers, and, expanding the possibilities of those adjustment layers. 'Cause a gradient map can do so much. A regular gradient can do so much, but it can only do that much if you know all the things you need to do to make it do that to develop your unique style. So let's go ahead and jump into Photoshop and get started with our first creative effect.

Class Description

Lessons

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