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Splash Image Final Touches

Lesson 20 from: Capturing Food in Motion

Steve Hansen

Splash Image Final Touches

Lesson 20 from: Capturing Food in Motion

Steve Hansen

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Lesson Info

20. Splash Image Final Touches

Summary (Generated from Transcript)

In this lesson, the instructor discusses how to add final touches to a splash image, including selecting and positioning elements, using different tools like the pen tool and quick selection brush, and the importance of getting the selection right the first time. The instructor also mentions the importance of composition, blending layers together, and doing basic clean up, color correction, and brightening at the end to make the image more vibrant and appetizing. The instructor emphasizes the need to make viewers hungry and pay attention to details like skin tones.

Lesson Info

Splash Image Final Touches

I say let's go to the selection that is involved with the... Let's go to the layer that has all the random stuff flying around and we'll just add some of that... That's really where I wanna get some stuff on the lower right for sure, I wanna add quite a bit there. I think we're done, I think those mussels look ridiculous. Let's just get rid of those. What do you think? They, right now, they're not really attached to anything, they're just Yeah. Sort of floating there. Yeah. So we'd wanna bring in some splash on them if we had more time but... I would keep them if we had the time. I like the fact that it's really forced out a small area so let's go in to the one that has all the stuff. Let's bring that down to 50%. And this one we're gonna move around. We're gonna select, I want you to drag it to the right until, and keep looking, keep watching it, drag, drag, drag, drag, right there. And so I wanna take the, actually I'm not gonna make it hard on you, drag down a little bit...

. What you wanna kinda do is drag them where there's no other splashes. Down, down, further, under that, right there, to the right a little bit. You what I mean, where it's tucked in right here. So I want this to come in. Okay. And you can actually just make selections if you want and just kinda cut it out. I think we'll show them how to, but that can be done obviously with some success. Yeah, so I'm just grabbing the pen tool real quick. So we're just adding this stuff and these. So these are gonna be really quick pen tool selects. That's totally not the right pen tool. (laughter) So you definitely want the pen tool, not the freeform pen tool unless you're really good at drawing nice curves. Just for example, do you wanna try the quick selection? Yeah, sure. I know you hate using it and I do, too, but it's something that can save some time. You can actually draw in... Yeah. You can draw in any missing parts that it doesn't understand to be part of the selection pretty quickly. Yeah, I mean it's definitely... Cause I wanna show them the composition we're going after more than... Right, the quick selection brush is definitely an interesting tool that sometimes works really nicely and sometimes doesn't work at all. So basically you just drag it out over the stuff you want and then it sort of does some sort of smart magic wand-y stuff to try... (laughter) It doesn't like the dark gray. That's when you run into trouble. It's when you don't have a white or a black. Yeah, it works really nicely on high contrast. Yeah. Just brush it in, brush it in. (laughter) Alright. Unless you think we have time. We'll have to get to the end here soon. But, I mean, there's plenty classes on creating selections so this liquids in selections are a challenge so that's one thing, the one reason I try to get it right is because you will invariably select yourself into a corner and you won't be able to get out of it. So it's really important to get it right the first time and then add elements intentionally and not use Photoshop to fix anything. I know it's a common theme with Photoshop-ees but it's truly important with splash photography. As you can see, you can run into trouble in a hurry. Yeah, so I'm just doing some really, really fast with the pen tool here and it's not gonna be anything that I would ever call a good cutout. You're starting to sweat. I know we work fast, you can't, you just freak out. (laughter) That's understandable. Alright. So we'll get these pieces in here to show you the composition we're kind of going after and why we're going after that composition, yeah. Many a Photoshop tutorial on cutouts and those are the ones I go if I need to fall asleep, if I needa... So, but because our backgrounds are pretty similar even though we moved it and I'm cutting it, we're not, the slightly soft, rough edge I'm leaving isn't too bad. So I'm just gonna knock this mussel in as well and then I think we're gonna call it good here for the stuff we've added off of this layer. Well there is, see there's a conversation going on about whether transparentize is an actual word. And so the verdict is that yes, it is. Oh, for real? That's my new catch phrase. Hey, I'm the one who came up with that state. (laughter) We can blend these layers together. You just gotta transparentize. (laughter) 50, 50. So, this actually looks like the sketch of a dead person on the ground. Now that I... Or someone flipped, nevermind. I roughed in a selection with a brush, even though the rest of this is still white on my mask, I held down Alt and clicked on the mask to select it. I just grabbed the magic wand, selected it, and then because I've got a soft edge, I'm gonna go expand my selection by, let's call it 10 pixels, and now it pulled that selection, that marquee selection in on my layers so I don't run into any issues with the soft edge. So pull up fill, fill the rest with black and we've now got an okay, not great, cut out of those additional couple things. We can see those splashes. They look like they're on top of it cause there's no splash... Yeah. Interacting with that's why the one frame is so important but I think this is the... We're gonna have the final image, we're gonna work on this and actually have the final image for you and that way you can see where we ended up in our minds as far as how we wanted this to look but we're almost there and it looks really good so I'm pretty happy with it right now. But at the end, we would do some basic clean up, color correction, and brightening and a little bit of, I would really increase the shadows, I think, in certain areas to make it more vibrant and delicious. Cause that's part of it, too. People have to be made hungry by this. We definitely would want a look at things like skin tones, cause we do have that little bit of a hand in there it being very blue looks a little unappetizing, unnatural. So that's one of the first things I picked up on when I opened the frame. Yeah, yeah. Is that apparently my circulation's really bad.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with RSVP

Food In Motion Lighting Setups

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Capturing Food In Motion Gear List

Ratings and Reviews

Cynthia
 

This course is so fun to watch! I love how hands-on this course is even while watching it 3000 miles away on the other side of the country. I love how Steve Hansen is like a mad scientist just throwing food everywhere just to capture the "right moment". It's great to watch a professional at work especially the behind-the-scenes that we normally won't ever know just by look at the final product. It's amazing how much work goes into this and actually gets me excited to try my hands on capturing food in motion as well - first need to find a place that allows me to get it messy :D I do prefer this type of course set up than the lecture-style some of the other courses are.

Christy cwood56
 

This course will NOT disappoint! So much quality info that can really help a photographer move to the next level. To see the actual shoots with food flying everywhere and how to capture all of it and turn it into an incredibly stunning image is worth every penny of the price tag. To spend an afternoon with Steve on a one to one basis would cost more than most of us could afford but that is exactly what this class offers! We see into the mind of an incredible artist and his creative process. This class has been invaluable to my personal education as a photographer. There is so much here and I will continually come back to it again and again to learn and refine my techniques and images. You opened up a world of possibilities to me with this class! Thanks Steve!!!

a Creativelive Student
 

I attended this class in person and I found it to be wonderful. Steve is awesome at what he does and he is great at explaining what he is doing and why he is doing it. This course will lay out all the steps needed to help you create awesome splash and crash photography. I highly recommend it.

Student Work

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