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Black & White Adjustment Layers

Lesson 14 from: Color Techniques For Retouching

Lisa Carney

Black & White Adjustment Layers

Lesson 14 from: Color Techniques For Retouching

Lisa Carney

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Lesson Info

14. Black & White Adjustment Layers

Lesson Info

Black & White Adjustment Layers

Black and white filter. Here we go. We are gonna talk about the black and white filter. And I'm gonna talk about something... Yes, I'm gonna talk about that first. Give me one moment here please, my lovelies. Alright, yeah, I'm gonna just talk about it this way first. Alright, black and white filter. Get rid of these real quickly. I think it's fantastic. Back in the old days, when you guys weren't even born yet, and you had to do black and white, and you could only do it with hue saturation, it was horrible. But now with the black and white filter, which we love and adore, you can control, just like with filters like shooting with a yellow filter, you can control density. I love this filter. Love it, love it. So what it allows you to do, just like if you were shooting through colored filters, I'm sure you have that in your photo class here at CreativeLive, so when you're shooting and you shoot through filters, you can actually change what the camera's actually seeing, what light is com...

ing into the sensor. This way you don't have to do it in the camera and you can just choose to do it later. It's beautiful, it makes great black and whites, I use this often, really really really dig it. Once again, you have auto sections you could save white and black presets, you could save them off. So what does that mean? That means if you're doing a series, so let's say you went to Hawaii and you did a photo series. You could save this off as a preset. I'm not a big fan of saving files out into other areas where they might get lost or not live, so I prefer to just take a file, open it, and drag and drop it. Because that's the way my brain likes to work. I don't like having to load and find presets. But other folks would like to save presets out. So I just wanna let you know that's available to you, I don't use it, it is available. There's this kinda weird function, it's kinda nice, but kinda weird. And that's this tint function. So wait a minute, didn't we just go over this in hue saturation, where you could colorize? We just did this right? Why in heaven's name would you do that here? Well, why you might do that here is you haven't lost any of that groovy tonal function. What? You'll never go back to colorize again. I'm telling you hue saturation dies here on this table. No it doesn't. But if you're gonna do a tint, a colorized tint, you can do it here and what it allows you to do is it still leaves everything completely flexible. Oh look at this! I could go pick that pantone 1375C that my client loves because it's so beautiful. And I could still use it, but I still can change the tone of how it reacts to the photo. What I would probably do is pick the pantone 1375C, and then go back to the color mode and go Jesus that was way too saturated, let's pull back on that. That's me editing, I can't help it. Alright. So let's take a moment here and talk about adjustment layers. Do you remember I said we were gonna talk about the how's and why's, why would you use one? So at the beginning I said, "Oh you've got "that solid color fill, that's pretty cool, right?" I kinda think this is cooler. I wouldn't use that now. So I have now totally disregarded what I said at the beginning of the class, which I knew I was gonna do. This is the land of choice that you're gonna be entering. Why us the solid color, and why not use this. Now why you might wanna use the solid color is you can actually reference a pantone and when they open it they'll see it's referencing the pantone and it idiot-proofs it just a hair. You're still referencing a pantone here, but they might not see it 'cause it's a little more buried in this dialogue box. So you have to take into consideration, I think, who you're talking to. But I think this is an absolutely beautiful way, I don't use colorize anymore, I use this, because I can do this, these kind of adjustments. Fair enough? Alright. I'm gonna show you something else here about this. Let us talk. No here I'll leave it big. Alright. I think this is kind of important. Hue saturation. That's a black and white. Just for giggles you guys I'm gonna put these three up here. Alright. Hang on, bear with me. Dance amongst yourselves here for just a second. Is there dancing allowed? Maybe. Alright. So when we started this section, this course, we talked a little bit about, there's a bunch of different way to get to the same result, or something similar. So in this illustration here, what we have is, you have the kind of old way of doing it, ubiquitous hue saturation. And you can look and see that result, what that gets you. Then you have black and white filter result. And to my eye on this monitor, they look incredibly similar. Incredibly similar. However, there is that added function here that you do not have with hue saturation, that I can change this, right? Now another very common way of doing a black and white is a function called gradient map, which we're gonna talk about later. And this is what the gradient map looks like. Out of the can, if it's a single move, a single solitary move without adjustment, I find the gradient map works best. I think the black and white filter with adjustments is more flexible. So if you have a production workflow where you don't have time to go in and jack with the settings, if it were me, and I had to pick, I would pick gradient map for black and white. If I cannot go in and change the settings, or I don't have a lot of time. Off the jump start, just the first grab in my bag of tricks would be gradient map. Okay? But if you have some time to play and you have some mobility, I would most certainly take the photo filter. Excuse me, the black and white filter. And the hue saturation dies on the table. I shouldn't. It's a old standard, we love her, we just don't visit her much anymore. Cool? There's one other quirky... I do not believe ladies and gentlemen, this is in the worksheet. So you may just have to make some notes. Hope everyone heard me there, it's not in the worksheet. There's one other quirky little function to the black and white filter. She's setting the stage. Black and white filter. So you know we talked a lot about modes today. It's basically hand in hand. You've got adjustment layers and you've got layer modes. And they're hand in hand, and crossing over, and changing things. If you take the black and white filter, and you put it on luminosity, you are only affecting tone, right? Value. So if you go into that magic window and you say, "Boy I need to lighten the skin." Adjust the skin, you can lighten... Oh, I got a tan! Oh and I got a mustache, oh my god I need a waxing! Lord have mercy. Oh that's just so wrong. But we can look at that for a moment. You can affect tone using color sliders. There's not much magenta, I have no lipstick on as you can tell. Again this is only gonna be the flesh tones so it's only gonna be the red and the yellows. But I don't have to mask it out. That's a really good trick. Again, it's where you would never expect it. It's the black and white adjustment layer, but the key thing is it's on the mode called luminosity. Dun dun dun, sound effects! That'd be great.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Color Channel Explanation Images
Color Techniques Workbook

Bonus Materials with RSVP

Outline Cards
Adobe Stock Contributor

Ratings and Reviews

user-6180b9
 

Another awesome course by Lisa Carney, packed full of information This course is really a comprehensive look at colors ... I learned so much, and even stuff I thought I knew pretty well, I found some pretty eye opening new information. I find Lisa Carney to be a wonderful teacher. When she has an important point to make she'll say her point, pause and then repeat what she just said, just to lock it into your memory. Fantastic. Side note: I signed up for the CreativeLive creative pass as soon as I realized how great all of Lisa Carney's classes are. I'd started to buy them one by one and quickly realized they are all wonderful. You can watch this class from beginning to end and get great information ... but to get the most bang for the buck you'll want to pause, hit rewind, get a cup of coffee, open Photoshop and try out her tips while you watch. There are sections I rewound and watched about 5 times, to be sure I understood all the subtle points. Lisa Carney is pretty amazing - she works really hard to thoroughly explain the process she uses to solve problems, and she never glosses over anything important. To cover a particular point, she'll start with a finished file with all the layers - and instead of simply explaining each layer like a mortal would do, she'll literally delete all the adjustment layers and start from scratch to show the process. This is incredibly empowering since it gives you an understanding of just how easy the process can be once you get the hang of it

Maggie Lobl
 

I am really enjoying this class! Lisa makes complicated concepts easy to understand. She presents various ways of doing things so that you have options and can use the method that best works for your own situation. She moves quickly through the material, which I appreciate, and I since I own the class I know I can go back and review material when I need to. I love her style and approach to teaching, as well as her real world anecdotes and the way she shares her experience, both good and bad examples from her career. I'm so glad I purchased this class!

a Creativelive Student
 

This course has an abundance of useful information along with professional tips based on actual field experience. This course is definitely one I will come back to from time to time to reiterate the information. For this reason the way it is organised is perfect to find information about a specific technique or adjustment layer. It is well composed with some humour and advanced information. Loved it and highly recommend it for people who want to deal with the little details and get things exactly the way they want. Not suitable for lazy or sloppy people who just want to get the job good enough for sharing but don't care about getting it perfect for print.

Student Work

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