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Photoshop® Editing Overview

Okay, guys. Photoshop is my background. Lightroom is my negative. So now I've colored corrected everything, we're gonna go into Photoshop. Before we go there, I'm gonna show you some examples, what I do to the pictures, then I'm gonna demonstrate each picture. My Photoshopping is very standard. I always do the same, the same, the same. I want to achieve one thing at the picture, then if you want to run a filter on top of it, it's okay. But you need to reach a stage, finish the picture, then either leave it as it is or run a filter to give it an effect. Filter, there are so many good plugins out there. You can buy filter, and if it suits the picture, run it. It's up to you. But it's important before you apply a filter, you have to reach somewhere with the picture. Okay, now, the three most important softwares for me: Photoshop. This is Nik Software. You can get it from Google. It's free. I recommend everyone download this software, because it's the best plugin I've ever worked with. Unf...

ortunately, Google has dropped it. So they're not gonna update it. But really, we don't need update. It works perfect. I don't want an update. I want them to destroy it anymore. And Imagenomic. Imagenomic, for me, is one of the best, if not the best, face-softening software. It does such a great job. It just softens perfectly. I just use it really heavily. And they have two other plugins. The Noiseware is to reduce noise, and Realgrain to add noise. So I use both of them. So the Realgrain will give you film feel to the picture, which I like. I like texture on pictures, I don't want them to be smooth. And the Portraiture is the softening of the face. Amazing software. I can't do it without it. So I'm gonna go through these softwares, each one of them. And these are part of my plugin also, my action. They use Nik Software and Imagenomic. Nik is free. This one, Imagenomic, they gave me special price. We'll go through that later on. It's a software. If you're a people photographer, I don't think you should not have this software. It's one of the best softwares for me. Been using it for nearly 10 years. Okay. Let's talk what I do. I do a lot of skewing of pictures. I'm gonna show you later on. Skewing, less distortion, anything that a picture, if it's distorted, and I don't want to look crooked, I skew it, I stretch it to make it perfect. So skewing is a tool I use quite a lot in Photoshop. I'm gonna show you cropping inside the frame. You see, when I design album, you have to think always album. If we crop each picture, one square, one rectangular, one thing, it's gonna be messy. And when you design an album, it's going to be all over the place. So I always keep the ratio of the frame, the 35 millimeter format, and I crop inside the frame. I'm going to show you that also. It's a good way to do, and all your images are the same format. So when you lay out in the album, then you decide how you're gonna crop it. Okay, let's go some examples. Always make sure that adjustments are done in layers. So if you want to go back, you can go back in Photoshop. Here, for example, I've just basic adjustment to that picture. That's the original. Then use my soft action. So the girl has beautiful, still details, plenty of details, but it's much smoother. And then light up her face just a bit. And that's it. Next picture. Remove anything that distracts. Okay, I selected that location. This is the original file. You see, if you go into the corridors like that, there will be winds, so the veil flies. And make sure that the bride is not worried about the veil. Take the shot. But there's a lot of things happening there. It's a building. It's nothing special. I want the eyes to go here. This is the subject. So this is what I do next. I extract details. So I make, especially for the dress. This is in my action. It extracts the details, so all the details are perfect. Then I start deleting what I want. So it's a new layer. So I start deleting the part that I want extracted. And then start darkening the background, and things like signs, and things eliminate. A bit more dark. A bit of motion blur in the veil to make it more softer and more fairy. And that's the final picture. You know, your eye now travels straight there. This was too much distraction. Too many details. Now I've gone straight to the bride. Nice details. A bit of color up there. I can sometimes also exaggerate with hue saturation, exaggerate the color, put more saturation, so it will be exciting. And that's the picture. That's quite popular picture with the bride. If you see the original, this is a bit washed out. If you see on the other screens, it's quite contrast and beautiful. Motion blur. I said it at the other picture. But I have a beautiful picture, motion of the veil, and then I add a bit more motion into it, motion blur. It's just a beautiful way of handling veils. There's a lot of details, but it's a bit more motion, so your eye straight goes to the subject again. It's a good tool to use. I'm gonna show you this also, how to do it. Retouching skin. When you use available light, natural light, the shadows and things will be exaggerated, and you get more details and textures in the face. This is, I've exaggerated just a little bit more, so for TV viewing. So I'm gonna show you how I softened the face without losing too much details. See, it looks good. There's still texture there, plenty of skin texture there, but it's softener. It's more pleasant. If you're a girl, you put makeup on. You want to look like this. Come on, let's face it. Some people say, "Oh, that's not real." Okay, I'm not that photographer. I want the bride to be amazing. And that's what I do. Not overdone, but just right. Removing color cast. When you shoot in winter, and the light is blue in winter, or it could be indoor. The light is blue. So many white dresses, many white will become blue, it picks up the blue light. I'm gonna show you how to get rid of that blue in certain areas, and make it into white. Very simple. Very effective. You only get details out of the blue there. Extending an image. A bride comes. She loves that picture. But she wants a wide posture on the wall. Wide, wide, big posture on the wall. And then you'll say, okay, if I crop the picture, either I'm gonna crop there, if I'm gonna crop there, but this is what I wanted to achieve. This is the look I want. I don't want to kill the look, so I can fit in the size she wants. So what I do is create a new layer. So this is where I'm gonna extend. So I've extended the canvas a little bit. First thing I do, because I shot the photo with a wide lens, and they're on the edge, they're gonna look a little bit wider in the picture. So what I've done is I've pushed the picture in, the top layer. So there's two layers here. The bottom layer, let's go back for a minute. So they look a little bit wider than they are. So the next one, this is the original. The next one, look at her. She gonna go a bit skinnier. That's the real her, because I pushed this layer back. Then I will pick up this area here, select that area, and extend it. When it's lines, and things, and background, it doesn't matter. You're not gonna see anything. So I've made it to the size I want to the final picture. This is very handy also. Let's say you order a five by seven picture, or eight by 10 is the right one, eight by 10, and you don't want to crop. So you can stretch the edges or anything, so it fits in the format, so you don't lose the framing that you've created. It's a very good technique. I use it quite a lot. Even in an album page, if you're gonna do a stretch of the page so it covers the two pages, if you stretch it, you have a big picture without cutting the picture. And then convert it to black. And this is what they wanted, a bit of darkening there. And that's the picture. And now by stretching, I had the size without losing anything. If I don't tell you this, would you know that this is stretched? No. I don't even tell the bride that I've done that. If I stretched her, that was gonna be wrong. Then she was gonna be a big girl. But no, I didn't do that. And if you noticed, because of her pose, it's a very gorgeous pose. But her tummy had stretched out a little bit. And if I don't fix that, she's gonna say, "Yervant, I look pregnant there." So I make sure that all these things are done without telling her. You don't want them to see problems in the picture. You fix it. Okay? You fix anything. Arms. Arms are the biggest problem. Strapless dress. Girls wear it. And every girl, unless she's a really skinny girl, have an arm. It's natural. We are all normal. But suddenly they don't like it in the picture. I'm very careful with that. I try to push it. In this case, look, I've covered her with the veil. I'm very particular about this. I'll come back to you in a minute. It's so important. If there was no veil, I would've liquified it. I've liquified here. I will liquify, I answered the question. I use liquify. I'm gonna show you that also, how I use liquify. I learned the secret of liquifying from Bambi, my friend, Bambi Cantrell. She is an amazing photographer. She's my good friend. If you're watching, Bambi, I love you. You see, I always learn from someone. So I learned from the great guys how to do this. And if I like it, I use it forever. Because we share, we learn, and we do it. There's nothing wrong with it. Okay. Adding texture. Sometimes I like to add texture to make it more interesting. You see, I saw that picture, beautiful decoration the girl has done into her room. The window is coming, lighting her up there, the dress and everything. Well, that can be an art print. Timeless art print. So the first thing I did was darken the dress in that area, because there's window light there. Just a bit of darkening. Then extract details. So those details have become heavier. And the dress, these details have become more stronger, so they're more like two dimensional. Add texture. When I add texture, I multiply or try the different layers to get what you want. And a bit of color correction. And that's the picture. Adding texture. Sometimes it's great. Now, this is extracting details. This is my school in Italy. I studied in this school. I studied art in this school. And every year we go for workshop in Venice. Most of the time we visit this place. It's a beautiful place. This is where I was a kid, and we used to sing, do presentations and things. So I shot, the dress was made by my wife. I shot this. It's at one of our workshops in Venice. But you see, it's flat, because this is how I've converted it in Photoshop, in Lightroom. Then in Photoshop, I will correct it first, and separate the bride. Make a selection around the bride. So the bride is on a new layer by herself. And exaggerate the details in the background, so make it crispy, and stronger, and contrasty. And then add a filter to it. And that's the final picture. Much nicer. This is not doing justice. When you see the picture of this. When you see the actual picture, it's like a painting. It's like painting. So this is where, again, when you print it, it becomes an art. You know, that becomes an art, you can hang it on any wall of this. And if the bride gets one of these, she's gonna love it. So extracting details, I'm gonna show you also that.