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Advanced Editing Concepts With Photoshop

Lesson 30 from: Fine Art Landscape and Travel Photography

Peter Eastway, Tony Hewitt

Advanced Editing Concepts With Photoshop

Lesson 30 from: Fine Art Landscape and Travel Photography

Peter Eastway, Tony Hewitt

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Lesson Info

30. Advanced Editing Concepts With Photoshop

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Overview of Fine Art Landscape and Travel Photography

08:44
2

Our Passion For Photography

07:38
3

Looking For The Next Great Photo

19:05
4

Peter and Tony's Photography

18:35
5

What is a Landscape?

15:48
6

Considering Color: What is Real?

13:16
7

Shooting Travel Photography: Exotic Locations

13:33
8

Preparing for a Travel Shoot: Research

16:35

Lesson Info

Advanced Editing Concepts With Photoshop

When you look at this here, that's the finished image. So we can have a look at my layers. And if I turn that off, that's what I started with, okay? So, it's a reasonable exposure, it's a reasonable capture, I don't mind the composition. But the most important thing for me was when I was looking down on this part of the gorge, I saw this section of rock that had fallen away over some period of time. And yet it had this majestic feel about it, it was like this castle coming up out of the depth. Yeah, yeah. So when I looked at that I thought how do I, with a few steps, how can I accentuate that feeling? So the first step I took was I thought I need to bring some attention to the middle of this image. Now, we could just grab a vignette and throw a loop around it and lighten the middle, that's one way to do it and it would certainly be effective. But what I preferred to do was to select exactly that area of the top of the rock, which I could see was already catching the light. Yep, y...

ep, yes I can see that. Because of the angle, these rocks up there are very flat. In fact, when you walk on them the percentage of iron ore in these rocks is amazing. This is one of the iron ore rich parts of the world and in fact those sheets of rock, when you walk on them, they're like metal plates and they sound like steel, as you know. In fact, I have a picture of Peter on a gorge standing on a section of rock, the gorge, maybe your daughter should shut her ears. And the cliff is quite high (laughs) and he's standing on this section of rock, but what makes the picture interesting is I shot it from the other side of the gorge and the section of rock he's standing on looks like its own little dinner plate with a full crack behind it. Which Peter probably stepped onto, thought it's all joined, it's all good. But from where I stood it looks like it's coming out like that and there's nothing underneath. But we won't tell them that. So we're not gonna talk then about the time that Tony was on a frozen lake and the big- Nah, so let's move on, we're talking about, actually this probably (mumbles) I didn't know. And he had metal spikes on the bottom of his tripod and he was pushing them into the ice just to make sure they were stood. I said, do you know what you're doing? And he said yes, I said okay (laughs). I had it covered, I knew what I was doing, and in fact, if the ice had cracked, I would've thrown- I'm loving the camera there, Tony. Alright, so the first thing I'm looking at is this central bit here and I'd like to just accentuate the highlight that's already there. It's only subtle and if we wanted to, if I just quickly through a level up, you could see, where's my- It's over there. Yep, yep, yep, yep. You could see that if I do this, you can see that section up there is quite bright, so anyway, we're not gonna do that, so let's get rid of that. What I did is I actually used a mask. So the mask I used was a mask that I took out of the channels if you like. And that allowed me to select this part of the image or the tones of the image that I wanted to work with more accurately. So that'll be covered under channel masking or luminosity masking, there's various ways you can do that. This would've been a channel mask so there'll be Creative Live and demonstrations of that. Absolutely. So once I've done that, let's go back out of that, I've now been able to brighten that up because using that mask, if we again have a look at our properties, and we shouldn't have to do this all the time, should we? You can see that I can effectively make changes to that section of the rock and you can just see it changing subtly there like that. So I made a subtle change and Pete, I don't make big changes, you know, I tend to work in small increments, I like to build it up. In the same way that a painter would paint a painting, do the background and just slowly build things up. And I think that's a really important takeaway that even when you're working on the same area, if you do a mask, make an adjustment, make a small adjustment, do a mask again, it might be more or less around the same place, do another adjustment. Building it up, rather than doing one big adjustment, three or four can give you a much more subtle, much more invisible effect than doing it in one. And so I think that don't be afraid to do as many masks as required. You can add in a thousand layers, when I say mask, adjustment layer with a mask attached. Yep, so that's sort of, if you look at the difference, it's just brightened up that center of the image just a little bit, brought attention to it. It's still not giving me the vavoom that I want, as our good friend Doctor Les would say. So I'm looking at this going, well what's the other way I can bring out the middle? Well I can darken down these darker areas. Yes, yes. So, I've got another layer here where I've done that, now how have I done that? Can I just come back? Sure, you may. You were trying to lighten up those areas. There's only so far you can lighten them up before they become pastel or washed out or don't look good. Color goes away. And the color disappears. So therefore to lighten it further is not really an option because you lose the effect. So therefore rather than lightening, we're darkening everything else. That's correct. 'Cause what we're looking for is the difference between the foreground and the background. Yep, so what we've done is I've got this image here which I've done that too. And the way I've done it is by using the opposite mask. Okay. Okay. Yep. So how do I do that? Well if I hit, let's go back into here, if I hit command I or control I on a PC, I guess. Yes it is, correct. It'll be verse the mask. So I'm able to use the exact same marks that I was using to lighten the central part of the image to darken the rest of the image, okay? So that's given me, if you like, an accentuated effect of lightening the middle. So we look at that, turn that on, turn that on, and suddenly that middle is now coming out and it feels a bit more majestic. But it wasn't quite enough on the edges. I felt that this top area up here was still a little bit light, so again, if we have a look at the mask, I've kept that same mask. And let's just have a look at this layer. And I've just chosen to darken it down just a little bit more, so I've actually used the same thing twice but in slightly different ways, as you just mentioned. You don't have to do it all in one hit and sometimes with building it up, it actually looks a little less visible, and we'll talk about it in invisible Photoshop. So then I've summarized those layers and I've put a little bit of a cast over it. If you have a look at that, I've just brought up a layer here and all I've done is I've gone into here. So you've copied up all of the adjustments you've done already- Stamped all the visible and then I've just changed the color tone on that, you can just see that subtly there. Go up to here and what I've done, if we look at the mask, that's pretty rough and ready. All I've done is gone into there and said right, these central areas up here- Ah yeah, I can see that. Just wanted to increase, increase in there a little bit. Go up to the curves here again, this one here, I've put a layer on there thinking what I could do is multiply, which means basically create a darkening to one stop on whatever was there, but as you can see the mask is black. And I've left this here deliberately. I had a play with the look and I didn't like it. And I suppose the point I'm trying to make is there are dead ends in creativity. There are things that don't work, the more mistakes you make creatively, the more creative you become. Hey, I like that, I'm gonna keep that. That's my view anyway. That could be a live comment. It could be. So the final one I've used this mask to warm up or to change the color temperature if you like of that outside, and that's all I've done. So if we start of at the beginning, that's it. So really all we've really done there is a little bit of color toning and a little bit of curves with a bit of masking to help it along the way just to accentuate the parts that I wanted to do. Cool, cool, yep. Very simple.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

The Incomplete Guide to Shooting Aerials
The Essential Manual For The Travel Photographer

Ratings and Reviews

Esther Beaton
 

Two Aussie blokes just having fun. Peter and Tone did us proud by representing the spirit of Australia, which is: don’t take anything too seriously. They hit off each other well, in fact, they are the best twosome I’ve ever seen on Creative Live, each giving the other respectful space yet not being shy about taking the micky out of the other guy when appropriate. The whole dialogue was spirited, informative, casual and fun. They also perfectly proved the symbiotic relationship between red wine and beautiful photography.

Swapnil Nevgi
 

Loved the positive energy of this class. Just finished watching it and I would definitely recommend it to someone who wants to take their landscape photography to the next level. This course is not about learning camera or software skills, but learning how to develop conceptualizing and composing skills. How an award winning creatives mind works is a lot more important than how to use camera. This is exactly what I was looking for and very happy with my purchase. Also it was good to see some of their raw vs post processed files to learn how far the professionals like Tony and Peter go with post processing (Something I have always been concerned about). Knowledge about exhibiting was also priceless. Thank you, I have learnt a lot in this class and I am sure it will reflect in my work in future.

Debra
 

This class is fabulous! One of the best on Creative Live. Peter and Tony share so much of themselves and their great art that you can't help but want to pick up your camera and get out to shoot. It was like watching two close friends. Thanks very much for a very enjoyable 2 days of learning and viewing.

Student Work

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