Skip to main content

Create a Toned-Down Highlight Action

Lesson 5 from: Incorporating Actions into your Portrait Workflow

Kristina Sherk

Create a Toned-Down Highlight Action

Lesson 5 from: Incorporating Actions into your Portrait Workflow

Kristina Sherk

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

5. Create a Toned-Down Highlight Action

Lesson Info

Create a Toned-Down Highlight Action

we're going to get right started creating our next action, which is going Teoh be toning down some highlights and blown out highlights. Okay, this is something that, uh, you know, whenever you're creating an action, you want to make sure that it works on multiple actions because that's the beauty of of actions. If if you created in action and it only worked on one image that would kind of suck and would kind of negate the fact that you're trying to create an action trying to save time. So in this example, what we're going to do is use some of the photo shot skills in the photo shop commands to have them do the masking for you because I hate freehand masking Any time that I have to actually draw in a mask, I'm like, finally I have to do this. Okay, so, um, so in this example, what we're going to do is use Photoshopped, my favorite command in Photoshopped of all time, and we're gonna use that to create the mask for us. So that's the next step up, right? We just create in action where you...

're responsible for doing them asking. But now we're going to create another action where photo shop is actually going to do them asking for you. All right, so for this image, we've got a client. She came in and we just feel like the highlight areas. Maybe just a little bit too hot. You can see it right on her forehead, the bridge of her nose and on those cheek areas. Um, it just seems to me to be just a little bit too bright, and so I'd like to see if I can do anything about, um, making those a little bit less bright. So in order to do that, just as we did before, we're going to come down to our new action icon at the bottom of our actions palette. And then we're going to name this tone down highlights, and we're going to save this in creative lives. Okay. And of course, I touched on function keys. I touched on color. So we're gonna just leave those as it is. And then remember, toe watch the little red record button as I click record, and immediately that's lightened. That's brightened up. Okay, so at this point again, television goes off, phone gets hung up and now you're going to just focus really 110% on your photo shop because we all saw what happens when you don't focus on your photo shop and you do two things at once. So my next step is coming to our adjustments layer, and I'm going to choose the hue saturation adjustment layer right there. And then I'm going to name this layer tone down highlights. Then I'm going to make one tweak to the actual properties of this adjustment layer, which is going to be decreasing the saturation by about 20%. And then I'm going to change the blend mode of the adjustment layer from normal to multiply to darken. Did you see what happened over here in my image when I changed the blend mode from normal to multiply, you can see, obviously it's darker on the image, but it's darker all over the entire image, which isn't really gonna do us very much good right now. But that's OK because we're going to tell photo shop where to hide and where to show this this effect. All right, so we've got our adjustment layer toned down highlights selected. Now, if you write down one note. Please write this down cause it's my favorite thing ever come to this select color range highlights. Okay, this dialog box, whether you're using select color range highlights mid tones, shadows or skin tones, um is really, really powerful. Okay, because what it's doing is you have a range right here and your range is basically where do you want this to be visible? Where do you want it to be? White. And where do you want it to be? Dark, OK. And as you change this, it's going to say okay, these different colors are going to be visible or not visible. So say goodbye to free hand masking. So last year. So for this example, we're gonna just due to 22 for our range, and that's going to create a mask for us. That's on Lee going to allow this area of the mask to be white and actually a little bit more. This area of the mask to be visible and everything else is gonna be black. But right now, our actual mask is all white. So we don't want to go ahead and fill with white on white. So what? We're going to have to do is hit this invert button, which is going to select the area that we want to modify because on this mask we want to modify the area basically in turn the area that's white. We want to turn that area black so that the effect is not visible on anywhere where it's white right now. Go ahead and press OK, Okay. And you see my marching ants that have shown up. So that's the beginning of a selection for creating our mask without actually drawing in the mask. Our next step is to be to click on the actual toned down highlights mask. And then we want to tell Photoshopped to fill the area that it has selected with black so that this effect is only visible on these areas right here. So we'll go to our edit menu, will choose Phil, and we're going to choose Black. OK, now let's hit Commander Control de to de select and let's come in and take a look at the mask that we created. You can see that we do have are darkening over the brightest areas of the image, and we have yet to do any masking yourself. Okay? Again? What am I very lazy, efficient? I like that. I'm gonna use that instead of lazy. All right. Our next step is going to be decreasing the opacity of our toned down highlights to something that's just a little bit more, uh, you know, a little bit more. Not so abrasive. But then we don't want to see there was a little ridge when this was up 100. Did you see the ridge here? Now that is not usable, right? Because obviously you can see where it's visible on where it's not visible. So if we go ahead and pull this the opacity of this down just a bit. But we also want to feather this mask will bring the feather up to 25%. No, 25%. 25 pixels. Sorry. Not percent. Um, and that looks good. That looks realistic. We didn't do anything with our track pad. We're just creating this action. Let's go ahead and press stop. Now. I just want to make sure that if you are dealing with darker skin tones, this is going to be a anak shin that's going toe work best on lighter skin tones because of the select color because of the number that we put in select color range. Here, range this too. 2 12 number. If you're dealing with darker skin tones, you want to decrease this number by about 30. Okay, so what I would do is I would create two actions. One for lighter skin tones, one for darker skin tone so that you know which one to use. Okay. And each one of those is gonna have a little bit of a different setting. Okay, so we created the action. Toned down highlights. This is always the moment of truth, guys. We're gonna delete that. We're going to click on her action. Let's go ahead and press play. All right? It worked, Right? So before and after before and after, and we didn't pick up the mat. We didn't pick up our pen once. Let's hold down Option or Ault and click on the mask Preview to see the mask that we had Photoshopped create for us during that. Okay. All right. Um, so again, option or all to click on the mask, look wrong button option or all click on the mask. And now let's say we've got another image from this same shoot that we also want to run that on. OK, she's looking a little hot here, too. Let's see if we can turn that down. Click on our action again. Press the play button. All right. And there we go. Okay, because we're not responsible for doing them. Asking ourselves were and we're allowing Photoshopped to do that. This is where that this is where the real power of actions is really going to start to shine, guys. But I needed to teach you all that stuff on the front end because of the fact that this is so. It is a complicated concept. Um, and again, you know, you've got, you know, a shoot of a bride and you had 30 seconds. This is not my finest work. I love this bride, but I had 30 seconds to do a portrait of her really, really quickly. Andi, I really wasn't happy with what I got. But that's OK, because I have my tone down Highlights action, click, press play. And then because of this, we want to just take this all the way up to 100%. And if you see the before in the after you can see that each one of the masks hold down option or Ault, that all of that masking was done in the blink of an eye by Photoshopped, Not by you by Photoshopped. Okay. And that's what's going to be your time saving that some of your real time saving opportunities. And then, of course, you know, this is just a little bit a little bit hot over here, so just you know, you can always bring back that opacity to whatever you think looks best. But that takes a lot less than time, then doing this all by hand, Um, you know, time after time, right? So very, very those were going to be some of your time saving tips. This is, uh I'm new to this. So I'm just curious whether at some point before the end, you could talk about of sort of a general list of things that could be useful to someone portrait photography in terms of for which one would create actions. Oh, yeah. So, um, kind of what I mentioned once you once you have a little bit more experience under your belt, you'll start to get frustrated or annoyed with creating. Now I have to create those whitened teeth. Or now I have to create the, you know, the eye color or anything like that and all that stuff that you're like. Here we go again, this step, this step. And if you do anything more than five times, you're also gonna want to think about creating an action for that as well. Um, all of those kind of mundane tools and there are so many actions out there and free actions that you can download online to try out. I think some of them, uh, I think some of them may leave beginners a little bit confused. And that's why I always put like notes in my actions, which is what I'm going to teach you next. How to, like, leave yourself a little note within the action so that you remember what to do at this point. Um, but, uh, but yeah, you could always try downloading some of those portrait actions. Just google it, see if there's free portrait actions to download, and probably my website will come because there's someone there as well

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with RSVP

Kristina Sherk - Portrait in a Pinch Download

Ratings and Reviews

Amy Vaughn
 

I was already a regular action user before this class, edited other people's actions and dabbled with creating a few of my own. Somehow, I still wasn't thinking about just how many of those repetitive adjustments I make across images that I could be automating. Kristina's class was great for making me think about how much more I can be doing with actions than I was, and I've already noticed a difference with my editing speed since I started applying her suggestions. This is one of those classes that seemed like a simple lesson at the time, but it's having a huge impact on my daily workflow.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES