Lessons

Lesson Info

Local Adjustments: Portrait Touch Up

We're going to do a little bit of touch up work on the ray here who's who's bravely volunteered to be our our subject. So I'm gonna go ahead and collapse this panel. I really appreciate her her doing. That will be very kind, and we're going to dio a little bit of typical portrait work, so we're gonna brighten her teeth a little bit, take a little bit of yellow out or teeth or pretty white, but we'll we'll de saturate them a little bit as well will brighten up. Her eyes will pop out the irises in her eyes a little bit, and I'm thinking that will shift the lipstick color, maybe a little bit more towards the orange, and we'll soften her skin a little bit as well. So that's the plan. Now. I just want to emphasize that I would do the global work on a photo first, and then I would do the local work. My If I'm making a decision on how brighter eyes or teeth are gonna be, I need Teoh. Decide how how bright the overall photo is first. So let's just start in the basic panel and do just a little ...

bit of work here. I'm going to reduce the exposure. It's a little too bright and let me see here. I'm gonna school the white balance down just a tiny bit. So I'm just sliding the temp slider a little bit from yellow towards blue. And let's leave it at that. So we haven't done a lot of work, but overall looks good. I'm starting to see a lot of just local things I might want to shift like her neck is a little brighter than her face. You know, I'd like more more emphasis on her face so we can do that locally with the adjustment brush as well. So let's go ahead and go into the adjustment brush notice. It remembered my exposure adjustment. So a double click on the word effect and let's start with her teeth. So I'm gonna zoom in a controller, command plus or use the Navigator panel, and the instruction I'm gonna use is going to be a combination of positive exposure, and I'm guessing on the amounts, and it's going to be also negative saturation. Take out a little bit of color from the teeth. Now I noticed that my brush does not have much feathering in it. It's gonna have a fairly harsh edge for this type of subtle change. I would use a little bit more feathering then. I have currently, so increase the feathering and I'm gonna turn off auto mask. I don't want it to detect hard edges. In this case, I could really going up against the lips. Okay, Now, look what happened to see how that darkened. Now, I told I told the Ray would be kind and I'm already starting out with a terrible thing here. So what is going on? Well, let's see. Positive exposure. Negative saturation. All right, turn this off and on. You know, I'm not sure what's going on. Frankly, the pins black, it's active. I'm gonna double click on the word effect to reset, and it seems to put spaced out. Okay, It seems to be some kind of of book. So here's how I think through these things at home. First, I'm just gonna delete it, okay? And we're going to start again. So positive exposure, negative saturation. And it's painting dark. I'm okay. What am I doing? I'm just gonna guess, but is it Did you change the color with the Oh, you change the mass color. And I think that was You taught me. Well, you get a special prize star. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so I did that on purpose because I needed you to know. I know these things happen to you at home just like they happen to me. So I wanted you to know how to get out of that, and you won't be on camera, so it won't be so bad. But all right, So you, um, now, because the color was changed me Zoom back out here on the Mac. I didn't realize that I still had the mask overlay on here, so I hit. Oh, to turn that off. And that's in fact, what what? Fix the situation. So let's just start over. Let's pretend that didn't happen. Okay? So I'm gonna brighten her teeth a little bit and reduce the saturation. So I've increased the exposure a little bit. I've taken out a little bit of saturation. Nothing's happened yet, but I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna paint in here and just paint in her teeth. Now I'm being fairly sloppy just because I'm on camera and time is of the essence for you guys. As you get close to the lips, you could turn on auto mask, but you don't want to use auto mask as you're hitting all these because as you're in the center of the teeth because you don't want to protect some of these individual tones in there, so I'll just go ahead and do it fairly easily here. And then there's a switch. There's always a switch at the bottom or the top of each panel or tool that we use except the basic panel. So I'm gonna hit that on and off. T. Look at what I've done so far, so off and on now, with something like brightening teeth or eyes. It's a good idea when you think you have it dialed in to zoom back out, control a command minus to get some perspective on it. I often find that I brighten things too much when I'm zoomed in. Now the pin is in the way of appreciating what I've done here eso again, I said, We're gonna be kind. But down here at the bottom where it says show edit pins, it's set toe always so they're always on So if I change that auto, I really like auto because as I move my mouse out of the photo, they disappear. Okay? To move back in there, There. Now, sometimes people when they come in to paint, let's say we had to paint a little bit more here they accidentally click and drag on the pin itself. Now, when you do that, what you're doing is adjusting these sliders. So I'm gonna do it in a sec. I'm gonna click and drag on that pin. But what you're going to see is that this exposure slider and this saturation slider are going to adjust as I do that. So it's kind of a short cut way to adjust both of those sliders or your full instruction. However many flyers it is at once. So I'm gonna do control a command Z to undo that updated adjustment amount. Let's go ahead and go on to her eyes now, So I'm gonna get this space far. Now click and drag up to her eyes. The first thing I'm gonna do is just a little bit of is just some general bright ning of her eyes and then I'm gonna focus on the irises separately or as a separate adjustment on top of that. So here in the adjustment brush, I'll click on new to start a new instruction and in this case, the the left side or the right side on. At least from my perspective, let's just leave it at that is brighter than the left side. So I want to add different amounts of frightening to the whites of the eyes here. I could do that with two different instructions, right? I have. I'm on new. I could go with positive a little bit of exposure for the this side of the eye, and then I could do new again and do positive mawr exposure for that side of the eye. But I do want to introduce this flow concept to you. So for this adjustment, the first thing I'm gonna do is double click on the word effect to resettle the sliders and then consciously think about what I want to do. So I'm gonna brighten, and I'm gonna brighten in this case, the exposure I'm gonna set. I'm gonna set it higher than I think I want to go again. I can always adjust it later, but I'm going to scroll down a little bit here and I'm gonna go with with a low flow. So what? This means it flow. Is it 100? Which it is by default. The full instruction, the full 1.2 exposure brightening gets applied the first time I paint. That's generally what I want. But sometimes when I want to vary the amount in different areas of the photo, the same instruction in different areas of the photo, I'll reduce the flow and I'll let it build up as they paint over it multiple times. So I've reduced the flow. I'm gonna paint in this case and let's go ahead and start in this the already bright area of the of this I here and just brighten it up a little bit. This paint once over it for the left side of the eye, I could paint over it multiple times so I could just keep painting over it, or I could go ahead and adjust the flow upwards before before I even start. Okay, so I could apply 50% to start with on that side. So that's what flow will do. So give that one a bigger boost and I'll bring the flow down and give give this side of the eye a smaller boost. Now density is usedto limit the build up of the effect. So if I wanted to make sure that the right side of this I never got more than 50% of the instruction, I could set the density down at 50. That way I wouldn't accidentally paint this side too many times and brighten it up too much. It allows me to even out and limit and effect. It's not something that I use a lot, but it's just another way of working now. I often have the situation where I come into the adjustment brush, and I want to make a significant change. And as I paint, very little is happening. Okay, so I'm gonna go with a new instruction. Let me zoom out. So, my Mac, you can see the whole screen just to illustrate this for you. Let's see, what should we do to illustrate? I'll just use the background here to illustrate what I'm talking about. Let's say I was converting this background to black and white. I did a new instruction click on new Reset the sliders and I'll go with negative saturation and I start painting and nothing's happening or it's starting to Grey out a little bit. But but nothing is happening or very little is happening. It's like, Well, I've got negative 100 saturation. What's going on? Well, you guys know in the audience, Flo, I heard flow. Exactly. Yeah. So I set this up to show you that if you're going to use flow to control the amount you apply in various parts of your photo rather than doing separate instructions, you've got to remember to set it back to when you do another instruction. Like if I really was doing a black and white instruction here, I need to set the flow and the density back to 100 if I expect all the color to go away when I paint. So if things are as strong as you would expect them to be, check and make sure your flow and density are at 100. I'm gonna delete this instruction and I go down a little bit in the photo. Let's pop the irises of these of her beautiful eyes out here. Let's go ahead and do a new adjustment Click on New that will click on the word effect. And I think it's gonna be a combination of contrast. So adding some contrast, adding some clarity and maybe brightening a little bit. But in terms of the exact balance between those, it's just a guess. Okay, so I'm gonna make my mouth smaller with a scroll wheel, and I'm gonna go ahead and paint in the irises of her eyes and I'll come down here, turn the switch on and off of the bottom of the panel. So that got a little They got a little heavy. So it's simply a matter of adjusting from here. Bring the contrast down a little bit, maybe brighten them up, Just a little touch. Now, if you're not sure how much of something to use, the best thing to do is to slide the slider too far and then come back to something that looks more reasonable now again. Once you think you might have it nailed down, zoom back out to get some perspective on the work. I could scroll down a little bit, turn off the switch before and after, and I could continue to fine tune it from there. Maybe the whites got a little white, maybe do a little bit more. Um, but I wanted to. There's someone so much else I want to show you that we're gonna leave it at that. Let's go ahead this time and I want a dark in her neck down just a little bit here. So let's do a new instruction. We'll click on the word effect when I'm teaching workshops. When I dream at night, I'm dreaming of myself teaching. So I'm saying, right, click all night long, so we'll click on the word effect. Okay. All right. So this case, we want a darkened, So let's go. A negative exposure. And then with a soft brush, I'm just gonna paint this in and it's getting too dark. Maybe, but that's all right. I'll just go ahead and paint that in, and then I can adjust the amount. I just want the focus to be in the center of the face. Next. Let's go ahead. And so we got two more things to go. We're going to shift the color of her lipstick, and then we're gonna soften her skin just a little bit. So for color we're gonna dio a new adjustment. Notice that we're building up all of these pins on this photo. We're gonna double click on the word effect. Zoom in a bit Control command plus eso I reset the sliders and now I'm gonna use the color box here. I'm gonna paint with color when I click on this color square here and I'm gonna choose a color. Now I'm shifting it towards orange. So I'm gonna choose, um, you know something towards the orange, but I'm adding the color to what's there? I'm not I'm not replacing the color. I'm adding it. So I'm gonna just be guessing at this point until I get something painted. And if I zoom out a little bit, you'll see there's a saturation slider here, 94. This saturated may not be the answer, but I'm just not gonna worry about it right now, but I've guessed on the what. So now I'm gonna go ahead and paint your lips here and again. I could take more time and be more precise about it, and it's, you know, it's too heavy handed, but it's more important for me now to get the get the wear laid down to say, you know, to do the painting and then I can come back and further adjust the color that I'm applying but a zoom out a little bit and then I'm gonna go back into the color squares. This pin is still active. This lip adjustment is still active. So I'm gonna click on the color square and I'm gonna reduce the saturation because I certainly don't need to go that far May even just start out with none and then bring it up. And then I can click and drag in the color square to decide what color Now that I've got it painted as I preview it as I look at the photo as I click and drag here, you can see that I'm adding, I can see the color that's being applied. So my goal again was just a shift It a little bit towards the background and I'm getting obsessed with this and I really don't want to, so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna leave it as it is. So I actually think I liked her lipstick before before I even started. But I still want you to see that you can add color to a particular part of your photo. Leslie, can you match a color like using that eyedropper tool like we do in Photoshopped to just sample a color And then you can in this color square here if you want a color from the photo, for example, like the back the background. So that's that's ah, great question. So what you would do anywhere in light room, not just in the adjustment brush, but anywhere that you see one of these color squares. So the book module, the print module, the slideshow module as well as here in the adjustment brush. If you click in this color sampler and you hold the mouse down and you drag out to the photo or to anything on your monitor, it could even be a web page. Okay, get sample of color from the Web page. You can you can grab that color. Okay, so now I've got that color, and I could take this down. Now, as I'm doing this right now, though, this color is being added to the color That was the different pink that was already in her lipstick. It's not replacing it. Okay? If you want to replace a color. It takes a little bit different technique. For those of you that still want to pack Maurin to your brain this afternoon, I'll show you how to actually replace the color. We use a different example for that. Okay, I'll just keep this subtle. I'll go ahead and close it and let's move on to skin softening. I'm gonna click on new and the first thing I want to make sure do is not painter skin with orange, right? So that sometimes I missed this color square the fact that I'm painting with color but as usual, double clicking on the word effect will reset. That is well, now for skin softening, I'm gonna use negative clarity. So positive clarity adds contrast ads, three dimensionality and for people that you like and that you care about, adding clarity to Rickles is not a good idea. So, um, negative clarity, though, can can reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles and just soften skin in general. So believe me, every photo I get of myself gets gets a nice those of negative clarity, and then I'm just gonna paint her skin. I'm gonna start with negative 100 clarity because that makes it a little bit more obvious to me. But then I can always back off, um, after a paint. Now I painting pretty sloppily, I'm avoiding lines that I want to protect. Lines of the lips and the eyes and the hair, but I'm I'm painting over most of her face. Now, as I paid under her eyes, you can see or you be able to see that I can reduce the appearance of circles under her eyes. It's another technique in addition to using this spot removal tool. Now, now is I've painted away till I get the pins out of the way. Now let me type. Oh, for overlay. And then sorry about that, Cipto. Okay. All right. So I can see where I've painted and all type o for overlay offer overlay. By the way, it's just a short cut. Instead of clicking on this check box here Now, I've given her so much negative clarity that she's practically glowing, right. Um, she's too young. She doesn't need negative 100 clarity. Now I need about negative 300 at this point. But you know what am I gonna dio? So now that I've painted my my clarity instruction is still active so I can back off on the amount. Okay, now, with a little bit less, I can hit the switch on and off, so off on, and I can continue to adjust it from there. So, Laura, there are a couple of questions and re the chat room. Martin, 76 says in custom, there are teeth whitening and, um, Iris and Hans. Uneven skin softening presets. Do you use those? You know, I personally just jump straight to the sliders. The presets are again saved settings. So here, let me click on new here. So I'm starting a new instruction right here at the top. We have this drop down where it says custom so I can choose. For example, go zoom back out here a little bit. I could choose teeth whitening. When I do that, it's just setting me up with positive 0. of exposure and minus 60 of saturation. So it's It's first of all, it's a suggestion to you is you're wondering, how do I whiten teeth, or how do I soften skin? I think there's a skin softening. 11 here is well you can also create your own presets. So if you find that for teeth teeth frightening that you generally use a particular mix of these, for example, you can set your sliders click on the drop down here and down at the bottom. You can save them as a new preset okay, and pixel lover asks, Does negative clarity help with things like bumps on skin that a too tedious to remove with, um, spot removal? If they're soft edged, kind of texture to skin, then yes, I would just suggest being careful that that when you look at the photo zoomed in that the skin doesn't start to look great out. Now, I used to see that more with the light from three version of clarity than with light room for But at some point, it can start to look kind of fake. You've kind of reduced the contrast so much. Okay. Andi. Becca, 82. Is it possible to delete to colored sections to the dots at once to visit us? It wants, you know, I don't know that I've ever tried. No, I don't believe so. I mean, if I click on the first. Yeah, I can't really select both of them at once. Now say, Just click on each one and delete it. Okay. Question From MJ Seattle As the number of adjustments increase, can you rename each step in history? So we even remember exactly what was done. For example, dark and neck brighten teeth, right? So we have all of these pins here. And while we're looking at the photo and not history, I'll get to that in just a sec. Even now, it's hard to figure out what does what, right? I mean, some of them it's obvious, but we have to in the eyes and what do they do? So here, if I hover over a pin, I can see where it's affected. And if I click on the pin that I can see what the instruction did. Now I had to mention that, because for some reason the question reminded me of that. But the question waas in history as we've been doing all of this adjustment brushwork, let me see if I can even find the beginning of it here. All right, here's the beginning of it. It's adding a step for every time. Basically, we click the mouse so if we adjust the amounts, the slider on something. If we paint a little bit, it's adding a step in history, and this is not very descriptive in terms of what this is. But if in doubt about what you could do in light room, I would right click on a step. But unfortunately, there's no renaming option for steps in history, so that's a long way to get around to know.