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Other Retouching Techniques

Lesson 43 from: Adobe Photoshop 101

Ben Willmore

Other Retouching Techniques

Lesson 43 from: Adobe Photoshop 101

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

43. Other Retouching Techniques

Next Lesson: GIF Animations

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Adobe Bridge Basics

27:08
2

Sorting Images in Adobe Bridge

29:24
3

Processing Images in Adobe Camera Raw Part 1

29:42
4

Processing Images in Adobe Camera Raw Part 2

34:57
5

Image Processing Q&A

08:13
6

Contrast and Color

18:15
7

Adjustment Brush and Auto Mask

16:19

Lesson Info

Other Retouching Techniques

Here's, how my images often build up at the bottom will have the original picture above that I'll have my retouching layers usually it's just one layer, but on occasion, it's more than one, because sometimes there's something I'm not sure if I want to retouch out like maybe I'm not sure if I want to get rid of these little boxes up here, and I might decide to bring him back later if so will create another retouch layer of just for the boxes s so that I could always turn it back on if I want to later on, then above that I have adjustment layers that are fine tuning my image and in this case, there's just very subtle changes being made with adjustment layers here were lessening the blew in the window, and here we're making the yellow in the surrounding building less colorful because I want your eye drawn to the red door and the guy uh but you end up building up your adjustment layers on top retouch layer below so in this particular image to do this retouching that's there, the main thing...

that I would do is what I showed you before is on the edge of the frame I know things that are called hell are probably going to screw up, I could either insert the content that should be there and then do it or I could use the content aware phil, to try to do that right here. I'm probably going to have to copy from this stuff up here and here. I just do it. We'll do it on fresh layer. I would use the, uh, normal clone tool here, I'm gonna copy from this stuff and just put it over here. We need to seem their sole copy seemed for right there and then here I needs the proper brightness. If I'm going to use the healing brush, get in there and they're right here. I need the proper stuff and that's where I need my brush to not be soft edged. I need my brush to match the edge of that stare, so I don't want omega soft brush. I'm going to get a hard edge brush, probably just one step away from the hardest up here. My brushes about seventy five percent of the way to a hard edge, and I'll copy from up in here somewhere, and I gotta beat laser precise, so I don't get any over spray on the stairs. What we're doing here is we were trying to get the area that we're retouching, surrounded with proper brightness, proper color, proper texture, even in right there, we had to be absolutely precise because we didn't want it to be blend in with the edge of the stair we needed to abruptly stop at the edge of the stare so is doing some they're on. I just needed tio keep going a little bit so let's put in just one more little transition down here. I don't need a hard edge brush down here anymore because I'm not going to stop right on the edge of something up above. I was stopping on right where the stairs were and I'll just put in okay, so now I have this area surrounded by proper brightness proper everything I can try to use my spot healing brush no trying to retouch out a big shadow because he didn't know what the goal wass see if it works, but it might copy from stairs. This is a tight area, okay west up only a small area, so give it three chances smaller area and then wherever it doesn't look right to give it a second chance and we're not doing too bad there as far as being able to get rid of parts of the wall. If you want to see that's what I just got rid of up at the top, I could manually do exit so blatantly obvious when I could copy from if I wanted to, I could use the normal healing brush just option click where that seam is because that's what's important it is the scene remains and this is where I might use a really huge brush to see where would the seam go get it toe line up to say where would that seem need to end right about there it's on the right level where the scene would go I click just to establish that that's where I want to apply things I choose undo because I didn't actually need to apply that big of an area and actually didn't lock it and I'm not sure why I didn't lock it in but usually it would and then I can come in here and apply it when I'm done is when I would use thie spot healing brush afterwards to get rid of anything that looks like a blatant repeat so break up into little wherever you see blatantly repeated content god it's so no longer looks repeated get rid of more of the shadow um and so on see what you get the process surround it with the right stuff then start healing in the middle's er all that kind of thing ah see also on occasion all have spectators in an image I don't have ah example that is that instead of cars but sometimes we'll have is like if you go to for instance a house designed by frank lloyd wright and it's the middle of the day there's always going to be people walking around it because people go there is a tourist attraction if I want to be able to get rid of people in that kind of an instance, what I might end up doing is taking more than one photograph and if I take more than one photograph here I'm not going to use all of these guys I don't think I'll need to if I use just two of them often come in and do load files into photoshopped layers and if I didn't use a tripod, then these layers might not line up and so after I'm done doing it, I'll select the two layers and I don't know if you remember hopes I'm not sure why I switched out a photo shop there, okay? Uh, aiken do auto a line layers click ok because if they weren't shot on a tripod there not going perfectly line up, but now they're going to be close enough and if I hide the top layer just looking to see if the text two remains in the same position and yeah, it looks like it does kind of fun tow do that uh then I'll just work on the top layer and I'll add a layer mask the bottom of my layers panel I'll grab my paintbrush tool and wherever I paint with black now I'll hide this layer and reveal the layer that's underneath and always paint where that car is because I wanted to get justin empty street that and I'll paint up here where that car is. And now I was able to get rid of that so often times with spectators and things. I put my camera tripod. I take a picture and I wait for people to move a little bit. Take another picture. Wait for him to move a little bit. Take another picture in for a really busy place. I might need ten pictures, though too effectively be able to get rid of them. In this case, if I take that mask, he and I invert it. That means make what's in the mass the opposite of what's. Currently there I'll have more cars instead. I just need to crop out this little edge that's because I was not shooting on tripod and that's. How far? My camera had moved between shots so it would just need thio crop that out. But I can either get more cars or fewer. All right. What else do we got in here? Way have red eye it's not that is the problem is trying to find images that everett I if you know howto prevent red eye in the first place, then why would you take a picture with it s o, this is actually a very old picture of my wife and his her sister and, uh, it's just happens to be one thread I there are a bunch of different ways of trying to get rid of red eye one of them is there's actually a brush designed for it? If I come over here there's their red eye tool with the red eye tool, I can click on the red eye and just one click and it will try to target that area and change it now there is a some settings at the top of my screen called pupil size and darken amount choose undo here and fighters target that if it doesn't get enough of the red eye if it doesn't extend out far enough, I could adjust the setting called pupil size, increase it and then click and try again or if it was extending out in affecting parts of the skin like too much of the image is changing, I could reduce it, then we have the darkened amount in the dark in amount is how much darker is going to make that area if it ends up looking like it pure solid black in that ends up looking artificial, I could bring down the darkened amount the tellers do less of it and then when I click I'm going to get a lighter looking and resolved, but we have our red I brush I don't think she's got too much of it, but so that's one option you could also instead of using the red eye tool ah you could instead go to hugh and saturation in inhuman saturation you khun tell it to work on the reds and you could bring down the brightness and bring down the saturation but then you'd have to paint on the image to on your mask to say don't affect the skin don't affect anything else that's right on lee do it on the eyes of but otherwise we can try it using just our red eye tool yes that is the human saturation thing how you would fix pet I I had a yeah you can because pet I could be green and other colors and so we could target it again with human saturation and you lower the the brightness and you lower the saturation but it's going to affect everything in the entire picture that is that color so with the green eye so there's a mask attached to any adjustment layer you use and so usually right afterwards I invert the mask what that means is turned the mask black and then I just paint it right over the eyes so that that means it's on ly where happens in those areas you don't have to be overly precise with painting in the eyes because inhuman saturation you khun target a particular color so it's just a matter of make sure you didn't get it on to anything else that would need to be the same color uh any other questions? Yes, if if you make a loop selection with a lawsuit oh that's suitable for example around the eye or the people or whatever is red could you then not yes, he saturate and yes, before you go to human saturation you could make two selections around the eyes the they wouldn't have to be overly precise they just need to contain the eye and nothing else that is of that color where the red iest problem is skin is similar and color to the eyes and so it would need to be relatively accurate if it's on a human it's on a pet though in there having their eyes come out being green unless it's a green pet you could make a pretty loose selection around there I before you do the human saturation adjustment layer and if you do then be you don't have to go through the rest of that process that I mentioned but with humans the problem is skin is in general the same colors red I it's just a lot less colorful and so if you make a really crude selection, you're goingto notice the skin's getting less colorful ahs well um so all right, any other questions or comments? Glare for eyeglasses couple things well, first off uh oftentimes unfortunately don't have an example of that here but if you have glare on glasses and there's only one of the two eyes that is glared often times you have to literally copy from the other eye socket, flip it horizontally in rotate sometimes scale to get it too be used for the other eye and then it's a matter of putting in other times with glare you mainly have to do what I just mentioned copying the other I'm flipping it if the glare is so bright that it's white where you cannot see the detail it in there if it's just sleight glare instead of it being like a light source like a photographic soft box kind of things sitting there that this doing instead of just a a bit bright then often times an adjustment that adds contrast in there will break through some of that glare. S o depends on what the end result looks like the problem is if you have glare across both glasses in it's really bright glare like from a soft box in a photo studio if you don't if you can't see the detail the eyes we need something to copy from and so oftentimes what I'll end up doing it I'm gonna photograph somebody and I'm getting glare on glasses because of the light source being right in there I'll have him take one shot with the glasses up and then one shot with it down so I have content copy from in order to retouch some of the glare or lessen it we don't always have that as an opportunity though, so sometimes we really have to search for what the copy from to put in there yeah yeah anything else? Okay, sounds good. Well, I've covered pretty much the images that I have here. So so in this case let's uh let's see what would we want to retouch out what's in this case? Um let's see if we could get rid of the shadow that's casting onto the the building that's here let's just say for some reason it bugs you. I'll get rid of the portion of the shadow that's down here first and so new layer all I'm going to do is isolate where the shadow hits the stairs to see like where the shadows hitting some unique detail and I'm going to try to create separation between the two uh, so I'll copy from just to the left of it using the clone stamp tool and here's where I need to use a relatively crisp edged brush because thie edge of that stare ends abruptly so I need my brush to end just as abruptly otherwise I'm gonna have this slightly soft stuff extending over onto the stare so end up put it in like that then I'll copy from just below where this er is so the right brightness put it in right there hey, then over here I need thio separate that as well trying to do is isolate the thing that needs to be retouched from the important details that around it that it bumps into so I would need teo put some of that and then I need isolate one more spot here and I don't mind so much that I'm copying from close by usually clapping from close by it's not a smart thing just because your eye is easy it is good at picking up repeated texture if it's really close by but I need the brightness to be right and that's why I'm copying from areas that are very close by in order to attempt to get the brightness the only other place that shadow is bumping into something is right here, so I'm going to try to also separate that yeah, and once I've separated it where the problem is surrounded with the proper texture and everything is when I can either go to my uh clone stamp tool or I can go to that at it phil thing uh I might also break this right down the middle to make it to chunks just like that now spot healing brush should bela nail it? This one I could break in half if I don't feel like tackling the entire thing with one chunk like that and then spot healing brush and then this one spot healing rush and then look for any repeated content, and if you have any pain over it, anything that's obviously repeated usually it's more unique content, like a brushstroke thatyou recognise has seen it twice, but otherwise we have gotten rid of that shadow, and we could do the same thing of here, it's just a matter of looking at where does that shadow bump into something else right along the edge of the building, right there it does, it pumps into the sky, so I need to insert a little gap on the ends of wherever the shadow bumps into the sky. I need to put little gaps for the shadow bumps into the stair bray ling, where it bumps into the stair and all that just so it's surrounded by the proper brightness. Then I could break it up into little pieces and get rid of it. So so when you're breaking up, you're using the clone stamp tool, you're copying from very close by because the brightness and color needs to be right. If I copy from too far away, the brightness and color ends up being, um off if I want to get rid of the line, that if I don't want to get rid of that line, when you get to stuff like this, you need my brush to match the edge quality of that. Wire if I want to keep the wire so if the wire doesn't have a soft edge on it, my brush shouldn't have a soft edge on it. One trick is if you click, you could hold on the shift key and click somewhere else, and it will connect the dots between the two areas where you click as if you painted across um but in this case, I'd probably want to paint quite a sfar and I could do the same thing over here copy from here click right about there hold shift the groups that shifty doesn't work actually my keyboard I'm working with head water poured into it at some point in the shift key on the left side of my keyboard is inoperative er and then healing brush spot healing rush that isthe spot healing brush and I can continue with that keep going and going, but anyway it's the same process often for all sorts of complex retouching I could spend the time to get rid of that or I can attempt to select it can use that one. I doubt it's going to do an amazing job here, but imagine I had this selected I could attempt two do this but it's probably going to do a pretty bad job of it and so that's why when you know it's going to a pretty bad job of you breaking apart make your task smaller and the clone source panel could be an amazing resource there if you need to copy from things that seem to be almost because like well okay, but I could copy from one area if I just flipped it and rotated and scaled it would work you know you can start doing that kind of thing ah, with that clone source panel so yeah, any questions comments way we have a question about after using the healing brush tool, how do you make the healed area look less mcgee and more in keeping with the previous texture? If you're using anything with the word healing attached, try to use a hard edge brush ok, if you end up using a soft edge brush, it will look all smudgy. What happens is you're forcing the edge to fade out and it's doesn't have control all the way out to the edge if you use a hard edge brush completely hard edge not slightly soft but completely hard edge he'll find it looks better and so I'm assuming your brushes either slightly soft or a fully soft brush because that's when it starts looking weird soft brushes are are things that I use mohr when I'm using the clone stamp tool on dso that's part of it uh but without seeing an image is hard to say exactly what you know what the look is they're getting

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Ben, thanks again for this course. I have taken and purchased quite a few of your courses to date. I keep thinking I will only watch to make sure I am on the right track and you always bring more to the table than the last course. Your teaching methods are the best, sorry to all the other instructors from Creative Live, but you are very easy to understand and you speak in layman's terms so we all can understand. I am following your instructions and working along with your files and it is the best! It is hard to keep up with you even when I watch you on one computer and work with the same files on another computer, to do what you are doing...impossible but I gain so much by trying. You provide so much info on each topic, it is amazing. Thanks to Karen for the PDFs, she does a fantastic job and also, for her templates/layout documents. Thanks again and to anyone who thinks this is too much money for all the videos, the exercise files and the instruction PDF, I am sorry to say but you are mistaken.

John Taylor
 

Like all of the Creative Live courses, excellent training. Ben does a great job of explaining the entry part of Photoshop. A lot of things cleared up in my head and i like his easy pace into this complex program. Thanks Ben.

Cecily
 

I had several "lightbulb" moments with this class, after many years of photography and when you think you know it all, you don't :) Ben Willmore is an excellent tutor, with his many years of experience teaching PS, he obviously knows the types of things a lot of us struggle to understand. I learnt a lot about Bridge, and have since implemented these things into my everyday workflow, so much easier to sort out what I want to keep etc.. Thanks so much Ben and Creative Live. Thanks also to Ben's wife for her amazing work creating the Guide etc. Even though being in Australia, I pay more for the courses (the conversion rate, the aussie dollar is low at the moment) it's very worth it to me. I have paid more for courses here, and learnt next to nothing. Thanks again.

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