Lessons

Lesson Info

Creative Color

before we get started. If you guys want to connect with me online, I would absolutely for you to do that. My website is photo lisa dot com. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter by putting your email address in the field On the right hand side of the site, there are a slew of tutorials. They're all free for your perusal. If you're on Twitter, I would love for you to connect with me. There to my handle is at photo Lisa, and if you're on Facebook, my fan pages facebook dot com slash photo lisa. And if you click the like button, you can download several very useful cheat sheets. And if you're on Google Plus, I would love for you to connect with me there as well, Pinterest. And if you want to keep up with all the classes that I teach here creativelive, then you can try it on over to lisa dot I n slash cl videos. My publisher, O'Reilly has given us a real sweet discount to pass along to you in your colleagues or friends works on all of my books. I have a feeling it works on all rightly book...

s actually, not just mine, but if you purchase them from O'Reilly dot com, you can get 40% off the print version and 50% off the e book version by entering the code off D at check outs with a u T h D. But you can get the book for free. We have a quote contest in the before and after contest going on on photo lisa dot com so you can go over there and find out all the details were going to be given away. Copy of Photoshopped e Book, My newest book, which is the skinny on Photoshopped Tips, which is a over 100 and 50. Really useful practical tips that are just gonna change your photo shop life were also given away. $100 Gift certificate for Lens Protego. An amazing place to rent camera bodies and lenses in picks dot com has given us to $25 gift certificates to give away, which is perfect for the holidays coming up. Say make really nice greeting cards that you can design yourself and upload and the folks over at Photographic Elements Techniques, which is an amazing magazine focused mainly on Photoshopped elements, as well as a few light room tips and a few shooting tips. One lucky winner is gonna win a subscription to that, so that's a fabulous magazine if you want to check that out, so the details are on photo lisa dot com. When you go to my website, just click that first story leases live quote and before and after contest to find out the scoop of how toe win and if you don't win, you can purchase those items, but the one it's on film on my website is the Photoshopped Tips book. So that's a whole $2.99 for that you book. If you want to purchase that, let's go playing elements, shall we? So yesterday we left off with looking at how to easily correct your images in camera, and before that, we looked at correcting your images in using a levels adjustment and levels. Adjustment gets its name because we're adjusting the levels of brightness that are found in your image. Well, I want to show you a little trick of how to brighten certain areas of your image selectively, which is just the thing for brightening teeth and eyes. Really anything that you need to kind of selectively does lighten a little bit. So let's start out with that. And they were going to jump into some really fun yet practical color effects. So if you purchased the course, you're going to get absolutely every single file that we use the layered file so you can reverse engineer what I've done. So the 1st 1 we're gonna uses this file named 01 be teeth and I lightning so you can open it in a couple different ways. You can either click and drag the file into the elements workspace, or you can trot up to the file menu in elements and shoes open and the navigate to where that file lives, whichever one works best for you. So let me go ahead and collapse the photo bend at the bottom of the screen, so we've got a little bit more screen real estate. So let's say we want to brighten this lady's teeth and eyes in this image, not a problem. What we're going to do is use an empty adjustment layer, and by empty I simply mean that we're going to create an adjustment layer. But we're not actually going to make an adjustment per se. What we're gonna do is we're gonna change the layer blend mode of that adjustment to something that's gonna lighten the whole image. And then we're gonna hide the lightning from the majority of the image and then using the layer mask that comes with an adjustment layer, we're going to reveal the lightning Onley where we want it toe be revealed on the image which in this case is teeth. And maybe the iris iris is of her eyes. So that's what we're gonna do. So the first thing you need to do is make sure that you're an expert mode because we need to get at the adjustment layer menu. So you want to be an expert mode and we're going to click the half black, half white circle at the top of the layers panel and we're gonna choose levels. Why are we gonna choose levels simply because it's the 1st 1 in this list that's not going to make a change to your image unless you start affecting that hissed a gram. So we're not even gonna pay attention to that panel over there cause we're not going to make a levels. Adjustments were just using an adjustment layer because it's more efficient to do the technique in this way, because adjustment layers really aren't filled with pixels is more like a more like an instruction, so we'll add as much fat to your file size. So now the next thing we're gonna do is come up here to this poppet menu at the top of your layers panel and will spend just a second talking about this. These modes, if you will determine how color on one layer interacts, blends with or knocks out color on other layers rather than go through a technical description of all of these blend modes because you would run screaming out the nearest door. And I do have a full day deep dive on these blend moods, which I highly recommend. But for the purposes of this technique, if we're gonna brighten or lighten teeth, go find the word lighten pretty easier and then slipped down one blend mode, and what that's going to do is it's gonna brighten the entire image just with that one little change. Now we want to use the included layer mask to hide that frightening from the image and a quick way to do that. Remember our rhyme. Black conceals why it reveals so somehow we need to get this layer mask filled with black because we only want the bright ning to be visible across her teeth area. And maybe on the Irish is of her eyes. It's faster to just fill that mask with black to completely hide that layer content from the image, and then go back in with the brush tool set to paint with white to reveal it. So it's less painting that way. I mean, can you imagine if we painted the whole image with black with a brush tool? Me, We'd be here till tomorrow doing that. So I've got a fabulous, useful keyboard shortcut for you, and that is when you have a layer mask active like this, and we know it's active cause it's got that little light blue outline around it. We can invert the colors of that so it'll immediately go for my two black opposite convert in that IHS command I or control I on a PC. So now the whole effect is hidden because everything on that layer is being hidden by this layer mask, and you know that because it's filled with black. So now let's come over to our image and we'll zoom in by pressing Commander Control Plus, and then we'll use our space bar to reposition the image while we're zoomed in. Now it's come over to the tools panel and grab the brush, told the regular old brush. You can give it a click and from the options bar at the bottom of your screen, you want to make sure that you've got a soft edged brush active. So let's click that preset picker. And as you point your cursor to those brush previews, you can tell by the name if they're hard edged brush or a soft edged brush. So we're going to scroll down. So we get to one of these soft edge brushes, see how that little tool tip comes up, and it starts with either soft or hard. This is so that when we are revealing the brightening that if we use a soft edged brush will get a soft transition between where the brightening is being revealed and where it's being concealed That way, it's not so obvious that who photo shop has been used. So just give any one of those soft edged brush is a click and then mouse over to the area that you're gonna paint. And we're going to use the bracket keys on your keyboard to affect brush size. So if you locate the P key on your keyboard P for Judas Priest, I keep trying to think of bands and everything P so the left bracket key goes down in birth size and the right bracket key goes up in breast size, and you can either tack those keys or press in the whole of them. So now I need to go down to my tools panel and take a peek at the color ships at the bottom of my tools panel. If black conceals and white reveals and I want to reveal the brightening in this area, then I need to make sure that white is my foreground color chip. And right now I can see that Why does my background color chip? So we need to flip flop those so you can either press the little curved arrow above the color chips to flip flop them, or you compress the X key on your keyboard. So with bright as the four or white is the foreground color chip. Now we can mouse over to our area that we want to brighten. And let me tell you, folks, this is the easiest way to date to brighten teeth. I see a lot of folks trying to select the teeth, and then we'll pop the teeth upon their own layer and do this and that. T they're hard to select because there's usually not a ton of contrast between the teeth and the gums. And some people like me have really teeny tiny teeth. They can be really hard to select. And this is a super easy way cause you're just using the brushed oldest paint on, uh, the revealing of that layer. Now what if we mess up and go too far and we reveal a little bit too much of the brightening? Do we have to start over techno? If black conceals and height reveals does press the X key so that black is your foreground color ship, and then you can come back over to that area and conceal the brightening that you didn't mean to reveal in the first place. So here's the before, and here's the after Now, In my humble personal opinion, this is a little too strong when you don't want the teeth entering the room before you dio generally a bad idea. So what we can do to lower the strength of that layer is to drop layer opacity until it looks good to you. So I would be tempted on this image to lower its somewhere in the 30 40% range. So now it's looking are before and after by clicking that little visibility eye to the left of that layers name in the layers panel. So there's the before, and there's the after. I cannot stress how handy this technique is to have in your back pockets. I don't care how much color correction, lighting, correction view do you know about, you know, camera, raw light room, etcetera, etcetera. There will be times when you need to go in and just lighten a little spot, and this is hands down the easiest way and most efficient way to get that done without duplicating a bunch of layers in your layers panel. So now what we can do if we want to lighten the irises of her eyes, which is another great technique. Then we could duplicate this adjustment layer by clicking. Activate it and you know it's active cause it's dark. It's got that dark blue highlighting going on. So let's press commander Control J to duplicate. And you can remember that by thinking that you're jumping that layer upon to another layer. At least that's how I remember so many keyboard shortcuts, so few brain cells. So now it's use our space bar trick. Hold on our space bar and let's cruise up here to the irises of her eyes. Well, the first thing I'm gonna do is go ahead and paint over that area that I revealed because on this layer I don't want the brightening showing on her teeth. That's what we've got going on this layer. And you could even give that layer name a quick double click, and we could call that one teeth so we know exactly where that frightening is affecting the image. So click to activate the duplicate layer that we made cruise down here. We'll zoom in any even more because for this one, you want to be really careful. So our layer mask it's filled with black so that we know that this extra duplicate layer brining is not being revealed anywhere right now. So with our brush tool active and we've already set our brush preset picker toe, use a soft edged brush we need to set. White is our foreground color chip like conceals, white reveals. So let's press the X key to do that. And now we can come over here to the iris of each I. You want to go pretty far down and brush size because you only want to reveal the brightening on the inside color part of the Irish. You don't want to touch the rim because that room is supposed to be dark. But what we can do is very carefully. Just lighten this middle part of her iris, and I'm keeping my left hand on the keyboard so I can use those brush re sizing keyboard shortcuts now a mouse over to the other eye and reveal that, and then we'll take a look at the before and after and then change the layer opacity Chelsea Mount Little Bit here. So here's the before. Here's the after, and that nice works really well on folks with brown eyes because it's almost like you can see into them just a little bit more. That's a nice technique. And of course, right now, because we duplicated that levels adjustment layer that we used for the teeth. We had set that at an opacity of 38% so we can adjust that however we want. So let's just take a peek at full strength. Not that I would leave it at full strength, but just so you know what the technique can produce, So now here's our before, and here's our after a little bit overdone, but you get the idea so we can drop that opacity to something that looks good. So now let's zoom out by person. Commander Control minus reposition our image while resumed in with a space bar. And there's our before there's our after Nice, huh? Let's do it again. Some of shift click to activate those layers and send them packing by pressing the delete key. That is a new feature in Elements 12 arguably worth the upgrade price just for that. Okay, so we're gonna create a levels adjustment layer just to get at it. Blend mode menu in its layer mask is just an efficient way to get this done. So from the half black, half white circle at the top of your layers panel in expert mode, we're gonna choose levels. And the only reason we're choosing levels is the 1st 1 down in this list that will automatically make a change to our image. These guys were all going to create a layer filled with something color pattern ingredient. So we're gonna choose levels. You could just as easily use brightness and contrast. Then we're gonna come up to the blend mode menu the top of the layers panel because the blend modes control how color on one layer interacts, blends with cancels out color on other layers. So think about what you're doing. We're one of Brighton or lighten. Then look for the word lighten and you're going to slip down one blend mode to screen. The whole images brightened now. So with the layer mask active and it is, you know, it's active because it has that blue outline around it. We're gonna flip flop the colors in that layer massive that's filled with black keyboard. Shortcut for that is commander Control I for invert. Now everything on that layer is being hidden, So let's reveal its Onley in certain spots by using a brush set to paint with white. So in your tools panel at the left side of your screen, make sure you got the brush tool active. You can also just press be for brush. That's a keyboard shortcut. And then down here in the brush preset picker, you want to make sure you've got a soft edged brush and just give that menu click and from the resulting many. Just point your cursor at some of these brush previews and just pick one that has the word soft. And it doesn't matter which one thes air, just different size brushes. That's what the number means. This one's 35 pixels. This one is 45 pixels, but we're gonna change the brush size with our keyboard shortcut so we don't care. I don't care about you presets in there. Okay, now let's come over here to our color chips and make sure that we're painting with white. Why? Because black conceals the white reveals. So I've been teaching photo shopped for what about 13 years now, and I swear to you to this day when I am retouching at home, I have to play that rhyme through my head to remember what color to paint with wind. So that's why I keep repeating. It started teaching when you were 13. Far older than I look 65 actually. OK, so now it's mouse over to the area that we're going to reveal the brightening on and using our bracket keys for our brush re sizing. I'm gonna go down in brush size here and just paint to reveal the lightning. Do you make sure that you don't reveal it on the gums, But it's pretty easy to do this, and you can see while I'm zoomed in that since we're using a soft brush. The transition between the area of which the frightening is hidden and where it's being revealed, is nice and soft, soft and fluffy. It's a great way to describe what it's like editing and elements. It's soft and fluffy. Tell people that will think you've lost your mind. This is another great technique Teoh use with ah wack um, graphics tablet. I use one at home. I haven't into us five that I absolutely adore. I just don't tend to travel with it. I know a lot of folks on the Internet always ask why she used in the mouth, because I don't have to pack it and carry it with me. So if you reveal too much of the brightening, let's say the cat jumps up on the computer desk or you get interrupted. The phone scares you to death. All you have to do is flip flop your color chips so that black is on top and then paint back over that area. And I don't about you guys. But this kind of stuff is fun to me, I guess, because it's so simple to do. It's an enjoyable technique, and then we're gonna drop the opacity to something that looks riel. So there's the before, and there's the after. Now let's duplicate that layer, and we're gonna use it on her irises of her eyes. You don't technically have to duplicate the layer. You could go through that whole process again. I think it's a little quicker to duplicate it, so it's duplicated by pressing Commander Control J. And then while we're down here in this area, let's go ahead and flip flopper color chips, increased brush size with the right bracket key and just hide the second layer brightening from her teeth area. So now our layer mask is filled with black again. So while resumed in, we can press and hold our space bar and then click with our mouths and drag to another position in the photo Zuman by pressing Commander Control. Plus, we're gonna go way down and brush size here, and we're also going to bring up the opacity just for the sake of helping a see where we're painting. So now with white is your foreground color ship. So let's press X to flip flop them. Now we're going to reveal that brightening on the iris of each eye, being very, very careful not to brighten that dark iris rim because that's supposed to be dark. If you lighten that two things, they're going to get hunky using our space bar trick to reposition or image while we're zoomed in. That's a real handy. He wore a shortcut to memorize, because you don't wanna have to keep zooming back out to figure out where you are changed. Position the image. That spaceport trick is really great. If you don't want to use the keyboard shortcut for that. This is the tool that we're activating right here. The handle at the top of the tools panel. Can you also show if they forget to use the X how they would switch? Is there a way to switch the foreground in the background? Sure. Great idea. Jim. There's a little curved arrow directly above the color chips, so if you click that, you'll flip flop your color tips as well. Cool. Thank you, yeah, and another great use for this technique is, let's say you get a portrait of somebody who's got a lot of red in their eyes. Maybe they didn't get a lot of sleep the night before or what have you, But so you could use this technique to brighten the whites of the eyes. Teoh. So I would do each area of brightening on a different layer just so you can have more control, because the opacity that works for brightening the teeth may not be suitable for brightening the irises or the whites of the eyes and so on and so forth, so just have practiced good layer habits. Then I would also double click the layer name and I would type in. I would rename it as to what I did on that layer, and brightening the iris is something that is meaningful to you. For this one. We did teeth. So that way, when you come back to this layer document later on, you can tell exactly what is happening on each layer. So let's say you print this out or you assess the image and you think all those teeth need to be a little bit brighter. Well, if you've saved this document as a native Photoshopped Elements document by choosing file save as in choosing Photoshopped from the format pop up menu, then you can always get back to these layers. So if you print it out or what have you need to change something, pop it open, And then, since you've named the layers, you'll know exactly which layer to go to to adjust the opacity. So let's zoom out with Commander Control minus, we might want to drop the opacity of the iris layer a little bit, so there's our before, and there's our after really handy technique to have in your bag of tricks. Now you'll notice that in this blend mode menu, there is also a dark and category, so you can use these exact same technique to selectively darken spots if you need Teoh. So if you want to do that, I don't have an example of that for you. But I just want to let you know that it works. So in that case, you would just find the word darkened and you'd slip down one blend mode to multiply. And it's the exact same technique. It just we would be darkening instead of writing any questions on that one. We have a question from adult today. 44. Do you always brighten both? Iris is the same amount I do, but you wouldn't have to like for this example. This her left eye right here is a little bit in shadow, so that might be You might want to brighten that one a little bit more. If you want to do it that way, then you would have to Brighton Beach iris on separate adjustment layers. So in that case, you just duplicate that layer again, and you'd that way you can control opacity separately for each iris. Great question and actually dealt today it has a follow up. Another good question, I think so. What is the difference between changing the capacity of the brush versus the capacity of the layer? Oh, very good question. Changing the opacity of the brush in. So faras using it on a layer mask like what, like we've been doing, would be when you're painting with black. If you change the opacity of the brush than that is lowering the opacity of the paint that you're laying down in that layer mask so it affects just the brush tool layer. Opacity effects, layer content. Yeah, So if you wanted to, let's say, reveal just a little bit of the brightening you could paint with gray. We looked at that yesterday, the end of the day, so but for this technique, you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't need to adjust brush capacity, but that's what that does capacity for just that particular tool. Laying down paint versus layer opacity