Lessons

Lesson Info

Advanced Retouching

in this image. This was a really complex retouching. Uh, I have my weed b gon layer here. I'll turn it off so you can see before and after what happened is the guy that owns this gas station parked his car over here and he wasn't overly into moving it, and so he could have moved it in a matter of 30 seconds time. But instead, it took me quite a while to completely get rid of his car. Because look at how much of the building is available behind it to copy from not much at all. And then I got rid of a bunch of telephone lines that are going directly through trees, that kind of thing. So that's not an easy thing to Dio. Let's look at a few of the ideas that were used there. I'm gonna hide all the other layers and just delete them so we can start with a simple document. I'll create a brand new retouching layer by clicking on the new layer icon, and we zoom up on an area. I would say that vehicle was mainly retouched out, using brute force meaning time and little bitty pieces to do it. It w...

as not a fun thing, Adul. But in general what I ended up doing was I copied a very small portion of this riff line option clicked on it, and I said, Where would that continue on to be once it hit the other side of the tree? Maybe it was about there, and I put a little bit in until I ran into something that wasn't the building which be about there. He sees part of a tree showing up, and I did it again, copying from the same general area and extending it further until I ran into that part of the tree. And then I did it again, and I just did that until I extended this down as long as I thought it should be. Then I headed copies and texture of brick and do it. But after I got a little chunk of brick made up, it was much easier clone from the same area and put it in and again and again. That wasn't fun. I don't want to spend the time to do that because it's mainly repetitive. Work is repetitive work where you're not being overly inventive. You're just it's like a puzzle putting it together. What I want to show you is how you might deal with things like lines going through telephone through trees because those are also not easy to deal with in might be something you struggle with. So in order to get rid of telephone lines going through trees, I would use the spot healing brush. I get a small brush, so I'm only gonna get rid of the area really close to my telephone line in. I'm gonna paint over it one brush stroke just to have it do something to get rid of that line. I'll make this only go over to this first branch, and the rest is just repeating the same concept. And then I'll let go, and it will do some work to try to get rid of that. I'll go through them and look at any other areas that don't look quite right. Where did this and try him again, just to see if it could do anything better. But I'll try not to expand that area very far. The main problem with going through trees is that branches become disconnected from each other and it makes it so it looks completely unnatural because branches will just be hanging all by themselves. So what I'll end up doing is I'll go to the normal clone stamp tool, the one that just blatantly copies from things. I'll get a small brush and I'll try to find a nice, clean branch to copy from, for instance, right here there's a branch that just stops abruptly, and then it goes to kind of blurry space. You could say same thing is happening here. Well, I can find another branch like right up in this area. Option. Click on it. And here's a little key If I were to just apply that branch in here to try to extend and connect some of these together, the problem then is we're gonna disconnect the branches, going the other directions because we're completely replacing things. What I need to do instead is changing menu that's found at the top of my screen. It's usually set to normal. I need to set it to darken by doing so. Now, the only thing this tool can do is dark in my photograph, and what that means is that it can put a branch in without removing any branches because the only way that your own end up removing a branch is toe lighten the photograph. If it's set to dark and mode, and that's all it can do when we put in something, it can only add to what's there. So let's see if I can use that. I don't remember. I was copying from right here, Let's say and then I can come over here to another branch. They want to extend this and I could go right over these other branches, and it can act like that, extending without breaking through mall without getting rid of more branches. And so I need to find a few clean areas to copy from and extend these branches again to get it so it can look like they're continuous. It's a laborious project process, but if you have to get things from within trees, it could be very useful. Sometimes, though, when you try to copy from a branch, it's not at the proper angle to connect one branch with an upper part. If there's a lower part of the branch and an opera part that the what he called the telephone line went right through it, you're gonna have a break in it. You need to find another branch that's at the same angle. Well, if you can't find a branch, it's at the same angle. Here's what you do. Find any branch that looks like in a relatively clean area option. Click on it, then go to the window menu, where you will find a choice that is called clone source and under clone source. There is a setting in here for rotation or angle. I would get a big brush so you can get a big preview of what you're about to put in. He had click on that angle setting so you can change it. Then move your mouse over the area, thinking off and use the up and down arrow keys. The up and down arrow keys will be changing the angle setting. If you add shift, you'll change it in larger amounts. If you stare it where my brushes, you might be able to see it rotating and then I get it so it might look like the proper angle for a particular area. Let's say they're for connecting to that one branches coming up. Then I will press the return key the return key will accept the value that I have typed in for angle. And then I will get a smaller brush because I only need that peace to go in for one little short distance wherever it needs to connect a couple different objects. And I can do that. Um, and I'm just picking a random branch. I'm not being overly precise with this. So anyway, what I do is first I go through with just full force, trying to get rid of the branch and one trick you can use if they're straight. What he called straight telephone lines is you could make straight lines with these tools. If you click in one spot like here and then hold down the shift key and click somewhere else, it can connect the dots. So if you have a telephone line going through a long area of tree, you can find an area outside the tree to click on. To start with, get a brush just the tiniest bit taller than your telephone line. Go to another area of the same telephone line that's outside the tree on the opposite end. Hold shift and click on it. It will connect the dots between the two areas and Onley retouch out the tiniest amount. Then you need to look go through and look for any major branches where those major branches are being cut. They don't look continuous, and that's where you go in and grab another branch used darkened mode and try to reconnect them. This I don't think I've done a great example with, but if you look at my original image, I revert this. You'll see what it is like when I'm closer. The monitor. I'm being more careful thinking, not always easy, doing things that perfectly live. But let's take a look and it won't be perfect because it's a pretty crazy thing that we're doing. But you see all those telephone lines, but you notice that where I did get rid of him, I can see him. If I knew where they were before, if you never saw where they were before, that's when you don't notice him as much. But notice that this branch right here is continuous. Going through this branch is continuous. The big branches are continuous moving through that area, and that's because I use darkened mode and I came and reconnected them. If I hadn't done that, this would just look like a weird broken branches throughout all those areas. So that was not a fun retouching, and I still have some areas to tweak. But I wanted to share with you the general ideas that it might have used their. All right, let's get rid of that one, This one. I just want to show you a quick idea, which is? You don't have to clone from the same document you can clone from other documents. Sometimes I have overly complex ones like this one here, Lets say here I needed to get rid of a large sign that was over here, and I had a whole bunch of other stuff. Let me turn off some retouching that's here. You could see the telephone lines that used to be there. You can see a big Elektronik sign, and if I turn on my retouching layers and see that all that stuff goes away, the problem with trying to get rid of large areas like that he is that it's very easy to see duplicate content if it's used close together. And so what I ended up doing is when I shot in this area. I didn't take just one photograph. I knew I was gonna retouch out that sign because I annoyed me when I pulled up. I was like, Why did they do that? They put this huge sign on this otherwise beautiful gas station in. So not only did I take this shop, but I walked about a foot and 1/2 to my right, and I took another shot of the exact same exposure studies. And then when I process this image, I made sure I processed both files with exact same settings. So if you're doing camera, same settings or if you doing HDR same settings that way I could open up that secondary image if I had walked to foot and 1/2 towards the right than the sign relative to the background would have shifted. And I get other parts of the tree that were behind it that I can copy from those and use them in here to cover up what's needed. So that's another idea that I use. So let me show you how you can go between two documents in kind of an unusual way. Here. I want to get rid of these corner areas. The problem is, where is there are a large enough area of smooth sky to do that? Where you calling from? There just isn't a big enough chunk, so we're gonna invent our own sky. I'm gonna go to the file menu here in the Quran. New document. And when you create a new document, you can type in various sizes. I'm going to just tell it here too. I don't see here. Use the name of this document. What that's going to do is type in the width and height of that document so that we're gonna make a new document the exact same size click. OK, and this document is just gonna look like this is gonna be white. I'm gonna use the healing brush, and I'm gonna option click in the middle of it to say clone from here. That's gonna be our source for Kony. Kind of weird, isn't it? You're like, Wait, we don't need white sky. We don't need that. Well, if you think about anything with the word healing attached, where does it actually get its color from the surroundings of where you apply it and what does it actually copy variation in brightness, which is texture. What do you need in sky blue sky? What kind of texture do you need? Nothing, really. So that will be our texture right there. What it's going to cause it to do is try to make the transition across the area that we clone to be Justus consistent is this. But if the edge of our document, let's say, is a little darker than where I end my retouching, it's just going to try to smooth it so it looks as close as it can get to this smooth, and it's gonna give us a nice, smooth sky. So let's go over to our image. The problem. We're gonna have those. If I just apply it over the corner here, it blends into its surroundings, doesn't and what's the color on the edge of the document? It's the old stuff that was there, So when I do, this doesn't look right. She's undo. All I need to do, though, is grab the paint brush tool, and with the paint brush tool, I can hold down the option key Ultima windows. And all that does is give you the eyedropper tool for a moment. The eyedropper tool allows you to click on your document. Choose a color to paint with saw. Hold down the option key and I'll click near the edge of the document right here. Then I'll just paint that color over to the edge. I'll do the same thing over here. Option Click to grab whatever color is there and just painted over to the edge. Now, if I use the tool with the word healing attached, it has the right color to blend into on the edge of the document, right? So if I grab my healing brush, come over here and I'll just cover up that entire area and it will try to look a little. Try to make it look as smooth as this white that I'm putting in when it comes to variation and brightness, but it's going to use the surrounding colors all the way around. It's kind of weird. Watch what happens. Phone. We got it. Let's do the other corners. I'll grab the paintbrush option. Click on the edge. So I grabbed the proper color just painted over Option clipped the edge here painted over. I also need to do that wherever this stuff touches the tree because otherwise, if I come in with my healing brush and I come up and touch the tree, grab the edge of the tree and pull that color over. So I just use the option key option. Click near and just create a little gap. Wherever that stuff touches in the tree, mice will do the lower right to All right, then let's go to our healing brush. Our healing brush is still remembers to copy from the middle of the up the other document, and I come over here and now clean up those corners who I might have bumped that tree. If so, it'll mess up. No, and one little thing there might be small and get rid of. It is not a kind of weird way of looking. The main thing is to know you can copy between documents. All you have to do is have both documents open. Go to the document you want to copy from an option. Click within it. That's all clicking and windows to tell it to copy from that, it will act as if it's just part of this document when it does it, and when it happens to comes to blue skies. Um, with a blue sky, we don't need any detail. So just the empty document. White, black, red Any color doesn't matter. It matters the variation of brightness. We want a very smooth sky. And by using that white document, it's just gonna take colors that were all the way around the edge of worry painted. Try to smooth it all the way across. Make it. It's close to the smoothness of that other document. Is it? Can now, this isn't gonna work with you. Have a sky that's got clouds in because clouds you need different variation and brightness. The other document could be a blue sky with some clouds in it, though, and you could clone in individual clouds from. So it's just an idea. I thought I'd share with you cause Aiken somewhat mess with your brain. So the tanker way, when it comes to retouching in working with the individual retouching tools, is that the clone stamp tool is where you have to do everything manually. You have to make sure the area you're copying from is the right brightness, the right color, the right texture, and you have to make sure your brush has the right kind of edge on it. Soft edge versus hard edge because it's all up to you to make it fit. And it's very easy to screwed up, because if the colors off just a little bit, you can see it. Anything with the word healing attached, on the other hand, is going to blend in with its surroundings. Makes things much easier because I can clone from any colored area. It matters just the variation in brightness, the texture we might have in there, and so it will make it so we can copy from areas that are much brighter or much darker than what you'd usually think of. We just have to make sure that the surroundings of where we're gonna stop our retouching are the proper colors. Sometimes we had put that stuff in manually, especially if it's the edge of our document or for retouching will end right up against something. Then on occasion, when I do retouching, I need to use dark and mode if I need to copy of Branch and have it go across an area without breaking up branches that are already there. I wanted to kind of overlay on it. If all I can do is dark in the picture, it can't remove branches that are already there, because in order to remove a branch, it would have to brighten it. And so sometimes they need to use dark and mode to reconnect little branches. And I don't think my example I showed you here was amazing one. But hopefully you got the concept of it. With that, I think of that is the first step in directing the viewer's eye into a picture and that is pulling the weeds out so they're not distracted by him because you would be amazed at how much stuff people look at that you think they're gonna ignore because it wasn't important to you in the shot. But if somebody's into something, you know, some interest that you don't have, they're gonna look at your image completely differently. And so I try to pull the weeds and get rid of all the distractions I can think of. And this is one example General questions before I show a little bit about a little more off the idea of pulling weeds over of directing the viewer's eye. There are questions are trend Trinny Latino says You keep saying three chances to get it right? Yeah, when I used the spot healing brush. OK, try it once it doesn't work. Try it again. But after three tries give up on it switched to the normal healing brush where the clone stamp tool because the spot healing brush isn't doing it.