Edit Photo Quick and Easy
Hi!! Welcome Back! I am Shamim Rahman from adesignpoint Today, I want to show you how to create Realistic Sun Rays in Photoshop Lightroom CC The Power Of Lightroom Tutorials And In this tutorial first, I process the photo in Lightroom CC then Photoshop for rays and set the upper Layer blending mode to screen and adjust the rays and apply the mask. So, now! you can focus too much on my step-by-step what I doing…
hello I’m Robin Whalley welcome to Lenscraft in this third in my mini series of photo editing workflows in the first
video we look to this image and assessing the changes we’d need to make
to it in the second video we looked at the raw conversion process using capture
one I’ll put the links to the previous videos in the information below in this
video we’re going to be looking at the editing that I would typically undertake
with tools such as Photoshop or the Nik collection for this particular image I
want to use the Nik collection now if you don’t have the Nik collection and
you don’t want to pay for it you can still get an older version of the Nik
collection for free I’ll put the details to a tutorial explaining how to do this
in the video information back to our image and let’s look at the changes we
want to make so at the moment we’ve opened up the contrast in the image and
we’ve also got rather a pinky hue to it from the adjustments we made I’m now
going to correct those in the Nik collection I’ll start by duplicating my
background layer and I’ll call this Nik adjustments I’ll
note this for use with smart objects now the
reason I do this is so that when I applied the Nik collection adjustments
if I decide I want to change them again later
I can reopen them and adjust them further if I applied them to a regular
adjustment layer that wouldn’t happen and I had effectively baked the
adjustments into that layer I’ll start by picking the color effects
Pro filter now that opened just gives me a warning message that I’m working in a
smart object so I understand I’m okay with that
and the first thing I want to do is use this Pro contrast filter I tend to start
with this wherever I’ve got a color cast in the image like this one even when
I’ve introduced the color cast and what I want to do is use this correct color
cast slider we have up here if I move it over to the right you can see how it
takes all the color cast out and even goes as far as to introduce an opposing
color cast now I don’t want to remove all the color casts from the image what
I want to try and do is neutralise the Greens here so that they don’t appear
purple and that seems to have given me a reasonable start on the image if I turn
the filter off and on you can see unfortunately each remove the color
casts from the sky and from the header so what I want to do now is remove the
effect of this filter in some of these areas and I can do that using the
control points so here I’ve got a negative control point if I add that to
the Heather what we see is that the color comes back in on that area
so now I can add in an adjustment over this side so that we keep the color on
that Heather and we’ll add the adjustment point into the sky make it
quite large and then I’ll duplicate it across the other areas so all I have to
do is hold down my Alt key and click and that just duplicates the control
point that I’m using now if I turn this on and off you can see that the effect
is still being retained in some of these areas but not in the others if I want to
just strengthen that effect if I add a normal control point here so plus
control point and I’ll add it to the ground here you can see that it’s
knocking out the color cast in that area and again we’ll do this on the distant
Hills because I want to retain the blue color in those now in this area I’d like
it to still be a little bit orange so what I’ll do is I’ll just reduce the
opacity of that control point to reintroduce a little bit of the color
and again I’ll do the same here so if I turn that off and turn it back
on you can see the effect it’s hard overall on the image next I want to
adjust the contrast in this area and the whale do that is with the pro contrast
filter because these from dynamic contrast slider is really really good
but first I’m going to add a completely new Pro contrast adjustment and the
reason I do that is because I want to apply it to different areas than the
first one so now I can introduce my dynamic
contrast and notice how that picks up the highlights in the Heather and I’ll
also introduce just a little bit more contrast now what I don’t want to do is
introduce all that contrast adjustments in the upper half of the image I want to
retain it down in this bottom part so this time I’m going to add a plus
control point so that I can select the Heather and adjust that again I’ll just
duplicate that onto the of the side here and that’s looking quite good and I’ll
just duplicate it again and add it to the path if we want to see the areas
that are being covered all I have to do is highlight the control points there I
can see that it’s actually selecting some areas of the sky and I’m going to
use a negative control point just to remove those out the reason I don’t want
the adjustment in the sky is it tends to highlight and exaggerate noise that
might be there and I want the sky to be relatively clean gain just duplicate
across holding down my Alt key I’m happy with that
we’ll turn off the masks and there’s the adjustment that’s
it off that’s it back on it’s looking quite
good no I’m going to add another filter and this time I’m going to add the
brilliance and warmth filter and I’m going to use that to try to reintroduce
some brilliance or warmth back into my image in the Heather and I also boost
the saturation or the perceptual saturation in those areas so if I select
a control point again I can now add that back in in the Heather and again I’ll
select this side as well just duplicating control points reasonably
happy with that increase our perceptual saturation see if we increase that no
it’s not too far keep the adjustments quite subtle so that’s it off that’s it
back on can’t see too much of a difference at the moment just let’s make
it a little bit stronger yeah that’s about the look I want I’m now happy with
those adjustments so I’ll click OK and we’ll return to
Photoshop so if I turn I turn it back on you can see the
difference we’ve made it’s subtle but it works well and makes the image appear
much more natural so what we’re doing here is we’re correcting selectively the
adjustments that we made in the raw converter the raw converter processing
was intended to give us a good starting point to do the other adjustments now
we’re going to use for Vader as well again I’ve got the warning message that
I’m working on a smart object this time I’m going to make selective adjustments
to the sky to warm it up and I’m going to enhance further the heather in the
foreground I’ll start with the sky I’m going to no so legs the area in the
clouds that’s quite orange and pink already know the reason you saw the mask
then is I was holding down my command key and if you resize a control point or
you move a control point around while you’ve got the command key held down you
see the mask of what it’s selecting this time then I want to warm that area up
you can see the warmth there being added end and I’m just gonna boost the
saturation very slightly and that looks sufficient to make it a little bit more
appealing so there you can see the difference no I’m going to select the
Heather on again if I hold down my command key and reposition the control
point you can see what’s being selected so that looks quite good I’m just gonna
warm it up very slightly I’m going to add a little bit more contrast in and
I’m going to add some saturation now one thing you can try is adding in a little
bit of structure what it tends to do is pull the highlights out with that little
bit more and make them stronger so that it appears that you’ve got much more
detail in there that looks quite good on that site so I’m just going to no copy
my control point and make sure I’ve got it selecting other areas of Heather that
I want to enhance and that’s know looking quite good the other thing I
might want to do is reduce the brightness because again that can tend
to really saturate some of the colors in this header but I don’t want to intrude
don’t want to reduce the brightness too much or it can make it look a little
blocking now I’ve noticed over here in the distance the hills become a little
bit darker again so I’m going to select that hold down my command key just so I
can see what I’m selecting and now I’ll open the shadows slightly and that tends
to open up the hills in the distance and I’ll also reduce the contrast very
slightly as well so let’s check the overall preview that
was the starting image that we got out of the color effects and no that’s the
adjustment that we’ve got and if you put them side by side you can see that it’s
a big improvement so we are moving now nearer to what we wanted to see from the
finished image with the Nik collection so let’s just check the effect back in
Photoshop now so that was what we got out of capture one
that’s what we’ve got out of the Nik collection and don’t worry if it appears
too saturated at this moment what we’re going to do later is pull the saturation
back once we’ve added special effects and the special effects section is the
next part of the workflow video so that’s video for special effects
I’m Robin Whalley you’ve been watching Lenscraft I’ll see you in the next
video to look at how we finish this image
today I’m looking at a common task for
landscape photographers which is enhancing a sunset photo I’m going to be
doing this using the Nik collection from DXO and the photo you see on screen now
I captured the image at the weekend but it’s lacking any real intensity in color
the weather at the time was mostly clear blue sky with a little bit of high cloud
unfortunately there was a lot of atmospheric haze about as well and the
sunset didn’t really happen as you can see the photo you see was converted from
the raw image using the free fuji version of capture one 12 I deliberately
avoided trying to enhance the colors in the raw processor when you’re editing
sunsets images it’s usually best to selectively enhance areas of the scene
you can do this in a raw editor but with the Fuji version of capture one it’s a
little bit more tricky that’s why I’m going to be using the Nik Collection
because it gives me a great deal of control using control points with this
image I want to warm up the pink in the sky and make it stand out more against
the blues I also want to enhance the color of the sky that’s reflected in the
lake and finally I want to increase the blue of the sky and also the blue in the
haze and that should also help the warm colors in the clouds stand out a bit
more the Nik collection has a lot of filters we can use to enhance images but
we’re going to concentrate on just three these are the same three filters that I
tend to use repeatedly when I’m editing sunset photos although I’m going to use
all three of the filters in this video to demonstrate you don’t need to it’s
often best just to use one or two of the filters let’s start by opening Nik Color
Efex Pro the first filter that I want to add to
the image is the skylight filter when you add the skylight filter it produces
a strong warming effect but it also has the side effect that it can cause blues
in the image to turn a little bit purple you can see this to some extent with
this image it’s also making the Greens of the grass look a little bit too
yellow the best way to control and prevent this is to apply the filter
using control points I’m going to start by adding a single control point in the
center of the image to select the clouds when I select the mask option to display
the control point you can see the areas that it’s selecting here the white areas
are where the filter is affecting the image but it’s hidden where you see the
dark areas I’m also going to add some negative control points to further
protect the dark areas and this is going to prevent the Blues in the sky from
turning purple I’m also going to add some to the ground to prevent the grass
turning yellow you can see the change in the image using the compare button one concern that I have from plying this
adjustment is that some of the lighter areas of intense color have become a
little bit too light these are in danger of clicking in the red color channel
when we apply further enhancements this can be a common problem when you’re
processing sunset photos if you make the color too intense I’m going to control
this before it becomes a problem by adding a levels and curves adjustment
filter I can now use the curve to reduce the brightness of the brightest areas
and this will help to reduce the chance of channel clipping I’m also going to
add a control points the shadows to prevent them from becoming too dark the
hazy feeling in the image is quite nice and I really want to protect that if the
shadows become too dark we’re going to lose that feeling the next sunset
enhancing filter that I want to tell you about is the brilliance and warmth
filter what I really like about this filter is
that you can use it to both warm and cool areas of the image it’s therefore
ideal for intensifying sunsets but also retaining a cool feeling in the shadows
let’s start by warming the clouds as before I’m going to start by selecting
an area to adjust with a control point I can then use the one slider to enhance
the colors in the sky I’m also going to add a small amount of perceptual
saturation this subtly saturates the colors in a much more natural way than
the regular saturation slider I’ll now add a second brilliance and warmth
filter this time I’m going to use it to enhance the blue areas of the image
which I’m going to select using a control point and I’m going to protect the area of the
lake using a negative control point and I’ll also similar protect the sky now I
can reduce the one thin these areas by moving a slider over to the left if the
blue becomes too intense which I think it has here I’ll just reduce the
saturation slider what this has done is highlighted blue in the sky in the haze
in a very natural way and by enhancing the Blues the colors in the sky stand
out even more you can see the improvement if I click the compare
button let’s now apply these filters and we’ll return to photoshop the last of the three filters that I
want to discuss is the Viveza this contains a Warmth adjustment which
produces excellent results when you’re editing sunsets as before I’m going to
add a control point to select the central clouds and then going to
increase the warmth in this area once I’ve done that I’m going to select the
surface of the lake and warm that also I’m now going to come down to the levels
and curve section here you can see that I don’t have any clipping you neither
the shadows on the highlights of the RGB channel I’m also going to check the
other channels particularly red and again I don’t have any clipping in
either of the shadows or highlights the green is also safe and the Blues also
safe so I’m happy that I’ve got a good tonal range without being a full tonal
range because that would ruin the contrast in the image I’m now going to
use the mid-tone levels to just darken the image a little bit more by moving
the slider to the right this as you can see has the effect of intensifying the
colors in the clouds even further this is a nice trick you can use to enhance
the colors of a sunset without needing to increase the saturation when you use
too much saturation you can easily cause the color channels to clip and start to
lose subtle shades I’m now happy without the sunset look so I’ll click OK to
apply the changes and just return to photoshop back in Photoshop I’m just
going to add the two layers I’ve created into a group this allows me to turn the
image adjustements off so you can see what we started with and here’s the
enhancement using the Nik collection if you feel the enhancements too strong you
can reduce the opacity of this group the filters we’ve discussed work well with
almost any sunset image you want to improve
it’s also worth experimenting with different images to understand how each
filter can affect the color and if you’re getting any unwanted side effects
I hope you found today’s video helpful if you have please take a moment to
share it with others I’d really appreciate it I’m Robin Whalley you’ve
been watching lenscraft I’ll see you next time for
another video