Hello to folks who had been following the four different groups for PS 101. Ken Priest (Art Roflmao) had to step away for a bit, and asked me to carry on.
Given the relatively low level of participation in the four initial groups, I've decided to combine them into one.
If you're new to this, let me suggest you start by reading the first post in this thread: PS 101 Pre-meeting
To the other mentors who were helping out, please join in! Actually, that goes for anyone with good advice.
My only request is to please stick to the topics being discussed at that moment or earlier. It's easy to get overwhelmed in Photoshop, so I'd like to ease people into various things, with plenty of time to explore and experiment, before introducing a new item.
In this thread we'll discuss various tools for adjusting lighting in a shot.
We'll cover things like levels, curves, contrast enhancement, selective color, and various blending modes.
Since we explored various methods for making selections in the last thread, let's jump right into using the soft light blending mode plus selections to make some areas brighter and others darker.
I can't type this up any better than idnic already has, so please begin by reading her tutorial, Move the Light.
Don't read further until you've read that tutorial.
The only thing I'll add to her tutorial is that I prefer to reduce opacity in my soft light layers to make it look right, as opposed to blurring them. That gives me a reversible method. Reversibility is goooooooood.
After you've read her tutorial and my comment about opacity, look at the original and the edited version of this shot, and try to spot where I used a soft light layer with a layer mask to darken:
Now look at this one, and try to find where I lightened and darkened:
Finally, go play! Post your original and results here, share any tips you run across, etc.
This is what it's all about. Picking up these little tips here and there. I've never done this and now I need to practice it more and more. I don't like my first attempt mainly because of subject matter, but I can see where this can go.
Tips I found:
Tip #1: Change your maskish layer to Soft Light in the beginning to kinda see what's happening.
Tip #2: Convert your colorspace at the beginning. Converting in the middle flattens the image. Converting at the end is a pain if you're duplicating the image (especially if you forget).
Here's what I got. My 4th wedding anniversary, we took a cruise. This is the top of the ship. Pretty flat image. Nothing special about it.
My mask. Lighten the subject and darken the background.
The final image.
I'm not liking the halo effect, but I'm sure I can do some tricks on that. Maybe using some gradient effect on my mask layer or maybe not blacking out so close to the subject.
Maybe this is better. The halo effect is less.
(BTW, I might be using the term "mask" improperly, but I can't think of another term)
Nullix: good start! Try masking more closely to the tower's outline. That will control the halo. Also change opacity. The effect you want is subtle, not too obvious.
I almost always paint in the soft light layer with the image layer visible so I can see the effect immediately.
I generally paint using a big brush with hardness set to 0% to get the rough outline, then work my way to smaller brushes to get the details.
The beautiful thing about this is that it's 100% reversible. Go over the line, just flip to the eraser and take it out again.
I found in portraits the halos were getting pretty bad, especially against a sky I am trying to darken. To reduce this, closely overlapping the subject, I painted with a medium-dark grey. This didn't darken the subject to much and helped to ease the halo effect. I also will put a line of grey on the barrier between white and black (if they touch) to help ease the halo. I will post examples when I get home from work.
Here's an extreme example of a picture that was way blown out.. White shirt, white table, white cement to reflect the sun off of & it was 1 in the afternoon.. So, I used only the black & made it a little better..
I also see that it really fixed the skin tones on my dad's arm.. You could barely see it before & after using this technique, it's much better.. Still all blown out, but it's a snap shot that I wanted to recover since it's my mom feeding my baby..
I've been playing with it a lot recently, and I also came across a nice useful video about it. A lot of it you know from tutorials already, but it covers some bits of stuff I found really useful.
The only thing I'll add to her tutorial is that I prefer to reduce opacity in my soft light layers to make it look right, as opposed to blurring them. That gives me a reversible method. Reversibility is goooooooood.
After you've read her tutorial and my comment about opacity, look at the original and the edited version of this shot, and try to spot where I used a soft light layer with a layer mask to darken:
