(instrumental music)
- [Nicole] In this tutorial I'm going to take two photographs
that were created with different exposures.
I'm going to blend them using masking so that the sky is
more visible in the brighter image, and then I'm going to
take that composite image into effects and add kind of
a muted look to the image.
Let's go ahead and get started.
I'm going to start out with this Iceland one dng file,
and before I do anything inside of layers with these images
I'm going to bring it into develop to make a few minor
adjustments to the tone and possibly the white balance.
So, I have this image selected, I'm going to click on
develop over on the right.
First, and the tone and color.
I'm just going to see what happens if I click
on that auto button.
And that seems to brighten things up quite nicely.
I am going to play around with some of the sliders.
I'm going to move that shadow slider around, and I don't
like that, I'm going to undo my adjustment there.
I'm going to decrease the contrast a little bit.
Seems a little too punchy.
And I'm also going to increase the blacks, which actually
kind of removes some of the dark black areas.
And I actually think that the as shot color balance,
actually looks pretty good here.
So, I'm going to leave the color section as is, and that's all
I'm going to do in this image is just
really basic tone correction.
So, let's go back into browse.
Click that browse icon on the right, and I'll go ahead
and open up the second image into develop just to see how
this looks as well.
So, the only thing here that I'm really looking at is
just the sky section.
First, I'm going to decrease the contrast a little bit.
That kind of just brings the sky and the foreground
together, so when I put this image with the other image
there won't be as much of a contrast along the kind of
joining sections of the image.
And I'm also going to increase the highlights and see
what that does.
I'm going to slide it back and forth just to see.
That looks okay, I think I like that.
And I don't really want to play with too much here because
I really do like the sky as is.
Let's me just real quickly see what happens if I increase
the shadow slider.
And that's affecting most of the foreground with is fine.
Most of this area's not going to be in my final scene but
I don't want this to be so dark that if I have anything that
overlaps that it looks funny when I blend these two
together, and you'll kind of see what I'm talking about
once I bring them into layers.
So, this is great.
I'm going to go ahead and go back into browse,
and now I'm going to select that first image, hold
my shift key, and then select that second image.
And then I'm going to click on the layer's
button over on the right.
Now, once I do that it's asking me if I want to add this
photo as a layer, open it up as a new photo.
It's a little confusing at first if you don't know what to
do here, when you're trying to open up two images together.
And basically, what you want to do here is always select
add as layer because that will open up these images
together on one document but separate layers.
So go ahead and click add as layer.
So my images are now over on two separate layers
in the layers panel.
And the way that I like to work with these is I like to
kind of have my main image on the top, and then I mask that
top layer to blend the sky below.
So I'm going to drag this bottom image, the brighter image.
I'm going to make sure it's sitting on the top.
I'm also going to reduce my opacity real quickly, and I'm
going to zoom into my image because I want to make sure that
these are properly aligned.
And it looks like I am slightly off with my alignment there.
So, I'm going to fix, I'm actually going
to fix the bottom image.
And I'm just going to move this around a little bit, so that
it's a little bit better aligned.
I'll go ahead and click on that
transform tool over on the left.
And I'm just going to use my up arrow key just to kind of push
it into place until it looks to me like it is nice and
lined up with that image.
And that looks great so I'll go ahead and click
apply at the top.
I'm going to go back to my fit view so I can see everything.
I'm going to go into my hand tool and add it.
And then I'm going to click on that top layer and bring my
opacity back up to 100%.
That was just kind of a temporary adjustment so I could
preview both of those layers on top of each other.
Now it's time to mask so I can see that sky.
Over on the left I'm going to click on the masking bug.
At the top I'm going to make sure that the preset is set to
linear top, and then I'm just going to
click in the middle of my image.
The first thing I like to do is add a
little bit more feather to these edges.
So, I'm just going to drag this down a little bit so I have
more room to work with.
And then drag the top or you could do the bottom as well.
I'm just going to drag it quite a ways up to the top so I
have a nice feathered edge.
And if you go up to view show mask you can actually see
what that mask looks like.
And I really am going for a soft transition there.
Now I can kind of relocate it and find a better spot for it.
I don't mind if there's a little brightness here at the top
and I can also fix some of this using a brush tool.
So, I'm going to go ahead and set the center of my masking bug,
just really close to the top of the waterfall here.
Now I'm going to switch over to my masking brush.
Before I do any brushing though I want to change the
settings at the top.
I'm going to increase my feather to 100%, and I'm going to change
my opacity to 10%.
I also want to make sure,
let's see, I'm not quite sure if I want to paint out,
I think I want to paint in.
So, go ahead and select paint in.
Going to increase my brush size using that right bracket key
and I'm just going to start brushing.
And it looks like I do have the correct mode set there.
So, what I'm trying to do here is just bring some of that
original brightness back to this area,
kind of in a subtle way.
I don't want the opacity to be too high or I could possibly
see those brush strokes.
Think I'm going to increase my brush size quite a bit, and
make some more adjustments there.
Doesn't have to be perfect because I'm working with a
gradient mask, it's kind of a subtle change to add
that sky to the background there.
But I think that this is looking pretty good.
You can also preview our mask by clicking on this little
toggle on the bottom, and now you can kind of see some of
those changes that I made to bring in some of that original
brighter image back into view.
Now I'd like to address some of the blemishes that I can
see in the scene, and also possibly remove
some of these people.
Before I do that I need to create a stamp layer of both of
these images so that I'm working on both of them and not
just one of the layers at a time.
So, over on the layer's panel I'm going to right click over
that top layer and I'm going to select new stamped layer.
Now I have a composite image that merged both
of those layers together.
Over on the left I'm going to select that perfect eraser,
and then I'm going to zoom in, and I'll zoom in 100%,
and I'm going to focus in on these people right here.
I'm going to use my left bracket key to reduce that brush size,
and I'm just going to brush over them
and let's see what happens.
Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. (laughter)
Looks like today's one of those didn't work all that great.
So, what I'm going to go ahead and do is just kind of sweep over
in a straight line to see if I can kind of get on one to try
and fix some of these areas, and I don't,
I don't think it wants to work for me right now,
so I'm just going to undo both of those,
and let's try to just remove these
people and see what happens.
A lot of this is just a little bit of trial and error.
Okay, so that worked there.
Now that I've removed that person, kind of the main person
in the foreground there, I'm going to switch over to my
stamp tool, my clone stamp tool, and I'll try and remove
some of these kind of blurred out people here as well.
Now I can see that from left to right the image starts
to get brighter.
So, it's a little bit darker on the left, and a little bit
brighter over on the right.
But the tones are pretty much the same from top to bottom.
And the reason I'm bringing that up is because you need
to really pay attention to that kind of thing when you are
cloning an image because the different tonal values, of the
different parts of your image will transfer over,
and they won't blend well if you do it the wrong way.
And I'll do it kind of the wrong way to show you what I'm
talking about and the way I don't want to do it.
So, the first thing I might want to think is well I want to
clone this so that I'm kind of following with this line
here, this kind of like water line the horizon line.
So, I'll start out by holding on the option or alt key
and this is where I select my source, and then I click.
And now when I hoover over you can see that I can just
kind of find that area and start painting.
But as I did that, well I went a little too far but we'll
ignore that, you can see that there's quite a difference
there in the tones because I was cloning from a darker
area over to a brighter area.
So, I'm going to undo that, and instead I'm going to sample
from above it.
So, I'm going to press and hold the option or alt key,
and click, and then I'll move down.
I'm actually going to reduce my brush size, and actually
before I do anything I'm going to drop my opacity down
as well to about 50%, that's like 47 that's close enough.
And now I'm going to brush across
and let's see what that does.
I still don't really like what's happening.
I think it's because my feather is too low,
so let's try this again.
I'm going to re sample, so I'm going to sample.
I'll just go ahead and start from the middle, I'm going to
sample right here holding that option or alt key
and clicking, and now when I move down
I can kind of start to remove that area.
And there's really not as much of a harsh transition.
I'm going to reduce my brush size a little bit, go over that
one more time, and let's see, I'm going to zoom out and see
if it looks okay, if it looks okay zoomed out
then we're probably fine.
So, I can see sometimes when you're cloning you are going
to be able to see the areas that you think look bad.
So it's good to kind of back up, close your eyes, look back
at your image and if you still see those areas then you
need to fix them.
And I can still see a little bit of an area here.
So, what I'm going to do is increase my brush size quite a bit,
I'm going to drop my opacity down to 20%.
I'm going to sample a new area, and hoover over, and then
just kind of draw over that area.
And I just kind of removed that little blemish that I saw.
And I can see that it is kind of, I kind of brought that
water area over there.
So, let me go ahead and try and fix that
just by sampling down below here.
So I'm going to hold that option key, that option or alt key
and click, and now I'm just going to kind of brush over
that area just to kind of add that darkness back.
Alright, so let's go into this little blemish right here.
And I think for this one I'm just going to go back
to that perfect eraser.
So, I'll click on the perfect eraser, and I'm going to reduce
my brush size, and I'm just going to brush right over it,
and let's see what this does.
It's okay, it looks like it kind of, I kind of lost some
of the lines there of the waterfall, so I'm going to undo that.
And next I'll go ahead and try the retouch brush to see
if that does a better job.
So, let's retouch that.
And it's doing okay again but it's acting kind of smudgy.
So, maybe if I do it little bits at a time.
I think that's helping a little bit just by kind of
painting down with the flow of the water.
Again, if I were to back up and look at this again I may
not even notice that I made a mis, any kind of edit there.
So, I'm just going to go ahead and leave this as is for now.
But I do see a few other spots in the image.
So, I'm just going to zoom in to 50% and kind of go into the sky
and I still have that retouch brush active,
and I'm just going to dot some of these out.
They're really kind of subtle, depending on your monitor
or how much you have possibly edited the photo beforehand
you may see more or less than I do here.
And of course you can always fix these at any time
during your edits.
Okay, I am at a good spot here.
Before I do anything I'm just going to do a quick save
of my file, want to make sure I don't lose any of my edits.
And then we're going to go ahead and bring this into Affects
to add some, a little bit more of like a style, kind of muted
style to the photo.
So, I have my composite image ready to go here.
But I would like to create an edit that is re-editable.
In other words I want to be able to make changes to it
after I finish in Affects and go back into layers.
So, to do that I just click on this little gear icon
at the bottom, which will convert that layer into
a smart layer.
So now I have a gear icon on the right and I'm ready to
make some more edits, so I'll click on Affects
in the module selector.
Okay, like I said I want to kind of create a muted kind of
a gloomy look to this photo just to kind of give it a feel.
The whole trip when we were in Iceland, this was a few years
ago but the entire trip was kind of muted and generally
there was a lot of clouds and I just want to give it
that feel of what it was like to actually be there.
So start out by adding a filter.
And I'm going to click on tone enhancer.
I'm going to skip every single thing except for the very
bottom down at that curves adjustments.
Scroll down so I can see it.
Now, I want to kind of add a little bit of a matte look.
So, I'm going to take the pointer on the very left, and
drag it up just a little bit.
And I'm going to do the same thing on the far right.
I'm going to drag that pointer down.
Now I'm going to add an S curve to this kind of matte effect
that I've added.
So, I'm going to click on the top right corner and drag it up
just slightly, then I'm going to click in that bottom left
quadrant and drag it down.
Now if I toggle this on and off you can see that matte
effect that I've added.
I'll go ahead and add another filter.
This time I'd like to add a split tone.
So I'll click split tone.
Now here's where you get to kind of play around with your
own personal tastes.
There area lot of different settings here.
And of course you can also choose your own.
And I really think that all of them
for the most part look pretty good.
I'm kind of leaning towards either this warm look, or the
default which is a denim look.
So, let me toggle that denim one on and off.
And I really do kind of like what this is doing.
Now if you'd like you can also change some of the
adjustments down below to kind of get a little bit more
personalized look.
So, maybe I want to play around with the highlight slider,
give it a different amount.
Or remove it altogether.
And that actually might be kind of interesting because I'm
really just adding kind of a blue tint then
to the shadow areas, and I actually
really kind of like that.
But I am going to play with the opacity slider, and bring
it all the way to zero.
Just kind of slide it back and forth.
And I'm going to go somewhere about 75%,
and I'll toggle that on and off, and that just adds a kind
of a nice, kind of gives it a little bit more
of a cool feel to the scene.
Go ahead and add another filter.
This time I'm going to add sunshine,
and I really like the sunshine filter.
By default it goes to the natural effect,
and you can play around with those sliders to see if
maybe you want to add some warmth or remove some warmth.
And overall I am actually going to reduce the opacity.
So, I'm going to go to zero and then drag it up to about 50
probably, got it at 48 right there.
So, I really like where things are going here.
I'm going to do a quick before and after of what I've done
here in affects by pressing that back slash key.
Now one thing I do notice is that some of the effects
that I've added have kind of washed out the sky,
which is definitely what I don't want to do.
I want that sky to be visible, which is kind of the whole
point of this entire edit.
So I'm just going to do that toggle again, see what that sky
looks like, and I think that the culprit might be with
this tone enhancer, so let me see if I toggle just that
tone enhancer on and off I can see that it did kind of show
that, that sky is being a little bit muted with this effect.
So, I'm going to click on that little mask icon inside of
the filter's panel.
I have that brush tool selected.
It looks like my settings are still kind of carried over
from my previous edit, so I'm just going to
keep everything as is.
I have a feather at 100%, opacity at 10.
And I'm just going to brush over the sky, you know actually
I'm going to bring that opacity up a little bit more.
Bring it out closer to 50, so 45 right there.
And I can see I am adding a mask.
And I'm just going to do this really kind of quickly,
just kind of bring it back.
And I think that looks good.
Let's go ahead and just do a quick toggle,
it looks like now my filter
is really only affecting the foreground area.
I am going to copy this mask though because I think I might
want to apply it to that sunshine filter
that I added as well.
So I'll click copy.
I'm going to go up to the top, to the sunshine filter,
I'll go ahead and add a mask and click paste.
And then add it a little bit,
that kind of helped out just a little bit.
Now you may be wondering why did I not add
the mask to the entire image?
And the reason is because I still would like to add
a vignette to this photo.
And if I were to add a vignette with a mask to it,
then it would not even show up in that area
where I masked out.
So, let's go ahead and add that vignette so we can have a
nice finishing touch to the entire image.
I'll go ahead an add a filter, and choose vignette.
And then I'm going to click the subtle vignette.
Let's see how that looks.
And I think that just as is that looks beautiful.
I'm finished here inside of effects.
So, I'll go ahead and click done.
Now my image has opened up back into layers,
and you can see that I have a new little icon,
or a new little section below that
top layer which says effects.
So, if I were to double click that I could go back into
effects and make some further changes
to the image if I'd like.
But for now I'm finished.
I really like this edit, I really like what I've done here.
(instrumental music)
I'll go ahead and click save to save my file,
and then after it's saved I'll go ahead and close it.
And it will be waiting for me inside of browse.