Hey guys, welcome back to another video. We've got some good news today and that
is Imerge version 6 is now available. If you don't know what Imerge is, it's our
photo editing product and it's come a long way since it was first released in
2018, and this is thanks to you guys for the feature requests and the suggestions
that you give us as well as the developers for implementing that
feedback. Today we're going to be taking a look at the new features in version 6,
the biggest being Brush Masks. We'll also be looking at some new effects
including Light Rays, a Multi-point Gradient, Lens Distortion, and a few
others. In other good news our Spring Sale is starting very soon so be sure to
subscribe to either our social media channels or the email newsletter to be
notified when it goes live. Let's take a look at the most exciting feature of
version 6 which is Brush Masks. These Brush Masks make it much easier to
isolate an area of your image or effect. So, I've got this picture here, and it's a
really nice picture, but what if I wanted to change the time of day? A big factor
in the time of day is the way the sky looks. So I have this picture of a sunset
and I want to cut the sky out of this and place it on top of this original
image. Now, before you either had to use an Area Mask, which is a predefined shape,
or a Vector Mask which means you click and you add in all the different points
and you go around. Vector Masks are easy to add but once you try to manipulate
them quickly it gets a bit tricky because you have so many points. So
instead what we can do is come up to Masks and then select Brush and now my
mouse cursor has changed to a circle. You can change the size of the brush by
using your mouse scroll wheel or up here at the top where it says Radius. If you
want to change the softness, you can hold down Shift and use the scroll wheel and
you'll see another circle appear. You can also change the Opacity of the brush up
here, up top. Now it's as easy as painting in the areas that you want to keep. So,
for example, I will go in and I'll paint in the sky here and if I want to take an
area out I can right-click and do that, or you can change the brush type up here
so that it removes an area instead of adds it in. And that's as easy as it gets,
if I wanted to decide that I want this cloud in the bottom here removed
I literally just paint it out and it's gone, just like that, I don't have to move
a bunch of points I don't have to create another mask that takes it out I just
paint and that's it. Of course, this isn't the end of the composite, I would add
something like a a color match background. And then I can
select that image and increase the strength and it will start to match the
color. I'll also just crush the shadows a bit so that it matches a bit better but
you can see how easy it was to really just paint in the areas that I want.
Here's another example of how you can use brush masks on effect. So, it doesn't
have to be a mask on an image. If I wanted to add the Clarity effect to this
picture here and then boost it up, it looks good but the problem is if I go to
View and then Highlight Warnings, you can see that I'm blowing out the details in
the sky. And that wasn't happening before I added the Clarity effect so I know
that the effect is causing it. What I can do is come over here to this icon and
select Brush again, similar to last time, and what I'll do is change the invert
switch over here so right now clarity is affecting the entire image if I come in
with my brush and I just paint around this area here, I can get rid of the
effect in that specific spot. And again, I didn't have to draw any sort of points, I
didn't have to use predefined shapes, I literally just painted over the area and
it was that easy. So here's without the effect, and here's with it. You can see
that area of the sky remains the same because it's not being affected by
Clarity. Now let's take a look at the new Light Rays effect inside a version 6. I
have this image here and I want to increase the feeling of atmosphere and
one way to do that is with Light Rays so I can just add that in, and then you'll
get a little circle here which you can move around or you can use these Center
controls in the controls panel. But I'll just place it somewhere that makes sense
for this scene. And you have a variety of controls to dial in the way that it
looks, so, for example, I'll increase the Threshold which means that not so much
of the image is getting affected, and then I'll also lower the distance just a
little bit so that the Light Rays don't go as far. I'll change the blend to
Screen because it's already quite white I don't want to be adding pixels on top
of each other. And then if I wanted to, I could increase the tint which would give
the Light Rays a specific color. In this case it doesn't really make sense
because it's a black and white picture, but you do have that option if you
wanted to do that. But that's how easy it is to add Light Rays into your image now
it's, you know, drag and drop, place the control, and then adjust the
parameters as needed. We have a new effect called Lens Distortion which can
either add or remove it from your picture and it's as simple as dragging a
slider. So you can see there it takes more the shape of a pillow,
or if you want to go the other way, it'll distort the lens more around the edges
than in the center. It also has settings for Chromatic
Aberration and De-vignetting around the edges as well, if you need to bring back
some of that lightness. The new Multi-Point Gradient effect is a good
way to add multiple colors into a plane or onto your image. You start with four
and each of them has a control point so you can move it you can make it bigger
if you want, which increases the spread. If you want to add another color, you
just click. The color dialog box will appear and I'll just choose something
like this, and now I have another color inside of the gradient. If you want to
change the gradient type, you can change you from Points to this other one which
results in a more geometric shape. We've also added a new Halftone effect so if
you need to get that newspaper print look, you can do that very quickly. We
have a couple presets if you want it to have color, or no black at all. That's it
for this video, hopefully you guys enjoy the new features. If you'd like to try
out version 6 for yourself you can find a demo on our website. Thanks for
watching and I'll see you all in the next video.