So a couple of days ago my friend on Unmesh from PiXimpe
shared a video showing how he used the Generative Fill
Artificial Intelligence in Photoshop
to fix a difficult selection.
And this got me thinking.
I wonder if Generative Fill AI in Photoshop
could do a better job on that group portrait
I took a few years ago
when the client asked if I could make the large sofa
look the same as the leather chair.
HOLY !#$@
Now I have got to show you this.
So a few years ago
I was asked to photograph a financial services company,
which was without doubt the most challenging photo shoot
I have had to date,
and not just because it meant photographing a group of 21
people. For the photoshoot itself, we used an empty area
on the top floor of their office building, However,
the client was unable to get matching furniture,
so during the shoot said that they ideally
wanted the large sofa to match the leather chair.
Now in the original edit, I did the best I could.
Firstly, changing the color
and then experimenting using the Filter gallery in Photoshop
to fake the look of leather, which kind of worked.
Not an exact match, but the client was happy.
And this is the final image
that has then had some color grading and a final look added.
But yesterday, when I was experimenting
in Photoshop, I tried Generative Fill on the same group photo
I mean, I've seen it do a lot of things, but change furniture?
So in Photoshop, here's the portrait
where I've cropped it
and you can see the gray paper on the back wall and floor.
As I turn on each of the upper layers,
you can see what I've done
by tidying up the joins on the paper.
adding texture to the back wall, adding in the wooden floor,
and then eventually changing the color of the sofa.
I’ll explain why that needed to be done first in a minute.
But now I need to make it look like leather.
Okay, so let me just delete all of the layers
above this one here
where I've already made a selection
and cut out to the sofa, which I had to do for the technique.
I used to match the color.
When I zoom in
you can see how different
the material looks compared to the leather on the chair.
The leather has a texture and obvious highlights.
So I'll hold down the command key on Mac or Control
key on Windows and click on the thumbnail of the sofa cutout
and load it as a selection.
Then in the contextual taskbar,
I'm just going to type the word leather.
Now watch this.
I'll click on generate and let's give the AI just
a few seconds to figure out what it needs to do.
And BAM!
Look at that.
That is just incredible.
Of course, we can click on Generate to get three
more variations and give it a few more seconds.
This one here I think is my favorite,
but I just need to tweak the color a bit
so I'll add a hue and saturation adjustment layer.
I'll also add a clipping mask
so that the adjustments only affect the layer directly below.
Then I'll adjust the hue a littl
Maybe a bit more contrast is needed.
So I'll add a brightness and contrast adjustment layer
I’ll add a clipping mask
and then just increase the contrast a touch.
Let's just put all of these layers here into a group
so we can see a before and after.
So this is the before and after
following the color match.
And this is a before and after of the original sofa.
Amazing.
Now, at the moment Generative Fi
won’t let me specify the exact c
that I want the leather sofa to be;
It'll only allow me to change it to leather.
And that's why we needed to change the color before.
For example, if I wanted this to be,
I don't know, a black leather sofa,
I'll just turn off these adjustments here
and click on the Generative
Fill layer and then type in black leather.
And these are the results it throws back.
So the color needs to be changed first and then use the AI.
but I get a sneaky feeling in the near future
that'll change.
But this quickly is how I matched
the colors of the furniture.
Okay, so let's just delete everything above this point
and then I'll just go to the original layer
containing the yellow sofa at the bottom of the layer stack
I’ll then load the sofa selectio that I've made
and now I have that selection.
I'll jump
this onto its own layer by holding down the command key
on Mac or control key on Windows and pressing J.
I'll then put this at the top of the Layer Stack.
Then let's zoom in and I'll grab the rectangular marquee tool
and drag out a selection in this area here,
kind of like a swatch.
And I'll then hold down the command and option keys on Mac
or the control
and alt keys on windows then keeping those keys down,
I drag this selection across onto the leather chair.
So if I can now change the color
of this swatch so that it blends in with the leather chair
anything else on this layer will also change
to the same color, which in this case is the yellow sofa.
And this is how we do it.
I'll deselect and go to the channels tab,
then click on the Red Channel and go to Curves by pressing
command on Mac or control on Windows and the letter M,
And because we're on the Red Channel,
that's how Curves opens.
And to blend the red values, we just drag this top right
point downwards until the swatch blends in.
Something like that.
I'll then click okay and go to the Green Channel
I'll then go to Curves by holding down the command
or control key and M And then drag the top right
point down until that swatch blends in.
Okay.
And finally the blue channel.
So I click on that, open a curves adjustment
and then drag the top right down to around about there
and click okay.
So now all the channels are blended.
let's go to the regular view by clicking on the RGB channel
and then go back to the layers.
We can get rid of the swatch now.
So I'll just use the eraser and brush over it.
But now look, so as I zoom out,
how the color of the yellow so far has changed.
Of course we can tweak it, making some adjustments,
but that's a great technique for matching colors in Photoshop.
Now since Generative Fill A.I.
was introduced into Photoshop Beta,
there's been a lot of discussion
online about it replacing photography,
and in one hand I get it,
but on the other hand, I don't.
AI is not going to photograph these exact people.
The people who work for this company
and then create a portrait. That is photography
and for that we need photographers.
For me, this was a paid gig,
and although the client at the
time was happy with what I was able to give them
had Generative Fill
been around back
then, what I could have done would have been way better.
So this is clearly an example of where A.I.
is a help and not a hindrance.
But anyway, we could discuss this for a long time.
In this video, though,
all I wanted to do
was show you what I found out purely by experimenting.
So if any of this has been useful
in any way, I'd really appreciate a thumbs up.
And if you haven't yet,
click on subscribe,
because that's just a great free way
that you can support this channel.
But for now, that's me. I'm done.
I'll see you in the next video.