Hello everyone, I’m Rikki. I’m the Chief Technology Officer at FXhome and the lead
of the Imerge project. Today we’re going to take a look at the top 5 effects in Imerge
to fix your photos. If you don’t already own Imerge, you can download the demo from
our website. Let’s get started. We’ll begin with number 5, the Tone Coloring
effect. This is great for removing color casts and adding color tints to different tonal
ranges in your image.
It works like this, the first thing in the user interface is a chart with a gradient
representing the color wheel running horizontally. Along the middle we have a line indicating
the neutral line. Then we have four circles we can move. Moving them up will add the color
they are positioned over, moving them down will remove the color they are positioned
over. You can drag these about horizontally to specify the color you want to add or remove.
The larger dot manipulates the entire image. The black dot indicates the shadow areas of
image which is the darkest parts. The smaller white dot relates to the highlights of your
image which is the brighter parts. The grey dot indicates the midtones of the image which
is everything in-between.
So let’s take a look at this image. We can see it has a blue color cast. We are going
to remove that so we get to a fairly neutral image in terms of color balance. We are then
going to use the shadows and highlights controls to add a film-like look by adding teal to
the shadows and orange to the highlights. One effect and three drags of the mouse has
enabled us to correct and grade this image in terms of its color.
Moving right along to number 4, the Color Adjustment effect. This is great for making
hue, saturation or lightness changes to an area of your image based on a color range.
Lets use this image of a camper van to see how this works. You define a hue and saturation
range of what you want to modify by positioning and sizing the selection box. The color selector
will move the box to be centered over a color you pick from the canvas. Softness will smooth
out the transition between what is selected in the color range and what is not. Protect
blacks, protect whites and protect skin tones allow you to tell the effect to not affect
these areas.
You can use the view matte toggle to visualise what is selected. It will show white where
the pixel is fully selected, black where it is not selected and the levels of grey in
between indicate how much of it is selected.
Once the selection is specified you can then choose to make modifications. You can modify
the hue in one of two ways.
The first is to shift the hue. If you just want to very slightly tweak the color, use
hue shift. Lets slightly tweak the color of the camper van by moving it from red to a
orange by moving the slider slightly to the right.
The second is to replace the hue. If you want to make a larger change to the color, such
as completely replace it for a very different color, then use the hue replace option. This
makes it easier to make larger changes but also deals with problems around edges in the
color channel which cause fringing that looks inverted. First we position the hue slider
over the color we want and finally we set the strength to 100% to move it there.
The next thing we can do is increase or decrease the saturation of the selection. Lets slightly
desaturate the blue of the camper van.
The final thing you can do is change the lightness of each pixel. Lets just slightly darken the
blue on the van by reducing the lightness slider.
Number 3, the Clarity effect. This is great for adding pop in the form of fine detail
sharpening and contrast in the larger contours of your images. What makes this so interesting
is the grittiness and details of the texture in the face. The shot straight from camera
is a little bit soft. We can use the amount slider to add contrast in the underlying contours
of the face. Next we can increase the structure which sharpens up the fine details like the
facial hair.
You can reduce the clarity too and this will smooth things out while preserving edges which
can be useful when trying to soften skin.
This all produces a result free of the typical haloing you get around edges from more traditional
sharpening filters. And number 2, the Dehaze effect. This is great
for removing and adding atmospheric effects like fog and haze. Here is a picture of a
forest path. We can see we have fog in the image which is washing out the scene. If we
increase the amount slider it will remove this and give the forest a very different
atmosphere. We can also use this method to increase the haze by reducing the slider.
Another example of this is its use to improve skies. This image has a nice sky, but it feels
a little bit washed out. Lets increase amount slider and it will remove some of this improving
the contrast in the details and causing the blue color to come out.
And finally number 1, the Exposure effect. This is great for adjusting the tones and
overall saturation in your image.
When adjusting tones it’s useful to monitor the histogram as it can show problems that
your naked eye alone can struggle to see. The chart shows dark tones on the left through
to bright tones on the right. The grey line represents the luminance tonal range and there
are separate lines for the red, green and blue color channels.
Let’s take a look at this effect in action on two different photos.
First up, here is a image of a cliff in RAW format. Straight out of camera the photo looks
a bit dull and there are issues with the sky and sand almost clipping to white with little
detail.
We’ll begin by trying to reduce the exposure. For this image that is not really working,
the foliage is going dull and we’re not recovering detail in the highlights.
We need to stretch out the highlights, so there is more difference in that area and
you start to see the detail. So, let’s start by reducing the highlights to around -60.
If we look at the histogram we can see there are no tones at the dark end. So we reduce
the blacks down to -11 to take advantage of this and the extremely dark areas have moved
slightly towards black instead of grey.
We’re still lacking contrast though and the scene as a whole feels a bit washed out
as the midtones are too bright. So next we reduce the midtones down a bit to -40. Let’s
also use the contrast slider increasing it to around 22.
The final thing we need to do is inject some intensity into the colors as they are a bit
dull. Let's grab the saturation slider and increase it a bit until the green looks good
at around 35. This is ok, but the rocks in the cliff have gone a bit too orange. So let’s
back this off a bit to around 20. We can now use the vibrance slider to further boost the
greens but it will protect skin tones. This rock and sand is close enough to skin tones
that it is also not affected.
Now, let’s compare this to the original by toggling the visibility of the effect.
That’s looking much better.
Let’s take a look at a different photo of a seating area on the beach which was shot
in RAW format.
Looking at the image and its histogram we can see it’s too dark and it's not using
the brighter tones. Let’s fix that by increasing the exposure slider to around 3. As we move
it, we can see the histogram stretching out to use all the available tones.
Next let’s increase the shadows slider to around 25 to brighten up the dark areas in
the trees and show a bit more detail.
The image is much better but it’s still looking a bit flat. Let’s add some contrast
by moving the slider to around 26. Let’s increase the saturation to 30 adding more
intensity to the colors.
Now lets toggle the effect off to see the original and back on to see the change. That
is looking much better.
That’s it for today. Let us know in the comments what other Imerge tutorials you’d
like to see, or if you have any questions about the software. Thanks for watching, and
be sure to subscribe for more Imerge tutorials.