hey guys welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we're going to look at
movable color specifically to address some of the things that i've seen you
guys doing and to basically improve the finished look.
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welcome you are joining me quite early in the morning and
we're going to sort out all of your movable colour
woes so on the screen right now you can see an image that i've literally just
brought into photoshop run a couple of adjustments on
it to alter the color and i'm pretty much at the stage where i
want to add a movable colour so movable colour was mentioned in a
full edit video which is quite complex and that is linked above
so today we're literally going to drill down right into the movable color
section you guys know from that video if you did
watch it that first thing we need to do is mask out the dog
so um i need to get a clean cut around the subject so how i'm gonna do that i'm
gonna make sure i'm clicking on a layer with him on it which this one is
and i'm going to click select subject and then
photoshop will pick the subject for us we're going to fine tune that and select
a mask i'm not going to include that in this video because it does get a bit
lengthy but after you've watched this video or
you can open in a new tab head up to watch the masking video
okie dokie so when you have a mask so i've got the mask
here over here and when you have that mask
ready then you need to create your movable color so you know we've been
here before down into the adjustment layer section
and up to gradient and within gradient we
then want to change it to a radial if i'm moving too quick you know you can
or either replay this video or you can watch it in slow motion
by clicking the settings icon on the video viewer
and then you want to go into your color and
into the color of that and just put it on white because it's always easy to see
on white and then the next thing to do is you
need to kind of assess what the scale of the
removable color is going to be and for me i'm going to use
quite a big one so with that done you just click ok on everything and that
puts it back here we want to move this mask to here we
don't need to copy it because we don't need the mask on this layer that we put
it on so we just click and drag and what
that's done is that's put the mask the other way
around so the mask itself is stopping that movable
color from being at the other side of the subject so what we need to do is
we need to invert the mask we can do that by clicking on
the mask itself and then doing command and i on a mac or ctrl and i on a
windows then the next thing that we really need to do is assess where
is this light going to come from so if we just turn that layer off for a sec
we can see that he is actually well he's kind of lit from above
but he is actually more lit from this side because
and we can tell that because if you look at the shadows on his
face so if you look at this shadow here that is far lighter
than the same shadow at the opposite side and the same for his nose
this is lighter than this this is lighter than this so the direction of
the light is coming from up there if your
image is backlit you can kind of put the movable color
wherever you want behind the dog but if it's not
you would not put this movable color this light
from this side because it doesn't make any sense so you have to make sure that
you know where the light's coming from and for me it's coming from up here
now i'm going to make this bigger because i want the light to pass
past him kind of like that and we need to make sure that it isn't just
sort of stuck behind him and small so he wouldn't do it like that
because again it just makes literally zero sense to the human brain
we have to make sure that these things make sense so we're going to put it up
at a corner it doesn't need to be right at the corner
if you've got bokeh flares in the background that you could attach it to
but you wouldn't put it sort of just like that because again it doesn't make
sense so i tend to put the center which is
about there up into a corner it doesn't have to be
right in there but basically so that the lightest part
is the corner and you don't have to be in a corner it
can be from above like so it could be from the side if the light
makes sense but for me today i'm just going to put
it up here i'm going to make it a bit bigger again
like so and then what we want to just ignore the
mask for a sec what we want to assess is how is this
light going to fall and this is going to depend on your
image if you've got lots of nice bright you like a bright style
you're probably going to want to be on screen
so in the layer mode section this little drop down here you've got all these
options now this top section darkened stuff
this sections lighten stuff this adds contrast
and then the bottom ones affect you know your color and your general light
so what we're going to be doing today is i want you guys to focus specifically on
lighting screen and also if you needed to
uh to go into a linear dodge but that is for backlit photos only and you use it
with a very light touch let me just show you the
difference between the two okay so this is screen
if you look at the light areas in the image
so the highlights on the leaves for example and the highlights where
the light hits the floor with screen enabled
they are lit more so it lets that differentiation and light come through
if we go on lighting it just lightens up most of the areas in
the image and it decontrasts it so if you like a matte style
you're going to want to be on lighting for us today we're going to use screen
and then you want to go into your opacity section and drop that down
i would not suggest using this super high unless you've got a super bright
image in which case it completely works but for me i'm probably gonna stick
around that general area you can then go
double click back into your gradient and into the
color section and into the color picker itself
and go into the color section and once there you will get a color picker come
up you can then go for a warm gradient
again use with care don't overdo it so putting color on to that does
actually make okay okay it does actually make quite a
big difference so if you look in your
history now between we've just added a warmth to it this is
before the warmth this is after the warmth so it makes
quite a big difference with that now done
you can then assess the general situation in terms of your mask
so i've not gone back in and fine-tuned the mask after doing selecting mask
so i'm just gonna make sure i've clicked on my layer grab
my brush make it nice and big and soft and i wanna just sort of dust
just over the areas that i want a little bit of this gradient fill to come
into so the light is coming from behind it would make sense that he would have
some gradient fill on his back and then also
to tie him in and make him look less cut out
grab a low opacity brush maybe 20% and just
dot that in over the edges you want to be quite careful when doing
this to not overdo it there is a bad bit of mask there
which i will go in and clean up after this the cleanup for the mask that is
actually in the masking video which we've already linked
above and that will be in the description below
but it is worth looking at if you are not a
regular masker shall we say when you get to lighter areas on the
edges you probably want to push the opacity of the mask a little bit
more when you've got movable color on because that will make it look more like
it was backlit in this situation which is super useful
so with that now in place we have made quite a big
difference to the lighting scene in this image
you could if you wanted to push that up even more make it bigger make it a
different color it doesn't matter what you want to do
different situations will call for different applications so please don't
use one thing all of the time because it doesn't always make sense and you can
also always double click back on the gradient
to move the color around the picture i can't get my words out today guys you're
missing all of my screw-ups but there are a lot
today in process so to counteract where we've got the light coming in
you can then go ahead and create shade which is something that i always
recommend i use your curves you can use whatever
you want to use i tend to pull down and have some shadow
there and then i will usually invert the mask
on that too grab a brush and go ahead
and add the this shadow to certain areas of the image as
required to make sure that everything makes sense
again because there's nothing worse than looking at a
picture and knowing um that's not going to be like that in real
life so the lights coming from here there's going to be a shadow here
it's important that we make sure that all of these sections
make sense you'll notice that i've used this technique
multiple multiple times with success and for me it personally works really
really well it's just something that i think
everybody should work on making sure that their light makes sense
the most important thing about movable color is that you have
a source point for the light which makes sense with the light already in the
scene that you connect it to the ground with
having some form of a shadow section and making sure the shadow makes sense
you want to get really comfortable using your layer
styles in terms of the different effects that you want if you look at the
difference between light and in the situation and screen
there is quite a big difference in how it's affecting the image
and of course the other options would change it even more
so you have to be really aware of what you're actually wanting to achieve
because there is no one size fits all and what you use is very much dependent
on your particular style so the next thing that i would do
with this image is just continue on through my workflow so i'd then
touch up him and do a dsat which we've already done before on the youtube
channel we've done everything that i would do to
this particular picture so uh just head back through videos if
you want to know how to create it including how to sheet it if
this has been useful for you and i really hope it has please drop
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there is also a blog post on this topic which i will link in the description
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