Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to quickly transform photos into the look of a frame from a dramatic,
cinematic summer movie blockbuster by changing their “color grading”.
This effect draws our attention to the people on the screen by warming their skin with orange
color casts and contrasting the surrounding background with teals and blues.
Download a photo that you'd like to use for this project.
I downloaded this image and the others from Dreamstime and Shutterstock.
There are many adjustment layers that can create color grading including "Curves" ,
"Color Balance", "Color Lookup", "Gradient Map" and "Selective Color".
When used in combination with Blend Modes, you can fine tune your image to get the exact look you want.
However, in this tutorial, I'm going to narrow it down to exclusively using "Color Balance"
because I find that this method is the most effective to get that particular summer blockbuster
movie look in the quickest and least cumbersome way.
The first step is to remove any color cast it may have.
We can do it automatically with "Auto-Color".
First, make your image active and press Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + B or go to Image and "Auto Color".
Click the scale icon to make the "Color Balance" adjustment layer active.
There are 3 tones: Shadows, Midtones and Highlights.
Each tone has 3 sliding adjustments that are arranged by their opposite colors on the color wheel.
For example, dragging the Midtone slider toward Cyan adds cyan to the image's midtones and
subtracts its complement: red.
Dragging toward Green adds green to the image's midtones and subtracts magenta.
The Color Levels boxes show the amount of each color that Photoshop adds and subtracts
while you move the sliders.
By checking "Preserve Luminosity", it ensures that the brightness and contrast of the tones
stay the same as we modify the colors of the image.
Keep in mind, since each image has its own characteristics,
feel free to modify the amounts for your image.
I'll click this icon to reset it.
Click "Shadows".
Make the Cyan / Red: minus 53, the Magenta / Green: minus 17 and the Yellow / Blue" plus 29.
Open Midtones.
Make the Cyan / Red: minus 32, the Magenta / Green: 14 and the Yellow / Blue: minus 20.
Open Highlights.
Keep the Cyan / Red: 0, the Magenta / Green: minus 22 and the Yellow / Blue: minus 24.
Next, we'll bring out more detail in the darkest tones of our image
by making the image active and going to Image, Adjustments and "Shadows / Highlights".
Click "Show More Options".
Make the Shadows Amount: 7%, the Tone: 50% and the Radius: 30 pixels.
Make the Highlights Amount: 0%, the Tone: 50% and the Radius: 30 pixels.
Make the Adjustment Color: 0 and the Midtone: minus 20.
Keep the Black and White clips point zero 1%.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!