Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you the fastest way to transform your deep shadow photos into
powerful, dual-color portraits and how to quickly reverse or even change their colors.
For your convenience, I provided this Shutterstock photo that you can download,
however, because it's not for public distribution, I had to add a grid watermark on it, but now,
at least you re able to use it so you can follow along. This effect works on both color or black
and white photos. Before we begin, if you want to know as soon as I upload new Photoshop tutorials,
smash that "Subscribe" button and please remember to click "Like" if you like this video. Since this
photo is a black and white, continuous tone image, go to Image and Mode. If the mode is "Grayscale",
check RGB color and make sure it's 8 bits per channel. If its a color photo,
the mode will already be RGB, however, we'll need to make it black and white. To do this,
click the Adjustment Layer icon and click "Black & White". We'll convert our visible image into a
Smart Object, so we can bring out the details in the shadows non-destructively. To do this,
Shift-click the photo to make it active as well and click the icon at the upper, right to open
the fly-out list. Click "Convert to Smart Object". Go to Image, Adjustments and "Shadows/Highlights".
If "Show More Options" is checked, the panel will be expanded like this,
however, it it isn't checked, it'll just show the Shadows section, which is all we need.
In most cases, for this type of lighting, we ll need to brighten it all the way to 100%. I ll keep
the "Tone" and Radius at their default amounts of 50% and 30 pixels, respectively. Basically, tonal
width controls the range of tones in the shadows that we modified which varies from image to image.
Too large a value may introduce halos around dark or light edges. The default setting of 50%
attempts to reduce these artifacts. "Radius" controls the size of the local neighborhood around
each pixel and determines whether a neighboring pixel is in the shadows or highlights. Moving the
slider to the left specifies a smaller area and moving it to the right specifies a larger area.
We'll make a copy of our subject by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
Double-click an empty area of the layer to open its Layer Style window.
Click "Color Overlay" and the color box. Pick any color you want. Change its Blend Mode to Multiply.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask next to the top layer. Open your Gradient Tool
and at the top, make sure the Linear Gradient icon is active. Click the gradient bar and in
the Gradient Editor, click the Black & White preset. Click the lower, left Stop and the
color box. If it s not solid black, drag the color in the Preview window to the lower, left corner.
Place your tool just to the left of center and press and hold the Shift key
as you drag the tool to the right approximately this much.
Make the subject under it active and open its Layer Style window.
Click Color Overlay and pick a different color. That s it! Voila! Keep in mind,
since every color has its own inherent level of brightness and therefore will make the face
brighter or darker, we can adjust the brightness of the face with the Shadows/Highlights filter.
For example, I'll double-click Color Overlay of the bottom layer and pick a bright green,
which brightens the half of the face that s green. I'll double-click its Shadows Highlights
and reduce the Shadows until I like the level of brightness on that half of my image.
To switch the colors around, make the layer mask active and invert it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + I.
To reduce the brightness on the green half of the face,
make the bottom layer active. Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click Levels .
Drag the Input Shadows to the right to darken the deepest tones
and drag the middle Input slider to the right, which adjusts the intensity values of the middle
range of gray tones without dramatically altering the highlights and shadows.
Drag the Output white level to the left which darkens the white level in our image.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!