Right now I'm going to show you how to control color with curves inside of Photoshop.
And this is going to create the most realistic catch lights you've ever seen, among other
things.
Let's get started.
So what we want to do is create a bright orange background and then get all these catch lights
to kind of match that color in a realistic way.
Before I do, I hope you don't mind if I just give you a little bit of theory.
Trust me, this is really going to be worth it.
So I'm going to hit CTRL Command M to open up curves.
We will work for an adjustment layer in a second, but there's something I want to show
you.
When we're inside of curves, generally we see this when we make the adjustments.
This affects the luminosity, the brightness, the darkness.
But when we go into the color channels, we're actually going into different mode.
When we're in these color modes, they don't affect the brightness, they affect the color.
So here's the neutral line here.
If I drag above it, we know we're in red.
This is going to add red.
But when we drag down, it doesn't darken.
What it does is it actually adds cyan.
And that's because it works on the six primaries inside of Photoshop, RGB and CMYK.
So when we're in red, when we go above the baseline, we get red.
Go beneath the baseline, we get cyan.
When we switch to the green channel.
Now we go above the baseline, it adds green.
If we go beneath the baseline, it removes green.
But what it actually does is it adds magenta, which is the opposite of green.
If I go into the blue channel, we push it up, it adds blue.
And if we want to get yellow.
You wouldn't go darker for yellow, would you?
Not if we're working in darkness, but because we're working in color, the opposite primary
of blue is yellow.
So to add yellow, we actually drag it down and notice it doesn't make it brighter or
darker.
All it's doing is changing the color.
All right, let's go ahead.
And what we want to do is create this orange color using the color curve.
So we're going to go into the adjustment layer, and we're going to choose curves.
All right, so cast your mind back to color theory.
The two colors that make up orange are a mix of red and yellow.
So hopefully now you can see the.
Value of what I just taught you.
Now we know how to get yellow.
Okay, so let's go into the red.
So we want to add red.
Now, there's another thing about the curves that really make this powerful.
I can go into the shadow of the highlight area.
If I go to the left, this is the shadow area.
I can apply that red to the shadows.
See what we're doing?
If I go to the right, which is the highlight areas, and I push up.
Notice I'm pushing red into the highlights and I can take them away from the shadows
by dragging there.
Look at that.
Alright.
Alright, now we've explained that.
Let's go to the red.
We're going to add some red here into the highlight area.
Now we want to make an orange and we need some yellow.
So let's go to the blue channel.
Remember, the opposite of blue is yellow.
And so we want to add this to the highlight area.
So let's drag the highlight and drag down.
Notice now we get this yellow so we can create this beautiful orange color.
Now I can roll this off the shadows if I don't want it to affect the shadows, but I'm not
too worried about this.
Let's go back to the red and maybe push this a little bit more.
There we go.
Now we're getting that really, really bright orange that we want.
Okay.
Because this is lit kind of behind them into the front and back.
The area facing us wouldn't get as much color as the rest.
So what we want to do is grab this layer mask there.
Then we're going to have a brush.
We're going to have b for the brush and then I can paint this away with black.
All right, so let's click on the color picker.
Make sure that we are choosing black as our foreground color.
Now I don't want to take this all the way down.
I could change this to a gray or I'm just going to change the Opacity.
Let's just drop the opacity down to 50 for what we want to do today.
I'll make this a little bit bigger and make sure we select the settings.
And we want to make the hardness all the way down.
So it's going to give us a soft brush.
And now we're just going to paint down the middle and notice when I did that, notice
it's giving us a more realistic kind of a look with the orange kind of hitting these
other areas.
Okay, we can touch this up a.
Little bit in some of the areas that maybe wouldn't be getting as much of the color.
All right, now currently we've got this affecting everything.
I just want to hit the highlights and roll this off the mid tones and shadows a little
bit.
So what we're going to do is see where the curve adjustment is, choose effects and then
we're going to select blending options.
Now what we want to do is use blend if to roll this off the shadows.
So we're going to take the slider.
Okay.
We're going to just roll it off and notice we get these very rough edges.
So we're going to smoothen those out, hold down alter option and then drag one side of
the trigger.
We're going to split it, drag it.
All the way back.
Notice now we have a smoother transition.
Now as we drag this more, you'll notice that it's rolling that color away from more of
the image.
So if we go to the middle now, it's just going to hit the midtones and brighter the shadow.
Midtones are not going to have that color anymore.
And if we look at this before and after, you can see now it's affecting us more where this
color is bouncing off these highlight areas.
So if we look at this, here's.
Our image before, here's our image after.
So if you wanted to put a different background in there, of course you could.
And all you need to do is cut it out.
And now you're going to have the very realistic looking color of reflections on this image.
So I'm curious if you learn anything new, if this is useful, let me know in the comments.
And also, did you like it when a bit more in depth or would you prefer to just keep
it fast paced?
I'm also curious.
Let me know in the comments.
And if you're new.
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