Hey guys!
Welcome back for another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez.
You can find me on Twitter @JRfromPTC.
In today's tutorial, I'll be showing you the highly requested technique that gives photos
a trendy, gritty, high contrast and desaturated look.
I don't, actually, know if this look has a name or not, but if you know what it is, feel
free to leave it in the comments down below.
Anyway, you've probably seen a similar grungy effect in movie posters and advertisements.
I think Nike has used it a lot lately, or at least, something similar.
This effect is actually quite simple.
All we'll use is two adjustment layers and one filter.
One of these Adjustment Layers is the Color Lookup Adjustment Layer, which is new in Photoshop
CS6.
If you have CS5 or older, don't worry about it, I'll be showing you an alternative technique
that should give you very similar results.
If you would like to follow along this tutorial with the image that I'm using, you can download
it for free.
Look for the link down below.
If you're a newsletter subscriber, you'll recognize this image.
We've used it in the Halloween Effects Tutorial, where I showed you how to turn someone into
a vampire, and add digital bruises and scars.
By the way, if you're not a newsletter subscriber yet, and you enjoy my tutorials, sign up now.
It's free.
All you have to do is enter your email address in the box on the sidebar of my website photoshoptrainingchannel.com.
But anyway, let's get started with this tutorial.
And the first thing I'm going to do is duplicate the background layer.
So I'm going to press Ctrl J, that's Command J on the Mac, and I'm going to add a Black
& White Adjustment Layer, and that's to Desaturate the image.
By the way, some people like to use a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, and then, bring the Saturation
Slider all the way to the left to Desaturate.
That works okay, but I prefer the Black & White Adjustment Layer, and I'll show you why.
If I go into Window, History, and create a New Snapshot, so this is "Snapshot 1," that
we just created.
This is the original, and at this point, I can now delete the Hue and Saturation Adjustment
Layer.
I'm going to turn on the Black & White Adjustment Layer.
And at this point, they're pretty much the same.
If I click on Snapshot 1 and Delete Layer, which is the History state that we're at now,
you really don't see a difference.
There's a very subtle difference that you, probably, couldn't see through the video.
But if I start making adjustments to the Reds and the Yellows, you can quickly see a difference,
and I'm going to create a snapshot of the Black and White adjustments I just made.
So this is the Desaturated Image with the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, and this
is the snapshot with the Black & White Adjustment Layer.
So, as you can see, it gives you a whole lot more flexibility.
So that's what we're going to use.
I'm just going to close that since we won't be using it anymore and I'm going to bring
the Opacity down.
So I'm going to put this somewhere around 75%.
You might want to go lower or higher, depending on your image.
Don't try to match all the settings I give you because they're very specific to this
image.
They might work for your image, but I would recommend playing around with the settings
and seeing what works better for your image.
So, for this image, I'm going to leave my Opacity at 75%, then I'm going to press Ctrl
E, Command E on the Mac, to Merge Down, which combines the Adjustment Layer and the Layer
on to one layer, or you could also go to Layer Merge Down.
Then I'm going to duplicate this layer by pressing Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, and
I'm going to go into Filter, Other High Pass, and this is going to give me the High Pass
Filter.
The settings that you want to use here are all relative to your image.
You're probably not going to go this high since you want to be somewhere around here,
where you can see the outline and some texture on the skin of your subject.
I, also, don't want you to go too low, because then, you really can't see any lines or texture.
So, you have to, sort of, find a nice medium, and, for me, it will be somewhere around 6.1,
so I'm going to press OK.
Then, I'm going to go into the Layer Blending Mode and select Overlay.
And, as you can see, this already gave my image a much sharper look.
I'm going to Zoom In so you can see.
So this is what it looks like now, and this is before I added that High Pass filter.
So, as you can see, it gives it a whole lot more contrast.
I'm going to Zoom Out just so we can see the entire image, and I'll do the before and after
here so you can see as well.
Then, I'm going to add a new Color Lookup Adjustment Layer, and I'm going to select
Teal OrangePlusContrast, and just bring the Opacity down.
And that, right there, is just going to automatically color my image and give it a whole lot more
character.
So, once again, I'm going to Zoom In just so you can see the difference.
And, actually, I'm just going to put all these three layers that I've been working with in
one group.
So this is before, and that's after.
Notice the dramatic change, how much better it looked just by adding a few simple layers
and one filter.
Now, if you're using an older version of PhotoshopóPhotoshop CS5 or olderóyou're not going to have the
Color Lookup Adjustment Layer.
So what you can do, then, is use another technique, and I'll show you what that is.
I'm just going to duplicate all the layers, including the background layer, and I'm going
to add that to my group copy, and I'm going to delete the Color Lookup Adjustment Layer.
So the group in the bottom contains the original group we're working with, and this group on
top, I'm going to use to show you what you can use in an older version of Photoshop.
So, I'm just going to click in the top layer, and I'm going to add a Gradient Map.
I'm going to set the Gradient Map to Soft Light.
I'm going to bring the Opacity down just a little bit, maybe, to 62 or so percent.
And I'm going to change the colors, and the colors that I'm going to use is a bluish color
that I predetermined, so that's 1f3946, and for the lighter color, I'm going to use e8cc7f
and press OK.
I'm going to move the swatch here over to the right a little bit, all the way to 25%,
and then press OK.
Now, when I shut off the visibility to the top group, you'll see that it's very similar
to the one at the bottom.
It's not an exact match, but it's pretty close.
So if you have an older version of Photoshop, this is what you can do.
And that's it for this tutorial, guys.
This is, officially, the shortest tutorial that I've done, but I've got a lot of email
requests on how to achieve this effect.
So I figure out we just throw a quick tutorial up for you guys, and show you how to easily
create this.
It doesn't take a lot of time at all.
It could really improve your images, just by simply adding a few Adjustment Layers and
one Filter.
If you have any questions, please leave them down below.
Also, if you create an image using this tutorial, feel free to share it on my Facebook page,
send me a Tweet, or you can, also, send me a message on Google+.
And, by the way, if you want to receive an email notification every time I put up a new
tutorial, feel free to go to my website, Photoshoptrainingchannel.com and enter your email address on the sidebar
to join my free newsletter.
And I hope you learned something new.
Once again, thank you for watching, and I'll talk to you guys again next time.