Hi, I'm Glyn Dewis and welcome to episode one hundred of this almost weekly video show.
In this particular episode what I want to do is who you how you can color grade your
pictures, how you can add mood and atmosphere really quickly using something called color
lookup tables in photoshop.
Just to set things straight right from the word go, this is actually a tutorial for those
of you who are using the subscription based version of Photoshop.
so you actually on the creative cloud.
That's purely because Adobe have only put the color lookup tables or 3d LUTs into the
subscription version of Photoshop.
That being said, what exactly are they?
Basically they are a great way that you can color grade your pictures.
They're pretty new to photoshop but have been around the movie and video world for a long
time.
Any of you premier pro users or any other movie editing software, you'll know exactly
what it is I'm talking about.
Let's take a look at them.
First of all where we find them, how we use them, how you can create your own and also
just a couple of the pitfalls that I can show you that will help you have no problems in
the future when you are actually trying to use them.
If we take a look at the picture on the screen and this is a picture that I took of a couple
of guys from a group called the bearded villains.
This is the final retouch picture and you can probably see from the layers panel here
we've got a few adjustments at the top here.
These are the one around basically adding in that final look but I actually want to
be able to use this look on many other pictures from now on.
I could maybe create an action.
We'll talk about actions in a short while and why they're not going to be the best thing
to use, but let's just focus on these color lookup tables.
Where are they, then?
First of all let's just get rid of all these layers here at the top.
This is the picture at the stage now where I want to add in the color grading.
The actual color lookup tables are found amongst the adjustment layers at the top right hand
corner.
You're going to find them just up here and there's a three by three grid.
When you click on that you're going to be presented with the properties here with three
drop down menus.
Oops.
Let's just get rid of that one there.
Then we click on the first one.
As in all of them you'll see all of these different names given to these presets.
You can see that if I click on them it's going to start adding in certain looks to the pictures.
Nothing groundbreaking or new there.
Especially for those of you who like to use plugins like the one I mentioned early on
with the color effects pro.
The great thing here is these are now adjustments layers within our pictures.
What that means is we can use things like opacity if we wanted to lower the opacity.
We can also start to be really creative by playing around with blend modes just to see
what kind of looks we can build up.
We can add more and more and more to get that final look that we want, but here is how I
actually do use them and I think you'll see at the end why I do it this particular way.
I now want to add in a mood, a look to this kind of picture.
When I get to this stage, let's just close up tab just there, what I then do is go to
the image menu and choose duplicate and click okay.
What that's basically going to do is give me exactly the same copy of the picture.
Not only do we have the picture but we also have the layers over on the right hand side
in the layers panel as well.
On this copy what I then do is come to the fly out menu at the top of the right hand corner
of the last panel and choose flatten image.
Again,
this will all become clear as to why I do that at the very end of the video.
Now then, let's add a look that we want to give to this picture.
I'm going to start using these lookup tables or these LUTs and we'll go to the first one
here, we'll go to the first drop down menu and I'll choose something like tension green.
Again it's an adjustment layer, so let's just take the opacity down.
We'll take it to forty percent.
Let's have another one.
I'll choose the drop down menu here.
This time I'm going to choose maybe edgy amber and we'll reduce the opacity way down on that
one to maybe fifteen percent and let's add just one more third one and we'll go for crisp
warm and we'll take that to maybe forty percent.
As well as these lookup adjustment layers here, I'm going to add in a curves
adjustment and I think with this one here I want to just bring back a little bit more
detail in the shadow areas.
We'll take the bottom left hand corner there and we'll drag that up slowly just to bring
a bit of detail back in the darks, in the shadows, and let's just have a little bit
of warmth in it.
Where it says RGB let's click to go to the blue channel, go to the top right hand corner
and drag that down to add a little bit of yellow, put a bit of warmth into the picture.
Now that we've got this look we're going to go to the file menu, we're going to go to
export, and we're going to go to color lookup table.
When we get that we get this little dialog box comes up that says the name of the picture
that we're working on.
Copyrighted to yourself.
The quality, I'm going to leave it high here and in the form of section you may find in
your version there that by default all four of these options are checked.
Just leave it in the first one, little 3DL for the 3D LUT, a little tick in there and
then click okay.
When you click okay Photoshop then asks you what do you want to call it?
We'll call this one bearded villains and I'll save it on my desktop in a folder called LUT
and then click save.
Now then, let's just get rid of all these layers.
Let's just pretend now this is a whole new picture.
I now want to add that exact same look to it.
All I do is go to the adjustment layers, click on the color lookup adjustment layer, we've
got the three options, click on the first menu, click on it once to open it, click on it again
where it says load and then just navigate to where those LUTs are that you've created
and choose the one you want, click open, and it applies it.
It's very quick.
The thing with using actions, you may be thinking now, why don't I just create an action?
When you create an action you're recording everything that you do within Photoshop and
that includes the name of the layers.
You may find that when you you try to use the action on a picture in
the future that the layers within the picture you're working on aren't named exactly the
same.
When you try to run that action it may look for the original names of the layers and because
it can't find them it starts to throw a bit of a hissy fit and it may cause problems and
may not work.
With the color lookup tables it doesn't care what the layers are called.
It just applies it with one click.
That's how we can use them.
I've shown you you can use the blend modes on them, you can load the opacities, just
to get really creative with them.
Now let's look at the pitfalls, things that you need to be aware of when you're doing
it.
The first one is this.
When you're creating them you have to have a layer that is a background layer and it's
locked.
Let me just show you what happens if you don't have that.
I'm going to unlock this layer and we'll just create one look.
Let's just go down to here.
We'll go down to crisp winter, let's say, something like that, and let's say now I want
to save this out as my own lookup table I can use later on.
We go to the file menu which use exports and which use color lookup tables, but now when
I click on it we've got this warning box that comes up saying, could not export color lookup
tables because this document has no background.
You have to have a background layer that's locked.
Click okay.
Let's go back to that layer.
As a matter of fact let's just delete that.
Now that we've got this layer that isn't a background let's turn it into a background
by going to layer, new background from layer, then let's try again.
Let's just create that same look.
We've got crisp winter.
Now let's go to file, export color lookup tables, and there we go.
Carry on as normal and we're not now getting that warning dialogue box come up.
Let's just cancel that one.
The other one is, you'll remember from before rather that rather than me creating the lookup
table at this particular stage where we've got all the layers and the original picture
and then saving it, I actually created a duplicate, flattened it, and then made it.
This is why.
Let's just say we wanted to create that same look with this picture here.
With all the layers below it.
I'll go to the 3D LUTs, the color lookup tables and we'll create the same look.
Tension green, down to forty percent.
We'll add a second color lookup and we'll go to edgy amber, turn that down to fifteen
percent, let's add that third one in.
This one we're going to choose maybe crisp warm, turn that down to forty percent and
then that final layer that we had was that curves layer where we increased the detail
in the shadow areas, we went to the blue channel and then we added in some yellow, some warmth
into the picture like so.
Nothing different so far.
Now then, let's say that we want to save that look.
We go to file, export and go to color lookup tables.
No warning dialogue box appears.
We get the name of the file here, the copyright, the quality, the 3DL is checked.
We click okay.
Everything seems fine at the moment.
We'll then name this one bearded villains two, and we'll go to desktop and we'll put
it in that same folder where my original one was saved.
We've got bearded villains and now we've got one that we've just created called bearded
villains two and we'll click save.
Nothing different so far but let's now delete all these layers and say that.
we've now done all this retouching and all we want to do is add that final look to our
picture.
We know we created a 3DLUT, a color lookup table for it.
We click on the color lookup adjustment layer.
We click on the first menu, click again where it says load, navigate to the folder where
we saved our looks.
Let's just choose the one that was called bearded villains two and then click open.
Now you might think that nothing seems that different, until I zoom in.
Now look.
Look at his clothing.
It's all gone weird.
Something's gone seriously wrong here.
It really doesn't like it when you create these lookup tables when you have other layers
below them that aren't just the background layer.
I hope that makes sense.
Keep things nice and simple.
If, however, we now apply the color lookup table from the original one we created on
our duplicate image, so we go to load 3DLUT, choose the one that was just called bearded
villains and then open, we can see there's absolutely no problems and the exact look
we're after has been applied.
That there is color lookup adjustments.
Absolutely fantastic.
I really do love these and I'll be honest with you.
In the past week or month or so I haven't even bothered going into my usual method of
coloring my pictures, which is where I'm using all these ones here, Nik Collection, MacPhun
and Topaz.
Don't forget, if you like the content make sure that you let others know about it and
share it out.
This is now episode one hundred.
Those of you who have stuck with me all the way through, thank you so much.
Obviously we're going to continue but a huge thanks from me, but please share it out there.
It would be great if you could do that.
If you haven't subscribed already make sure you click that little subscribe button there
which is just another way of showing some support but you'll also get to know when there's
a new video that's been released and if you want the same file that you can see on the
screen now so that you can get working straight away to try out these lookup tables so that
you can get to know the techniques, just go to my website, join the email group by putting
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That's it.
Thanks again.
Episode one hundred.
We are done.
I'll see you next week for a new one.