- Bonjour, madams and monsieurs.
In this video, I want to show you a photo manipulation.
Now, if you're a lover of getting it right in the camera,
and you don't want to do any post-processing,
please stop this video because it's gonna hurt you eyes.
Because we're gonna take this photo,
we're gonna change the sky,
we're gonna make into like a selective color.
And then we're gonna do a dramatic black and white,
using entrant Dodge and burn technique.
It's gonna be crazy, stay until the end.
The best is at the end.
(dramatic music)
Bonjour, madams and monsieurs.
So, in this video, we're gonna go from this photo,
and press Shift + Tab L + L to show you this photo,
which is much more like a fun art photography,
which I'm actually gonna try to sell in galleries.
All right, so let me show you how I did this.
So, let's go back to the original file.
So, if you want to follow along,
you can just click the link under the video.
And once you do that, you kind of come to this page.
This was the one for last week,
which you can download this amazing panorama.
And you just put in your email address.
You click on Sign up for free.
And then it's gonna take you to put in your first name,
first name, last name, password.
Once you do that, it's gonna say that
your items have been added to your library,
press play for your next step.
This is just an attempt from me to sell you all my presets,
which is an awesome deal to which you can get.
You don't have to go for that, you can just get click.
You can just go to PhotoSerge.com.
Because now you have an account there, PhotoSerge.com.
And you go here, up right, to My Library.
And there is going to be all the raw files.
I mean, almost every YouTube video I have.
I have raw files, so they will all be
always in your library, you can just open and download them.
So, I'm gonna give you this raw file,
which is a Fuji GFX 100S file.
Look at the resolution of the thing, it's 11,648 by 8,736.
Look at the detail of this.
I mean, it's one of the best,
if not the best camera in a wealth of city scapes.
And we're gonna turn this into a really cool, fine art.
So, first thing first, I want to do a bit of retouching.
I want to open the shadows a little bit, not completely.
Bring down the highlight, not completely, just a little bit.
Just so that we get some more details.
And then we're gonna do the black and white.
Now, black and white is always vital for me.
I always do this step.
And, for this, if you're on a Mac,
you gotta hold the Option key.
If you hold the Option key
and you move the black setter to the left,
what you're gonna get, what you see here in black,
is dots which are like 100% black, 100% black.
There is no more information.
And then if you'll do the same thing with the white,
and you go to the right,
what you see here is 100% percent white.
Now, I don't want that.
So, I'm just gonna go at the threshold, which is about here.
Okay, maybe on this one, I want to add a bit of texture,
a little bit of clarity.
I never do clarity when there is clouds.
But there is no clouds, we're gonna add the clouds.
And then, I'm not gonna add any vibrance,
or touch the color in any way.
But I do want to make it straight.
It's very tilted down because, you know, I was tilting up.
This was in Paris a few days ago,
there was no cars, I waited for no cars.
And I'm gonna go to the Transform panel here,
and click on Auto.
And boom, it's gonna make it straight.
And then we are going to go to Photoshop.
So, I'm gonna right click, Edit, Edit in Photoshop 2021.
And we're gonna do a Sky Replacement really quick.
All right, so, now we just go to Edit, Sky Replacement.
And, by default, it's gonna use the last sky used.
Now, this was shot, if you see, the sun was there.
This was shot during a sunset.
Now, one thing that's very important,
when you do Sky Replacement, is you got to use a sky
that matches the time of the day.
So, this one, for example, doesn't match.
This is like a blue hour sky.
It just doesn't fit right.
I want something where the sun is here.
So, I'm gonna give you a sky,
and what you can do is you can install it here.
All you have to do is click here,
double click on that sky here.
Or not even double click, I'm gonna go to my Florida sky,
which you can purchase, by the way.
You see that's this sky is we're gonna be using.
So, but I've already installed that in Photoshop.
If you don't have this, all you have to do
is click on the plus.
And here, I have a lot of skies, which are my Florida skies.
Skies which were shot on a medium format camera,
which you can use on any photos.
And I have a great deal on that too,
you will get the links down below.
But I'm gonna offer to use this one sky for free.
You just click on Open,
and that's gonna put it forever in your Photoshop.
Now it's here, I can just click on it and it's there.
And, basically, that's all I'm gonna be doing,
because all I wanted was that sky to be in.
And the colors don't really match, it's totally fine.
Because we're gonna try to do some cool black and white.
So, then I just go to File.
I'm gonna click on Close, and Save.
And that's gonna reintroduce this into Lightroom.
Now, one thing that's vital, so,
is that if you can like this video,
just smash that like button,
it will be amazing because it really makes a difference
in the YouTube algorithm, if this video is liked,
and if it's commented.
So, if you can just take a second,
actually, tell me what you would like to learn,
either on Lightroom, on Photoshop,
on Luminar, on the, you know,
on different photography techniques.
I'm always looking for ideas, I try to do a video a week.
So, if you can just leave me a comment
of what you would like to learn,
that would be really helpful.
Plus I'll make maybe a tutorial just for you.
And if you can like that video,
that means the world to me.
Really, it means the world to me,
because it helps other people to be able to find this video.
So, thank you for doing that.
Okay, so we're back here,
and now we're ready to do our black and white.
Now, on this one, I want to make something a bit archie.
I wanted to make like a selective color, black and white.
So, let me make that screen a little bit bigger,
so you can see better.
And, so, I'm not gonna go here
and turn this photo into black and white.
I'm not gonna do that.
I'm gonna do a selective black and white.
So, for this, I'm gonna go here to the HSL panel.
And I'm gonna, basically,
all I want is to keep this sort of red here.
Yeah, this sort of blue, white, and red photo.
So, well maybe I don't need the greens.
So, I'm gonna make the greens completely desaturated.
I made the aqua desaturated.
Now, the blue is gonna be a problem,
because it takes the blue, oh, not really.
It doesn't really take the blue out of here.
Okay, purple, I don't think there is, yeah, there is purple.
All I care is to make sure that my flag still is on.
And maybe the magenta, yeah, magenta.
See, I cannot do the red,
because I want to keep the flag on.
What about orange?
Yeah, see, I can take orange out.
Ah, not completely, just a little bit.
And yellow, yeah, I can take the yellow out.
So, now, it's almost black and white except the flag.
So, what you do is you take your brush,
and this is the only time I actually do that.
You make sure that you're Feather is 100%,
that your Flow is 100%, and your Density is 100%.
I wanna really powerful brush.
Double click on Effect,
so that everything is down to zero in your settings.
And then desaturate all the way to minus 100.
So, what is brush going to do is wherever you brush,
it's gonna desaturate the colors.
So, that's what I'm doing, I'm gonna desaturate the colors.
First I take a big brush to do almost everything.
And then, once as we get closer to the flag,
I'm gonna go and turn on Auto Mask, yes.
Because Auto Mask, I'm gonna press Shift and zoom in,
what Auto Mask is doing is, basically,
you see that little plus?
If I click here, it's gonna desaturate everything
but the flag.
But if I take the plus, let me show you.
If I do that, you see, the plus is on the flag.
It's gonna desaturate a flag, I don't want that.
So, Command + Z to undo that last thing.
So, make sure the plus never goes into the flag.
And it just helps to make sure
that you desaturate everything except the flag.
You see, it's, yeah.
So, when you were far away from the flag,
you can actually take the Auto Mask off.
Like here, I'm pretty far away.
I want to make sure everything is black and white,
except the flag.
See here, I have.
And whenever I am close to the flag,
then that's when I use heat.
I still have some colors here, that's not good.
You wanna make sure you don't have any color left.
What a cool photo, I really like this photo.
It's actually the best I ever took of the Arc de Triomphe.
I've been shooting this place for 15 years,
and this is the best I ever got.
I mean, that's the one, at least, I liked the most.
Okay, and when you get close to the flag, boom,
that's when you put Auto Mask on.
And then make sure to plus stays outside.
And I will be able to make
everything black and white but the flag.
It's just a cool effect, people love it.
I'm telling you, people love it.
It's a little cheesy, but people love it.
Okay, good, so, now we've got everything black and white.
And we got everything black and white, except the flag.
Now that's just the beginning.
Because now we make the Ansel Adam technique,
where I'm first gonna click and drag,
and darken the top of the photo one time, okay.
Just one time and make a big gradient.
And then I'm gonna remake another gradient,
just for the very top.
And I'm even gonna go a little bit darker.
But I don't want to influence the Arc de Triomphe.
So, I'm gonna go here to Range Mask Off.
I'm gonna go to Luminance and I'm gonna use that.
You see, so, what that's gonna do,
is, you see, the gradient's in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
Now it's behind, in front, behind.
So, it's gonna avoid making the Arc de Triomphe darker.
I'm gonna make a second one here.
A third one, sorry, for the bottom.
I'm gonna add a lot of Contrast.
Because I love black and white, that's contrasty.
And I'm actually going to do a technique called chiaroscuro.
Chiaroscuro is a very fancy French word to, basically,
you make things dark, like this, and then you relight it.
Now, how do we relight this?
Well, I'm gonna relight it with two techniques.
One is the circle, I'm gonna double click here on Effect,
so everything is at zero.
I'm gonna add a bit of exposure,
and try not to go over 0.5, okay.
Then you need to go here
and make sure you're feathering is all the way to 100.
Inverted it and then click and drag.
So, now, you see, it's like I have a little lamp.
Oh, actually, you know what, on this one,
maybe let's make it a tad, maybe let's go to .65.
Yeah, not more than that.
And, you see, what it's gonna do, it's gonna break.
It's gonna break the luminosity.
The luminosity, see how I've got the same gray everywhere
on the Arc de Triomphe?
Now, if you do it too strong, if you do it like this,
it's gonna be visible.
So, a good rule of thumb is try not to go.
You see that value here, like .70 is the max, the max.
Then once you have a value that you like,
you can just right click and duplicate it.
And then I'm gonna put another one maybe here.
And see what happens was that,
let me make sure your Show Edit Pin is on Auto.
I'm gonna put that on Never, so you can see.
So, you see what happens now
is that we have gray, gray, gray.
It's a bit brighter, and then it gets dark again.
It just makes it a little more interesting.
And the key point is not to put it everywhere.
But to put it just in some places, actually, you know what,
on this photo, I think I'm gonna go a little higher.
For some reason, it's not really very powerful.
So, I'm gonna do one here, Duplicate.
Maybe one here, on the clouds.
You see here, on the clouds, it's too strong.
So, don't hesitate to tailor made it, you know.
Make this one a bit less strong.
And I'm gonna right click, Duplicate,
maybe put one here, like that.
Okay, and, usually, when I want to do really
kind of fancy, actually, let me put one on the, um.
I'm gonna put one here on the flag, on the French flag.
Maybe make it a bit brighter.
Okay, cool.
And usually I do two pass, when I do that.
I also take a brush and I double click on Effect.
And I put the exposure, same thing, like .7, max.
I go down here, I take Auto Mask off.
I make sure Flow and Density is in the seventies.
And then I just make my brush a bit smaller.
And then I'm gonna paint here a little bit of white.
It's very, ah, maybe because my Flow and Density is so low.
So, maybe just add a little more.
Yeah.
And, you know, but the key is not to do it everywhere.
You know, between the brush,
and between the brush and the circle,
they sort of get mixed up and, you know,
it makes it like an interesting photo.
And, usually, at this point, what I do,
I think the overall photo is still too dark.
So, I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna go to my White.
And I'm gonna boost my White.
White is gonna take anything which is bright.
Maybe make it bit brighter, it's a little too strong.
And, so, let's compare to the first one that I did.
So, I'm gonna click here,
because I've already done this before.
You see, that's my first version.
Yeah, much brighter, I did it much brighter.
Oh, you see, every time I retouch a photo,
I get a different result.
There's a lot more red on the flag.
But I actually like, I kind of like more,
what I just did with you guys, a little more moody.
But, you know, that's the power of raw files and Lightroom.
You can do whatever you want.
I can open a Shadow and make it much brighter.
I can make it much brighter, I can make it much darker.
At this point, it really is your choice.
So, I hope you enjoy this.
I challenge you to download the video, download the photo,
download the sky that I'm giving you for free with this.
You can also buy all my skies you want,
you have the link down below.
And you can post this on your Instagram.
As long as you credit me at @PhotoSerge.
@PhotoSerge, it'd be amazing.
And if you put it in your story,
and you use the hashtag @PhotoSerge,
I'll share it to my followers,
which is over a hundred thousand people.
So, you might get some followers in a way.
And, also, I'd like to see what you did.
Voila, let me know in the comments
if you liked this kind of tutorial,
what else you would like to learn, very important for me.
Because, you know, when you have to do a video every week,
you know, it takes a bit of imagination.
So, if you can help me on this.
And, of course, please, please, please
smash that like button.
I really appreciate your help.
And I will see you in the next video.