- (speaks in foreign language)
In this episode, I'm gonna show you
how to add depths to your photo.
(angelic music)
- (speaks in foreign language) My name is Serge Ramelli.
I'm a French photographer in the beautiful city
of Paris, France, and in this video,
I wanna show you how you can add color depths
playing with haze in a photo.
Don't forget to download the source files
and also my photographic toolbox.
Now, my photographic toolbox is amazing presets,
texture, sky, and brushes that you can use in your photo.
It's all free.
All you have to do is either click the little Info button
up there, or the link below this video.
Don't forget to subscribe to this YouTube channel
by clicking the little Subscribe button and the little bell
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Alright, let's go to Paris, and let me show you
how you can add depths to your photo.
And in this episode, I wanna show you a photo shoot
I did a couple of days ago in Paris where I did
something special to get more depths into my photo,
a special drama secret that I want
to reveal to you right now.
Alright guys, so I just want to talk to you about this photo
because, you know, I get a lot of photo everydays
where photographers send me their photos,
and I think there's one misconception
or a mistake that I see a lot where people is trying
to get drama everywhere on their photo.
And this photo actually did really well on social media
and I wanted to share with you
a few secrets about this photo.
First of all, of course, the composition.
You know, whenever I got up very early in the morning
and I see this, you know, amazing sunrise in Paris,
and I was looking, what could I put up
in the foreground of my photo,
and I found these two lamps, you know.
And then, so, I had the sun in the middle
and then, you know, I took a few shots
until I got that one bird and I thought
that was great, you know, a good composition.
So, let me reset it and show you how I did it.
That's the original roll file without any retouching.
And there's a few tricks to it, but the main trick is this.
So first, you know, if you follow my channel,
you've seen me do this over and over, right?
We open up the shadows, I'm gonna do, you know,
my white points, usually holding the Option key.
I don't wanna burn anything, I don't care
about the sun if it's burned because it's
anyway already way burned.
Then I'm gonna do my black points.
You know, I usually want 2 or 3%
of the photo to be really pure dark.
And then what? And then this is it.
So, the overall photo, like once I'm done with all that
it's come off too, yeah, it's too dark.
So, what I usually do is I brighten up the whole thing,
and then I'm gonna take here this linear gradient, okay,
and I'm going to go to, well, exposure.
When you take any of these settings,
like, let's say I will take shadows
or I would take, you know, exposure,
what it does, and it's always a safety,
it puts everything at zero except the one option you took.
So, I'm gonna go just a little minus exposure here,
okay, and then I'm gonna go like this.
Now the problem with that is that it's...
It's okay, it's good, but it's making everything darker.
What I wanna do is I wanna make more contrast
between the full round that's done,
I want it to be really sharp, and the background
that I want to be more diffused,
you know, because if you have, if everything is super sharp,
is super contrasted in your entire photo,
you don't have depths, you don't have notion
of what's further away, what's close to you.
Usually when it's further away, you know,
it's more blurry, more fuzzy.
So what I'm gonna do is, on top of darking it,
I'm gonna use a de-haze.
Usually de-haze gives you the right to add drama.
I'm gonna go the reverse, okay, I'm gonna de-haze a lot.
But the problem now is that it de-hazes
all over my lamps here.
But if you don't have the new Lightroom CC, check this out.
If you go to Range Mask, and you go to luminance,
you click here, you're gonna hold down the Option key,
and that's gonna create a mask.
Now, the way masks work in Photoshop, in Lightroom
and everywhere else in any software anywhere
is that black conceals, white reveals.
So, you see how the lamps are becoming black?
What's gonna happen is that the fuzziness, the haze,
is only gonna go behind the lamps, okay?
So check it out, before...after, okay?
It took, you know, it took some of the drama off the sky,
I agree, but I want it, especially for the buildings,
I want the buildings to be really hazy, okay?
Now, I can always add a new gradient.
And this time I'm gonna go to Contrast,
or I'm gonna go to Exposure, and I'm gonna
lower the exposure just to close the photo
and maybe go the other way around
and de-haze a little bit just the top of the photo
so we still get some clouds, but what I'm really trying
to do here is I really want, you know,
this building to be less clear than this one.
Now, for this to work, I have to create another gradient
which is what I'm gonna do, and this time,
I'm going to go to Exposure, and I'm gonna just,
this time, do the opposite, I'm gonna bring,
I'm gonna do de-haze the other way.
So now, I have, and, you know, maybe not make it so dark.
So, now, I've got a full round that's, you know,
very sort of dark, and the rest is hazy.
Now, I'm lacking colors in this photo, obviously,
so I'm gonna add a lot of vibrants,
I'm gonna add a little bit of saturation,
I'm gonna add some magenta because
that's what I do for lighting, I add magenta.
And it's already warming up, but you see how fuzzy,
you know, the building is and how sharp that is?
You see, fuzzy, sharp.
That's gonna give dimension to your photo.
It's gonna make it more interesting.
Okay, I think I'm gonna boost even more
the overall photo, add some contrast,
and now, you know, I just fine tune things.
Like, for example, I find that it's too blue here.
So, what I usually do when some colors are not good,
I go down here to the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance,
and I take this little tool here on Saturation,
and I click here, and what it's gonna do
is detect whatever color is there,
and I'm gonna lower this, you see,
it makes the purple and the magenta a bit darker,
a bit lower, and then I'm gonna click here
and maybe go, the other is gonna be orange,
go a little bit brighter, something like this,
just to correct it.
I think I'm gonna add even more,
the original version added a little more saturation.
Okay, maybe warm it up a little tiny bit
to take out some of the blue, and yeah,
something that just kills some of the blue.
You know, I really wanted this sunrise
kind of feeling, you know.
So, I'm gonna create a virtual copy here,
because, you know, I always like
to create a virtual copy.
Usually, I will do sharpening or other things.
And I'm just gonna reset it.
I'm using the visual, so that's before,
and that's the after, you know, it's quite a change.
It's quite a change, and I think on this one
I'm gonna add even more yellow
because there's too much blue yet
to make it shine even more, you know.
So, you know, I lost some details of this kind,
but that's fine, you don't always have to have
like these crazy skies, you know, with a lot of contrast.
Sometimes, it's kind of nice to have it hazy,
as long as, you know, play around with contrast.
Now, we have a contrast between, you know,
let me show this to you in fullscreen,
between what's hazy and what's not hazy,
and that's gonna give a lot of dimension to your photo.
I hope this trick is gonna help you.
I'm gonna give you this file.
If you cannot fly over to Paris on the sunrise,
you know, and take a photo by yourself.
I'm gonna use this file to play around with,
so you can see what I mean.
All you have to do is click the link under this video,
and voila, we'll see you in another video,
(speaks in foreign language) hope you like this.
Alright, guys, I got something really cool to show you.
I got a new app on my watch. Check this out.
(electronic whirring)
Hey guys, it's so funny, it feels so weird
to be so small in Paris, I gotta watch out for the rats.
Let me know if you wanna learn anything, you know,
on photography, on photography techniques,
on Photoshop, on Lightroom, anything you wanna do.
I'll try to do my best to fulfill your wishes.
For now, let me show you something.
(electronic whirring) Yes.
It feels good to be bigger.
Now guys, don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
All you have to do is click here,
and you've gotta click that little bell
so you get a notification every time
a fresh video comes out.
Now, I'm gonna explore Paris as Ant-Man.
(electronic whirring)
Wow, guys, this is so cool, everything seems so big.
Okay, I'll see you in another video.
I'm gonna explore Paris. Buh-bye.
(uplifting music)