- Mmmm! (claps)
Ready to go, I'm on time, it's Tuesday.
Lockin' this down to two minutes, let's get it done.
(rock music)
What's up everybody?
Peter McKinnon here and welcome back to
yet another 2 Minute Tuesday.
It's so good to see all of your smiling faces
and today's topic, we're jammin' on
three ways to enhance your photos in Photoshop.
Now, today's video is gonna specifically
go over the first way and I'm going to roll this out
over a series of three videos.
These are techniques that I've been using for years.
I first started doing this in 2009.
Sometimes I do it a little more subtle than others,
sometimes I do it in a very bold-like manner.
It's really fun to do, it's a way to kind of accent
the colors that are already in your photo
and turn them into something that's a little more like,
larger-than-life, sort of like superhero-esque but a little
almost sci-fi, it's a kind of a weird mixed kind of thing.
Here's some examples, obviously you saw the thumbnail
which is my friend Jay who is a firefighter.
And here's another example of my friend Adam
that came up with the device that shoots
fire from your wrists, super cool.
And here's another one of my friend Spencer
who is actually a Canadian Special Forces Scout sniper.
So those are three examples of what I'm going to show you
over these next three videos.
Today specifically we're talking about color gradients
and how to kind of accentuate the colors, like I said,
that already exist in your photo and bring them out with
a little more bold larger-than-life flavor, if you will.
So we're gonna use Photoshop for this.
So before we jump in, let's throw two minutes on the clock
and let's get started.
Alright so fire up Photoshop, grab a photo that you want
to apply this effect to and let's get started.
The first thing you're going to want to do is come down here
to the color pickers, you can reset those to black and white
by hitting "x" and "d" on your keyboard.
But we're gonna click on one of them which is gonna open up
the palette and you're just gonna select the color
that you wanna use, in this case we're gonna use red.
Now keep in mind that I'm applying this effect to a photo
that I've already done it to so it's gonna be
a little heavier than I would probably recommend
but for explanation purposes it should do just fine.
Once you have that color selected, come down here
and start a new layer and then we're gonna slide
all the way up to the gradient selection tool and make sure
this one here with the transparent background is selected.
Hit "g" on your keyboard to open up that gradient,
hold down "shift" and then you're gonna
drag across a straight line.
Holding "shift" locks that line to be straight.
If you didn't have "shift" held down you could
drag it up and down, up and down, etc.
But we want it to be perfectly straight, so let's drag
that across and boom, we've got a red gradient.
You might be saying, "That looks terrible"
and I would agree, so come over here to your blending mode
scroll all the way down to "color"
and that's going to effectively change
that entire gradient to be a solid red
but it's going to blend with the background.
The thing is we don't want everything in this photo
to be only red, so we're gonna change
the fill and the opacity over here on the right
to kind of tone that down just a little bit.
So that looks a lot better.
Now we're gonna do the same thing
but we're gonna use blue instead of red on the other side.
So again, select your blue, hit "g",
hold down "shift", drag over that gradient,
change that to "color" in the blending mode
and then adjust the opacity and the fill
and you've got a really interesting lighting dynamic here
without having to use gels or actual strobes.
This was all done basically just with available light.
And there is a perfect example of one of the steps
that I use to kind of enhance my photos and my portraits
to make them feel a little more larger-than-life,
is the best way I can put it.
Super fast, here's another version
of my friend who is a scout sniper.
As you can see, I faded green from the right
and blue from the left using the exact same technique
which pulls out the accents of the forest and the mood
and the tone and the light of the day
which just makes everything a little more bold and colorful
which is my style but I think that you guys will probably
have a little fun with this, so I urge you to check it out.
Next week we're gonna be talking about how to add even more
elements to make your photos even more hyper-realistic.
Oooo, that's a good one!
So stay tuned for that and guys, I hope you like this video.
Hit that "like" button if you did,
smash it if that's something that your into.
Subscribe if you aren't already and...
And I will see you on the next 2 Minute Tuesday.
(techno music)