- Bonjour mesdames and messieurs, in this video
I'm gonna show you all the different secrets I had
retouching my lavender field.
It's a bucket shot for me.
I've been wanting to do this my whole life as a
photographer, and I'm gonna show you some little secrets
that's gonna really make the colors,
pop and be completely right.
Stay until the end,
because the best retouching is at the end.
And the best secret is right at the end of this video.
So come and join me and let's retouch
the lavender fields together.
(dramatic vocalizing)
All right mesdames and messieurs.
So let's, I want to show you some of the retouching
that I did, some of the things that worked,
and I found a really cool trick that I'm gonna show at
the end, so stay until the end of this video,
it's a little thing,
but it really makes sure you get the color right.
So basically when I got there, honestly, the sky was bad.
It was the worst it can be.
It was very hazy.
You know, it was hasn't rained in weeks, maybe months.
So there was a lot of dust particle.
It was just, you know, almost white, nothing.
So when that happens,
what I decided to do is really stay on toward the sun
and just wait for the sun to come down.
And honestly, I did not really take any good photos
until this specific moment,
which is when the sun is half in and a half out.
That that is something that lasts two minutes.
And that was kind of like the first shot that I got.
And when that happens, I always shoot for the highlights.
You can see how dark the photo is.
I don't like to do HDR.
I like to try to get it right in the camera.
And this is what I got.
So the truth at how I retouched this
is I retouched it using my presets,
but I'm gonna show you without the presets.
Below this video I'm gonna give you some
of the best RAW files, so you can try this at home
if you cannot fly to Provost.
I'm also gonna give you a little guide of the best
location to shoot the lavender in Valencia,
which is where I, which is the main place.
So you have the photo and you click here.
You have the exact Google map, you know, location.
You can even open this PDF on your phone and you are gonna
get all the location of all the photos
that I'm about to retouch.
Also, you can get for free my free toolbox
and some of the presets
for free that I'm gonna be using today.
So what I usually do on this one is,
this one is really dark.
So I'm gonna open up to shadow, but not completely,
not like a 100% on this one.
You know, for many years,
I always did like this plus 100 minus 100 on this one,
I'm gonna go a little more gentle because I find it gives
a more natural results.
So I'm gonna go like maybe
like plus 57 highlights like this.
I'm still gonna do a black point by holding the option key
and going to the left.
I want to get about two, 3% of my photos of pure blacks.
And then I'm gonna go with the white here.
So if you hold on the Option key
on a Mac or the Alt key on Windows and you move to the
right, you'll see this are pixels,
which are a 100% white.
Okay.
You don't want anything white because if I would print
something, it is, it would just be basically paper.
Okay, and black,
I just want to be like one or 2% of what you see here
in purple is 100% black.
Okay, good.
I'm happy with that.
And I'm, maybe I'm gonna make the overall photo
a bit brighter so we can see a bit what's going on,
but it was really dark, you know?
And the next thing I'm gonna do is usually when I got my
exposures right, you can fine tune it by the way,
was the curve here.
I like to use the, this option here.
If you click here on this little guide where you can go into
shadows, dark, and light and highlights,
so you can move this around, like, oh,
maybe I'm gonna open the shadows a bit more here.
And it just does different things to the curve and you,
you just move them around and adapt them to how you want it.
I'm just moving them around until I have something that I
like, and it's gonna create a curve.
Okay, cool.
Maybe not so much to shadow something like that.
Okay.
Once I have the exposure that I kinda like,
I play around with the white balance.
I think the wide balance is pretty spot on.
I think I shot on cloudy or I think cloudy.
It's funny.
Cloudy is supposed to be pretty cool.
And it's still pretty warm to me.
I think I'm gonna stay on cloudy,
maybe just add back a little bit of blue
and a little bit of magenta.
Yeah.
You just want to make sure the lavender
has the right color.
So maybe adding a bit of more blue makes it a little more.
I kind of like that, but my sky is a bit too bright,
so I'm gonna go here,
I'm gonna click and drag, click and drag here,
and I'm gonna lower the exposure a little bit and maybe
add a bit of an magenta just in that sky.
Okay.
And when it comes for the highlights,
let's see what happens if I lower the highlights.
Yeah, maybe I lower the highlights a little bit
and add a bit of contrast.
And I'm pretty happy with that.
That's to be before backslash key,
and that's the after.
I'm pretty happy with it.
That was a Sony shot by the way.
Later on, I took a Fuji shot.
I just bought the GFX 50 R,
which is a medium format camera.
There's I really kind of liked the colors of it.
And so on this one, I'm gonna use my preset.
So I'm gonna use my golden hour preset, you see,
I've got like five golden hour preset.
You gotta get like one of the five for free.
If you click the toolbox.
But when you get the toolbox,
by the way, you're gonna get an email.
You're gonna get this in your email.
And I will make you a proposal
to get the full set of preset if you can,
it fully supports this channel,
me making weekly free videos for you,
and you will love it because this is what I use everyday.
So I go with my golden hour preset.
I'm like, oh, I kind of flagged this one,
maybe the light one.
And then when I use my preset and let me close this,
I still hold on the option key and check my black.
I want about, yeah, about 5% black and then my whites.
Okay.
And then the highlights, highlights here pretty low.
And maybe out of the contrast and very fast,
I got a really good retouching that I like.
Now, all my presets comes with local adjustments.
So you click here first and you can see there a local
adjustment for that.
It's basically lowering the sky and it's lowering this.
But another thing that my preset does,
which I think is really cool is adds a bit of a circle here
for the sunset.
So you can decide in this case,
I'm not even gonna use it.
I'm gonna take it out, 'cause I don't think it's needed.
The only thing I might do on this one is I just might dodge
a little bit the photo to make the lavender
a little bit brighter.
And also one thing is when you use my preset, you will see,
look at the hue and saturation.
They have like a special curve to it that just makes the
color better, which I didn't do on this photo.
That's why I love using the preset.
'Cause it's like 27 sliders, you know,
done for the price of one, I'll get,
I get at least four emails per day
of people telling me I was very skeptical you know,
I didn't believe in you preset.
I use it in some of my photos and I love them.
So thank you for that guys.
Okay.
So I'm just gonna take a brush and that's something you
have to do.
It's not part of a preset.
Add a bit of exposure.
Try to go above 0.5 and I'm just gonna,
it's very subtle guys, very subtle.
I'm just gonna make a bit of highlights
on the lavender here.
And, and I really love that, shot one of my favorite before,
after I love the Fuji colors and,
and I'll show you something really cool later on.
Okay, now this was the next morning,
this was the next morning.
So same thing on this one,
I'm gonna use one of my presets.
Think I'm gonna go for the golden hour circle on this one.
I'm gonna make sure the shadows are not that high,
I think I want to make it more natural.
So you can use a preset and change things around.
And then I kind of like the white balance.
I'm gonna go here.
I'm gonna go with 16 by nine.
'Cause I love the sort of movie look, take the angle,
click and drag.
And yeah, we had a lovely first morning.
Check it out.
I really loved that shot.
This was a Fuji shot, I believe.
Great, great colors.
That's the before, that's the after.
Then a bit later on that morning.
And so that's a mistake not to do.
And I really want to show you these photos.
So you don't fall into the same trap.
When you shoot and the sun is very high.
All your colors get squashed.
All right, check it out.
When I use my preset, it's really weird.
It's just because there's no more colors because the sun
will wash out everything.
So as a solution is either to shoot when the sun is half in,
half out, which is what I showed here
or to wait for the sun to go
behind and then you'll get a less dynamic range
and you get nicer colors.
This photo was not usable for me,
although it kind of looked nice.
Even if I shot it with HDR,
it's just too much dynamic range.
This was shot with a Fuji.
So this one was the same night, I shot with a Sony.
And I'm gonna show you a little trick on this one,
which is kind of cool.
It's a small thing, but I just found out about it recently.
It's really great.
So golden hour, I'm gonna use a golden hour,
leave it a little bit dark.
I'm just gonna boost the highlights,
maybe lower a little bit shadows
to make it a bit more natural.
And this is the magic trick.
You go here and you'll see on the Fuji photo,
it's on the next photo, it's even more important,
and if you have the latest version of Lightroom,
you have an option here called camera matching.
Camera matching is basically profiles
that the different brands create for you.
So this is Sony and you can go here like you can go neutral
and it's a profile and it's gonna slightly
alter the colors.
On this one, I'm gonna go vivid, check this out.
Neutral, vivid,
and vivid is just gonna really make it vivid.
So much as sometime that you have to like even lower.
I'm gonna double click on the vibrance and the
saturation, but I just love the color that it gives.
It just makes the color really pop.
Maybe I'm even gonna lower the magenta a little bit,
but you will see even more on the next photo.
So next photo is this one.
This was shot the next morning.
That was this famous, you know, little place that I found.
And it was really hard to find.
That's why you should use my guide if you go there.
And, and I was really happy
except the sunrise was really bad.
So something I I'm gonna use my golden hour preset.
So I'm gonna show you two photos.
One was before the sunrise, which was this one,
which I kind of thought was kind of boring and something on
this one, now check this out.
If you go here, now the profile for Fuji,
because Fuji comes from a background of films.
I used to shoot film and I used to shoot with Velvia 50 and
Velvia 100, it's a very colorful film and check it out.
They have Provia and they have Velvia, check out,
look at the difference.
Look at, look at the lavender when I go to Velvia,
bam, such a difference,
it just makes the lavender really pop.
And I love this,
plus I love it just brings me good memory
of when I was shooting a film and then same thing,
you can lower the vibrance as you've seen so far,
but the lavender looks great.
So same thing here.
This one was kind of cool.
So when you have a retouching that you like, you can go,
you can select the next photo and click on synchronize.
And it's even gonna synchronize the profile that you use.
You see, no it's not, actually in this case,
you have to go back and reselect the profile.
I'm sorry, I just lied.
So I'm gonna go back to vivid and close the profile here.
And this only works, if you have, like,
if you have an old version of Lightroom,
this is not gonna work by the way.
And then I just love the colors that it makes.
And there is a circle there, which is, you know,
included in my profile.
I'm gonna make this bigger and maybe make it go outside,
'cause that's where the sun was.
And I think I'm gonna go 16 by nine on this one.
And by the way, guys,
if you like this kind of retouching,
and this kind of videos,
please give me a like, and leave me a comment.
I love listening.
And I'm sorry,
I love reading your comments and I love getting your likes.
So smash that like button, kill it.
It really helps me to make more videos.
It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference.
And last my favorite photo,
this one is, was shot with a Fuji.
I at first I was like, I didn't really like the photo.
And then I did this.
I used my golden hour preset,
which I love my preset.
And then I went here and I went into the camera matching
and I went back to Velvia and I was like, oh,
the lavender looks so epic,
so much I had to turn down the vibrance and the saturation.
I just love the Velvia 50,
I even like lowered the vibrance a little bit.
And it was actually strangely enough,
it was my favorite shot of, of the whole stay,
I don't know, I don't know why.
I just really love this shot.
I'm just gonna move this around where the sun was.
And then it's a little bit too grayish,
remember my presets have gradients,
so you can take that gradient and you can add a bit of blue
because I don't like gray.
Blue is fine.
Orange is fine, but gray is not fine.
And then I can adjust here my little thing.
So, voila, and that's the full, that's the photo.
That was my favorite.
If you get a chance, one time to go lavender field,
get my guide, go for it, download it.
If you don't get a chance to download the source files,
which I'm giving you for free,
download my presets that I'm giving you for free.
If you can buy my full set of preset,
you are gonna be blown away.
I have thousands of people using them all over the world.
Thank you very much for watching.
And guys, I just prepare to play these for you
of some of my best landscape tutorials.
It's starting right now.
You can watch it here.