in this video I want to share some of the selection techniques I use when editing
photos with the nik collection I've already converted the original raw file and opened it
in nik viveza I'm using nik viveza because it makes understanding control points easier
let's start by adding a single control point to see what it's doing you can do this by clicking
the add control Point icon and then clicking on a point in the image to select it control
points use something called u-point technology the idea is that you point at the thing you want
to edit which is then selected by the control Point what happens with the control point is
that the software is sampling the area of the photo at its Center it then selects any similar
pixels in the image based on the sampled color and tone the control point is also added to this
selective adjustments list over on the right of the interface to see what's being selected we
can turn on the mask view by clicking The Mask icon next to the control point in the list the
white areas you see are what's being selected what's nothing is selected where you see black
what's great about control points is that they're interactive as you move them around the image they
keep sampling new areas and we see the selection chain we can also adjust the size of the control
Point using the slider arm alternatively we can click and drag with our Mouse on the edge of the
control Point itself now notice that the edge of the control point isn't the edge of the selection
the selection extends about the same distance again and is feathered to blend our adjustment
into the image and this is where the new diffusion control introduced in the Nik collection 6 comes
in useful it controls this Feathering around the edge of the control Point by default it's at 100
which means the maximum feather Now watch how the mask changes as I move the diffusion slider left
and right by moving it to the left I reduce the feather and when I move it right it increases it
notice also that this feather area extends both outwards and inwards from the edge of the control
Point let's use the example now of wanting to select the white areas of the pier to adjust
them we can position the center of the control point on that area that we want to select and you
can see the mask is updated now the selection spreads beyond the pier but we can reduce its
spread using the diffusion slider this is great but it has The Unwanted side effect of making our
adjustments easier to spot if I turn off the mask View and increase the brightness you can see what
I mean this problem isn't really being caused by the feather though it's been caused by too much of
the surrounding area of the pier being selected and this is where the luminance and chrominant
Sliders come in we'll start with the luminance slider which controls how sensitive or accurate
the control Point selection is to brightness when I move the slider all the way to the right pixels
need to be a close match to the luminance of the sample point to be selected when a pixel
is slightly lighter or darker it's ignored and not included in the selection now move the slider
over to the left and the brightness of the pixels is virtually ignored the chrominant slider works
in the same way but it's sampling color and not lightness when the slider is over to the left the
color is ignored but move it to the right and the color needs to be an accurate match so to make our
selection of the pier more accurate we want to use a high value of both the luminance and chrominant
Sliders and this is where something weird happens because we're using a low diffusion value to
limit the spread of our selection it's actually easier to spot in other areas that aren't appear
but look what happens when we use a high value it's Blended more smoothly and is harder to spot
what's most important to make inaccurate selection though is to limit the size of the control Point
know a word of warning it can be tempting to think that you need to create a perfect mask and
selection but you don't if we hide the mask View and look at the effect of the adjustments instead
we only see them on the pier and not the sky next suppose we want to apply the same adjustments to
more of the pier the easy way to do this is by selecting the first control point in the list
and then clicking the duplicate button we can then drag the new control Point into position
I'll magnify the image to help with the positioning now because the new control point
is a duplicate of the first it has identical adjustments so we now have two control points
selecting different areas that appear but applying the same adjustments this is how to make an
irregular shape selection in the knit collection and when you do this it's a good idea to group the
control points to create a group we select all the control points we want to use in the list
by holding down the command key and then clicking them on a Windows PC use your control key for this
once the control points are selected click the group icon to create the group
you can then see the new group in the selective adjustment list replacing the two control points
as before we can click the mask icon to view the group now we can see the selection in white just
like the control points we looked at earlier each group then only has one set of adjustment
controls to deal with but something that's often overlooked about groups is that we can
still select the individual control points that contain this allows us to reposition and resize
each of the control points without needing to remove them from the group the group also has
the same luminance chrominance and diffusion Sliders in the color sensitivity area now for
a couple of important tips I want to share let's say that you want to reset the color sensitivity
sliders rather than clicking and dragging each of the sliders you can double click them and
they then return to their default position now we can see the areas outside the group are being
selected again I wanted to show you this because it's possible to protect these areas by adding
new control points click the new control Point icon and then click the area you want to protect
if we now look at the mask for just the group we can see that the new control Point restricts
the spread of the group selection but we can take things further by using in the luminance
chrominance and diffusion sliders for the control point it's then possible to duplicate the control
point and use that to protect other areas from adjustment these protection control points can
then be placed into a single Group which you can rename to something more meaningful let's turn
our attention now though to the new control line feature that was added to the Nik collection 6.
light control points it also uses Viewpoint technology so should feel familiar I can add
a control line to this image by clicking the icon next to the control Point icon then I can position
my mouse pointer before clicking and dragging down as I do this you can see the new control line
being drawn this is selecting the area above the point I first clicked on if I add another control
line but this time drag up it selects the area below the starting point it's then possible to
click and drag the control line to reposition it as well as rotate it now although it's
using Viewpoint technology the control line is slightly different to control points in that the
sample point isn't at its Center instead there's a movable sample Point represented by an eyedropper
icon let's say that we want to select the colored clouds in the sky all we need to do is click and
drag the sample point to that area of the image unlike the control point we have the luminance
chrominant sliders to adjust the sensitivity there isn't however a diffusion slider and that's
because we control the spread of the selection using the bottom edge of the control line another
feature that's shared with the control point is that we can select our two control lines and then
group them this allows us to apply identical adjustments to both the sky and Its reflection
In this image now once control lines are new to the nik collection they have been around for a
little bit longer in this video I make good use of them when editing an image in DxO PhotoLab
it's a good one to watch next if you want to learn more about using control lines thanks for watching
today don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already I'll see you soon for another video