Hey, everyone. Today's video is sponsored by Luminar AI
I and I'm going to show you how I edit a portrait
from beginning to end.
So I want my editing videos to be helpful and educational.
So I thought today I'd show you guys
how I edit a photo from scratch.
So we're going to be using RGB Curves, HSL, split toning
all that kind of stuff, which is pretty universal
to any editing software
you're using so you can follow along with these steps.
And there are also some Luminar AI specific tools that will be using,
which are some of the reasons I love using this software
so much for editing my photos.
So this is the photo shoot that I will be working on today.
I'm here in the catalog
in Luminar AI and this is the photo that I want to start off with.
So usually you can go into templates
and apply a template to your photo to speed up your editing workflow.
But I have shown you guys that in previous Luminar AI videos.
So today I wanted to do the edit from scratch.
So we're going to skip
the templates and go straight into edit.
So the first thing that I want to do
is come up to my enhance panel here and bring up the Accent AI
which basically balances out the lights and shadows in a photo.
The next thing I want to do is go down into light.
And here I'm going
to bring up my exposure slightly as the image was shot
a little bit underexposed.
And I'm also going to
bring the highlights down even more since the left side of this image
is quite bright.
And I also want to bring the temperature up
to warm up the image and the tint to bring it more into the pinks.
The final tonal adjustment
I want to do to this photo is with the curves tool,
which you can find in the light panel.
So what I like to do with curves is to add an S-curve, to really
bring out that muted vintage soft vibe to the photo.
So what I like to do
is bring the shadows
point up across the edge of the curves panel here.
So as you can see, it's going to
make a black appear more muted and a little bit more subtle.
And then so the image isn't too faded.
I am then going to put
another point here in the black's of the image and pull them down
just to add that extra contrast. But we do still have
that nice softness in the shadows of our photo.
Then I'm going to put a point up here in the highlights of our image
and pull it up, which is going
to bring some more light into our subject's face.
So once I have my main points mapped out, I then like to adjust
them until I'm happy with the lighting of the photo.
Once I'm happy with the tonal adjustments
I've made to the image,
the next thing I like to focus on is the colors.
And when I look at this photo, I feel like very vintage, soft,
creamy brown kind of look to the photo would really suit
this as we've got a very whimsical looking image
with the flower crown and the soft facial expression.
So that's what we're going to aim for when we're editing the colors.
So to achieve this creamy looking color
that I want to add to this photo,
we're going to start in the blue channel of the curves tool
and create a very similar looking
S-curve that we did to our tonal curve.
So I'm going to start by bringing up the black point of the blues,
which, as you can see, is going to start
adding a nice blue tone to the shadows of the image.
And then I'm going
to pull the blues down here at the next point of the curve,
which is going to add that nice kind of green, yellow
look to the image.
So I don't like how it's affecting her skin tone too much.
It looks a little bit too yellow.
So the next point I'm going to make
is further up in the turn curve to pull it up.
And this is going
to now add some blues to the highlights of our photo.
So that's going to help even out her skin tone
and make it look a little more natural.
And then the last point that I'm going to move is the white.
So the point at the very top corner of our blue channel
and bring it down, which is going to make
the highlights of our image look very creamy and yellow.
So I'm not going to pull them down that much just a little bit.
So it's not too extreme.
And again, just like the tonal curve, once
I've put all my main points down, I like to just adjust them
little by little until I'm happy with what the photo looks like.
Next thing we're going to do is head into the Green Channel.
And something that I like to do here,
especially when it comes to editing portraits, is to add a slight
touch of red to the highlights and the whites of the image
to bring out a nice skin tone in our portrait.
So to do that, I'm going to put a point here
in the upper right hand side and pull the curve down slightly.
And as you can see, that's made the skin go from that green
kind of color that we had from the Blue Channel
and added a nice warmth and redness to her skin instead.
Next, we're going to go
down into color, which is where we'll find HSL,
which is the hue, saturation and luminance of particular colors.
So when I'm looking at this photo, the first thing I want to fix
all these greens,
I feel like they look way too vibrant and are really distracting,
especially this patch of green here in the bottom right hand corner.
So we're going to start off by going into Hue.
And I'm going to bring the hue of yellows down to make
yellows appear more orange.
I'm also going to bring the green
hue down to make greens appear more yellowy and orange. So.
As you can see, that's already
started to soften that very vibrant green color that we had going.
The next thing I want to do
is go into saturation and bring the green saturation down.
And finally, I'm
going to go into luminance and bring the green luminance down
to make it appear a little darker in the photo .
So in Luminance
I also want to bring up the orange slider and the red slider,
which is going to lighten her skin and make her
appear brighter in the photo.
And I also want to bring up
the blue slider, which is going to brighten the background up here
and also the little flowers that are in her flower crown .
And then I'm going to go back into saturation and also increase
the saturation of the blue
slightly, because I want those flowers to
be quite prominent in the photo.
The next thing I will do
is bring down the orange saturation again to soften her skin tone.
So I to bring that down slightly.
And I will also bring up the red saturation
to balance it out so she doesn't look to desaturated in her face.
The next tool that we're going to be using is split toning.
But before we move onto that,
because it is going to add a lot of color into our photo,
and I'm aiming for a more washed-out look.
I am going to bring the saturation slider down just to mute
all the colors in the photo
before we add more colors in the shadows and highlights.
So you can find the split toning under Creative in Toning here.
And you've got both shadows and highlights that you can play with.
So we're going to start
with highlights,
and I'm going to bring the saturation up super high
so we can see exactly what we're doing.
And I feel like I want to go for a yellow highlights
to this image, but I do always like to just slide the hue around
to see if there's
any other interesting combinations that I can use for a photo.
So in this case, purply blue looks really nice in this image,
but I'm not really going for a moody edit here.
I want it to be more warm and inviting.
So I am going to stick to my original plan
of a yellow highlight.
And once I'm happy with the color,
I will bring the saturation down to help it blend into the photo.
So now we'll go into the shadows.
And again, I'm going to bring the saturation up way high.
And while I'm adjusting the hue,
I again like to get an idea and see what different
colors will look like.
Usually my rule of thumb is
if I pick a warm color for the highlights, I'll pick
a cool color for the shadows just for that balance in the image.
So I thought a purply pink color would look really nice
with the shadows. So I'll bring the saturation down.
Although I did like what that green color looked like as well.
But I think we'll go for the purple.
It's got a more soft and whimsical feel
to that color combination, the purple and the yellows.
And I think that really suits this image.
So here's a before and after.
This is the before and this is the after.
So I'm really happy with what the photo is looking like.
So far, we've really embodied
those vintage tones and that soft, dreamy look to the image.
Once I'm done with the color and tonal adjustments,
the next thing I like to do is skin retouching and final
touches on the image to make it ready to post online.
We're going to head down
to our portrait editing tools and start with the Face AI.
So I'm going to add a little bit of face light.
And as you can see, it
starts brightening up the face of your photo.
Also, something really cool to know
is that if you do have more than one person in your image,
it will adjust the face light for all the people in your image.
So I feel like that's really cool
when you're editing
like group shots, maybe like a bridal party from a wedding.
Then we're going to go down into eyes and here.
I really love using Iris Flair and also Eye Enhancer,
just to make the iris really pop in a portrait.
And something I always like
to do with the lips is I love darkening them
because it makes them look more prominent in a portrait.
And I'm going to saturate them slightly as well.
Next, we're going to move into Skin AI.
And this is a tool that I've been using recently
to retouch my portraits.
So if you want to see my complete
photo editing workflow from Lightroom into Luminar AI,
I explained all of that in my last video,
which I'll leave linked in the description
if you guys want to check it out.
But basically, it's super easy.
All you have to do
is bring up the amount and it's going to soften the skin.
So with this model in particular,
she has some really beautiful freckles.
And I don't want to get rid of them or soften them too much.
I actually want them to be quite prominent in the photo.
So in this case, I am only
going to bring the amount up very, very slightly, just so we have
a little bit of skin smoothing, but not too much.
I also notice she does have a small blemish here on her face.
I could use the skin defects removal tool,
but I don't want to get rid of any of her freckles.
So I'm just going to
use the Erase tool, which is up here in Essentials and
just going to brush over that once hit erase and her blemish is gone.
I might actually get rid of these two here as well.
And for the last part of the image, I'm just going to use my tablet
here to add some final touches to the photo.
Here I'll go down into our Clone Tool.
Which is under the Professional tab,
and here, it's going to remove all the edits that we've done
so we can clearly see what we're cloning in our photo.
The first thing you need to do is click to set a source,
which I'm just going to click here. We can change it later.
The next thing I want to do is make the brush smaller.
I'm also going to bring the opacity way down.
So I want it to be very, very subtle.
And I will keep the softness at 100.
Since we sampled here, I'm going to brush over the undereye area
to just soften up the shadows under her eyes very slightly.
I'll then sample from the other undereye area.
I'm just doing that by holding down the option key.
I'm going to select that
And again, brush over the shadow here.
And I also want to brush out this shadow as well.
So I'm going to sample
just here next to that area of skin and brush over it.
And once we select the clean tool again,
it will bring back
all the other edits that we've done to the photos
so you can see what it looks like all together.
Last but not least, I'm going in to dodge and burn.
The left side of the image is very bright as we had the sun
coming in from that side, and then the right hand side is very dark.
So I'm going to select darken with dodge and burn.
Again, I'll bring the strength down
very low, and I'm going to make the brush size quite big
because I want to paint across this whole area of the photo.
And that's just going to balance out the left and right a bit more.
I was looking a little too
unbalanced overall in the photo, so I think that looks much better.
One of the last things I'm going to check out,
which just came out in a recent update, is the Portrait Bokeh AI tool
which you can find in the Portrait menu.
So if we select this,
we can actually change the bokeh amount in the photo,
which I know I've already shot this photo
with a very shallow depth of field.
But you can use this tool to make the background
even more creamier or make it look smoother, as you can see.
I think I'm shooting with a bit of a high ISO because there is
some green here in the bottom right hand side of the image.
So when we bring up the bokeh amount,
that's going to get smoothed out.
And I think that actually looks really nice.
There is a little bit of a funny outline here,
which I'm in a fix up by bringing the brush opacity down
and making the radius slightly smaller.
And I'm just going to brush over this area.
So here's a before and after what the Portrait Bokeh AI Tool looks like.
So this is before with out it
And this is after with it.
Honestly, it did a pretty good job of outlining my subject.
I'm also impressed
that it included the flower crown as part of my subject as well.
So just for fun,
I thought we should bring the
amount up to the maximum just to see what it would look like.
Honestly, it's not like too bad.
I feel like this is a pretty good picture to test on
because we have quite a complicated outline with our subject here,
but it looks pretty nice.
But I'm going to bring the amount down because I do
like how it just smoothed out the noisiness of my background.
OK, so I'll show you guys a
before and after one more time, before and after.
I also wanted to try out the Portrait Bokeh AI Tool on a photo
that has less depth of field straight out of the camera.
So for this photo, I applied the High Key Template.
Then in edit, I applied my Positano LUT.
So here's a before and after the original and the edits.
So let's go down into Portrait Bokeh
and bring up the amount,
because I feel like the background is super distracting.
So this would look nicer if it's softer.
And again, it does a really good job of cutting out her hair.
You can see here the outline of the subject.
Unlike our last image
for this photo, I want to
use the defocus brush because I feel like the hair
on the right hand
side of her face will look a little bit nicer
if it was slightly more out of focus.
So I'm going to bring the opacity of the brush very low,
as I only want this to be a subtle effect.
And I'm going to brush over the hair
just on the very edges.
And here we have a full before and after of this image.
So this is the original and this is edited
with the Templates and Portrait Bokeh and the Mood Tool.
I hope you guys enjoyed seeing my tutorial
of how to edit a photo from beginning to end in Luminar AI.
I'd love to know what you thought of the edit
and of the tools that I used.
By the way, if you wanted to try out Luminar AI for yourself,
I do have a twenty dollar discount code,
so you can use the link in my description to activate that.
But otherwise, thank you guys, so, so much for watching! I make new videos
every single week. So I will see what next time, bye!