One of the most powerful tools to apply a color effect inside of Photoshop is the Camera Raw filter.
Check out how you can use this powerful tool to apply a futuristic neon color effect in Photoshop.
Hi, welcome back to the Photoshop Training Channel, I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to apply a cool cyber punk neon effect in Photoshop.
This is going to be an easy-to -follow tutorial, so make sure that you stick around to the very end.
We're going to use Camera Raw and we're just going to drag a few sliders to create this
effect.
Alright, let's get right to it.
This is a photo that I'm going to work with, you can follow along with your own photo if
you like.
If you want to follow along with this image, then you can download it from the link down
below in the description.
The first tip is to right click on it and Convert to a Smart Object because we want
to work non-destructively, with a smart object you're going to apply
adjustments, distortions, filters, and transformations non-destructively,
which means you can always come back and edit them.
And the filter that we're going to apply for this effect is found under the Filter menu
and that is the Camera Raw filter.
You can click on that and the Camera Raw filter will appear.
Camera Raw was initially built as a Photoshop plugin for raw image processing.
In 2013 with Photoshop CC, Adobe added Camera Raw as a filter, allowing you to use these
powerful editing tools and more file types like PNG, TIFF JPEG, video clips, and more.
We're going to start editing this photo in the basic panel where we can adjust the lighting
and color of the photo.
Keep in mind that all these edits are subjective and that every photo will require a different adjustment.
Use my edits as a starting point and make the appropriate changes to your photos,
but most importantly, remember what each slider does and how it works.
First, I will use these sliders to control the brightness of the image.
I'll start with a Contrast slider.
I want the shadows to be darker and the highlights to be brighter.
Then I can adjust the Highlights, I can drag them to the left to bring in more detail in
the brighter areas, which is what I want.
Then I can drag the Shadow slider to the right to bring in more detail in the darker areas.
Next, I'll make the details of the image pop more by using the sliders in the following category.
The Texture slider was released in 2019 and it's a fantastic tool to make the details
and texture of an image really stand out.
I'll drag the Texture slider to the right, and I'll just add a little bit of Clarity.
Clarity adds contrast to edge pixels.
Next, we'll work on the Saturation of the image.
Both of these sliders control saturation, but in very different ways.
I'll start with the Vibrance slider.
Vibrance is a smart way of adding saturation, it protects already saturated pixels and skin tones.
If you need an overall adjustment to your image, you can just click-and-drag on the
saturation slider.
Let me double-click on the slider to reset it.
Next, let's adjust the colors of the image.
I would like to add colors to the shadows.
To do so, you can go into the split toning tab.
From here, you can add a color to the highlights or to the shadows.
In this case, I'm going to add a color into the shadows, so I'm going to drag the Hue
to the blues and teals right over here and increase the saturation.
Notice how now I have this color in the shadows of the image.
The Balance slider allows you to control what a shadow is, so I'm going to click and drag
this all the way to the right
and if you bring the slider here, you'll notice that nothing is really a shadow, so the effect
is not applied anywhere.
And if I drag it to the opposite end then everything is considered a shadow and the
effect is applied everywhere, so I'm going to double click on this point to reset it.
Then I'll drag the slider to the left a little bit just to increase the range and make a
few more items in this photo blue.
Next, I'm going to click on this icon here, the HSL adjustments, where you can control
the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance of the colors that you see here.
With the Hue, you can shift the color to a different degree.
For example, if I adjust the Reds, you'll see the red neon light here, shift in hue.
In other words, it would become a different color.
See that? How it's yellow, orange, red, and magenta.
So you can shift the colors that you've seen in your image.
I'm going to go into the Luminance now, and from the Luminance, I can adjust how bright
those lights are.
So I want that red light to be a little bit brighter and I'm going to brighten up the
oranges, which is her skin tone.
So I'll brighten that up a little bit and I can adjust the blues as well.
Next, I'm going to go into the Saturation, and from here, I'm going to increase the saturation
of the oranges, of the yellows, of the blues.
I want this to really pop, but notice what happens when I adjust the reds, and I'm going
to do an extreme adjustment so that it's noticeable.
Notice how you get all these red blotchy areas all over the image.
This is mainly because of the JPEG compression of this photo.
This necessarily wouldn't happen if I was working with a raw photo, so I am working
with a JPEG image so I really can't push up the reds too much in this case.
So what I'll do instead is go into the calibration tab, and from here I can adjust the hue, the
primary colors which include red and I can just increase the saturation all the way.
See that? See how by increasing the saturation I don't necessarily create those blotchy areas
that you saw in these parts of the image.
So I can just adjust the image accordingly.
I can also increase the saturation of the blues as you can see here, and adjust the
hue so I can make them a more of teal color rather than blue.
And obviously, you can keep fine-tuning the sliders until you get the result that you want.
By the way, if you want to learn more about Photoshop, then check out my latest video,
30 Photoshop Tips and Tricks That You Probably Don't Know.
You'll find a lot of useful information in this tutorial.
I highly recommend watching it right after this video.
I'll place a link to it right below in the description.
Next, I'm going to go into the effects tab, and from here I'm going to increase the Post
Crop Vignetting which will darken the edges of the image.
One thing you should note that once you do this edges will become really dark, but I
recommend in a portrait like this you want to also increase the highlights so that the
bright areas pop out through that vignette.
Next, you can click indirect to the right to reduce the intensity of that vignette,
so maybe somewhere around here.
I'm also going to go back into the calibration and increase the saturation of the blues.
Also, at this point, I'm not too happy with how blue the background is looking, so I'm
going to go back into the Split Toning and just increase the saturation a bit more just
to make it more intense and adjust the hue as well.
If you ever want to go and see the original image, you can click on this icon, hold it
as you click until you'll see this pop up.
Then you can select before, after, left and right.
So on the left you'll see the original image and on the right you'll see the after.
And if you just simply click on it, you're going to toggle between all those different options.
You can actually remove these options so that you only see the ones that you want.
If you click and hold, you'll get the pop up once again and make sure that you click
preview preferences and uncheck the ones that you don't want.
So I rarely use the bottom three.
I tend to only use left and right side by side.
So I'll leave that checked, and I can press okay.
So when I click on this button, I only will see those two views, the working image and
the before and after.
So before on the left, after on the right.
Next, I can keep fine tuning the image.
So I'm going to go back into the basics panel and from here I'm going to decrease the temperature
just to make it even cooler.
So something like this, maybe -13.
And this game is all about fine tuning.
You'll find that you'll make an adjustment, it doesn't necessarily look the way that you
want it to look.
So then you go back and you make other adjustments.
So that's what I'm doing now, simply making adjustments and fine tuning the image.
I'm noticing that I really like the blue in the background now.
I like the red highlight pointing at her.
I'm noticing that there's a lot more red on her face than I want.
So I could do a couple things.
First, I could try the HSL adjustments once again and maybe adjust the oranges a little bit.
In this case, I don't seem to be doing much.
Maybe if I adjust the hue, so I am going to adjust the hue of the oranges and that's going
to help a little more.
So I'm going to take the oranges and drag them more towards the yellow so that they're
not so red.
And you can click on this icon here to toggle the visibility between the adjustments that
are just in this panel.
So if I click on this, you'll see that I'll remove the adjustments from this panel.
I'll click again and the adjustments from this panel come back, and you can see that
that looks much better in this area.
Next, I'm going to apply a couple of local adjustments to make the image pop a little more.
First, I'm going to select the Radial Filter and I'm going to click and drag on her face
like so.
And if I hold the space bar, I can move the circle as I create it and I'll have a circle
that just goes around her face.
I'll click on the fly out menu reset the color corrections and I'll just increase the exposure
a tiny little bit.
Notice that the effect is actually being applied to the outside of the image, I want it to
be applied to the inside.
So what I'll do is, I'll scroll down and make sure that under effect I select inside, I
can go back up and continue adjusting the exposure and really what I want to do is just
a tiny little bit of exposure to brighten it up.
I can brighten up the highlights and brighten up the shadows as well.
And next, I'm going to create another radio local adjustment that just goes around her body.
And what I'm going to do is increase the blurriness outside her body here, and to do so again.
I'll click on the fly out menu, reset the local color correction settings and scroll
down, and this time I want the effect to affect the outside of the image.
So I'll click on Outside and drag up to the Sharpness slider and drag it to the left.
When you do that, you'll notice that the edges of the image will be blurrier.
Let me show you what I mean by that.
Let me zoom in, hold the spacebar, click-and-drag to pan, and when I adjust the Sharpness, you'll
see how you blur the background a little more.
And when you blur, you actually reduce the grain of the image and that starts looking
a little digital, a little too smooth.
So what you can do is go back into the basic adjustments and make sure that you click under
the Effects tab and add just a little bit of grain so that the image doesn't looks so
smooth—so "Photoshopped".
And I think that will look much better.
Let me click on this drop-down and select Fit in View and you can see our results so far.
When you're done, you can press OK and all the changes will be applied to the smart object.
From here, you can continue using any other Photoshop tool to enhance the image.
If you want to go back and adjust the Camera Raw filter, all you need to do is double-click
on this label from the layers panel.
And the Camera Raw filter will come back up and you can make any adjustments that you like.
For example, maybe I can reduce the vignette a little bit and press OK,
and from here you can also see the before and after by clicking on this eye icon, before
and after.
Let me know down in the comments below what you thought about this technique.
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Thank you so much for watching.
I'll talk to you again in the next Photoshop tutorial.