- Bonjour madames and messieurs,
in this episode I'm gonna give you a good
introduction into blending modes in Photoshop.
(upbeat music)
Bonjour madames and messieurs,
my name Serge Ramelli,
I'm a French photographer from the amazing,
the incredible, the romantic city of Paris, France.
Living right now in Los Angeles, California.
And I've been wanting to do this episode for a long time,
which is to show you the power
of blending modes in Photoshop.
Also, at the end of this episode, I have a surprise for you.
I have my new workflow 2018 course coming out.
It's awesome, I am so proud of it.
I'm sure you're going to enjoy it.
Check it out.
All right, guys.
So I want to show you blending modes.
I've been using Photoshop for years,
and after all these years, I realize
there's only a few blending modes I'm really using.
That's what I wanted to focus on.
There's maybe some other ones.
And if you do, leave me a comment
and tell me how you're using blending modes.
But I'll show you what I do with it.
And I think it's,
it's actually pretty cool,
blending modes really makes things a lot easier.
For example this is a photo of Chinatown I took in LA,
and I didn't like the sky, it was very boring.
So I have a whole collection of skies here,
which, by the way, you can have if
you really like sky replacement,
you can check my sky replacement panel
and I'll show you how to replace skies on many photos,
and I give you like 60 skies of super high definition.
But what I do is I, you know,
I always have all my assets in my library in Photoshop,
so for example, this sky, I wanna put over here,
so I just drag and drop it.
And back in the day, I used to do
a specific selection of the sky,
and I don't do that anymore.
So what I do is I take about half of the sky
that I put roughly at the horizon.
Then I'm gonna duplicate that layer.
Now on this layer that's duplicated I'm Command T,
for the free control tool,
right click, flip horizontal.
That's gonna mirror the sky.
I'm gonna press the shift key, by pressing shift key,
when I'm dragging my sky, it aligns perfectly,
it doesn't go left or right.
I wanna make sure until it's fully aligned.
I press enter.
And now I've got a perfect mirror.
Or not quite.
You can use the move tool, press V for move tool,
and then just use the mouse here like this.
Alright, so once you've got your mirror,
you select both of these layers, right click, merge layer.
So now we've got this weird layer.
And first blending mode is multiply.
Multiply, what multiply will do.
It's gonna take anything which is white on this photo
and replace it with what's on this layer.
So check this out, boom.
Now you see the sky is there,
and imagine if I had to do selection,
look how perfect this selection is.
Okay, the downside is that we can
see some of the clouds here on the building,
but it's a good start.
I can just create, sorry, Command Z,
I can just create a mask, take a brush, B for brush,
make it big, make sure your brush is around 20 or something,
and I'm just gonna brush off the effect on the building
and on the floor.
I only want it really,
I kind of like it on the building but I really want it
more just in the sky.
And one operation, we just replaced the sky.
And then you can do whatever you want with the photo.
So that's the multiply mode.
Anything which is white becomes transparent.
And it's great for, I use it for,
adding some clouds and things there
using my library of sky.
The next mode I wanna show you.
This is a photo I shot in the inside of a canyon,
it's called The Bear.
I don't know if you can notice,
but it's the beautiful lower inner canyon,
and it has a little bit of the shape of a bear.
I wanted to spice up the photo with some light rays.
Some time of, there's some sections of the year
where you have light rays.
So I'm gonna go here to my light rays section,
and by the way, if you wanna have the light rays,
and the bundle of the sky,
you can get it, there's a link below the video,
with a good price.
And what the light rays is basically
a whole bunch of light rays of clouds,
of things you can add.
Let me show you how it works.
Basically, I just want to add some
particles in the air there,
and I've got this great light ray that's got particles.
The way we did it was having real dust in the air.
So I'm gonna make it big,
but you see now, it's kinda weird because it's black.
So there's another blending mode which is the reverse,
which is screen.
Screen's gonna make anything
which is black become transparent.
The other one it was anything
which is white become transparent,
and this one is the opposite.
I can take the move tool, move this around.
Shift key now make it bigger.
Okay, and I actually want this,
I want the effect to be just where the bear is.
Like if the particles were in this section of the cavern,
not in front,
so I need to make a mask or something.
But before I'm gonna just do something very easy,
I'm gonna select here, I'm gonna press quick selection tool,
I'm gonna make a selection of the bear,
that's the bear,
and that's where I want my particles to be,
so just a really rough selection,
the quick select tool is really easy for that.
And then I'm just gonna click here,
select my light ray, and I'm just click in mask.
And because I've got an active selection,
it's gonna just use that.
And now the particles are behind, which is cool.
Now you see there's a bit of light there.
I said, okay, why not.
Let's make another light ray there,
just for the purpose of showing what this blend mode does.
So this is another one that's got less particle.
Another light ray.
I'm gonna make this bigger.
Just shape it however you want it.
I'm gonna place it here, something like this.
Okay, and then I'm gonna put it on screen mode,
so remember, everything which is black
is gonna become, and check this out,
now I've got this nice beam of light coming there.
If I want to, I can even mask it here.
Same thing, I can, you know.
Alright now I can do the same thing here.
I can go here.
I'm gonna unselect that.
Take the quick select to make a quick select,
because I want the light to go behind.
So I'm gonna reactivate that, reactivate this.
But now it's the opposite.
Remember before the I wanted the mask,
I wanted the selection to, what was selected to
be visible, now it's the opposite.
So I'm just gonna press the Option
and click on the mask here, boom.
And now the light ray went behind this.
So you see I added a light ray here,
I added a light ray there.
I can make this one, lower the opacity.
You know on this one, I would probably add a bit of color
because it's too white.
So you could press Command U,
Command U is gonna bring the hue and saturation,
I can click on colorize.
And by default it's very yellow
which is exactly what I want.
I'm just gonna lower the saturation to add a bit of yellow.
And you know, I can, I still think
it's a little too present,
so I can lower even more the opacity.
But you know, it's just for the fun of it.
So now I've added some light rays.
And I think I went too strong on the yellow.
But you know you get the idea.
It just makes the photo a little more complex.
But look at all these particles, it's kinda cool.
Alright so that was screen.
Alright now the next one is the overlay mode,
which I use when I do dodge and burn in Photoshop.
When I do it in Lightroom I use the brushes.
But if I do it in Photoshop, one thing I love to do is
I can take a curve, for example,
and make this entire photo a lot darker.
And then I'm gonna create an empty layer
that I'm gonna put into this beautiful blending mode
called overlay.
Okay the way overlay works is basically,
I can take a brush, make it big,
I'm gonna make sure the brush is very,
zero percent hardness, so very soft,
and I'm going to, first I'm going
show you at 100%, so I'm gonna press,
and I'm gonna click here and I'm gonna take
the colors from this lamp here, and press okay.
So now what I do, if I paint here,
you see with the overlay mode it
sort of blends in completely.
It just makes it brighter wherever I brush.
If I press X and I paint with black,
it's gonna make it darker.
Usually I don't go so strong.
So let me do Command Alt Z a couple of times,
so what I'm gonna do is press X again,
take this, get back this color,
and I usually when I use my dodge and burn,
I go more around like 20%.
Okay and then I'm gonna paint.
You see, that's the normal blending mode.
And now if I go to overlay,
boom it blends in completely well.
So I brush, brush, brush,
and maybe make this a little less yellow.
Okay, and then I'm gonna brush even more outside,
then brush more inside.
Maybe boost the opacity even more, just for inside.
And I'm kinda relighting the photo
with just using these lamps.
Check this out, before, after.
It just add that sort of drama, which is really cool.
And that's what I use overlay more.
It's more for the dodge and burn.
I can also use it, let's say I wanted to make
some parts of the photo darker,
on the same layer, I can make a big brush,
press X for having black as a foreground color,
I'm gonna use a very low value, like 15, 12%.
And because it's in overlay mode,
I can vignette this even more,
if I wanna put more attention, I can darken the sky here.
And press X again, and then I can press D
for having, D is gonna make this white
and I can just relight this.
Just add a bit of light here and here.
There's one thing I learned with photography
is that an option which is partially lit
is more interesting than an object which is fully lit.
By making all these little light adjustment,
I just made this photo really much more interesting.
So that's the overlay mode.
Now another thing that I use the overlay mode
back in the day is the dramatic look
which I don't use that much anymore.
The idea about that look, it still uses overlay,
you can drop and drop your layer to duplicate.
Then you can go to image, mode, adjustment,
I'm gonna go to adjustment, hue and saturation.
And I'm gonna desaturate this photo.
So this photo is now black and white
on top of a color.
And now if I put this into overlay,
it makes it very dramatic.
Or I can try soft light.
What it does, overlay and soft light is the same thing,
soft light is a little lighter.
What it does it adds a lot of contrast
without adding saturation.
So it's kinda, what we call a dramatic look.
Check out the before and after.
It's just a little twist.
And I you think it's too strong, then lower the opacity.
You know, so you just duplicate the layer,
make it black and white and put into overlay.
So that's one thing I've been using.
Okay and last but not least is the color mode.
Let's say I wanted this sepia or old looking.
This is a town ranch here in Los Angeles, California.
I can go here, add a solid color,
so in this case I'm gonna take something like yellow,
like sepia type of looking, something like this.
Click okay.
And I'm gonna go to the blending mode of color.
And what color is gonna do is just gonna mix the color,
change it out through the color.
And now I can go into it,
I can double click on it in realtime,
just adjust the color until I have got the look that I want.
I can go very sepia.
Or I can go very blue.
That type of thing.
But I don't use that very often.
And to show you some more dodge and burn,
I can go back here, put this into overlay.
Take my black first, and I'm just gonna darken,
I wanna make a a vignette effect.
So I'm gonna make, big brush,
remember my brush is at 12%.
Gonna darken the sky, now that we've added the sky.
I like to vignette the whole photo except this,
and I'm gonna press X and then around the lights,
I'm gonna boost this, maybe add a little bit of yellow.
I can even take it from the real color here.
Voila.
And just make this a little brighter.
Dodge and burn.
The good ol' dodge and burn.
So that's what you use overlay for.
Honestly today I do it a lot in Lightroom,
but you get great results in Photoshop too.
So that's before and that's the after,
and that's without the sky.
That's how it look with the sky
and with a bit of overlay.
So very powerful technique, guys.
Blending modes are amazing.
And I will see you in another video.
Thank you very much.
Bonjour madames and messieurs,
I am so excited.
I have a new course coming out which is very peculiar
called Serge Ramelli Workflow 2018.
The idea of this course was to update you
on all the latest Lightroom version,
Photoshop version, Aurora, Luminar.
This software, they have so many updates,
that my workflow has completely evolved and changed
over the last two, three years.
And so I did this course, taking the opportunity of
my latest workshop in Los Angeles,
where you are gonna be in the seat
like if you were on the workshop.
The first day of work, we're gonna go to the Griffith Park,
and that's the first photo we gonna do.
This is a panorama.
You can see all the, that's the before,
and that's the final result,
which is like a crazy 20,000 pixel panorama.
We took another panorama as the sun was getting down,
and that's the before photos.
That's the first stitching,
and then I was like, I gotta get that tree out,
which is so complex because the tree is against the city,
and I'll show you a workflow in Photoshop
to take out the tree and everything that's
annoying in the photo to get this result.
Then later one, we walked and hiked
to get this Terminator view.
I call this the Terminator view because
that's the view you get on Terminator one
and Terminator four where you have
the observatory and downtown compressed against it.
I'll show you the full retouching
to go from this to this.
I used Luminar to use some secret
advanced contrast and different features
to get this result.
The next day we went to the Venice Canal,
and we didn't have any good sky there.
But I'll show you all the bad framings that I took,
all the good framings that I took,
and also how to replace the skies,
and how to find the right sky for the right photo.
For example, this was kind of like a bluer type of sky,
and then later on we got this sunset type of sky.
But I added the clouds to get this result.
And choosing the right sky for the right photo
is so important.
And I'm gonna go over that in details.
And then later one we went to the Venice beach
and got this great sunset photo.
With long exposure.
I'll show you the entire workflow.
I used plugins into get this result.
You know, it's really how I work today.
And then the next day we went to downtown Los Angeles,
starting off at the Walt Disney Concert Hall,
where I'm gonna show you a new technique.
Actually, I took this eight photo of the
Walt Disney Concert Hall, and believe it or not,
Lightroom refused to stitch them into a panorama.
So I used another workflow with Photoshop
to get this result.
I used some Luminar also for some extra sun rays
and some extra details and advanced contrast
that are really cool.
While we were waiting for the sunset
in downtown Los Angeles,
I shot this portrait of my daughter and my dog,
and I decided to make a fine art photography out of it.
I have this rule that if the colors are not amazing,
go black and white.
I also took a photo of the downtown City Hall of Los Angeles
and made it into fine art.
As we were walking down the highways,
I also shot this photo of downtown Los Angeles,
and I used a new workflow to get this
really, really fine art, dramatic black and white,
using some presents in Luminar which are amazing.
So later on that day in downtown Los Angeles,
we shot the highways, and this is a before photo.
I'll show you a technique where you can
stack up different light rays to really
get this dramatic highway type of photography.
This is another one that we shot a bit later on
during the night, it's the before and the after.
The next day we went to the nicest beach in California.
El Matador Beach.
And this is a normal exposure,
this is an underexposure.
I'll show you how to retouch each exposure,
and then to blend that into Photoshop
to get this result and then into Luminar
to add some advanced contrast
to really get a photo that's gonna pop
and that's gonna make you popular
on the web and on social media.
The last project that we did
out of the 40 projects is a portrait that Kelvin did of me
where I show you the whole retouching to get this sort of
contrasted, desaturated look.
So in total you have 40 different projects
I'm gonna give you all the raw files,
I'm gonna give you everything.
This is my most up to date training.
It really takes into account
all the updates that's been done on all the software.
This is truly how I work.
It's three hours and 15 minutes long,
it's got, I'm giving you all the raw files.
And you got a great release price down below this video.
This is one of my most favorite courses ever.
And if it is just one course you should buy from me,
it's this one.
Check it out, The Serge Ramelli Workflow 2018.
No, one second.
Hey guys, I hope you liked this video.
And if you did, please give it one thumb's up.
Also don't forget, leave me a comment
anything you wanna learn on photography,
on Lightroom, on Photoshop, on plugins.
I will do my best to fulfill your wishes.
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