- So in this video I want to talk to you about
the right way to shoot a landscape.
To make sure everything is sharp.
For many many years,
I made the mistake of
not really caring where I was shooting,
I was just on auto-focus.
But there are times when you wanna get some flowers
that are full-round,
and you wanna get a middle ground
and you wanna get a background.
And it's really hard to get a really sharp photo.
So, a couple weeks ago I did a
photosoot in Topanga Canyon in California.
And, let me show you how I shot the flowers,
the exact same that I used.
And then, let's retouch them.
So one idea I had was to
get very close to one of the flowers,
two of these flowers there.
And so we have the sunset and the flowers.
That can be kinda cool.
The key point is to go to manual focus
This land which is a 12 24,
so we can focus 30 centimeter
which is about I'm thinking about 5 inches.
And I zoomed on these two flowers
and indeed it's very sharp.
So, I'm gonna focus,
I'm gonna take several photos
I'm gonna take first a photo
for these two flowers that are there.
And then I'm gonna move my focus a little bit
I'm gonna focus for example, like
maybe on half a meter.
So half of a meter is gonna be
let's see here...
Um, I'm zooming in to make sure I'm good.
Yeah I'm focusing on the next flower
that's over there.
Okay.
I make sure I'm sharp.
Yeah so now it's good.
These flowers are blurry, this one is sharp.
And now I'm gonna move further,
I'm gonna go...
maybe to one meter
and take one.
And the more you have the better
because in Photoshop,
we'll be able to get them all to blend.
Okay?
And then I'm gonna go...
I'm gonna take one more.
I'm gonna go to two meters.
I rather have more than not enough.
This is really cool because there is the flowers,
and we have the mountain,
and we have the sunset.
And then,
I'm gonna take one onto infinity.
All right so,
this is how you shoot them.
Basically, you make sure you're shooting the first flowers,
the middle flowers,
and then the background.
Three, four, five photos if you can.
Very important to be on a tripod.
Very important to be on manual focus.
I love to use a focus
to make sure I'm really sharp everywhere.
So, once you have this,
I've already imported this to Lightroom,
I'm going to show you two projects.
First a very easy one.
And then if you stay till the end,
you will see the project I did in Topanga Canyon.
This one is a little crazy.
Because I had to replace some flowers,
there's more Photoshop involved.
But it's worse,
staying all the way.
The one little thing I can ask you,
if you like this video,
please give it a like,
leave me a comment,
and share this video.
It really helps you to produce more free videos for you.
Thank you so much,
I really appreciate it,
because that's how YouTube works.
If you don't like it,
if you don't share it,
nobody else is gonna see it.
Thank you very much.
Okay, so first, to retouch this photo,
I'm gonna install my free preset.
The link is under the video.
You can and you will get an offer to
buy the full package.
If you can, it's amazing.
Really helps.
So I'm gonna go here,
click import presets.
The file you're gonna get, by email,
make sure it's not in your spam, is called,
Lightroom and CC classic dot zip.
All you have to do is put the zip file
and you're done, it's installed.
If you have an older version of Lightroom,
you will see a whole pdf dedicated to that.
It's a little more complex,
takes maybe 20 more seconds,
but you have them.
Once the presets are installed,
it's gonna go really fast.
So, this is two photos that I shot.
Actually I did a video on this last year.
In Malibu (mumbles)
and check this out!
So first let me retouch the first one
so you see what the problem-
So one, is basically,
the flowers are sharp,
and the other one it's the background which is sharp.
And we're going to mix boths exposure.
So, let me go to my free preset back that you have
and let's just go to sunset.
And boom, one click.
Check this out, one click.
You know this preset, I use all the time.
And I have a show every Wednesday,
there's a link.
If you want to be a part of that show,
also under this video.
It's called my masterclass.
Go watch it.
Anyways, while we touch,
your photos, your word files,
and I always use my presets.
So, I've tested my preset on about
10,000 word files which were not bound by me.
And they work pretty well.
So, here is the basic thing.
I'm going to press the whole option key,
to do my black point,
and then my white point.
Maybe, boost the highlights.
Okay?
On this one, I think I wanna add a little bit more blue.
So I'm just gonna change the white balance,
maybe a little bit more magenta.
Add a little bit more contrast.
Yeah.
But you see, here is the problem.
The photos here-
the flowers are really sharp because
I focused on the flower.
But check this out.
This is completely blurry.
So, uh...
The good thing with Lightroom...
Okay the blue is actually too much now.
I'm gonna go back to,
I'm gonna go back to this.
To a bit warmer.
Actually I wanna crop the photo 16 by nine.
Because I think it's gonna look better,
16 by nine.
Just cause that sky is not that great.
Okay and then I'm gonna go here,
in the gradient.
Grab my gradient which is here.
All my presets have include gradient,
and that you just need to move around.
Voila.
I think I'm just gonna lower a little bit exposure.
No, actually not.
Not-
I'm just gonna take a brush,
and I'm gonna put more attention on the flowers,
by brushing the flowers,
a little.
I have just a bit of a exposure value.
0.42.
Did not go over 0.50. 0.50 is too much
And, flow and density in the 70's.
I'm just gonna make my flowers a little bit brighter.
Very simple retouch.
I'm happy.
I know everything else is taken care of.
Lens correction, sharpening is all done.
Because I used the preset.
And now I'm gonna take those two,
I'm gonna synchronize them.
And check this out.
So now the second photo,
the flowers are blurry,
look at this,
completely blurry.
But, here, check this out.
This whole part is completely sharp.
Okay so now we're gonna take both of these photos.
They have the same correction.
We're gonna right click,
Edit,
Open as Layers in Photoshop.
Now, this is a great feature.
Open as Layers in Photoshop.
But what it does,
it takes both and puts them into Photoshop's.
So here we are in Photoshop.
All we have to do now,
and this is crazy.
You select both of the these files,
you go to Edit,
Auto Blend Layers,
you just leave the default setting, click okay.
Wait for it...
And boom.
Look at this.
Flowers are sharp,
and the background is sharp.
The magical thing is,
if you hold down the alt key,
on the first-
If you hold down the option key,
and click here on the eye here,
you can see what this is doing.
So this is masking everything else but the flower.
And the other one is masking everything else,
the whole sky, but not the flowers.
So in both of them, they're sharp.
Now I have some little issue here.
There was some sensor dust.
So I'm gonna create a new layer,
blending-
Or I can just do,
take both layers and right click,
and go to,
Merge Layer.
And I can duplicate this one.
BY clicking and dragging here.
And I'm gonna take spot healing brush tool.
And I'm just gonna clean that up,
just because this is really annoying.
There was some kind of sensor dust that was there.
Yeah, that should be good enough.
And you can use a stem tool.
As for stem tool,
click on here, just to make sure it's really well done.
And voila!
And we have an amazing photo of flowers,
where the flowers are sharp,
and the background is sharp.
Everyhthing is sharp.
All right,
so that's the photo shoot that we did.
I only ended up taking three photos
because I did some tests and three is good enough.
So first thing is,
I'm gonna retouch the first one.
Using this time,
the golden hour preset.
Or actually no, let's use the sunset preset also.
It was a sunset, why not?
Okay?
Make sure I do my black point.
Yup, black point is good.
Abuout 3%.
These presets,
you gotta check them out.
These presets are really amazing.
I don't wanna brag,
but they are amazing.
Okay, this is good.
And then maybe the highlight a little bit.
Add a bit more contrast,
a bit more saturation.
Yeah.
And the sunset preset have like a circle,
a big circle here.
I just wanna put it here so it's really nice.
Same thing,
I think the sky was a bit boring.
So I'm gonna go 16 by nine.
And voila!
So that's my basic retouching.
Maybe add a bit of texture,
because they're really cool.
Minus clarity, to make it less geo looking.
And now I'm gonna take all three photos,
synchronize,
boom.
Synchronize, synchronize.
And check this out.
So this one,
this flower is completely sharp.
This one,
this flower is not completely sharp.
It's blurry, this flower is sharp.
Okay?
And this one, the next one,
now it's the background that's completely sharp.
And the full ground is completely blurry.
Same idea.
So three photos,
three level of zoom.
Okay?
Take all three,
right click, Edit,
make sure you use,
Open Layers in Photoshop.
And that's something else.
So here we are in Photoshop,
all three photos are there.
All I have to do is select all three.
I go to Edit,
Auto Blend Layers,
use a default option.
Wait.
And voila! Ta da!
And if you wanna see what it did,
you can hold on the option key like we did before.
You can see this is just for the first photo.
First flowers.
This one, I'm holding the option here.
This one is for the middle ground flowers.
And this one is for the rest.
Okay, and all three is good.
Now on this one, I wanna take it to the next level.
A bit of retouching.
And I didn't like that flowers,
I didn't like this flowers,
and I thought it was a lack of flowers.
So, I'm gonna copy paste this flower over here.
I'm gonna copy paste this flower there.
But first, there's a bit of an issue.
This is flowers, because there was a bit of wind.
I forgot to mention in the video,
it's good to not do that on a windy day.
Because, this is what's gonna happen.
You see,
when it's blending everything,
it's gonna do something weird.
So,
but that's okay.
I'm gonna click here on the mask.
Remember, this first layer is all about this photo.
I'm clicking on the mask and
remember a mask is,
let me show you the mask.
Black conceals, white reveals, okay?
So, basically I want to extend that white mask.
So I'm gonna press B.
Make sure brush is my forerun element.
Right click, make sure that my hardness is around
0%.
So you click and drag left and right,
to make your brush smaller or bigger.
And now,
ladies and gentlemen,
I'm just gonna bring back,
make this one sharp.
Cause this one is kind of like the star of the photo.
I wanna make sure it's kind of sharp.
Now when you do that,
it's gonna bring back some blur.
So that's fine, you can press X.
Make it smaller.
And you just go back in there.
Okay, not too much.
Just a little bit.
A little bit.
But you know it's better to a bit of blur there,
than some yellow blur.
So it's not perfect as a technique
and there's more advanced way of doing this.
But I wanted to make some things simple.
That you could use right away.
That was kind of my idea.
I want people to be-
Oh, X, you just press X and voila.
And then here.
It's a bit blurry, but that's fine.
You see?
Nature is so random that a little bit of blur,
is not gonna be that visible.
That yellow blur was much more visible,
so now it's kind of good.
You know.
It's kind of okay.
And that's because I shot on a windy day.
If it was not a windy day,
I wouldn't even have to do that.
Now, I'm gonna merge all these layers.
Select them, right click.
Merge layer, and then I'm gonna click and drag and
duplicate this layer.
And now I wanna copy and paste this flower here.
Cause this is ugly.
And copy and paste this flower here,
because this is ugly.
So, I'm gonna take the lasso tool by pressing "L".
L like lemon.
Okay?
I'm gonna make sure that my feather is around 50 pixel.
So when I make a selection with the lasso tool,
the fact that I have a 50 pixel feather,
means it's gonna be very feathered
around my selection.
So and then I'm just gonna make a really quick selection
around this flower, like this.
And you see because nature is so random,
it should work quite all right.
So, selection.
And now I'm gonna press command J on a Mac.
Or control J on Windows.
And that's gonna put,
that selection on its own layer.
Remember, if you wanna see just what's on one layer,
and nothing else.
You hold down the option key.
Boom!
You see how it is?
You know, it's very blurry around.
But check this out.
Now I can press command T or go to edit, free transform.
And then I can move this.
I'm on the layer,
see I can copy and paste that flower here.
And I can maybe, you know, rotate it,
so that it sort of matches the ugly thing that's behind it.
And...
boom!
It already looks kinda cool.
If you want to make it even cooler, you can create
a mask here.
Remember, and then you can take a brush.
B for brush.
Make sure your black now is your forerun.
So you press X.
X is gonna make the black become the forerun.
And X is gonna make the white become the forerun.
And you can just do that forever.
So you want black, because black conceals.
So maybe you want to actually,
it's so good I can hardly see anything.
But I'm just gonna paint back some of the original things
around the flower.
And it's so random in nature that,
nobody is gonna see that.
Okay, next I'm going to do the same thing with
that flower.
So, I go back on this original layer L.
I make a selection.
It takes really two seconds.
That should be good enough.
And then, command J to bring it on its own layer.
Command T, to move it.
Instead of this ugly flower.
I can maybe rotate it.
You can maybe squeeze it, you hold on shift.
You can squeeze it so it doesn't look like the other flower.
Looks like a little more random.
And voila.
I'm gonna put it here.
Okay, and I can create a mask.
Same thing.
B for brush, I can,
I can brush around it to make it blend.
And voila.
I like that, I like that, I like that.
Now I got more flowers, so that's kinda cool.
And now I'm gonna create a layer that takes into recall
everything that we've done so far.
With the most crazy shortcut of all time.
Are you ready?
Command, option, shift, E.
I believe on Windows, it's control, option, shift, E.
And that creates a layer with everything that
we've done so far.
And on that layer,
I just wanna do one final cleanup.
I'm gonna go here,
use the stadium brush tool.
And I'm just gonna,
I'm just gonna clean this little stem here.
And this one is kind of not nice.
It's so random, that this tool is gonna do wonders.
It's just gonna replace with nature.
Bad nature with good nature.
Just cleaning things up here.
This is kind of weird in the corner.
Voila.
And you know, I could go on for hours
and copy and pasting other flowers.
But, you get the idea.
And voila!
Now I'm ready to go back to Lightroom so close all.
Save.
And then once I'm back in Lightroom,
I do a very quick double development.
It just makes the photo pop a little bit more.
So I'm just gonna open the shadows a little more.
I'm gonna bring down the highlights.
I'm gonna do the black a little bit,
and the white.
Just a bit more contrast and I'm gonna click and
make a new gradient, for the bottom here.
It's gonna help,
sell the effect.
Like this.
Voila.
Ta da!
A really sharp photo from the all the way from the forerun
all the way to the background.
Guys, it's spring, we're soon gonna be able to go out,
go out there and take some beautiful flower photos.
Don't forget to like this video if you can.
That really helps.
And tell me what you would like to learn.
I'm gonna try to make one video per week.
Tell me what you would like to learn.
I read every comment, I answer every single comment.
And it just helps for more of these video.
Thank you very much.
Don't forget to get my free preset,
and if you can,
get my full pack.
You're gonna get an amazing offer,
right down below.
Thank you very much.