Have you ever wondered how to get that
'Dodge and Burned' look without spending
all that time in Photoshop?
Look I know you have, I know you have,
because I have,
we're both lazy, it's okay, we can admit it.
In this video. I'm gonna show you how
to use Lightroom and an editing
technique that I refer to as Dark Mode to
go from this to this in absolutely no time.
My name is Pye, and I'm one of the
founders of Lynn and Joseph photography
and SLRlounge.com
We're teaming up with Adorama to bring
you a new series of photography tutorials
called Master Your Craft,
right here on Adorama TV.
Solet's dive in, what's up my friends, my
name is Pie, welcome back to Adorama TV.
So glad you're joining us, this would be a
wonderful time to go ahead and grab the
exercise files by following the
description in the video, below... the
link in the description... you know what
I'm saying, let's go ahead and jump
straight in, and what I want to do is, in
this tutorial I'm gonna show you guys
kind of our typical approach to editing,
then we're gonna show you this new
approach over what we refer to as Dark Mode editing.
I'm gonna help you guys to
create your own preset so you guys can
kind of utilize this set up with your
own images, your own presets, everything,
and I'm gonna give you some
demonstrations along the way, as well as
showing you how to shoot for Dark Mode.
Yeah this is gonna be a good one,
you're gonna want to bookmark this, let's
go ahead and dive straight in.
So I have this image right here,
this is of my buddy Dylan,
and what we would typically do with an
edit is, we would raise exposure.
We'd kind of look to pull down
our highlights, and we would pull down
our whites, I'm gonna raise the shadows,
maybe lower the black point, maybe add a
little bit of contrast you know, you know
the usual,, and then we'd go and do like
our color adjustments.. everything, but
that's the typical way we would do an
edit right?
Raise exposure balance everything out,
kind of go for this, you know, preserving
of the highlights thing.
What we're gonna do with Dark Mode is
almost the exact opposite, so before I
explain kind of how to shoot for it and
everything else, I want you to see what
it does, so this is a RAW file, this was
shot on a 1DX III, and the subject is just
in natural light against a darker
background, and what I'm gonna do now
instead of raising the exposure, I'm
actually going to lower it, in fact I'm
gonna take this down to -3 okay, this is a great starting
point for a dark mode edit.
What we're gonna do now is raise the black point
all the way up to a hundred, and then
we're gonna go to the highlights, and
what I'm gonna do is start using
highlights to lift the skin tones out, so
instead of lowering highlights we're
actually raising the highlights, and
we're using the highlights to control
the skin, we're gonna use the whites to
actually control the white point on skin
so this becomes essentially that dodge
that lifts out some of those nice little
highlights, over the nose and kind of the
t-zone you know,
all the good stuff okay,
and then if you want to raise the
shadows a bit - you can raise the shadows
a bit to get to a more kind of pleasing
contrast, so this in a nutshell is Dark
Mode... from here what I would do is kind
of change the exposure just a little bit
to get it exactly where I want, now let
me show you if I create a virtual copy
of this by pressing ctrl+',
command +' and I reset this out,
look at where we started, and what a dark
mode edit does, and I'm gonna go ahead
and just add a little bit more exposure
to this, so this Dark Mode edit almost
acts as a Dodge and Burn without ever
going into Photoshop okay, this is what's
fun about this kind of technique okay, so
now we've learned kind of the typical
way that we might approach an image
development is to raise exposure, balance
out highlights and shadows,
now Dark Mode is the exact opposite,
lowering exposure using the highlights
over our subjects to control that
brightness and doing
that dodging and burning there.
Now let's go to step #3
well how in the heck do
we shoot for this Dark Mode look,
well Dark Mode really requires an image to
use or to be shot with "Chiaroscuro Lighting"
Okay this is an italian term
that references like basically just the
difference in shading between light and dark.
So you're basically using lights to
highlight the subject, and this is a
painterly effect that was used by
Rembrandt and all sorts of classic
artists that would basically paint
bright subjects over darker backgrounds
so that's really all we need, is we need
skin tones to be brighter than our
backgrounds, so when you look at this
this was shot at
for light and when you see the
behind-the-scenes video, we're literally
standing on a sidewalk, and I've just
placed my subject kind of into the
bushes I mean, I love doing that, I'm
literally walking around and when I see
a bush, I'm like you know what, just get
in the bush, you know what I mean like
like just get in the bush, it's gonna
look good.
So you know, don't do what I
just said right now at all, but anyway
she's being lit just with that natural,
light, and then background is naturally
darker than she is, which makes it
perfect, but this is a natural light
setup, you can do this in any scene or
situation, now this image is not gonna
work with dark mode because if I reset
this out, and I start using. I've dropped
my exposure, I start using highlights to
control my subject's skin tone, his skin
wasn't in the highlights, the, the, the,
the scene itself is in the highlights, so
we have no highlights on the skin, which
means that this has to be processed as
an HDR image, so let's go to another
scene, this is another scene, I'm gonna
make sure this is fully reset out by
pressing control shift R, and all that's
happening in the scene is - we're using
the windows to control the highlights right?
So I've just used the curtains to
kind of close them down a little bit,
place her in the spot where that window
light's coming in, and kept the background
a bit dark.
What is the exposure?
It's 1/200th second, f/1.8, ISO 800.
Background is left nice and dark,
and we just kind of control the light in that
way, so this works perfectly because all I
got to do is lower the exposure, raise my black
point, and start playing with my
highlights to lift her out, and you can
see that we now darken what's already
kind of dark in the image, or darker than
our subjects, and we lift out our subject
using at this technique.
I'm just gonna make this kind of quick
and dirty okay,
so same thing on this image, this is shot
in the studio, this go around we're using
a strobe, and we're lighting her up with
a nice soft light, and just making sure
that once again the background is darker
than the highlights on her skin, and it
works perfectly, in fact what I'm gonna
do now is, I'm gonna encourage you so
let's go back to this image right here,
and I'm actually gonna click the 'dark
mode preset', so inside of visual flow
tool, so if you use visual flow
development tools, you already have dark
mode along with all of our retouching
tools, along with the actual presets,
but if you don't have them it is
totally okay, if you guys don't want to
buy it, I'm gonna show you how to get it
right here, so this is the 'baseline
default setting' that we use for 'dark
mode', and we're gonna create the preset
together, so you're gonna dial in
- 3, plus 73 for highlights,
plus 53 for shadows..
zeroed out for white balance, are sorry
the whites and then blacks are at a 100,
now once you go up to the +
and you're gonna go 'Create New' preset
Click 'check none'
select your 'basic tone options only' as
well as 'process version'...
give it a name save it out as d'ark mode'.
Now we're choosing this because this
goes into step 4.
I want to show you how you can use
'dark mode' in conjunction with the
presets that you already have
or if you have 'visual flow' with these
presets, but it's really cool because you
can stack this effect over one of those
settings, so let's go ahead and do this.
Let's create that out, I'm gonna press
cancel because we already have it, okay
so what I'm gonna do is just kind of get
this image back to where I like it by
kind of just adjusting up, and it will
kind of bring the exposure up a little
bit, and right about here is is pretty
nice, where we have this, nice, look I'm
gonna create a virtual copy here because
now what I'm gonna do is actually reset
this out, and I want you to choose your
favorite preset - you could choose a
preset that you've created for yourself,
one of your favorite ones from a pack, a
visual flow one, you could even just dial
in the color settings that you'd like to
have, just dial in those settings, now
what I'm gonna do is select from the
visual flow modern pack, which kind of
creates this nice warmth and bright look
to an image.
I'm gonna select soft light okay,
then from there select that dark
mode preset that you just made okay.
It's gonna invert the colors,
and now from this place we're gonna
make our subtle tweaks and adjustments.
I'm gonna add to my highlights
and look at this - what we've just done
now is we've created a
dark mode look with an existing color
setup, so if I compare this to that
previous image, you'll see that all of
our color tones from the soft light
preset, from that modern soft light preset
are now applied with this dark mode look
and what I would do now, I'm gonna drop
in a radial burn, all this does is if you
press shift M,
this is dropping in a radial burn at
- 0.5 right, over my subjects skin
in the middle, and here's what I would do.
You can create that radial burn on your
own, these are things that I'm always
doing, I'm dropping in these radial burns
in the center of my image right, so
rather than doing it manually each time
drop it into whatever strength that you
like, go up here and save this out as a
preset, only using the radial filters.
Now you can add a radial burn anywhere and
just simply move it around as opposed to
creating it manually each time, now this
is what's fun about this, is we've
literally done nothing, this takes
seconds to do, and if you want to take
this into Photoshop and go at this point
and do additional dodging and burning,
and kind of bring the eyes out, and do
whatever you want, you're totally can do
that, but most of the work has now been
done for you, and if you compare the
before and the after, it's it's pretty
night and day, like the way that she pops
out from the background now compared to
the original file.
Now if you made it this far,
first I want you to come below
and be like, dude I made it to the hair
technique, and it was awesome because a
lot of you get available for that, but
here we go, a lot of retouch can be done
inside of Lightroom.
So here's what I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna go to my adjustment brushes,
we've built out a full retouching kit
inside of visual flow development tools.
So this is literally a workflow based
retouching kit that does everything ok?
So all you do is you literally select
what you want and right now what I want
is to enhance hair detail, so what you're
gonna do is pause the video, and dial in
all these settings, because now you have
a hair enhancement brush preset already
for you, it's raising exposure, it's
boosting contrast it's lifting
highlights significantly, it's going to
increase shadows, drop the whites a
little bit, raise the, or drop the black
just a little bit, add texture, and the
overall looking effect when I paint this
over hair, you're gonna see it just kind
of add gloss to hair okay, here's the
next fun part about this, if you want to
strengthen it, hold down alt or option
and just click and drag to the right to
strengthen the effect,
now I can nicely kind of strengthen and
enhance the hair.
I'm gonna do that on the opposite side
as well just to get a
little bit of extra pop from this, and if
you watched this little tip on hair, I
want you guys to come in, because I think
it's fun, I'm, I'm I really want to be the
Bob Ross of Photography Tutorials, like
I'm gonna paint happy clouds in every
photo, except instead of happy clouds I'm
gonna do hair, hair is gonna be my, my, my
happy clouds, I love that man, I spend a
lot of my childhood watching okay...
so a lot of things we can do directly from
Lightroom okay, I might do one other
thing since you're here, and you know
just because we can, let's do a little
bit of eye enhancement.
So press new - I'm gonna go,
and we're gonna drop into this
again, and we're gonna go down to eyes,
enhance detail, we can also do whiten but
I would start with enhance detail, dial
this in, pause the video, save it out as a
new preset, again you save brush presets
by dropping down here once you have the
settings dialed in, you drop down here
and say save current setting, the new
preset, save it, this is like, this is gold
you're getting three presets.
Mikey, Carlo it's crazy, we're giving them
free presets, alright, it's cool, you guys
don't have to say anything, like they're
in the background, but you just make me
feel like a crazy person.
That's fine,
so what I'm gonna do is paint this over the eyes,
and what this does is it kind of
enhances detail and just adds a little
bit of sharpness to it, and then I'm
gonna go to new and we're gonna go ahead
and add a white, and once again dial this
in, pause, dial in all these settings and
we're gonna just paint this in right
over kind of the base whites of the eyes.
Now I like to feather this off, so
holding down alt or option,
I'll kind of feather this off in the shape of the
shadows that are already landing on the
eye's, okay, so that way it kind of looks a
little bit more natural, so where the
shadows would be in kind of this dark
area, the iris, I'm gonna do that and just
for shiz and giggles, let's do one more,
go - new, and go - intensify iris,
pause the video, dial this in, yeah.
That's now four presets okay,
I'm gonna paint this right over the iris, and what
this is gonna do is just lift out some
of the color tone in the eyes, I wanted
to be very subtle and the way that you
guys can check, once you've done all this
stuff, the way that you check to make
sure it's subtle, and not noticeable is
you zoom back out, in fact you can go
back to grid view, look at it from grid
view with a large thumbnail, and look at
and say, do the eyes pop out in an
unnatural sort of way, if the eyes look
kind of normal,
you're good, if the eyes look like
they're glowing like an alien, that has
glowing eyes, you've gone a little too
far, but with just that it's so much fun.
Cuz look at this, we've gone from this
image, this before image,
to this final, and we've never even
had to touch Photoshop to get there so
hopefully you guys enjoyed it, this tutorial.
Be sure to subscribe to the
Adorama TV channel,
like the video, let me
know what you thought about it.
What you guys would like to see next.
I get a lot of ideas from all of your
guys's comments,
so please let me know and I'm happy to
create tons more
tutorials for you.
In the meanwhile if you guys want to
check out more about
visual flow presets be sure to go to VF presets.com
and for more of the best A to Z education
for photographers, portrait
photographers, those that want to start
businesses go to SLRLoungeworkshops.com
as well, you guys can follow me at
@Pyejirsa.com
in the meanwhile I'm gonna see
you all in the next video.
Peace.