[MUSIC]

For this stage, we're gonna do a bit of roleplay as we create some ads for

a client.

The client is Nature Light Studios,

a small photography team that specializes in photos for realtors.

They'll be providing us with the imagery, their logo, and even the copy, or

text, that we'll need to use for all three deliverables.

They're looking for a banner for a website, an ad for

a mobile device, an ad for a use in Twitter.

So we'll need to make sure their imagery looks good,

and all the content is formatted properly for each use case.

You can download all the assets we'll use in the teacher's notes.

Within the ZIP file, you'll find the image and

logo we'll be using, let's get started.

The first thing we'll want to do is have a look at the image they sent

of the property.

So, let's open the file, Naturelightimage-raw.jpg.

The first thing I notice is,

there's an unnecessary whitespace around the image itself.

Let's go ahead and use the Crop tool to isolate just the image content.

Once selected, the Crop tool gives us an overlay,

with handles on each side we can adjust.

In our top toolbar, we can take advantage of some popular preset aspect ratios, or

the relationship of the width to height, and the crop will constrain to that ratio.

For this image, let's go ahead and

manually crop the image by selecting width by height by resolution.

It's okay if we crop just a little bit of the edges of the image,

as it probably won't end up in our final product.

Press Enter to commit to your crop changes.

Next, let's have a look at the histogram for this image.

To bring up the histogram, if you're not seeing it, select it from the Window menu.

The histogram gives us the tonal range for all the colors within the photo,

giving us an overview of the exposure.

Along the horizontal axis, we'll see the distribution of tones and

colors lying within the range black to white, or shadows to captured light.

The vertical axis tells us how much we're seeing of a specific tone.

Generally, when looking at a histogram, we see all colors RGB-combined by default.

If an image is overexposed, it'll be quite a bit of white, and look blown-out.

The histogram would then appear heavier on the right-hand side of the graph.

If it's underexposed, the image will appear dark, and

have more peaks to the left end of the histogram.

Our image here appears to be quite overexposed, and

that's not always a bad thing.

This whitespace will actually come in handy for our end product.

We can make a few adjustments,

however, to bring out some of the natural colors of this image.

To do so, we're gonna use a few adjustment layers.

Adjustment layers allow us to modify an image in a non-destructive method.

Meaning we can delete the layer, if we don't like the adjustments we made.

If we were to use the Levels adjustment from within the Image Image menu,

That would be a destructive adjustment, that would immediately affect our image.

For the most part,

sticking to non-destructive techniques is best practice.

As it allows us to undo or modify any adjustments we make.

So let's add an adjustments layer, and see how those corrections work.

From the Layers panel, let's go ahead and

select Adjustments Layer, and select the Levels adjustment layer.

As you can see, the levels adjustment looks like our histogram,

providing us a tonal range of the image.

We're able to make adjustments to this range,

either in RGB together or individually.

I'll make some adjustments to help bring out the reds and blues in the image.

Slightly decrease the midpoint of the red.

The highlights as well, just a hair, and then now I'll select Green.

Gonna adjust the shadows of the greens, again just a hair.

And the highlights.

Finally we'll adjust the blue.

I'll choose to adjust the midpoint on this one as well, And the highlights.

The one thing to think about when making adjustments.

Is, the gradient below will give you a good idea of whether you're adjusting

the highlights or shadow areas of a specific channel.

If you'd like to read more about adjusting levels,

check out the links in the teacher's notes.

So this is looking pretty good.

We can preview our adjustments later by turning it on and

off within the Layers panel.

Let's add just one more adjustment layer, to bring up the contrast of our colors.

Again, selecting Adjustment Layer and choosing Brightness/Contrast this time.

This panel only has two adjustments,

similar to the one you may find on a TV, Brightness and Contrast.

By increasing the contrast, we'll see the difference between colors, and

bring about additional detail.

And we'll bring up the brightness just a hair as well.

Okay, that's looking pretty good as well.

We can also, again, turn on and

off our levels together, and see them combined, or one on top of each other.

Okay, this is looking pretty good, let's go ahead and save it,

click File, then Save.

Since we've added some layers, it'll default to saving in the PSD extension.

For now, I'll choose to save this on my desktop,

and I'll make sure that the layers are indeed preserved.