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In this video we’ll take a look at a few of the photos our client provided to us and make some quick adjustments to ensure the image looks its best.
New Terms:
- Histogram - Displays the tonal range for colors within the photo, providing information about the exposure.
- Adjustment Layer - Layers that allow for image adjustments in a non-destructive method.
Further Reading:
How to Use Levels in Photoshop
Levels Adjustment
How to Read & Use Histograms
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[MUSIC]
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For this stage, we're gonna do a bit of roleplay as we create some ads for
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a client.
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The client is Nature Light Studios,
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a small photography team that specializes in photos for realtors.
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They'll be providing us with the imagery, their logo, and even the copy, or
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text, that we'll need to use for all three deliverables.
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They're looking for a banner for a website, an ad for
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a mobile device, an ad for a use in Twitter.
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So we'll need to make sure their imagery looks good,
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and all the content is formatted properly for each use case.
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You can download all the assets we'll use in the teacher's notes.
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Within the ZIP file, you'll find the image and
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logo we'll be using, let's get started.
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The first thing we'll want to do is have a look at the image they sent
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of the property.
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So, let's open the file, Naturelightimage-raw.jpg.
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The first thing I notice is,
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there's an unnecessary whitespace around the image itself.
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Let's go ahead and use the Crop tool to isolate just the image content.
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Once selected, the Crop tool gives us an overlay,
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with handles on each side we can adjust.
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In our top toolbar, we can take advantage of some popular preset aspect ratios, or
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the relationship of the width to height, and the crop will constrain to that ratio.
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For this image, let's go ahead and
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manually crop the image by selecting width by height by resolution.
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It's okay if we crop just a little bit of the edges of the image,
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as it probably won't end up in our final product.
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Press Enter to commit to your crop changes.
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Next, let's have a look at the histogram for this image.
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To bring up the histogram, if you're not seeing it, select it from the Window menu.
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The histogram gives us the tonal range for all the colors within the photo,
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giving us an overview of the exposure.
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Along the horizontal axis, we'll see the distribution of tones and
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colors lying within the range black to white, or shadows to captured light.
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The vertical axis tells us how much we're seeing of a specific tone.
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Generally, when looking at a histogram, we see all colors RGB-combined by default.
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If an image is overexposed, it'll be quite a bit of white, and look blown-out.
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The histogram would then appear heavier on the right-hand side of the graph.
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If it's underexposed, the image will appear dark, and
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have more peaks to the left end of the histogram.
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Our image here appears to be quite overexposed, and
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that's not always a bad thing.
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This whitespace will actually come in handy for our end product.
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We can make a few adjustments,
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however, to bring out some of the natural colors of this image.
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To do so, we're gonna use a few adjustment layers.
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Adjustment layers allow us to modify an image in a non-destructive method.
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Meaning we can delete the layer, if we don't like the adjustments we made.
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If we were to use the Levels adjustment from within the Image Image menu,
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That would be a destructive adjustment, that would immediately affect our image.
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For the most part,
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sticking to non-destructive techniques is best practice.
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As it allows us to undo or modify any adjustments we make.
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So let's add an adjustments layer, and see how those corrections work.
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From the Layers panel, let's go ahead and
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select Adjustments Layer, and select the Levels adjustment layer.
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As you can see, the levels adjustment looks like our histogram,
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providing us a tonal range of the image.
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We're able to make adjustments to this range,
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either in RGB together or individually.
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I'll make some adjustments to help bring out the reds and blues in the image.
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Slightly decrease the midpoint of the red.
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The highlights as well, just a hair, and then now I'll select Green.
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Gonna adjust the shadows of the greens, again just a hair.
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And the highlights.
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Finally we'll adjust the blue.
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I'll choose to adjust the midpoint on this one as well, And the highlights.
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The one thing to think about when making adjustments.
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Is, the gradient below will give you a good idea of whether you're adjusting
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the highlights or shadow areas of a specific channel.
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If you'd like to read more about adjusting levels,
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check out the links in the teacher's notes.
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So this is looking pretty good.
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We can preview our adjustments later by turning it on and
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off within the Layers panel.
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Let's add just one more adjustment layer, to bring up the contrast of our colors.
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Again, selecting Adjustment Layer and choosing Brightness/Contrast this time.
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This panel only has two adjustments,
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similar to the one you may find on a TV, Brightness and Contrast.
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By increasing the contrast, we'll see the difference between colors, and
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bring about additional detail.
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And we'll bring up the brightness just a hair as well.
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Okay, that's looking pretty good as well.
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We can also, again, turn on and
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off our levels together, and see them combined, or one on top of each other.
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Okay, this is looking pretty good, let's go ahead and save it,
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click File, then Save.
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Since we've added some layers, it'll default to saving in the PSD extension.
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For now, I'll choose to save this on my desktop,
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and I'll make sure that the layers are indeed preserved.
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