The provided texts are tutorials focused on image editing techniques within the free, open-source software GIMP and darktable. They cover fundamental adjustments like color balance, exposure, and contrast, often contrasting the approaches for JPEG and RAW files. More advanced methods such as layer masks, dodging and burning, sharpening, selections, compositing, creating special effects like double exposures and vignettes, and fixing common issues like overexposure are also explored. The tutorials guide users through specific projects, offering practical application of these editing tools and concepts.

GIMP & Darktable Study Guide

Quiz

1. Explain the purpose of the Curves tool in GIMP.
2. Describe two methods for zooming in and out of an image in GIMP.
3. What is the function of the Healing tool in GIMP, and how is a source point selected?
4. Why is it generally recommended to duplicate the background layer before editing in GIMP?
5. Explain the concept of non-destructive editing and how it can be achieved in GIMP using layers.
6. Briefly describe the difference between a pixel layer and a text layer in GIMP.
7. What is Darktable, and what is its primary function in a photo editing workflow alongside GIMP?
8. Explain the purpose of the histogram in Darktable during the editing process.
9. Describe the function of dodging and burning in photo editing.
10. What is the main difference between sharpening an image for online use versus preparing it for a large print?

Quiz Answer Key

1. The Curves tool in GIMP allows for precise adjustments to the tonal range of an image, affecting highlights, shadows, and midtones. It can be used to increase contrast, correct exposure issues, and create various artistic effects by manipulating a curve representing the image’s tonal values.
2. Two methods for zooming in and out in GIMP are using the Zoom tool (activated by the ‘Z’ key) to click or drag around an area to zoom in, and using the Control (PC) or Command (Mac) key while clicking with any tool to zoom out. Alternatively, the zoom controls can be found in the View menu or the Tool Options panel when the Zoom tool is selected.
3. The Healing tool in GIMP is used to repair imperfections in an image, such as blemishes or stray hairs, by replacing the selected area with pixel information from a designated source area. A source point is selected by holding down the Control (PC) or Command (Mac) key and clicking on an area with desirable texture and color.
4. Duplicating the background layer in GIMP allows for non-destructive editing. By working on a copy, the original image data remains untouched, providing the flexibility to revert to the original or adjust the edits on the duplicated layer without permanently altering the base image.
5. Non-destructive editing is a method of making changes to an image without overwriting the original data, allowing for flexibility and reversibility. In GIMP, this is primarily achieved through the use of layers, where edits are applied to separate layers, leaving the underlying original image intact. Adjusting layer opacity or blending modes are examples of non-destructive techniques.
6. A pixel layer in GIMP is a standard layer that contains image data made up of individual pixels, and it’s where most direct image manipulations like painting and retouching occur. A text layer, on the other hand, contains editable text elements. Text layers have a special icon in the Layers panel and can be modified using the Text tool to change the content, font, size, and color until they are rasterized into a pixel layer.
7. Darktable is a free and open-source raw image processing software that works in conjunction with GIMP. Its primary function is to handle the initial processing and adjustments of raw camera files, similar to Adobe Lightroom or Camera Raw, before further detailed editing in a pixel-based editor like GIMP.
8. The histogram in Darktable is a graphical representation of the tonal distribution in an image, showing the frequency of different brightness levels from black to white. It helps photographers assess the exposure of an image, identify areas of over or underexposure (clipping), and guide adjustments to the tonal range, such as setting white and black points.
9. Dodging and burning are traditional darkroom techniques used in digital editing to selectively lighten (dodge) or darken (burn) specific areas of an image. This is done to enhance contrast, bring out details, and direct the viewer’s attention by manipulating the brightness of localized regions within the photograph.
10. Sharpening for online use often involves a slightly more aggressive approach to make images appear crisp on various screen sizes and resolutions, whereas sharpening for a large print requires more subtlety to avoid exaggerating noise and artifacts that might become visible at a larger scale. The viewing distance also plays a crucial role in determining the appropriate level of sharpening for prints.

Essay Format Questions

1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using adjustment layers (or the mimicked version in GIMP) in a photo editing workflow. How do they contribute to non-destructive editing and creative exploration?
2. Compare and contrast the roles of GIMP and Darktable in a comprehensive photo editing workflow, particularly when working with raw image files. Explain how these two software programs can complement each other.
3. Analyze the impact of tonal and color adjustments on the overall mood and visual narrative of a photograph. Using examples from the source material, discuss the significance of tools like Curves, Levels, and Color Balance.
4. Evaluate the importance of understanding layer management in GIMP for complex image editing tasks such as compositing and applying creative effects. Describe different types of layers and their specific applications.
5. Explore the concept and application of dodging and burning as a technique for enhancing depth, detail, and focus in a photograph. Discuss the potential pitfalls and best practices for using this technique effectively in GIMP.

Glossary of Key Terms

• Contrast: The difference in tonal values (lightness and darkness) within an image.
• Curves Tool: A GIMP tool that allows for precise adjustments to the tonal range of an image by manipulating a curve.
• Darktable: A free and open-source raw image processing software used for editing raw files before potentially moving to a pixel editor like GIMP.
• Dodge: A photo editing technique used to selectively lighten specific areas of an image.
• Burn: A photo editing technique used to selectively darken specific areas of an image.
• Exposure: The overall brightness or darkness of an image, determined by the amount of light that reaches the sensor or film.
• GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program, a free and open-source raster graphics editor similar to Adobe Photoshop.
• Healing Tool: A GIMP tool used to repair imperfections in an image by blending pixels from a source area with a target area.
• Histogram: A graphical representation of the tonal distribution in an image, showing the frequency of each brightness level.
• Hue: The pure color in the color spectrum (e.g., red, green, blue).
• Layer Mask: A non-destructive way to selectively hide or reveal parts of a layer in GIMP.
• Layers: Separate levels within a GIMP image that can contain individual elements, allowing for non-destructive editing and compositing.
• Levels Tool: A GIMP tool used to adjust the tonal range of an image by manipulating the black point, white point, and midtones.
• Non-destructive Editing: Making changes to an image in a way that does not permanently alter the original data, allowing for reversibility.
• Opacity: The degree to which a layer is transparent or opaque.
• Pixel Layer: A standard layer in GIMP that contains rasterized image data made up of pixels.
• Raw File: An unprocessed image file directly from a digital camera sensor, containing the maximum amount of data and offering greater flexibility in editing.
• Retouching: The process of making minor corrections or enhancements to an image, such as removing blemishes or adjusting skin tones.
• Saturation: The intensity or purity of a color.
• Sharpening: An image editing technique used to enhance the edges and details in an image, making it appear clearer.
• Tone Curve: Another term for the Curves tool, referring to the graphical representation of tonal adjustments.
• Vignette: A darkening or reduction of saturation towards the corners of an image.
• White Balance: The process of adjusting the color temperature of an image to neutralize any color casts and ensure that white objects appear white.

Briefing Document: Review of GIMP Tutorials

Document Version: 1.0 Date: October 26, 2023 Prepared for: User Request Subject: Detailed Review of GIMP Tutorial Excerpts

This briefing document provides a detailed review of the main themes, important ideas, and facts presented in the provided excerpts from GIMP tutorials. Where appropriate, direct quotes from the original sources are included. The tutorials cover a range of fundamental and intermediate GIMP skills, including image adjustments, retouching, interface customization, layer management, non-destructive editing techniques, working with raw files via Darktable, and various creative effects.

Main Themes

1. Introduction to GIMP Interface and Basic Operations: The tutorials begin by familiarizing users with the GIMP interface, including toolbars, panels, and basic actions like opening files, zooming, and selecting tools.

• “let’s jump back into and let’s grab our Zoom tool which you can grab from the tool bar which is right here or you can use the keyboard shortcut which is the letter Z”
• The tutorials emphasize customization of the interface for user preference, including combining panels into single window mode, resizing panels, rearranging tabs, and adjusting the size of tool icons and layer thumbnails.
• “you can combine them all by going up to Windows and selecting single Window mode”
• “for Mac users you’re going to go up to and select preferences from here and if you’re on Windows it’s going to be under edit down here at the bottom”

1. Fundamental Image Adjustments: Several tutorials focus on essential image editing techniques, including contrast adjustment using the Curves tool, retouching blemishes and stray hairs using the Healing tool and Clone tool, and resizing images for online use.

• “I love the curves tool for applying contrast”
• “to retouch we are going to use the healing tool in gamp which is very similar to the healing tool in Photoshop we also have another retouching tool that is similar to the one in Photoshop which is called the Clone tool”
• The importance of setting a source image for retouching is highlighted: “if you take a look down here it says set a source image first”
• Saving images correctly in GIMP is covered, noting the distinction between saving the project file (.xcf) and exporting to common formats like JPEG and PNG.
• “there’s something you have to do specifically in order to save your image as a JPEG or PNG file”

1. Color and Tonal Adjustments: A dedicated tutorial explores various color and tonal adjustment tools available in GIMP under the “Colors” menu.

• Tools covered include Color Balance, Color Temperature (White Balance), Hue-Saturation, Exposure, Shadows and Highlights, Brightness-Contrast, Levels, and Curves.
• The instructor expresses personal preferences, often favoring the Curves tool for tonal adjustments and Hue-Saturation for color correction over other similar tools.
• “never ever use this one [Hue and chroma] I don’t anyways”
• The benefit of shooting in RAW format for greater flexibility in white balance adjustments is mentioned.
• “it’s much easier to change the white balance in Raw versus JPEG”

1. Understanding and Utilizing Layers: A significant portion of the tutorials is dedicated to explaining the concept of layers in GIMP and how to work with them effectively.

• The analogy of analog layers (sheets of paper) is used to introduce the digital concept.
• Four main types of layers are identified: Background layer, Grouped layers, Pixel layer, and Text layer.
• Differences between GIMP’s background layer and Photoshop’s are highlighted, particularly the initial unlocked state in GIMP.
• “in Photoshop the background layers are automatically locked you can’t move them you can’t apply any edits to them but in you can”
• Four ways to customize layers are discussed: Layer Styles (effects like drop shadows), Layer Masks (for non-destructive pixel hiding), Blending Modes (to interact with underlying layers), and Opacity (to control transparency).
• Various functions at the bottom of the Layers panel are introduced, including deleting, duplicating, adding masks, merging, and creating new layers and layer groups.
• The concept of the Layer Boundary (yellow and black dashed line for individual layers, blue and black for groups) and its purpose in showing layer size and confining edits is explained.

1. Non-Destructive Editing: The tutorials strongly advocate for non-destructive editing practices to maintain image quality and flexibility.

• Duplicating the background layer before applying edits is recommended.
• Using adjustment layers (mimicked by duplicated and edited layers) to control the intensity of adjustments via opacity is demonstrated.
• “what you have done is you’ve done what is known as destructive editing you’ve applied an edit directly to the pixels and you alter them in a way that you cannot get them back”
• The workaround for GIMP not having built-in adjustment layers like Photoshop is presented: “in essence this edited layer is our adjustment layer”

1. Working with RAW Files via Darktable: A dedicated section introduces Darktable as a free and powerful RAW editor that works in conjunction with GIMP.

• Darktable is presented as a Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw alternative with image management and editing capabilities.
• The Lighttable and Darkroom modules are introduced, along with other modules like Map, Print, and Tethering.
• The Darkroom interface, including left and right panels, history panel, snapshots, and categorized editing tools, is overviewed.
• Customizing the right panel by creating personalized workflows (presets) to show only frequently used tools is demonstrated.
• The non-destructive nature of RAW editing in Darktable is emphasized: “you’re not actually editing the raw file instead you’re editing a preview…it’s non-destructive”
• Importing images into Darktable from various sources (hard drive, camera, media card, tethering) is explained.
• Setting import parameters, including metadata inclusion, is covered.

1. Practical Editing Project in Darktable: A step-by-step walkthrough of editing a landscape photograph in Darktable is provided.

• The editing process includes adjusting exposure using the Exposure module and histogram analysis, correcting white balance, adding contrast with the Tone Curve, removing unwanted elements with the Retouching tool, reducing digital noise with the Denoise tool, and enhancing the sky and water with the Graduated Density tool.
• The use of clipping indicators to avoid overexposure and underexposure is demonstrated.
• The importance of personal preference in white balance adjustments is noted.
• Creating S-curves in the Tone Curve to add contrast is explained.
• Managing multiple instances of a module (e.g., Graduated Density) for targeted adjustments is shown.
• Addressing issues like dust spots and color banding in Darktable is covered.

1. Exporting Images from Darktable: The process of exporting edited images from Darktable is detailed, including destination selection, file naming options, format choices (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc.), quality settings, resizing, watermarking, metadata inclusion, and more advanced options.

• Recommendations for common export settings (JPEG, sRGB profile, appropriate quality) for online sharing are provided.
• Understanding bit depth (8-bit vs. 16-bit) and its implications is briefly touched upon.
• The use of “Create unique file name” option is explained.

1. Refining Edits and Exploring Advanced Techniques in GIMP: The tutorials then transition back to GIMP to refine edits and explore more advanced techniques.

• The Levels tool is revisited for setting white and black points, particularly when working with JPEG files. The difference between linear and logarithmic histograms is explained.
• The Curves tool is explored as a versatile tool for setting white and black points, adjusting exposure, and adding contrast through S-curves, offering a more flexible alternative to the Levels tool.
• Dodge and burn techniques are introduced, both conceptually (darkroom analogy) and practically using GIMP’s Dodge/Burn tool.
• Tips for effective dodging and burning, such as using low exposure settings for gradual build-up and avoiding the halo effect, are provided.
• Lens correction in Darktable is discussed, including its effects on vignetting and distortion, and the need for potential cropping or further correction in GIMP.
• Sharpening techniques in both Darktable (Traditional Sharpen) and GIMP (Unsharp Mask, High Pass filter) are demonstrated. The High Pass filter with an overlay blending mode is highlighted as a preferred method, along with the use of layer masks for selective sharpening (e.g., avoiding skin).
• Advanced compositing techniques are introduced through a “Sky Replacement” project, covering the selection of the sky, feathering edges, pasting a new sky as a layer, and using layer masks for seamless blending. The importance of matching atmospheric conditions is emphasized, and using a gradient on a layer mask to achieve this is shown.
• Creating a “Matte Effect” (faded or muted look) using both the Levels and Curves tools in GIMP is demonstrated, with a preference expressed for the Curves tool for a more traditional and versatile result.
• Adding a “Retro Effect” to an image is covered, including desaturation, adding dust and scratch textures (using “Open as Layers” and adjusting blending modes and opacity), and creating a color fade effect using a large, low-opacity brush on a new layer with different color choices and blending modes.
• Achieving a “Dramatic Lighting” effect using selection tools to isolate areas (e.g., a subject), inverting the selection, darkening the surroundings, and then enhancing the subject with curves adjustments is shown.
• Adding vignettes in both Darktable and GIMP is explained. GIMP is presented as offering more flexibility, especially for creating custom-shaped vignettes using layer masks and selections from external files (e.g., a heart shape). Gaussian blur is used to soften the vignette edges.

Important Ideas and Facts

• GIMP offers a highly customizable user interface.
• The Curves tool is a powerful and versatile tool for adjusting contrast and tonal range.
• Non-destructive editing is crucial for maintaining image quality and allowing for future adjustments.
• Layers are fundamental to advanced image manipulation in GIMP.
• Layer masks provide a non-destructive way to control the visibility of layer pixels.
• Blending modes allow layers to interact in various ways to create different effects.
• Darktable is a free, open-source RAW editor that integrates well with GIMP for processing RAW files.
• RAW files offer greater flexibility for editing compared to JPEG files.
• Dodging and burning are techniques for selectively lightening and darkening areas of an image to enhance depth and detail.
• Sharpening should typically be applied as one of the final steps in the editing process.
• Layer masks can be used to apply sharpening selectively.
• Compositing involves combining multiple images into a single document.
• The matte effect is characterized by reduced contrast, particularly in the blacks and shadows.
• Retro effects often involve desaturation, added textures (dust, scratches), and color shifts.
• Vignettes darken the edges of an image, drawing focus to the center.

Conclusion

The provided excerpts offer a comprehensive introduction to various essential image editing techniques in GIMP, complemented by the use of Darktable for RAW file processing. The tutorials emphasize core concepts like non-destructive editing, layer management, and the effective use of key adjustment tools. By following these tutorials and practicing the techniques, users can develop a strong foundation for enhancing their digital images using free and open-source software. The inclusion of practical projects further reinforces the learning process and encourages creative exploration.

GIMP Basic Image Editing and Interface Guide

1. What are some basic image editing techniques in GIMP demonstrated in the sources?

The sources demonstrate several fundamental image editing techniques in GIMP, including adjusting contrast using the Curves tool, retouching images by removing blemishes and stray hairs with the Healing tool and Clone tool, zooming in and out, resizing images for online use (scaling), and saving images in different formats like JPEG and PNG via the “Export As” function.

2. How does GIMP’s Healing tool work for retouching?

GIMP’s Healing tool, similar to Photoshop’s, requires setting a source image first. To do this, you hold down the Ctrl key (PC) or Command key (Mac) and click on an area of the image with similar color, luminosity, and contrast to the area you want to retouch. Once the source is set (indicated by a small circle), you can click on the blemish or area you want to cover, and GIMP will use the pixel information from the source to blend and remove the imperfection. For stray hairs, it’s recommended to resize the brush to be slightly larger than the hair’s thickness and then click and drag along the hair’s length after setting a source point adjacent to the hair.

3. What are the differences in saving images between GIMP and Photoshop as highlighted in the sources?

The sources emphasize that saving images in GIMP for formats like JPEG or PNG is different from Photoshop. In Photoshop, you typically use “Save As.” In GIMP, you must use the “Export As” function. The standard “Save” function in GIMP saves the image in GIMP’s native format (.xcf), which preserves layers and editing information. To get a shareable file format like JPEG or PNG, you need to explicitly choose “Export As” and select the desired file type.

4. How can the GIMP interface be customized according to the sources?

The GIMP interface offers several customization options. Users can switch to “Single Window Mode” via the Windows menu to combine all panels. The left and right panels can be resized by dragging the three small dots located between them. Individual tabs within these panels can be rearranged by clicking and dragging, closed, or even made into free-floating windows (though this functionality had issues in the Mac version at the time of recording). New tabs can be added back through the Windows -> Dockable Dialogues menu. Users can also increase the size of tool icons and layer thumbnail previews in the Preferences (under GIMP on Mac, Edit on Windows) by navigating to Interface -> Icon Theme and adjusting the icon size, and within the Layers panel’s preferences for thumbnail size.

5. What are the four main types of layers in GIMP, as described in the sources?

The four main types of layers in GIMP discussed are: * Background Layer: This is created when a new document is opened or when an image is opened for the first time. Unlike Photoshop, it is not automatically locked initially and can be edited or moved unless explicitly locked. * Grouped Layers: These layers serve to organize other layers together, allowing for collective management. * Pixel Layer: Any layer containing image data, whether from an opened file or created through painting, is a pixel layer. * Text Layer: These layers contain editable text, indicated by a specific icon in the layer preview. Once a text layer is modified in a way that rasterizes it, it becomes a pixel layer, and the text is no longer directly editable as text.

6. How can layers be customized in GIMP based on the information provided?

Layers in GIMP can be customized in several ways: * Locking: Layers can be locked to prevent moving, editing pixels, or altering the alpha (transparency) channel. * Linking: Multiple layers can be linked together so that actions like moving are applied to all linked layers simultaneously. * Layer Styles (Effects): Although not covered in detail, the source mentions layer styles like drop shadows can be applied. * Layer Masks: These allow for non-destructive hiding or revealing of parts of a layer based on a grayscale image associated with the layer. * Blending Modes: These control how a layer interacts visually with the layers beneath it, offering various effects. * Opacity: Adjusting the opacity of a layer changes its transparency, allowing underlying layers to show through.

7. What is the workaround suggested in the sources for mimicking adjustment layers in GIMP?

Since GIMP does not have built-in adjustment layers like Photoshop, the suggested workaround is to duplicate the layer you want to adjust and then apply the desired edit (e.g., exposure change) to the duplicated layer. This edited layer then acts as a pseudo-adjustment layer. The opacity of this layer can be adjusted to control the intensity of the effect. If the results are not satisfactory, the adjustment layer can be turned off or deleted, preserving the original layer. This method allows for non-destructive editing.

8. How does the source describe the integration of raw editing with GIMP using Darktable?

The sources explain that GIMP, like Photoshop, cannot directly edit raw files. Instead, it integrates with a separate raw editor called Darktable. Darktable is presented as a free and powerful alternative to Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw, offering features for importing, organizing (with tags, keywords, labels, stars), and editing raw images non-destructively. The workflow involves editing raw files in Darktable and then exporting them (typically as JPEG or other raster formats) to be further worked on in GIMP. The source highlights Darktable’s extensive set of editing tools, its modular interface, and the ability to customize the displayed tools for a streamlined workflow.

Image Tonal Adjustment: Levels and Curves

Based on the sources, tonal adjustments are crucial for enhancing the contrast and detail in an image. The tonal range of an image includes blacks, shadows, midtones, highlights, and whites, which are visually represented by a histogram.

Levels Tool:

• The levels tool displays a histogram showing the distribution of tones in an image. Gaps in the histogram on the left side indicate missing detail in the blacks and shadows, while gaps on the right side indicate missing detail in the whites and highlights.
• Adjusting the black point (the leftmost slider in the levels tool) involves dragging it to the right edge of the histogram to set the darkest point in the image, thereby adding contrast.
• Similarly, adjusting the white point (the rightmost slider) by dragging it to the left edge of the histogram sets the brightest point and also increases contrast.
• Be cautious not to drag these markers too far inside the histogram, as this will lead to clipping, resulting in a loss of detail in those tonal ranges. The clipping indicator can highlight areas where detail is being lost (red for whites/highlights, blue for blacks/shadows). It is recommended to set the clipping preview mode to ‘luminance only’ for tonal adjustments.
• In GIMP, the levels tool can also be used to target individual color channels for removing color casts. Dragging the midpoint slider in a color channel can decrease that color and increase its complement (e.g., moving the midpoint to the right in the red channel reduces red and adds green).
• The midpoint slider in the levels tool can be used to adjust the overall exposure of an image, making it darker or brighter.
• In GIMP, you can switch the histogram display from linear to logarithmic to better visualize peaks and valleys, which can aid in editing.

Curves Tool:

• The curves tool is considered a more advanced yet precise tool for adding contrast compared to the levels tool. It also displays a histogram in the background.
• Instead of horizontal sliders, the curves tool features a linear line representing the tonal range, from black (bottom left) to white (top right).
• Contrast is often added using the curves tool by creating an “S curve”: dragging down the line in the blacks and shadows to make them darker and dragging up the line in the whites and highlights to make them brighter.
• The curves tool allows for pinpoint adjustments along the tonal range by adding anchor points to the line. This enables subtle and targeted modifications to blacks, shadows, midtones, and highlights independently.
• Similar to the levels tool, the curves tool in Dart Table allows setting the white and black points by dragging the ends of the curve to the edges of the histogram. An ‘S curve’ can then be applied for contrast, and the midpoint can be adjusted for exposure.

Other Tonal Adjustment Tools:

• The sources briefly mention other tools for tonal adjustments, including “Shadows and Highlights”, which can be used to brighten the shadows and darken the highlights to increase detail and contrast. In Dart Table, this tool can perform basic dodging and burning by adjusting the brightness of shadows and highlights.
• The “Brightness and Contrast” tool provides simpler controls for making an image brighter or darker and adjusting overall contrast. However, the curves tool is often preferred for more control.
• In Dart Table, the “tone curve” tool can also be used to set white and black points and adjust midtones for exposure, offering similar functionality to the levels tool but with the added flexibility of curve adjustments.

In summary, tonal adjustments involve manipulating the distribution of light and dark tones in an image to improve contrast, reveal detail, and achieve a desired look. The levels and curves tools are fundamental for these adjustments, offering different levels of control and precision in both GIMP and Dart Table. Understanding the histogram is essential for making informed tonal adjustments and avoiding clipping.

GIMP and Dart Table Color Adjustment Tools and Techniques

Based on the sources, color adjustments are essential for modifying the hues, saturation, and overall color balance of an image. Several tools are available in both GIMP and Dart Table for this purpose.

GIMP Color Adjustment Tools:

• Levels Tool: While primarily for tonal adjustments, the levels tool in GIMP can also be used to target individual color channels for removing color casts. By adjusting the midpoint slider for a specific color channel (e.g., red), you can decrease that color and increase its complementary color (e.g., green).
• Color Balance: This tool allows you to remove or add color casts in an image. You can target specific tonal ranges (shadows, midtones, highlights) to apply these color adjustments precisely. For example, you can add red to the shadows or remove red from the highlights.
• Color Temperature (White Balance): Similar to white balance adjustments in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, this tool allows you to adjust the color temperature of an image. You can input the original Kelvin temperature at which the image was captured and then adjust it to your desired temperature. However, the source notes that significant white balance adjustments on JPEG files may lead to unnatural skin tones, and it’s generally easier to adjust white balance in raw files.
• Hue and Chroma: The source explicitly states that the instructor does not use this tool.
• Hue-Saturation: This is a recommended tool for color adjustments in GIMP. It allows you to target individual color channels to modify their hue, saturation, and brightness levels. This is often used for removing color casts or changing the colors and intensity of specific parts of an image.
• Saturation: This tool adjusts the overall color saturation in a way that is described as slightly different from the Hue-Saturation option, but the instructor prefers the Hue-Saturation tool.
• Colorize: This tool allows you to replace the colors in a selected layer with a uniform color based on the chosen foreground color. You can adjust the hue, saturation, and lightness of the colorize effect.
• Blending Modes: When working with layers, blending modes offer various ways to combine the colors of one layer with the layer(s) below. For example, using the “HSV Hue” or “Color” blending mode with a solid color fill layer can effectively change the color of objects in the underlying layer. Other blending modes like “soft light” can also create color effects like a sepia tone. For changing eye color, “darken only” was suggested as a potentially effective blending mode.
• Velvia: This tool, mentioned in the context of Dart Table but later used in GIMP, is designed to boost color saturation in an image.

Dart Table Color Adjustment Tools:

• Graduated Density Tool: This tool allows for localized color adjustments. You can apply a gradient of color changes across a selected area of the image, often used for enhancing skies by adjusting hue and saturation.
• White Balance: Similar to GIMP, Dart Table has a white balance tool to adjust the color temperature of raw files.
• Color Grading: This category contains tools like split toning, color contrast, color correction, and shadows and highlights, which allow for more advanced color manipulations.
• Effects Panel: This includes options to convert images to monochrome and other color-related effects.
• Velvia: This module is available in Dart Table to boost color saturation.

General Concepts:

• Color Casts: These are unwanted tints of a particular color that can affect the overall look of an image. Several tools, like Color Balance and Hue-Saturation, can be used to remove them.
• Color Saturation: This refers to the intensity of the colors in an image. Tools like Hue-Saturation and Velvia can be used to increase or decrease saturation.
• Color Profiles: When exporting images, choosing the appropriate color profile (e.g., sRGB for online use) is important for consistent color rendering across different devices.

The sources emphasize that experimenting with these tools using your own images is the best way to understand how they work and achieve your desired creative vision.

Editing JPEGs in GIMP and Dart Table

Based on the sources, editing JPEG files can be done in GIMP, and while Dart Table primarily focuses on raw files, JPEGs can still be opened and have basic adjustments applied. However, the sources highlight some important considerations and techniques specific to editing JPEGs.

Limitations of JPEG Editing:

• The sources emphasize that it is generally better to shoot in raw format rather than JPEG if extensive editing is anticipated. This is because JPEG files are compressed, and in the process, some image data is discarded. This loss of information can lead to issues like color banding (sharp changes between colors due to insufficient color information) when making significant adjustments.
• When you edit and resave a JPEG, it undergoes further compression, which can lead to a gradual degradation of image quality over multiple edits – this is known as destructive editing.

GIMP for JPEG Editing:

Despite the limitations, GIMP offers several tools for editing JPEGs.

• Basic Adjustments:The levels tool is recommended for setting the white and black points in a JPEG image to increase contrast. You can adjust the sliders to the edges of the histogram to maximize the tonal range. Be mindful of clipping, which can be monitored with the clipping indicators.
• The levels tool can also be used to adjust the midtones to control the overall exposure of the JPEG.
• The curves tool can be used similarly to levels for adjusting the tonal range and adding contrast with an “S curve”. It offers more precise control over different tonal areas.
• Basic tools like brightness and contrast are available, but the curves tool is often preferred for greater control over contrast.
• Color Adjustments:The color balance tool can help remove or add color casts in JPEG images.
• The color temperature (white balance) tool can be used to adjust the warmth or coolness of the image, but significant adjustments on JPEGs may produce less desirable results, especially with skin tones.
• The hue-saturation tool is recommended for targeting individual color channels to remove color casts or modify the hue, saturation, and brightness of specific colors within the JPEG.
• Retouching:The healing tool and clone tool can be used to remove blemishes, stray hairs, and other imperfections in JPEG images. The healing tool blends pixel information from a source area to a target area, while the clone tool directly copies pixels.
• Dodging and burning techniques can be applied to selectively lighten (dodge) or darken (burn) areas of the JPEG to enhance depth and detail. This can be done using the Dodge and Burn tool in GIMP, with careful attention to the exposure setting and avoiding the “halo effect” along edges.
• Sharpening:The unsharp mask filter and the high pass filter are available for sharpening JPEG images in GIMP. The high pass filter, when used with a blending mode like “overlay,” can effectively sharpen edges while allowing for selective application with layer masks to avoid over-sharpening skin.
• Saving JPEGs:In GIMP, you cannot directly “save” an image as a JPEG if it has been modified. Instead, you need to use the “Export As” option and then choose the JPEG file format.
• When exporting as JPEG, you can set the quality level, which affects the amount of compression. A higher quality setting results in a larger file size but less compression artifacts. The source suggests a quality of 80 is often sufficient for online use and even prints, with a smaller file size and minimal visible difference compared to 100%.
• It is generally recommended to avoid saving over the original JPEG file if you plan to make further edits, as each save introduces more compression artifacts. Saving a copy or working non-destructively with layers is advisable.

Dart Table and JPEGs:

• While primarily a raw file editor, Dart Table can open JPEG files and apply basic adjustments like exposure, white balance, contrast (using the tone curve), and sharpening.
• You can also use tools like shadows and highlights in Dart Table to perform basic dodging and burning on JPEGs.
• When exporting JPEGs from Dart Table, you have options to set the quality, size, and color profile. The source recommends using sRGB for online use.

Workflow Considerations for JPEGs:

• The source recommends working non-destructively as much as possible when editing JPEGs in GIMP. This can be achieved by duplicating layers before making significant adjustments, allowing you to adjust the opacity of edits or discard them entirely without affecting the original pixels.
• For complex edits, consider merging layers into a new visible layer before applying destructive tools like dodging and burning.

In conclusion, while JPEGs can be edited effectively in GIMP and with some basic adjustments in Dart Table, it’s crucial to be aware of the format’s limitations due to compression. Working non-destructively and avoiding excessive adjustments can help maintain image quality. Shooting in raw format is generally recommended for greater flexibility and quality in post-processing.

Image Importing in GIMP and Dart Table

Based on the sources, importing images is a crucial first step in both GIMP and Dart Table, although the processes and primary uses differ slightly for each.

Importing Images in GIMP:

• To open an image in GIMP, you can go to File > Open. This will open the selected image in a new window or within the single-window interface if that mode is enabled.
• You can open multiple images as separate layers within the same GIMP document by either:
• Clicking and dragging the image files directly onto the GIMP canvas.
• Going to File > Open as Layers and selecting the desired images.
• When you open an image in GIMP for the first time, the initial layer created is considered the background layer.

Importing Images in Dart Table:

Importing in Dart Table is primarily done within the Light Table module. The Import panel is located in the top left corner of this module. Clicking on it expands the panel with various import options.

• Add to library: This option is used to import images that are already saved on your hard drive or from a connected media card.
• You can navigate through your computer’s folders to select the desired images.
• It allows for the selection of individual photos or a range of photos.
• A thumbnail preview of the images can be toggled on to help you identify the files before importing.
• By selecting a top-level folder and enabling the recursive directory option, Dart Table will search through all subfolders to find images for import.
• For connected media cards, you might need to add them to the “places” section for easier future access by clicking the plus icon and navigating to your media card.
• Copy and import: This option is similar to “add to library” but also allows you to rename your files during the import process.
• This can be useful when importing directly from a media card or if your files haven’t been renamed yet.
• You can define naming rules using predefined variables to structure the new file names.
• By default, images imported with this method are saved into the system pictures folder within a subfolder named “Darktable,” but you can change the destination folder.
• You can choose to keep the original file names if desired.
• You can override the import date and apply the date the photo was taken instead.
• Mount camera (when a camera is connected): When your camera is connected to the computer, this option becomes available.
• Clicking “Mount camera” may provide options to import directly from the camera’s media card or to use tethered shooting.
• Tethered shooting allows you to capture images directly into Dart Table. When activated, a new interface opens, and captured images are automatically imported into the Light Table.

Common Import Settings in Dart Table:

• During import in Dart Table, you can configure parameters to include or exclude specific metadata from the images, such as copyright information and geo tags.
• When using “copy and import,” you can set renaming rules that consist of a base part (parent folder), a session part (subdirectory), and a file name part (file name structure).
• You can save your export settings as presets in Dart Table for consistent exporting in the future.

The sources emphasize that for Dart Table, importing is always done in the Light Table module before you can edit images in the Dark Room module.

Dodge and Burn: Image Editing Techniques in GIMP and Dart Table

Based on the sources, Dodge and burn is an editing technique used to control the brightness or darkness of specific areas within an image to enhance depth, bring out detail, and fulfill a creative vision.

Traditional vs. Digital Dodge and Burn:

• Historically, in darkroom photography, dodging involved selectively obstructing light during printing to make areas lighter, while burning involved giving more light to certain areas to make them darker.
• In the digital realm, tools within software like GIMP and Dart Table simulate these effects.

Dodge and Burn in GIMP:

• GIMP has a dedicated Dodge and Burn Tool.
• It can be accessed by right-clicking on the smudge tool icon and selecting “Dodge/Burn”. The keyboard shortcut is Shift + D.
• The tool applies a brush effect to the image.
• You can choose between “Dodge” to lighten areas and “Burn” to darken them.
• You can target specific tonal ranges: Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights, allowing you to apply the effect selectively within those brightness levels.
• The “Exposure” setting controls the intensity of the Dodge or Burn effect.
• A high exposure (e.g., 100%) applies the edit very strongly and can lead to unnatural-looking results and poor blending.
• A low exposure (e.g., 10-15%) is recommended for a more gradual and realistic build-up of the effect, allowing the edit to blend more smoothly with the surrounding areas. Applying multiple strokes at a lower exposure is preferable to a single stroke at high exposure.
• It’s advisable to work non-destructively when using Dodge and burn in GIMP. This can be done by:
• Duplicating the layer before applying the Dodge and burn.
• Merging all visible layers into a new layer (Right-click > New from Visible) and then applying Dodge and burn to this new layer, leaving the original layers untouched. This allows for adjustments or discarding the Dodge and burn effect later without altering the base image.
• A common pitfall to avoid is the “halo effect”, which occurs when the Dodge or Burn is applied imprecisely around objects, creating a visible bright or dark outline. This can give the impression of an over-edited image. Careful brushwork within the lines of the desired area is crucial to prevent this.

Dodge and Burn in Dart Table:

• Dart Table doesn’t have a specific “Dodge and Burn Tool” in the same way as GIMP.
• However, basic dodging and burning can occur automatically or be achieved using the Shadows and Highlights tool. This tool adjusts the brightness of shadows and the darkness of highlights to increase contrast and reveal more detail.
• Adjusting the tone curve in Dart Table can also contribute to dodging and burning effects by selectively brightening or darkening different parts of the tonal range.
• The source mentions that after applying lens correction in Dart Table, the image might appear flatter with less contrast, potentially requiring further adjustments that could include techniques similar to dodging and burning using the available tonal adjustment tools.

Workflow Considerations:

• Dodge and burn is often applied after basic tonal adjustments like setting the white and black points and adjusting contrast.
• It can be used to subtly enhance existing highlights and shadows, bring out texture in specific areas, and guide the viewer’s eye within the image.
• For portraits, careful dodging and burning can enhance features and create more flattering light, while avoiding over-sharpening skin textures. For landscapes, it can add depth and dimension to elements like rocks, water, and foliage.
• In the context of fixing overexposed images, dodging (brightening shadows) and burning (darkening highlights) can be part of the process to try and recover lost detail, although the success of this depends on the severity of the overexposure and the amount of information retained in the file.

In summary, Dodge and burn is a powerful technique for localized tonal adjustments. In GIMP, it is implemented with a dedicated tool offering precise control over the area, tonal range, and intensity of the effect. In Dart Table, similar results can be achieved through the Shadows and Highlights tool and adjustments to the tone curve. Regardless of the software, a subtle and gradual approach is key to achieving natural and impactful results while avoiding common artifacts like the halo effect.

The Original Text

hello and welcome to the photo editing Master Class where you’re going to learn how to edit your photos in like a pro now this photo editing master class is 5 hours long and includes 33 different lessons in total the timestamps are in the description below so if you’re ready to master photo editing in let’s do it all right so are you ready to edit your first image in if so that’s exactly what we’re going to do in this tutorial so let’s go up to file click on open you’re going to navigate to your section one folder and you’re going to select the o1 image and you’re going to go ahead and open that so this is the image that we’re going to be working on and as you can see it’s kind of flat there’s not a lot of contrast in the image and that’s due to the highlights and the Shadows or maybe it’s the blacks and the whites of the tonal range that are missing details and we’re going to find out which one it is with the levels tool which is going to show us the histogram of the particular image but first let me show you my final edit so this is the edit that I created for this project and as you can see it has a lot more contrast than the original image so that’s what we’re going to do in this tutorial add some contrast and make it pop so we’re going to start off with with the levels tool and then I’m going to show you a different tool to add contrast because I prefer the second one better but it’s nice to know more than one way to edit an image that way you can decide which one is best for you so we’re going to go up to colors and we’re going to click on levels so the levels tool shows you the histogram of the image and if you’ve ever taken one of my photography courses before then you may already know everything you need to know about the histogram but for those of you that do not we’re going to take a quick tour over the histogram so you can get an idea of what we’re going to do for this particular edit now I’m going to go ahead and grab a corner here so I can drag this out and make this a little larger to make it easier to see so the histogram is made up of the different tones of your image and that includes the blacks which are over here on the left then we have the Shadows we have the midtones in the middle then we have the highlights the whites on the right and then we have what is known as the black and the white points which are pure white and pure black so we have our black point right here and that’s designated by this little icon right here and the white point is over here now we have some detail missing in the image which is causing the image to have a low amount of contrast and we can see that there’s a gap on the right side and a gap on the left side so the blacks and the whites in this case are missing detail so what we want to do is we want to fill in that Gap and that’s going to add contrast to the image so we’re going to grab our Black Point here and drag it to the edge of the histogram on the right side here I’m going to go ahead and make this smaller now and we can see that the image is darker and that’s already adding some contrast we’re going to do the same thing with the white point now we’re going to click and drag that over to the left side here so I have 238 for the white Point 11 for the Black Point and that creates contrast in the image and fills in those gaps now another thing you can do with the levels tool is you can Target individual color channels and I like to use these for removing color casts in my image for example if you find that the image is too red you can drag the midpoint here to the right to remove that red and it’s going to add green instead or if you want to add red move it to the left okay so since I’m not a big fan of this particular tool I’m going to go ahead and cancel out of this and go to my favorite tool for adding contrast which is the curves tool it’s a little bit more advanced but it does provide more precision and control over the levels tool so let’s go ahead and grab that by going up to colors and clicking on curves now just like with the levels tool we do have a histogram in the back but this time instead of applying our adjustments along a horizontal line we’re going to manipulate this linear line that goes from the bottom left to the top right the top right here represents the white point so this little circle if we grab that and pull it down it’s going to make adjustments to the white Point down here we have our black point so I can drag this to the right and make it darker that way but what I want to do to create the contrast for this image is I want to manipulate this linear line along the blacks and the shadows and the whites and the highlights so I can pinpoint where that adjustment is going to be applied along that tonal range and it’s going to be more subtle versus linear like we had with the levels tool so we’re going to click right around here and you’re going to click and drag down that’s going to make the image darker and then that line begins to bend so it creates a subtle transition from our edit from this point and it slowly diminishes as it gets up to this part of the tonal range so this part of the tonal range really isn’t being affected by this adjustment down here now if I click and drag up that’s going to make the whites and the highlights brighter so by doing that we add contrast with what is known as an S curve because now this linear line looks like an S curve and this gives you the control and the Precision to apply that contrast exactly where you want it in the image because now I can come in and say okay I’m going to take this Anchor Point and move it up a little bit higher and that’s going to make an adjustment based on that new location versus where it was down here so it’s a lot flatter up here than it is down here so you can make this adjustment based on your own Creative Vision and your own personal editing style the other thing you can do now is you can continue adding additional anchor points along this line now in order to Target specific points of the tonal range for example you can come in here and click in the midpoint here and adjust the midtones of the image and make adjustments that way because maybe that contrast was too much and you want to flatten it out a little bit you can do that and then I can come in here and Target this part of the tonal range as well so you can make these adjustments based on your own Creative Vision just like I mentioned I’m going to go ahead and stick with this right here and I’m going to go ahead and click okay and now we have our finished edit how cool is that I love the curves tool for applying contrast all right before we continue on with the next tutorial I want you to keep this image open and that’s because we’re going to continue working on this image in the next tutorial and I’m going to show you how to retouch this image by removing blemishes and the stray hair all right I’m now going to show you how to retouch your images in so if you’re ready let’s jump back into and let’s grab our Zoom tool which you can grab from the tool bar which is right here or you can use the keyboard shortcut which is the letter Z and just like in Photoshop or any other editing software you just click to zoom in now my favorite way to zoom in is to click and drag around the area that I want to zoom in and we want to zoom in so we can actually see what we’re going to be retouching which are some of these blemishes and this stray hair now if you zoomed in too far and you want to zoom out you can come over here to the tool options and click on zoom out to do that or you can use a keyboard shortcut in addition to the zoom tool which is your control key if you’re on a PC or your command key if you’re on a Mac and when you hold that down and then click it will then go ahead and zoom out once you release you can go ahead and zoom back in all right to retouch we are going to use the healing tool in gamp which is very similar to the healing tool in Photoshop we also have another retouching tool that is similar to the one in Photoshop which is called the Clone tool so if we come over here to the toolbar click on this little icon right here and then you will see your heel tool over here but in order to select it I can’t select it by clicking and dragging down what I need to do is rightclick on this icon and then I can scroll down and select the healing tool from here or you can use the keyboard shortcut which is the letter H all right so let’s say we want to remove this blemish right here and if you click on it nothing happens and that’s because if you take a look down here it says set a source image first so the first thing we need to do is give some information to about what we want to do so what we want to do is we want to take pixel information colors luminous values contrast Etc from one part of the image to cover up another part of the image in this case the blemish so we need to give a Target source to work from in order to do that what we need to do is we need to hold down our control key if you’re on a PC or your command key if you’re on a Mac now you’re going to select an area that’s similar to the colors and the pixel values of the area that we want to retouch I’m going to go ahead and click out here I’m going to hold down my command key and click once and then we’re left with this little circle which is the target area now when I come over here and click on this blemish it disappears how cool is that I love it it’s very similar to what we have in Photoshop but let’s say for whatever reason you don’t like the results let’s go ahead and undo that with command or Control Plus the letter Z what we need to do is change our Target source so I’m going to select an area closer to that blemish so again I’m going to hold down my command or control key and I’m going to click right here to reset that Source now sometimes you may need to click more than once in order to get the results that you want now we can come over here and begin removing these other blemishes by setting a new Target because we don’t want to use this area for this blemish for example because these pixels are much brighter than down here and it’s not going to blend in as well if you don’t set the correct Target area okay so I’m going to come over here click pull down that keyboard shortcut and continue removing blemishes as needed all right so the next thing I want to show you is removing this stray hair right here and what we need to do this time is resize the editing tool to be smaller or a little bit larger than the thickness of the stray hair now when it comes to blemishes I like to have my brush size a little bit larger than the blemish that I’m removing so this blemish right here is much smaller so I’ll probably use a smaller one but this size brush works okay for that one as well but for this stray hair this brush is too large so we’re going to come over to our tool options here and we’re going to resize this smaller I’m going to go right around five for the size actually that’s a little bit too small so I’m going to go up up to 9 and I’m going to go ahead and set my target area right here so hold down command or control click to set that Target point and this time instead of clicking and releasing we’re going to click and drag down to paint over that hair how cool is that now you may have noticed that this little circle followed my brush as I was brushing downward here and that’s because we want to Target the different colors and the contrast levels and the pixel values along the edge or the length I should say of that hair versus the pixels in here because if it just stuck to this area it wouldn’t blend in as well because this area is much darker than it is down here all right so go ahead and keep this image open for the next tutorial as well because I want to show you how to properly resize your images for online use so if you’re ready for that let’s do it all right I’m going to share two more things in this tutorial that you need to know when working with images in and that is how to scale your image larger or smaller so you have the proper size when posting online and also how to save your image in gim because it’s a little bit different than what you would do in Photoshop there’s something you have to do specifically in order to save your image as a JPEG or PNG file and I’m going to show you how to do that in this tutorial so let’s go ahead and take a look at this image again and what we’re going to do is we’re going to scale it down smaller so it’s the recommended size based on what Facebook or Instagram tells us our image should be so I did a quick Google search for Facebook post sizes and it shows it right here but if you want the other ones if you come down here and find this hootsuite.com post it’s been updated for 2022 and then you can scroll down here and then you’ll see the different sizes for in Instagram Facebook Twitter and Linkedin so landscape portrait and square images we’re going to have 1 1200 X 630 or 630 X 1200 or 1 1200 by 1200 so 1 12200 is the maximum width or height that you need anything larger is going to take up extra hard space on your hard drive because you’re using images that are too large for Facebook anyways or at least what they recommend and what Facebook is going to do is they’re going to compress that image down smaller anyways so you might as well start off with the size that they recommend and I’m going to give you a pro tip on which file format I recommend when posting to Facebook now if you’re going to do a story you can go a little bit larger 1080 by 1920 all right so we know our width for this image because it is the landscape is 1200 pixels wide so let’s go ahead and resize this image smaller by going up to image and selecting scale image so from here you want to make sure you have this little icon turned on so it should look like this and when you type in 1200 for the width and hit your tab key it’s going to automatically adjust the height to 800 which is going to keep the image in proportion now down here we have a resolution of 300 which again is too large for online use 300 is for print and then 72 is for online use click my Tab Key and it’s going to update the Y resolution now when I click scale it should resize the image and what I want to do now is I want to fill in the window with this image like it was before it’s too small so to fix that we can go up to view zoom and select fit image and window or you can use this keyboard shortcut which is shift plus command or control if you’re on a PC Plus the letter J so that fills it back into the work space all right so what we need to do now is we need to crop the image so it’s 1,200 by 630 pixels tall versus the 800 pixels tall it is right now that being said you don’t have to do that you can actually post the image as it is right now but it’s not going to show all 800 pixels of the image it’s only going to show 630 pixels and then when somebody clicks on that image they’ll see the full size and the full resolution of that image so if you want to keep the image cropped to the recommended size that Facebook gives us you can go up to image click on canvas size and then we can crop the canvas from here so this time since we don’t want the image to stay in proportion we’re going to undo this option here so it looks like this then we’re going to type in the height which is 630 you’re going to click your tab key and then down here we have our thumbnail preview and once you click that tab key it’s going to update with a new preview showing where the image is going to be cropped so right now she’s going to be cropped across her shoulders and her neck right here we don’t want that I want the full body so I’m going to click and drag up to make sure the entire subject is in the frame and then when you click resize it will recrop that image now we do have this yellow and black dashed line around the image and that is known as the layer Bal boundary so this is letting you know that we have pixels within the image that are still available so I’m going to go ahead and turn this final edit layer off and then with my move tool which you can grab with the letter M you can click and reposition the image to recompose it as needed so those pixels were not deleted permanently now in order to save this to be used on Facebook or Pinterest or anywhere else you need to save the file as a JPEG or a PNG file now if we go up to file and click on save as it’s not going to give you the option to save it as a JPEG file so if I type in JPEG and click save I’m going to get this little message right here that says the given file name cannot be used for saving you can use this dialogue to save to the xcf file format which is a proprietary file format for which is similar to the PSD files that we use in Photoshop so xcf is for saving files with layers I’m going to go ahead and click okay and I’m going to cancel out of this because we can’t save a JPEG with that window so we need to go back to file and this time instead of save save as or save a copy we’re going to select export as now I can save it as a JPEG file but for Facebook what I like to do is I like to save it as a PNG file and that’s because PNG files are not compressed JPEG files will give you an option in to compress the file based on the quality setting that you give it so in Photoshop that could be 80 90 100 or whatever you want and then when you upload that file to Facebook Facebook is going to compress that file again and then you end up losing information in the image and you can can have what is known as color banding which gives the illusion that there is a sharp change from one color to another and that looks like there’s little bands in your sky for example and that’s because there’s not enough colors from one color to another so the transition from let’s say a dark blue sky to a light blue at the Horizon there’s not enough colors within that particular sky and that creates the Banning effect well that comes about from compressing the file one too many times so short story is use PNG file if you want a higher quality image or if you’re noticing that you’re getting that kind of banding in your image and then you can click on export here then you’re going to get another window here with some other options and I like to just keep everything set as is now even though it says it’s compressing at a level of nine that’s okay it’s still better than what you’re going to get with a JPEG file and then once you click export it’s going to export that file and then you can upload it as needed all right so that is it for the editing portion of the quick start guide but we’re not done yet we still have some things we need to learn about in order to get the most out of it as a photo editor using so if you’re ready to get started on the next topic let’s do it all right we’re now going to discover gimp’s interface so you know where everything is located how to customize the interface so it looks more like Photoshop like rearranging the panels increasing the icon size of your tools and more so if you’re ready to get started let’s do it all right let’s start off by opening up a file by going up to file and selecting open and you’re going to navigate to the section one folder and open up any image doesn’t really matter because we’re only going to be using this for demonstration purposes actually let’s open up o2x CF since it has an extra layer in it and and once you install for the very first time you may have had this setup here where there’s three individual panels if so you can combine them all by going up to Windows and selecting single Window mode all right let’s go ahead and get this image back in the center here and it doesn’t look like it’s going to fit so to get that to fit inside of there we’re going to go up to view and select zoom and then fit image in window window all right now that it looks more like Photoshop let’s go ahead and customize the interface some more one of the things you may want to do is resize the left and the right panel by making them wider or thinner so if you take a look right here we have three little dots and once you get your mouse cursor over there you’re going to get this little icon right here and once you see that you can then click and drag it to the left or to the right and you can do the same thing for the right side as well the other thing you may want to do is rearrange these individual tabs here that have some information about different tools and features and you may not want to have all of them either so you can actually hide them so let’s go ahead and hide some of these up here these are all the default ones so I’m going to go ahead and click right here on this little arrow and click on close tab to well close it out the other thing you can do is you can click and drag this out and create a free flow in panel it doesn’t look like it’s working in the Mac version right now so let me show you the windows version here and show you how that looks so I’m going to click here drag it out and now I have a free floating window now I just want to mention real quick that this class is being recorded on the Mac version but it doesn’t matter because is the same on Windows Mac and the Linux system the only real difference is the font and each operating system because the default operating system font is different for Windows compared to Mac so that’s why it looks a little bit different visually it’s because of that font other than that it’s exactly the same all right so the other thing you can do is you can take this tab and pull it down here in with these other paths as well so you’re just going to click and drag it down all right now we have all four tabs here in the same panel and it got rid of that bottom because there was nothing else there but if you still want to have that split for whatever reason just click a tab drag it to the bottom and you’re going to notice a little bit of a line at the bottom there actually it’s pretty thick that blue line right there once you release it’s then going to separate those into two different parts now you can also take a tab from over here and bring it over to the right panel by clicking and dragging and you’re going to notice a outline once you see that outline you want to make sure all of it is selected there you can then release and it will be added inside you can also rearrange the tabs by order so if you want to move the brushes to the end you can click here and drag it to the right and it will move it into that new position I’m going to go ahead and close some of these tabs because I don’t need all of these right now go ahead and close the channels and I’m going to close out the path now if you close a panel or a tab by mistake you can actually add them back by going up to Windows dockable dialogues and then choosing the tool or the information that you need so if you want your histogram you can add that in there and I don’t need that so I’m going to go ahead and close that so go ahead and add any tabs you think you’re going to need most of the time I’m just using the layers and the tool options that’s pretty much it and undo history once in a while but I like to use my keyboard TR cuts to undo anyway so I really don’t have any use for that now the other thing that I like to do is I like to increase the tool icons and increase the size of my layer thumbnail previews here so let me show you how to do that for Mac users you’re going to go up to and select preferences from here and if you’re on Windows it’s going to be under edit down here at the bottom all right so there’s one main difference between Mac and windows that’s it I promise all right so once you’re in preference this here let me go ahead and go back you will navigate to interface going to expand that and look for Icon theme now up here in the icon theme you can change well the theme of my personal preference is symbolic you can go through these and choose the one that you like and to increase the icon size you’re going to choose it from down here because I’m blind I like to use the largest available which is is huge once you click okay you’re all set and you’ll notice that the tabs also increased in size as well so that makes it easier to see and read what that tab is all about now for increasing the layer thumbnail preview in the layers panel here you’re going to click right here down to preview size and then you have all your options right here so medium is the default I’m not quite sure what tiny is for I’m not sure if anybody can actually read that but again because I am blind I like to go with gigantic all right much improved if you ask me all right now down here at the bottom of the layers panel you have some functions that will allow you to rearrange the layers move them duplicate add layer mask delete them and we’ll go over these later on in the class as we work on some different projects you’ll begin learning what all of these are for now let’s take a look at the tool options over here because again you’re probably going to be using this one the majority of the time in conjunction with your layers so the tool options are going to list all the options available for the tool that you have selected so every time you select a new tool it will update with the different options available for that tool some tools will have more options than others and we’ll go over some of these tool options as we work on the tools later on in the class as you progress through it now down here at the bottom we have some additional information that you can use to customize the interface the main one is this one right here the pixels or the dimensions that you want to set by default it’s pixels but if you want inches or millimeters you can choose those different measurements from here and then this is showing the current zoom level for the image in your interface right now so if you grab your Zoom tool and zoom in it will update or you can change it from here if you want to go 200% 800% Etc and then going going back down 15.9 to fit it inside at least for the way I have everything set up right now and then we have our file name and the size of the file the working file all right so that’s it for the overview of the workspace as you progress through the course we will go over some additional tips and tricks for getting the most out of your interface and you will begin recognizing where everything is located as you work on the projects in the remainder of the class you’re now going to learn about three tools that you can use in to help you achieve your Creative Vision now the scale image and the move tool you’re mostly going to use when creating composits in which you’re going to learn how to do in a future section but the rotate tool you’re going to use more often when you have crooked Horizons in your landscape images and you need to straighten them out so I’m going to show you how to use all three tools right now so let’s jump into and get started by opening up our O2 file here in our section 01 folder so to open this file from here I’m going to click and drag this over to the interface and it’s going to automatically open as a new document now depending on your operating system this may or may not work if it didn’t open the file this way go up to file and select open from here so let’s start off by moving this image layer right here of our subject from the last tutorial and move her Above This l landscape layer here so let’s come down here and click on this little icon right here to move those layers around now I’m going to grab my move tool because let’s say we want to move this image layer higher on the canvas so we can come over here to the toolbar to select our move tool from here or you can use the keyboard shortcut which is the letter M and then you can click and drag up unfortunately it’s moving the wrong layer so let’s undo that with Commander Control Plus plus the letter z now the reason why it moved that landscape layer was because I have that one selected if I click on this layer it will activate or select this image layer and then you can go ahead and move it up but let’s say you have this layer selected and then in your tool options you have pick a layer or guide selected this time when I click on the image layer it’s going to move this layer even though the landscape layer is selected and if I undo that and come over here and click on the background layer it will then move that layer so if it’s not moving the layer you want to move make sure you have the correct options selected in the tool options here now let’s say for whatever reason this Horizon in this image layer is crooked and you want to straighten it out you can use the rotate tool to do that by coming over here and clicking on this icon and it’s probably not going to be this one that’s visible it’s probably going to be this one by default if you’re starting off with for the first time so right click here scroll down and select rotate from here or use the keyboard shortcut which is shift plus r if you select from here you then have to click on the layer that you want to activate now because I had this landscape layer selected it’s going to rotate that one so I’m going to escape out of there by hitting my Escape key I’m going to select my image layer and then I can click on it and then click and rotate the image as needed or if you use shift plus r it’s going to automatically activate the rotate tool so you can click on the canvas and rotate from here you can use this slider up here you can also type any number if you want something precise or even more precise you can use these little arrows right here to adjust them in smaller increments clicking rotate will then rotate that image for you I’m going to undo that with Commander control plus the letter z now let’s say we want to fill this image to fit inside of this entire canvas we can use the scale tool to do that so again same area same group of tools we can select the scale tool from here now we can click and drag to the left or right or up and down to resize the only problem is it’s not in proportion right now so we’re going to hit our Escape key to get out of there I’m I’m going to hit shift plus s to autoactivate the tool and then in this little window up here we need to activate this option here to keep everything in proportion and then you can grab a corner a side or drag from inside the image layer here to resize it as needed or you can even type in a specific number if you know you need 1,00 pixels wide it will then automatically adjust the height for you once you’re happy click the scale button here here and it will resize your image all right so that’s it for those three tools the next set of tools that you’re going to learn about in the next tutorial are the ones that you’re going to be using the most often when editing your images in and it’s all about making Selections in to Target your edits exactly where you want them so if you’re ready for that let’s do it one of the most important skill sets that you can learn in or any editing software for that matter is learning how to make selections to precisely control where you place your edits on your image so in this tutorial we’re going to do a quick overview of the six most used selection tools that you’re going to be using in and then later in the class we’ll go into these tools in a little bit more detail so you can get the most out of them so we’re going to jump back into here and we’re going to select our section one folder again and this time we have five images for this tutorial and just like before we’re going to click and drag over the interface and then they will open up one at a time into new individual documents and you can navigate to each image by clicking on the tabs again if this isn’t working for you go to file open and open the images one at a time and it will open up in new tabs right here so the first selection tool we’re going to use is the fuzzy select tool which can be found on your toolbar right here and you can also select it with the keyboard shortcut which is the letter U now this selection tool is very similar to the magic wand tool in Photoshop and the key to using this particular selection tool is adjusting the threshold so here’s how it works so when you click on your canvas it’s going to give a reference color based on the color of the pixel you clicked on then will use that reference color to find similar colors next to it once it reaches the maximum threshold that you set in the tool options will no longer select any more colors once it’s reached that threshold so in essence the higher the threshold the more of your image that will be selected so let’s see this in action so right now I’m going to set my threshold here to 39.2 once I click on it that’s going to be the reference point and then it’s going to make a selection based on that threshold or that range of colors now we didn’t select the entire sky so I need to click again but before I do that I’m going to hold down my shift key because the shift key is going to allow you to add to the selection and once I click down here it’s going to well add to the selection and I need to continue doing this until I get the entire Sky selected and it’s going to take several clicks at this threshold in order to select the sky now if you’re in a rush and you set the threshold higher and you click on your Sky well it’s going to select not just the sky but parts of the foreground as well because you’ve clicked a higher threshold or a larger range of colors now another quick tip that I like to use is using the draw mask option so if you turn this on you can then click and drag down and you’ll see this pink overlay that will show you the part of the image that is going to be selected now if you go too far it will start selecting the foreground as well so I need to back away until that disappears and then shift click and drag down to continue selecting the sky and this time and two click I was able to select the sky how cool was that I love it all right let’s go ahead and deselect with Commander control shift plus a all right let’s go to our next image which is this one right here and what we want to select this time is all the red petals and this time we are going to use the select by color tool which is grouped together with fuzzy select and it’s right here so shift plus o will activate this tool tool now it works very similar to The Fuzzy select tool in that you need to set the threshold to increase or decrease your selection but it works very differently when it comes to targeting your color so this time instead of picking colors in a range next to the Target area is going to select colors throughout the image so let me show you what this is going to look like with the fuzzy select tool first so I’m going to click and drag down and it’s picking only the colors from these two petals because these colors are next to each other I’m going to deselect and I’m going to select my select by color and this time I’m going to click and drag down and it’s going to begin selecting all the petals this time how cool is that so which tool you use is dependent on what it is you need to select again it’s not perfect I need to make some adjustments but it’s much faster than the fuzzy select tool at least for this particular image I’m going to go ahead and deselect and we’re going to go to the next image for this image we’re going to make a selection of the turtle and I’m going to show you two different tools to do this and then you can decide which one you like better the first one I’m going to show you is called the path tool which is similar to the pen tool in Photoshop and it’s not my favorite selection tool but I want to go ahead and show it to you in case you’ve already used the pen tool in Photoshop and you like it let me show you how to use it in so you’re going to grab the path tool by clicking the letter B which is the keyboard shortcut and then you can also grab it from the toolbar right here I’m going to go ahead and zoom in just a little bit more so I can see the edge a little bit better and then to use it you’re going to click to add an anchor point and then click and drag out the path and then when you pull away from that Anchor Point you’re going to get these little handles and then you can adjust where that path is being applied the only problem is when you have the handles like this and you come over here and click it’s not always going to give you a straight line it looks like it did a pretty good job that time so let me see what happens when I pull it out a lot more this time just to show you what’s going to happen if we want a straight line let’s say from here to here and I click here I get a curve instead so I’m going to undo that with Commander Control Plus the letter z now to fix that we need to take this handle and bring it back inside to get rid of it now when I click here I’ll get a straight line so basically you’re going to click and drag out a path as you go around the turtle’s Edge and bring the handle in as needed to make sure that you’re getting that straight line when you continue going around now this could take forever I’m not going to sit here and select this entire Turtle that’s pretty much how you use it what you have to do though is you have to go back to the original Anchor Point here hold down your command or control key and then click on that Anchor Point to close out that path so you can then fill it in or add a stroke or if you hit your enter or return key it will then add that selection for you around that path all right let’s go ahead and deselect with Commander control shift plus a and then we’re going to get rid of the pass tool by selecting our next tool which I believe is 10 times easier than the pass tool and that is the scissors select tool which is similar to the magnetic lasso tool in Photoshop so we can grab that via this grouping right here if we right click we’ll find the scissors select and the keyboard shortcut is the letter I now instead of clicking and creating the path by pulling out handles is going to do this for us automatically by automatically applying the path between the two points so I’m going to click here to start with our first Anchor Point I’m going to come down here and click and boom has automatically applied a path for us and we can just go along without worrying about pulling out those handles to adjust the angle of the curve or the path to get the selection that we need now it’s not perfect right now so I’m going to show you real quick I’m going to go around this corner here and show you what happens when it goes outside of the line like it did there at the bottom and how to fix it but again this is I believe much faster than the pass tool so right here it is outside of that Edge right there so I’m going to click on this line and move it into position and it’s going to add another Anchor Point and it’s going to AIX that path exactly where I want it now just like before we need to come up here and close out the path this time we don’t need to hold down our Command or control key we just click on the first Anchor Point and it automatically creates that path or I should say closes it and then with enter or return you can apply your selection let’s go ahead and deselect with Commander control shift plus a all right this is our next image and the tool that we’re going to use now is known as the quick mask mode which again is available in Photoshop now it’s not available through the toolbar here so you need to either use the keyboard shortcut which is shift plus Q or come down here to the bottom left of the interface here and click on this icon to turn it on now that it’s on we have a red overlay and this represents what is selected in this case nothing is selected so anything in red is not selected now to add to our selection we’re going to grab our paintbrush tool with the letter P or you can grab it from the toolbar right here now I’m going to increase the brush size here a little bit larger maybe a little bit more and then I’m going to paint over actually I need to switch to White to the foreground here and then when I paint over the horse here it will remove that overlay and that lets you know that part of the image is being selected or is part of the selection so once you go through and you adjust your selection this way you can turn off the quick mask mode by using the keyboard shortcut again or clicking on this icon and then it shows you the selection that was created with that selection tool now I like to use this particular selection tool in conjunction with the first two fuzzy select and the select by color even some of the other selection tools that you’re going to learn about as well and that way I can quickly narrow down my selection to exactly where it was because you may remember in this image here it was selecting parts of the image outside of those petals and you can use the quick mask mode to quickly remove it from the selection all right we’re going to deselect again and I have one more selection tool that I want to share with you and this one is called the foreground selection tool which is in the same group as before which is right here foreground select we don’t have a keybo or shortcut for that so you have to grab it from the toolbar now the way this works is you’re going to make an initial outline of the area of where the subject is or the foreground is and then you’re going to get an overlay like we did previously with quick mask mode and then you’re going to fine-tune your selection that way so I’m just going to make a quick outline around our Cardinal here it doesn’t have to be perfect because again we’re going to narrow down that selection process by helping figure out where the foreground or where the subject is in this case Okay so once you go back to the beginning you’re going to notice this little yellow circle once you see that release your mouse button and then hit your enter or return key to get your blue overlay so we have a lighter blue and a darker blue so the lighter blue is the foreground and the darker blue is the background now in the tool options you want to make sure you have draw foreground selected if not it’s going to do the opposite of what you want so to fix or to refine our selection you’re going to use a brush tool which is automatically activated for you you’re just going to need to go in and adjust the stroke width to increase the brush size so I’m going to go maybe a little bit lower here and what we’re going to do is we’re going to paint on the subject to tell okay these are the colors the textures the brightness levels that we want to Target because this is the subject this is the forr so we’re going to go ahead and paint around the inside this time and I’m not going to select that Branch because I don’t want that as part of the background or I should say the foreground and we’re going to see if selects that or not if it does we can then use our quick mask mode to remove it from the selection so I’m going to go ahead and fill this in I want to make sure that this part down here is selected as well the tail of the Cardinal I’m going to go with the lower brush and then I’m going to make a selection here again it doesn’t have to be perfect we just want to get enough of those colors and that texture to reference or give a reference point for selecting the forr all right so once you paint on there you’ll notice that that light blue overlay has disappeared so this is the foreground or we’re telling this is the foreground and it’s going to refine that even further once we click on select it’s going to do its magic it’s going to take a minute depending on the size of the file and the speed of your computer and then it’s going to finally hopefully sooner rather than later make a selection and you can see it didn’t make a selection of the tree branch here and it kind of missed these colors or this part of the bird as well so we can go in with our quick mask mode now and this time with our paintbrush tool we are going to paint with white again to add that to the selection now if we go too far and let’s say we add in the branch if you paint with black that will remove that part from the selection so we can go ahead and deactivate and then our selection process is updated all right so that was a quick overview of the selection Tools in kimp there’s still a lot more to learn and we’re going to cover more in upcoming tutorials once we get into the projects you’re going to learn more about these tools to get the most out of them but before we go on to the next section there’s another set of tools that you need to know about for editing your imag in and that is tonal adjustments and color adjustments so we’re going to cover those tools in the next tutorial so if you’re ready for that let’s do it all right I’m now going to share some editing tools color and tonal adjustments in particular for editing your JPEG files in and I don’t use these tools all that often unless I need to make adjustments after I’ve done my edits in the raw file itself because I’m going to make my tonal and color adjustments with the raw file when I bring the image in as a JPEG file now if you’re shooting with JPEG files you’re going to use these tools more often so I’m going to quickly give you an overview of how they work and where they are and then what I recommend doing is using your own images to practice using these tools so you can see how they work because if you’re just going to use the one image that I’m going to show you throughout this tutorial it’s not really going to give you an indication of how these tools work so it’s best to use your own images to learn how these tools work I’m just going to give you a rough overview of what’s going on in each tool and how to use them so I’m going to use this turtle image here and let’s go ahead and zoom all the way in and the color and tonal adjustment tools are up here under the colors menu here so we’re going to concentrate on these tools right here again we’re only going to be using 20% of the tools 80% of the time so there’s tons more Tools in here that we haven’t even covered yet but you’re most likely not going to use them when you’re editing images in again so we’re going to start off with color balance which will allow you to remove color cast or to add a color cast depending on your Creative Vision you can also Target your shadows midtones and highlights to pinpoint where that edit is going to go so if I want to add red in the shadows I can do that with the cyan red slider here and then add cyan if I want to do that so if I want to add colors into the highlights or remove that color cast I can do so by targeting the highlights and midtones Etc all right let’s go to the next one which is pretty important which is the color temperature or the white balance as you know it in Lightroom or adobe camera raw so with the color temperature window here you’re going to type in the original temperature or the Kelvin number that you used or the Kelvin temperature that you used when you captured the image and then you’re going to apply your intended temperature that you wanted for that white balance so if you shot it at 7,000 then you’re going to type that in here and if you prefer 5400 then you’ll go ahead and adjust this now again for me I prefer shooting in raw and nine out of 10 photographers that I know a lot of my students they prefer shooting in raw as well and that’s based on a poll that I did in our private Facebook group and 90% of them said they prefer raw over JPEG and it’s much easier to change the white balance in Raw versus JPEG and that’s why I bring it up because you’re not necessarily going to get great results by changing the white balance from a large range so let’s say you did 8,000 for the Kelvin originally and you actually meant 4,000 well the skin tones especially with portraits the skin tones are not going to be that good it’s going to look unnatural so just keep that in mind when you’re adjusting your white balance next we have Hue and chroma never ever use this one I don’t anyways uh you can adjust your colors here you can adjust the chroma and then the brightness levels here instead what I like to use is the Hue saturation option here and then I can Target or you can Target your individual color channels to remove color cast or to change the colors or the saturation or even the brightness levels of those individual color channels this is the one that I use 99% of the time if I need to make adjustments once the file is inside of as a JPEG file all right next we have saturation which adjusts the saturation slightly differently than the previous option I just showed you again I never use this one this is something you’re going to have to play with to see if you like the results from this saturation option versus the other one next we have exposure which is pretty self-explanatory you’re going to increase or decrease increase the exposure this way you can also change the black level or the Black Point with this slider here now a lot of these windows you’re going to notice down here a blending option so you can come in here and choose a blending mode to adjust how that edit is going to be applied to the image not something that I use but it’s there so go ahead and play around with that to see if you can get something that you like for your particular style next we have shadows and highlights so we can Target the shadows and the highlights to make them brighter or darker here’s the highlights common to be honest I’ve never used this I’m not even sure what it’s used for so play around with that looks like it’s making adjustments to the white point and increasing the radius of that white point and then compressing it to be wider or shorter based on the amount or the intensity for that particular edit again I don’t use these at all I only use the Shadow and highlight adjustments in the raw editor or if I want to Target the highlights and the Shadows I use the curves tool like we talked about previously I’m going to adjust my highlights this way versus using those highlight and Shadow sliders because again this gives you more control and then we have I think the last one is brightness and contrast again pretty self-explanatory brighter or darker more or less contrast but again I prefer the curves tool over this option so we’ve already talked about levels and curves and we’re going to use the curves tool more later on in the course and I’ll give you some more tips for using that tool all right so congratulations on finishing the quick start guide you now know how to do some basic edits in later in this class you’ll learn some more Advanced Techniques and pro tips for editing in and in the next section we’re going to dive into layers in regards to how they work in gim because they work a little bit differently than they do in Photoshop the concept is the same but I want to give you all the information you need to know about layers in and how to maximize your use of layers and so if you’re ready to learn more about layers and let’s do it so when it comes to layers and you don’t have all the same features and tools as you do in Photoshop however there are four main types of layers and ways to customize them that can help you achieve your Creative Vision and gam so in this tutorial you’re going to discover all of that more but first let’s define what a layer is so we’re all on the same page so in your analog world a layer is nothing more than a canvas or an image and you can add layers to the initial layer like a sheet of paper that you draw on or maybe you want to add another photo to it and that’s another layer that you can use to alter your artwork now the same is true in your digital world you either start off with a blank canvas or a layer that doesn’t have any pixels but if you open an image here let’s go ahead and open up an image that first layer consist of pixels that make up your image and just like in your analog world you can create new layers to alter how your image looks so I can add a new layer I can fill it in and then I can blend it in with the layer below so that’s how layers work so let’s go ahead and review the four types of layers and the four ways to customize them all right to follow along navigate to your section two folder and open up this file called four layer types now the first thing I’d like to do is to turn off the layer boundary which is this blue and black dashed line right here and you’re going to learn more about the layer boundary in an upcoming tutorial let’s go ahead and hide that by going up to view and clicking on show layer boundary all right so the first type of layer is the background layer and it’s a little bit different compared to the background layer in Photoshop now before I show you what it is let’s go ahead and expand this first layer right here go ahead and click on this plus icon to expand the contents inside of it and then what I want you to do is I want you to navigate to the background layer here you can go ahead and click right here and then come over here to the left and click right about in this area right here to reveal the contents of that layer so this I icon will show or hide the contents of layer so if you click here again it will hide that content all right so the background layer is the layer that is created when you create a new document or when you open an image for the first time so if I come up here and create a new document that background layer is right here so the contents are blank there’s nothing in there have a blank slate to start with but when you open an image for the first time the thumbnail preview is going to consist of or show you a preview of what that image looks like even though it doesn’t say background layer this is the background layer for this file and I don’t recommend applying your edits to the background layer instead you should duplicate your background layer and apply your edits to that so you can work non-destructively and we’ll talk more about that as you progress through this class now the reason why I bring this up is because it is a little bit different versus the background layers in Photoshop and that’s because in Photoshop the background layers are automatically locked you can’t move them you can’t apply any edits to them but in you can so if I grab my paintbrush tool here I can paint on the background layer now if you want to have the function of background layers in Photoshop you can come up here and click right here to lock the pixels so now I can’t paint on it but I can grab my move tool and move it now you can lock that action as well by clicking on the icon next to that and then you won’t be able to move it so now it’s a true background layer similar to what we have in Photoshop all right let’s go back to our layers here and what we’re going to do next is look at grouped layers so let’s go ahead and turn on this layer right here to reveal the contents and go ahead and click here to expand it so a grouped layer is a layer that well groups other layers together and when you first open this file only two grouped layers were visible so if I Collapse this group layer this is a group layer and this is a group layer and then inside we have a layer here and then this is considered a grouped layer because there’s more layers inside of it same with our grouped layer here we have individual layers inside so that’s a grouped layer all right let’s go ahead and collapse that and go ahead and turn on the pixel layer here and this is the third type of layer in and a pixel layer basically is a layer that consists of pixels so anytime you paint on your layer or you add an image to the layer that is considered a pixel layer then the fourth type of layer is a text layer now if you take a look at the preview right here it looks like there’s some information there but we can’t see it on our canvas why is that well that’s because the contents of the pixel layer here is above this layer which hides it so if you want to see that go ahead and turn this layer off which will turn everything off or just come inside of here and turn off the image pixel layer to reveal the text layer so this is a text layer now I know it’s a text layer let’s go ahead and expand this here because we have this little icon right here as part of the preview so if we come over here to our toolbar you’re going to see that same a letter and if you click on it you will then activate the text tool and then you can click here to update that text with new content or to change the color if that’s something that you want to do or to change the font type the size and more now if you try and do that with this text layer down here where it says text layer or any one of these for that matter if you try and click on there you will not be able to update that text and that’s because it’s been converted from a text layer to a pixel layer and then if you take a look at the individual layers you’re going to notice that the preview is different than the text layer up here so that’s how to distinguish between a text layer and a pixel layer all right let’s take a look at the four different ways that you can customize your individual layers let’s go ahead and close this group up and let’s go ahead and turn it off to reveal the grouped layer below it and let’s go ahead and expand this so the first type of way to customize your layer is through a layer Style so a layer style could be a stroke or a drop shadow or something else so if we go ahead and turn this layer on we have the image without any type of layer effects but if you turn on the layer below you would then see a drop shadow has been added so that’s a layer effect so layer effects can be applied either through filters or through selections and then adjusting that selection with a stroke through a selection or through a path right here the next type of way to customize your layer is with a layer mask I’m going to go ahead and turn this image layer off here and then inside I’m going to reveal this layer here and then just above that you can see the layer preview shows a black and white version of this layer below it and then next to that we have this rectangle with some black paint on it and this is the layer mask so the layer mask is used to show or hide individual pixels of that layer so if you turn this on you would then see some color coming through that black and white image and that’s because it’s blending with the layer Below based on the black that’s been painted on the white rectangle here so the rectangle takes the shape of the pixels in the layer and then when you paint with white white you will add the edit and then black will remove the edit so that’s why certain areas here are in color because that area has been painted with black on the layer mask to reveal the layer below it all right let’s go ahead and hide these two layers here and collapse the layer masks and then go ahead and turn on the blending modes layer and expand the content here and then inside you’re going to see that black and white image again again as well as a solid color of orange so once you turn that layer on it will hide the image layer below it because it’s a solid color and it’s above it now what you can do is you can use your blending modes to blend this layer in with the layer below so let’s go ahead and try that by going up to mode and selecting soft light and now you have a sepia tone versus a true black and white image and that’s another way to customize your layers through all these different blending modes that you have in there’s actually more blending modes in than what we have in Photoshop so go ahead and go through all of these play around with them and you will see the different ways that you can blend one layer with another layer all right I’m going to go ahead and collapse that actually let’s turn off these two layers here and turn on the opacity layer now OPAC capacity is going to allow you to customize the layer by reducing the transparency of the layer if you click on the blending modes icon here you’re going to notice that the opacity is down around 37% if you increase this all the way to 100 it’s no longer transparent and it’s much brighter than it was before but as you drop the opacity it becomes more transparent harder to see and then the layer below it will then begin showing through because it’s no longer solid so in this tutorial I’d like to share some tips about using layers in and some layer attributes to help you organize them so let’s jump back into here and let’s go ahead and open any image since it’s only for reference all right so in the previous tutorial I mentioned a couple things you can do to lock the layer to prevent you from accidentally moving it it or altering the layer Itself by adjusting or altering the pixels of that layer so to prevent your image layer from being moved you can add this move lock and then you won’t be able to move that layer and then this one here will lock the pixels so you can’t accidentally alter those pixels and then this last lock option here is to lock the alpha channel so the alpha channel is the transparency of layer so if you have transparency in that layer let’s say a logo then you can lock that transparency from being altered now in addition to locking with these three options you can also lock two layers together or link them together so if you come down here and click on this icon that will duplicate the layer then if you click to the right of this I icon it will add a link icon and then you will need to add another layer to link to now when you grab your move tool and move that layer it’s going to move both layers at the same time if you only have one linked then it’s not really linking to anything so you’re only going to move that one layer that has that link icon or without it actually and you can actually link two or multiple layers together if that’s something you need to do for your particular project that you’re working on all right so let’s quickly review some of these options down here at the bottom of the layers panel so you have an idea of the things that you can do with these attributes and then we’re going to cover some of these in more detail later in the class so this first option here pretty self-explanatory it’s going to delete a layer and of course this will duplicate this little clown icon will allow you to add a layer mask and there’s multiple types to choose from and we’ll go into great detail about these in the Pro editing section so we’re going to go ahead and cancel out that for now and then this icon here will allow you to merge the layer that is selected with the layers below it or at least the ones that are visible if they’re not visible then you won’t be able to merge them together so once I click here it’s going to merge those two layers together now if you want to change the stacking order of your layers you can click and drag down or up or you can use these little arrows right here now this option here will create a grouped layer for you but currently it doesn’t have anything inside of it so to add a layer or layers into it you’re going to click and drag that layer over the image preview here until you see those dotted lines once you see that release your mouse and it will automatically be added and you can see it’s added because it’s indented compared to the top layer here and then the layer group will inherit the image preview of the layer that is at the top to add another layer you’re going to click and drag up until you see that horizontal line you can do it either at the top of that layer or below it and then you can add another layer inside of here as well to remove the layers you’re going to click and drag down and then it’s going to remove it and if I close this you’ll see that this layer is no longer in this grouped layer here now to create a new layer you’re going to click right here and you have some different attributes inside of here that you can apply while creating your new layer so you can give it a name here you can add a color tag based on how you want to organize your layers maybe a specific color will be applied to all layer masks and then maybe another color for grouped layers so on and so forth and if you want to apply a blending mode at the time of creation you can do that from here these options are more advanced I never really Ed myself you can apply an opacity setting for that layer as well you can set the size and the position with these options here and then this option down here you’ll probably use more often because you’re either going to want to fill in that new layer with transparency or a solid color whether it’s your foreground or background color swatch that you had set up prior to activating the new layer window now you also have some options over here to make that layer visible or hidden it’s visible by default and then you can set it up to be linked locked with these three options here as well and then once you click okay it will create that new layer accordingly now if you want to change the color tab or make other attribute changes you can right click on the layer and select your color tag from here and make some other changes to that layer from here as well and then there’s other options down here and we’ll cover some of these later on as you progress through the class all right so the last thing we’re going to cover real quick is the layer boundary what is it and what’s its purpose so I have my new layer selected and on the outside here you’re going to see the yellow and black dashed line that’s the layer boundary now if you select a layer group it’s going to change to blue and black so that’s just an easy way to determine whether or not you have a group layer selected or an individual layer now the purpose of the layer boundary is to show the size of the layer and to confine your edits or altering of the pixels of that layer within the layer boundary because you can’t paint on the outside of this layer because the size of this layer is right here so everything you do is confined to that layer boundary inside of it now if you crop your canvas and you didn’t crop the pixels or delete those pixels permanently then the layer boundary is going to show outside of that canvas and that’s your cue that you have additional pixels outside of that layer or outside of that canvas I should say and then you can readjust the layer accordingly if you need to recompose the image now sometimes I find the layer boundary to be a little distracting so I like to turn that off and we did that previously by going up to view and clicking on show layer boundary now every time I click on a new layer it will not show that layer boundary if you want to reshow it just come back up here and click on show layer boundary all right so one type of layer we haven’t covered yet is adjustment layers and if you have experience with Photoshop then you probably know what they are if not that’s okay because you’re going to learn all about them in the next tutorial next up is discovering what an adjustment layer is where they are in and how to use them so if you’re ready let’s do it all right so an adjustment layer is a type of layer but it’s a very special type of layer an adjustment layer is used to contain a specific type of editing tool we take our editing tool and we put it inside of a layer for example when you edit an image you can access a tool to I don’t know let’s say make the image brighter that tool when selected is available in an individual window or it’s separated from all the other tools however we can turn that editing tool into a layer that resides inside of the layers panel with all your other layers which is how it got its name adjustment layer all right so the advantage of an adjustment layer versus having that editing tool outside and separate is that it gives you more control and flexibility over that editing tool I have some good news and I have some bad news the bad news is does not have this type of a layer an adjustment layer built into it like Photoshop but the good news is I have a workaround that will allow you to mimic adjustment layers in so that you have that flexibility of using the editing tools for your Creative Vision all right so let’s go ahead and dive right back into and learn why we want to use adjustment layers and how we can use them in G so just for demonstration purposes we’re going to increase the exposure of this image so let’s go up to Colors levels and then we’re going to adjust the levels midpoint or the midtone section by clicking on this little triangle here and moving it to to the left so the image is now Overexposed it’s not a type of edit that I would recommend but again just for demonstration purposes let’s go ahead and click okay now we’re going to go ahead and save this edit by going up to file select export as we’re going to keep the same file name and click export it’s going to ask do you want to replace the original file in this case we do so click replace go ahead and click export on this next window let’s go ahead and close this file go ahead and select discard changes and then we’re going to go back up to file open up that same image as before and let’s say we do this tomorrow next week next year after we edit the image we save it we close it we come back we realize we over edited the image and it’s Overexposed now what well you could go back up to Colors levels and try and adjust it but the only problem is you’re going to begin degrading the quality of the image and it’s not going to be the same as the original so what you have done is you’ve done what is known as destructive editing you’ve applied an edit directly to the pixels and you alter them in a way that you cannot get them back because you saved over the original file unless you have a duplicate of that particular file or a backup of that file you’ve essentially ruined the image forever you’re out of luck all right so now let’s

take a look at how we should be editing our images so go ahead and close out that file we’re going to go back to file and open and we’re going to open up image 02 which is the same image now what we’re going to do is we’re going to duplicate this layer by coming down here and clicking on this duplicate layer icon okay let’s go ahead and double click right here so we can rename this layer and let’s just call it exposure edit now we’re going to go back up to colors and select levels again and again we’re going to adjust the exposure to make it over exposed so go ahead and do that click okay and now this layer is different from this layer so we have our original and our edited layer so in essence this edited layer is our adjustment layer so let’s see how this works we’re going to go up to file select save as and now is going to amend the file type xcf to the file name so that we can save the layers and keep everything intact go ahead and click save close that file go back in and reopen the O2 xcf file we have both layers still intact we have our adjustment layer and now we realize that the image is Overexposed and we over edited the image so we can come up to our opacity slider up here and then we can click and drag it to the left to tone it down and then it will blend in with the layer below it so we still have the flexibility and control of re-editing our image because we can adjust the opacity but if at some point we decide we’re not getting the results we want we can either turn this layer off or we can come down here and delete the layer and then start our editing over with the original layer so we’ve in essence worked what is known as non-destructively so we can use an adjustment layer in this manner to work non-destructively to give us the flexibility and control to edit our images again in the future now I will admit if you have ever used adjustment layers in Photoshop it’s not 100% exactly the same but this is the best workaround at this point in time and I will add that the developers at are in the process of of updating to include adjustment layers that are going to be much more robust and professional and more like the Photoshop option in a future release however we do not have a specific timeline for when that will happen until then this is the best workaround all right congratulations on completing this section on layers in the next section you’re going to discover how to edit your raw files with gamp if you’re ready for that let’s do it so I have some good news and some bad news the bad news is just like with Photoshop you cannot edit raw files directly in the App instead there’s a raw editor that works in conjunction with and it’s called Dart table for those of you new to Dart table it’s a free alternative for editing your raw files that is similar to Lightroom and Adobe camera raw and just like with Lightroom you can manage your images by sorting with label stars and keywords Plus it works seamlessly with gamp and did I mention it’s free all right so installing Dart table is super easy to do and to download it you’re going to go to dart.org click on install right here and choose your operating system to download it and then you can install it just like any other app that’s it you now have Dart table installed so let’s go ahead and jump into Dart table and take a look at what it has to offer so once you have Dart table open you’re going to be in the light table View and you can do a few different things in here one is importing your images from your hard drive or from your camera you can also organize your images by adding tags and keywords you can add color labels you can also rate those images with the star system down here and then next to light table we have a dark room module and next to that we have other so other is going to include additional modules that are similar to Lightroom so we have a map module which is to list your images on a map based on geographic location and then you have a print module slideshow and if you want to tether your camera to your computer you can do that with this tethering option and then when you create an image Dart table will automatically import that image into light table for you so dark room is where all the magic happens for your editing but before you can get in there you need to select at least one image and when you hover over this you’re going to see that keyboard shortcut for getting into dark room is the letter d and light table is the letter L all right let’s go into dark room so like I said this is where all the magic happens when you want to edit your images and if you’re transitioning from Lightroom to dark table you’re going to notice there’s a lot more tools and features versus Lightroom so you have a lot more ways to edit your images based on your Creative Vision now before we get into that let’s take a look at this left panel over here we have a couple of options here that makes editing your images much easier so to kind of streamline your workflow you can use snapshots to take different versions of your edit and save them for future use and we also have a history panel here which is pretty cool because it’s going to record every edit that you apply to your image and if you decide that you don’t like the direction that the edit is going in you can go back in time by coming in here and selecting one of these editing options and then everything above it will be removed from your image that way you can restart your edit from here versus restarting from scratch now over here on the right side we have our editing tools and they’re divided up into different categories now there’s around 50 to 60 maybe 70 different editing tools that you have available for editing your images now just like with you’re probably going to use 20% of these tools 80% of the time and we’re going to cover those later in the course I’m also going to show you right now how to customize each one of these panels to only include the editing tools that you’ll want to use because personally I probably use only around 20 of the 60 or so tools available for editing so I don’t like to have the Clutter of all these different editing tools that I’m not going to use so I’m going to show you that in just a second so the first category right here or the first tab is the quick access panel which is going to list the tools that you’re probably going to use the most often so local contrast exposure lens correction the noise white balance and a couple others as well now the next module here is going to list all the editing tools that you’ve used for the image that is currently visible so as you continue adding more edits and using new tools they will be listed here all right so the next mod module is the technical editing tools so this is going to list things like the output color profile a base curve the cropping tool and much more now you may notice that there’s a lot of editing Tools in here that were included in the quick access panel like exposure and I believe white balances in here as well so we can actually hide those so that they’re not visible and taking up more room again I’ll show you that in just a second first let’s take a look at the next category which is color grading so you have your split toning you have color contrast color correction shadows and highlights levels tone curve and much more and then the final module is the effects panel so you can add things like vignetting grain you can convert it to monochrome and there’s a lot of other cool options in here as well now like I mentioned I like to have each of these panels set up with only the tools that I prefer to use so that my panels are not as clustered as they are right now so if you click on this hamburger icon right here you’re going to see all the different default workflow options available so they even have one for beginner display referred scene referred those are some pretty Advanced types of Concepts here so we’re going to keep this kind of simple and just look at some of the basic editing tools that you may want to use and you editing workflow so my workflow here is going to list only the editing tools that I selected so once I click on that you’re going to notice there’s a lot less tools than there was before so I’m going to go back to default here and then back inside because I want to show you how to create your own workflow or your own workspace what you’re going to do is click on manage presets you’re going to duplicate the default option that has the majority of the editing tools so once you do that you’re going to give it a new name just going to call it new for now and then from here you can go ahead and begin removing any editing tools that you don’t want to use now if you’re just starting out as an editor you’re probably not going to know which ones that you’re going to want to use or not use so you may want to just stick with the default option for now now if you made a mistake and removed something that you didn’t want to remove you can click on the plus icon here and then you can scroll through and find the module that you want to add back in So once I close out of this and go back again you will then see my new workflow right here now as far as editing your images it works like any other raw editor once you select the tool that you want to use you just adjust the slider to the left or right and then it’s going to update the preview over here on the left side where your image is of course and I just want to point out that you’re not actually editing the raw file instead you’re editing a preview so this right here is just a preview of that raw file so what it’s going to do is it’s going to take these edit settings and save it as a separate file next to your raw file so it’s not going to affect the raw file at all it’s non-destructive and you can go back into that image tomorrow week from now a month from now and continue making adjustments without ruining the original raw file now in addition to customizing your individual editing modules here you can also hide these individual panels so there’s one on each side if we come over here and click on this Arrow it will hide that panel clicking again will reshow it you can also hide all the panels at the same time by pressing the Tab Key and then clicking again to reshow it now there’s additional keyboard shortcuts for customizing your interface and for using Dart table in general and we’re not going to go over all those keyword shortcuts so to see the list of keyword shortcuts available in dark table just hold down the letter H to show all of those keyboard shortcuts if we scroll down there’s a lot more all right once you release H it will go back to the original interface here all right so a couple more things I want to share with you real quick and that is adjusting the size of the panels so if we come to the inside of the panels here we’re going to get this little icon right here and then you can drag it to the left or to the right to resize the width of the panel and then for the thumbnail previews down here come up to the top right here and then drag up or down to resize those thumbnail previews all right it’s now time to get your images into Dart table so you can start organizing and editing your images so if you’re ready for that let’s do it you’re now going to learn everything you need to know to import your images into Dart table and what I would like you to do is import all the images in the section 3 folder so you can use those images throughout the rest of this class and of course you can import your own images once you’re done with this tutorial as well so let’s dive into dark table here and get started so like I mentioned before importing of your photos has to be done in the light table module so make sure you have that view active and then in the top left here you’re going to find the import panel and clicking on it will expand the panel showing the options for importing so right now in the latest version of Dart table which is currently 3.8 there are two default options add to library and copy and import and since I have my Nikon d500 connected to my computer I have a a third option and when I click on Mount camera it provides an option to import from the media card or to use tethered shooting so let’s go over each of these and then you can decide which one you prefer now since we’re here let’s go ahead and look at the tethered option first to activate this feature you’re going to click on the tethered shoot button and a new interface will open now when I capture an image it will auto inut Port into dark table and let’s see how that works I’m going to go ahead and take a random photo here of my studio and let’s see how long it takes to import so depending on the speed of your computer and your camera’s media card will determine how long it takes for that image to import and that took a few seconds to do let’s go back to the light table option here all right so if you already have your files saved to your hard drive you can then use add to library to import those images you can even import directly from your media card when it’s attached now unlike when you have your camera attach it’s not going to list the media card from here instead you have to go into add to library and then locate your media card and find the images that way now it’s not going to show up automatically in the folder section or even in places now I already have have mine added into places which you can see right here Nikon d500 and in order to add your media card so it locates it again in the future you’re going to click on the plus icon here and then you’re going to navigate to that media card click open and then it’s going to add it in places then when you click on the name here Nikon d500 in my case is going to show all the folders inside of that media card now when I click on Nikon d500 from here no images show up so what I have to do now is I have to dig into the folders to find the images so it might take a couple of minutes to actually find them it’s actually in here but a quicker way to overcome that is to select the top folder and select recursive directory and then dark table will look through all the folders to find all the images and by default all images are selected for import now I don’t know about you but the file numbers here have no meaning to me so I have no idea what this particular image is all about I don’t know what I took could it be a tree could be a person water I have no idea so what I like to do is I like to turn on the thumbnail preview so I can actually see which images are being imported because I may not want to import all of them I may just want to select a select few so if we click right here on this little I icon it’s going to show those thumbnails and you can click it again to hide it so it’s going to take a minute to show all those thumbnail previews depending on how many images that you have now what I can do is I can go in and select individual photos so if I click on this top photo only that photo is selected if I want to select this one as well I’m G to hold down my command or control key and click that then I can scroll through and continue clicking as long as I have command or control selected now if I want to select multiple images within two other images I can select one and then hold down my shift key and click on the top image here and then it’s going to select all those images in between now it’s only going to import those images that are selected versus what we had originally so nine images out of 139 are now selected and that’s it so now all you have to do is click on add to library and they will automatically be imported into D table for you all right so let’s go ahead and close out of that and let’s take a look at copy and import actually let’s go back because I want to show you one more thing here in add to library and that is if you go to the places again and click on home this is going to list all the folders on your operating system this way you can select your folder of images that are already installed on your your computer so in this case I can go to desktop and select this folder and it’s then going to show all the images inside of here so that’s how you would import your images if they’re already on your hard drive all right so copy and import is pretty much the same process however this option allows you to rename your files during import so this would be helpful when importing directly from your media card or when you haven’t renamed the files on your hard drive but you’re going to end up with duplicate files since you’re copying and importing at the same time so my recommendation if your files are already on your computer is to rename them before importing and you should be able to do that with the operating system that you have Windows Mac Linux whatever the case may be just do a Google search on how to rename your files before importing but if you decide you want to use this option you can rename your files from the option below the list of your files here by clicking on naming rules to set up how they’re renamed now the naming pattern consists of three parts a base part for defining the parent folder a session part defining a subdirectory and then a file name part defining the file name structure for each imported image and the file naming structure I’ll admit it looks a little confusing so in the next article that’s going to follow this tutorial you’re going to find a link that will provide a list of predefined variables that you can use in each part so by default your images are going to be imported into the system pictures folder on your operating system and it’s going to go inside of a subdirectory or I should say a subfolder called Dark table if you’d like to import your images into a different directory you can do so by clicking on this folder icon and then choose your preferred folder now under that we have our subdirectory naming pattern and a default subfolder naming system will be applied and your images will go into this subfolder so you can either change the subfolder naming to something you prefer or if you don’t want your images in another subfolder you’re going to delete all this information right here you can also keep the original file name when you turn this option on right here versus the file naming pattern underneath it now for the renaming of your files you’re going to use this option down here and we have a default setting that will add the year the month and the day which will be today’s date and then the file extension now for my system I’ve set up a sequence variable that is going to add a sequential number so 01 02 03 Etc to my file name now I need to mention something about this year month and day here and in the subdirectory this date is going to be based on today’s date not the day you took the photo so if you want to override the date and apply the date that you took the photos you’re going to need to apply that in the override today’s date so these images here were taken on looks like February 12th and today’s date is I believe February 16th so if I want to override that I’m just going to do something random here so we’re going to put our year first followed by the month and then the day that the photo was taken now this is going to override this information down here and then it’s going to put the sequential number in here next to it with an underscore and then the file extension and that’s it you’re now ready to import the images okay so one more thing you should know before importing is the parameters you can set during import so from here you can include or exclude certain metadata from these options the one thing I like to include on all images that I import is copyright information so all of these are pretty self-explanatory so go ahead and go through these and you are now ready to import your images so do that and like I mentioned import all the images from your section three folder so you can follow along with the rest of the tutorials it’s now time to learn how to edit your images in Dart table with a real world project that you can submit after you’ve completed your edit so let’s jump back into Dart table and get started all right so here’s the image we’re going to be working on and this is included in your section 3 folder and here’s the final edit that I created how cool is that I love it all right so let me show you how I achieved this edit and I need to go into the history panel and click right here to clear the history to remove all those edits all right so the first thing that I like to do before I edit an image is look at the histogram which we can see up here and you can see that it’s severely underexposed which is pretty interesting since I shot this with an exposure or a shutter speed of 30 seconds so I didn’t nail the exposure in camera and now we need to fix it and we’re going to use the exposure module to brighten it up so I’m going to go ahead and increase the exposure by sliding this to the right and as you can see the histogram begins moving to the right to fill in that Gap and if I go to around two stops brighter we can see that the histogram is beginning to be clipped right here on the right side so I might be losing some detail with that clipping and to verify if I am or not I’m going to go ahead and use my clipping indicators which are located down here actually it’s this icon right here so once you click on that you’ll see this red or blue or both overlays on your image indicating that the detail and that part of the tonal range is being clipped so the red overlay here in the sky is an overexposure indicator so I’m losing detail in the sky so I increased the exposure too much now there’s also a blue over lay and it’s kind of hard to see so I’m going to go ahead and use my scroll wheel on my mouse to scroll in and you can see little specks of blue in the tree stops and I’m okay with that I’m not going to try and correct that because it’s not going to really help this image that much because we’re not going to see the detail in there anyway especially when I’m done editing and darkening up that part of the image so what I do want to do though is I want to lower the exposure value until these red overlays these little dots here disappear so I’m just going to go ahead and grab my slider and move it to the left until they’re all gone so right about there so reading the histogram is an awesome way for figuring out where to start your editing it’s going to tell you if your image is over or underexposed and what parts of the tone range need to be fixed so in this case the highlights and the whites needed to be fixed in order to correct the exposure so once you fix the exposure you then have to determine what’s next well for me that would be the white balance because I see that the image is very blue and I think it’s too blue for my taste so again I didn’t get the correct white balance in camera so let’s go ahead and fix that so if we navigate to the quick access panel you’re going to find the white balance setting options here at the bottom and these settings are the ones that were applied during capture of this image so I should have increased the Kelvin temperature before I took the photo but since I didn’t do that I’m going to go ahead and drag this to the right and I think I want to place it right around 12,000 for the Kelvin and I also want to increase the red tint a little bit as well to add a little bit of red and reduce the green now when it comes to white balance for an image like this it’s more of a personal preference there’s also if you take a look down here some white balance settings down here that will help you set the white balance to remove color tense so if you click on your eyedropper tool here what you want to do is you want to click on an area in your image that should be either pure white or pure black or pure gray and then when you click on it it samples those colors in there and it removes the colors so that part of the image is pure white pure black or pure gray so a neutral gray and that removes the color cast which in effect is white balancing your image all right so the next thing I want to do is I want to adjust the contrast that’s a little flat right now so I’m going to go ahead and grab my tone curve here because that is my preferred method for adding contrast and what I’m going to do is create what is known as an scurve so we should have a histogram behind this linear line right here and inside of this grid and that’s going to represent the tonal ranges of your image which will match the histogram you have up here so as soon as I click on this line you’ll see the histogram show up so this side is the blacks and the shadows and then we have our midtones or the exposures in the middle and then we have our highlights and whites on the end so that’s the same with your histogram so what I want to do is I want to increase the brightness of the highlights and darken the Shadows so I’m going to click and drag up here to brighten up the highlights but you may have noticed that I’m overexposing the sky now so what I need to do now is decide if I’m okay with losing detail here or if I should lower the setting here back to where it was or reduce it some which is going to still show some overexposure and then just darken up the Shadows instead and I think I’m okay with making this part of the image Overexposed for two reasons one it’s not that important of an element of the image there’s no detail there anyways that I can really see there’s no texture or anything like that and we’re going to end up darkening up the sky later on with another tool tool which is going to compensate and reduce the overexposure here so these are things that you have to think about and consider as your editing what other tools do you plan on using and can you fix it with a different type of edit or should you reduce the adjustment now that you made with that specific tool so increasing the highlights or making the highlights brighter and making the Shadows darker adds contrast and we can see that when we turn off the tone curve module or any module by clicking on this icon here to turn it off and this is a great way to see the before and after and as you can see it’s really flat here and now we have some more contrast all right so let’s go ahead and close this off and what I want to do next is I want to remove this tree branch that is peeking in over here on the side and I’m going to use my scroll wheel here to zoom in so I can see it a little bit better and then I can click and drag to navigate around the image a little bit more if needed or you can actually do that up here in this navigational panel right here so to get rid of this I’m going to use our retouching tool which is in the effects group and what I’m going to use is the circle shape tool we also have an oval a path and a brush but for this particular type of edit I prefer using the circle shape so with your scroll wheel you can increase or decrease the size of that shape and and what I want to do is make it just a little bit larger than the element that I’m going to be retouching so once I click here dark room is going to add another Circle which is used to sample another part of the image to be used to cover up or retouch the area that needs to be well retouched now sometimes Dart table is not going to give you a good point of reference and it may overlap with the original area that needs to be retouched so what you can do is you can click on this Circle here and move it into another position to create a better point of sampling the other thing I want to do before I move on is I want to turn off these two circles to review that area that’s being retouched now if you take a closer look you can kind of see some blurriness in the shape of that Circle right here so we need to blend that in a little bit better so let’s go ahead and turn these back on and I’m going to go ahead and increase the Feathering of this particular Circle and we can do that by holding down our shift key so make sure you’re in between these two lines here and then use the scroll wheel on your mouse to increase it and then it’s going to smooth out and feather that a little bit better than it was before now the other thing I’m noticing now that we’re zoomed in is all this digital noise and I want to get rid of that now typically when I shoot at ISO 400 I don’t have this much digital noise but because I had a 30-second exposure that tends to increase the amount of digital noise no and because my image was extremely underexposed when I fixed it it added additional noise so what I always recommend doing is trying to nail your exposure in camera at least as close as possible and you’ll end up with a higher quality image and you won’t have to do these extra editing steps like reducing noise all right so I’m going to go ahead and come up here to the search module and type in noise to find our D noise tool and we have four options so which one should we use well this first one is for Astro photography or designed for that type of Photography surface blur is going to apply an edgeware surface blur to den noise or smooth out the textures and I’ve never really used this one so I don’t know that much about this one now we do have D noise profiled which is more of a common type of D noise filter or tool that you’ll see in other software like Lightroom or adobe camera and then we have RW noise which is a more complex Advanced type of denoise filter so again which one of these are you going to use well it depends on your image and the type of noise that you have so for this camera my Nikon Z6 I found that the raw noise works best for this particular camera but I also have a Nikon d500 where I found that this option the profile option works better for images for that particular camera so you have to experiment based on the camera that you have and the type of noise that is introduced so I’m going to go ahead and use raw the noise and once I turn this on it’s going to automatically remove all the noise how cool is that I love it the only problem though is by default the smoothing effect to remove the noise is intense and you’ll end up losing a lot of texture and detail with the default settings so that’s where this extra linear line here and this grid and other options here give you more control over how much noise is reduced or removed and how much texture or detail is lost so I don’t want it to be this smooth because it looks fake it looks plastic especially when applying this tool on portraits the skin looks really unnatural with these default settings so what I want to do is I want to introduce a little bit of noise back by clicking right here and dragging it down toward wordss noisy next I want to increase the texture and the detail and I have two options either coarse or fine so fine will be smoother and coarse will be more intense and you’re going to see more of that texture come back so let’s go ahead and click and drag this one down and this node or Anchor Point I’m going to bring down as well and yes we have more digital noise but it’s not as bad as it was before plus we’ve brought back some of that texture in there now granted this was a 30-second exposure so we’re not going to have a lot of of detail anyway because of the effects of the water being smoothed out during the process of the long exposure I just wanted to bring back a little bit more texture so it wasn’t too smooth all right so the next step is to darken the sky the water and add a little color tint to the image as well because I think the colors right now are a little boring and I want to add a little bit more color pop to it as well maybe a little color boost with some contrast as well so what I want to do is I want to click on this icon here to bring back all the editing modules so the tool for this job is going to be the graduated density tool at least for this image and this is the tool that I like for this particular effect that we’re going to create so once you click on your graduated density module here you’re going to see this horizontal line on your image and this is the halfway point of the image right now and we also have two triangles on either end which you can click on and then rotate the line according to the direction of the adjustment because what it’s going to do is it’s going to apply the adjustments from the top down to this line so 100% of the edit will be applied up here at the top and it will gradually decrease to zero once it reaches this line and then of course anything below that line will not receive that edit so I want to apply this to the entire sky so I’m going to go ahead and click and drag this down to the horizon and then in my graduated density module here I’m going to increase the density and by default it’s already increased it by one stop so if I turn this off we can see that the sky is darker and the sky is no longer Overexposed in this area so I’m going to go ahead and increase this to around two stops or two EV so right about there looks pretty good and then I’m going to use my Hue slider here to change the color but nothing happens and that’s because you need to increase the saturation first to add some color to it because right now without any saturation it’s not going to render any colors in that area or render any effect so I’m going to go ahead and click and drag this over to the right to right about there should be good and actually that’s not the color I want I want it to be more Bluer to purple so I’m going to go ahead and increase the Hue slider here to the right so right around there looks pretty good all right so I want to do the same thing with the water now but I want to use different settings and that’s why I didn’t drop this all the way down to the bottom so to create another density adjustment we need to create a new instance for this module so we’re going to click right here and select new instance to get another graduated density filter effect so again this line this new line is applied in the middle of the image and it’s starting from the top down and we want to reverse that so I can either click and drag and rotate it that way or we can use the rotation tool which I’m going to use and let’s drag it all the way to the right here to 180° all right so I want this to start at the Horizon again so I’m going to go ahead and click and drag this back down to here and now the edits are being applied from down here all the way up to this line so I think one stop looks pretty good and as you can see the blue overlay is much more more brighter or intense than it was before and that’s because I’m clipping more of the blacks and the shadows and losing detail in that part of the image but I’m okay with that for this particular image because it is a night or blue hour Sunset type of photo and it’s more of a silhouette of the tree stumps and I’m not really interested in keeping all the detail all right so I’m going to go ahead and increase the saturation again to about where we were before and let’s increase the to the right again to I don’t know what do you think I don’t want to go as purple as before I want it to be a little bit Bluer so maybe right about there I think that looks pretty good now the other thing that you may have noticed once we darkened up the sky is the remnants of dust spots and they’re much more visible now than they were before we darkened the sky so I’m going to go ahead and zoom in right here and we can go ahead and navigate over here to the left and we can see a spot right here and there’s a couple of other spots here as well so to fix these we’re going to use the retouching tool again with the circle shape and I’m going to go ahead and click right here actually I think maybe I need to make my brush size a little bit smaller and then once I click here dark table will do its magic and it will magically disappear and don’t forget you can go ahead and move these circles around to adjust it if it’s not giving you the sample point that you need to completely remove it and once you have all of those removed there’s one other thing that we need to fix as well and what I’m noticing in the sky is some color banding so the color banding resulted from some of the other adjustments that we’ve already done and to fix that color banding let’s do a search for the dithering tool and this should help eliminate or minimize this color banding so once you turn this on Dart table would do its magic again and boom the color banding is gone how cool is that all right now that you’ve learned some tips for editing in Dart table you can complete this project on your own to reinforce what you’ve learned and then you need to know how to get your images out of Dart table so you can share them with the world and you’ll discover how to do that in the next tutorial so if you’re ready for that let’s do it now that you’ve learned some basics for editing your images in Dart table it’s now time to learn how to get your images out of it so you can share your images with the world so let’s jump back into Dart table to find out how to export our images all right in Dart table here make sure you’re in the light table view select an image or images that you want to export and click on export and you have a ton of options to choose from before you export your images we’re going to go over each one of these items so you know what they do and which ones you should select but keep in mind some of these are very Advanced options and are beyond the scope of this tutorial because entire books have been written about them and we can’t cover everything in this tutorial but once you’re done with this video you will know how to export your images and which options I recommend using so the first thing you need to do is tell Dart table where to export the file so click on this icon here and choose the destination under that we have an item here called create create unique file name which is going to append a number at the end of that file name if you click here you also have overwrite which will overwrite the original file and you also have skip which will skip renaming the file but if the original file is in that same folder location it will overwrite it so I don’t recommend either one of these it’s nice to have a number appended to the file name so that you can keep them together if you decide to put them in the same folder and then under that we have to set the format or the file type of the image when exported by default we have jpeg selected if you click on it you get this menu here with additional file formats if none of these look familiar to you then you won’t need to use them in fact I would think 99% of the time jpeg will be sufficient for most of your projects especially esally if you’re posting online jpeg is sufficient even when I do print enlargements I still use JPEG 8bit and I find my prints are perfect with that file format next you need to set the quality of that JPEG file so you can set this between 0 to 100 100 is the highest quality and I set mine to 80 for the quality it just means a smaller file and it may not be as good as 100 but I can’t see the difference unless I’m pixel peeping in other words I’m zooming in real close and putting that print enlargement right up against my face I’m not going to see the difference when it’s hanging on the wall or sitting on my desk all right so under that we have an option to set the size of the file on export by default it’s going to set the size to be the same as your raw file if you want want to change it you can adjust the width and the height accordingly you can set it in pixels centimet or inches or by scale so if you want to create an 8×1 12 print you would type in 8 for the width 12 for the height and then the DPI or what is known as dots per inch so that’s the resolution here 8×2 by 300 if you’re going to be using the images for online use then you would use pixels so now that same 8×10 print is now 2400 by 3600 pixels per inch the other thing you can do is you can leave the width or the height set to zero and then you can adjust the width or the height accordingly to whatever you need let’s say 800 pixels wide and then dark table will adjust the height automatically to keep your image in proportion and this is useful when you’re sending images to a social media site that requires a specific width all right so this next option allow upscaling I recommend using when you set the size of the dimensions to be larger than the original raw file and what this option is going to do when you set it to yes is it’s going to improve the quality of of the image because you’re making it larger than the original and often times images will become Jagged or pixelated due to the extra pixels that have to be created when making it larger since they were not there originally so long story short use upscaling when the dimensions are larger than your original the next option highquality resampling is another way to improve the quality quality of your images because it’s going to process that image or the export in a different order in order to create a higher quality image but the downside is it’s going to take a lot longer when you have this set to yes versus to no but if a highquality file is of importance to you I would recommend using this option here the next option is grade out for JPEG file formats and it’s not until you select something that can store masks like an xcf file which is a file format will you be able to store masks with that file under that we have the color profile that you want to export to if you’re only putting images online srgb is the way to go I even use this sometimes for prints if I’m sending to my home printer I will choose one of these other options that closely relates to the color profile of my printer so again like I mentioned before color profiles are something you’re going to need to spend a little bit more time learning about but for now for 99% of your images srgb should be sufficient until you have some understanding of these other ones and know when to use them and when not to use them the next option here in intent is another Advanced type of setting that you’re going to need to learn more about and what this does is dark table is going to render your images that have outof gamut colors based on the option that you have selected here so if you don’t know what a color gamut is that’s something else you need to learn about if you want to take advantage of this option here and have higher quality images on export the next option called style is like presets and it will allow you to apply specific edits that you saved and you can apply those on export it’s something that I usually do during the editing process and that’s something I do on export but you do have that option to apply them during the export process now if you decide to use a style on export you can choose to have that style appended to or overwrite the history stack of that image I would recommend appending it but not overwriting it because you may want to go back at a certain point and take a look at those different editing steps you took for a particular image so the last decision to make is right inside of here if you click right here you get a new window called edit metadata exportation so from here you can tell D table what metadata you would like applied or included in the image and these are all the default settings and you may or may not want to turn these off one you may want to consider turning off is Geo tags let’s say you’re taking some pictures at home and your camera or your smartphone is adding Geo information well with that information somebody can find out where you look live if you’re posting these online so if you don’t want people to know where you live go ahead and uncheck geot tags and maybe you don’t want tags either maybe you’re using the names of your kids or your spouse or other family members and you don’t want to include the names because you want to give them some privacy you might want to turn off the tags option as well and then once you save that it’s going to be sticky so the next time you export those same settings will still be there all right now that you spend all this time going through and setting this up you may want to save this as a preset so you don’t have to come back and do this every single time now that being said this is sticky information in other words when you come back tomorrow next week whatever these settings are still going to be there but maybe you’re exporting images to Facebook one day and then the next day you want to export images for Instagram and the file sign or the dimensions of that file are different for both platforms well you can come up here and click right here and click on store new preset and give this preset a name you can call it Facebook and then you can select that preset from here and then those export options that you set for Facebook will repopulate according to that preset now the moment you’ve been waiting for you can click on export and D table will begin exporting your image all right so we’re going to start off with the levels tool and I want to give you a couple quick tips on using it and both Dart table and even though we’ve used it before or talked about it before I want to give you some additional tips on using it so let’s jump into Dart table here and we’re going to take a look at this image right here and hopefully you’ve already imported all these images from the section 3 folder if not go ahead and do that because we’re going to be using a lot of these images in this section and the next section so go ahead and grab that image and let’s go into dark room now at first glance you can tell that the image is very flat or lack contrast and the histogram confirms that so I like to start off by reviewing my histogram to determine what part of the tonal range needs to be fixed and you can see in this histogram that there’s no detail in the blacks and very little in the shadows and there’s no detail in the whites or the highlights either so those are two things we need to fix we need to fix the whites highlights blacks and shadows and we can do that by starting off with adjusting the white and black point so the purest White and the purest black point of the image now in most cases in most images you want a full tonal range if it was available at the time of capture so this is a I would say a low contrast image at least a dynamic range is low contrast so that’s why this person that whoever photographed this it wasn’t me ended up with a low contrast image now they could have increased their exposure settings to make the image brighter to fill in these gaps so you want to try and do that as much as possible in camera if you can’t then you can come into dark room and use your levels tool to adjust the white and black point so we can do that by by going to the color grading grouping here and accessing the levels tool now once you begin adjusting one of these sliders here it will then show the histogram so this is the white point over here on the right black is over here and what I’d like to do is I like to adjust everything to the edges of the histogram so I’m going to take the Black Point right there because that’s where the histogram begins and then the white point over here to the left so just like that we’ve increased the dynamic range of the image and we’ve added contrast in the process so it’s not as flat as it was before now the one thing you want to be careful of is not placing these markers on the inside of the histogram like this because you’re going to start losing detail so everything on the right side of this marker now is gone all that detail is gone and we can confirm that with our clipping indicator right here so once I turn that on we got a big red overlay so all those pixels have been deleted and then in some points of the forground here you see some blue overlay so that’s pure black so we’ve lost detail in that part of the image so we can adjust that by moving this to the left to try and bring back some of that detail in the foreground now a lot of it you’re not really going to see but I think the sky is important so I’m going to go ahead and move this back to the right and then that over delay begins to disappear as I bring detail back into those parts of the image so it’s not necessary to go right to the edge sometimes you may need to keep a little bit of a gap just to ensure you’re not clipping any detail you don’t want to always fill the Gap completely again this is all dependent on each individual image and your Creative Vision for a particular edit now real quick before we jump into I have some tips about the clipping indicator here because right now you’re probably getting different results than I am and that’s because I’ve set up the settings for my clipping indicator versus using the default settings and if you hover over this you’re going to see a little tool tip it says toggle clipping indication right click for option so go ahead and right click and you can see my clipping preview mode is luminance only so I like to set my to luminance only versus full gamut which is the default because I want to see what part of the image the brightness levels are being clipped so the whites or the blacks or the black points and the white points so that’s what I recommend using the clipping indicator for is for the tonal adjustments so I would set that to luminance only and then you can change the color scheme to something else if red and blue isn’t for you and then you have different thresholds so my numbers here are probably different from yours because I’ve adjusted these and when you hover over the lower threshold here this is going to give you a popup window for the black points and it’s going to give you some ideas to what settings you should use based on your output so if you’re using an 8bit srgb it’s going to clip the blacks at- 12.69 EV 8 Bits Adobe RGB is -99 18 so on and so forth and then you can see if you’re going to do a glossy print it’s minus 8 now which setting you use is dependent on your output but also based on your individual image because if you’re shooting Nikon Canon Sony or whatever the case may be it might be slightly different from One camera to another as well especially when it comes to the upper threshold because it’s not going to really give you any information about the output because Pure White isn’t really going to be printed on paper but black is a solid color ink that is usually used during the printing process not so much white so the upper threshold here you’re going to have to experiment with based on your own images and I find right around 90 95% works the majority of the time so if I take this upper threshold and move it to the left and lower the threshold Dart table is now saying that that part of the sky is Overexposed even though though we can visually see that it’s not okay so now that I have it turned off I can still see color in there so it’s not really being clipped and that’s why you want to be careful with your settings here so I’m going to set this back to around 90% And I think that works pretty good for this image all right so let’s go ahead and click right here to reset those parameters and then go ahead and go into light table and Export it as a 8bit g apeg file 80 for the quality and then go ahead and open it up in kimp so I’ve already done that and we’re going to take a look here at the levels tool in now so I’m going to go up to colors and let’s select levels and we basically have the same information the histogram is showing that detail is missing on both sides we have a gap and we can fill that Gap in with our markers here on either side now we have a little teeny tiny line right here so that’s why I’m stopping right here and I think with this white point now along the edge I think that’s too bright so I’m going to go ahead and bring this back just a little bit and then you have your before and after in game so pretty much the same results but what I want to show you here is a couple other things that we haven’t talked about yet and I would use the levels tool when I’m using or editing I should say a JPEG file 99% of the time I’m editing raw files because that’s that’s what I shoot but if a client gives me a JPEG file this is how I would set up the White and The Black Point so if you’re not shooting a raw and you’re shooting jpeg instead then you’re going to use your levels tool to set your white and black points now if your histogram is really flat and it doesn’t have these really tall Peaks like this you may want to change from the linear histogram to a logarithmic histogram so just click right here and it’s going to change the height of that histogram 9 times out of 10 I use this but once in a while I may need to use this histogram to see those Peaks and valleys a little bit better to help me edit my image another thing that I would do with the levels tool instead of using the exposure slider here or this exposure tool you can adjust your exposure from here by adjusting the midtone so now I can make it darker or brighter by adjusting this midpoint versus going back into the exposure tool here and doing it from here all right so that’s it for the levels tool next up is the curves tool all right we’re now going to take a closer look at the curv tool to see how we can use it in place of multiple tools so we’re going to jump back into Dart table here with the same image as before to see what kind of results we can get with the tone curve so again in color grading just below levels we have our tone curve so it’s a little harder to determine where the weight and black points are but they are in the corners here on this linear line This is the Black Point this is the white point now as far as moving the white point to the edge of the histogram well to fill in this Gap we need to move this to the left and now that aligns with the histogram right here I think that’s a little bit too bright so I’m going to go ahead and bring this back a little bit and then for the black point we can drag that to the edge of the histogram right here let’s go ahead and turn our indicator back on if you don’t have it on and again we’re losing detail in the bushes but we’re not really going to see that detail in there anyway because that detail or that those elements I should say are pretty small all right so we now have our white and black point set our histogram is now showing a larger tonal range and we have pretty much the same result as before but now I can add contrast with the tone curve by applying an S curves so I’m going to go ahead and drag the blacks and the Shadows down and take the whites and the highlights and drag those up and now we have more contrast than we did before and you’re going to adjust this based on your Creative Vision I love it I like that right there you may think it’s too much or maybe not enough that’s entirely up to you I just recommend not overdoing it and start clipping too much detail so I’m happy with these settings right here because I’m not really losing any detail other than these small bushes in the foreground now I can take it even a step further and adjust the exposure by dragging in the middle here where the midtones are and then dragging that up to brighten up or darken the image so you can make that type of decision based on what you prefer so maybe a little bit brighter is better for this particular image I’m not sure what do you think so I think that looks pretty good let’s go ahead and take a look at another image and see how we would apply the tone curve in the same manner with what you’ve learned so far so the first thing we do is that’s right we take a look at the histogram and we can see that there’s no gap on the left side so the blacks and the Shadows are pretty good even though the indicator is saying we are losing detail in that part of the image that’s okay again these parts of the image are not that important but as we make adjustments to the right side which are the whites and the highlights it will brighten up the shadows and bring back some of that detail so let’s go ahead and do that I’m going to grab my white Point here and drag it to the left now if I go all the way to the edge I think that’s too bright it’s a little hot plus I’m losing a little detail in the sky here so I’m going to go ahead and move this back to the right until I find a setting that I think looks good so I think right about there and now we’re losing less detail in these parts of the image where that blue overlay is compared to the image straight out of camera so it’s brightening up that part of the Tona range which is what we want so we’re losing less detail but I may want to do an S curve which is going to lose more detail on that side but again I’m okay with that but I’m going to brighten up the highlights as well because I want to add some contrast to this image and I may drag this up a little bit more and now we definitely have more contrast than we did before so it’s brighter and sharper and has more contrast so the contrast adds a little bit sharpness to it as well because it’s defining the edges a little bit better based on the contrast between the tree and the sky and again what do you want to do do you want to increase the brightness level or darken it up in the midtones so how do you want to change the exposure or do you want to change the exposure if not just double click here and it’s going to reset everything but if I use Commander Control Plus the letter Z it’s going to take me back because maybe I just want to get rid of just one Anchor Point and not reset it completely and you can do that by right-clicking on that Anchor Point to reset it all right back in and let’s take a look at curves from here so colors curves and pretty much the same thing as before so it all depends on if you’re working with a JPEG file or a raw file I would definitely recommend raw over jped because it’s going to retain more information more detail than a JPEG file you can kind of see that this image now is starting to get pixelated because it is a lower quality image as a JPEG file compared to the raw file so go ahead and play around with both your JPEG and RAW file to see this for yourself and go ahead and practice with the tone curve as well all right so that’s it for the tone curve in the next tutorial I have another type of editing technique that can help you elevate your photographic editing skills and it’s called Dodge and burn so let’s check that out another important editing technique to help you fulfill your Creative Vision is known as Dodge and burn we used to use this technique back in the day when we processed our own film and printed it in a dark room so what exactly are Dodge and burn well you would Dodge a specific area of the print to make it brighter and you would burn if you wanted to make another part darker so Dodge and burn are simply controlling how bright or dark different areas of your image are and you can apply this technique in your digital world inside of with the Dodge and burn tool so let’s dive in and check out how to use this tool but before we get into let’s first look at this image that we’re going to be working on in Dart table and that’s because I have a couple of tips for editing in Dart table that is related to a little bit to dodging and burning so one of the things you may notice when you import your images into Dart table for the first time is they may not look like they did on the back of your camera at the time you captured the image some of them might be close to what you saw but some may look completely different they may look too bright or too dark compared with what you captured or saw at the time of capture and that’s because D table is applying default edits to all your images once they’re imported and if you take a look over here here at the history panel you can see all the edits that are being applied during import so if I click on original this may be closer to what you saw at the time of capture maybe or it may be something like this so which one you want to start your editing from is dependent on your Creative Vision and where you want to start your editing because you can come all the way back here and pick one of these points to start your editing now you may end up with something similar to this as you begin applying your own edits when you adjust the tonal range you apply or adjust the whites and black points you add some contrast you may end up with something similar to this maybe not this dark but something similar so you have to choose a starting point in their history panel here if you’re not getting something close to what you want at the time of capture now for this particular image I believe the photographer adjusted his exposure to the left or in other words He adjusted the exposure to get more detail out of the highlights which is going to end up creating darker midtones and Shadow so something closer to this but then dark table is adjusting for that compensation that the photographer did manually and it’s trying to fix it for that photographer so I would come back to this point if this was what I wanted at the time of capture and then I would do my dodging and burning to make the shadows and mid tones brighter and the highlights darker so we’re going to start from this point right here so make sure you grab this image and you should have imported this image already from the section 3 folder if not go ahead and do that and we’re going to go ahead and do a couple quick edits here and we’ll take a closer look at dodging and burning and once we export and open this image so the thing I want to do for this particular image from this point is I want to brighten up the Shadows so that is dodging and you can do that with the Shadow and highlights tool I’m going to type in Shadow here to get the shadow and highlights now once you turn this on you’re going to notice a huge difference in the image boom that looks 10 times better than it did before we’ve done some basic dodging and burning or I should say Dart table has done done some basic default dodging and burning for us by making adjustments to the shadows and highlights for us automatically so these are the default settings and it adds more contrast more detail more depth in the image by adjusting the highlights and the shadows in this manner now you can make adjustments to this now based on your Creative Vision you can make the Shadows brighter or darker if you want I think I may want to make them just a little bit brighter and then I want to make the highlights a little bit darker so here’s the before again and the after so that’s the basic premise of dodging and burning making parts of the image brighter and other parts darker to add that depth to bring detail back and much more now the other thing I want to do before we open this up in is I want to do a basic lens correction because if you take a look in the corners here you can see a yet it’s very dark and I’m not sure if that’s due to the lens hood or if it’s a lens Distortion so type in lens here and turn on lens correction from here and it’s going to remove most of that vignetting and you’re also going to notice that the image is stretching out and that’s due to the lens Distortion for this particular lens which creates what is known as a

barrel Distortion so it kind of has a bulge effect in the middle here and then lens correction is going to stretch out that image to remove that Distortion as well as minimize the vignetting now it’s not completely gone so what you have to do is you need to come in and crop the image tighter to get rid of it but the problem with that for this particular image is you’re going to start cutting into the rocks and the boulders here on the edges and the composition is going to change so if you know what particular lens you’re shooting with creates this type of vignetting or if it’s going to happen because you have a lens hood on then you may want to create a little bit more space on the edges here of any elements that may be close to the edge that way you don’t have to worry about cropping out too much of those elements or at all and changing the composition completely or you can come in with a clone and heel tool in to remove this vignetting now the other thing you may have noticed when we applied this lens correction is the image is flatter has less contrast and it’s overall much brighter than it was before that lens correction was applied so what we need to do in that case then if that happens is go back to shadows and highlights and make adjustments from here to get it back to where we wanted it originally so I’m going to bring the highlights and the Shadows down just a little bit and then we can do some more fine tuning dodging and burning in so go ahead and Export your edit and open it up in so I’ve already done that so I’m going to go ahead and hop over to here and let me show you the final edit I did for this particular image for the dodging and burning so here’s the exported file and my Dodge and burn so you can definitely see there’s more depth in the image now with that dodging and burning so I’ve highlighted the highlights and darkened up the Shadows a little bit and vice versa which creates more depth and you can also see more detail in the Rocks here in the foreground now I did make a mistake on my particular edit here and I did that because it’s a common mistake that I see photographers do when they’re posting their images online whatever social media platform you use Facebook Instagram Pinterest Etc it’s a very common mistake that I think we need to try and avoid to give the impression that the image is edited or over edited and that is known as the halo effect and this can occur when you’re doing your dodging and burning and you’re going outside of the line so I don’t know about you but when I was a kid I had a hard time coloring inside of the lines of a coloring book and the same thing applies when we’re dodging and burning and if you take a closer look at the boulders here you can see a little halo effect you can see it more so down here and that’s because I didn’t keep my brush inside of the area where I was trying to apply that edit and it was being applied outside of the line and it creates that Halo so if I turn this back on and back off you can definitely see the halo effect that is occurring along the edges of the rocks and it’s not a very good edit so let’s try and avoid this type of stake when dodging and burning now you may also notice that I got rid of the vignetting here so I’m going to show you how I did that real quick and then we’ll do some dodging and burning so I’m going to grab my clone tool with the letter c and then we’re going to Target an area in the Sky by holding down our Command or control key clicking right here and then you can paint over that area to get rid of that vignetting so I’m going to do another one down here I’m going to go with a larger brush now for this area down here want to go just a little bit larger than the vignette so command or control click here to set the Target and then just paint in that area okay so now that you know how to remove the vignette let’s go ahead and grab our Dodge and burn tool which is in this group right here so if you see this little hand that’s the smudge tool right click and you have your Dodge and burn tool right here keyboard shortcut is shift plus d now we have a brush tool automatically apply lied once we select that tool and then we have to tell which one we want to work with Dodge or burn so if you take a look inside your tool options here and scroll down you’re going to see a type Dodge and burn so you can select whether you want to brighten or darken parts of the image where you apply that brush then you can Target a tonal range whether it’s the Shadows midtones or highlights the other thing we have down here is exposure which will will apply that particular edit at 100% so think of the exposure like a percentage so 100 it’s applying that edit full force 100% down here it’s only going to apply it at 11% so it’s going to allow you to build up your edit at a slower pace so you’re not applying it all at once and it helps blend in that particular edit with the surrounding area where it’s not being applied so it Blends in a lot smoother and it looks more realistic and you’re not going to really notice that you’re applying an edit at a lower exposure rating versus applying it all at once so let me show you what I mean so I’m going to go ahead and Dodge this part of the bowler and this one down here I’m going to go ahead and go with a larger brush maybe a little bit more and 100% so you can see it’s not really blending in with the tonal range of the rest of the area of that rock or that bowler and same thing down here so 100% is too much I’m going to go ahead and undo that and then if we drop this down to around 10 to 15% it’s going to allow you to slowly build up so I haven’t released my mouse button yet but once I do it’s going to apply another let’s see 13.8% and then if I click multiple times it’s going to add that brush effect more and more and more the more I apply it and this allows you to slowly build up that edit so it Blends in a lot better than it does at 100 now I’m going to bring this back up a little higher to around 52 and I’m going to show you you can see my little outline of my brush there it’s going on the outside of that Boulder and now I’ve created that halo effect around the bottom of that Boulder so be aware of that when you’re applying your Dodge and burn tools so for this particular image I would Dodge my Boulders with the midtone range and or the Shadows so I can Target some of these darker areas in the boulders as well so that’s basically what I did for my particular edit my exposure is too high again so I’m going to go ahead and drop that down is I switched between shadows and midtones and I slowly applied different exposure settings and applied that brush exactly where I wanted it based on the ton range so I can continue going in here into the shadows and building up or bringing out that detail in that area now for the highlights same thing you’re going to grab your Dodge or burn tool depending on what you want to do I think for the highlights for this image should be darker so I’m going to go ahead and grab my highlights range here and then increase my brush size and I’m going to go ahead and dark up the sky slowly this way and of course just like before we want to make sure we’re not applying that Halo along the edge of the trees and the sky so you can continue applying this and adding additional adjustments until you get the sky the way you want it and that’s how I ended up with this how cool is that I love it all right so I’ll leave it up to you to complete this particular edit on your own now that you know how to use the Dodge and burn tool so you can complete the project that follows and then you can post your image and make sure you’re not adding that halo effect which is going to be a dead giveaway and one of the first things I’m going to look for when you submit your image all right it’s time to revisit an editing tool that you’ll be using often when you need to make a selection of your foreground or a subject in particular and the tool of choice for that is the foreground select tool so in this tutorial I’m going to share some tips on how to get the most out of it so let’s go ahead and jump back into and we’re going to open up this image which is O2 in the section 4 folder and let’s go ahead and get started so the foreground selection tool like I mentioned previously is a tool that will allow you to make a selection of your foreground which you can then separate from the background so once you make that selection the creative options you have are limited based on your Creative Vision for example I’ve gone ahead and I’ve isolated our main subject from the background and I converted the background to black and white another option is to remove the background and replace it with something else how cool is that I love it so these are just two examples and you’re only limited by your imagination so let’s go ahead and isolate our bird from the background and review some ways to improve how the tool works so you can get exactly what you want to be selected now before I forget let’s go ahead and duplicate our image layer here so we can work non destructively now before we start the selection process let’s review the tool options that can help improve the selection of your foreground and let’s go ahead and grab our foreground select tool from this group right click and select from here now one of the most important ones is the feather edges right here which is turned off by default so this will feather the edges of your selection that way it creates a smoother transition or separation of the foreground and background now for my images I’ll set this to around 5 to 10 it all depends on the image and the higher the quality and resolution the higher I set this so if you’re not getting the results you want try adjusting the amount of the feather and for this image I believe five will work out for us just fine so below the that we have draw modes so the draw modes determine your intended selection so in this case we are selecting the bird and its perch so the foreground so we’re going to select draw foreground but if you wanted to you could select or Target the background instead with draw background so if you ever find yourself trying to select a subject and it’s not working as it had in the past make sure you have draw foreground selected okay so we have stroke width which is actually the brush size and I’m not sure why they called it a stroke but if you want a larger brush size you can do that from here all right so under that we have preview mode and we can choose either color or gray scale and I’m not sure what grayscale does because for me it doesn’t really show anything except a solid gray and black overlay so let’s stick with color for now all right so next we have our engine so the engine is what drives the foreground select Tool It’s actually an algorithm that you can use to change how the tool function so the engine types are matting Global and matting 11 now each will produce different results depending on whether you’re on a Linux machine windows or a Mac personally I prefer to use l for my photos so you’ll have to experiment to see what works best for your images now depending on which engine you use you’ll have some different options to choose from to refine how it works so for Le we have levels and active levels and then for Global we have iterations so for these I will typically just use the default options and then I will refine my final selection with the quick mask mode if needed and that seems to work best and fastest for my workflow again play around with the options to see the results you get from each and then you can decide what works best for your workflow all right so let’s go ahead and isolate our foreground by making our initial outline like we did previously in a different tutorial and again it doesn’t have to be perfect because this is just the initial selection process and we’re going to go all the way around back until we see this yellow circle then you can hit enter or return to get into the next step step so what I like to do is I like to make an outline of the inside of my subject with a fairly small brush not too small but small enough so I can get most of the subject selected so I’m going to go ahead and create an outline like so to begin the process of telling gamp these are the colors the textures the contrast that I want you to Target because this is part of the foreground so once I get my initial outline done I will then go in with a smaller and larger brush to fill in the other areas now the one thing I want to point out is the color of my brush stroke is probably different from yours and that’s because is using the foreground color swatch and the color that you have set in there and it doesn’t really matter what color you use because it’s just being used to Target specific areas of the image so knows what’s the foreground and what is the background all right so I’m not going to make this perfect you know how to do it now so the next step is to hit enter or return and that’s going to update the overlays to give you a better idea of where the foreground is at this point so now you can go in and refine your selection if needed by brushing on and off according to what you need to update for the selection process or you can do what I do and that is use the quick mask mode after it’s made the initial selection so you can do that by hitting enter or return and then will do its final analyzation and give you your selection and boom there’s your selection all right so what we’re going to do now is we’re going to delete the background but first we need to invert the selection since the bird in our foreground here is selected so let’s go up to select and click on invert here’s the keyboard shortcut command or control plus the letter I now that the background is selected we can delete it with our backspace key or our delete key the only problem is we’re left with a solid color based on the color in our background color swatch here and that’s not what we want we want transparency so let’s undo that with Commander Control Plus the letter Z what we want to do like we’ve talked about previously in a different tutorial is we want to add transparency to that layer by right clicking and selecting add Alpha Chana so an alpha Chana adds that transparency now when you delete you’re left with transparency how cool is that I love it now there’s one problem this is not the way I recommend removing your backgrounds there’s a better non-destructive way to do this so what I would like you to do is to keep everything in place as it is right now and go into the next tutorial where we’re going to learn the proper way of removing the background and I’m going to give you some Pro tips on the tool that we’re going to use to do this so if you’re ready for that let’s do it so we’re going to continue where we left off in the last tutorial and what we want to do is work non-destructively so we deleted those pixels in the previous tutorial and that can be permanent depending on how you save your file and whether or not you duplicated the original image layer either way you still want work non-destructively as much as possible so what we want to do instead of deleting is we want to temporarily hide those pixels that way if you made a mistake in the initial selection process you can bring back or show some of those pixels or hide other pixels if needed that way it’s not permanent it’s temporary and you can do that with a layer mask so a layer mask will show or hide individual pixels based on how you set up that layer mask ask so let me show you how to do that in gamp all right so we’re back where we started and I need to bring those pixels back and because I haven’t saved and closed this file yet I can do that by undoing my last command so command or Control Plus the letter Z brings back those pixels now we need to make sure we have the right part of the image selected in this case the foreground and I know the background is currently selected because if you take a look at the outer edge of the canvas here we see these little white and black dashed lines and it looks like they’re moving and that’s known as dancing ants or that’s what they’re referred to sometimes and that lets you know what part of the image is selected if you see these dancing ants on the outside that lets you know the outside of the image or the background I should say is selected so we need to invert that with Commander Control Plus the letter I and then those dancing ants disappear and that lets you know that the foreground is now selected so let’s come down here to the bottom of the layers panel and click on this icon to add a layer mask and there’s a lot of options to choose from but when you’re working with a selection you want to make sure you use selection as part of the layer mask or the type of layer mask once you click add boom your background is gone how cool is that but what’s even better is those pixels are not gone permanently they’re just hidden so if you take a look at at the image layer here you can see the preview of the image and all the pixels are visible here but next to that is the layer mask anything in black is hidden anything in white is visible so now if you made a mistake let’s say for whatever reason you decide you don’t want to include or show this thing that he’s sitting on free stump or whatever it is well you can paint with black to hide those pixels so so let’s go ahead and do that but first let’s deselect by going up to select and selecting none and the keyboard shortcut for that is shift plus command or control plus a all right so we need to set up our foreground and background color swatches so go ahead and select white and black by clicking here and selecting them from there or click on these little icons right here so that’ll give me black and that’ll give you white there as well now you can come over here and switch between the two by clicking on these double arrows but what I like to do is use my keyboard shortcut which is the letter X so I can be working on my image adjusting the layer mask as needed and then if I want to switch to the other I just press X to add or to change the color swatch okay so I need black so I’m going to set black to the foreground color swatch and then I can paint over this tree stump and it begins hiding those pixels pretty cool if you ask me now let’s say you did the opposite you made a mistake you actually wanted this part of the stump included press X paint with white and it’s going to make those pixels visible how cool is that I love it so a layer mask will give you more precision and control over the final area being targeted with your edit to sharpen or not to sharpen your images that is the question then how much sharpening should you apply so you don’t over sharpen well in this tutorial you’re going to learn some Pro tips for sharpening your images let’s dive back into Dart table here and we’re going to look at some Raw photos and we’re going to determine whether or not we should sharpen them and then how to sharpen them in Dart table then we’ll jump into and learn how to sharpen our images in there so we’re going to take a look at this image first I’m going to scroll in with the scroll button on my mouse and I don’t know about you but I think this image is sharp enough what do you think yes technically you can sharpen this image even more but I think it will degrade the image not improve it now this next image down here on the left is much softer than the other one so I think this particular image can benefit from some sharpening now if you want to zoom in a little bit more you can click right here to select a different percentage so you can definitely see how much softer it is versus the other image so I would definitely sharpen up this image now how much sharpening I apply is depending on the intended use for that particular file if I’m going to post an image online then I will sharpen it more than if I were to do a photographic print but even then I’m going to sharpen my photographic prints more or less depending on the size of the image for example if I have a small 5×7 print on my desk I’m going to sharpen that more than I would say for one of these 40 by3 canvas Gallery wraps that I have up here on my wall behind me because I’m not going to be viewing these images behind me really close like I am my desk photo so I don’t need to spend as much time sharpening it and making sure I’m not oversharpening things like the skin so if you want to sharpen your images in D table just go to the search module here type in sharpen and you’ll get this traditional style type of sharpening tool now I only sharpen my images when I’ve completed my editing so if you’re going to bring your images into I would edit after you do all your edits in and then sharpen from there but if you do all your edits in D table you can go ahead and increase the amount of sharpening and the radius will enhance that sharpening a little bit more and then threshold will narrow down the sharpening in the different tonal ranges from all the tonal ranges down to the midtones and the blacks and the shadows and it will Target the highlights less which is where the skin tones are usually residing within your tonal range if I zoom in here it’s probably a lot sharper now than it was before so let’s take a look at the before and the after so I think that might be a little bit too much so I might bring that threshold down just a little bit just to tone it down some so it’s not as sharp as it was before but what I would prefer doing is targeting my sharpening with a layer mask and gamp so either way I would probably export this particular file and then sharpen in instead so let’s go ahead and do that let’s jump into here and we’re going to take a look at this image and this one here both are in your section five folder so let’s go ahead and zoom in on this image and you can definitely see it’s not as sharp as it could be and again I think that’s because of some motion blur at the time of capture so let’s go ahead and work non-destructively by duplicating this layer and let’s take a look at the first option for sharpening which is under filters enhance and then it’s right here sharpen unsharp mask now this is an old school traditional classic type of sharpening that we’ve had in Photoshop forever so if we go ahead and click on that you can then increase the amount of sharpening from here and then the radius of course will refine the edges a little bit more more than just the amount by itself and if you go too far you’re going to end up with this grunge look so if you’re into that or if that’s what you want that’s one way to get it now for this particular image it’s not looking so good so I wouldn’t use that much so if you bring your threshold in again you can Target that to reduce the amount of color fringing and the amount of the sharpening along the edges so it’s not as intense I’m not really liking this particular sharpening tool for this image the one that I prefer is also under enhance here and it’s called High Pass now the first thing you’re going to notice is the image is converted to grayscale and that’s because it’s easier to see the sharpening along the edges of the detail more so in a grayscale versus a color image but if you want to see the color image as you’re adjusting the amount of sharpening you can do that by going into your blending options here and selecting overlay now as you increase the contrast level here which is targeting the edges of the detail from light to dark you will see that it’s beginning to sharpen up the image but again it’s oversharpening the skin and the pores and the blemishes and everything are being enhanced and I think that’s degrading this portrait image overall so I would probably bring the contrast level down to around two or so for this particular image maybe a little bit more and what I would do next then is I would use a layer mask on this layer in white and then I would paint with black along the skin here to remove that sharpening from the skin so I think that’s looking much better now the eyes are sharper the eyebrows are sharper and the hair is a little bit sharper and so is some of the clothing so you can adjust this to your own liking but again you have to determine how much sharpening you want to apply based on its intended use now for landscape photos you can get away with sharpening a little bit more because you don’t have the skin to deal with so for this particular image I would use the high pass as well and I can increase that contrast to maybe right around two or so now for this particular image actually I’m going to go down lower because it’s not as soft as the previous image so if I put overlay here you can see that we’re already getting a pretty good amount of Sharpening at 1 and 1/2 versus 2 and 1/2 with the previous image because the previous image like I mentioned had some motion blur in it so the before and after so I think that is much improved it’s not as soft the details are popping and there’s more sharpening and contrast from the foreground to the background and I think this overall makes the image much better for this project you’re going to learn how to replace a sky with another one and three as keys for doing it right so let’s open up image 01 from your section 5 folder and the first thing we want to do is duplicate this layer here so we can work non-destructively let’s go ahead and turn this background layer off and then let’s make a selection of our sky so we’re going to use our fuzzy select tool and I’m going to set my threshold to right around 25 and I’m going to use draw mask to assist in the selection process so I’m going to click drag down and try and get as much to the sky as possible without the foreground let’s go ahead and back away now with the shift key I can click and drag down and continue making my selection now I’m starting to get a little bit of that foreground again but we’re going to use our quick mask mode to refine our selection I just want to make sure all of the guy here is selected that looks pretty good now we’re going to grab our Zoom tool with the letter Z and click and drag in let’s go into our quick mask mode with shift Plus plus Q let’s grab our paintbrush tool with the letter P and we want to paint with black so we can remove from the selection so I’m going to go ahead and paint in this area and continue removing from the selection okay shift plus Q again to get out of it I need to do a little bit more refining here so I think that should be pretty good now command or control shift Plus J to zoom all the way back out all right now that we have our Sky selected let’s go ahead and apply a layer mask to hide those pixels so we’re going to come down here click here we’re going to make sure we have selection selected and we’re going to click add and unfortunately the wrong part of the image has been hidden so let’s undo that with Commander Control Plus the letter Z let’s go back inside of here invert mask from here we’ll do just that and boom this guy is gone how cool is that all right we’re now going to review the three key Essentials for replacing Skies to make them look realistic and that is the direction of light color of light and creating an atmospheric condition so let’s review those with some images so the first thing we want to do is make sure that the direction of light matches our original image or the original sky so in this image you can tell that the light is coming from over here on the left away from or outside of the camera angle of view and we know that because we have some Shadows here coming from this mountain range so it’s coming from over here so we want to make sure that the light and the set of clouds or the sky that we’re going to use matches otherwise it’s going to look off it’s not going to look right the other thing is the color of light so in the original sky here it’s a light blue but if you take a look at the light or the color of light right in this area here you can see it’s much warmer so this tells me that this was taken later in the day close to Sunset so I would like to find a sky that was taken at the same time as this image now unless you’re taking the images yourself you’re not going to really know the time of day that an image was taken unless you can get the original raw file that will have the metadata the time for that particular image so when it was created now let’s look at some images to see why this is important so this image here I took this set of clouds or captured it in the middle of the day so you can kind of tell that the lighting in the color is different so it’s not really going to match the original this image here you can definitely see the direction of the light it’s directly behind the cloud so again it’s not going to match the direction of the light here now as far as the time of day this one was later in the day I believe that the sun was pretty much below the Horizon when I took this so the colors are much more vibrant more saturated warmer more orange we have some purples some blues so again it’s not matching so we want to try and find a set of clouds or a sky that matches as closely as possible so I have this set of clouds here we have the sun over here on the right side it’s near the Horizon but it’s not completely down it’s a little bit warmer than the sky here but we have some warmth in the colors on the mountain range right here so I think this set of clouds would work well for this image other than the direction of the light but that’s not a problem because we can flip the canvas so that the light is over on this side so this particular image is not included in this class and that’s because I want you to find your own Sky your own set of clouds and try and find something that matches the time of day the color of light the direction of light to add this layer to this image over here we’re going to click and drag over the tab and then I can release over top now the one thing I want to do is undo that with Commander Control Plus the letter Z and I also want to deselect so I’m going to go up to select and click on none now another way to add a layer is to grab your file from your systems operating folder or the folder system and click and drag over your canvas and then it will be added as a new layer now if that’s not working for you you can go up to file open as layers and then it will open up that image as a new layer so I’m going to go ahead and click and drag this below my layer mask here so I can see that Sky now I believe this set of clouds is much larger than the file that I have open right now the mountain range that I’m working on so I need to scale that smaller so I’m going to grab my scale tool I’m going to click and drag down and try and get it to fit within that canvas if I click on this little square here I can reposition it and it looks like it’s pretty large so I’m going to take a look here and I I believe I resized the original image here from 5,000 pixels wide I believe is what you have and I scaled it down to 2500 so I’m going to go ahead and type in 2500 for the width to rescale or resize this image to fit within the canvas I’m going to make it just a little bit larger and I’m going to place it right there Then enter or return to rescale it now I have my light over here or the direction of the light is coming from over here so let’s go ahead and flip it now by going up to layer transform and selecting flip horizontally all right our light Direction now matches the original so I’m going to go ahead and grab my move tool with the letter M because I want to go ahead and move these clouds up a little bit higher so maybe something like that all right so the third key is the atmospheric condition what is that well you’ll notice in a lot of landscape photos that the sky at the top is darker than the sky at the Horizon it’s going to be much brighter or there’s going to be some transition from darker to lighter and we can see that in this original image here if I turn off my clouds here you can see it’s darker up here but it’s brighter down here that’s the atmospheric condition so we’re going to recreate that with a lay layer mask and a gradient so the first thing we need to do is create a new layer so I’m going to grab my background layer here I’m going to click right here to create a new layer you want to make sure you fill it in with white click okay and that’s going to add the layer above and below the clouds here so make sure this layer is below the clouds if it’s not just click and drag it into position all right let’s grab our set of clouds now and let’s add a layer mask and we’re going to select white because White shows the pixels black hides and you need to make sure you turn off invert mask otherwise it will invert the white to black all right let’s click add and now we’re going to grab our gradient tool which you can grab from the bucket fill tool group right here we’re going to right click select gradient or press the letter G now in the tool options you want to make sure that you click right here and select foreground to background and you want to make sure you have linear set to the shape and we want to paint with white to black so we’re going to start up here and drag down so it’s going to apply white up here and slowly switch to Black so there will be Grays in between and that will reduce the transparency or begin to hide the pixels accordingly so I’m going to click here drag down and that will then create that transition from dark to light I’m going to go ahead and grab this right here and drag it up higher to create a smoother transition from light to dark okay so once you have it set the way you want I’m going to actually bring this back down I’m going to click enter or return and you have your atmospheric condition how cool is that I love it all right it’s now your turn to apply your new knowledge and complete this project on your own back in the days if you underexposed it it would create a faded look today you can recreate this mat effect in and I’m going to share two different methods for creating it so the main characteristic of the mat effect is it appears to be faded or muted and it’s easy to replicate by reducing the amount of contrast in particular the blacks and the shadows and adjusting the Black Point and the two tools you can use to recreate the matter effect effect are either the levels or the curves tools we’re going to take a look at levels first so let’s jump in here and this is the image we’re going to use now even though we’re going to be doing this edit in we first need to fix the tonal range of this image so we need to fill in the Gap a little bit here not too much because I think for this particular image if we adjust it all the way to the right it’s going to start blowing out the highlights and ruining or degrading the skin so we’re not going to do too much I’m going to increase the midtones shadows and highlights by adjusting the center of of our curve here up and then I’m going to grab the shadows and the blacks here and brighten those up maybe just a little bit of a bump on the highlights as well so that’s pretty much it for the tonal adjustments for this particular image so once you do that go ahead and Export this file and open it up in all right so let’s go up to colors and select levels and the way we create the mat effect is by reducing or clipping detail in the blacks and the Shadows so we’re going to take our Black Point here and move it to the right and the image gets darker so that is now pure black in all this area of the image so we’ve taken all this detail and reduced it to a solid black color Now to create the Matt effect we’re going to take our output levels here and we’re going to take this marker and move it to the right and the further it goes to the right as you can see it’s going to get brighter it’s going to add Shades of Gray or a shade of gray I should say in place of that solid black so let’s go ahead and do that I’m going to go ahead and move it to the right and there’s the mat effect unfortunately I’m not a big fan of this particular method I know it’s a popular one on YouTube and other creators use this particular method but it’s not my favorite so let me show you the method that I prefer for creating a matte effect so let’s go ahead and cancel out of this now we’re going to go up to colors and select curve curves so I’m going to add an anchor point right here so I can restrict my adjustments to this part of the tonal range which is the blacks and the Shadows there might be a little bit of midtones in there as well but I’m targeting the two main areas in that range that I need now this is the Black Point like I’ve mentioned before so we’re going to grab this and drag it up and it’s going to begin reducing the contrast in that part of the Tona range from blacks to Shadows how cool is that I love it now this particular method I believe works much better and gives us that true classic traditional matte effect plus you can apply this particular technique on images that are much brighter versus this one whereas the other method will only work with images that has a lot of dark in it but if you do have a Brighter Image you can then darken It Up by changing the shadows in the blacks to be darker and to increase the Black Point here so if you wanted to you can click and drag down here to make those blacks or those dark Grays even deeper than they were before so you can adjust this based on your Creative Vision all right so go ahead and keep this image open for the next tutorial since we’re going to be applying an old school retro effect to it now if you can’t do that next tutorial right away go ahead and save this file so you can get to it when you’re ready to start that next tutorial all right so in the last tutorial you learned how to create a matte effect and now we’re going to enhance that image with a retro effect with some dust textures and more and here’s what the final edit is going to look like how cool is that I love it so if you’re ready let’s do it so the first thing we’re going to do is work non-destructively by duplicating this layer let’s rename this D saturate and that’s because we’re going to reduce the saturation of the image which I like to use when I create my retro vintage type of effects so we’re going to go up to colors and select Hue saturation and I’m going to drop the saturation down usually for vintage retro photos I like to do around minus 50 to minus 80 but I think for this image because we reduced the overall contrast we don’t need to reduce the saturation as much so I’m going to go right around 10 for this project all right so we have some resources that you can add to this image to create the final retro effect which are these files right here 5 through 7even so go to your section five folder locate them click and drag them to the canvas again if this doesn’t work for you go up to file and select open as layers to add the layers now we need to rotate and resize these layers to fill the entire canvas so let’s start with this first layer here these are the scratches so we’re going to go ahead and go up to layer transform and select rotate to well rotate it then we’re going to grab our scale tool with shift plus s and then I’m just going to click on the corners here or on the inside Corners here and resize and stretch that out to go outside of that canvas go ahead and click scale all right I’m going to go ahead and turn that layer off and let’s do the same thing for this layer and one more so we need to rotate this one as well so back to transform and rotate Perfect all right let’s work on this layer here I’m going to go ahead and double click and rename this dust and I think I want to drop the opacity down to around 50 to 60 now we have white dust but dust really isn’t white so what we can do is we can convert this white color to Black by going up to let’s go to colors and select invert and now well can’t see it now let’s go ahead and zoom in here well we can see it a little bit but if you can’t see it go ahead and increase your opacity to show those specks of dust a little bit better okay I’m going to go ahead and zoom all the way back out and I think I want to increase that opacity just a little bit more I want it to be visible when I’m zoomed all the way out so right there looks pretty good all right now that I’m looking at this black dust I’m not sure if I want black dust what do you think white or black and again I guess this really depends on your Creative Vision because the dust particles on a print enlargement are going to occur in two different ways one it can occur during the printing process so back in the old days when we did our own printing in a dark room if there was dust on the paper or the film it would tend to be white on the final print but when you lay your print out or hang it on the wall and you don’t have glass on it dust and dirt builds up and then that dust and dirt is gray or black and not white so I guess I’ll leave that entirely up to you based on your Creative Vision I think I’m going to go ahead and just leave it like it is for now also don’t forget we can also use a layer mask if you need to remove some of that dust where you don’t want it for example I probably don’t want it on her tooth right here so I’m going to go ahead and add a white layer mask and then with our paintbrush tool here we can go ahead and whoops I did the opacity I want to make this smaller we can go ahead and paint with black to remove the dust as needed so I like that better so command or control shift plus J to zoom all the way out all right let’s go ahead and grab our texture layer here let’s go ahead and rename it texture and let’s go ahead and turn it on now we need to blend this in with the layers below so we’re going to go up to mode here and let’s go with soft light I think I like this effect you may want to try one of the other blending modes to see if you can find something else that you like or maybe you just want to use soft light again I’ll lead that up to you all right we now have our scratches here so let’s go ahead and rename that and add that in there and we also need to change the blending mode for this as well and for this one let’s go with screen all right that’s a little bit too intense for me so I’m going to drop that opacity down and just kind of blend it in a little bit more so maybe right around 40 to 50 I think I’m liking that right there and I think this big scratch on her lip right here is kind of distracting so I’m going to go ahead and get rid of that one with a white layer mask and let’s go ahead and get rid of that there we go I like that better all right so the next step is aging the image just a little bit so when you leave your images out in the open and they’re exposed to light the chemicals used will tend to change and degrade that print over time and not only will they fade which we already did in the previous tutorial but they will also begin to change colors because those chemicals are reacting with the light and they tend to shift colors from left to right or orange to blue or whatever the case may be so let’s go ahead and create a new layer by clicking right here and let’s call it color color fade and then for fill width make sure you have transparency and click okay all right grab your brush tool with the letter P and for the foreground color I’m going to choose this orange color right here so if you want to use the same color just type in this hexadecimal number right here click okay and then we need a really really large brush because I want to cover about a third of the image with this color so I’m going to come over here and drag it to the right right around 1,300 or so maybe a little larger and what I want to do is I want to drop the opacity of the brush because I don’t want a solid color and I’m just going to click here and there just to add the color randomly in different places want to go a little lower on that opacity and then just go ahead and add it to the new layer now don’t worry about what it looks like now because we’re going to blend that in in just a second so what we’re going to do now is we’re going to change to a different color I want to choose a contrasting color so let’s go inside here and I believe I used this color on my final edit may want to go a little darker with that so here’s the hexadecimal that I’m going to use go ahead and click okay and then just in a different spot go ahead and add that blue color randomly and make sure it’s not filling in a solid color you just want to bring in a little bit of that blue tint into the image like so if you wanted to you could overlap the colors a little bit as well just to mix it up a little bit more all right so that’s not looking too good right now so let’s go ahead and blend this layer in by changing the blend mode to soft light so we have just a touch of a color shift in it and if you need to add more you go ahead and continue painting across the image to add more color if that’s something you want to do I think I want to add some more orange here actually I think I did too much now so I’m going to go ahead and drop that opacity down of that layer just a little bit to right around 80 to 90 so there’s the before and the after all right so the next thing we need to do is we need to add some grain because a retro image wouldn’t be complete without any so let’s go ahead and create a new layer let’s call it grain and let’s go to our foreground color swatch here and let’s choose a mid gray color actually need to go back now and we need to fill with the foreground color and the reason why we’re filling it in with the color is because the filter that we’re going to use requires some color in order to add the Grain and the color gray the mid gray is a good starting point so let’s go ahead ahead and click okay all right let’s go up to filters down to noise and let’s select HSV noise all right so we’re going to increase the value to add more grain and of course the higher you go the more you will add so I’m going to go pretty high here so maybe right around one or so and depending on the speed of your computer will determine how fast it generates the grain for you now I do want to get rid of the saturation in the grain so I’m going to drop the saturation down to zero and if I want to change the randomness of the grain I can adjust the dulling so I’m going to go ahead and change that to around three all right so we don’t have to wait for this to complete generating so let’s go ahead and click okay and now we’re going to go up to our mode here and change the blend mode to softlight and boom we have our grain all right real quick let’s take a look at at the before and after and here’s a quick tip on how to do that quickly and easily we’re going to scroll all the way down to our first image layer here we’re going to hold down our shift key and then we’re going to click right here on this little I icon and there’s the before and the after how cool is that I love it when photographing a scene that has a large dynamic range chances are your camera will not be capable of capturing all the brightness levels this means you’ll end up with either the highlight lights Overexposed or the Shadows underexposed or possibly both the solution is to take multiple images at different exposures and for this project I’ve included two images with two different exposures one that captures all the detail and the highlights and another that captures the detail in the shadows then you’re going to learn how to merge those two images in to create an HDR image which is known as a high dynamic range so let’s open up this image file here which is 02 and it’s located in your section five folder and let’s learn how to create an HDR image so this file consists of those two layers that I mentioned so the first image I captured to retain the detail in all the highlights and then the second image I adjusted the exposure to get all the details in the shadows which caused the highlights to be Overexposed so the goal is to blend the two layers together to have a new layer that shows all the detail in the shadows and highlights and here is the final edit that I completed for this project and how cool is that I love it so you can definitely see more detail in the shadows and the highlights so the secret to blending and merging these layers together to create an HDR is through the use of a special type of layer mask so let’s add a layer mask by coming down here and clicking here and you want to select grayscale copy of layer and what that’s going to do is it’s going to convert your color image into grayscale and it’s going to apply it on a layer mask the result is the Highlight layer has been blended with the shadow layer below but why did I put the layer mask on the highlights and not vice versa well let’s do that and see the difference so I’m going to go ahead and right click here and disable this layer mask I’m going to go ahead and move that layer below shadows and then I’m going to go ahead and apply that layer mask to this layer and they are Blended together again but they look different this time the Shadows are really dark compared to what we had before so I’m going to go ahead and undo this and get back to where we were originally and notice now how the Shadows are brighter and the highlights are also brighter as well so this is a better starting point for the next phase of of creating your HDR image so the next step is to do some dodging and burning to fix the black Shadows highlights and whites of the tonal range and we’re going to start the process by duplicating the Shadows layer so go ahead and click here and then go ahead and double click on the name to rename it to let’s do exposure adjustment and for this layer we’re going to make it darker to tone down the highlights and darken up the Shadows a little bit so let’s use our curse tool to make that adjustment so let’s go up to colors and select curves from here and let’s go ahead and pull this down and make everything just a little bit darker so right about there looks good okay so we’re now going to bring back some details from the layer below because maybe it’s a little bit too dark and you want to bring back some of that detail so the highlights to me are better than what they were before but maybe the Shadows especially in this area I think it’s a little bit too dark so we’re going to apply a layer mask to bring back some of that detail so let’s go ahead and click here and let’s apply a white layer mask let’s grab our paintbrush tool with the letter P make sure you have black selected for the foreground color swatch here and then go ahead and paint into the areas where you want to bring back some of that detail so I’m going to do this area here maybe over here as well and maybe a little bit up here so wherever you think you lost too much detail with that curves adjustment maybe over here a little bit as well actually I’m going to undo that with Commander Control Plus the letter Z because I do not want to brighten up this area as much so I’m going to drop the opacity which is similar to painting with gray versus pure black and that’s just going to make a small adjustment and it’s not going to make it as bright with opacity set to 100 so if you take a look at the layer mask here you can see a little bit of gray here instead of pure black like we have over here so I’m going to go ahead and put the opacity back to 100 so I don’t forget to do that later on all right so what we’re going to do now is a more traditional type of dodging and burning with our Dodge and burn tool so let’s go ahead and grab that with shift plus d now before we apply this tool let’s go ahead and grab our top layer here we’re going to right click on it and select new from visible and that’s going to merge all the visible layers into a new layer so we can work non-destructively and apply our dodging and burning to this layer so let’s go ahead and Target our highlights first I want to go ahead darken those up so I’m going to select burn and I’m going to Target midtones and the exposure I’m going to set to right around 35 now what I want to do is I want to slowly gradually build up the detail s in this area and darken this area so I’m going to add multiple Strokes at a time not one big stroke at a time but multiple strokes and that will bring out the detail slowly and it will build depth as well which is much better versus just one or two big Strokes at a time so you can apply this to all the areas that need to be a little bit darker and then you can go ahead and work on your shadows and brighten them up if needed so I’m going to go ahead and switch over to my Dodge tool now and I’m going to Target the midtones again and I’m going to go ahead and brighten up this area that’s a little bit too much so I’m going to go ahead and undo that with Commander Control Plus the letter Z so let’s try the Shadows this time and I think that’s too much still so I think I just need to adjust my exposure down to right around 10 to 12 let’s try that I think that’s a little bit too much still I think we did a pretty good job on brightening up those shadows in the previous step that we did but I just want them a little bit brighter just going to add a little bit more depth and over here I think I’ll go ahead and brighten this up as well and you can adjust the dodging and burning of your image to your liking whatever your Creative Vision is and whatever you think looks good to you that’s what you’re going to do so I think it took me about 20 minutes to complete this particular edit here so you’re going to spend some time on this yourself now to practice what you’ve learned but there’s one more thing I want to do before we finish up and that’s something that we need to talk about when it comes to HDR images that we haven’t touched yet and that is the ghosting effect so we’ve talked about ghosting in a previous tutorial but when it comes to HDR you will create the ghosting not from the dodging and burning but because the two are multiple images the details in the scene do not line up completely or exactly I should say so if you have a tree it might be off a little bit compared to the previous image that you took so what happens is when you’re taking multiple exposures and you’re handholding it you’re going to take a photo of the first image at one exposure right and then you need to change that exposure to something else to capture the details in a different part of the ton range the problem is as you’re doing that you’re not going to line up exactly where you were before so to avoid that you can use a tripod but even then if the wind is blowing and moving those leaves and the branches and stuff they’re going to be in a different position when you take that second photo anyways so another thing you can do if your camera has the feature available is to use Auto exposure bracketing and that will automatically change the exposure for you after you take your first photo and if you shoot in continuous shooting mode you can take two photos rapidly one right after the other and that’s going to eliminate the elements in your scene from being out of position now if there is some movement or they are out of position that is going to create the ghosting effect because it’s not lined up and it looks like a ghosting effect around those different elements or the edges of the subjects in your image so one way we can counteract that in is to sharpen up the image so let’s go ahead and do that you learn how to do that in a previous tutorial but let me show you what I would do for this particular image and what I like to do is I like to go ahead and zoom in a little bit so I can see how much ghosting I have it’s not that bad it’s off a little bit and that causes not just the ghosting which we really can’t see in this image but the image isn’t as sharp as it could be because those details don’t line up perfectly from one image to another so I’m going to go ahead and duplicate this layer now and I’m going to call it sharpen so I can apply that sharpening to this layer we’re going to go up to filters enhance and select high pass and then we just need to increase or decrease the contrast based on how much we need to sharpen the image or to minimize that ghosting as much as possible now it’s kind of hard to see because we have a Grays scale here and not the full color so I may go a little bit higher than I actually need and I’m going to go ahead and apply that we’re going to apply our blending mode of overlay and let’s take a look at the before and after so it’s definitely sharper than it was before so those details look like they’re aligning a little bit more than they were before and if you oversharpened your image that’s okay just come into your opacity here and lower it down to tone down that sharpening how cool is that I love it so one of the most difficult things to make a selection of is hair however once you learn the techniques in this tutorial you’ll be able to cut out hair like a pro so here’s the image you’re going to be working on and the final edit how cool is that so if you want to follow along and complete this project this image can be found in your resources folder now if you want to practice fixing the tonal range of the image we have the original raw f to that you imported previously and if I turn off my adjustment here you’ll notice it’s much darker and the histogram has a gap in the whites and the highlights and this was the tone curve adjustments that I applied to fix the image so if you want to do that go ahead and practice making that adjustment export it and open in or just use the image that I provided all right so the first step in cutting out the hair we need to create a new layer and it has to be a solid color so we’re going to go ahead and grab a dark color any color will work out just fine go ahead and name that layer color and then fill with the foreground color and the reason why we’re using this layer will become apparent later in the tutorial let’s go ahead and move that layer below the image layer now let’s grab our image layer and duplicate it and now let’s go ahead and desaturate the image by by going up two colors desaturate desaturate and okay so the next step is key to cutting out her hair what we need to do is we need to convert the Shades of Gray down to as few as possible and the goal is is to make that background as pure white as possible so we’re going to use our levels tool to do that let’s start with our white point and dragging it to the left and now we have a pure white background the only problem is we’re losing a a lot of the detail in the hair and the Stray hairs and when I bring this back you’ll notice some of those stray hairs come back so I’m going to place the white point right around 150 and I’m getting that number right here now to bring back and Define that hair a little bit we can grab our black point and bring it to the right but again if we go too far then that white background is no longer white so we have to find a happy medium between the two so I’m going to bring this back to right around 20 to 25 maybe a little less so I think closer to 20 is good and then we can darken it up a little bit more if we wanted to with the midtones here and I think I’m going to go ahead and do that so again need to find that happy medium between Pure White and retaining as much detail as possible so that looks pretty good I’m going to go ahead and click okay so our next step is removing the background and we’re going to do that with a layer mask now before we apply a layer mask we’re going to copy all the pixels of the layer so let’s go up to edit and select copy visible let’s grab our color image layer now cuz we’re going to apply that layer mask on this one so let’s go ahead and add a white one now we’re going to go back up to edit and select paste and that’s going to create what is known as a floating selection so we need to Anchor this layer with the one below and then it’s going to paste those pixels inside of the layer mask so come down here and click C on this little anchor icon and now you can see those Shades of Gray in the layer mask let’s go ahead and turn off this color layer and our black and white layer up here and now our model is transparent the only problem is I want the background to be transparent not the model so let’s go ahead and invert the layer mask by going up to colors and selecting invert all right we can now see our model a lot better than before the background is gone the only problem is our model is too transparent and that’s where our color layer comes into play for us to help us redefine where our model should be or to see our model again so with our layer mask selected we’re going to grab our paintbrush tool with the letter P I’m going to start off with a fairly large brush here so I can cover as much of the image as possible and we’re going to paint with white to add our back so now I just need to go around the image to reveal all the pixels or our subject again so that she’s not green or transparent if that layer is off so I’m going to go ahead and do this real quickly don’t want to spend a lot of time on this now that you know how to do it but I have one more thing I want to share with you before we wrap up this tutorial so the one thing you may have noticed is her hair has a little bit of a glow to it at least along the Stray hairs here and we’re going to go ahead and fix that let me go ahead and finish up her shoulder here all right that’s looking pretty good now of course I would come in with the smaller brush and get in along these edges here to refine that a little bit so we can see her a little bit better and now let’s go ahead and get rid of that glow in the hair by going up to colors and selecting levels grab your midpoint and drag it to the right and that will minimize that glow and again you don’t want to go too far otherwise you’re going to start losing too much detail in the hair and in case you’re wondering the green or any color of your choice is just really to be used to help you see where you need to make adjustments for example I can see I have some green in her hair up here and when the layer is turned off it’s really hard to tell if you’ve ever wished you wore a different color garment for a photo shoot then this tutorial is for for you you’re about to learn how to change colors from one to another and you’ll discover three different ways to do it so you can find the exact color you need so here’s the original image we’re going to be working with and here’s a different color how cool is that now check this out here’s a different color as well pretty cool all right so let me show you how I did this and just like with the other tutorials this image is in your resources folder if you want to practice fixing the tonal adjustments the Raw file should be imported into dark table already and here’s the tone curve adjustment I made for this image all right so let me show you how to change the colors the most difficult part of this process is making a selection of the target garment that you want to change the color of now for this particular image it’s extra difficult because the Garment is the same color as the background and if we try and use select by color well that’s going to select the background and if we try the fuzzy select tool that’s not going to work because the colors are right next to each

other so again it’s going to bleed into that area and it’s going to take a long time with that particular selection tool so the tool of choice for this would be either the quick mask mode or the foreground select tool so I think I’m going to go ahead and go with the foreground select tool here and I’m going to go ahead and make my initial outline here to start the selection process okay I’m going to go ahead and start targeting the colors the contrast the details and the textures so knows exactly what is the foreground all right now that we have our selection we can refine that with our quick Mass mode so shift plus q p for your paintbrush and then I’m just going to paint with white and black to add and remove from the ction all right I’m going to go ahead and zoom out now that I have my selection it’s not perfect but I can always refine it with the layer mask later on so the first thing we’re going to do is duplicate this layer and the first method for changing a color is pretty simple we’re going to go up to colors and select Hue saturation and then you can adjust the color with the Hue slider here you can make it brighter or darker with lightness and adjust the saturation now this is not my favorite method for changing the color let’s try another method for this next step we’re going to try creating a new layer let’s make sure it’s filled with transparency and then we’re going to choose our color here and you can choose any color you want I’m going to go ahead and go with this dark orange color and then fill it in with your bucket fill tool go ahead and click inside of the selection and that will add the color to that layer all right so that’s not really working out too well so let’s go ahead and blend that in with the layer below let’s go up to mode and select HSV q and boom we now have well it’s not really Orange it’s more tan so what you can do if you’re not getting the color that you want go back into the blending modes here and try one of these other values let’s try color all right so that’s more orange than tan and that’s another way to change the colors of your garments and let me share with you one more I’m going to go ahead and put this layer back to normal so let’s go ahead and turn this layer off and grab our duplicate layer and then we’re going to go up to Colors colorize and boom you have a new color so this light blue color is the default color for this particular tool just click right here to choose another color or you can use your eyedropper tool here to select the color from within in the photo how cool is that I love it now the other thing you can do here is you can apply a blending mode from here if you want to do that to see if you can get the color that you want or you can also adjust the Hue saturation and lightness from here like we did in the first step I don’t know about you but I’ve always thought it would be cool to change the color of my eyes blue or maybe green hm well I’m not a big fan of contact so I’m stuck dreaming and instead we’ll have to settle for changing the color of my eyes and so here’s the image you’ll be working with and she has brown eyes and now they’re green so let me show you how we did this so one of the keys to changing the color of the eyes is ensuring that the eyes themselves are not too dark otherwise the color the new color will not transfer to that solid black color if they’re too dark so we have the original raw file here and I had to brighten up the image and the shadows and the blacks to brighten up those eyes but we need to go a little bit further in and Target those eyes and make them even brighter so let’s go ahead and duplicate our layer here and then we’re going to make a selection of her eyes and I think for this image and this project we’re going to go ahead and use the quick mask mode and we’re going to brush on the edits where we want them let’s go a little larger on the brush size here and then you’re going to paint with white to add to the selection all right shift plus Q again to get out of it and it looks like we have a pretty good selection let’s go ahead and add a layer mask here make sure you have selection selected and click add and we’re going to make sure we have our image layer selected let’s go ahead head and deselect while we’re at it and let’s go ahead and brighten up those eyes so let’s go up to colors and let’s use our curves tool to make them brighter and I’m going to add a little bit of contrast here by darkening up the blacks and the shadows and we’re going to brighten up those whites a little bit maybe we need to adjust the white point and the black point so whatever you think looks good I just want to add a little bit of contrast and make sure that they’re brighter than they were before let’s take a look at the before and the after there we go so that’s what I wanted so let’s go ahead and click okay and I need to zoom out now just a little bit all right now the next thing we need to do is duplicate this layer again make sure the preview thumbnail is selected not the layer mask and what we’re going to do is we’re going to go up to colors and select colorize and boom we have a new color now I didn’t do a really good job on my selection here so I can go back with the layer mask and adjust that as needed and let’s go ahead and click here to choose a new color maybe you want a darker blue lighter blue entirely up to you I think green might be pretty good for this particular image I’m not sure what do you think so maybe a little bit darker on this one so right there looks pretty good and of course you can make your adjustments from the Hue saturation and lightness Sliders just like we did in the previous tutorial I’m going to go ahead and go with that and click okay all right so couple more things I want to do I want to clean up this eye right here with my layer mask and my brush I’m going to go ahead and paint with black to remove this green from the whites of her eye it shouldn’t be out there let’s go ahead and clean this up and if you hold down your space bar you’ll get your hand tool and then you can navigate to the other eye and you can adjust this eye now all right let’s go ahead and zoom out a little bit one more thing I want to do is I want to tone down the green a little bit it’s a little too intense so I could either drop the opacity change the blending mode or both that’s entirely up to you and the blending modes I like to use are either darken I don’t think overlay or soft light work too well so when you have a brown eye I think darken only works pretty good let’s check out the before there’s the normal and command or control+ Z to go back actually that’s not going to work so I’m going to go in here and select darken only and I’m going to increase that opacity again beautiful now if you wanted to you can go up to Colors actually make sure your image layer here is selected go up to Colors Hue saturation and adjust the color of your eyes from here how cool is that so maybe you wanted blue and not green there you go kind of an aqua green now and here’s the before and the after all right so our next photo editing Challenge and project is trying to fix an Overexposed image and you may remember this image from the HDR tutorial where we merged two different exposures to get detail in the shadows and highlights this time we’re going to see if we can fix an Overexposed image when you don’t have multiple IM to create an HDR and you’re also going to discover the challenges that you’re going to face when you overexpose an image now for this particular image I captured both a raw file and jpeg at the same time in camera and the results are very different straight out of the camera so this image here is in your resources folder and of course this is the jpeg file since it’s already in so let’s go ahead and take a look at the raw file now in D table wow that’s a huge difference wouldn’t you agree so more detail in the shadows and highlights compared to the jpeg file but it’s still Overexposed now check this out we’re going to go into Lightroom here to review this raw file there to see what it looks like in Lightroom so it looks completely different it looks more Overexposed compared to Dart table and it looks more like the jpeg file actually and this is more of what I saw at the time of capture with the LCD view on the back of the camera so if you’re transitioning from Lightroom to dark table you’re not going to be presented with this instead you’re going to have this preview of the file why is that why do they look different well you may remember from a previous tutorial how I mentioned Dart table applies some basic edits after you import which you can see here in the history panel even if I go all the way back to the original it still looks different than what we saw in Lightroom and that’s because D table and Lightroom are rendering the raw file based on how they were programmed Dart table is showing more of the detail that was captured Lightroom on the other hand is showing the raw unfiltered rendition of the file so seeing the detail in dark table from the start is nice to have especially for those that haven’t mastered reading the histogram yet now I know that detail is in Lightroom as well because the histogram tells us it’s there based on the bars being displayed in each of the different tonal ranges and if I adjust the highlights all the way down and I dropped the exposure down as well it’s closer to what we start with in Dart table all right now that we got that out of the way let’s go ahead and jump back into and figure out how to fix this underexposed jpeg file and then we’ll edit the raw file in Dart table and then we’ll compare the two with each other all right so for this particular image the jpeg I went ahead and did the edit and here’s my final edit and it’s much improved over the other but I think it still has some problems because the image was severely Overexposed so I’m going to share with you the different steps that I took to get this final image I’m not going to do the complete edit because what I want you to do is to take the knowledge that you’re getting and apply it to the image yourself because that’s the best way to learn how to do something is applying your knowledge all right let’s go ahead and get started by duplicating this layer so we can work non-destructively and we’re going to go up to colors and select curves because what I want to do first is I want to darken up the overall image in particular the highlights I want to try and darken up the highlights and the whites as much as possible so I can bring back some detail or at least show some detail in that area it’s going to affect the blacks and the shadows as well and we’re going to lose detail in some parts of the image that’s fine we’re going to fix that in the next step so I’m going to go ahead and darken this up I may want to drag the highlights and the whites here and try and darken it up from here all right so I think already we’ve done a pretty good job in restoring the details in this image let’s go ahead and add a white layer mask now so we can bring back the detail in the shadows so we’re going to grab our paintbrush tool with the letter P and let’s go ahead and drop the opacity down to around 50 or so and I’m going to start over on this side and I’m going to go ahead and begin bringing back that detail in the shadows so maybe this area here as well and I may need to go back and make adjustments to this later on we’ll see though so what I want to do now is I want to increase the opacity just a little bit and I don’t want to use the same opacity brush in all the areas otherwise it’s going to be really flat and then we’re going to end up doing more work later on trying to bring back some contrast in the different levels I’m going to go a little bit higher again for this Cliff that might be too high I’m going to undo that with Commander Control Plus the letter Z actually I need to go the other way I’m going to go 25% here and I want to keep this side a little bit darker because it’s on this side of the cliff here and it’s not really getting any direct sunlight like this side here so this side I may want to go a little bit brighter and over here if I want to bring back a little detail in here I can go ahead and use a higher opacity setting here to try and bring back some detail in there let’s go all the way to 100% and we’re going to have to do some dodging and burning I think to get the detail back in there all right so you can continue working on your shadows as needed until you’re happy with your final results so I think that looks pretty good for now and now we need to do some dodging and burning so let’s go ahead and right click and select new from visible so we can merge all those layers into one and then we’ll do our Dodge and burning here so let’s grab our Dodge and burn tool with shift plus d and what I want to do first is I want to burn in the highlights so I’m going to start off with the midtones I think and the exposure right around 30 to 35 and I’m going to go ahead and try and darken up these highlights in this area here so I may need to go a little bit higher on the exposure or just continue building up with multiple Strokes I’m going to go ahead and do that so overall we are starting to bring out some detail but I think we’re starting to introduce some additional problems and that is I think this area is becoming oversaturated based on the amount of burning we have to do let’s go ahead and apply some adjustments to the highlights now maybe that’ll tone it down a little bit it looks like it is now in this area here you can see that the results are not that good so I’m going to go ahead and undo that with Commander Control Plus the letter z a couple times until I can get back into this point and then I’ll go ahead and apply some edits in this area here as well and that’s pretty much it so that’s how I achieved this particular edit with some dodging and burning and the curves adjustment overall it’s not bad if you hold down your shift key and click here you will see the before and then the after now personally I’m not really happy with this particular image because it is too Overexposed and you can kind of tell that there’s something wrong with it you may not know what it is exactly when you first look at it but with a trained eye you can definitely see that something is off with this particular image it’s kind of flat in the highlights we could probably go in and make some adjustments to the shadows as well and try and bring back some contrast in that part of the image but overall I think there’s a problem with it and it’s due to the image being Overexposed and this is why I always recommend trying to nail your exposure as close to perfect as possible in camera and shooting in raw because you’re going to notice when we edit the raw file you can get back that detail because what your camera is doing when it converts it to jpeg is it’s taking the detail and information and it’s throwing some of that information out to compress it into a JPEG file so you’re going to lose that detail and you won’t be able to get it back like you can with a raw file now let’s jump into dark table and take a look at how I would edit this image as a raw file now I wouldn’t want to start at the original point I may want to go up a little bit higher to maybe number eight I think number nine makes it too dark in the shadows so these steps right here I’m okay with now I’m going to go ahead and begin making additional adjustments to try and bring back the detail in the highlights so for this particular image if we take a look at the histogram it’s showing that we have detail from the blacks to the whites but it’s still Overexposed and you can see this little line right here it’s kind of being clipped on the right side see that blue line there so that’s letting you know that there’s detail being clipped in the whites so we need to try and fix that and what I want to use is the shadows and highlights so let’s go ahead and grab that and once we turn this on there will be a huge difference boom all right so it did kind of fix the Shadows a little bit and we have more detail in here and some other areas but I think the overall image now is flat so we need to add a little bit of contrast but first I want to try and fix the highlights a little bit more above the default setting here of minus 50 so I’m going to go ahead and drag this to the left to see if I can bring back some detail and definitely if you take a look at this sky here you can definitely see that some detail is coming back into there and in this Cliff area right here if I put this back down to around 50 you’re going to notice that the highlights in here are getting darker the only problem is we’re getting this halo effect around the trees and that doesn’t look good so I’m going to bring the highlights back down until that begins blending in together a little bit better or the transition from dark to light is a little bit less visible it’s more transparent so right around minus 60 to 65 I think would work pretty good for that we’re also going to make an adjustment to the white Point here to the left and that too is going to fix some of those highlights so there’s the before and the after so I think this does a much better job than the dodging and burning in although when I’m done editing in D table I will then bring that file into D table to do some additional dodging and burning if I think it can benefit from that all right so the next thing I would do for this particular image is a tone curve to add some contrast so we’re going to do a little bit of an S curve here and we’re going to try and retain as much detail as possible in the shadows and the highlights so I think the more I bring this down I’m still seeing detail so I’m going to continue going until I’m not seeing any detail in that in this area in particular so if I turn on my masking indicator or my clipping indicator I should say that will definitely help us out so I’m can go ahead and pull this down and I’m starting to lose a little detail in here so I’m going to go ahead and stop right there now if we take a look at these little red overlays that’s where all the highlights are being blown out now we do have another indicator to show whether or not parts of the image are Overexposed and it’s the one right to the left so this is an overexposure indicator and this is going to be more precise than the clipping indicator at least when it comes to overexposure so once you click on on that you’re going to see this red overlay here and it’s basically telling you the solid red here is completely Overexposed slightly and then less Overexposed now these areas in here the Reds it looks pretty solid to me so all of that is being blown out or it’s Overexposed so that’s a good starting point as well before you start editing your image you may want to turn this on to see where the trouble spots are all right so far it’s not too bad but there’s some detail missing in this area here and over here that we’re not going to be able to bring back at least not with the editing tools we’ve used so far what we could do to bring back this detail in here is to use the Clone tool in to copy the detail from one area into another which is going to be tedious and hard to try and match the coloring and the lighting to make it look natural and realistic but before we do anything like that we still have a couple more things we need to do to fix this image in particular the contrast levels are pretty low in the trees the water the rocks and the color as well is kind of flat so let’s go ahead and work on the color first and I’m going to turn on this panel right here Velva which is going to boost the color saturation in the image and the default settings here are pretty minimal so let’s go ahead and increase the strength to kind of tune that up a little bit and then let’s take a look at the the before and after so I think that’s much improved we’re starting to get that halo effect again in the sky here so we’ll probably have to go back and make some adjustments to the black and white points the tone curve and possibly the shadows and the highlights in order to fix that halo effect so if we go back to this tab here it’s going to show you all the edits that you’ve applied so far so it will make it easy to go back and make adjustments to any of the tools that you’ve already used and I need to bring back this highlight down back to aroundus 50 to fix that halo effect all right so the next thing I want to do is try and work on the contrast so I’m going to go into my levels panel here and I’m going to adjust the Black Point which is going to clip some data in the shadows which I’m okay with because I really don’t need to see the detail in this area so I think that’s much improved versus what we had before I think I want to adjust the white balance now so I’m going to go into the quick access panel here and at the bottom we have our white balance so I’m going to go ahead and increase the temperature here to make it warmer than what it currently is right now so there’s the before and the after actually I need to bring this down I think that’s too much now so right about there looks pretty good all right so I think we’ve done just about everything we can do in Dart table so I’m going to go ahead and Export this file and open it up in gamp so here’s the raw file here I’m just going to add it to the jpeg layers here so we can compare the two at this point so we haven’t done any dodging and burning yet on this file that we just imported but I just want to do a quick comparison between the jpeg file and the raw file so we have much more color saturation in the jpeg file but I think that’s too much it’s over saturated in my opinion at least that’s what I think you may think differently but I’m liking the detail in the raw file better now if you want to spend the time on fixing some of these Overexposed areas you can grab your clone tool here with the letter c it’s a little bit too large and remember you have to hold down your command or control key to give a reference point to copy from and then you can go ahead and copy this in and you can see that it’s not really blending in all that well so what you’re going to need to do is go back with your healing brush to try and blend that in with the area that you’re fixing right now so if I grab my healing brush I can then paint over this area actually I need to do a reference point for this as well so command or control click and then just gently paint over the edges here to try and get that to blend in a little bit better so that would be one way of getting some of that detail back now as far as dodging and burning again you can do that if you think you can improve the image by trying to bring back some detail in the Highlight or darkening up the Shadows or bringing out more detail on the Shadows whatever it is you want to do so I’m going to go ahead and increase my brush size here and try and do a couple brush Strokes here in the highlights to see if this will improve it and I think it does and this time unlike with the jpeg file we’re not getting that oversaturation as much as we did before so we may want to go into in midtones next to try and darken that up a little bit more and overall I’m starting to like this edit better than the jpeg file so I’ll leave that up to you to decide which one you like but now it’s time for you to go ahead and practice on the JPEG and RAW file to complete this project next up learning how to whiten teeth so here’s the original image and the final edit how cool is that all right to follow along and to complete this project go ahead and go to your section five folder and open up the teeth JPEG file the first thing we’re going to do is duplicate this layer so we can work non-destructively now we need to make a selection of the teeth so we can Target our edit directly to the teeth so you can use any selection tool that you want to use I’m going to go ahead and use the foreground select tool and since we’ve gone over this tool several times I’m going to go ahead and speed up this part of the video so you don’t have to sit here and watch me redo this again all right if needed go into Quick mask mode and go ahead and fine-tune your selection by painting with white and black to add and remove as needed all right let’s go ahead and add a selection layer mask grab the image preview thumbnail by clicking on it then go up to Colors UE saturation and drop the saturation I wouldn’t go too far otherwise it’s going to look unnatural so you want to leave a little bit of color in there so maybe right around -45 to -50 whatever you think looks good I’m going to go right about there click okay go ahead and deselect and there’s the before and the after to add or not to add a vignette that is the question so in this tutorial I’m going to show you how to add a vignette in Dart table and then how to create a custom vignette in this case a heartshaped vignette how cool is that I love it so let’s dive into darkart table and apply a vignette to this image first so this raw file is in your section three folder and it should be imported already if you’ve been following along since the beginning now before we add our vignette I’d like to do some minor adjustments to the tonal range it’s a little dark so I’m going to grab my highlights and my Shadows here and I’m going to go ahead and turn that on and yep I think I like that we have more detail in the shadows now and that’s what I want I want to bring the highlights down just a little bit just to bring back some details in the highlights and darken them up a little bit all right let’s go ahead and grab our tone curve next and I want to apply a small S curve so I’m going to brighten up these highlights a little bit more than the blacks and I think I want to go ahead and increase the midtones as well to make those a little brighter all right so that’s looking pretty good I’m going to go ahead and grab my vignette tool now and we’re going to add an old school traditional style type of vignette once you click on this the tool will be activated and you will get these two circles on your image so you can either make adjustments from these two circles here or from the sliders over here or both so if I click on this little teeny tiny Circle right here and drag in I can reshape that vignette I can also resize it from up here as well so go ahead and adjust that to your own personal preference and then this Outer Circle is where the Feathering Begins for that vignette so if we click and drag in you can now see that vignette inside of the corners here that might be a little bit too far I’m going to bring that out and then of course the brightness will make that vignette darker or brighter saturation will reduce the color saturation or increase it depending on what you want to do and then horizontal and vertical Center will allow you to move that vignette into a different position because your subject May not be directly in the center and then shape will change the shape from an oval or a circle to more of a diamond shape all right so what I want you to do now is go ahead and turn this vignetting tool off and go ahead and close it because we’re going to learn how to add some vignettes and now and sometimes is a better tool for adding vignettes compared to Dart table because we can do more in versus Dart table so go ahead and Export that file open it up in and then we’re going to grab our image layer here and let’s go ahead and duplicate it so we can apply the vignette non-destructively and to add a vignette in you’re going to go up to filters light and Shadow and select vignette from here now just like with dart table we have pretty much the same tools and adjustments here on the image as well as we did in dark table we have a third oval here that will resize and then this outer one will increase or decrease the width or the height depending on which one you adjust and then we have this dash line which represents the Feathering of that vignette so it’s much softer now than it was before if I bring this in it will be more of a harder Edge and of course you can do all these adjustments in the sliders here and then the other thing you can do is you can change the shape of the vignette from Circle to a square there’s a diamond there’s also horizontal and vertical so all depending on your Creative Vision but if you want to add a custom shape like this heart shape here what you’re going to do is let me go ahead and delete these so we can start over is you’re going to navigate to your section five folder you’re going to find this heart PNG file you’re going to click and drag it in or if that doesn’t work BAS on your operating system you’re going to go up to file and select open as layers to open it up as a new layer now before we can create a vignette out of this we need to increase the layer boundary because it’s smaller than the current canvas and if we try and create that vignette right now it’s going to be confined to the inside of this layer boundary so let’s go up to layer and select layer to image size and that will increase the layer boundary to match the canvas size now let’s make a selection of our heart and we can do that real quick by right clicking on the heart layer here and selecting Alpha to selection and that creates the selection now we need to invert the selection so that we can then fill it in with a color of our choice so let’s go up to select and click on invert let’s go ahead and turn this layer off and let’s create a new layer called vignette and let’s fill it with transparency and now we’re going to go ahead and grab our foreground color swatch here and choose a color so choose anything you want click okay grab your bucket fill tool with shift plus b and fill in that selection let’s go ahead and deselect and then the final step is to blur the edges and the layer Itself by going up to filters blur gazan blur and then adjust the X and Y size to whatever you want so I’m going to go pretty high here so right around 60 to 70 click okay and then drop your opacity down to blend it in a little bit more how cool is that I love it all right congratulations on completing the 10 projects in this section in the next section you’re going to learn how to do three more projects that are a little bit more advanced so we’re going to do some compositing which simply means you’re going to take multiple images bring them together in one document and then merge them blend them and do some other stuff to create a new image or a new piece of artwork so if you’re ready for that let’s do it for this next project we’re going to create what is known as a double exposure and you’re going to take two main images and combine them together to create what looks like one image so here’s the main image that we’re going to be working with and then we’re going to add some trees and then some birds now once we’re done with this particular project we will have something that looks like this how cool is that I love it now I did do a couple different versions of this concept so here’s another version and another one here with some different trees and a mountain in the background here that I shaped to his head I think this is Yos so you could do something like that or another set of trees here and I converted it to black and white because I do like black and white myself so what I recommend you do once you finish this project is take what you learned and apply this new knowledge to your favorite animal and add whatever elements you want because it doesn’t have to be trees it could be clouds or it could be a city citycape if you want to do a jux toos of the city and the industry or something industrial with nature you could do something like that and I would love to see your final composition your final artwork so if you want to share that go ahead and place that in the Q&A section for everybody to see or if you’re part of our private Facebook group go ahead and post it in there as well I would love to see it all right so let’s go ahead and get started by opening up the resource file that is in your section six folder and it is called elephant now I placed all these image layers in there for you so we could go ahead and skip that part since you already know how to do that in fact everything we’re going to do for this particular project you’ve already done before in other projects so although you’re not really going to learn any new tools you’re going to learn how to apply them differently than what you have before which is going to help hopefully inspire you to create your own artwork so let’s go ahead and start off by cropping this canvas here to a square so let’s go up to image and select canvas size and let’s go ahead and do 1,800 for the width and let’s make sure our elephant here is in the center go ahead and resize actually what I want to do is I want to make this elephant larger so let’s grab our scale tool with shift plus f s and let’s go ahead and enlarge let’s see if we drop the opacity that will make it easier to see the size of the elephant compared to the Cannabis and I like that so I’m going to go ahead and scale that down and place that opacity back so the hardest part of this particular project is making a selection so we’re going to have to select the sky here and then possibly make a selection of the sky of these birds here as well to remove the sky in both of them before we do that let’s go ahead and duplicate this layer and I’m going to rename this Sky removal and I’m going to use my fuzzy select tool here to make a selection of the sky so I have my threshold right around 30 and let’s go ahead and make a selection I’m going to hold down my shift key to add this part as well and let’s add our selection layer mask actually I think we need to invert that yes we do so let’s go ahead and deselect Commander control shift plus a what we’re going to do is we’re going to go up to colors and select invert and that will invert the colors of our layer mask all right I’m going to go ahead and zoom in over here because it looks like I missed a little area over here so I’m going to grab my paintbrush tool and paint with white to add that back all right let’s add a little bit of contrast the overall image is a little flat I’m going to duplicate this layer I’m going to right click on the layer mask and select apply layer mask now we can turn this one off and let’s call this curves since we’re going to add an S curve let’s go up to Colors curves and let’s go ahead and create a small S curve I’m going to bring the blacks and the Shadows down a little bit and for the highlights and the whites I’m going to bring those up a little bit more than the blacks so I can accentuate the brightness levels a little bit more to add more contrast that way all right so the next thing I want to do is I want to do some classic dodging and burning because I find that the grassy area here is too bright so let’s go ahead and darken that up let’s start by duplicating this layer and calling this dodge and burn let’s grab our Dodge and burn tool and then as far as the options we have burn midtones and I’m going to do exposure right around 30 actually I might go a little bit higher because what I want to do is I want to try and get this done as quickly as possible I don’t want to spend a lot of time making this perfect because I think you have better things to do like practicing this on your own when I did this edit here I think it took me about an hour to do because I was being really picky and spending a lot of time on perfecting it and I’m not going to do that for this image here you already know how to do all this stuff so let’s go ahead and do this real quick now when you begin applying this you’re going to be adjusting the elephant as well his feet legs belly his trunk and what we need to do is we need to remove that once we’re done with our dodging and burning so let me show you how we’re going to do that actually probably already know how to do that because we’ve done that 100 times already and that’s by adding a layer mask to remove the edit from the elephant so let’s go ahead and do that let’s add a white layer mask and then with your paintbrush tool and black you can begin removing that edit where it shouldn’t be so we don’t want on the elephant so let’s go ahead and remove that as needed I’m going to go ahead and do this real quick and we’ll go on to the next step all right so it’s not perfect but I think you get the idea let’s go ahead and move on to the next step which is let’s go ahead and add a new background layer to fill in our sky so let’s go ahead and click on the elephant layer here we’re going to click here to create a new layer let’s call it background and I filled it in with white I don’t want white so let’s go ahead and choose our color from this tree layer here so we’re going to click on our foreground color swatch here grab your eyedropper tool right here and click on the sky to choose a light gray okay that’s the color I want to fill in for that background so let’s make sure that background layer is still selected and with your bucket fill tool go ahead and fill it in and you can kind of see what it’s doing it’s starting to blend the sky in from this tree image together which is what we want all right let’s work on our tree now which is scaling and then blending in to cover up part of the elephant so let’s go ahead and grab our move tool and we’re going to move this up just a little bit now it’s kind of hard to see where we want to place it so let’s drop our opacity that’ll make it a little bit easier to decipher where to place it and I think I want it right about there I’m going to grab my scale tool now with shift plus s and I’m going to drag from the top right down so I can keep that right side in position and then I’m going to continue adjusting until I want this tree along this area here let’s go ahead and move this up just a little bit so maybe right about there maybe a little bit tighter I think right there all right perfect let’s go ahead and put that opacity back up and then add a white layer mask all right so this layer boundary right here is really bugging me let’s go ahead and go up to view and click on show layer boundary now here’s another little neat trick if you never want to see that layer boundary ever again right click go to edit and select preferences then let’s see I think it’s down here somewhere I think it’s under image Windows click right here on appearance and click right here that will turn off Show layer of boundary and the next project you work on you will not see them all right let’s go ahead and grab our paintbrush tool here and we’re going to paint with black to remove the trees but first actually I forgot a step let’s go back and click on the image layer go up to mode and select darken only and that will help blend it in all right back to the layer mask and then begin removing with black now what I would recommend doing is possibly using a lower opacity to help blend that in at a slower rate so you can fine-tune your edit so it’s not completely gone along the edges otherwise it’s going to have a hard Edge and you also want to work with a soft edged brush I have 50 right now you may want to go down lower to around 22 25 something like that up to 50 at the most and that’s going to give you a softer edged brush which will help blend everything together all right again I’m not going to spend a lot of time on getting this perfect actually I’m doing that thing again where my OCD is kicking in I’m trying to do it perfect but let’s go ahead and stop right there before I go too far I’m going to set my opacity back up here and my hardness back to 50 by clicking right here all right we’re now going to get rid of the elephant’s head and hump right here and over here as well so let’s do this let’s go ahead and turn this layer off we’re going to let’s see let’s go down here and turn off the background as well we’re going to right click and select new from visible all right we can turn this one back on but what I want to do is make sure these two are turned off and then the trees can go back on all right so guess what we’re going to do now that’s right we’re going to add another layer mask so let’s go ahead and do that and then with our paintbrush tool we’re going to paint where that elephant shouldn’t be visible to make him disappear how cool is that I love it let’s go ahead and rename this disappearing elephant and of course this would be trees and now we’re going to add some birds now we already have a set of birds from this tree layer here so I’m not sure if I want to add more small birds or not I’ll leave that up to you we’re going to go ahead and work on this image later here so what we’re going to do is convert this to black and white first and then we’re going to apply a technique that we learned in a previous project so let’s go ahead and grab this image layer here we’re going to go up to Colors Hue saturation and let’s drop the saturation down not all the way I just want to leave a little bit of color so something like that so let’s go with that and then let’s go up to Colors levels and try and brighten up that that sky as much as possible without losing any detail from the birds I don’t want to go too far like that so I’m going to go maybe right around 200 for the white point I’m going to darken up those birds just a little bit I’m not too worried about this part of the image because I want to get rid of all these birds anyways so I’m concentrating more on this area here so maybe a little bit brighter on the white point so right about there all right so let’s say you go in and add a white layer mask again and then you try and brush in between all the birds here and it’s not working well what you can do is you can make a selection even though you added a layer mask what you have to do though is make sure your image layer is selected and then grab your fuzzy select tool and make a selection of the sky like so and then go back to your layer mask make sure your background color is filled to Black and then go up to to edit cut and that will remove the sky based on that selection all right let’s go ahead and deselect with Commander control shift plus a what I’m going to do now is paint with black to remove all these birds that I don’t want so let’s go ahead and remove all of these this guy up here and I think I may want to move these birds into a different position I think I got rid of a bird there that I didn’t want to get rid of so I’m going to go ahead and res start so if you’re going to try and do this all on one stroke and then if you have to undo it well you’re going to have to redo everything so I like to stop release my mouse button and then continue editing that way I don’t have to go all the way back to the beginning if I have to undo something because I made a mistake let’s get this bird here and let’s get these guys over here all right let’s go ahead and grab our move tool I’m going to place this on move the active layer because it’s going to be kind of hard to select a bird otherwise it’s going to select whatever you click on other than a bird so let’s go ahead and click and move this up I’m going to move it over to the right I think right about there should be good now I need to undo that because we need to make sure we have our image layer preview selected and not the layer mask because the layer mask is going to move with the image layer at the same time now I think I need to grab my scale tool here and make this a little bit smaller and let’s go ahead and reposition this right about there okay and now we need to go back in with our paintbrush tool and remove this side of the image make sure your layer mask is selected and adjust as needed all right so the last thing we need to do is some color grading because we have three different images that were shot under three different types of light or different colors of light so each one of these were shot at a different time of a day and I want to blend it in together to finish off the entire image so that it has the same color tone all right long story short we’re going to create a new layer let’s call it color grading and I don’t want black let’s go into our foreground color swatch here and this is the color that I want to use so if you want to use the same color here is the hexadecimal number right here go ahead and type that in right there click okay and then fill in your foreground now let’s blend that in with all the layers below with let’s see let’s go with Luma luminance dark and only and well that doesn’t look too good does it so let’s go ahead and drop the opacity down to help blend it in so somewhere around 50 to 55 and there you go that’s the Double Exposure project go ahead and complete this project on your own and pick out your own elements to create your own artwork for this next compositing project we’re going to take this image here and transform it from day to night and add a magical glow how cool is that all right so let’s go ahead and get started by opening up this image from your section six folder and let’s go ahead and start off by duplicating this layer and calling it KN because that’s the first thing we’re going to do is transform it from day tonight and we’re going to do that by going up to colors and selecting color eyes now for this I’m going to add a light blue color so I’m going to use this color right here and here’s the hexadecimal number if you want to use the same color go ahead and type that in and let’s go ahead and grab this layer next and duplicate again and let’s move it above the other layer what we’re going to do now is separate our deer from the background with our foreground selection tool which is what I used originally for this project when I was putting this together and then I used the quick mask mode to fine-tune my selection now you’ve seen me do this several times throughout the class and you’ve already practiced a few times as well so there’s no need for me to go through how to use this particular tool again since you already know how to use it so I’m going to save you and me sometime by cheating a little bit I’m going to grab my layer mask here that I’ve already done and I’m going to add it to this document so go ahead and duplicate that layer and make your selection and then apply a layer mask based on a selection once you have that you should end up with this now we’re going to take this layer and we’re going to duplicate that one and right click on it and apply the layer mask now the background has been removed so what we need to do now is we need to match the color of the light in the background with the foreground because he’s being lit with daylight it’s a different color than the nighttime light so let’s go back up to Colors colorize and apply that same blue color all right let’s duplicate this layer and let’s call it antlers and we’re going to make a selection of the antlers and remove everything else so let’s grab our free select tool which is right here or you can grab it with the keyboard shortcut which is the letter F and I’m just going to draw around the antlers like so and let’s go around this ear right here so it’s not included and then go ahead and finish off by going back to where you started we need to invert our selection and then hit your delete key or your backspace key and that should leave you with just the antlers all right so we’re going to start working on our glow of the antlers so let’s go ahead and put this first set of antlers inside of a layer group and we’re also going to change the color from Blue to a yellowish orange-ish color I’m going to do that by going up to colors Hue saturation and I’m going to drop the Hue all the way down to minus 180 let’s go ahead and grab our Zoom tool here and zoom in because I forgot to do this little piece in the center this is a little bit of a gap between the antlers and it shouldn’t be glowing yellow it should include the background or at least show the background through it so I’m going to grab my Eraser tool which is right here the keyboard shortcut is shift plus e and let’s just go ahead and erase this because we’re not going to need this B later anyways otherwise I would use a layer Mask doesn’t have to be perfect because we are going to do some blurring of the antlers to create the glow so don’t worry about making it perfect all right I’m going to go ahead and zoom out and I’m going to duplicate this set of antlers and I’m going to call this glow one because we’re going to do this a couple more times and let’s go up to filters blur gazan blur and I’m going to set the blur amount to to I don’t know what do you think I think I’m going to go pretty high here around 80 to 90 so maybe let’s go in the middle 85 all right I’m going to go ahead and duplicate this layer now and let’s call this glow to let’s go up to filters and repeat that gajian blur I also want to change the blending mode to dodge and that’s too intense now so I’m going to drop the opacity down to around 30 or so so maybe right about there and let’s go ahead and grab our original antlers again duplicate it and move it all the way up to the top and let’s blur it again but not as much as before I think this time right around 5 to 10 so I’m going to go with six now there’s one thing that’s bugging me I think the background should be darker than the foreground so let’s go back to our night layer here and let’s recolor eyesee that with a darker blue so let’s see let’s try this one or even darker I think I like the darker one because the deer stands out a little bit better now so I’m going to go ahead and go with that and I think we need to do one more thing with the antlers here I think I want to bring the glow to opacity up a little bit and then I’m going to grab my layer group and drop the opacity of this one down to kind of tone down everything just a little bit so right about there looks pretty good all right let’s go ahead and collapse this layer group so the next step is applying this glow color on on the deer itself since it should be reflecting off of his body so we’re going to Target the highlights of the deer and we’re going to apply the edit more towards the top or where the antlers are closer to his body so down here it’s going to be less of a glow or less of that color so to do that we’re going to grab this layer here we’re going to duplicate it I’m going to rename this glow highlights let’s go ahead and colorize the deer with that color that we used previously this light orange color and then we’re going to add a black layer mask to remove it and then we can paint on with our brush where we want it and I’m using a low opacity of around 15 to 20 so I can gradually build up the edit where I want it and kind of create a smooth transition from one part to another and that’s going to create some depth as well so I’m going to go pretty heavy up here on the top and near the antlers because that’s where the antlers are closest to is this part of the body so it should be brighter over here compared to other parts of his body and again I’m just targeting the different highlights on his body which makes it a little easier to kind of Target where to place everything so I’m going to go really dark in here with lots of strokes and I’m going to go with a larger brush now so I can begin Feathering this color down a little bit there we go so now you can see it’s starting to feather in we probably really shouldn’t have any down there maybe a little bit on this part of his leg here because it’s kind of protruding out a little bit it might get a little bit more light than other parts of his body and maybe a little bit on his legs over here but not as much and then just go ahead and continue Feathering this in until you’re happy with the final results I’m going to go ahead and go with a smaller brush now to get his eyes here a little bit more because it’s really close to the antlers and I think this should be pretty bright in this area and of course if you add too much you can always paint with black to remove it and tone it down if needed now the other thing you can do if you want to speed this up and make this a little bit darker is you can come down here and duplicate this layer and I think that’s a little bit too much now so I’m going to go ahead and drop the opacity down just to add a little bit more than what we had previous viously so there’s the original and then the extra so you can do more or less depending on your personal preference let’s go back to the antlers here I’m going to duplicate this layer and I’m going to turn this layer off and then I’m going to right click on the ant layers and select merge layer group because what I want to do is I want to tone this down it’s not exactly the same color that I had previously so I don’t remember all the exact steps I did so your rendition and your final edit may be different than mine because you may choose different colors throughout the process and I didn’t write down the exact colors that I used here but I do want to tone this down because I find it’s a little bit too saturated and I’m going to go up to Colors saturation actually let’s go to Hue saturation because I prefer that tool over the other one and I’m going to go ahead and drop this down a little bit so right around -40 to -50 yeah that’s too much I like that much better all right so the last step is to add some Stars to our Glu so navigate to the section six folder and drag that over to create a new layer and again you can go up to file open as layers if that doesn’t work for you now with the move tool I’m going to go ahead and move this up so it covers up those antlers Al together so I think right there will be good I’m going to go ahead and apply a black layer mask and then I can begin painting in the Stars exactly where I want them and make sure you have white selected to paint that on you can add as many or as few stars as you want I’ll leave that up to you now there’s one more thing we need to do we need to tone this down just a little bit because it’s a little bit too bright I think so I’m going to go ahead and grab my black now and paint with that with a lower opacity and I’m going to begin painting in some Different Strokes here to tone this down a little bit so we’re left with just a few Stars not too many and I don’t want that big white glow in some of these areas here and this will help tone that down now depending on the colors you chose if you have a really dark background you may want to change the blending mode to either screen darken only multiply or something else to help blend those colors in also depending on the Stars you chose if you’re choosing something else you may need to choose a different blending mode to help that blend in with the background the other thing you can do is you can go to your levels tool here to adjust actually we need to go back and select the image layer here and then adjust the White and the black points to try and darken it up that way so we can brighten up these Stars by going to the left here that’s a little bit too far and then you can darken it up some more this way and that might help blend it in a little bit more as well but now I’m starting to see an outline here and that’s why you may want to go in and choose a blending mode to try and get that to blend in a little bit better so here’s the original and the final edit all right so the final composite project consists of a couple of new challenges Reflections and drop Shadows so when you’re done with this project you’ll have created the world’s tallest draft so let me show you what we’re going to create here is the original image that you’re going to work with and when you’re done you’re going to add a couple of photos and boom this is the final artwork how cool is that I love it so let’s go ahead and get started by opening up this image which is in your section six folder and let’s go ahead and grab the other two files here the clouds and the giraffe and go ahead and add that as well and let’s go ahead and turn these layers off for now all right so we have a lot of steps to cover and we’re going to start off with the foreground by making a selection of the sky and when I did this project initially I used the fuzzy select tool so go ahead and use whatever selection tool you want to use to make a selection of the sky and go ahead and get that done all right with the quick mask mode here I’m going to go ahead and refine my selection if needed looks like I did a pretty good job I need to clean up a little bit here so I’m going to go ahead and do that next the other thing I want to do now real quick if you’re wondering how I’m navigating around if you hold your space bar key you’ll get the hand tool and then you can move around the canvas as needed now the one thing I want to do is I want to adjust this peak right here because we’re going to make this canvas taller and when we do we’ll end up with a flat top for this mountain peak and that’s not what I want so I’m going to go ahead and come in here and adjust it by creating a slope like that all right so once you have your selection go ahead and invert it and apply a layer mask via the selection option and boom the sky is gone all right let’s increase our canvas size Now by going up to image canvas size and for the height we’re going to type in 3500 and once you click your tab key make sure you adjust your position of your image to the bottom of the new canvas all right I’m going to go ahead and zoom all the way out with command or control shift plus J and now we have room for our cloud and our giraffe so let’s work on our clouds next let’s turn that layer on and let’s go ahead and move it behind the foreground now right now the image layer is way too large if I zoom all the way out here let’s see if I go up to view show layer boundary so this is the size of that layer right now and I want it to be closer to what we have for our canvas so I’m going to go ahead and resize that by going up to layer and selecting scale layer so I’m just going to do a little bit wider than the canvas right now so I don’t have to worry about getting it perfectly aligned along the the edge of the canvas there so I’m going to go ahead and do that and move it up with my move tool all right I’m going to go ahead and get rid of that layer boundary again because it’s kind of annoying all right so two things we have to do with the clouds now is we need to create a reflection in the water since we have a new set of clouds and we need to create our atmospheric condition that we learned how to do in a previous tutorial so let’s go ahead and do the reflection first we’re going to duplicate this and call it clouds reflection and it should be above the foreground since we need it in the water so let’s go ahead and go up to layer transform and select flip vertically and then with your move tool you can go ahead and move this down into position so I think I’m going to go right about here now let’s go ahead and grab our new mode which is going to be overlay all right so that looks like it’s in the water now that looks pretty good good we just need to clean up now because we have this part of the sky overlapping the mountain and it shouldn’t be so we’re going to grab a white layer mask and then with a black paintbrush we can go ahead and remove that part of the sky I also want to clean it up on the steps here I don’t necessarily want to remove it completely because the steps look like they are white so what I’m going to do is I’m going going to drop my opacity as soon as I get it off the legs here of our subject I’m going to go a little bit smaller here so I can get in nice and tight clean all of this up and I need to fix this again all right I’m going to go with a lower opacity brush this time so I can paint with gray and remove some of that from the steps all right next is the atmospheric condition this is optional it’s something that I like to do but it’s entirely up to you so if you don’t remember how to do this let’s go ahead and do that real quick I’m going to go ahead and create a new layer called atmospheric condition background I’m going to fill it with transparency and then I want to fill it with white let’s grab our bucket fill tool and fill in that layer and we’re going to move it all the way to the bottom let’s grab our Cloud’s layer here and let’s apply a white layer mask now with our bucket fil tool we can go ahead and apply that condition so I’m going to set my foreground color to Black and my background color to white so make sure it’s pure white and pure black I’m going to click right here and drag down looks like it’s reversed so I need to either adjust the line here or in the tool options I can click on this little icon right here to reverse it I’m going to go ahead and bring this down below this peak right here and I’m going to drag this down just a little bit more perfect okay enter or return to apply that and you can now see there’s some gray right here that is removing that part of the sky and letting the background show through which is the white which creates that atmospheric condition and yes you probably already know that since you learned about it previously all right so the clouds are done let’s go ahead and work on our giraffe now let’s go ahead and resize him let’s go to layer scale layer and same thing I’m going to do 1620 for the width and we have 2446 so click scale we just want to make sure that we have the correct layer selected I still have my cloud so I’m going to go back to giraffe here and layer scale layer and 1620 2439 click scale all right let’s go ahead and move him up into position here let’s go ahead and drop the opacity so we can see where he is in relation to the rest of the image and I want him to look the other way so I’m going to go up to layer transform and select flip horizontally and that’s the direction I want him to look in and I think I have the position exactly where I want it all right so I did a pretty good job there let’s go ahead and put that opacity all the way back up because now we need to get rid of the sky a lot easier this time since it’s a solid blue so I’m going to go ahead and make my selection here and apply my layer mask this time I’m going to click invert mask and select selection and that will invert the selection so we don’t have to go up to colors and invert it up there now we need to place this layer below the foreground so that is’s behind the mountain now and I’m going to let you do some fine tuning of your mask here so you can get rid of all this blue and white along his man right here and then you’re going to go in with a teeny tiny brush in between his hairs here where the light is shining through I’m not going to do that because it’s going to take a few minutes all you have to do is grab your paintbrush tool and paint with black to begin removing it now what I did originally is I did lower the opacity and I did multiple Strokes along the m to get rid of that to try and keep as many of those hairs as possible without losing the overall shape sh of the main so you’re going to have to spend a little bit more time on that to get it just right now it looks like I have a little boo boo or Bobo or whatever right here and I think that is the foreground so I’m going to go ahead and grab that and get rid of that all right I’m going to go ahead and zoom all the way out and now we need to work on a few different things we need to add a reflection in the water because he’s behind the mountains now and he’s kind of peeking over the mountains so his reflection should be there plus a drop

shadow on this side of the mountain then we need to create some depth by reducing the contrast in the image because the further away a subject is from you the less contrast it will have in most cases anyways now for this particular image it’s a little bit harder because the lighting is pretty harsh we have some strong sunlight coming from over here and then if you take a look at the mountain here we have a strong hard Edge Shadow here and then we have the same thing on the Dr as well so we don’t want to reduce the contrast too much but enough to where it looks like he’s further away from us than he currently appears so a lot of things to do let’s start off with the reflection first so let’s grab our giraffe layer here we’re going to duplicate it right click and select apply layer mask let’s go up to layer transform and flip vertically and then with your move tool you’re going to go ahead and move them down into position we also need to get that layer above the foreground since he’s going to be on top of the water now now all this blue is the sky but you don’t really have to worry about that too much because we’re going to get rid of that with a layer mask in just a second I’m just going to go ahead and position them where I think he should be now he’s directly behind the mountain and he’s kind of peeking over so how far down you go depends on where you think he is in relation to the mountain if you take a look at this peak right here that reflection is all the way down here so I think it should be in that same general area so I’m going to go right there let’s go ahead and apply a white layer mask and clean up the sky actually I need to go back because I had invert turned on I’m going to go ahead and turn that off and redo it and now we’re going to get rid of the sky along the edges and the bottom here with your paintbrush tool all right let’s change the blending mode to Overlay to help that blend in and let’s go ahead and drop the opacity down as well and that’s going to definitely help blend it in some more now the one thing I want to do here is zoom in because I don’t think this part of the draft should be on the steps at all so I’m going to go ahead and paint that out all right so the next thing we need to do is we need to blend in this reflection a little bit more so it matches the water what do I mean by that well if you take a closer look at the water you can see there’s some ripples happening in the water so there’s some motion in the water we need to apply that motion to the giraffe reflection as well so it better matches what’s going on with the water itself so to do that we’re first going to duplicate the layer and then we’re going to apply the layer mask and let’s turn this layer off because we don’t need both of them and then we’re going to go up to filters blur motion blur or linear motion blur and we’re going to match the angle of the ripples to match the angle of the water so right now it’s left to right or right to left which is what we have for the angle right now if you’re working on another project and you need to change the angle there’s a little arrow right here just click and drag it to match the angle of the waves and then you just need to adjust the length to match the intensity of those ripples so anywhere from 10 to 15 or 18 for this particular image I think would work I think I used 18 originally so I’m going to go with right around 18 so that’s a little bit too much so I’m going to come down just a little and go with that now we have another problem if we take a look over here the giraffe is now outside of the water so we don’t need this part of the giraffe on the mountain but we are going to use that for the drop shadow but first I want to clean up this part of the giraffe layer so it’s not outside of the mountain range so we’re going to go back to a white layer mask and clean it up once again all right let’s go ahead and duplicate this layer we’re going to go ahead and turn this layer off just for a moment because what we need to do with this layer mask now is get rid of this part of the layer or the reflection part of it on the layer mask so cleaning up once again and then we’ll be left with just what we need for the drop shadow okay let’s go ahead and app apply that layer mask I’m going to call this drop shadow and let’s call this one reflection let’s go ahead and turn that back on before we forget and I’m just going to scroll up here so I can take a look at my drop shadow we do need to make some adjustments to it make sure you have the drop shadow layer selected and let’s go ahead and darken up that layer I’m going to go up to colors and I’m going to go with levels I’m going to bring the Black Point all the way over to the right here and that’s going to darken it up and then we need to blur it out a little bit so that the edges are softer and it will definitely soften up the rest of it so it looks more like a drop shadow so we’re going to go up to filters blur gazi and blur and then increase this to around 10 to 20 or whatever you think looks good now as we’re doing this as we’re increasing the amount of the blur it’s starting to go on the outside of the mountain range here so we need to go back in and clean that up once again with another white layer mask now I would spend a little bit more time on this than I am right now so you’re going to need to spend a little bit more time to fine-tune everything so it looks really good I’m kind of making a mess here trying to go through this as quickly as possible so we’re not here all day and you’re going to notice that the blue in my main here and I also have a blue outline here and under his chin and his mouth that’s actually going to show go up in the reflection which you can see right here which is another reason why you want to clean up before you start doing all these extra layers so you’re not spending more time fixing this up after the fact all right we now have our drop shadow and now we need to work on the perception that the giraffe is farther from us than what it currently appears to be and we also need to make an adjustment to the mountain range as well because I want those to look like they’re further away as well so let’s go ahead and start with the foreground let’s grab our foreground layer here and duplicate it let’s go ahead and apply the layer mask and now we’re going to apply the effect by going up to colors and selecting levels so to create this effect that the mountains are further from us we’re going to reduce the contrast or in this case reduce the amount of tonal ranges from 0 to 255 to 35 to 40 to 255 so if we adjust the output levels this will decrease the tonal ranges in the image and you will notice that the image becomes brighter or has less contrast the further to the right you go that’s too much so I’m going to go maybe right around 25 to 30 I think I’ll go with 30 and then we’re going to go ahead and apply a white layer mask again so we can add back the contrast in this part of the image with our gradient tool which is going to give that illusion that there is more distance or more depth in the actual image than there really is so with your gradient tool make sure you have pure black set to the forground and pure white for the background otherwise you’re going to have some transparency in other parts of the image I think we’ve talked about that before so I’m going to go ahead and click and drag down here and you’ll notice that this part of the image is getting darker I’m going to go ahead and move this line up to shorten that distance so it’s more on the mountain area or the mountain ranges here and less so on the water I’m going to go ahead and click enter or return to apply that gradient now we need to do the same thing to our giraffe so let’s grab the giraffe layer duplicate it right click and apply the layer mask and then the same steps as before so back to Colors levels and I’m going to adjust this too I think it matches the mountain range and you can see already it’s starting to give the illusion that that giraffe is actually further away than it is if the level is at zero so I think I’m going to increase this to right around 27 to 28 I think that matches the mountain range pretty good if you want the draft to be further away from the mountains then you’re going to apply this level further to the right the only problem is I think if he’s back that far you’re not going to see the reflection as much because most of his body and his head here are going to be cut off from the mountain pass and then you would have to move your reflection here up higher so that it’s not covering as much as it is right now so I’m going to go ahead and bring this down to around 27 to 28 and that creates that part of the illusion now the other thing I want to do is I want to do some white balance adjustments on the draft because if you zoom in you’ll notice that this side of the giraff is pretty blue especially in his eyes and his ears right here and we have a Setting Sun and it’s very warm compared to what we see on this side now this side will be more blue or less yellow because it is further away from the Sun just like in the mountain ranges here this is more blue now I do have some problems with some ghosting from the sky in a previous layer right here so again that’s why you have to spend a little bit more time getting things right from the beginning so you’re not going back and making Corrections like I am right now or will have to but anyways let’s go ahead and do our white balance adjustment on our giraffe here by warming him up so we’re going to go up to colors and selecting color temperature and then we’re going to adjust the intended temperature to the right and that will make the giraffe much warmer than he is right now so you can definitely see a huge Improvement by adjusting that to to around 8,800 so you can go more or less depending on your personal preference all right so there’s one more thing I want to do to the white balance or the color of the image or the giraffe I should say and that is to tone down these blue colors here and we’re going to do that by duplicating this layer and then we’re going to go into Hue and saturation and drop the saturation down to remove that then we’re going to go ahead and apply a black layer mask and then paint in those areas to apply that previous edit all right so we only have two more steps left and next I want to create the illusion that the giraffe is inside of the clouds not in front of them let’s go ahead and create a new layer group and place all our giraffe layers inside of it let’s go ahead and duplicate that grouped layer and turn off the original right click and select merge layer group now do you have any idea how we can create the illusion that he’s in the clouds well if you said a layer mask you are correct let’s go ahead and add a white layer mask and then we’re going to paint with black to begin revealing the clouds but you want to make sure that you have your opacity set pretty low under 50 or so and then a fairly large brush to cover more area and then the hardness I would do under 50 so the default is 50 I’m going to go with 25 which is going to create a softer edged brush which will help blend everything together much better and then you can begin clicking and dragging out to create the illusion that the clouds are coming through how cool is that I love it may want a little bit up here on top as well and maybe around his ear all right so the last thing we need to do is we need match the color of light between the three images each of the images were captured at a different time of day and possibly a different season which means the color of light is different for each of them so to create some color Harmony we’re going to create a new layer and fill it in with a color I’m going to call this color grading I’m going to fill it with transparency and then I’m going to choose the color that I want to be dominant throughout the entire image and what I want is this orange pink color right here so I’m going to grab my ey dropper tool and I’m going to go ahead and try and find a color that I like actually I like that so here is the heximal number that I’m going to use go ahead and grab your bucket fill tool and fill it in and all right let’s go ahead and blend it in not quite done yet let’s try overlay nope that’s not going to work soft light actually soft light or overlay I think would work what we need to do is tone it down by dropping the opacity so just like that we now have that color throughout the entire image and the colors are now in Harmony from one image to the other

By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog

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