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Edit Multiple Images to Show Cohesion

Lesson 74 from: Fine Art Photography: The Complete Guide

Brooke Shaden

Edit Multiple Images to Show Cohesion

Lesson 74 from: Fine Art Photography: The Complete Guide

Brooke Shaden

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Lesson Info

74. Edit Multiple Images to Show Cohesion

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

19:06
2

Storytelling & Ideas

27:34
3

Universal Symbols in Stories

03:19
4

Create Interactive Characters

02:16
5

The Story is in The Details

04:13
6

Giving Your Audience Feelings

05:49
7

Guided Daydream Exercise

04:20
8

Elements of Imagery

02:19
9

The Death Scenario

01:47
10

Associations with Objects

03:01
11

Three Writing Exercises

06:39
12

Connection Through Art

30:35
13

Break Through Imposter Syndrome

07:40
14

Layering Inspiration

23:13
15

Creating an Original Narrative

07:42
16

Analyze an Image

04:12
17

Translate Emotion into Images

04:31
18

Finding Parts in Images

06:02
19

Finding Your Target Audience

04:05
20

Where Do You Want Your Images to Live?

12:01
21

Create a Series That Targets Your Audience

32:43
22

Formatting Your Work

06:08
23

Additional Materials to Attract Clients

07:24
24

Which Social Media Platforms Will be Useful?

04:17
25

How to Make Money from Your Target Audience

11:27
26

Circle of Focus

07:55
27

The Pillars of Branding

06:18
28

Planning Your Photoshoot

09:05
29

Choose Every Element for The Series

07:38
30

Write a Descriptive Paragraph

09:37
31

Sketch Your Ideas

17:27
32

Choose Your Gear

02:50
33

How to Utilize Costumes, Props & Locations

26:18
34

What Tells a Story in a Series?

13:06
35

Set Design Overview

01:43
36

Color Theory

19:50
37

Lighting for the Scene

12:05
38

Props, Wardrobe & Time Period for Set Design

06:00
39

Locations

04:31
40

Subject Within the Scene

07:26
41

Set Design Arrangement

05:46
42

Fine Art Compositing

03:46
43

Plan The Composite Before Shooting

10:29
44

Checklist for Composite Shooting

18:52
45

Analyze Composite Mistakes

12:11
46

Shoot: Black Backdrop for White Clothing

10:42
47

Shoot: Black Backdrop for Color Clothing

08:36
48

Shoot: Black Backdrop for Accessories

08:17
49

Shoot: Miniature Scene

09:59
50

Editing Workflow Overview

01:57
51

Add Fabric to Make a Big Dress

08:35
52

Edit Details of Images

08:09
53

Add Smoke & Texture

10:47
54

Blend Multiple Images Into One Composite

24:58
55

Put Subject Into a Miniature Scenario

17:55
56

Location Scouting & Test Photoshoot

22:10
57

Self Portrait Test Shoots

22:30
58

Shoot for Edit

04:21
59

Shoot Extra Stock Images

10:01
60

Practice the Shoot

25:07
61

Introduction to Shooting Photo Series

03:33
62

Shoot: Vine Image

10:40
63

Shoot: Sand Image

09:50
64

Shoot: End Table Image

04:59
65

Shoot: Bed Image

06:18
66

Shoot: Wall Paper Image

05:54
67

Shoot: Chair Image

08:02
68

Shoot: Mirror Image

06:57
69

Shoot: Moss Image

05:48
70

Shoot: Tree Image

07:33
71

Shoot: Fish Tank Image

04:09
72

Shoot: Feather Image

09:00
73

View Photo Series for Cohesion & Advanced Compositing

07:35
74

Edit Multiple Images to Show Cohesion

36:55
75

Edit Images with Advanced Compositing

29:33
76

Decide How to Start the Composite

09:35
77

Organize Final Images

21:37
78

Choosing Images for Your Portfolio

08:19
79

Order the Images in Your Portfolio

16:28
80

Why do Some Images Sell More Than Others?

16:03
81

Analyze Student Portfolio Image Order

11:42
82

Framing, Sizing, Editioning & Pricing

02:19
83

Determine Sizes for Prints

16:44
84

How to Choose Paper

13:56
85

How to Choose Editions

07:18
86

Pricing Strategies

18:59
87

How to Present Your Images

13:26
88

Example Pricing Exercise

09:39
89

Print Examples

08:23
90

Licensing, Commissions & Contracts

04:44
91

How to Keep Licensing Organized

06:07
92

How to Prepare Files for Licensing

07:28
93

Pricing Your Licensed Images

12:33
94

Contract Terms for Licensing

12:07
95

Where to Sell Images

04:55
96

Commission Pricing Structure

08:23
97

Contract for Commissions

12:17
98

Questions for a Commission Shoot

08:45
99

Working with Galleries

08:58
100

Benefits of Galleries

07:39
101

Contracts for Galleries

10:32
102

How to Find Galleries

05:22
103

Choose Images to Show

08:53
104

Hanging the Images

03:38
105

Importance of Proofing Prints

08:04
106

Interview with Soren Christensen Gallery

21:59
107

Press Package Overview

04:35
108

Artist Statement for Your Series

18:20
109

Write Your 'About Me' Page

09:04
110

Importance of Your Headshot

03:55
111

Create a Leave Behind & Elevator Pitch

20:19
112

Writing For Fine Art

04:44
113

Define Your Writing Style

14:49
114

Find Your Genre

06:41
115

What Sets You Apart?

02:25
116

Write to Different Audiences

05:10
117

Write for Blogging

39:57
118

Speak About Your Work

14:21
119

Branding for Video

07:37
120

Clearly Define Video Talking Points

14:27
121

Types of Video Content

31:45
122

Interview Practice

13:22
123

Diversifying Social Media Content

22:32
124

Create an Intentional Social Media Persona

24:48
125

Monetize Your Social Media Presence

18:46
126

Social Media Posting Plan

04:01
127

Choose Networks to Use & Invest

02:57
128

Presentation of Final Images

19:13
129

Printing Your Series

09:16
130

How to Work With a Print Lab

13:39
131

Proofing Your Prints

10:11
132

Bad Vs. Good Prints

03:32
133

Find Confidence to Print

10:50
134

Why Critique?

06:55
135

Critiquing Your Own Portfolio

10:39
136

Critique of Brooke's Series

16:18
137

Critique of Student Series

40:07
138

Yours is a Story Worth Telling

02:09

Lesson Info

Edit Multiple Images to Show Cohesion

And then we've got our final images with the feathers. And really liked this expression that she had in her hands and in her body. So I'll probably end up editing this particular photo from the set, but maybe not right now. 'Cause I wanna pick some that have some finishability, I just made this word up, finishability, right now. So let's go ahead, and we're going to find a few images that we're gonna play with. I think that if we have time, maybe we'll get to the vines here. That'll be one. The sand room will be another. We can work on maybe trying to put some clouds outside that window and see how that goes. And the moss image, I think we'll look at those. I think first, we'll open the moss because you might remember in a different segment, we were editing, and I did not get to add April's feet onto her body. And I thought this would just be the perfect way to be able to do that right now, because we can go ahead and edit some different feet onto this body. So I'm gonna go ahead and o...

pen up some images. I accidentally just opened a .jpeg, so I might just close that and open the raw file. There we go. And, there are a few things that I wanna focus on here. Now, one of the things that I'm thinking about before I even get started is what is this series supposed to look like. Overall, from one to the next, what do I want it to look like? I'm not saying that I have to choose right now, because of course editing can take you to different places, and you should be open to that. But in terms of generally color, lighting, perspective, things of that nature, what do I wanna do in Photoshop to try to make it all look cohesive? So I've got this image, which is a good one to start with, because this is challenging for me with color. I never photograph green, ever, and it's really difficult for me to think in terms of green and that particular perspective. So I'm going to start with this one and see how that evolves. And that might help to inform all the rest of my images that were a little bit easier for me to conceptualize with color. So, I've got my feet. Well, they're not my feet. They're someone else's feet, but they're mine now. And I'm gonna open these up. Yeah, those were two different feet. It's very confusing to look at, isn't it? So I'm just gonna open my feet into Photoshop. I'm bypassing Camera Raw, just opening it straight into Photoshop. And, here we have our subject and her feet. And we're going to try to put the feet on. I'm also going to look for this image that I took here where there was nothing below, because I had an apple box and some flat feet there to begin with. So, let's take that one into Photoshop, and we're going to be able to use that for the floor area. And then outside of that, I might need to expand my frame outward. So I'm just going to look at which images will allow me to do that, which I think would be this one and this one. And we'll open those up. Okay. Did I get them both? I think so. All right. So we've got all of our images in Photoshop, and we're going to go ahead and start to piece this together. But I do want to continuously just mention that this is part of a series, and if I want an art buyer to buy the whole series or at least multiple images, they do need to relate to one another. So that's what we're going to be focusing on right now. So the first things first. I always expand my frame, and I create squares. And you certainly don't have to create a square. That's not anything that will, you know, make or break an image. It's just what I do, and the reason is that I really like to create images that don't look like photographs. And I feel like the square frame really helps with that endeavor. So I'm going to just fill in the expanded frame here. Here's one side that I can use. I'm just dragging and dropping it in. You could very simply select all on that image and drop it in, copy and paste it, or I just use my Move tool to drag and drop it in. Now I'm using my arrow keys to try to figure out where this needs to go. You can see this little piece here that I'm matching up. Maybe that can be put in place. If you're not sure, simply lower the opacity on your layer. And then you can see a little bit better where all these things are supposed to be. I'm not as concerned about the moss, because you can see that actually, the moss ends within this frame. So I don't need to extend the moss. I'm looking much more at the baseboard here, at the floorboard, and at the ceiling. And I can see that they're simply not going to match up. This is just not something that's going to happen naturally. And that's why we have to rely on our Move tools, our perspective-shifting tools. So, when I go to Edit > Transform, I'm thinking now about Perspective, Distort, Skew, Warp, all of these tools that will allow me to move pixels. For example, if I choose Perspective, I can try to match the perspective. So you can see that when I move this into place, it's going to start to match a little bit better along the floorboard. It doesn't match along here, but that's kind of okay, because I'm not expanding upward. I'm expanding outward here. So let's try that, and I'll take this opacity back up. And at this point, I need to create my layer mask. So I'm creating a layer mask with my Brush tool by hitting B on the keyboard, and I'm going to take my hardness down and my size up, and this is my every day process of compositing. Whenever I have images to blend together, I always start with a big, fuzzy brush. And that's going to allow me to erase really gently through my frame. So, what I'm doing is I'm erasing everything here except for just the strip that I wanna keep, which I know is right along the edge. And I am totally okay with erasing too much, because I would much rather bring it back and not have to worry about, not have to worry about guessing where I'm erasing. So I've made my brush smaller with my left square bracket. I'm choosing X on my keyboard to switch to white so that now, I can bring back what I have erased and just do so in a much more controlled manner right through there. So can you guys see how this wall doesn't quite match up, and it's a little bit of a perspective issue? It's a little bit of a color and lighting issue. So let's go ahead and change the color first. I'm clicking on my layer one, which is the right side of our wall, and I'm going to create a curve layer that pins down to that wall, and I'm just going to make it a little bit darker, just like that, so that it matches. I think that maybe it's a little bit too yellow, but I'm not going to change that yet, because I'm not quite sure if I'm accurate about that or not. The next thing that I can do to get this into place is to click on my layer one, go to Edit > Transform > Warp and see if we can't just nudge certain things into place here and get that all to work out. What do you think? Is that lining up a little better? I'm gonna say yes. And then we have this issue of this pipe sort of curving in toward the frame, and that is a matter of me using a wide-angle lens here. And so you get a little bit of distortion. I don't believe the pipe was actually curving in. It could have been, though. It was a really freaky, weird house, so who knows. But I don't think it was. So that's something that I'll fix later, once we have all of our layers combined together. Because I have now matched up the edge of this and this pipe, I don't really wanna have to try to straighten this line and then risk messing up these lines at the bottom. So I'm not going to do that yet. So I'll keep that as it is. And we'll go searching for our next image, which will be the left-hand side. Here we are. The lighting in this room was a little bit confusing for me. It was very much directional, and was very spotty. So in this room, we have this big piece of light here on the wall, which a lot of people I think would find that to be very interesting. You know, you might think, oh yeah, that's a really nice detail. I don't. I like even lighting in general. So this is going to be a little bit of a battle for me in terms of exactly what needs to stay and what needs to go. So I've got this image in here, and I've taken my opacity down, and I'm just trying to match this up. So I'm looking at pieces like this piece of moss here, all these pieces, and how are we going to get this into place. So, let's go ahead and first do our Perspective shift. So I'm clicking on Perspective, and we'll see if that helps. We've got something better happening than we did before, and we can always take that opacity back up to really see how it's popping into place. And now I think we can go back into Edit > Transform, and I like to try all of these at different times. So if we do Skew, you can see how this is going to actually shift our lines up or down, which, as you can see, if you follow the lines on the walls, are looking much straighter, aren't they? That's good. But our moss is still a little bit sad-looking, so we'll just keep... That looks pretty good, doesn't it? I feel like that one was... Yeah. Let's go with that for now, before we try anything else. So let's take the opacity up, create our layer mask with our Brush tool, and I'm going to, on black, start to erase. I may make my brush bigger here, just to go faster. And I'm erasing everywhere where I really don't need to keep that image. Okay. So now, let's zoom in, 'cause now we're getting into the details. For example, it would be really terrible if I suddenly realized 45 minutes from now that she has two pointer fingers. That would be really bad. So I'm going to make sure that I erase everything that I need, make sure we have nothing overlapping here, and you might choose to do this differently where maybe you prefer to have a harder edge of your brush so that things aren't blending so easily into one another. And there's an argument for that, for doing it that way, but I find that I make fewer errors when I do it this way. So, all right. We've got just a couple problem areas. We've got some lines here that aren't matching up, this little piece that doesn't match up. So let's go ahead and finagle this with our Warp tool. Edit > Transform > Warp, and I'm going to just move things around slightly. That was pretty good. Except for our lines here. Okay. Let's hold our breath and hope that that was perfect. I think it was perfect. Looks good to me. Oh, wait. Listen. You know what they say. If you see something, say something. So tell me if you see something out of whack, okay? But that looks pretty good. And often, I'm going to look at my navigator, look at the piece as a whole, but also just click these layers on and off, on and off, on and off, over and over, and it really annoys people when I do this. So now I'm just gonna keep doing it to make sure that everything looks okay. For example, you'll notice this little area down here, how these little dots shift over because clearly, I put this layer over further than it was. I'm totally fine with that. I don't care if that's not how it was. That's now it is now, gosh darn it, and it's staying like that, and I'm okay with that. So, I'm gonna say this looks good to me so far. This is my little piece for the floor. So I'm gonna go ahead with my Lasso tool and just select the floor area here and copy that and paste that in. So here, we have our little floor, and we can get this in. I'm gonna have to stretch it, so Control or Command + T, and I'm just gonna make that a little bit bigger, 'cause that is our blank shot here. Say OK. And then the same process. So this will be the last time that I do this, for the sake of time. And this one needs a little bit of a shift as well. So we're going into our Transform tools. We could do Distort, for example, just to try something different to see how these things go. And often, you're going to find that one works better than another for whatever you're trying to do. I would say Distort was not the right one for that one. Perspective could be good. Skew is often really nice for me. Or just plain old Warp, where we're just warping things into place. So we're going to see which one works best for us. I think that Warp is going to give us squiggly lines, so let's instead do Perspective. And this side needs to come down, and this side needs to come up, and oh my goodness, what needs to happen? Or we can do regular, just rotating it into place. So let's go ahead and put that down, and we'll warp it if we need to later. Taking that opacity up, and let's get rid of our apple box, okay? 'Cause we've got this weird box in there that needs to be gone and a floor that needs to be fitted. So let's get as much as we can, and we still have feet. We have our foot issue, of course, that we're going to fix. So this isn't looking too bad. I just wanna make sure to get rid of this apple box, more than anything else. So I'm going in, and uh-oh, I don't like that. Sharp lines in an image are my enemy, and they often create the most mistakes when print. So I'm trying to get rid of any harsh lines that I might find running through this picture. And I'm simply going to, okay, so these are the feet. I wanna at least keep the ankles, 'cause we have to know where to attach our new feet, which sounds really weird, but we still need it. So I'm going to go ahead and just erase that apple box as much as I can. I replace that. And this is just a little dancing game of what goes where and what's the best way to do it. So we'll keep that for now. And now, I have to add in her feet. So we've got the majority of this image composited in. I'm just gonna X out of that. And we gotta find the feet. So with my Lasso tool, we're gonna get her foot, copy it, and paste it, and this is what we would have done during the other segment where we had a bit of a foot dangling issue. So same exact process. And now, this is perhaps the most perfect situation to be in just as a talking point, because we've got this super bright foot and her super dark leg. And clearly, they don't go together at all. And I could start to blend it and hope that you can make a nice soft transition between the two, but it's clearly not gonna happen. Like, clearly, this is just way too bright. So let's go ahead and fix that as much as we can. First, I'm going to try to match up the ankle bones so that I don't have her foot like, way down her by accident or her foot isn't like, up here right next to her knee. It's all very crazy and terrible when that happens. So I'm lowering my opacity on that layer, just to match up in general her ankle, which I think is roughly there. I could be very wrong about that, but I think, roughly, maybe up a little. Okay. Now while I still have this harsh line and it's really easy to see the difference between these two layers, this is when I'm going to go in and try to change the color and the brightness of that foot that we're adding. So, I'm going into Curves. I'm gonna pin that layer down, and we can now play with that foot layer by making it brighter or darker. And you can see immediately when we make it darker, it's starting to look a little bit better. But I would argue that light doesn't always go from the midtones. So I'm pulling right now on my curve in the center of our curve. And the center of the curve is most frequently going to represent your midtones. Not your highlights, not your shadows. So, if I go ahead and actually work from the highlights, you're probably going to have a little bit better match in terms of what her leg actually looks like, because you're not leaving the highlights and shadows where they were, which would create more contrast in that image, but instead, we're going from the highlights. Now, she's also a little bit more purple in the original image. Somehow my subjects often turn purple. So I'm going to go ahead and fix that by adding a little bit of blue into her leg. Now, again, you can go from the shadows, the midtones, or the highlights, and it's good to just experiment with what looks better, and just a tiny, tiny little bit of blue is probably going to be good. It might even be too much. Oh, it's so, so small, that little smidge. And I'm going back to RBG. Maybe she needs to be a little bit darker. Okay. So this is looking pretty good, at least in terms of just contrasting these two pieces right here. So let's go ahead and start erasing. So I've created a layer mask on her foot, and I'm going to see what we can do about showing the other leg through. There she is. And just very, very gently erasing. Now, she probably have to have that foot rotated slightly based on the position of this leg. So I'm going to make sure that I do that as well with Control or Command + T, just a slight rotation. And you can always use your arrow keys to nudge everything into place if it's a little bit off. So it's still looking, maybe it's actually a little bit desaturated. Can you see that difference there? It's really hard to see, and it's the kind of thing where like, yeah, I'd be really tempted to just back it up like that and be like, hey, looks great, doesn't it, guys? Doesn't it. Put this on the internet. You'll never see that foot. But, that is not a good practice to be in. So I'm gonna make sure that this all matches up, and I would even go so far as to click our layer zero here, which is the one with this leg on it and maybe even to use our Clone Stamp tool with no hardness, just sort of a big fuzzy brush at a really low opacity, and Option or Alt + Click on her leg where there's a good texture and then put that on our subject's leg here just really, really gently to try to mimic the texture that was original on her leg that has been lost slightly in this second picture. So, I'm not going to go through that process and do it all now, but just something to keep in mind that is possible to do later to make that just match a little bit better. But for now, we're not gonna do that. So we've got her foot, and I need to erase around her foot. So I'm going back to my Brush tool, and this time, I'm gonna take my hardness up, and we've already discussed this. Why I would take the hardness up is because I'm going to erase around my subject's foot actually touching the foot. So, if her foot was in focus, which I should point out that it wasn't in great focus, so I'm going to back that hardness up to in the 70% range, and now I can simply go in and erase in general around the foot. Now, I'm doing this from afar right now. I'm not super zoomed in, as you can tell. And I'm going to make sure that I do what I can from this distance, and then I will zoom in to get all the little details. For example, her toe here. I would wanna get in there with a smaller brush. But the more you toggle the brush size, you have to adjust the hardness as well. The smaller the size, the more hardness it will have. So I'm gonna take the hardness down somewhere in the 40 to 50% range and continue to erase in there along her foot. And yeah, it's a little bit tedious, but it's really not that bad. All you have to do is put Game of Thrones on in the distance, and it'll all be okay. And I'm just erasing. And there are arguments to be made here for keeping as much shadow as you can around the foot so that you don't have to totally recreate the shadow, but I prefer to recreate my shadows, just because then you're not working with half real shadow, half fake shadow, so that you can really sort of do whatever you want with that. So we've got one foot. We're going to do the rest real fast. So, we're going to get the other foot in there, because it's the same process. So we've just got our little foot, and I'm copying it, and I'm pasting it. And wouldn't you believe, every single time I've pasted something, it pops in under my pinned layer. So I'm just constantly changing the layer order, releasing my clipping mask, and taking her very, very bright foot down to try to match up. So the same process. We're going to put the foot in. We're going to try to figure out where her ankle is, which is about there. And I'm going to rotate this away a little bit because her feet were kind of pointing toward each other. I'm gonna just eliminate that a little bit. Here I'm going to create my curves layer, which I'm pinning down, and we're going to make it darker from the highlight portion. That actually looks really nice, doesn't it? I can't even see that line there hardly. So that's great. Create our layer mask and erase. So as I'm doing this, I'm going to start to consider what else needs to happen in this picture. Here, I'm going my general fuzzy eraser, and then I'll go in with a more fine point with a harder brush and erase the rest. Get my size down. There we go. I've got some other leg showing through there, and I'm doing this a little bit faster than I normally would, just for the sake of time. I'm not going to get in with every single detail at the moment, but just so that we have a general sense. So what needs to happen next in this image? What needs to happen next is I have to start thinking about overall look and feel, not only for the image, but for the series. And I'm okay with things being a little bit creepier in this series. I mean, I'm okay with things always being creepy, I should say. Not just in this series. Oh, look. We've got a little foot in there. Do you see the dual footing? So let's get rid of that, and we can just pop our layers on and off to see what can happen here. For example, we could use this floor image to just bring it up around here to cover up the foot, and we've got, that's on our original base layer. So I'm going to use this floor just to bring in to cover that foot a little bit better. And then we've opened a whole other can of worms, haven't we? 'Cause you have two different brightness levels underneath there. And this is where compositing is super frustrating, because you have all of these issues. So I'm actually going to wait to fix that foot, and I'm actually going to clone that out, just do a little bit of light cloning over this area to blend the darkness in with the light. And that's going to be a lot easier for me than trying to erase and bring back and change the colors in the background. Instead, I'm going to deal with that in just a little bit. But for now, when we zoom out, you can't even tell. So that's a win, right? I'm gonna call that a win. So, I'm going to choose my Crop tool, and I'm just making sure that I get rid of the excess, cropping this into a square, because that's how I like it, making sure that my subject is in the center of the composition, and I talked about how we would fix this pole, and we would do this cloning and things like that, so I'm going to go ahead at this point, we're assuming that this is the most perfect edit that you've ever seen, and I'm going to duplicate my layers and then merge my layers down. So, duplicate, OK, and then merge. And I like to do this instead of just flattening, because then we still have everything preserved here if we ever need to go back to that edit, to that work that we've done. Here, I can to in with my Clone Stamp tool and just really get rid of everything that we wanna get rid of in this area, specifically the foot, which is really an issue in this region, and then with a low opacity, you can always go over that segue, just to create a little bit of a nicer tone in there. Even lower with the opacity, and even bigger brush. Right in there. Okay. That looks slightly better. Oh, I wish I hadn't done that last thing. It's fine. It's fine. Okay. So, I'm backing out, and we still need a little bit of a shadow in here. Have you guys noticed we've got these feet dangling with no shadows? So I'm gonna go ahead and just draw in a shadow with my Lasso tool, and here, I'm just drawing wherever I think it should be, and I'm okay if I go over the feet here. I'd rather select too much of the feet than not enough of the feet. And what the idea is here is that I'm thinking, okay, we added the feet in. They're a little bit bright. We've got some bright moss all around. There are no shadows, 'cause we erased all around the feet. So I'm gonna go ahead and right-click and feather, and I'm just guessing on my feather here. We talked about this earlier. I'm guessing on my feather. And for this feather, I'm gonna keep it at 25 pixels and see how that looks. Just guessing. We're just gonna see. And I'm creating a new curves layer. So there are many ways that you could create a shadow. One is this way, where you're drawing in wherever you think it should be, and then you're literally just making it darker in that area, however you want. It doesn't have to be with curves. It could be exposure. It could be levels. Whatever you think is most important, however you like to do it. And then to finesse this, you might wanna just get in a little bit closer even, just like that, create another shadow just by feathering, and maybe we'll do 35 pixels this time, just by feathering and then creating a new adjustment layer, whether you like to do curves or levels. It does not matter. I like to do my shadows from the highlights. So instead of pulling down in the midtones like we've been talking about, I tend to think that lighting just looks more natural if you go from the highlights and shadows versus the midtones. So I tend to pull from the midtones. Because if you think about a shadow, you've got a situation where, you know, maybe you're looking at a shadow, you know, on this table, and I've got my hand here and I'm sort of testing to see, how does the shadow change as I pull it back versus when I put it down, and the closer I get to this table, the sharper my shadow is, and the darker my shadow is, and the more I pull away, the softer it becomes and the lighter it becomes. So I'm thinking about shadows in terms of fuzziness, how fuzzy is the shadow compared to what the surface is versus my foot, in this case, my hand, and then also, how dark is it, how light or dark should it be. So if I've got this little area that I'm working in, and let's just say that I do it again down here, it's very close to the wall, which is going to be one consideration. We've got our foot really close to the thing that it's casting a shadow against, which means that it'll be darker and sharper than it would be if it was really far away from the wall. And so, if I'm going ahead and I'm going to feather, let's just say 20 pixels here and I create a new curve, then the way that shadows work, if I watch my hand, is that my shadow is not making things that are already dark, former shadows on this table or whatever it may be, it's not making those shadows any darker. Once something is black, it's black. You don't go darker than black. But it's making the highlights darker. That's exactly what is happening with the shadow. So that's why I'm going to choose from the highlight portion of my curve to pull down on, because that is what's happening with the shadow. You're taking your highlights down. You're not making your shadows even darker. So that is why I like to pull from the highlights instead of the midtones to create my shading here. Now, we have some overall issues that we need to address, one of which is the fact that the lighting is very uneven. And I think that this is perhaps the most fun part of Photoshop for me is changing how you see an image, changing where the light hits and how your eye is directed around the frame. So right now, if you were to just look at this image and we were to map your eye movements, it's very likely that you would land right here. And it's going to keep pulling your attention, even though you're like, I know that there's a girl in the middle of this room, and that's really creepy and cool, except I can't stop looking over here. That's very much the opposite of what we want. So I'm going to use the same method that I made that shadow around her foot with simply selecting, feathering, and then darkening or lightening to do that all around this image. So, if this is too bright for me, then I'm going to select this area. Just like that, I'm going to feather it, maybe 200 pixels, just a big, soft selection, and then I'm going to use my curves in the highlight portion here to bring that area down, because I don't want you looking there. And if that's not enough, then I'll do it again. Over and over and over, until we have that area dulled. And we don't need to dull it so much that it's, you know, the same as everything else. It can stay a little bit brighter, because now, we're going to do the opposite and brighten our subject. So I want your eye to go right here. This is what I want you to look at right through that region. So I'm going to go ahead and feather. And you'll notice when I make selections, they're often a little bit squiggly because light is squiggly. Well, maybe it's not, but it is if you look at it on walls. It's often going to have a very natural falloff. So instead of just making a box here and saying, I'm going to put a box around this subject and put the light in that box, I would rather let it fall naturally onto the wall by creating squiggles. That is a technical term. I'm gonna coin that right now. I'm just doing a nice, big feather on that and then changing how your eye sees the image by creating brightness in this area. And now the good thing about an adjustment layer is that clearly, to me, this is too bright. I just made this area too bright. But it comes with a layer mask attached. So I can go in and just softly erase off of the wall there, and that means that I can, oops, wrong one, erase. That means that I can really control where that light is hitting. So you can see, if we just take a look at these three adjustments, you can see what a difference that it's made already in terms of how you see this image. No longer does your eye go out here, but you're going more on the subject. And I'm going to keep doing that for different areas around our room. So I'm going to right-click and feather. We'll do 300 pixels this time, and my feather selection pixel number is based on how large my selection is. So the bigger the selection, the more feathered pixels you're going to need. So I feathered that selection, and we'll just do one more quick adjustment here to draw in our attention on our subject. I think that looks really nice. And again, we can always finesse it. I'll just take the opacity down here, and I'll just get rid of some of that light on the wall, 'cause it's a little bit much right in that area. This is looking pretty good. I think that her legs are too bright, so now I might go in right through her upper body here, feather, and we'll do another big selection. So this is the process that I take over and over and over when I'm trying to draw attention to my subject, and now you can see even more what we've just done. And the reason why we're able to do this is because the lighting was not very direct. Yes, it what coming from a few windows, which means that yes, it's coming from ma certain direction. But it's so soft that you can change it to be wherever you want it to be. If you had one harsh light on her, no, you're not gonna be able to change where that light hits, 'cause there's gonna be extreme highlights and shadows. But here, there's not. Here, I'm going to try to draw the eye in as much as possible. So I'm doing things like this where I'm going to select all around the outside edges, and in this case, I'm going to have to select inverse, 'cause I've just selected the center. I'm going to right-click, feather. We'll do 400 pixels. And then right-click and select Inverse. Now, everything but her is selected, and now we can basically do the opposite where we're adding a vignette. It's just a manual vignette instead of going in and using, I think, like Lens Correction or something like that is one that you can use. All different ways of adding a vignette. Maybe there's even something called vignette. I have no idea. And instead of doing that, we're just creating our own squiggly line so that the vignette is much more natural. So if I do it really extreme, you can see exactly how the light is coming in. And it's not just the four corners, you know, like you would normally have. It's creating a more natural light falloff. And this, again, is something you might wanna do from the highlight portion of your image. And so again, if we just do those few, it just keeps getting more and more drastic with the lighting changes here. And this was something that I knew would be possible when we shot this image. I remember thinking, oh, wow, this lighting is really weird. She's in shadow. We have this weird highlight over here. Is that a problem? And if it was a problem, then I would have added light or blocked the light in certain areas to make it more even. But I know how much we can shift, and this is a really good amount to shift. So I'm not going to take this image much further, because we have the basics. We've got the feet. We've got some shading. We're starting to maneuver the light. And there's a lot that we can fall into doing with this picture right now. So instead I'm going to save it and know that we'll come back to that later, but not yet, and I'm going to get a different image in here, because we need to make sure that we're editing for cohesion with the series. And this has given me really good start. What I notice about this lighting in particular is that it has sort of a creepy, dark contrasted feel to it, in a way. Not so contrasty like film noir or something like that, but I was watching this film noir channel in my hotel last night. It was great. But it was also, like, cringeworthy with how much I would not use that lighting. So, this is my lighting with a little bit more contrast than I'm used to, a little bit more directionality. So I'm just going to X out of Photoshop, and let's go pick a different image.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Guided Daydream & Writing Exercises Workbook (Lessons 1-11)
Creating an Original Narrative Workbook (Lessons 12-18)
Finding Your Target Audience Workbook (Lessons 19-27)
Planning Your Series Workbook (Lessons 28-34)
Set Design Workbook (Lessons 35-41)
Compositing Workflow Checklist (Lessons 42-49)
Editing Workflow Checklist (Lessons 50-55)
Location Scouting Workbook (Lessons 56-60)
Stock Image Downloads for Practice (Lessons 61-72)
Organizing Your Portfolio Workbook (Lessons 77-81)
Pricing & Editioning Your Work Workbook (Lessons 82-89)
Writing Contracts & Licensing Images Workbook (Lessons 90-98)
Gallery Best Practices (Lessons 99-106)
Pitch Package Workbook (Lessons 107-111)
Writing Your Brand Workbook (Lessons 112-117)
Marketing Workbook (Lessons 118-122)
Social Media Workbook (Lessons 123-127)
Printing Methods Checklist (Lessons 128-133)
Self Critique Workbook (Lessons 134-137)
Bonus Materials Guide
Syllabus
Image Edit Videos

Ratings and Reviews

April S.
 

I tuned in for most of Brooke's lessons in this course and watched some of them more than once as they were rebroadcast. First I want to say that Brooke is a very good instructor. Her easy-going, friendly, down-to-earth, somewhat quirky manner cannot be mistaken for unprofessional. She is very prepared, she speaks well (not a bunch of hemming and hawing), she is thoughtful, she is thorough, she is very relatable and at ease, and she is definitely professional in her presentation. I really thought when I first tuned in that it would mostly be background noise while I was at work, sound to keep me company. Not because I didn't like Brooke but I really didn't think I was into fine art photography nor did I think I cared about the business side of things much. Not now anyhow. I was really wrong. Brooke sparked a deep interest in me to delve into fine art photography, to consider creating images for myself, from my imagination. In fact, I realized that this was something I'd been thinking about for a couple of years though I hadn't put a name to it (the idea of creating pre-conceived images based on my own creative goals). I gleaned many little treasures from her about image sizes, working with printers, different types of paper, selling, interacting with galleries, and so much more. I may not need all of what she taught right now because I'm definitely headed in another direction at the moment, but she planted ideas and information in my head that I know will be useful at some point. Things I may not have thought of on my own, but that seed is in my head now so when the time comes, I'll know. I'd really like to buy her course but at the moment, with the holidays right around the corner, it's not in my personal budget. I'm grateful to have caught the live and rebroadcast lessons though, and her course is on my list to own. I think it's a great reference to be consulted over and over again, not watched once and forgotten. Kudos Brooke for really putting together an excellent course.

Ron Landis
 

I'm retired now, but spent decades in the people and training business. Brooke is extraordinary! Even though this course is extremely well organized and she's left nothing unattended, she moves through it with friendly conversational manners and without a sense of it being stilted. It's as though we are all her friends, not students, as she shares her heart and passion with us. What a joy it is to listen to her. And what a clear, unambiguous command of her subject. Wow! She explains it with such ease using explanations and techniques that won't overwhelm artists just starting their portfolio or the Photoshop-squeamish among us; but despite its simplicity her resulting art is breathtaking and beyond original. I wish more of my professors at school were as engaging. This was by far my best buy at Creative Live yet.

Angel Ricci
 

When the title says comprehensive, it means comprehensive! I loved every part of this course. It's inspirational, motivating, and insightful towards creating art work. Even if you are not necessarily considering a fine art specialty, the concepts discussed in this course are applicable to many areas! I find this super useful as a videographer and photographer and look to apply all of these exercises and concepts for my personal and business work moving forward. It is lengthy, but you will not regret a single minute. Brooke Shaden is an amazing artist and educator. I recommend keeping up with her work, presentations, and any future courses that may come in the future.

Student Work

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