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Graduated and Radial Tools

Lesson 21 from: Post-Processing for Outdoor and Travel Photographers

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

21. Graduated and Radial Tools

Lesson Info

Graduated and Radial Tools

you could find out if you have any black and your picture in a couple ways one of them though is to hold down the option key when you click on the black slider that's all tim windows will do that right now and if nothing shows up nothing's black in your picture if you move the black side towards the left heel darken the darkest part of your picture and eventually something will start showing up and you're looking for black not colors colors is where remember your image is made out of three parts red green and blue and only one or two of those three parts have maxed out and how dark it could go it's once you see a little hint of black that all three have maxed out in their darkness and so I see a tiny speck of black in the lower right that's gonna make this picture look better than if I didn't do it if I didn't do that then if you see it printed on the wall next to another picture that does have some black in it this picture is going to feel somewhat dull it's a very subtle thing in thi...

s particular picture but it makes a big difference in general now oftentimes I end up using the adjustment brush too I want to say it to take a picture that has dull light in add a little bit of life to it and I actually don't have a picture set up for this but let me see if I might be able to find one if I look in portfolios actually looking manual portfolios if I go and look at desert things adventurism cactus or something in here yeah these two will be good so if you look at this image let's take a look at what it looked like before it was adjusted and light room I'll hit the reset button and then what it looks like after you know obviously the vibrance has been pushed up or in this case saturation actually to make it more colorful but part of what was done most likely with that and with some of these other images is the light was kind of boring it was so even it was like overcast a even kind of thing and I tried to make it more interesting by making it very more you see how that compared to that in a lot of the times that hasn't do with using the adjustment brush in using particular setting let me just mouse over some of these this area I might have made less colorful this area I probably brighten because I wanted your attention in the middle that area I might have made more colorful to pull your attention there betcha dark and that's I was dark in the edges and you see these little areas that I've isolated in applied different adjustments to just to get it to vary so that it didn't look so darn consistent if I turn off my adjustment brush there's what it looked like with just the normal adjustment supplied I got it too very mohr though by using my adjustments get the part where you want your eye to go to be the brightest and most colorful get the part where you don't want your eye to g o to be less colorful and sometimes somewhat darker and she just get it to various um or it can often become more interesting there's another one where I'm just making it so it various moore this is justine adjustment russian see I'm darkening the upper right darkening the bottom and it might be making some areas less colorful because of for it just looked too consistent and after it varies it makes it so my eye has a place to go then you see I've adjusted various areas so that's not uncommon but other things when it comes to work in an isolated areas so far we've only used the adjustment brush just want to quickly show you that there are a few other ways of doing it uh see if I can find an appropriate image just take me a moment here's one in this image we're in an area called the police um and I don't really like the where the horizon is looking what's up here just to me feels a little vault first let's see what the original image looked like because you're like first I think this might be a panorama and if it is a panorama that means I adjusted the individual pictures first before I stitched them and then I might have done further adjustments so if I hit reset it might not look like just a dull looking picture although if it's not a stitch to hammer panorama than it should look different let's see what this file format iss this is a tiff which tells me it's a panorama because it would be a raw file if it was uh the original so so anyway if I hit reset that was like the original cropping and I decided that I wanted your bea little more concentrated so I'd kind of bring in like that but let's qo to up here there's our adjustment brush two slots over from it is something else called the graduated filter with the graduated filter if I click on it we have the same general sliders that we had with the adjustment brush and so I'm going to just guessed a mate what I'd like to apply the top portion of this picture I'm guessing I'm gonna want it to be a little more yellow eh sh I might push white balance over there I'm guessing I'm gonna want to bring the highlights down to darken it a little bit and that's my guest then instead of painting across that area I'm gonna click within the picture and dragged down if I hold the shift key I'll make sure I don't get a weird angle instead of straight in now I can adjust what we have is grabbing the edges there's these little lines that are on it we'll see if I can zoom up here there are three lines that air here how at the bottom anything below this line is not being affected at all anything above the line that's up here I know that line's very difficult to see it the moment you see me moving it though anything above that line up there is getting the full adjustment that I've dialed in and then by moving this I can control how quick of a fade out I get how abrupt is the fade and so let's see what's going on first off let's see if we get that to go away it's down here set to auto hide and let's turn off its little light switch before after dc a little change where the becoming more yellowish on the horizon I can always dial in something else let's bring down our highlights maybe further their ego bring him down and let's see if you want to be able to shift that even further towards yellow maybe towards magenta or away from magenta or remember we had that thing called color we could push whatever color we want in there just click on the little rectangle here and see what you think might look good I don't want it to be too blatantly obvious that something's going on so leave that turned down might try things like contrast changes bringing down the contra but they're so I'll turn off a little light switch again before after not sure if you like that one or not I'm kind of on the edge if I like that or not but just want to make sure you knew you could do that and that is the replacement for a graduated neutral density filter the kind of filter you can put in front of the lens of your camera and the top part of it is tinted and has a slow fade out a lot of people hold it in front of their camera lens to keep their sky nice and dark well you can kind of simulate it using that particular tool in that tool was just two slots over from the adjustment brush we have one other here which is the radio filter which isn't really appropriate for this image but you could click uh so if I get the right tool that is there we go you could click and drag like this and define an oval or circle and then adjust this and in doing so you can like vignette the edges of an image that kind of stuff I find I don't use that very often because I don't want a consistent one usually wanted to conform to the landscape or something so I'm painting with a brush so those were our other options when it came to selective adjustments and I think that's good enough for that stuff unless we have some questions we have one or two that came in let's see uk wonders whether there is a way to inverse the selection area in a graduated filter two in verse in the graduated let me take a look to be honest I don't use the graduated all that often but the main thing is you khun dragged the other direction here I'm dragging down to create this and if I want to go the other way you could drag up that and that it would affect the other side we can try pressing letter x no it's sedatives rejected I don't want to reject this picture so I'll go back up here and I'll set my flag toe unflagging remember x was the the choice that we used to swap the crop tool so I thought they might have used that I think what he's talking about and what brett daisy is also asking about is whether you can do the inverse of something for example if you do a mask you know or you use the adjustment brush on a particular part of the image can you then say the the rest of it instead of that selected area like you can with an inverse selection and but I'm not certain it's not something that I have attempted to do other than going back to the settings are applying to the entire picture in applying you know like just like we said we're negative twenty five for sharpening when you paint in counter acts the plus twenty five applied to the whole image so if it's like your de saturating this area want to saturate the rest just get out of the adjustment brush and applied the whole image and your somewhat in effect doing that that's an interesting idea I like that because I think I'm pretty sure that that's the only way that you can do it I'm sure it's just something I haven't waited to do s o I might have to look for a few minutes but uh here's one that's won if you just want to see a before and after here is the original picture and see here here is the end result which I like a lot more than the original wish to me feels a little dull nice fall color there and it's a matter of me getting used to what all the sliders do the more you process images with these the more you get used to them but let's see how much of it was the adjustment brush with the justin brush I'll turn off its little life's wish it's not dramatic but it did help if you look at the top part of the picture to me it feels a little bit bluish in a little too light I can see too much detail in the trees where's afterwards it darkens up and just makes it so much I does not explore the area up here but I actually painted in quite a few areas to just make it very more especially making the color very more uh and just so you know the suggestion brushes overly useful when it comes to white balance in this case we have mixed lighting there's a light just outside of your view just like there's a light in the distance over here a street like kind of thing it's over here the style of bulb that is in it is different than the lights that are under here so if I used this little white balance eyedropper right here that eyedropper is designed so if I grab it and click on the picture if I can click on something that should be a shade of gray it will see if there's any color showing up there if it is it'll soon it shouldn't be there and in this case you can see what color is finding it finds blue so it says hey there's way too much blue in there so we might as well move this away from blue and tall that color goes away so let's see what happens when I click there all right well now the side of the building looks fine because the light coming from the street light has been compensated for but the type of bulb that's in here is a different color it's more of a yellowish orange well this is painted white which is a shade of grey so I could grab that little white balance eyedropper and compensate for this by clicking on this white area but then that got screwed up again because we have two different kinds of lighting so what we can deal is compensate for one of them I'll compensate for maybe the one over here then grab your adjustment brush and you khun guesstimating what the adjustment would be just look at what color is in here that's yellowish so move the white balance away from yellow and maybe just a little less bit away from magenta in that I'm going to come and paint it in and I'll find tune it afterwards I think that light is spilling on the ground so that's what I'll paint there gotta be careful when I get over here because I'm gonna get spill over to where that other light was falling but I'll do that and then I'll just find tune it I'll say okay what we really need in there like that and I can't even try to compensate for what's in the back by saying I want a new adjustment that looks very bluish in somewhat greenish so I move this away from blue and a little away from green and painting back there that looks like it's becoming two yellows I push it away from yellow see if I can deal with it if I can't bring down my saturation to make itjust less colorful back there so without the adjustment brush yeah one or the other one's gonna look screwed up with it we could get both

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Handbook
Bonus Packet
Post Processing Practice Files

Ratings and Reviews

Photoracer
 

After catching parts of each of the three days, I knew that I would need to have access to this wealth of information. What is great about the program is the ability to stop and go back over something that is not fully understood...and be able to do that until confident enough to move on. I saw no "fluff" in the course, just great information imparted with a style that is makes it easy to understand. CreativeLive scored a big hit with this course! The bonus material is SO valuable, especially the presets. That saves an enormous amount of time for me. My appreciation of the power behind the software is becoming ever clearer. Thanks, Ben, for another outstanding presentation!

Shannon Beelman Photography
 

Ben has been amazing! He is a wealth of information on organizing images as well as great tips to make your travel images pop just a little more. I came into this class feeling like I had a good handle on lightroom and have come out with a better understanding of the power of the software to make artistic life easier. He covers tips, tricks and little known options that help make workflow smother. I have sat here watching as much of the free broadcast as I can and in this last week I have gotten control over years of images in my lightroom. This is one I know I will be buying soon.

johninblackhawk
 

Great class! Somehow, it was enjoyable not having Ben default to "curves for everything"! I don't think the title for this course did it justice, tho. This class was 90% Light Room and 10% Photoshop. I was very happy to discover that dynamic and equally as happy to purchase this course! If you are new to Light Room, this class is a MUST. Creative Live offers several LR classes but this is the one to own. Ben is working on his new book about Light Room Mastery - can't wait! In the meanwhile, I'll be watching Ben's thorough approach to LR in this video. So, don't let the title throw you a curve ball, if you are new to Light Room or a seasoned user, there's plenty of great information - delivered as only Ben can! Thanks CL for this great class!

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