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Editing: Adjusting Presets for Specific Photos

Lesson 16 from: The Automotive Photography Workshop

Aaron Brimhall

Editing: Adjusting Presets for Specific Photos

Lesson 16 from: The Automotive Photography Workshop

Aaron Brimhall

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Lesson Info

16. Editing: Adjusting Presets for Specific Photos

Presets are great building blocks, and Aaron shows us how he starts with a preset and then will fine-tune it for specific photographs.

Lesson Info

Editing: Adjusting Presets for Specific Photos

Oh, I am going to take one last photo and throw just one of my presets I have on my sidelines. And I, I'm gonna try to make this warm photo feel a lot cooler and just kind of fit more in tune with my style, just cause I normally wouldn't use a, a warm sky like this, but yeah let's have fun with it. I already picked one out. I'm gonna use this AB and this is kind of what I'm gonna go with. So I'm gonna try to be as like fast so little tweaking, but I still want it to look cool. And like right off the bat, I might crop in a little bit just so we have just, you know, more action in your face rather than all this empty space. So let's go up here and crop it just a little bit. Make sure it's locked over here. So you're getting the same dimensions basically and let's keep it right there-ish. So we got layers, an even layer of sky goes to subject or sky, subject, ground. Yeah, that looks good. All right. So I think first things first, might mess with the white bounce just a tiny bit. I might ...

even go just a tad to the cool side and I'm gonna go right here to the radial. Let's get a nice vignette over that. I'm gonna go pretty wide. So I use basically just want this whole section to be a nice vignette with a fall off going right to the subject. Let's dumb down these shadows, just a tad. See, and that's already bringing out the subject really nice, which I love. And then another cool thing to do is you can bump this clarity up but you're gonna want to do that with the brush. Cause if you do that with, with the radio tool you're gonna still get clarity up here which will create noise in the sky, and you don't want that. This has grain on it already. I usually like grain in my photos but I shot this kind of like a darker, like sort of like night time-ish. This is like right at dusk, so. I'm gonna bring all the grain out of that, cause I think there's naturally some grain in there, which is cool. And I'm gonna go less contrasty on this. Go to the brush. Let's work on that ground a little bit. And I already think the treatment looks really cool on this already. I'm just kind of bringing some of the textures in line with what I like and give it a little bit more of a pop. So let's get that clarity out and run through that foreground. Just a little, a little clarity. Just kind of want the texture out a little bit and that should be good. Mess with that a little bit more. Yeah, let's go pretty high on that. Another thing I like to do as well is bring out the dust like you saw in the last photo. I'm gonna make all of this coming behind the truck kind of more vibrant and pop a tiny bit. So let's bring the shadow up just a tiny. Whites up a little and then clarity up a lot. Let's go through everything that's highlighted in the dust. Just do swirls, kind of just fill it all in. As you can see, those shadows just like the tiny shadow I did with the bar movement already had a lot of play down there, which is cool, but I don't want that much. So let's go to texture cause I want more texture in the dust. Let's bring up the texture just a tiny bit. Cause you're getting all that. And so all this texture, all like the the ripples and just like it looks like it's vibrating, which is really cool. And you know, having that dust looking like it's breathing looks pretty mean. And I think that is really cool looking. Bring up that clarity just a tiny bit more and that looks cool. So back here in the background you can see all the other dust from the truck. I'm gonna darken that a little bit, so it makes the truck pop a little more. So go back into the brush and let's go to contrast and bring the contrast up a bit. Let's just go over that background dust, the tiny. I'm going over the truck right now. I'm gonna bring that eraser tool into the mix here in a minute and erase what I've done on the truck. Cause I don't want my truck to be dark at all cause it's already dark, and so the goal is to not have that subject be lost in any of the background. Just keep going over that dust, that background dust. And if you find that it's, you know, messing around with the foreground dust, that's okay. Again, you'll have the eraser tool. And I kind of want it a little bit darker, so let's mess with blacks. Well, before we do blacks, let's do shadows. Just go down a bit. See, and that's already too dark and I don't want. That's kind of a nice medium. Didn't mean to press that clarity. Wanna do that command Z if you don't want it. All right, and let's go to the eraser tool and just kind of go over the truck of where we were brushing. Just so we're not losing any of that information on the vehicle. Cool. It's looking sweet. And I think with this gradient tool, I'm gonna do this with the sky and try to bring out just maybe even darken the sky just a little bit, let's reset that. And you can come down past the truck most of the time and it's not gonna affect anything. I'm just gonna mess with the exposure just to see, I'm just having fun with it too. So again, go as creative and wild as you want. See, that's already too dark, which I don't like. So I might just keep it, one last try with highlights. I'm gonna bring the gradient tool up just a little and mess with dehazing a little cause that's gonna bring out the sky just a little. So you're already getting those clouds, like those wispy clouds in the back which looks really cool, but it also gets a little busy which I don't always like. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So I'm gonna forget about the dehaze, and I might just leave this guy as it was, but yeah, for the most part, I'm pretty happy with this image. Here's before and after just so you get kind of the point of where I like to be in the end of a photo. So it was shot more warm and I kind brought it to the cooler side, which I think is really cool. And yeah, so that's kind of my editing techniques and there you have it. I'm pretty stoked on that image and it's time to save that and put it as a wallpaper on my background. Pretty cool. So that is it. And there are the presets.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Automotive Presets

Ratings and Reviews

Ben Waugh
 

Worth Every Cent! Keen For More! This was awesome, definitely keen to see more of these in the future! Keep them coming dude! Loved seeing your edit breakdown and workflow. Would love to see some more of the behind the scenes of planning a shoot too - @benwaugh

Allison Gregory
 

From Zero to Hero Awesome workshop to not only get my first taste of automotive shoots, but I am walking away with a shoot set-up and planned to create speck work and present brands with decks. I loved how Aaron really explained everything he was doing. He rocks.

Adrian Mirabal
 

Amazing and WORTH IT! I have followed Aaron Brimhall for a while now and when I saw he was releasing a workshop I knew I had to get it! If you are wanting to shoot anything in motion or automotive action this is the workshop for you!

Student Work

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