My Ways Of Editing- Cleaning up, Layer Masking, Dodging and Burning, Sharpening

[NazVil86]

Well I started wanting to write out a tutorial about just merging photos- but didn't have a way on just doing that So instead I'm basically showing my whole process from Start to Finish on one of my photos I had chilling on my computer. Now I'm not writing this expecting to get "oh wow your awesome", "wow that totally sucks", "pics look like shit", "best article of the year"---But all the things I did on this one picture I learned over a period of time, each -technique I guess- I learned from someone else and I just put them all together and its how i do my work. Now granted I don't do all these things all the time in each of my pictures. But its just to show samples and step by step on how to do these type of things. Hope you Enjoi Here we go here's a first look at everything ill be doing- minus the fixing the corner light, i got lazy sorry I start off with the small stuff first- which for me would be removing the little flash flare in the sky I forgot to put- after this step of using the patch tool- i used the healing brush to smooth out the area Checking off the list- no more flare wohoo, pft like that was hard Ok so my lighting placement on this shot sucked hard so I got that catch light right there on the door- and it brought out a lot of the paint swirls and imperfections and what not. Now i cant totally remove that catch light- but we can smooth out this area out a bit To get this result i just zoomed in a good amount- past 100% and started using the healing brush tool. Its like the clone stamp tool- but I'm not gonna lie, i have no idea what the difference is on the two lol. to me they kinda do the same thing but the healing brush is smoother hah Now we get to how to layer mask. I want the ground in this shot to look a little more..."gritty"? If that makes sense to anyone. I want it darker and to have some depth to it- because it really looks flat here. To start off I will duplicate the background layer Than make my adjustments accordingly- which shows in the next frame. lets move on to that shall we? Basically I messed around with the color balance- upped the blues, turned down the reds in each section except I don't think I touched the shadows. I also messed with the Levels a bit. Here's how we do a layer mask- which is how i merge my layers- follow along now kiddies Here's after i re-touched up the ground layer again- needed to be a bit more darker than i originally planned on but I like it Now I forgot to do screen shots while I was editing the rims. In the description in the picture I just want to make sure you all get this. I duplicated my base layer- went to Image > Adjustments > Color balance and started to play around with the sliders. Yes it does affect the entire picture- but just look at the rims, since that's the area that's important here. I got the bronze tone i liked- than hit OK. I now have a whole picture that looks "orangey bronze". Do the layer mask- and just draw in the rims- that easy. You don't have to use the lasso tool- and do all these other things- For me drawing it in is easier. I ended up lowering the opacity for the layer after wards since the bronze looked to orange. But the next images cover my dodging and burning method vs just using the dodging and burning tools in Photoshop Ok the light flare is gone, I smoothed out the passenger side swirl marks and what not, I adjusted the rims to pop a bit more, I adjusted the ground for some depth, I brightened up the front end (for this i opened up the original raw file- stepped up the exposure a bit- and brought that layer onto this file- using the layer mask- drew in the selected area up front in this picture- than lowered the opacity so it wasn't so bright- sorry I didn't cover that also but that's how I did it, very subtle change but it makes a difference) To remove my camera bag- just zoomed in and used the clone stamp tool- the healing brush will not work here- it wasn't bad I just went with the lines on the ware houe as a guide line This part to get the sky and warehouse touched up I did the following Duplicate the layer *get used to doing this from the start*, Desaturated the layer- and played with levels and what not. Then layer masked and drew in the sky only. Duplicated the layer, Played with selective coloring on the cyan option so it could be a nice deep green like the warehouse really was, than layer masked and drew in only the warehouse. And here we are now Now if you have your own sharpening method- you don't have to follow these next steps. My friend showed me this method since I personally cant get the hang of using the USM method. So if you don't mind trying something new keep reading. I'm not saying this is better than USM- any way you get your image sharper, and you feel comfortable working with do it. For the radius I will usually go up to 25%-35% Thank you for reading this, If you have any questions or comments please post up or PM me. Again like I said in the beginning- if your reading this and saying "wow this guy did it all wrong" that's fine, there are hundreds of ways to do things in Photoshop, this is merely the way I get things done, I feel comfortable doing, and works for ME. Larger version of final product

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[CRX_VTEC]

super nice write up! Props for taking the time.

[ne3ek]

i picked up a couple tricks, thanks.

[RedStarGsr]

nice write up man.

this little tutorial thing takes 'forever' im sure to put together but a lot of people can really learn from it. Hell, i didn't learn any tricks until I started going through these types of tutorials!

We use a lot of the same techniques, haha-- did you try to get rid of the flash hot spot though? I'm sure you could...

[jonshonda]

Really good write-up!! Makes HT a better place when members put this much time into their work

[NazVil86]

I am going to clone it out
AND I know the steps on the pictures themselves have a bunch of typos, I was on my meds and made me kinda sleepy- but knew I wanted to finish this or I would've put it off for another few days.

I am in the process of cloning out that hot spot.
Im glad some of you took something from this, and if I can think of anything more- ill post a few things up here and there. I really wanted to try doing video- But I heard to get real good quality you'll need a capture card? or something, oh well later on.

I can maybe do a tutorial on lighting setups with video though....dont let this hot spot fool you- usually i dont get a lot of hot spots haha. i swear.

[JDMxTi]

good stuff man, currently trying out a few things from this.

[RedStarGsr]

i have a program that's mega easy to use to 'record' what you'er doing it on screen, and the thing will even upload it to their server. our trainer uses it at work, when he gets back from lunch i'll hit you up playboy.

[NazVil86]

awesome man, id love to try doing little things, maybe like skin touch up for portrait work
and maybe on set clips of where i place my lighting and how to balance ambient with flash- i know most know, but it'd be good to see on video. Hm.

[RedStarGsr]

jing by techsmith.com

check it out

[RedStarGsr]

skin work
: select
: color range
: select face
ctrl j ctrl J (two layers)

first layer surface blur 20/20 settings
second layer other- high pass, soft light (or overlay) i forgeto

then player w/ the mixtures of opacity

[NazVil86]

do a writeup lazy mo fo lmao

[sik_one]

Very good write up! Props to you mang.

[just Touge]

There is still lens flare on the car.

[NazVil86]

blah blah blah

thanks sik_one

[Kyle is raaddd]

thanks, i picked up some techniques i didn't know before

[OneOhNine27]

Holy crap!!!

STICKY MATERIAL FTW!!!

[TouringAccord]

added to the Tutorials section of the FAQ thread

[NazVil86]

wohooooo

[jokercykoe]

thanks!