Preset Opacity Slider In Lightroom Classic

Using the preset opacity slider is easy and in order to bring that slider, you have to apply a preset first.

You can go to the Develop Module and on the left of your screen, under the Presets Panel, select a preset and after applying a preset you’ll see the Opacity Slider will become active.

As you can see, it is set to 100%, you can either decrease it to reduce the intensity or the effect of the preset. You can even set it to 200% to stronger the effect of the applied preset. This all depends on you how strong you want a preset effect to be.

Preset Opacity Slider In Lightroom CC

In Lightroom CC, again you have to apply a preset first and then the preset opacity box will appear.

Open the Lightroom CC, and select a photo to edit.

From the Edit Panel, click on the Preset panel and a new panel will open.

Select Yours section, this is where you will find your installed presets, from there click on any preset to apply it. Once you applied a preset, the opacity/amount slider will appear below the preset name. Simply move the slider left or right to modify the edit.

Preset Opacity Slider In Lightroom Mobile

This slider is also available in Lightroom Mobile. To access this feature, select a photo to edit and then click on the Presets option at the bottom of the screen.

Select a preset, and once you applied the preset a slider icon will appear on the image thumbnail of the preset. Now you have to tap on the thumbnail again and the amount slider will appear.

You can then adjust the opacity of the applied preset.

Preset Opacity Slider In Photoshop Camera Raw

The Amount/Opacity slider is available in Photoshop Camera Raw as well. To use the feature, you can open an image in Photoshop.

Go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter and this will bring the Camera Raw filter.

Click on the Preset icon (double overlapping circle), and a list of your presets will be available to you. From there, select a preset and you’ll notice the Preset Slider will become active at the top of the preset panel.

Feel free to play around with it to decrease or increase the effect!

Thanks much for following the tutorial. I hope you’ll like this tool. For over a decade, we want a feature to control the opacity of presets & now it’s here. I hope you’ll reap the benefit of this new feature in your post-production process. If you have questions, do comment below!

The post How to Use New Opacity Slider in Lightroom appeared first on Photoshop Tutorial.

This tutorial is all about how to use the sky replacement feature to its full potential. What to do after using the Sky replacement, how to enhance colors, light, and what to consider before picking a photo for sky replacement.

A Word of Advice

Leaving everything to technology is not a great choice and technology should make your task easier not to take over. The same thing applies to Photoshop Sky replacement, picking the right images should be considered before you start editing in Photoshop. The best images for sky replacement are where you clearly distinguish the sky from the background and your subject. A bit blown-out sky is a great choice to start with. A sky horizon that is cutting off from the background is another good choice.

The image, I am using in this tutorial, has no details in the sky and it is completely isolated. These types of images make the job easy and this is where you can use the Sky replacement feature. I know it promises to replace a sky in any condition but just a word of advice. Also, I have covered the Sky Replacement on my website already, you can read this tutorial for full explanation.

Step 1 – Open The Sample Image

I opened the image in Photoshop as you can see in the image below. It’s perfect for sky replacement as we don’t have any details in the sky. It should be easy-peasy for Adobe A.I. to change the sky here.

Step 2 – Sky Replacement

Go to Edit > Sky Replacement to bring the Sky Replacement dialog box.

To replace the sky, select a default sky that can be selected from the existing sky list. Pick the one that goes well with the photo that you are working on. I chose a golden hour sky and later I’ll adjust it according to the background of the image.

Step 3 – Make Adjustments

The sky overlay looks a bit dark and the brightness is not matching with the rest of the image. If you take a close look at the image the bright colors in the image indicate that the image is shot in bright daylight. In good lighting conditions, the sky always has a good amount of brightness or at least the light is neutral.

To keep that in my mind, I increased the Brightness to 65 to give a boost of light to the sky. You can see the settings below.

Also, by dragging the temperature slider to left (adding cool tones), I added cool tones to the sky and it turns the sky a bit close to a bright blue sky. See the image below. You can move it to the right to add warm tones.

There are two blend modes available in the Foreground Adjustments: Multiple & Screen. By default, the Multiple Blend was selected, and this blend mode darken the image (foreground) and I want the image a bit bright. Instead of changing the blending mode, I moved the Lighting Adjustment slider to the left to eliminate any lighting adjustments to the image. I don’t want it as it already looks great.

Once you are done with everything, Hit Ok and every layer that is used to replace sky will be exported to the Layer Panel. From there, we can make further adjustments if needed.

Step 4 – Further Adjustments

If you are happy with the results then you can stop here but I found some things that are a little off such as the blue tones in the shadows don’t match with the greens of the field, sunlight needs a boost of light, and the colors in the image a bit muted. I am gonna work on this starting by adding yellow tones to the shadows of the image using the Curves adjustment.

Go to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and in the Blue channel, drag the black slider to the right to add yellow tones to the shadows of the image. This will add a little bit of warmth to the shadows of the image.

I am gonna go ahead and paint the light on right over the sun. I want the sun to shine a bit more than it already is. Use a soft round brush (B), pick a dark orange color, and paint it over the sun as shown in the image below.

Change the blending mode to Linear Dodge and reduce the opacity to 51% (just to make sure you are not overdoing the light glow).

Step 5 – Pump Colors

Lastly, I am gonna pump colors to the image and make it a bit vibrant. The best way to do this is using the Vibrance Adjustment layer. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Vibrance and move the slider to right. See the settings below.

Here you can see the final results:

And we are done. We just learned how to replace the sky in just 5 Steps. Bear in mind, that it could have taken longer if you are working with a sky image that has details such as mist in the background, light flares around the horizon, and where it is difficult to distinguish between the sky and background.

Always do the work before you start in Photoshop and that will definitely help you become a better photo editor. I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Let me know if you have questions below.

The post AI Sky Replacement in Photoshop appeared first on Photoshop Tutorial.

Step 1 – Open the Sample Image

It should go without saying that you have to choose the right image for any photo effect that you are trying to replicate. Without the right photo, it would be very hard to get the effect right. For matte effects, I would look at the images having high contrast generally those images that are a bit on the brighter side. Because, we gonna wash out the contrast, and if you choose a photo that doesn’t have enough contrast and on top of that, you decrease the contrast, it would definitely ruin the image.

Take a look at the image below, this is a perfect image with high contrast and brightness.

Step 2 – Wash Out Contrast

To get a soft feel, you need to lift the shadows of the image. You can do that by washing the contrast using adjustment layers.

Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels and move the black slider to the right until you start seeing a faded effect starts to appear in the photo. Don’t go all the way to the right, just stay inside the grey area where you see the shadows are starting to fade away as you don’t want to lose all the details in shadows.

If you are confused with this step, it simple words it means we are giving a soft look to the image.

Step 3 – Mute Colors

The matte effect features muted color tones and it is obvious with a soft look. In vintage photos, the colors seem to be muted a bit, I’d say a muted color palette goes well with the vintage effect and that’s why it is necessary to mute colors.

To remove the colors a bit, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Vibrance and remove the colors by decreasing the Vibrance value to -21.

I am choosing Vibrance instead of saturation because I don’t want to mute all the colors in one go instead, I’d prefer subtle muted color tones in my photo.

Step 4 – Add Color Overlay

The vintage effect goes well with warm tones added on top of the image. It can be achieved by adding a color overlay using the adjustment layer.

Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Solid Color and I chose the color #d83d2d. You can choose the color that you’d like to go with.

Change the blending mode to Screen & adjust the opacity to 46%.

You can play around with the color using the Solid Adjustment layer. Just double-click on the layer and change the color such as warm amber tones would be a great choise. As you can see, we have a color overlay applied to the image.

Step 5 – Add Grain

This step is optional, I used the Camera Raw Filter to add a bit of grain to the image. First, create a merged layer of all layers by pressing CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + E.

Go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter:

In the Effect panel, increase the grain value to add grain to the image. You can see we have grain added to the image giving an artistic look to the image.

With the help of little tweaks, I managed to end up with the image below. You can compare the before and after results.

Thanks for following the tutorial and I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know if you have questions in the comments below.

The post 5 Steps For A Matte Photo Effect in Photoshop appeared first on Photoshop Tutorial.

Pairing The Style With The Right Images

9 out of 10 times, I would say pairing is the important factor that can have a big impact on your photos. Choosing the right image for a style should be your number one priority if you really want to nail the editing. No matter, if you are capturing with a DSLR or using your phone, a photo won’t come out as expected if you are not using presets/settings that made for it.

Let’s take the example of the below image. In the image below, you can see I applied a moody preset and you can see it’s not doing anything, and even it made the image underexposed or dark. You don’t want your photos to be ruined by a preset and you might think here you have wasted your money. The problem is not the preset, it’s the image itself. If you notice carefully, you’ll find out that the image is pretty much underexposed and on top of that the moody presets are designed to give a dark look.

So if you are using moody presets and you choose a photo that is already on the dark side or I’d say that is too dark then I am afraid any moody preset won’t be perfect for a photo like the image below.

Let’s try the moody preset again but this time on a different image. You can see right off the bat it started working and giving a dark and moody look to the image.

Why is that? First, take a look that the image is properly exposed, it has greenery around it, and most importantly when you choose an image that is already set to natural-looking exposure you can try any preset with that photo.

It’s not just preset, and it always going to be your photos that you decide to edit with any preset collection.

Set The White Balance

White Balance is the first setting that you have to set before applying any preset or you can try setting it after you use a preset. It has two sliders Temperature and Tint. The temperature slider can add warm and blue tones to your photos. The tint slider controls the greens and magentas in photos. The best part of White Balance is simplicity, you want to add warm tones, increase the temp and you want to add blue tones just decrease the temp. The same thing goes with the tint slider as well.

As you can see in the image below, I increased the temp to add golden yellow tones to the image.

I want to add cool tones to the photo, I decreased the temp.

Also, if you want to be more precious with the colors that you are adding to your photos, I would recommend using the New Color Grading Panel. This panel is new but it is more powerful than using the White Balance. You can choose a color, set the intensity, and even control the brightness of the color. You can learn more about the color grading panel here.

Set The Exposure

Exposure is a reference to light and in Lightroom, it is a setting that you can use to make a photo darker or brighter. If you dial up the exposure slider, you make a photo brighter and if you dial it down, you darken a photo.The exposure has a lot to do after applying a preset in Lightroom. Some presets can make your photos a lot brighter, on the other hand, they can even decrease the exposure of the photo.

The only way to fix the exposure, you can play around with the exposure slider. If a preset is making your photo dark, increase the exposure, and if it is exploding the image with a lot of light, simply decrease the exposure value.

But make sure you are setting the exposure for every image as there are no best exposure settings that work on every photo.

Take a look at the image below, where I applied the moody preset, remember that it made the photo dark but as I increase the exposure it started looking better. This is how the exposure can change the look of the entire photo.

After increasing the exposure:

The Tone Curve

The tone curve is very intimidating at first, but once you know how this powerful tool works it can do wonders for you. I am not going into details about this, but I am gonna share 3 tips where this tool can come in handy while editing in Lightroom.

If you want to learn more about this tool, I have an in-depth article that you can read to learn everything about the tone curve.

Top 3 things that can tone curve do with your photos, it can brighten your photos, add a soft look, and it can dim the brightness down of your photos.

Let’s say you are going after a matte and faded look, you can simply lift the shadows to add a faded look to your photos. This will increase the brightness of shadows giving you a beautiful soft matte look.

The famous S-Curve settings can be used to add a contrasty and clean look to photos. The S-Curve settings when used, it brightens the photo and at the same increase the contrast of the photo. These settings are great when you want a clean and bright look, especially with family and friends photos.

One last thing (there is a lot more you can do) that you can dim down or decrease the brightness of a photo. All you have to do is, drag the highlights point down and the image will be darkened. But why would you do that? There are a couple of reasons for doing it and the first one is if you are going after a dark and moody look. Then you gotta bring the highlights down a bit. The second reason is maybe you are dealing with overexposed photos. When a photo is overexposed that means  it has a lot of light, in that case, you can bring the highlights down to fix the exposure.

Sharpening & Smoothness

This is something that is really important for any photo that you are editing in Lightroom. Your image should have enough sharpness to pop details especially when you talk about wildlife, landscape, the milky way, sports, and urban photography.

The sharpness of an image can be controlled under the Details panel in Lightroom. This Details Panel has Sharpening & Noise Reduction options. The sharpening slider can increase the sharpness of a photo, which you should use to pop details. Noise Reduction can be used to get smoother skin tones when working with Portraits.

You can either increase or decrease the sharpening of a photo using the Sharpening slider. Make sure to always increase it to the point where you see the details good enough to be noticed by the human eyes.

When working with portraits, Noise Reduction can help you smooth skin tones but make sure to keep it on the lower side otherwise you might get blurry skin tones.

You don’t want to blur skin tones when you use this slider, one thing that you can do is use it very carefully, like don’t use a higher value (choose the value that gives you smooth skin but you still be able to see skin textures) and at the same time use it with the combination of sharpening slider. What it would do is that it retain the texture of the skin while adding softness to the skin.

That’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed these tips. If you have questions, comment down below.

The post 5 Tips on How to Use Presets & Edit Photos Like a Pro appeared first on Photoshop Tutorial.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the new masking tools “Select Subject & Select Sky” in Lightroom Classic. I’ll show you where to find the new masking tools, how to work with masks, select subjects & sky, and a creative way to use the new tools. Let’s get started!

Where to Find The New Masking Tools?

Go to the Develop Module, you’ll find a dotted circle icon that is the New Masking Tool icon, where Adobe has grouped all the masking tools such as Linear Gradient, Radial Gradient, and Brush. You can see they have added new tools Select Sky & Select Subject. Most of us are already familiar with Gradient and Brush, these two are new. We gonna take a look at them in detail by selecting the subject and sky.

Click on the Masking Icon to display the tools:

Select Subject in Lightroom

If you are one of those who has spent brushing their subjects to keep the background intact or brushing backgrounds to keep the subject intact, then you’ll love this feature. This feature allows you to quickly select subjects in one click using machine learning and artificial intelligence technology.

To select a subject, click on the Select Subject:

Notice how Lightroom has automatically selected the subject in the photo and created a mask. Yes, you can see a mask in the brand new masking panel. This allows us to create a new mask, make selective adjustments on just the subject or the background or the sky.

That new masking panel will help you refine selections as you can add parts to mask, or take away parts from the mask using the Add & Subtract button.

To show you how accurate this AI technology is, I have desaturated my subject so you can see how precise it is. Some of the furs of the goat did get away but it’s not that bad and you can even add those fluffy hairs back to selection.

Subtract/Add From Mask

The new masking panel also allows us to add new parts to selection and subtract those parts that shouldn’t be inside the selection, both can be done using the Add & Subtract Button.

Let’s subtract from the selection:

Click on the Subtract Tool, then choose the Brush, then brush over the areas which you don’t want in the mask:

Here you can see the results and notice a new masking layer is added right underneath the Mask 1, this allows us to go back at any time and refine the masking again.

If you want do the masking again, you can delete this brush layer by right-clicking on it and choosing “Delete Brush 1”.

Invert Mask

Yep, you heard it right, you can invert Masks in Lightroom. To do this, first, make sure you have selected the subject layer of the mask, and make sure you have selected the right mask in case you are working with Multiple masks.

You’ll see an option called “Invert”:

Click on it and you can see all the adjustments have been applied to the background and the subject is intact. Also, you can make further adjustments to the background without affecting your subject.

To show you, you can see I have reduced the exposure of the background but Lightroom is not affecting my subject.

Select Sky in Lightroom

Just like the Select Subject, Select Sky works the same but it selects sky instead of a subject. To get started with it, click on the Select Sky button.

You can see the red overlay showing the sky has been selected:

Let’s make adjustments to the sky! Here you can see that I made some adjustments to the sky and you can see the sky is now poping whereas there is no effect on the rest of the areas.

Multiple Masking

The fun doesn’t end here, Lightroom even allows you to create or work with Multiple Masks. You can click on the Create New Mask Button to create a new mask and work with them.

Imagine selecting multiple parts of a photo with different settings and affecting each of them without impacting the rest. This is just amazing!

How to Use The Select Subject & Select Sky

Now, I will show you a creative way where you can use these tools effectively.

First, create a Linear Gradient:

Apply the Linear Gradient as shown below. As you can see, I want to make adjustments to the sky but the subject is in the middle of the sky.

I decreased the temp to turn the sky blue but it is making the subject blue as well. I want to keep my subject out of the Linear Gradient effect:

Earlier, it would have been time-consuming as I have to brush the entire subject to remove the effect of the Linear Gradient.

But now, I can click on the Subtract button, then choose Select Subject, and boom I am done:

Here are the results:

Both of these tools are very useful and will surely help Photographers who want to make selective adjustments without spending hours. I think Adobe doesn’t want its users to move away from Lightroom to Luminar. Especially, photographers because more than 95% of photographers don’t need Photoshop and they can get the job done in Lightroom.

Of course, the Basic Photography plan (even the stand-alone Lightroom 1TB Plan) might not suitable if they don’t have access to these tools (Luminar already has these tools) as most will prefer to go for Luminar to avoid subscriptions. Anyway, these are great additions to Lightroom, and let me know what your thoughts are in the comment below.

The post Lightroom New Masking Tools Explained appeared first on Photoshop Tutorial.

Step 1 – Open The Image

Open the image in Lightroom Mobile that you think needs skin smoothing. On the left-hand side, you can se that I have opened an image and you can clearly notice that the skin has a lot of details and require a bit of smoothing.

Step 2 – Selective Edit Brush

Once you open your photo, choose the Selecting Editing Brush at the left bottom of the screen. This selective brush allows us to selectively make changes/edits to the parts of the image. It only affects those areas where you brush and the rest of the parts remain intact from any edit that you do through this brush.

There will be several options to choose from, just click on the (+) and choose Brush.

Once you have the Brush Option selected, you can set the settings of the brush such as Flow, Size, & Feather.

Step 3 – Brush Over The Skin

Let’s brush over the skin. For now, the default settings would be enough for most of us. Click on the middle icon that has soft edge circle, this will make the brush stroke soft and smooth.

Now brush over the skin where you want skin smoothing to be applied.

Keep in mind, you only need to paint those parts where it needs smoothing, don’t just brush over the entire skin.

Step 4 – Apply The Smoothing

To apply smoothing, scroll to the right until you see Details Icon. Click on it, increase the noise Levels to 50+ and decrease the sharpness level to -50 or more.

These settings may not work with your images, you gotta tweak it a little. Just make sure you are not washing away/blurring the entire skin details, just keep it to the point where you see soft skin but still able to see those skin details.

Remember, blurring doesn’t mean skin smoothing.

Step 5 – Reducing Texture & Clarity

If you think there is still some work that needs to be done on the skin, then I would recommend reducing Texture & Clarity in the Effects Tab can help you. But make sure you don’t overdo it, as these sliders are very sensitive and can blur the skin in one go.

Here are my final results:

Also, if you don’t have access to Selective Brush, you can use the Effects Tab, from there you can increase noise and reduce sharpening. But keep in mind that it would affect the entire image as it doesn’t have the option to selectively edit parts.

I hope you have enjoyed the tutorial. Let me know if you have any questions in the comment below.

The post How to Apply Skin Smoothing in Lightroom Mobile appeared first on Photoshop Tutorial.

Feature #1 – Object Selection

This tool is new and promises to select objects automatically in photos using AI technology. It’s pretty good at identifying and selecting objects.

To activate this tool, you can press (W), on the Options Bar, you can select Object Finder to find an object in any photo. It is grouped with Quick Selection & Magic Wand tool.

To quickly see this tool in action, you can hover to an object and it will give you a preview of the selection. You can see in the image below that it is pretty accurate.

If you want to select all objects in a photo, you can select the Show All Objects option. It will automatically select all objects in one go.

To select an object, you can click on it and Photoshop will make a selection:

Feature #2 – Harmonization

Harmonization filter as the name suggests tries to blend subjects with backgrounds. To be honest, it is not quite accurate and needs a lot of work. If your subject is relevant to background, then it will work. But most likely, it might not able to adjust mood, coloring, and brightness of your subject with the background and still you have to rely on blending techniques.

To activate this filter, go to Filter > Neural > Harmonization Filter:

I have my subject already extracted and I put it on top of the background layer. Once you have activated the filter, you have to select a layer as background otherwise it won’t work. The background layer could be any layer in your layer stack in which you want your subject to be harmonized.

Once you have selected the background layer, you can now start blending the subject with the background. You can adjust the colors, brightness, and strength of the filter.

Here you can see before/after imagery:

Feature #3 – Mask All Objects

This feature is really useful and very handy-dandy if you want to mask all objects from a photo. This will save time and energy as you won’t spend time selecting objects for your compositing.

To access the Mask All Objects feature, go to Layer > Mask All Objects:

Once you click on it, it will automatically mask all the objects, put each object layer with a mask on the top of the layer stack:

Feature #4 – Landscape Mixer

Landscape mixer is one of the best Neural Filter that Adobe has released and it works really well. This filter can help your landscape pop either with default presets or you can make custom changes to it. It can even mix the colors of a custom image to your landscape images.

Go to Filter > Neural Filter > Landscape Mixer:

Here you can see I used a default preset Winter and it changed the entire landscape into a winter scenery:

Here you can see the before/after imagery:

Apart from presets, you can also set the settings manually, and even you can select a custom image and this will mix the color of the custom image with your landscape.

Feature #5 – Comments

We have another cool feature rolled out with Photoshop 2022 called “Comments”. You can use this feature to get feedback from your clients, colleagues, or friends by inviting them. This really helps a lot in communication.

You can find the Comments Feature in the Window Menu.

To use this feature, you have to save your work/document in a cloud document. Which you can easily do that, by clicking on the Continue Button, and then Photoshop will upload a copy of your work to Cloud.

After saving your work to the cloud, you’ll have an option called “Share” which you can use to share your work with people:

Once you click on the Share Button, you can enter the email address of a person to whom you’d like to share your work:

You can also set Access Settings:

Feature #6 – Paste Vectors From Adobe Illustrator

Last but not the least, Pasting vectors from Illustrator to Photoshop is a huge time saver for Illustrators. I don’t have access to Illustrator and that’s I have only a little info on this. With this feature, you can easily preserve layers, structures, and attributes in Photoshop from Adobe Illustrator.

All you have to do is, select your objects in Adobe Illustrator, copy it, and paste in Photoshop, the following option will pop on your screen:

Choose layers and Photoshop will paste all the layers from Illustrator to Photoshop, preserving every layer.

That’s it for this tutorial. Apart from this, we have some more features such as Gradient Interpolation Options, Content Credentials that sound self-explanatory. Gradient Interpolation options try to create a more natural gradient blend, on the other hand, the Content Credentials feature adds credentials to your work.

It adds meta info such as your name, Photoshop version, photos used, activity and etc. Once you add the credentials, you can use it to authenticate your work. But if someone opens it and made some changes, then all the meta info will be lost. Then there is no way to authenticate your work. That is why it is not on my list of top features.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Let me know which feature stands out to you in the comment section below.

The post Top 5 Features of Photoshop 2022 appeared first on Photoshop Tutorial.

Step 1 – Open The Sample Image

Creating a dramatic image is all about creating focused lighting. The light guides the eyes to the main subject of the image and leaving other elements of the image out of focus/darken. To create a dramatic image, we can always work with Highlights and Whites, especially with whites and blacks. Because these two can help you add a high key and dramatic tones while avoiding harsh lighting.

First, download the sample image from Unsplash and open it up in Photoshop.

Then, go to Filter > Camera Raw:

Step 2 – Radial Filter

To create focused lighting you can use the Radial Filter and it’s one of the best tools to add focused lighting to any image as it provides a lot of controls such as exposure, highlights, shadows, and color control.

Also, it’s one of the best tools to make selective adjustments to any image.

To create focused lighting, select the Radial Filter (J) and then draw a circle (or oval) as shown in the image below.

Now, only the area inside the circle will be affected by the changes which I am going to make inside the Selective Edits menu.

First, I increased the exposure a bit but dialed down the highlights and shadows. Pay attention to the increased whites, and reduced blacks as these are giving the image a high contrast dramatic look.

Remember, we are only affecting the area inside the circle.

Step 3 – Basic Tab & Curves

Now get back to Basic Tab by hitting [E] and do a bit of edit to the entire image. This time I increased whites and reduced the blacks as well. This will affect the entire image and don’t forget to increase the clarity a bit to pop details.

I went to the Curves Panel, then increased the Lights again but this time I also increased the shadows. Increasing shadows will help reduce the high contrast that we are adding to the image and help adds a soft look to the image.

This is necessary to avoid any harsh lighting in the image. Increasing the level of the shadow of any image helps reduce contrast which leads to fixed harsh lighting. So, if your image is suffering from harsh lighting condition or it looks very contrasty just increase the shadows level to fix it.

Step 4 – Working with Colors

To target the colors of the image, you can use the Color Mixer or HSL Panel. I am gonna use the Saturation Tab to mute skin tones (orange color) and green color in the image.

You can see in the setting below that I have reduced the green and orange colors. Also, I went to the Luminance Tab, where I darken the green tones, and you can use the Luminance tab if you want to darken or lighten any color. In dramatic images, the background is mostly dark and very contrasty, so it makes sense to mute and darken the colors of the background.

I decided to add blue tones to the image using the Color Grading Tab. I didn’t add any color to Highlights, but if you want to you can do that. The skin tone is looking perfect and I don’t want to add a color on top of that by adding color to highlights. I chose a cyan color but you can go for a different color. See the settings below.

Step 5 – Finishing with Vignetting

Finally, I have finished the image with vignetting. You can go to the Effects Tab and use the settings below. Play around with settings, it all depends on how strong you want that vignette effect.

Also, you can go to the Details tab to help detail pop especially skin details. For now, the image looks sharp, focused lighting is there, the contrast looks good and we don’t have any harsh lighting in the image resulting in a beautiful and dramatic portrait image.

Here you can compare the before/after results:

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. If you have questions, feel free to comment below.

The post How to Create a Dramatic Image in Camera Raw appeared first on Photoshop Tutorial.

This feature is one of them and it has improved vastly, it has some new features such as Refine Hair Button and Refine Mode: Content & Object Aware. I’ll try to test this feature to see if it works and if it does, do you we need to make further refinements to our selections or not. Let’s get into it!

Step 1 – Open The Sample Image

First, you can download the sample image from Unsplash and download it if you want to follow along with me. You can see in the below image, I have opened the image by selecting File > Open.

Step 2 – Improved Select & Mask

To test this improved Select & Mask Feature, go to Select > Select & Mask.

Step 3 – Select Subject in Two Clicks

Once you are inside the Select & Mask, click on the Select Subject Button to select the subject and remove the background. In the previous version of Photoshop, it won’t select subject inside the select and mask dialog box but in Photoshop 2021 it can select subject inside the dialog box of Select & Mask.

Also, we have a brand new Refine Mode: Color & Object Aware. I selected the Object Aware Tool because I am working on a complex background. You can select Color Aware if the background is clean and simple. Bottom line is Object Aware for complex & busy background, and Color Aware is for simple and clean background.

Click on the Select Subject Button:

Here you can see the results after clicking on the Select Subject button:

They added a brand new button Refine Hair, it lets you refine hair in just one click instead of refining the hair using the Refine Edge Brush Tool. You can still use Refine Edge Brush Tool but I am testing it for the sake of simplicity and tutorial.

Step 4 – Add A New Background

Before I zoom in and show you the results of Select & Mask, I want to add a new background behind the subject. I added a new background as you can see in the image below.

I went to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and then I blurred the background using the settings shown in the below image:

Step 5 – Select & Mask Results

You can see how it did in the below image. I zoomed in so you can see how it has selected the hair and extracted them. In my opinion or as you can see it is not perfect but not bad for just one click. Not sure when we will get the perfect results but if we leave everything on A.I. then there won’t be any fun and challenge to learn from your own and others.

I have recreated the hair using my custom brushes and it started to look better after fixing the hair. If you want to learn more about how to use the custom hair brushes to recreate hair, you can follow my How to Remove Background in Photoshop tutorial, where I have shown how to remove background, fix hair, recreate them using custom hair brushes, and even you can download the custom hair brushes for free.

Step 6 – Does it really work?

Looking at the example of this tutorial, it’s been clear that it has improved significantly and as a Photoshop tutor, I couldn’t ask for more. I mean, it is just getting close to you a perfect selection in just 2 clicks and what else you want now. Sometimes if you have a complicated background and your subject doesn’t have flyaway hair, in that case, you don’t even need to do further selection refinements.

The below image also shows that it only cares about the subject and it ignores other stuff while making a selection. That’s show how accurate is the Improved Select & Mask.

Step 7 – How To Get The Most Out Of It?

That’s the question you need to ask yourself and the answer depends on person to person basis. For me, I can make it work on almost any image but to get the most out of it, I’d recommend choosing a new background but relevant to the existing background of your subject.

If you put your subject on a new background that is completely different from the existing one then it might not work and you might have to spend more time blending your subject on the new background.

The below example explains it better where I cut-out my subject from a background which has greenery and I’ve chosen a relevant background which shows flowers and greenery as well.

There is no doubt it is going well with the image and I didn’t even paint hair or did any adjustment. It’s just only 2 clicks and you can see it looks nice.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below. If you have used this feature or have some feedback on the improved Select & Mask, do let me know in the comments below.

The post Make Selections in Just 2 Clicks with Photoshop 2021 appeared first on Photoshop Tutorial.

What is Color Correction?

Color correction is a technique to find a natural looking white balance in any photo. With color correction, we try to find the perfectly balanced values for Red, Green & Blue colors. If any of the values let’s say the value of Red is higher than the rest of the two colors in a photo, that photo requires color correction treatment.

Step 1 – Open The Sample Image

I opened the sample image in Lightroom to start correcting colors. You can go to File > Import Photos & Video and import your image for color correction.

Right off the bat, you can see this image has a green color cast. It’s all over the image like a green film pasted on a photo.

We gonna remove the color cast using The Tone Curve and using the White Balance Selector W.

Step 2 – Auto Color Correction

This step is for those who want automatic color correction in Lightroom.

In any color correction, you have to select a gray point to balance all the colors in the image.

A Gray/Neutral point is where the Red, Green & Blue are same that means a point where we have no color differences.

But in this image, the green color is going to be higher than any color because it’s green color cast so we gonna find a point where you see Red & Blue close to each other.

First, select the White Balance Tool in the Basic Panel:

Once you have selected it, hover to a point where you see Red & Blue values are close to each other. Don’t worry about the green.

As you can see, I have found the gray point:

As I clicked on the gray point, you can see it has automatically removed the green color cast from my photo.

It did a pretty great job as you can see the results:

Step 3 – Incorrect Gray/Neutral Point

Let’s assume that if you have selected a gray point where Red and Blue values are not matching, then you might not get the perfect results.

In the image below, I have selected the neutral point from the skin of the model, as you can see that Red & Blue is not matching at all:

If I click here to select the gray point, you can see it is not the best result for the image.

It’s kinda added a lot more blues rather than fixing color balance in the image. Make sure you leave the color that you are trying to remove, in our case green, focus on the rest of the two colors.

This is only applicable if you can tell a color to remove from a photo. For example, looking at our image we can easily tell it’s the green color cast that we want to remove.

Step 4 – Manual Color Correction

To manually remove any color cast or correct color, you need to know the color theory. The theory says in the digital world, Reds sits opposite Cyan, Blue is the opposite of Yellow and Green is the opposite of Magenta.

To remove the green color cast, we need to add magenta tones that will cancel out green tones.

To do this, go the The Tone Curve, select the Green Channel drag it down to the magenta areas to add magenta tones and cancel out the green tone in the photos.

To confirm whether the RGB color values are the same throughout the image, activate the White Balance tool and hover on the image you’ll see almost the same values for all three colors in most of the parts. Of course, if you hover it over the red dress, the reds are going to be higher.

You can also choose other channels such as Blue to find a perfect-looking color balance. Just make sure to check the RGB values using the White Balance Tool.

Here you can see the before/after results:

Step 5 – Accurate Neutral Point

Sometimes it is very easy to find a neutral point to correct color, for example in the image below you can see the model is wearing white jeans and this is perfect for selecting a gray point. We all know that RGB values are going to be the same in white color. When you see a model wearing a white shirt, jeans or dress or you see an object is white in your photo, you can select an accurate gray point from there.

I selected the White Balance tool, then I clicked on her jean, and right off the bat the color is automatically corrected by Lightroom.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Try to find a gray/neutral point in your photo that will help you correct color in any photo. If you have questions, please leave a comment below.

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