LIGHTROOM PRESETS: LIGHT LEAKS

We are SO excited to announce the launch of our highly awaited Lightroom Light Leaks Collection! A Lightroom Collection including a curated 25 light leaks, film burn emulations and even a tilt shift effect to add a little something extra to your photos. Take a look for yourself at some of our examples below!

You can purchase the Lightroom Light Leaks Collection here!

PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: BASIC RETOUCHING TOOLS

In today’s tutorial, we’re going to go through a few basic portrait retouching Photoshop Tools. These include:

• Healing Brush Tool
• Clone Stamp Tool
• Dodge Tool
• Burn Tool

Each of these tools are essential for portrait retouching in Photoshop, so we’re going to go through an explain what each one is, what they do and how you can use them to reach the next level in your retouching.

01. Healing Brush Tool // The Healing Brush Tool is an extremely powerful tool in Photoshop. You can use it to remove blemishes from the skin, wrinkles, stray strings on fabric, scratches, dust, distractions, pretty much anything! To find the Healing Brush, you can click on the bandaid icon in Photoshop’s Tool Module or you can tap the shortcut “J”. There are two different Healing Brushes including the original Healing Brush Tool and the Spot Healing Brush Tool. Both work in similar ways. We are going to focus on the Healing Brush Tool first.

Before we can start using this tool, we need to understand how it works first. The Healing Brush Tool takes a sample from another part of the image which you can then use to paint over the section of image you want to repair. The tool then blends in your selection causing it to disappear into the surrounding image. The Healing Brush Tool does this by matching the texture, lighting, transparency and shading of your sampled selection allowing it to blend seamlessly into the image.

You can see how the Healing Brush Tool works below. We selected a sample (by Alt + clicking on a particular area) from the model’s hair and painted it into the grass. Can you see how at first the new area of hair in the grass looks exactly the same as the hair we sampled from? As soon as we let go of the mouse, the Healing Brush Tool gets to work to start blending the painted area. We can now see that the hair has a transparent look and the colour is matching its surroundings.

The hair doesn’t blend in perfectly with it’s surroundings as we are just using this as an obvious example to show you how the Healing Brush works. In a real retouching situation if you were to for example remove a pimple from someone’s face, you would use a small brush sampling from a clean section of skin and brushing over just the pimple or item you are trying to remove.

As we mentioned before, this tool also has a variation in the Spot Healing Brush Tool. This tool works in very much the same manner, however instead of sampling yourself, the tool automatically samples from around the area you are retouching. 

02. Clone Stamp Tool // The Clone Stamp Tool is similar to the Healing Brush Tool in that you Alt+click an area you want to sample from and then brush the sample into another area of the image. Unlike the Healing Brush, the Clone Stamp Tool doesn’t match the texture, lighting, transparency or shading of your sampled selection, instead it’s paints in the pixels as they are. This tool is useful for duplicating objects or removing objects entirely. You can also use it to paint part of one layer onto a different layer. Take a look at the example images below to see how the Clone Stamp Tool works.

The Clone Stamp Tool can be used in combination with the Healing Brush to smooth out sharp edges left by the healing brush in intricate retouching situations. I’ve touched on this subject on various of my previous tutorials such as this and this one.

03. Dodge Tool // The Dodge Tool in Photoshop works to lighten an area of your image. Applying the Dodge Tool to the original image layer permanently alters the image information. To use the Dodge Tool on your images nondestructively, work on a duplicate layer.

Select the Dodge Tool and choose a brush softness and size in the options bar. In the Range menu, you can select between Highlights, Midtones and Shadows. Selecting Highlights from the Range menu means the Dodge Tool will lighten the lighter areas of your images. Selecting midtones lightens the middle tonal range of your image and shadows lightens the darker areas. Opacity is the next option to change. When the opacity of the Dodge Tool is lower, it will be applied with less strength. When the opacity is at a high percentage, the Dodge Tool will be applied harsher. Tick the Protect Tones checkbox in order to minimise clipping in the shadows and highlights.

Once you have changed your settings, simply brush over the areas you want lightened in your image to see the Dodge Tool take effect. In the example image below, we used a large, soft brush with the Dodge Tool set to Midtowns, Opacity 20% and Protect Tones checked on.

Original

With Dodge Tool

We used the Dodge Tool to brush over the model’s face, arm and hair to brighten the portrait and bring attention to the centre of the image.

04. Burn Tool // The Burn Tool in Photoshop works to darken an area of your image. Just like the Dodge Tool, applying the Burn Tool to the original image layer permanently alters the image information. To use the Burn Tool on your images nondestructively, work on a duplicate layer.

Select the Burn Tool and choose a brush softness and size in the options bar. In the Range menu, you can select between Highlights, Midtones and Shadows. Selecting Highlights from the Range menu means the Burn Tool will darken the lighter areas of your images. Selecting midtones darkens the middle tonal range of your image and shadows darkens the darker areas. Opacity is the next option to change. When the opacity of the Burn Tool is lower, it will be applied with less strength. When the opacity is at a high percentage, the Burn Tool will be applied harsher. Tick the Protect Tones checkbox in order to minimise clipping in the shadows and highlights.

Once you have changed your settings, simply brush over the areas you want lightened in your image to see the Burn Tool take effect. See how the Burn Tool works in the example images below.

Original

With Burn Tool on Midtones

With Burn Tool on Shadows

In the second example image, we used the Burn Tool with a large, soft brush set to Midtones, Opacity 20% and Protect Tones checked on. We brushed over any light part of the image, which results in a flat photo. This tool is handy to use when a part of the image is drawing the eye away because it is too bright. For example, we could use the Burn Tool on Midtones to bring down the brightness of the model’s leg in the bottom left hand corner of the image, as well as the hand that’s on the grass. With those two elements of the photo now darkened and in turn flatter, they blend into the rest of the photo drawing your eyes up the model’s arm and to her face. We also used the Burn Tool on the top background of the image, bringing down the blacks further to bring attention away from the background.

In the third example image, we used the Burn Tool with a large, soft brush set to Shadows, Opacity 10% and Protect Tones checked on. This time we brushed over areas of the image that we wanted to be darker. In this case, we brushed over her hair which brings out more of the texture, as well as brushing over a few features on the model’s face. As you can see, using the Burn Tool on Shadows actually brings out contrast in the image in contrast to the Burn Tool set to Midtones which flattens the image.

Below is an example of the image with both the Dodge and Burn Tool used in conjunction to bring out the best in the image. 

Original

With Dodge and Burn

One last tip when using the Dodge and Burn Tool is that sometimes when applying these tools, the colour in your images may start to be altered. In the above image while using Dodge and Burn on the model’s face, the orange tinge in her skin tone was being saturated. In order to avoid this happening, set your duplicate layer’s blend mode to Luminosity. This means that only the tone in your image will be altered rather than the colour.

As you can see from the above examples, using the Dodge and Burn Tool in Photoshop can really make the final emphasis needed on an image to make it stand out. While you can apply an overall colour tone in Lightroom, Photoshop has the tools needed to take further control over an image. You are able to hone in on specific parts of a photo, editing with as little or as much strength as you need to alter a specific section.

PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: GOLDEN HOUR EXPANSION

In today's tutorial, we're going to take a closer look at this speed editing video and go through each of the steps carried out in Photoshop to create the final image. Below are all the original images used to create the final photo, scroll down to read the rest of the tutorial!

Original image 1

Original image 2

Original image 3

Original image 4

Original image 5

01. Original Images // Similar to a few of my other Photoshop Image Expansion tutorials, I did not shoot this image with the intention of creating an expansion from it later down the track. Instead of having thought out extra photos from the main photo to be able to select from to expand my photo, I only have random photos that I also took of the landscape that same day. The first step in this expansion process is to go through all your images and select which ones you think you might need for your edit.

In this case, I selected a photo with a subject in it for the main focal point of the edit. I also then selected one photo which included an even spread of ocean and sky, a photo which prominently featured just the sky, a portrait orientated landscape photo and a photo that featured more of the shoreline reflection. You can see all the original images I selected above.

02. Lightroom // Once I have selected my images, I open them in Lightroom to colour grade. Due to the golden hour glow and the nature of this image, I wanted to give it a pop of pastel colours so I applied the Lovestruck Lightroom Preset to all the final images I intend to work with.

03. The First Layer // I open the main image I want to work this expansion from in Photoshop, in this case the photo with the subject walking, and crop the image outward into a square. I then use the Photoshop Transform Tool to adjust the angle of the photo so the horizon line is straight. 

04. Adding the Sky // The next step is to fill in the missing piece of the expansion, the sky. I decide to go with original image 3 to do this as it was photographed at a similar angle to the image I am working on, and has just enough sky to fill in the expansion. I then pasted original image 3 into the expansion, lowered the opacity of the new layer to 30% so I could see what was behind it, then used the transform tool to make the horizon line up horizontally. 

To blend in the two images together, I applied a layer mask to the sky photo. I then used a soft brush at 100% opacity to start removing sections of the ocean. Once I started getting close to the horizon line, I switched the opacity of my brush to about 20% to soften the edges of where the two photos of the ocean meet to help them blend in seamlessly.

05. Reflections // While you can already see a slight reflection of the clouds in the shoreline of the image I’m working on already, I wanted them to be more prominent to add a little extra sense of magic to the photo. Looking through the images I prepared to use for the expansion earlier, I decided to use original image 1 to get the job done. I loved the big, orange clouds this image had in the top right hand corner. I thought the fact that they were slightly lighter in colour and were overall softer than any other clouds I had available through my images would work really well in order to be able to make them seem like a reflection.

I imported original image 1 into my expansion and flipped the image upside down using the Transform Tool in Photoshop. A tip to be able to do this quickly is to select the layer you want to transform and use the shortcut Cmd+T (or ctrl+T if you are on PC). When the Transform Tool is in action, head to the top of the Photoshop Module where you can see the X &Y axis, W & H percentages. If you want to flip your image upside down, simply change the Height (H) percentage to -100%. Likewise if you want to flip your image horizontally, then change your Width (W) percentage to negative 100% and press enter to set the transformation.

Once again I lowered the opacity of the new layer to 30% so I could see what was behind it, then used the transform tool to move the layer around and change it’s size so the clouds would line up in the reflection of the shoreline. Once I was happy with the placement, I set the layer’s blend mode to Multiply and set the opacity to 80%.

Finally I applied a layer mask to the reflection clouds and used a brush at 100% opacity to remove any areas of the image that weren’t needed. Once I started getting close to the area I wanted to work on, I switched my brush to an opacity of 20% and slowly brushed away until I was happy with the clouds that were left on the shoreline.

06. Little Details // I’ve mentioned in my tutorials in the past that once you remove the more obvious distractions, sometimes the eyes are drawn into something new in the image. In this case, my eyes are now gazing into the bottom right hand corner of the image where you can see a few other footprints and dark spots in the sand. I create a new blank layer and use the Clone Stamp Tool at a 20-40% opacity to start smoothing out the sand. While using the Clone Stamp Tool it is important to constantly have your finger hovering over the Alt key to quickly be able to select new areas for the tool to sample from. This helps to not create recurring patterns in the texture you are cloning, but rather keeping it looking random and thus more natural.

07. Tone // I was happy with how the final image was looking now that we’ve finished the expansion, but still felt like it could use a little more contrast to make it look more dramatic. I use the Lasso Tool to select different areas of the image, starting with the left hand side of the image, working my way towards the clouds and finishing off by focusing on the sand and shoreline. When I make a selection, I always feather it by 100 or 200% before opening my RGB curves to alter the tone curve to add a little more contrast. This help the curve you are adding to your image blend in.

08. Colour Grade // Last but not least I opt to do one last colour grade on the image. I still felt like the overall image was looking quite blue and detached from the amazing sunset that was happening to the right side of the image. I create an RGB curve adjustment layer for the entire image and remove the blue tinge in the shadows and add some warmth into the mid range. And there we have it! This is the final image below.

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LIGHTROOM PRESETS: LIGHTROOM PRESETS

It's that time of year again! Each season, we round up our favourite six Lightroom Presets that perfectly suite the season we're in for you to edit your current images with! Today we're putting together our favourite Fall presets. Wonderfully warm, film-like, desaturated and soft - the perfect vibe for fall! See them below.