A Powerful Way to Change Background in Photoshop by Using Blend Modes

in this video we're gonna be talking about how to change backgrounds using blend modes isn't that interesting now remember what I told you I told you that overlay is such a blend mode that it deletes everything which is 50% gray right which is neutral great totally it raises it makes it invisible now if you have shot your subject with a gray background well changing the blend mode remove the background they'll find out so without any further ado let's get started [Music] so here we are four sharpened before we do anything blend modes are major we need to understand them first so I told you that opacity makes invisible everything which is 50% gray but soft light does the same and hard light does pretty much the same how are they different so we need to understand them so in the background I have a very pretty image landscape and I have covered it with three strip colors okay in another layer just above it so in the middle we have neutral gray on the right hand side we have something a lighter gray on the left hand side we have darker gray so when you change the blend mode to say overlay what happens is the middle remains the same okay let's have a closer look even if I turn this off it's the same I turn it on it's the same now overlay if you remember I had said makes everything brighter than neutral gray brighter and darker than neutral gray gray darker so that's what it's doing so on the left hand side we had darker gray so it's making that darker and lighter grades making that lighter now how is soft light different from this so so if you change wait a minute let me just lower down the volume it's something is coming up okay if you change this to soft light watch it's also making the right hand side light on the left hand side darker but here's the difference the difference is it's making it less lighter and it's making it less darker so it's matter of threshold so overlay has a more narrow a threshold even as something is little lighter than neutral gray it makes it a whole lot lighter as compared to soft light okay now soft light has a wider threshold even if it is much more brighter than neutral gray it makes it a little brighter so it's all about thresholds now let's move on to hard light now what does hard light do hard light is stronger than overlay now it makes the darker more darker than overlay and something brighter than neutral you get more bright and then overlay so you can think of it like this soft light is very subtle overlays in the middle hard light is very hard okay extreme soft light hard light over so today we're going to experiment the same with this image so this image was submitted by Shawnee and net she's an awesome portrait photographer to check out more office work go ahead and check it out right here so as you can see this is shot in a grey background but it's darker it's not fifty percent gray but it's great and that's going to help us how let's find out let's find her a nice background using the pectorals photoshop plugin and this allows you to search for free stock photos from inside of Photoshop and import them as layers so I saved this so let's click on it it will download the photo and import it in our image so it has imported let's just memorize that and let's make it a little bigger ctrl T also if you don't have that plugin if you have that background saved in your computer what you can do you can go to file open and import adds you know how to do that right or or here's not the tip what you can do is you can also go to file place embedded and search for that image and that will embed that image over this one okay that's one of the ways of doing it now let's make this a little bigger so ctrl t press and hold shift and just reckon all right to the very bottom now once you have dragged this press ENTER and then just adjust it the way you like okay maybe okay there's another tip press and hold shift while you move it that way you move it along the line you don't go up and down if you are not if the shift is not held and you move it this might happen okay if the shift is held when you move it it moves straight okay if you want to move it something like that press and hold shift if you want to move it like this it will move in straight lines so shift is the key so suppose we want it to be like this okay now what do we have to do we have to make two copies of the background layer control a command J twice okay name this one hard light oops I did something wrong name this one hard light okay to name a layer all you have to do you have to double click on the text again double click on the text hard light okay and name this one fill in you don't have to name it later but just for an indication I'm telling you now turn off the filling and take the hard light above the background take the fill and also above it okay fill in is the topmost layer then the hard light then the background then the normal the background lock clear okay so change the hard lights blend mode to hard light okay now you can also try overlay another blend mode soft light and overlay and see how it looks but hard light watch look at the image how beautifully says of course it's showing some strange things through her body but here's the thing just look at her hair just look at these intricate selections just look at it it's so amazing just a little bit of adjustment and we can fix it now here's the key here's the thing I usually get confused between here's the key and here's the thing but that's a different story alright so if you turn off this one you see the background is a little lighter but if you turn this back on turn off and turn on you see the background becomes darker and this is going to help us this is a positive thing because this is matching now okay have the background being brighter this wouldn't have matched now if you go ahead and if you add something like levels and curves to this one if you make this brighter the background will automatically become brighter according to the colors or the adjustments that you do in this okay now of course there's going to be some adjustments you're going to do in this sometimes what's going to happen is that the color is going to change when you apply hard light which we will look at later in the tutorial but for now this is not affecting the color you know why because the background doesn't have much of a color okay so now we need to adjust the light to adjust the light at a levels adjustment layer and I don't know why this is so huge let's make it a little smaller and there you go and make this level adjustment layer to be applied only to this hard light layer to do that click on this this creates a clipping mask also another way of creating a clipping mask is press and hold alt or option and click on this line two ways of creating a clipping mask we need to make it lighter take this ladder from the right to the left don't make it blow out alright so this is great and middle ones not too much now this is something I like okay let's look at the before and after so this before this is the after so we love the light right now now what we have to do we have to fill in the areas to fill in the areas we're simply going to use the fill in layer let's turn this layer on but this time you're going to create a negative mask and then fill in the middle part in which the background goes through her body so present a little alt or option and click on this mask button so this creates a negative mask now take a brush make it a little bigger make it a little softer to make the brush bigger press and hold alt or option hold the right mouse button drag it to the right to make it bigger and drag it to the left to make it smaller and drag it upwards to make it soft downwards to make it hard okay make it soft make it a little bigger and let's zoom in and simply paint over these areas now once you paint you begin to realize that this is darker than the adjustments that we had made okay so you can add the same levels here or what you can do you can even add some curves now let's try adding the same levels adjustment to this one and let's create a clipping mask and let's see whether that's adjusting or not that's pretty much adjusting we need to do a couple of more adjustments to this but I think how about adding a curves adjustment layer so let's add a curves adjustment layer you can add new levels also but let's try curves and let's brighten this up okay but this is affecting the whole layer we don't want that to happen we just want this to affect this one the fill in one so and increase it until it matches with that of the background now this is good this is good closing now just paint in come back to this mask paint in with white brush white is the color and foreground color and just simply paint just don't go near the edges just don't paint near the edges just paint in the middle and you'll be fine all right so you can take as much time as you want in this but you get the idea right so this helps you a lot now you can be careful here the sides not super careful you can pretty much work your way so let's fill in the middle and then they'll take up take care of the curve it just simply fill in these areas I'm doing a very rough job guys take your time and do this perfectly okay so but I'm going to show you my final which took me a little more time but see how easily does the selection for you and you don't have to do all those intricate selecting masks and all those stuff kit you don't have to do any of that at all I'm doing right now is painting with white and that's what that and that's all right so it's super easy super easy to do soft brush white and it's all fun so you can take your time doing the edges but it's all fine have a look just so quickly we have made composite and if you have spilled out by mistake for example if you are painting here for example and if you spilled out by mistake what you can do is you can press X and this makes the foreground color black and then you can paint back in this right so you can press X again to get this area right and you can take your time as much as you want and you can also do a little bit of selection here if you want to but I don't think you would need that so we have done a pretty good job now how about adding a little bit of light and drama to it so as you can see if I turn this hard light layer off the background is already a little brighter so if I had a mask to this hard light let's add a mask and if I paint in this area with black so this area will become invisible in this layer and therefore the background will become brighter so let's come to the mask let's make the little at the brush and let's make the brush little bit bigger and make sure the foreground color is black and don't paint over the subject just to the side just a little bit now this adds a little beautiful light here so you can do a little more here here so as you can see just a beautiful light adding a little drama look at the before and after now isn't this looking beautiful now you can go ahead add another curves above all of it okay add another curves to add more drama to it maybe make it a little brighter a little darker so just a little drama before after now let's try it some cross processing it should be fun now there is something in Photoshop which is kind of hidden but you can use it it finds like Instagram filter but you loved it so go to the adjustment layers and choose color lookup now here just have a look so many presets you have that you can choose from candlelight Chris forms amazing presets so let's go ahead and choose one of my favorite horror blue wow it looks really beautiful look at the before and after amazing this gives an amazing effect now here's the thing you can control the intensity by using the opacity slider I've always told you opacity is going to be your best friends so let's decrease the intensity to somewhat maybe not too much maybe 5755 let's keep it 55 now add one more color lookup you can combine different presets okay let's add one more color lookup and this time let's choose of edgy amber and this is good now we have to decrease the intensity to something like this 35 this is good and just increase the intensity of this one from 55 just a little bit more maybe 65 good and let's add one more color lookup and this is going to be crisp one but this is too much so we're going to decrease the intensity is it a little bit let's increase the overall brightness let's add one more brightness contrast or maybe channels with the curves to do so let's increase the overall brightness all right after now as you can see that this side is getting a little more darker very dark we don't want that to happen so what you can do you can add a brightness contrast layer and increase the brightness and watch once you're satisfied with this side just decide say 60 years satisfied with 60 so close it and then right click on it go to blending options and how about decreasing the brightness from the already brighter area so take the slider of the underlined layer from the left so as you can see brightness goes away from this and we want brightness to goes away go away from extra dark areas also suggest this area so this is fine and to make it smoother press and hold alt or option + click on this and make it smoother from here do the same for the right side right so have a look before after it adds a little bit here so you want to create a mask controller command I and just take the brush and just paint over that particular area with white make sure why did the foreground color and just paint over this area if you want to just a little bit so that's a little trick there if you think it's helpful it is so yeah so that's just a little trick there okay before after adds a little more dimension to it have a look I don't think I should have applied it here and a forehead just a little bit and decrease the opacity of course have a look before after so that's pretty much done for this image now let's move on to the next one why the next one now remember what I told you about changing the colors manipulating the colors of the image when you change the blend mode to hard light because the hard light a kind of bit changes the colors and does something so let's have a look so by the way this image was submitted by Karim Benzema he's an amazing also amazing awesome portrait photographers I really have I'm really grateful for these awesome photographers to let me edit their images I'm really fortunate to do that you can check more of his work or right here okay so let's jump straight in so here I have already done the work for you so that I don't have to go through the whole process so that we have the background image and then they're okay the background layer and then the hard like layer I have not changed the blend mode yet now when you change the blend mode have a look have a look it's changing the colors here okay it's kind of desaturating them right so what to do now so add a hue/saturation adjustment layer and sometimes what's going to happen it's going to over saturate it depends upon the background okay also the subject but totally depends upon the background how colorful or non colorful the background is so as you can see we need to increase the reds here the reds are totally gone so what we would do we would go to reds and increase the reds the saturation of the reds as you can see now the hair is looking natural now here's another tip what you can do is that you can change the blend mode to saturation now what that's also let me show you what that go to no matter how much lightness you change that's not going to brighten the image see it's just making it black and white okay no matter how much you you change that's not going to affect the image fine because the blend mode is saturation so that's a great part of having the saturation blend mode that it just affects the saturation right so we would increase the saturation of what let's reset that off Reds to match with that of the background and increase the saturation now this now this is too much of course so now this is great now we want this to be just effect this one the hard light one so let's create a clipping mask and there you go now one of the keys of matching the color is to have a look at the original one image again and again press and hold alt or option and click on it look at how the hair was okay just have a look at how the hair was then all present all rolled again and press it again so just have a look so don't look at how bright it has become just look at how the hair was so it can always go back and go to red and we just adjust just a little bit and maybe go to the yellows and decrease the saturation of the yellows just a little bit okay now you can add the fill in there I have already added it and there you go that's not quite matching so what we would do we would have to brighten the layer a little bit okay so let's go ahead is to the fill in there and let's brighten it using the curves and the curves just apply to that one so clipping mask and then dragnet brighten it up just a little bit okay there you go so if you want to brighten the background up also what you can do you can come to the hard light layer and you can brighten that up using curves or levels so let's add levels let's add curves this time so make sure that has a clipping mask just applying to this one so you can make it a little brighter too if you want to okay and if you do that you again have to go to that curves it's just affecting the filling layer and make it even more brighter now here's another key the key is that the hairs are not completely coming in as you can see there's a couple of thing it's not filling in properly and it's not dark enough so what to do stack another hard light layer as simple as that so go back to the hard light there and make a copy of it so controller command J now as you can see the hairs are filling in so properly but there's another problem the problem is it's making everything dark we don't want that to happen right so what we would do come to the hard light layer which is beneath because on the above hard light layer we have the curves and hue/saturation being applied so safe kind of safe you can do that in that one also let's come to that one present DeLaughter option click on this mask button and now take the brush and just paint over the areas that you want to darken okay with white so decrease the flow please just 20 or something like that and just paint over these areas just fill it up you might have to decrease the saturation just a little bit here and there you get the idea right see never look sweet how else nicely kind of fills in these areas adds a little shadow to it okay so that's another tip here we left up so you do that properly I quickly did it to show you guys so you fill in these areas and if you spill it over X and then bend over this area so let's have a look at before and after so this is the before this is the after see how nicely nicely that feels thin okay so that's pretty much it for this one now also I know I need to go to the fill-in and just fill up this one fill up this space I actually increase the flow just a little bit fill up this space and you get the idea right so that's how you change backgrounds for using blend modes and a couple of things to keep in mind one you have to shoot it in grey background for this method to work okay number two remember what the blend mode does the complete blend mode sector here overlay soft light hard life this total area pretty much does the same it deletes everything which is 50% gray and has kind of different ways of treating which is which what is lighter than what is darker than 50% gray so a number three you need to remember that you need to be very careful with the color and the lightness when you apply the hard light now when you apply the hard light it can over saturate your image and it can can also desaturate your image it can take away the Reds take away the yellows or increase the resin crease the yellows so accordingly we need to adjust if the color is wrong adjust using the hue/saturation adjustment layer and if the light is wrong add just using the levels or the curves also you can add a little bit of special effect using a mask in hard light player and of course to add more cross processing effects presets what you can do adjustment layer color lookup and try the different presets hey hope this video helped you and if it did make sure it give us a like and don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe clicking that Bell button so that you don't miss anything I'll see you guys in the next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you creating we are feeling bored and I can say we are vacant and I wonder where you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 379,404

Keywords: photoshop background change, change background fast in photoshop, easy way to change background in photoshop, select hair photoshop, blending modes photoshop, blend modes, select subject photoshop, extract object photoshop, dramatic lighting, color grading photoshop, cross processing, color lookup, match background color photoshop, change photo background, overlay, soft light, hard light, photoshop concepts, adjustment layers in photoshop, color matching photoshop, piximperfect

Id: odgIW8qHUYU

Length: 23min 42sec (1422 seconds)

Published: Thu May 04 2017