CREATIVE EXPRESSION (Via COLOR):Featuring The NIK COLLECTION/ Color Efex Pro 4...

hello everyone on today's episode it's creative expression via color this is dave kelly and welcome to the joy of editing with dave kelly [Music] i'd like to start off today by saying i love to create pictures now notice i didn't say i love to take pictures and there's a big difference there to me creating pictures is taking what's in your mind and bringing it into a picture form now i use different pieces of software like photoshop topaz software the nik collection and you know luminar and different pieces of software to bring out my creative expression and today i want to look at how color can really alter the mood the filling of an image now the image up in the upper right hand corner is right out of the camera the image on the lower left hand corner was my creative expression now you'll notice i did some blurring techniques on it but the main thing i want to focus on today is the color look how the color changes look at the mood of the picture on the bottom compared to the picture on the top now i'm not saying the picture on the upper right hand corner is bad i really enjoy that picture but that picture on the left is a total different expression now i can take this picture and this one picture here i can maybe have hundreds of different forms of expression just out of one picture imagine that so the the possibilities are really endless when you have a creative mindset and please leave comments and questions in the comment section below because you know i look and read all those sometimes i don't get to answer them all but i try my best to answer them and the thing is i when i read those comments and questions it gives me ideas for new episodes so i really want to keep a dialogue opened up with you guys and i really appreciate all of your feedback now here we are in photoshop and as i said this episode or this tutorial today is going to evolve around color i'm going to show you how i colored this image and i use the knit collection i use colorfx pro 4 to do that and we're going to do that today i'm going to show you how i made this and also i used some other pieces of software and i did some other things to it like for instance here's the original image the background image and then i have a layer called background cleanup so let me show you here's the before and here's the after and i have other video showing you how i use painting effects in photoshop to clean up a background especially on images that have a nice soft bokeh in the background all right and then i sent this image into analog effects pro 2 that's part of the knit collection and i did some blurring effects and some different lighting changes on it i'll do other episodes showing how i blur and you can blur with uh topaz products you can blur in photoshop you can blur in the knit collection i really love to do blurs with the uh analog effects pro piece of software like i did here in the nik collection i'll i'll do videos on that upcoming here but i did that and lastly i sent in to set it into uh color effects pro 4 and did the coloring and i'm going to show you how i did the coloring next by the way i provide my affiliate links to the software that i really love and enjoy and i use in the description below and if you click on my affiliate links and use my promo codes that i have listed there you're going to save money on the software and it helps me out and you'll never pay more for the software but most of the time you're going to save money and this helps me with my channel helps me to keep these videos coming your way and i really appreciate all those who use my links for now i'm just going to delete this colorfx pro 4 layer i'm just going to you know make sure it's selected and i'm just gonna click on the trash can and it goes away hate to see it go but i'm gonna try to recreate it again so here we go all we need to do now is come up here to filter and i'm gonna go to the nik collection and go to color effects pro 4 give that a click i don't even have to make a new layer it does that all for me and i really love that about the knit collection whenever you use colorfx pro 4 colorfx always remembers the last filter or filters that you've used and through the magic of video editing i got rid of those because i wanted to start from scratch so you'll notice it says empty filter right here and we will start from scratch along with topaz studio 2 and i know if you watch my videos you hear me calling it my creative toolbox this is another one of my creative toolboxes one of my secrets and that is colorfx pro 4. look at all these filters in here i mean it's it's almost mind-blowing uh when you look at all these filters you say oh my gosh what do i do with these well this is where you really have fun and when you tap into these filters and unleash their power that's where the fun really begins we're going to work with three filters today in here and that's the bi-color filters the ink filter and the level and curves filter now that's the same levels and curves that's in photoshop i could have saved that step for photoshop but i'm going to do it in here well let's go ahead and find that filter which is the bi color filters right here i'm gonna click it right here you can also come here see where you see these this little these little thumbnails right here if you click that that'll show you some presets i'm not going to work with that today i'm just going to show you how i did my image of other videos showing you how all this stuff works okay so by color filters and that's what my image looks like when i first click it on now if we come over here and you notice where it says color set if i click this right now it says one now what you want to hover down through these you'll see the image change but isn't that cool look at all these really cool different effects you get and to me this is where the fun comes when you start saying oh my gosh i've spent i can honestly tell you i've spent hours working on images just playing with these different things but i find it a great joy to do you know some of you may say well that seems hard you know because i got to go through and check all these things out but you know take your time relax have some fun and just experiment and enjoy and believe me the more you do this kind of stuff the more creative you're going to get and people are going to say oh my gosh i didn't know you were an artist and yes you are we all are artists we have an inner artist in us we just have to listen to it and bring it out get it out of the box okay unleash it now i used uh one called violet pink and i use violet pink number three and that's this guy right here so i'm going to go ahead and click it and that's what it looks like now you may say that looks totally different dave than what uh the image in photoshop looked like yeah but i'm not done i'm going to add another filter called ink but if you come up here see where it says compare and click this and hold this left click it with your mouse and hold it there's the before and there's after but right there that's beautiful and you may have said you know what when you were clicking through there dave i saw a lot of really beautiful looks in here and yeah they are beautiful right but i stopped on this one and i thought this is the one i want and when you're doing your image pick the one that you want okay now notice here we have a bunch of different sliders one called opacity blend vertical shift rotation what does this all mean well let's remember my numbers okay opacity is on 50. so remember that and i think i think it's around where i kept my opacity because i think it remembers my last settings but anyway let me go ahead and see this see if i pull the opacity up the effect gets stronger so let me pull it back to 50 i just want you to see how this works let's go back to 50 and now the blend is at 50 percent now i'll take the blend move it to the left see it's it's not blending as well right it's a more harsh line there but if you move it to the right it starts to blend and see how you can blend and have fun with it i'm going to put it back to 50 and then we have vertical shift right now it's at 45 degrees and let me take that blend move the whole way to the left just to show you something here it's a 45 degrees remember that number help me if i forget so i'll move it to the left you can and move it to the right you can see it see it move see the vertical shift moving we don't see any of that purplish color but now when i start to move it down it starts to move in and what was that number i think it was 4245 somewhere around in there um maybe 45 i'll put it at 45 and now let's do our blend and see how we can blend in and it was blend blending in around 50. but let me pull it back because i'm going to show you the rotation right right now the rotation's at 180 we can take it and we can move it see how it just rotates it that's all it's doing it's rotating you can put it on the side you can move it to the bottom put it anywhere you want and let's put it back to around 180 okay right right there and now i'm at 182. let's go to 180 right there now let's start to blend it and i think i was blending in at around 50 but isn't that isn't that beautiful right there and we can protect shadows and highlights i don't need to do it here today i'll show you that on another video but there we go here's the before and here's the after now you may say this is the vision i have stop right here you are done but i went further and i do want to say this when i said i went further i didn't know where to go in my mind i thought let's try this filter called ink which is right here okay now before i do that this is very important see here it says add filter if you just click on ink here you'll lose your bicolor filter it'll go away and the ink filter will go up so you have to click on add filter all right very important okay don't forget that step and then come over here and you can click ink now before i click ink if i click on these thumbnails right here you can see a bunch of different presets and look at these presets and presets are really cool because this will help you you might find one of these presets and you say like you know what i love this cool warm look right here i'm going to work with that and then you can alter it and change it okay but it's a good starting point sometimes but i didn't do that i'm going to click back and go backwards and i'm just going to go ahead and click on the ink filter by itself just like that and that's what appeared and i thought oh my gosh look at that now notice the zinc filter has this little check mark here if i uncheck it you can see just the bi-color filter and here it is with the ink filter and i thought wow that is amazing and you know what have you ever heard of the muse the muse is that inspiration inside of you think of it like the spirit within you okay don't mean to get weird on you here but it's that creative force inside of you what i would call the inner artist and that inner artist a lot of times not a lot of times if you tap into it it'll coach you until you give you ideas like hey try this try that listen to that and follow it and try things and again this is all part of the joy of editing this shouldn't be stressful it should be fun i'm having a lot of fun today as you can tell anyway let's come over here to the ink and see what controls we have here now we have a color set this drop down here let's click it and we have all these different colors that we can play with and again as you hover over them see them changing for you look at this beautiful stuff and again come on have fun play try these things out but you know what i liked one so i stayed with one and then you have a strength slider here right so if you move it to the right it makes it stronger if you move it to the left it it softens it up a bit and i ended up with a strength of like 57 and i really love that and uh we have this highlight protection i'll go ahead and show this to you now but if i move this to the right see what it does in the highlights it protects the highlights here it kind of like your highlights don't take on that really um over you know like that clipped look like here they take on that clip look here now in hindsight i probably could have just used this highlights to do what i did with curves i'm going to go ahead and do what i did with curves but i could use the highlights to do it too right there i think i'd be done but i'm going to leave the highlights off i should have done it that way but i'm learning too as i go and that's important okay but that's the ink filter and i'm done so let's compare i started with this and i'm ending with this so far i'm going to do one more filter and that's the curves just to tame these highlights down but again as i said i should have just done it right here it would have done the job for me now i'll take care of these highlights and you can look down here at the bottom see my histogram you can see the highlights are kind of slammed up to the edge here right so i want to tame those down and that's what that highlight protection would have done for me but hey i'm doing it the hard way so i'm going to use curves so there's a curves and levels here or levels and curves right here i'm going to click this and oh let me do something i made a mistake i'm going to hit command z go backwards it might be ctrl z and a pc because remember i told you you have to click add filter i'm leaving this mistake in because this will happen to you i'm going to click add filter and now i'm going to go to levels and curves and click it on okay very important don't make that mistake you will i guarantee you will now all i want to do here is take this curve this upper point of the curve the highlights and i just want to pull down as i do pull down in there you notice that my highlights are taming down and you also see my histograms moving to the left here okay so i just want to ease up on the highlights a little bit not too much like that and i might just click right here and add another point and just bump up the midtones a slight bit something like that maybe just pull this down a little bit more right like that now here's the before the curves and here's the after see it just toned that down just a little wee bit and here's a little tip too if you come here to control points and click this there's an opacity slider hidden away in here if you went too much you can take this and pull back on that a little bit so if you went a little bit too strong you can ease up on it and i think right there is good so let's click on this before and here's after and that is it when you're happy with your results you're totally satisfied the only thing you have to do is come down to the bottom right hand corner and click ok and that'll save out your image and send you right back into photoshop and now welcome back to photoshop so we started out with this kind of fun image and we ended up with this a piece of artistic expression or may i dare say a piece of art now at this point i might save this out and say i love this picture might hang it on my wall and now that i have a copy saved i may continue to work on a new version of this image i might want to add textures to it i might want to take it into topaz studio 2 and turn it into a painting i may want to use the ai remix filter on it gosh again the possibilities are endless but listen to that inner artist within you that creative muse listen to that and make art enjoy and have fun i hope you enjoyed this tutorial today i had a lot of fun making it and this is something i wanted to do for a while just really talk about art and artistic expression in that inner muse in you that we all have believe me you have it it just might not be unleashed yet and i hope this uh video inspired you to do more experimentation to use the different pieces of software and to really take your time and enjoy yourself and enjoy the journey that's all part of the joy of editing enjoying the journey along the way if you enjoyed this tutorial today please give it a like share with your friends and this really helps me out as well it gets this work out to other people it inspires other people helps my channel to grow and i really appreciate that if you're not yet a subscriber to my channel please subscribe click that bell notification icon then every time i upload a new tutorial you'll be notified about it hey i want to thank each and every one of you for joining me today in the joy of editing with dave kelly and i'll see you all right here next time but until then as always happy editing [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Joy of Editing with Dave Kelly

Views: 1,370

Keywords: Creative, Expression, Color, NIK Collection, Color Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro 4, DXO, Creative Photography, Creative Edit, Creative Editing, Photoshop, Analog Efex, Analog Efex Pro, Analog Efex Pro 2, Photography, Flower Photography, Floral Photography, Floral, Blur, Creative Blur

Id: W9CIUBxXqV0

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021