How to create a soft, dreamy edit in Photoshop.

[Music] hey everybody I thought I would do a tutorial of this image these are two adorable little kids that I had the privilege of photographing and so I'm just going to jump right in I always let everyone know right away when I do my tutorials that I am NOT like a Photoshop expert so there may be a lot of things you know that I don't and so feel free to let me know if there's a different way to do something I'm also notoriously bad at shortcuts I just really haven't I kind of have a DD with that I just don't want to take the time to sit and learn them so anyway I thought that I would just jump right into this edit I did use a flash on this photo I don't remember what the settings were but I did use a flash to add some fill light into the image anyway let's get started I'm just going to mess around with the white balance presets first and see if there's one that I like this was what the image looked like as it was looking straight out of camera and then I'm just going to see here I actually think I like cloudy I'm going to go with cloudy and then I'm just going to go ahead and open this in Photoshop now I don't do a lot of detail work on my tutorials just because I really if you're anything like me you just don't have a lot of time to watch like an hour long video so I'm going to just jump right in and then the detail work I'm just not going to do so I'm just going to give you kind of the basic rundown of how I would do this photo the first thing I'm going to do is duplicate this layer and I'm going to do that because I want to get rid of this tree over here so I'm going to go to edit transform flip horizontal and I am going to click on this white layer mask and then I'm just going to take a soft black brush set at 100% opacity and a flow of 100 and I'm going to make sure that this top box here is set to black because that now represents that that's a black brush and when you have a white layer mask when you use a black brush you erase the effect when you have a black layer mask when you use a white brush on the black layer mask you reveal the effect so I'm just going to erase this part of the image that I don't want in there like so and I think I'm going to add back in this portion here I over did it so I'm going to just click this little arrow thing right there and that's going to make the white brush come out and so if you take a white brush and you put it on a white layer mask it puts back what you didn't want to take away like so okay now I'm just going to go ahead and flatten this image and I want to get rid of these branches up here so I'm going to duplicate the layer again and then I'm going to take my clone stamp tool and I'm going to click options and I'm going to just delete or clone clone out these trees I'm not overly cautious about this right now because I have a really blown out sky so you can't really see the detail work or the clone work okay so I think I'm happy with that I'm going to flatten the image again I know this was probably like considered destructive editing but it's just how I'm going to do it so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to layer duplicate layer and I want to just kind of soften this image of it so I'm going to go to filter other High Pass and I'm going to set the radius to 55 now I'm going to hit command-i on that layer and set the blend mode to soft light and as you can see it really softened up this image here I'm going to create a layer mask because I don't want that effect on everything I'm going to create a layer mask and then I'm going to take my black brush set to an opacity of 100 and a flow of 100 and Boop's let me click on my brush and I'm just going to remove that softness from my subjects because obviously I don't want them to be overly soft I might just I'm just kind of dabbing here and I'm okay with some of these edges of their clothes being part of that softness okay the next thing I'm going to do is I am going to create a gradient that's going to be similar to the colors in the image so I'm going to go to layer new fill layer gradient I'm going to hit OK and then I'm going to click on this gradient bar and I'm going to click on this left-hand slider I'm going to click on color and I think I'm going to pick this pink in her dress I'm going to see if I like that I might drag it over just a little bit to increase the richness and then I'm going to click on the right handed slider and click on the blue actually we might try the pink again I think we'll stick with the pink so I'm just going to use the eyedropper tool and pick on pick a pink color here now obviously I don't want this all over them so I'm going to move this gradient you see how you can move it around I'm going to move it to right about here and then I'm going to hit OK and if you close out on a layer all you have to do is click on this thumbnail twice and it'll bring it back up just like that okay so I'm going to click on the white layer mask and I'm going to take a soft black brush I'm going to increase the size pretty significantly and I'm just going to click over them ever so gently and then I'm going to decrease the opacity of that layer to right around let's do 65 so there's the before and after okay I'm going to try something I don't know if I'm going to like it you know that's kind of how it is when you're editing you just kind of try things out and then say yay or nay I'm going to create a layer and then I am going to take my elliptical or starting my rectangular marquee tool and I'm just going to drag it over this sky area here slightly over his head and I'm going to hit select and mask now up here I have overlay selected because I like this red being able to show me what I'm doing and I'm just going to feather this until I like the feather I think probably right about there actually I'm going to bring it up just a tad more almost at 200 it's like 189 so I'm going to hit OK and then what I'm going to do here is on this layer this top layer right here I'm going to click on my gradient sorry on one my gradient tool box and I'm going to click here and I'm going to make kind of like a sky so I'm going to start with kind of a blue and then in the middle I'm going to add let's try a yellow and then here I'm going to add a pink let's go up here and select like this color and then what I'm going to do is just go right down the center with my gradient tool and go like that now that's a little intense so I'm just going to decrease the opacity of that sky that I just created just a tad now I want to show you something oops I'm going to go to select deselect on the gradient that I just did the left-hand slider will put will be the color at the top the middle will obviously be the color in the middle and the right-hand slider will be the color on the bottom now I don't want this so much on them so I'm just going to create a layer mask here and then I'm going to click on my black paint brush and just kind of paint that off of them like so and I think it might decrease the opacity of this just a bit more so I'm going to put it out right around 30 and then I'm going to go to layer new fill layer gradient I'm going to hit OK and I'm going to set my style to radial I think I said that right I'm going to click on my gradient box and on this left-hand slider I'm going to turn the slider white I'm going to do the same thing over here just going to make it all white and then I'm going to drag it up to right about there and then I'm just going to go on the flight layer mask again with my soft black brush I'm just going to kind of tap around them and just remove a little bit of that gradient and then I'm going to lower the opacity just a tad actually you know what I'm going to do I'm going to actually add some of that back in right about here and then I'm going to lower the opacity just a tad let's try it at around 60 okay so for the one of the final steps here I'm going to take my elliptical marquee tool and I'm going to drag it right around my subject and then I'm going to go to select and mask and then I'm going to feather this right about there that's not like 750 almost and I'm going to hit okay now since I have this selection just around them and there are no marching ants around the edge if I did anything to this image it would affect just what's inside of the circle I don't want that to happen I want to affect what's outside of that circle so I'm going to select inverse and as you can see there are now marching ants all around so now whatever I do on this outside portion will not affect them so I'm going to go to layer new fill layer solid color I'm going to set it to soft light as a blend mode hit okay and I'm just going to mess around with the different colors in here kind of like that one it's kind of like a grayish color there's an orange you can just play around with these and like determine what you like oh I think I kind of liked that one that's kind of pretty so I'm going to just kind of choose this black color and then hit OK I'm going to decrease the opacity just a little bit to right around 65 okay great you know I'm not sure if I like this gradient here I think I'm going to get rid of it now that I'm looking at the picture so I'm just going to go ahead and delete this gradient that I put behind their heads it's just not working for me right now all right so now I'm going to click on the layer mask where I had just selected them and I'm going to hit command and click on that white layer mask and now it's made that selection again but this time I want to work on them so I'm going to go to select inverse and now it's made that selection again around them so I'm going to go to layer new adjustment layer curves and I'm going to bring up the center just a little bit to brighten them up and then I'm just going to go to layer new adjustment layer color balance and just play around with these sliders think for the mid-tones add a little blue maybe I'm going to add in some cyan not too much think I'll put it up negative to the highlights yeah I like that I have that out like negative 16 okay so I'm going to flatten this image now and then I'm going to go to layer duplicate layer I'm going to hit OK and then I'm going to go into layer layer style and I'm going to select a pattern overlay these are really fun patterns to use I'm using one called if you just click this arrow here it will bring up your different patterns and I'm going to use one called color paper and you just play around with these and you can adjust the scale of the the pattern as well as the opacity of it you can change the blend modes to whatever you want so it's very easy to use so I'm just going to decrease the scale of this pattern here I think I'm going to bring it down to maybe we'll do 245 and then I'm just going to decrease the opacity a little bit not a ton I'm going to put it at around 50 and then I'm going to take some of that off of their skin so I'm going to click here and create a white layer mask and then I'm going to take a black soft brush and I'm just going to paint the texture off of them now the only thing you have to be mindful of is when you're using the color paper paper overlays there might be a dramatic difference in the tone of your subject if you paint it off so you just need to be mindful of that when you do that okay so I think that's probably it now someone told me because I didn't know how to do this um I think if you go into the actions and then there's something where you can history okay I'm going to try this okay there's the original now how do I get back okay I don't know if I can get back now okay so well now I'm in trouble I don't know what I'm doing they told me if I hit the history button or something that I would take it back to the beginning but now I think I've totally screwed up everything oh there we go yay okay got it okay so thank you for that tip so here's the before and here's the after I'm so excited about that see I told you send me your tips because I don't know a lot about like the technical side I just know how to like add the textures and colors and that kind of thing yeah okay awesome so here's the before and here's the after so anyways I hope that this tutorial helps you guys a little bit always come to my Facebook page and let me know if you have any questions or tips because like I said I am NOT a Photoshop guru and yeah we will talk to you guys in the next tutorial [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Page Kuepper Photography

Views: 17,368

Keywords: photoshop, photoshop tutorials, photoshop editing, photoshop learning, editing in photoshop, photo editing tutorials, soft edit in photoshop, beautiful edit in photoshop, dreamy photoshop tutorial, children's photography, kid photography, child photography, before and after edit in photoshop, how to edit a child's photo session, how to edit in photoshop, easy editing in photoshop, simple editing in photoshop

Id: 7BYvTpacGog

Length: 17min 24sec (1044 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2017