- Bonjour mesdames and
messieurs, in this video, I want to show you a sunset retouching, something that I actually
delivered to my galleries, the Yellow Corner Gallery. How I shot it, how I retouched it. I did a very similar
piece but on a dusk photo, check it out. The link must be somewhere in this video. And this came because I was
reading one of your comments and Monsieur Marcel Ven, which I cannot pronounce this (indistinct) says for another video, can
you retouch a Paris photo? Or a few, as you retouch
them in 2021 for a publisher. So I was like, okay,
I'm gonna do two videos. for Marcel, 'cause I love Marcel. I don't know Marcel, but I thought he was kind
of cool for asking this. So I'm gonna, I did a dusk photo, Marcel, and now I'm doing a golden,
I'm gonna do a sunset. So I read all of your comments. If you can take a second and
smash the like button and leave me a comment and tell me
what you would like to learn. I try to make two videos per week. I'm on fire. I need ideas and you're gonna love this. Okay, so the, I wanted to show you one photo
shoot that I did and how I retouched it for the
galleries that I work with. Once upon a time, we had a beautiful night in
Paris and I wanted to take a beautiful photo for a gallery. So this is the view of the
Pont Alexandre in Paris, and the sun you can see is
right behind the Louvre. Amazing. But there's a problem. A lot of people take photos
with the sun in their frame. I try to avoid that. I find because the eyes only
goes to the sun, the sun. You can not see, see
nothing as in the sun. So I try different framing
to get the sun a bit more on the right side. I was underexposing my photos
a lot because I wanted to get this incredible sky. And I knew, I knew that my
RAW files had power in them and I could open the shadows
and get so much detail. Especially I, I shot
this with like a Fuji. I think it's the 50 million version. Anyway, so I was not so happy
with that. I don't know. I didn't like the white boats there. I love the sky, but I thought it was, the foreground was very empty. So I moved around and
then I, so this view, which I kind of like, but I thought the clouds,
like this is the east, the other side of the sunset
and it was not so nice. Although I did love
that cloud in the water. I thought it was kind of cool, especially this was
during COVID and we had, the water was actually, there was no boats passing by for sunset, meaning the water was pretty
flat and pretty mirror, which is only happened when
there was a curfew on COVID. So that was good for that. And then, then I realized
that in my life I had never taken a good sunset photo
of the Musee d'Orsay. What is the Musee d'Orsay you may ask? The Musee d'Orsay is an amazing museum. It's an old train station. It's where you see a lot
of impressionist art. There's so much art there.
I've been there a few times. I love it. And it's just a beautiful,
beautiful, old train station. Look at that. Look at this place. It's massive. And so I was like, okay,
I got to get closer. I didn't like this on the right side. So then I decided to go in
the middle of the bridge and I got this view and I was
like, yeah, that's the photo. I have a foreground element,
which is this bridge. And then I have that,
I'm a little far away so I'm gonna have to crop,
but you know, this is like a, what is that? That's yeah, that's 102
million pixel photo. Look at that. Look at the detail. I can see a time on this and
I shut this at what, 160 ISO, so pretty good. And it's a little dark, but okay. That was a shot that I was
gonna sell to my galleries. So how did I retouch it? Well, I, first of all on
this one, I think I, again, I opened the shadows a lot. Look at that. Look how much details. That's why I underexpose my photos, because I always expose like
the way I expose my photo is I look at the back of my camera and, and the theory is this. I got to see all the little,
you know, texture in the sky. I don't want anything
blown away and I could, I can see that with my eyes. And then the rest has to be dark, but not so dark because
when you open the shadows, you can see that and look at
this, it's not even so noisy. It is little bit noisy
there, but not that much. And okay, so I'm not gonna
open the shadows complete on this one. I'm gonna bring down the
highlights a little bit on this one. Not fully, this Fuji camera is so powerful that I don't even need
to go all the way to 100. I'm gonna do that for now. And then I'm gonna down the Option key. And I'm gonna do, set my black point. That just means that I'm
holding the Option key on a Mac or on, a Alt key on Windows. And I'm having a 100%of black points. That's what I want. And then I'm gonna do the
reverse with the white. And so what you see here in
the red and yellow and yellow is a 100% white, which
is not what you want. So something like that. And I'm gonna add some contrast. Okay, now I kind of like
it, but it's really lacking because I remembered it
was a great, great sunset. What happened to it? Then I'm gonna crop this
because it's, I love 16 by nine. That's what I do with my gallery. So I'm gonna 16 by nine it. And also it's gonna get
me a little closer to, I don't like that. You know what? So I'm gonna just kind of crop
that out and then I want to get the clouds there. Maybe just a little, okay, you know what? I'm gonna take a little bit of that because I don't want to, I'm gonna erase that in Photoshop. Cropping is an art I'm telling
you, cropping is an art. And I think, okay, what is nicer? Is the sky nicer or is the water nicer? Both of them is nicer. So I'm just gonna crop
something like that. Yeah. I like that. It's a little
bit centered, but you see? Now we're getting closer. Okay. Now the white
balance is completely off. I want to warm things up
a little bit more here. So I am gonna warm things
up, but see the problem when I do that, look at,
look at the sky here. Sky's kind of blue. And now if I add some yellow, which I kind of like, like, let's say I go to shade for example, which is like a classic sunset view. I like it. But what happened to
my blue sky? It's gone. So usually what I do is I go
to daylight and then I add a bit of magenta and then I'm like, yeah, but I got to make this pop a little more. So in this case, I'm gong to go to daylight
and add back some yellow, just a little bit, but that's not all. I'm gonna go here. And I'm gonna take a
circle where the sunset is. And I'm gonna add back some yellow, a little bit in a circle, just there a big circle with some yellow, just to make it pop. And I'm gonna use a radial
mask illuminance so that it's not so visible. I'm gonna usually put it
there, see before, after. What it does, it makes it go a little bit behind the bridge. Here, it's over the bridge. You can, yeah. You can see how the bridge becomes yellow. I don't know if you can see
it on video in there. Okay. So just what makes it pop. But where did my blue go? I want my sky to go from
blue to orange and yellow. Well, if only there
was a tool in Lightroom that could do that. Guys, before I tell you anything, you got to check out my Confession
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getting the RAW files. If you buy this, you're
getting the RAW files, but you're also gonna get
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take amazing cool portraits with a flash techniques. Very non-expensive flash, like $50 and you get this kind of result. And also I'm gonna give you also the Lightroom Black and White course today and yesterday where I show
you how I studied Ansel Adams way of doing black and whites and how I apply today in Lightroom. Yes, it's crazy. $27. You're gonna get all that. It's the deal of the century.
Get it under this video. All right. So we're back, we're back. And now I'm gonna take a gradient and I'm gonna make a gradient
here and on that gradient I'm just gonna lower
this guy a little bit. Look at that, right away. Don't
be too much, a little bit, but add some blue to bring back some love. 'Cause it from blue to
yellow, which is what we want. Now, the sky goes from blue to yellow, and then I'm gonna add another one here, 'cause I want to close up for it. I want people to look inside. Okay, I'm kind of happy with the photo, but I would do a lot more. I'm gonna add a bit more contrast. Maybe open the shadows a
bit more. Just a tad more. Yes, sir. Okay. I'm not gonna add
any vibrance or saturation. I feel it's good enough. And this is hard, remember, crazy sunset. Was one of the best I
got over the whole month of May when I was there. And then I'm actually gonna
do a little bit of minus clarity and maybe add a bit of texture just to make things pop. Sometimes, you know what I do sometime, I actually do minus
clarity and minus texture and then I take a brush, but don't tell that to anybody. And then I add a bit
of texture and clarity, but only on the brush and only
on foreground elements like the Musee d'Orsay, the bridge, and maybe some of these trees in this. That's it. Not on the rest of the photo. I don't think you'll be able
to tell, watching this video, but when you make a big print,
you can tell the difference. Okay. So now it's time
to, it's time to tweak the colors a little bit, 'cause I'm still not
happy with how it looks. So I'm gonna go to the hue,
saturation and luminance. And I'm gonna go to the hue
section and take this tool here called the targeted tool. And I'm gonna click here
on the, on the sunset. If I go up, it becomes
very greenish, ugly, and I go down very red, but
somewhere in the middle, somewhere in the middle, sometimes you can get
something kind of cool. So something like that. Yeah. Just make it a bit more reddish. And then I'm gonna go
to the blue sky here. If I go up, it becomes sort of magenta. If I go down, becomes some of teal. So yeah. I don't know. Maybe a bit like that. Okay. So, and now I'm gonna go
to the saturation tab, take the same tool here
and maybe just add a bit of saturation just on the
yellow here and on the orange. Just a little bit. So I click and I drag up and
make sure you see here plus 37 that you don't go over like 40. Let's look at the hue. Yeah, this is minus 41. That's too much. So it just lower that, make sure you don't
have any value over 40. It's just a good, a good way of, of making sure it's not too much. Actually looking at it. I think it's too much. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna add a bit of
saturation, but not so much. Yeah. I don't want it to be too saturated. Alright. And I really don't like this
thing here and this thing here. So let's jump over to Photoshop and clean up the photo really quick. And then we'll be ready to send
it to the gallery for print. And I hope this one does well.
So here I am in Photoshop. That's gonna be quick. I'm gonna put this on its own layer. I'm gonna zoom in because
I've got the zoom by default or you can press Z for zoom. And then, and then I'm gonna take the famous spotting brush tool. I'm gonna make it bigger,
like any tool in Photoshop, you hold down the Control
and then Option key. You click, left click, you can make it bigger or smaller. And I'm just gonna paint on
these people and erase them. Very peacefully, but erase them. And this, I don't like this. I'm gonna erase that.
This is not nice to me. I don't know. I just don't like that. I want to clean up the image
a little bit, you know? Okay. And it does something weird there. That's fine. We're gonna do this in two steps. First, first thing, I'm using this tool, which
is a spot healing brush tool. So I'm erasing that, this gentlemans and their reflection. Here there's a reflection. And then to finish it off, I take the stamp tool. S for stamp tool. Hold down the Option key here. And I'm just gonna boom,
finish that off here. And then you can take the stamp tool. You can take, you can go back. J to the spot, J, the two
touches I use the most when I clean up and I use J
the spot healing brush tool and S is a stem tool. So J and then I'm just gonna, see, there's a a bit of pattern repeating? So I'm just gonna you erase that in that so it's not repeating. And voila. Maybe clean up a little bit, that water just really quick. And I like that photo.
I really do like it. And then, so then at this
point, what I do is I save it. And then, so what I truly
do is usually at this point, I let it rest. I don't send it to the gallery right away, because I like to see if
it's not too saturated or not enough saturated or too contrasty. And my eyes has been adapting
while I was retouching and recording the video. So I go do something else for, or the next day I pick up
the photo and I look at it with fresh eyes. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's too saturated. Or it's not. That's, that's how I do it. Now one thing I forgot to do, because every time before
I send it to my gallery, I always make sure the
sharpening is really good. I don't, over sharpen my
photos, but actually what I do. Okay. So the photo is back here. Boom. Everything got erased and
it's good to do it before you go to Photoshop, you can do it after. So I'm gonna zoom it out a
100% to see my noise level, look at the quality of this photo. It's crazy. And then what I'm gonna
do is I'm gonna go into, to the, the noise and on this one, I think I'm just gonna do
like 10 of nose reduction. Usually when I'm at a 100 ISO
I do 10 of noise reduction, sorry, I do 90 of sharpening. I'm like, ah, I'm gonna, oh my gosh, 90 of sharpening and 10 of noise reduction and I do my masking. You see how there is like some, look at the grain here on the clouds. If you do the masking, you
hold down the Option key, basically anything that's
gonna get, that's black as you move this to the right is
not gonna get sharpened. I don't want to sharpen the sky. And now I've got to smooth
skies and everything else is pretty smooths and pretty sharp. And voila, and this is
going to make a nice print. All right. So check out my Confessional
For a Fine Art Photographer. Link under the video,
it's gonna blow your mind. Let me tell you a couple of stories. I've had a lot of students
do this course and like, they were not able, they were
not happy with their photos. And after doing this course,
like people started, you know, they started winning challenges and people started telling
them their photos look great. You know, you know,
imagine if you could well, master Photoshop and
Lightroom really well, that you could get the
best out of your RAW files, if, when you post a photo,
you get lot more comments. If you become a huge star. Well, that's happening down below. Confession of a Photographer. Click the link. You will
thank me for it, I hope. Anyways, it helps me also
do all these free videos for you guys. Sorry for all the advertisement. I'll see you in another. Peace out mesdames and
messieurs. Au revoir.
