My NEW Secret Method for COLOR GRADING in Photoshop 2021

what's happening team today we're looking at a whole bunch of color grading techniques using color theory selective color adjustments local and global plus the power of blend if here's how play tape [Applause] [Music] welcome back to the channel guys now i've not done an editing video for a while so i'm pretty excited and i've got a few techniques up my sleeve with color grading that you may not have seen before so let's dive right in now the important thing to get your head around with color grading is color theory now this is a big topic but mostly i tend to stick around two or three methods for color grading and a great website for understanding color theory is adobe color analogous colors are groups of colors close to each other on the color wheel and here's an example of one of my images using analogous colors it's very close to being monochromatic now another favorite of mine is complementary colors and as you can see they're on opposite sides of the color wheel and they create the strongest contrasting colors in an image and you'll probably see sports companies using this color theory on advertising and their products because it grabs your attention complementary colors also cancel each other out creating a grayscale black and white and this can be very useful in color grading as we'll see later in the video so first up i have an image i took a number of years ago of an actor model in some warm shade but the colors are a bit muddy and lacks punch so firstly in lightroom i'll reduce the highlights because we have that hot spot behind his head bring up the shadows to enhance those industrial features in the background and a touch of clarity but cool off the texture now onto the luminance sliders to increase his skin tones and in the saturation we have some ugly moss greens on those metals here so i'll just remove them with the yellow and green sliders and finally onto the hue tab change the blues to a more pleasing cyan now onto photoshop the color grade that i want to achieve here is something like you see on the morning show on apple tv so if you've seen that show they use a lot of rich orange skin tones and complementary lush greens and deep reds so first up i'm going to change the color of his vest to a green i'll take the quick selection tool and make a rough selection then heading to select and mask to refine and using the brush tool i'll deselect the area that we don't want i'll just fast forward to the end to speed things up [Music] now i'll create a new layer so the selection is on this new layer and head up to edit fill and then choose color from the drop down menu now we can pick a green and fill this selection and yes this looks pretty bad at the moment but we're going to fix that open up the blending options and i think i'll go with this overlay the next step is really quite a useful tip to make easy changes to colors that you've added head down to adjustments and choose solid color if we pick a different color click ok and then right click this adjustment layer and create a clipping mask so it only affects the green vest now if we double click on the adjustment we can change it to whatever suits our taste [Music] so i'm going to choose this green now time to give the green a bit more contrast i'll select the vest layer and head up to object selection tool as there is nothing else on this layer i'll select the vest and that makes a perfect selection then create a levels adjustment layer with this selection now we can tweak the white and black points to give the vest a bit more depth next i'm going to remove the blues from his jeans as i want the dominant colors to be orange and green in this image i'll use a hue saturation adjustment layer and with the color picker sample the jeans with the eye dropper and then just desaturate them and maybe darken them also so that's just revealed my shoddy selection from earlier so i'll quickly fix the sunglasses by adding a mask to the vest layer and with a black brush because black conceals we can remove those leftover greens next it's time to add some warm oranges to the areas of sunshine in the image make a new layer and choose a nice warm orange to match the guy's skin tones with a soft edge brush just paint those areas and you can be pretty carefree with this because the next step will clean things up considerably now change the blending option to vivid light i'll reduce the opacity to around 30 percent now we can head into the layer style dialog box by double clicking on the layer i have a dedicated video on blend if which i'll link to in the description it's a very powerful tool which i use on most of my editing so in the blend if section we can remove the orange highlights from the darker parts of the underlying layer meaning the base image now once you find the sweet spot we can break apart the slider arrow by holding the alt key and clicking the arrow this allows us to feather the transition between the bright areas of orange and the shadows of the underlying layer the last adjustment i'm going to make is by using a selective color adjustment layer choosing the blacks from the drop down menu i'm just going to introduce some magentas into the darkest parts of the image and one final tweak to the levels of his vest just fade the intensity ever so slightly so if you have a client who wants a specific mood or color grade in an image this is a great way to add localized colors to an image or even to black and white now you just saw me use a selective color adjustment layer in the previous image and this is one of the best tools at your disposal for color grading and i use a selective color adjustment layer on virtually every image that i edit and color grade here are two images i took this week with my friend oliver lundy and the first image was taken using an led strip light set to green and using the ambient light in the room this other image was taken using two strobes with a magenta gel on one light and a blue on the other but perhaps you're not entirely happy with those colors when you get back home and onto your computer so let's add a selective color adjustment layer now our dominant colours in the image are green orange and black so let's head up to the green in the drop down menu and as you can see we have cyan magenta yellow and black to play with but that's not entirely correct we also have red green blue and white to play with as well because the opposite of cyan is red green is magenta's opposing color blue opposes yellow and white opposes black so say if we wanted to change the greens of the motorbike to blues and have complementary colors of yellows as the background we can target these specific colors so let's choose the green from the drop down menu and because the opposite of yellow is blue we can use the yellow slider to introduce blue into the green color and also use the cyan slider to achieve this lovely teal color the black slider can either add contrast or take away contrast depending on which way you push the slider now let's change the orange background to a more complementary yellow we're going to be working on the yellow and red colors here so the obvious color slider to go for here is yellow and let's push that all the way to 100 but also the opposite color to magenta is green so let's push those towards the greens now we can do the same with the red channel [Music] neutrals act in the same way as mid-tones do using the colour balance adjustment layer we can introduce some magentas into those mid-tones and finally using the black channel let's color grade with some blues and then fade up using the black slider towards the negative end [Music] now let's go extreme with the other bike shot i want the overall feel of this image to head more towards a fiery red color grade so let's target those magentas and the opposite of cyan is red so let's push the reds and also the yellows now let's take the blues in the image and again push those reds and those yellows same for the cyan drop down but here's where you'll see the biggest change using the neutrals let's really push those yellows and now we're in this fiery hot bike cellar a completely different feel from the original image let's look at another example of color grading an image here's a shot i took of a beautiful model with those moody smokey eyes and near perfect skin and this image hasn't been retouched yet but i've just lifted the whites to touch in lightroom and i took this shot using v-flats and studio strobe so the light is incredibly soft but i'd like to add a high-end fashion vibe into this image so the first thing i'm going to do is add a gradient map and i'll choose this standard black and white gradient and i'm going to add a few control points by just clicking underneath and choosing pure black and i'll do the same with the other side and go with a pure white now this intensifies the black and white gradient and also this gives you control should you need to tweak the gradient map further into the edit and we can bring down the opacity to something like 30 percent then we can change the blending option that will give us more contrast and nearer to that fashion look that i'm going for some of the options will look awful but some key choices are overlay soft light luminosity works very well but i think i'm going to settle on hard light and if we do a quick before and after already we're starting to see some real punch in the image but the eyes are looking a bit dark for my liking so clicking on the mask for the gradient map with a soft black brush i can just remove some of those crushed blacks and bring some detail back into the hair i think i'm just going to reduce the opacity a little more and that's looking good now using a selective color adjustment layer choosing white from the drop down menu i'm going to play around with the black slider to increase the whites for a more high key effect now pushing the slider too far will make her look pasty and a bit unnatural so somewhere around the negative 25 mark should do it now we've got some greater depth in those whites and if we look at our progress so far the soft flat lighting of the original image has now got some dimension in her face and i'm going to go one step further with a color grading on this image using the same principles as the previous image create a new layer and we'll rename this to lips and with a brush tool i'm going to choose a nice deep rouge color and head into brush settings and change the hardness to something like 70 percent and i'm just going to trace around her lips now the brush edge is a little hard so i'm going to back off to maybe 50 percent yeah that's better and now just trace around those lips as neat as you can and we can refine this in the next step so this obviously looks pretty bad at the moment but if we change the blending option to multiply which intensifies the color and reduce the opacity down to around 60 percent works well again if we double click on the layer and enter the blend if section this time i'm going to let the lighter areas of the lips through from the base image and then break apart the control points to feather the transition this gives the lips depth from the block of red we initially painted a quick before and after and that's not too bad but i just think we can soften the edges of the lips using a mask and i'll choose a soft black brush flow around seven or eight percent and just begin removing the edges of the lips for a more natural look and one final adjustment to the selective color layer we created earlier to introduce some blues into those shadows and add more contrast using the black slider [Music] so how do we take a desaturated street photograph and turn it into a vintage color graded image using localized and global adjustments i'll begin in lightroom for some basic adjustments starting with changing the color profile to adobe vivid now when i took this shot the camera's auto white balance got it wrong so let's just warm things up to around 6100 kelvin overall exposure could come down a hair highlights down to around negative 40 to bring some detail back into his head and the floor and i'll boost the shadows to around plus 30 and a touch of clarity with opposing texture now onto the color mixers luminance of the blues can come up and finally a bit of saturation on the orange slider too now onto photoshop i'll start by adding a new layer and because i want the image to have a vintage vibe i'm going to pick this light turquoise color and with a soft edge brush just roughly paint over some of the lighter parts of the image and again we can be fairly carefree at this point because of the blend if feature in the next step and i'll reduce the opacity of the brush to around 50 by typing 50 on the keyboard and include some of the background areas too i think this window display too now this is a creative choice obviously but i think this color will lend itself to this dated look that i'm going for now i can change the blending option to overlay which i think works well here and then reduce the opacity to around 30 percent and once again we can remove the effect from the darker areas of the image using the black control point of blendiff break apart the arrow to smooth the transition and this effect is subtle but very effective next i'm going to use exactly the same process for the sunlit areas of the image using a warm orange and just roughly paint on a new layer [Music] again let's go with an overlay blending option and an opacity of say 45 this time heading into the trusty blend if section to remove and soften the color from the darker areas now you're starting to get the idea now for a global adjustment to the black parts of the image using selective color i'm going to introduce some magentas to the blacks but as you can see this has had an undesirable effect of crushing those blacks a touch so i'll just fade those blacks up by using the black slider now i'm not entirely happy with the orange color that i've added to the floor so as you've seen already i can change this by including a solid color adjustment layer [Music] creating a clipping mask now i think more of a yellow works better a bit more vintage [Music] so there you have it a couple of tips on color grading images that you might not have seen before and that might be useful editing your own images so i'm off to scotland for my next photography adventure so hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on that video and if you fancy helping out my channel give us a thumbs up that really helps later

Channel: Mark McGee Photos

Views: 87,284

Keywords: color grading, photoshop, photoshop tutorial, selective color, blend if, color grade in photoshop, cinematic color grading in photoshop, photoshop effect

Id: ahnf_Xy9Ua4

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Tue May 18 2021