The Inverse Curve Technique for Painting Light! - Photoshop Tutorial

hi there this is sunreesh from pixim perfect and today i'm going to share with you one of the most realistic ways to blend the elements of a composite using a special technique called the inverse curve technique now using this technique we will be creating realistic highlights and shadows and that too colorful so without any further ado let's get started [Music] back in the magical world of photoshop and here we have a background and on top of that we have a subject i've already masked it out to save time now if you want to download the starting psd just like this check the links in the description now the first thing we would do right here is to match the brightness but right now the colors might be distracting us so how do we take the colors away by creating a luminosity check layer so click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose solid color and choose any shade of gray white or black will do too hit okay and then change the blend mode to color that will take away all the colors now all you need to do now is to create a curves adjustment layer above the subject lip so with the subject layer selected click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose curves now inside of curves all we got to do right here is to darken it now if we do anything right here it affects the entire thing we want it to be limited just to the subject and how do we do that by creating a clipping mask by simply clicking on this button right there this limits the curve as you can see right there this arrow it limits the curve just to the subject now let's darken the subject accordingly this seems to be about right we can always get back to that edit this later as well let's take a look here's the before here's the after it seems to be matching more now you can take away or turn off the luminosity checklist by the way if you want to learn more about check layers do watch this video now it's time for us to begin matching the colors but before we go ahead and start painting the highlights and the shadows and all of that fancy stuff we need to create a nice base and what is a nice base something that would go with the background a little more so first of all let's create a gradient map so click on the adjustment layer icon again and then choose gradient map this will help us match the atmosphere now what does the gradient map do it maps the colors of highlights mid tones and shadows according to the colors we choose for example right now on the right hand side we have black so the highlights are painted in black and the shadows are painted in white because on the left hand side we have white so single click on it you can choose whatever color you want so for the highlights right now we have green and the shadows we have red and in between we can add as many colors as we want but we want the colors on the subject to be similar to the background so we will go that route so for now let's hit cancel and first of all let's limit the gradient map just to the subject by holding the alt key or the option key and clicking on the line between these two lists that also creates a clipping mask and clicking on this button also does the same thing so again we need to select the icon the symbol of the gradient map not the mask otherwise it will only sample colors from the mask which is white so select the symbol right there single click on the gradient and then just make sure sample all layers are current and below is selected also you want sample size to be three by three or five by five so that it samples an average color of that area not a particular pixel so let's zoom in and sample a highlight color for the highlights so click on the right most slider click on the color and you can sample whatever color you want from the background so i'm going to choose one of the highlights from the light because that's the source of light in the background so let's click on that that's pretty good you can add a little bit of saturation to it hit okay for the darkest spot single click on it single click on the color and let's sample the darkest color in the background so according to me let's sample one of these colors very close to black hit okay now we're going to choose a mid tone let's assume that these areas are gray in real life and it's just taking the colors of this light so we're going to create a point a slider right here and single click on the color and pick on just select one of these colors now keep in mind the brightness level of this is 53 absolutely close to the midtones hit okay but if you want to be absolutely precise let's you can just set the location to 53 as well and by chance we had that location already selected if you want a darker shade here as well so let's click to add one more slider and single click on the color and let's choose this for this one the brightness level was 18 so hit ok and let's choose the location to be 18. okay that seems to be about right but let's take a look at the subject how it does so it looks fine but we can make some adjustments here and there so let's take the slider a little bit more to the left and the middle one a little bit more to the left as well adds a little bit of highlights there as well now it matches very well but of course it's all blue we don't want to turn it into avatar so let's decrease the opacity to about 50 see that forms a nice base now let's add one more curves adjustment layer just to you know blend the image a little bit more this is not painting highlights or shadows just a little bit blending so click on the adjustment icon and then choose curse and we want a little bit blues in the highlights so we're going to go to the blue channel right over there and let's add a little bit of blues in the highlights but it's affecting the background as well we want it to be affecting the subject so click on this button don't forget to clip it so let's add a little bit of blues and let's go to the red channel now we want to add a little bit cyan to the highlights now cyan is the opposite of red so we need to decrease the reds to bring up the cyans so let's decrease the reds a bit see it's getting a little closer now you can play with the green and see what they do let's increase it just a bit and see how it is so let's take a look at the before and after so here is the before here is the after look how much more it matches before after we are definitely getting closer looking at it now i feel like we added a little too much cyan and that my friend is the advantage of adjustment layers that you can adjust it later so double click on the symbol to open up the properties so let's go to the red channel and decrease it just a bit and let's go to the green channel and just adjust it accordingly see what feels good to you just a little bit so i'm going to select that and you can also move it with the arrow keys to make slight adjustments okay now definitely as with every adjustment and we are humans we tend to go a little bit overboard we so uh let's decrease the opacity of this one as well to about 45 and that looks a little more natural i would highly recommend that you go ahead and take a break maybe drink coffee tea whatever you like maybe watch the sunset watch the sky go out in nature just do something that relaxes you and then get back to the image you might be able to find some mistake that might have been overlooked otherwise now i can see that it should have been a little flatter there's a little too much highlights more than required which might not give us enough room to paint in the highlights manually so we'll go to the gradient map properties by double clicking on the symbol and single clicking on the gradient and move it a little bit to the right see what it does yes it makes it a little more flatter if we take this to the right that would add too much shadows to it that seems to be about right let's take it a little more towards the right that's perfect now here we are this is much better now it's finally time for us to move on to the inverse curve technique now to be able to understand how the inverse curve technique works we need to create a brand new curves adjustment layer so select the top most lip not the luminosity check let's delete it let's not confuse things so click on the adjustment icon and then choose curves all right and this time instead of brightening the highlights this is how we usually brighten the highlights right so we click a point on the right hand side and we take it up or we take the right most point a little bit to the left this just brightens the highlights that's what we do some other times when we want to brighten something we create a point in the middle and then take it up sometimes very rarely when we want to brighten the shadows we create a point on the left hand side and then take it up and probably create a point on the right and bring it down do not brighten the highlights but what if i told you that in this example we're gonna take the left most point and take it up to paint in the highlights that would be some interesting stuff isn't it why would we do that you might ask well for extreme composites this is important because this gives you absolute freedom let's say we created a point even a little bit on the left right and then took down the highlights right and we want to brighten this area so first of all select the mask of the curves press ctrl or command i also we want to limit the curves just to the subject so we will click on this button it will create a clipping mask take the brush and select white as the foreground color make sure flow and opacity at 100 let's decrease the brush size and no matter how much you paint right here with white it just won't be brightened enough right so even here in the absolute dark areas no matter how much you paint it just won't brighten much right this doesn't give you absolute freedom however if you do it the other way if you take the extreme left point up look even those areas are being brightened now it does come with its own problems because every area is being brightened you have to be extra careful while painting the highlights so let's move on to painting the highlights we're going to create a brand new curse just to not confuse you so first we will click on the adjustment icon and then choose curves we're going to name this highlights so double click on the text and let's name this we also want to limit it to the subject so click on this button right there now take the left most point up just brighten stuff just like this but we not only want to brighten it we also want to create a colorful highlight how do we do that again channels my friend so let's first of all go to the blue channel because we want to match it with that of the background we want to match it with the source light so let's take up blues again we are not adding blues and the highlights we are just doing the opposite of it and that's why it's called the inverse curve so let's take it up right there we can always adjust this later let's go to the red channel now we also want to add a little cyan to it bring up a little cyan so we will decrease the reds like this that seems to be okay also we can play with the green but in this case i don't feel like adding or playing with the green a little bit this seems to be a very right formula for a great highlight now keep in mind you can start painting the highlight right now and anytime you want to just adjust the colors you can always just go to the channels and then just adjust it to your desire there you go now before we start painting the highlights there's one more thing we need to do we need to understand the fact that not all of us are leonardo da vinci's right we also need to understand the fact that we don't have the whole lifetime to just behind the highlights we need something to help us with it and that is the blend if blender will help us take away the highlights from extremely dark areas like like absolutely dark areas so double click on the right hand side of the layer just take it away from extremely dark areas by taking the slider off the underlying layer from left to right but this is harsh right so hold the alt key or the option key click on the slider to break it apart and take it apart for me about 0 40 looks good if you're satisfied just hit ok you can now start painting the highlights first of all select the mask press ctrl or command i choose the brush make sure you have chosen the soft round brush keep the flow lower 5 4 something like that would be great i'm going to keep it at four and then just zoom in and start painting the highlights now where to paint you might ask great question and the most important question of this lesson we need to paint on every area that faces the light not just the edges so it's not like we're just painting right here and adding highlights that looks good that looks realistic however we also need to paint on areas that face the light even if it is not on the edge for example have a look at this area this hand right there it also faces the light there's a light right here there might be a light street light that is out of the frame of the camera so we need to paint a little bit right here as well so you understand right now where we need to paint similarly have a look at this area this area faces the light and might face a light that is a head forward so i'm going to paint a little bit right here i'm painting very fast along a little bit on the edge maybe a little bit on the edge right there this is a fast work we have to take our time to do it slowly have a look just a little bit of this add a little bit glare around the edges right here as well just a little glare here as well you know around the face this really adds a lot let's take a look at the before and after just doing this five seconds of this here's the before here's the effort just look at the difference now we're gonna speed it up otherwise it would be absolutely boring we'll talk about shadows later just keep in mind while you are painting the highlights for example right here keep in mind the folds just don't paint a straight blob with this brush please don't do something like this that would be childish doesn't look right keep in mind the folds so according to the folds you would just brighten so there's folds right there so you would brighten this way and according to the folds just let the brightness flow just as it would in real life see how better that one is in comparison to previous one so keep in mind the folds and still if it doesn't look right you can always double click on the right-hand side of the layer and take it even further to help you more with painting the highlights you can take it as high as 0.50 in this case so we're going to keep it at 0 50 right there and hit ok now let's start painting the highlights i still feel like there's too much blue in the face so let's go back to the gradient map and decrease its opacity to about 44 how do you feel about that that looks a lot better now let's get back to painting the highlights select the mask and resume painting so there you go as you can see we have finished painting the highlights let's take a look at the before and after so this is the before and this is the after isn't that a massive difference let's do it once again let's zoom in and do it here is the before here is the after now when i look at it i feel like that this should have been a little less brighter maybe with more blues so double click on the symbol of the curve and just take down the left most point see it makes it a little more bluer and more exciting let's zoom out and do a proper adjustment so earlier it was something like this which is good too but if we take it down just slightly it makes it a little more bluer you can also adjust the blues now so let's go to the blue channel and take it up and down and see what changes it makes if you take it up it matches it a little more i feel in my opinion okay there you go let's take a look right now at the before and after so this is the before and this is the after now let's take a short break from the inverse curve technique and let's add some rim lighting so if we zoom in what if we add a little bit of light more light around the edge and this time we only want to brighten the highlights so we don't have to do the inverse curve thing all over again just add one more you already might have guessed it curves and this time just create a point in the middle and take it up just like this if you want you can go to the blue channel and increase the blues as well something like that and we only want to add it around the edge and that too automatically but before that let's limit it just to the subject so hold the alt the option key and click on the line between these two next thing we will do is hold the control or command and click on the mask of the subject layer we just want a selection of the subject now we want to contract the selection a little bit all right so to contract the selection let's go to select modify and then contract let's try two pixels let's see what it does so two pixels contraction a rim light of this how would it look maybe we would want more let's go to select modify and then contract one more time and let's choose one this time if this doesn't work we will try some other values now all you gotta do is to fill this with black so with the mask selected make sure that the foreground color is black and then press alt backspace in a mac that would be option delete now let's take a look press ctrl or command d to deselect we have added some rim lighting but it's very very harsh we need to soften it up a little bit so select the mask and open up the mask properties by clicking on the properties button if you cannot see it go to window and then make sure properties is checked and just increase the feather have a look at it right now let's set it to 2.5 that seems to be a good number now let's take a look and the rim lighting looks amazing let's add a little more feather see how that looks so here's the before here's the after just a little bit of light i'm gonna stick to 2.5 that looks good and only add it in certain areas not all the areas so select the mask right here take the brush make it a little larger and just paint away the areas where we don't want it increase the flow to about 100 and paint black in these areas where you don't want it this area is fine little bit there is good now i want to remove it just so slightly right over here so let's decrease the flow to about 10 percent and then let's print this area with black to remove it from there okay there you go let's take a look at the before and after so let's zoom out a bit so here is the before here is the after just a little bit of rim lighting goes a long way of course we forgot to do it right here so select the mask and then just erase it at the bottom right here let's increase the flow there you have it my friend a little bit of rim lighting here's the before here's the after just add a little oomph to the photo now let's get back to the mood for the inverse curve technique and now we're gonna just paint in the shadows so we'll do just the opposite so let's create a curves again curves adjustment layer again you know what this video should be named the infinity curve let's get back to it so instead of creating a point in the left in the shadow area and then making it darker we will make the highlights darker take the extreme right point and take it down just as we did with the highlights we did just the opposite we took the extreme left point and took it up similarly in the shadows just the opposite extreme right point and take it down also we want to limit it to the subject so click on this button to create a clipping mask and then select the mask press ctrl or command i and then you can start painting the shadows by the way to momentarily turn off the mask and see how dark your shadow is gonna go hold the shift key and then click on the mask to momentarily turn it off and come back to the properties of the curve and we're gonna make it dark like really really dark something like this looks good okay if you want to add some color to it you can you can go to the blue channel and add some blues to it but i feel like i wouldn't add much color to the shadow just a little bit of blue and probably in the red channel we'll just take it down a bit just like that and enable the mask again by holding the shift key and clicking on the mask just select it take the brush let's set the flow at about three or four so i'm gonna set it at three and begin painting the shadows make sure the foreground color is white now again you might ask where should i paint in the shadows brilliant question similarly as we did with the highlights we painted on the areas which faced the light we will paint the shadows in areas that do not face the light as simple as that so let's resume painting so there you go we have finished painting the shadows let's take a look here is the before and here is the after that's a massive difference my friends now painting the shadow was not as difficult as painting the highlights highlights is where all the hard work takes place you know what we are pretty much done now all we have to do is to adjust some finishing adjustments so let's add one more you have already guessed it just one more curves to blend it in a little bit more so we will limit it as well by creating a clipping mask and then let's increase the blues a little more first we'll just make it a little darker to match it even more so let's take the right most point down just like this see it's matching a little more so slowly and gradually take it down to match it now let's go to the blue channel and increase it just a bit this value seems to resonate with me with the green channel we're gonna play we're gonna try to take it down and take it up see what works best for us just a touch of it let's get back to the rgb channel if you want to add more cyan again go to the red channel and let's try decreasing that see it's matching a little more there you go this was just for blending in a little bit so here is the before here is the after just blends in a little more now if you zoom into the subject there is an issue there's a lot of noise in the background but there's no noise on the subject so we need to add noise to it press ctrl shift n command shift n on a mac and change the blend mode to overlay make sure you check fill with overlay neutral color so that it fills the layer already with 50 gray and overlays a blend mode which hides 50 gray and we're going to name this noise okay we also want to limit it to the subject hold the alt or the option key click on the line between these two lists let's go to filter and convert for smart filters hit okay so that whatever filter we add we can change the values later let's go to filter noise and then add noise and make sure monochromatic is checked we don't want to add too much color to it slowly and gradually increase the noise to the point where it matches with that of the background in my opinion i'm going to keep it a little bit higher first let's keep it at about 25 in the beginning now we need to add some blur to it this is very sharp noise so let's go to filter blur and then gaussian blur point six point seven works in this case so point let's go for point six how does it match up not pretty well let's go for point five okay now we only want noise in the shadow areas so we will just double click on the right hand side of the lid that's how noise works so hold the alt k the option key click on the right most slider of the underlying layer section and take half all the way to the left this takes away the noise from the highlights hit okay take a look here's the before noise is in the highlights here's the after it gets slightly better now i feel like the blur should have been a little less so i'm going to decrease the blur to about 0.4 and also the noise should have been a little less double click on add noise and you can change the values right here so we can change it to about 15. how do you feel about that 15 looks a little better and it just kind of blends well and on top of that you can always take down the opacity and slowly and gradually increase it and stop at just the point where it looks good so in my opinion we're going to keep it at about 55. one of the things we do while creating a composite is adding a global effect at the end what it does is that it allows us to blend all of the elements of the composite together it's just kind of a final bringing together effect so in this case we can add a color lookup table so click on the adjustment icon and then choose color lookup and this is something we apply to all the elements in this case both to the subject and the background so we're gonna choose teal orange plus contrast this is a very exciting one but of course this is too much so let's get the opacity to about 35 that looks good or maybe 30 whatever suits you so we're gonna keep it at about 30. also now if you look at this image it's just too dark we need to add some brightness to it but if we add a simple again curve and just take it up it's also going to blow out the details and the highlights it's kind of too much so what we can do though we can just take it even more and only brighten up the shadow areas by double clicking on the right hand side of the by the way this looks great as well so double click on the right hand side of the layer and take it away from the highlights by taking the slider off the underlying layer from right to left of course it's harsh so hold the alt key or the option key click on it to break it apart and take both the halves to the extremes so hit okay let's take a look here is the before here is the after that makes a ton of difference my friend you can always get back to the properties and let's decrease it a bit i think it's too much so let's decrease it just a bit and this looks perfect now if you want to add some overlays you're always free to do so so i have some light leaks that i downloaded from enfanto elements the link to which are in the description by the way i have offers in envato elements as well that will give you 75 something 75-ish discount for the first month it's like for a fixed fee you can download all of their assets as many as you want you don't have to pay for each and every one of them so here are a lot of light leaks that we can use so i'm just going to select this one light leaks 2 and drag it and drop it over the canvas this looks interesting let's make it a little larger adjust it adjust it like that hit enter and change the blend mode to screen there you go that's fun too as well and you can finish right here but wait there is a mistake we need we still need to fix let's turn it off this was optional if you zoom in everything looks fine however what if we wanted to add a depth of field have a look at the subject these areas are out of focus the mouth and the face is in focus this area is out of focus even in the subject so how can the background be so tac sharp it is just not possible right so we need to add some background blur to it so we're gonna make a copy of the background so with the background layer selected press ctrl or command j just to have a backup and then go to filter convert for smart filters hit ok so that we can change the values later now let's go to filter blur gallery and tilt shift now tilt shift allows us to add blur gradient in all different directions so we're going to bring it down and start the solid line where she must be standing so and we're going to bring the dotted line all the way far we're going to create one more point right here by clicking and we will just rotate it 90 degrees and take it far as well and bring a gradient something like this and add one more point right here as well and rotate it 90 degrees there you go the solid line is where the blur starts so that's where the blur is zero and the dotted line is where the blur gradually increases to whatever value you choose 15. so blur is zero right here from zero slowly and gradually it will increase to 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 to 10 11 12 13 14 and it will end at 15 right over here hope that makes sense now let's just control how much blur you want right here in the background so we will keep it at about 10. for now you can always change things later now before you hit ok now keep in mind we have added a little noise on the subject we need to add a little bit noise on the background as well just to match things up because some areas like this have noise so to match things up just click on the noise button right there and just increase the amount you can also control the size of the noise but this one seems to be good you can always control these things according to your taste but in my opinion oh this feels looks good to me hit okay and there you have a little bit of background blur and we have our image ready if you want to make it absolutely shallow depth of field you are welcome to do that as well so there you go here my friend is the before and this is the after so just to wrap it up all you have to do is to first create a base now how do you create a base there are lots of ways just look at the image look at what it needs in this example we first match the brightness because have a look at it the brightness is not at all matching and you can create a luminosity check layer for that so we matched the brightness and then we were to match the colors to match the atmosphere we created a gradient map and created a similar gradient to that of the background and just slapped on the subject and then we added one more curves to match it even more added some blues reduced some reds just to bring it more closer to the background and then came the inverse curve technique so if you want to add highlights all you have to do is to do the opposite take the extreme left or the shadows up and then combine the rgb channels to add some color to it and just begin painting the highlights don't forget to blend if right you need to apply blend if to take it away from extremely dark areas so similarly we will do the opposite with the shadows also there's one more thing we did we added some rim lighting we just made a selection brought it in and just painted around the edges filled around the edges and after that one more curve to blend all in a little more and the background had a little noise so we added a little noise on the subject as well color lookup table on top of everything global effect to bring all the elements of composite together and then just a little curve to brighten it up this was a dark image and light leaks is optional and don't forget we can always add a little depth to the image by blurring the background it's not always necessary but in this case if you have a look at the subject some areas were blurred some areas were out of focus so definitely we can tell the subject was captured with a shallow depth of field so we had to add a little blur to the background even if you have a have a look at the original image of the subject just the subject see it had a shallow depth of field so we had to do that with the existing background as well and on top of that you can add some light leaks if you wish to so that's pretty much it for this video this was a little longer one but i hope it helped and this was something that you kept on requesting even when i created a poll and asked you what you wanted a lot of you guys said you want more compositing videos so there it is thank you so much for watching and i would like to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting pixem perfect on patreon and helping keep fixing perfect free for everybody forever thanks so much for watching i'll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 757,679

Rating: 4.9555902 out of 5

Keywords: create highlights photoshop, realistic shadows, photo manipulation, compositing, inverse curve technique, match color photoshop, color grading, realistic shadows in photoshop, color correction, change background, curves, blur the background in photoshop, background blur, blend images in photoshop, match subject with background, color match, photo effects, adobe, colorful highlights photoshop, paint light, photoshop tutorial, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: hJSFBUXgQog

Length: 31min 31sec (1891 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/KruiserIV]

This dude ain’t no joke. Probably one of my favorite YouTube instructors.