Hi, I'm Glyn Dewis and welcome to episode
one hundred of this almost weekly video show. In this particular episode what I want to
do is who you how you can color grade your pictures, how you can add mood and atmosphere
really quickly using something called color lookup tables in photoshop. Just to set things straight right from the
word go, this is actually a tutorial for those of you who are using the subscription based
version of Photoshop. so you actually on the creative cloud. That's purely because Adobe have only put
the color lookup tables or 3d LUTs into the subscription version of Photoshop. That being said, what exactly are they? Basically they are a great way that you can
color grade your pictures. They're pretty new to photoshop but have been
around the movie and video world for a long time. Any of you premier pro users or any other
movie editing software, you'll know exactly what it is I'm talking about. Let's take a look at them. First of all where we find them, how we use
them, how you can create your own and also just a couple of the pitfalls that I can show
you that will help you have no problems in the future when you are actually trying to
use them. If we take a look at the picture on the screen
and this is a picture that I took of a couple of guys from a group called the bearded villains. This is the final retouch picture and you
can probably see from the layers panel here we've got a few adjustments at the top here. These are the one around basically adding
in that final look but I actually want to be able to use this look on many other pictures
from now on. I could maybe create an action. We'll talk about actions in a short while
and why they're not going to be the best thing to use, but let's just focus on these color
lookup tables. Where are they, then? First of all let's just get rid of all these
layers here at the top. This is the picture at the stage now where
I want to add in the color grading. The actual color lookup tables are found amongst
the adjustment layers at the top right hand corner. You're going to find them just up here and
there's a three by three grid. When you click on that you're going to be
presented with the properties here with three drop down menus. Oops. Let's just get rid of that one there. Then we click on the first one. As in all of them you'll see all of these
different names given to these presets. You can see that if I click on them it's going
to start adding in certain looks to the pictures. Nothing groundbreaking or new there. Especially for those of you who like to use
plugins like the one I mentioned early on with the color effects pro. The great thing here is these are now adjustments
layers within our pictures. What that means is we can use things like
opacity if we wanted to lower the opacity. We can also start to be really creative by
playing around with blend modes just to see what kind of looks we can build up. We can add more and more and more to get that
final look that we want, but here is how I actually do use them and I think you'll see
at the end why I do it this particular way. I now want to add in a mood, a look to this
kind of picture. When I get to this stage, let's just close
up tab just there, what I then do is go to the image menu and choose duplicate and click
okay. What that's basically going to do is give
me exactly the same copy of the picture. Not only do we have the picture but we also
have the layers over on the right hand side in the layers panel as well. On this copy what I then do is come to the
fly out menu at the top of the right hand corner of the last panel and choose flatten image. Again, this will all become clear as to why I do
that at the very end of the video. Now then, let's add a look that we want to
give to this picture. I'm going to start using these lookup tables
or these LUTs and we'll go to the first one here, we'll go to the first drop down menu
and I'll choose something like tension green. Again it's an adjustment layer, so let's just
take the opacity down. We'll take it to forty percent. Let's have another one. I'll choose the drop down menu here. This time I'm going to choose maybe edgy amber
and we'll reduce the opacity way down on that one to maybe fifteen percent and let's add
just one more third one and we'll go for crisp warm and we'll take that to maybe forty percent. As well as these lookup adjustment layers here, I'm going to add in a curves adjustment and I think with this one here
I want to just bring back a little bit more detail in the shadow areas. We'll take the bottom left hand corner there
and we'll drag that up slowly just to bring a bit of detail back in the darks, in the
shadows, and let's just have a little bit of warmth in it. Where it says RGB let's click to go to the
blue channel, go to the top right hand corner and drag that down to add a little bit of
yellow, put a bit of warmth into the picture. Now that we've got this look we're going to
go to the file menu, we're going to go to export, and we're going to go to color lookup
table. When we get that we get this little dialog box comes up that says the name of the picture that we're working on. Copyrighted to yourself. The quality, I'm going to leave it high here
and in the form of section you may find in your version there that by default all four
of these options are checked. Just leave it in the first one, little 3DL
for the 3D LUT, a little tick in there and then click okay. When you click okay Photoshop then asks you
what do you want to call it? We'll call this one bearded villains and I'll
save it on my desktop in a folder called LUT and then click save. Now then, let's just get rid of all these
layers. Let's just pretend now this is a whole new
picture. I now want to add that exact same look to
it. All I do is go to the adjustment layers, click
on the color lookup adjustment layer, we've got the three options, click on the first menu,
click on it once to open it, click on it again where it says load and then just navigate
to where those LUTs are that you've created and choose the one you want, click open, and
it applies it. It's very quick. The thing with using actions, you may be thinking
now, why don't I just create an action? When you create an action you're recording
everything that you do within Photoshop and that includes the name of the layers. You may find that when you you try to use the action on a picture in the future that the layers within the picture
you're working on aren't named exactly the same. When you try to run that action it may look
for the original names of the layers and because it can't find them it starts to throw a bit
of a hissy fit and it may cause problems and may not work. With the color lookup tables it doesn't care
what the layers are called. It just applies it with one click. That's how we can use them. I've shown you you can use the blend modes
on them, you can load the opacities, just to get really creative with them. Now let's look at the pitfalls, things that
you need to be aware of when you're doing it. The first one is this. When you're creating them you have to have
a layer that is a background layer and it's locked. Let me just show you what happens if you don't
have that. I'm going to unlock this layer and we'll just
create one look. Let's just go down to here. We'll go down to crisp winter, let's say,
something like that, and let's say now I want to save this out as my own lookup table I
can use later on. We go to the file menu which use exports and
which use color lookup tables, but now when I click on it we've got this warning box that
comes up saying, could not export color lookup tables because this document has no background. You have to have a background layer that's
locked. Click okay. Let's go back to that layer. As a matter of fact let's just delete that. Now that we've got this layer that isn't a
background let's turn it into a background by going to layer, new background from layer,
then let's try again. Let's just create that same look. We've got crisp winter. Now let's go to file, export color lookup
tables, and there we go. Carry on as normal and we're not now getting
that warning dialogue box come up. Let's just cancel that one. The other one is, you'll remember from before
rather that rather than me creating the lookup table at this particular stage where we've
got all the layers and the original picture and then saving it, I actually created a duplicate,
flattened it, and then made it. This is why. Let's just say we wanted to create that same
look with this picture here. With all the layers below it. I'll go to the 3D LUTs, the color lookup
tables and we'll create the same look. Tension green, down to forty percent. We'll add a second color lookup and we'll
go to edgy amber, turn that down to fifteen percent, let's add that third one in. This one we're going to choose maybe crisp
warm, turn that down to forty percent and then that final layer that we had was that
curves layer where we increased the detail in the shadow areas, we went to the blue channel
and then we added in some yellow, some warmth into the picture like so. Nothing different so far. Now then, let's say that we want to save that
look. We go to file, export and go to color lookup
tables. No warning dialogue box appears. We get the name of the file here, the copyright,
the quality, the 3DL is checked. We click okay. Everything seems fine at the moment. We'll then name this one bearded villains
two, and we'll go to desktop and we'll put it in that same folder where my original one
was saved. We've got bearded villains and now we've got
one that we've just created called bearded villains two and we'll click save. Nothing different so far but let's now delete
all these layers and say that. we've now done all this retouching and all
we want to do is add that final look to our picture. We know we created a 3DLUT, a color lookup
table for it. We click on the color lookup adjustment layer. We click on the first menu, click again where
it says load, navigate to the folder where we saved our looks. Let's just choose the one that was called
bearded villains two and then click open. Now you might think that nothing seems that
different, until I zoom in. Now look. Look at his clothing. It's all gone weird. Something's gone seriously wrong here. It really doesn't like it when you create
these lookup tables when you have other layers below them that aren't just the background
layer. I hope that makes sense. Keep things nice and simple. If, however, we now apply the color lookup
table from the original one we created on our duplicate image, so we go to load 3DLUT,
choose the one that was just called bearded villains and then open, we can see there's
absolutely no problems and the exact look we're after has been applied. That there is color lookup adjustments. Absolutely fantastic. I really do love these and I'll be honest
with you. In the past week or month or so I haven't
even bothered going into my usual method of coloring my pictures, which is where I'm using
all these ones here, Nik Collection, MacPhun and Topaz. Don't forget, if you like the content make
sure that you let others know about it and share it out. This is now episode one hundred. Those of you who have stuck with me all the
way through, thank you so much. Obviously we're going to continue but a huge
thanks from me, but please share it out there. It would be great if you could do that. If you haven't subscribed already make sure
you click that little subscribe button there which is just another way of showing some
support but you'll also get to know when there's a new video that's been released and if you
want the same file that you can see on the screen now so that you can get working straight
away to try out these lookup tables so that you can get to know the techniques, just go
to my website, join the email group by putting your email address in there, and then you'll
get access to a page where you can download all the files that go with all the YouTube
videos. That's it. Thanks again. Episode one hundred. We are done. I'll see you next week for a new one.
