TK8 PLUGIN for Photoshop: TONE GRADING (Bringing Balance to Shadows, Mid Tones and Highlights)

hey everyone it's tk friday again the title of today's episode is tone grading i found some new ways of using the color grading tool and the tk8 multi-mass panel i'm going to show those to you today let's get started hello everyone and welcome to the joy of editing with dave kelly well it is that fall time of the year again where the autumn colors are coming out and i love it that dance of color is beautiful today i'll be working on this image i shot last year in an area in pa called mill run pa it's close to where falling waters is but the day was kind of interesting it was kind of stormy but then the sun would come out and i was on an old country back road some farmland and i came across this scene and i just jumped out of the car and took the shot of course after i pulled off the side of the road then i jumped out or else the car right would be you know what i mean i started out this edit in lightroom i just did some basic editing on it as you can see right here gave it a slight exposure increase a little bit of contrast started out with the linear profile and if you don't have your linear profile yet you can get those free off tony kuiper's website i'll leave a link in the description below for that and if you don't have the tk8 panel yet you can click on my affiliate link it'll take you to the tony kuiper website where you can purchase panels and videos and if you use my promo code dk15 you could save 15 off your entire purchase but the linear profile is a great way of starting i usually start out with a linear profile and then do like an auto adjustment and then tweak it from there but it's a really good starting point so i highly recommend at least giving that linear profile a try i think you'll like it and if anybody has used the linear profiles please leave comments in the comment section below and let people know how you're using them and how well you think they work for you i'd really love to hear from you and hear your thoughts on that now other than exposure and contrast i did pull back my highlights a bit and opened up my shadows and adjusted my white and black point i didn't use any presence adjustments and as far as vibrance and saturation i reset those back to zero because the auto setting gave me both extra vibrance and saturation but i did work with camera calibration uh let me shut it off and show you here's the before camera calibration and here's after i've been experimenting with this and i'll probably do a video on this someday but anyway i just tweaked up the red primary green and blue primary saturation levels just to add a little bit of extra color to my image and sometimes i find it does a really nice job but it seemed to really work well on this image but again here is the before the camera calibration here is after and of course i always do my lens corrections uh i check on remove chromatic aberrations and enable profile corrections and then i uh as far as detail i just use the default sharpening and no noise reduction because once i got it into photoshop i sent it into topaz the noise ai just to uh remove noise because it was shot at iso 1600 and then i sent it into photoshop i just right clicked it edit in and clicked on edit in photoshop and now here i am in photoshop and like i said the first thing i did to this image was send it into topaz the noise ai and remove the noise but i also did a crop on the image i did a 16x9 crop because i didn't like this crop here so much i had too much foreground grass but i thought this was a much better crop more cinematic but now it's time for the fun stuff the tk8 multi mask panel now being that this is a landscape and we have a clearly defined sky and foreground i always like to start out by saving out the sky and the foreground as a channel and to do that all you need to do is click this action here and that will select your sky for you and then if you click this other action you can save that out as a channel and i just name it sky and click ok and now you'll notice i have a channel called sky and now that that sky is selected all i have to do is invert it click this icon right here that inverts it and now it selects the foreground very handy and now save that out as a foreground channel because we'll be using those very shortly here click ok and now you can see i have a sky and a foreground channel and of course i can deselect my selection if i want to which i will do by clicking this action right here the first thing i'm going to do is come up to this icon for color grading and click it and click the plus and that adds a color grading curves adjustment layer here and this is where i've come up with the title for this episode called tone grading because i'm using color grading for something a bit different and that is to tone grade my image because in every image we have shadows mid-tones and highlights and check it out in this color grading tool we have shadows mid-tones and highlights and that's what got me thinking well i could really balance out my image very well with these different adjustments for example if i want to lighten up all the mid-tones i can click on mid tones and take this luminosity slider and drag it to the right and beautifully lighten up the mid-tones and then if i say well i want to darken my shadows a little bit to add more contrast click on shadows and maybe just darken up my shadows a little bit like that and add that contrast and then i could come to highlights in if i want to increase my highlights i can drag this to the right and increase the highlight so if i have too much highlight i can drag it to the left and minimize them a little bit now here is the before and here's the after but remember i saved out a sky and a foreground channel and i'm going to use those so let me go ahead and just delete this whole color grading layer and i'll show you how i do this now by the way if you don't have a sky and a foreground in your image and you just want to balance out your image just do what i just showed you that's that simple but when you have a defined sky and a foreground here's what you need to do let me go ahead and get rid of this color grading tool by clicking the x and then just click this my channels icon and choose let's work on the foreground first let's click foreground and now let's output it to a color grading layer and we do that we have a beautiful selection of the foreground on a color grading layer and now all we need to do is let's start with mid-tones let's uh adjust our mid-tones and again we're only working on the uh foreground so there's my mid-tone adjustment then i can go to my shadows and maybe darken those up a slight bit just a little wee bit and let's go to my highlights and maybe just pull back on my highlights just a wee bit or let me see if i go the other way do i want to go the other way you know what i'm i think i will i think i'll just open those highlights up a little bit now here is the before and here is after but isn't that great it just balances out my foreground now let's work on our sky so let's x out of the color grading tool and go back to my channels and this time we're going to pick sky and i'll put it to a color grading layer and let me start out with my mid tones i don't think i'll touch shadows because i don't have many shadows in that sky so what i'll do is just pull back on my mid tones a little wee bit just something like that okay and then let's go to our highlights and let me see let me try increasing the highlights now i think i'm going to decrease my highlights slightly and i think that looks really good right there now if you had any issues where you wanted to change the color of the sky if it was too blue or whatever you can use this tool right here and the color wheel and balance things out if it was too blue you could shift it more into yellow or if it was too yellow you could shift it more into blue if it was like a like a sunset you may want to throw some magenta in there so you understand there's a lot of really great possibilities here you don't just have to tone grade you can also work with the color as well because it is a color grading tool but it has two components tone and color now i want you to bear in mind we are working with the curves adjustment layer and you might say dave well just can't we work with the curves adjustment layer hey you can but not this easily and really breaking it down to shadows mid-tones and eyelids let me show you let me click on the foreground um curves adjustment so you can see now if we look here you can see i've i've lightened up my mid-tones but you notice my highlights the highlight edge of the curve here is drag into the left and the shadow edge is dragging to the right okay but i've done that really simply by adjusting the slider so i don't have to think about it and a lot of times we might not even think to do that but now that we have this tool it's a very easy no-brainer we can just slide this you know pick the tone we want shadows midtones to highlight and start making adjustments and then if we need to alter the color we have the color grade wheel here that we can move our colors and alter and change them very simply and very intuitively in other words we don't have to come in here and you know go to red you know adjust the red then go into the green do i go up do i go down we don't have to think all we have to do is move this color grading wheel around here you know slide this square to wherever we want it we want it more red move it this way or green more blue whatever but it's very intuitive and instinctive and i might add quite a joy to use but to do this it's super fast and super easy it takes time to explain it but after you start doing this you'll find this is a breeze and you'll be happy to use it here is my before and here is my after just balanced out so fast and simply well that was the tone grading part and now i'm going to switch over to troubleshooting and see how i can make this image even better so i have this cloud right here i feel that this cloud is a little dark i want to lighten it up and it has a bit of a blue cast and i'm going to use a color grading tool to fix this what i'll do is click on my top layer and then add another color grading tool and basically what i'm trying to do is lighten up this cloud a little bit now i'm going to work on the entire image and you'll see what i mean here but what i'll do is i'm going to go to mid tones and i'm just going to lighten up the entire image but i'm only looking at that cloud okay some somewhere right around in there now it's a little too blue so i'm going to shift that color up into yellow a little bit take a little bit of that blue off of there you see that now here is the before and here's the after now it's affecting the entire image so what i'll do next now follow me closely is shut off this eye to shut that adjustment off and then what i'll do is x out of here and come up and click on this zone mask icon and select this cloud right here and click ok and now i'll just go ahead and maybe lighten up that selection a little wee bit it's selecting that cloud rather nicely but it's affecting other parts of the image as well so i'm going to output it after i just tighten this mask up just a wee little bit i just want to tighten it up not much just a little a wee little bit now i need to output this mask i'll click this icon right here it'll attach a black layer mask to my color grading layer and it will give me a white brush and it'll load the mask up as a as a selection and how i can paint my own mask pretty cool stuff it's going to give me a white paint brush and it's going to let me paint through a selection and i'm just going to fix that cloud now i'm going to use a nice large brush here with a nice feathered edge on it and i will use my opacity of paint around 50 now remember it's white paint and i'm just gonna paint over this cloud here and even up into this section here that's one pass now i'm going to paint again now remember i have 50 opacity there's another pass and i'll do it one more time there's another pass okay now let's take a look here is the before and here is the after so again the before and the after so just that easy now i could come back here and click on the curves adjustment here and you can see there's my color grade right there okay click on this icon again and um click on the three tones right here in this icon to the right and you can see my adjustment so if i needed to come in here and adjust any of these i could click on them so if i wanted to make it lighter yet i can click on this mid-tone adjustment and drag this to the right and lighten it up even more so we can come back in there and alter things but remember i told you on my last tutorial on a tk friday do not touch this when you start out with a curves color grade tool do all your adjustments on the tool and not on the curves itself and by the way if you click this icon here whatever layer you're on you can look at the layer mask itself and if you over painted all you need to do is get some black paint and i'll use this icon right here to get black paint i'll make my brush smaller and i could come here and you know i'm still painting through a selection so i could come here and paint off any area that i over shot like on this tree here if i don't want it i'm just painting several times but i'm still painting through a selection so you can clean it up and then when you're done just click that icon again so that's a little tip for you the next thing i want to do is add a little pop of color and life and contrast to these trees here and to do that what i'm going to do is go to an action one of my favorites but before i do that i'm going to shut off my selection because i don't want to paint through a selection so click this icon right here and go to my actions and click on paint contrast the color picker comes up because you can paint with color or whatever i'm just going to say okay but then i'm going to grab my white brush and my opacity right now is at 50 i'm going to change that to 100 i'm just typing the 0 key to change that to 100 and now i'm going to kiss some light on some of these trees here and i'm just gonna paint that on look at that isn't that beautiful now you don't have to hit every light spot okay but look at that i'm just gonna kiss some color in here but this always excites me because it adds drama to the image and you know this is where you need to use your artist's eye just to do this and and again just pick and choose wherever you think it goes now i'm doing a tutorial so i would take much more time and really work on this okay but i hope you see how exciting this can be these are the little nuances that can really set your image apart from other people's images it's that attention to detail and this paint contrast is great for adding a pop of color and contrast to these trees okay and even back in here i'll hit some light kiss a little bit back in here it's almost like uh dodging a bit but it is working with contrast so it's good give this one a try try this in some of your autumn images because it can do some really magical things to them okay so let's take a look here is the before and here is the after again the before and after i'm just going to leave it at that for now but if you felt that effect was too strong you could take this opacity and start to pull it back but i like it now i'm going back to troubleshooting mode and i feel that these trees back here the light on this hill back here just seems a slight bit hazy to me and i thought hey i know there's a dehaze action so i went to my actions and i looked for de-haze and i got it highlighted here where are you no i don't have it highlighted i'm going to right click it and highlight it yellow so i can remember it next time so let me click this and it runs a de-haze action now it runs it over the entire image and you can use it that way over the entire image and you it's in a group so you can take the opacity and pull it back if you want to but i'm going to leave it up full but what i want to do is turn this a white layer mask into a black mask by clicking on this icon right here and just remove it from everything and then i'm just going to get my brush i'll just click on the white brush icon and i'm going to paint at i think 50 i'm not going to go at 100 and i'm just going to paint that dehaze with that white brush onto this hill back here but look how beautifully that just you know removes some of that light haze off of there just there was a slight haze on there and i'm just hitting these areas right in here now check this out here is the before and here's the after but just that easy that action really takes care of that problem i'll go ahead and close this dehaze group because i want to add another adjustment above this group and if i don't do that when i add that new adjustment it'll go inside this group now i could always drag it back out but this will just save that problem from happening so i'll close the group okay what i want to do next is just lighten up the mid-tones of the foreground just a wee little bit i feel it's just a little bit too dark now i could just come down to this first layer of the foreground and you know alter these adjustments a bit but instead of that i'm going to make a new color grading adjustment layer above the dehaze group but what i'm going to do is x out of this first and go to my channels and select the foreground by clicking this and let's output it to another color grading layer and i'll just click on mid tones and i'm just going to lighten up the mid tones of that foreground just a tiny wee bit here is the before and here's the after and if i wanted to warm that up a little bit i could take this gray square and just drag it into the warm tones just a slight wee bit now here is the before and here's after just to give it an overall warming there's one last thing i want to do and that's add a vignette around the image and to do that i'm going to grab my lasso tool l is the shortcut for lasso tool and let's just draw our own shape around this image here and then i'm going to use one of my favorite tk actions to make the vignette so open up your actions and i love this action freehand vignette just click on this and the action starts to run and then you'll get this gaussian uh blur dialog comes up i just take the default setting click ok and here's my vignette here's my before and here is my after now if that vignette is too strong you could pull back on it and i think i will i'll take it back a little bit there's 40 let's try 40 here's before and here is after and for now i think i'm done now when i'm all said and done i'll just save this out with the layers so you can just come up here to file and click save where is it safe osu shortcut keys command s or control s to save or come up the file and click save there now that your image is saved you can always come back later and work on it let's take a look where i started from i started with this image and end up with this and i started out with that new tone grading technique with the color grade tool you can separate out the sky from the foreground or you can just do it all with just one color grading layer on an image that doesn't have a sky in the foreground but if it does have a sky in the foreground i recommend that you separate them out like i showed you in this tutorial well there it is everyone it's been another tk friday thank you so much for joining me today hey if you enjoyed the tutorial today please give it a like and share it with your friends if you're not yet a subscriber to my channel please subscribe click that bell notification icon then every time i upload a new tutorial you'll be notified about it i want to thank each and every one of you for joining me today in the joy of editing with dave kelly and i'll see you all right here next time but until then happy editing [Music] you

Channel: The Joy of Editing with Dave Kelly

Views: 2,776

Keywords: TK8, Tony Kuyper, TK8 Plugin, TK8 Plugin for Photoshop, Color Grading, Tone Grading, Photography, Photo Editing, Photoshop, Luminosity Masks, Zone Masks, Training, Tutorial, Promo Code, DK15

Id: FY3yl-QvheA

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021