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[♪♪] [ADOBE TV Presents]
[Russell Preston Brown in..]
[The Russell Brown Show]
In this episode of The Russell Brown Show,
I want to talk about simple things you can do to improve photographs you're taking.
And in this case I have a photograph of this child who's just won an award,
but it's a cluttered image with a lot going on in the background,
which is distracting from our focus--
and that's the child's face and the award.
We want to tell a story in this image.
So let's go in and turn it from this image into this image,
where we're going in and emphasizing the foreground,
dropping the shade of the background back, and blurring it back,
once again, before and then after.
We're really emphasizing our subject matter in this image
and telling our story more clearly.
Okay, here we go.
Let's get started by selecting this image.
Let's go in with a few simple tools.
In this case we're going to make a selection to start this all off.
Going over here to my Tool panel, I'm going to go down here to my Selection Tools,
and in this case I think the best one is the Scribble Selection Tool right here.
With the Scribble Selection Tool, of course, I can select the foreground,
and in this case I'm going to click and drag here on the screen,
and I'm going to go right around the outline of my subject.
I'm going to try and stay as close as I can to the edge, as you see here.
The closer I can stay to the edge without breaking over the edge,
the better the results and the better the results the first time I try this.
That looks great.
Let's now click on Remove over here to the left,
and let's go in and create a parallel line to the green line that we've just drawn.
Don't touch or intersect the 2 lines as you're drawing them,
but just go around like this.
I'm going back up and around. I can continue my process by going up and around my image.
If I've come to a dead end, just move off the screen, as you see here,
go all the way around, and then come back in again for a project like this.
That looks great. Let's let this process.
It looks pretty good, but I can see a few issues.
I'm going to zoom in by clicking with my 2 fingers on the screen.
I can see the areas that I want to repair.
With the Remove still selected, I'm going to go back in,
and as I click on the screen, notice that when I've zoomed in
the brush size has now changed relative to my zoom level,
which is a really nice way to refine the edges of your selections.
Let's go switch over here to Keep, and let's redefine the edge of the hair here
because it's a little bit light here on the edge,
and we might just get that bit of that ear right here.
That looks better.
Let's zoom out a bit right there.
In this case my selection does not have to be absolutely perfect
because I'm not going to be cutting out the background
or moving the subject to another image.
I'm just going to be blurring the background.
In this next step we're going to go in to this flyout menu here, my Selection menu,
and down to Refine Edge.
In this case we can now go in with my brush and re-refine the edges here,
for example, of his hair, just like this.
That's going to do an overall softening to it.
I see another problem over here. I'm just going to do a little scribble there to solve that one.
But in general, I have a soft selection around my foreground subject, and I can now click OK.
So just a quick selection because, again, we're just going to blur the background.
I do have the foreground selected.
We now need to inverse the selection.
From the Select menu at the top we're going to select Inverse.
So I've selected the foreground, but I really want to work on the background.
With the background selected, let's get started.
Let's go up here to our Effects menu here at the top.
Under the Basic menu here we're going to select Gaussian Blur.
With Gaussian Blur I can go in and make an adjustment here with my slider.
Taking it all the way over to the right I can have a really, really blurred background.
But there is some information in the background that I think adds to the story in this image,
so I'm going to drop this back down a bit, just about there. Perfect.
Then select Apply.
Okay. That looks pretty good.
Let's now go up here to my Select menu and down here to Deselect for my current selection.
That looks great.
Let's now go back in and lighten up our foreground.
The best way to do that is with our Brush Tool,
clicking here on my Tool panel and going down to my Brush Tool right here.
Within the Brush Tool you have 2 different modes.
Here under my Mode setting you can paint with a brush or paint effects.
In this case I want to paint with an effect, selecting that.
Clicking here I can select from these variety of different effects.
In this case it's Dodge and Burn, selecting it right here.
Then over here under Settings, click on it
and now adjust your setting here until you get the value that you want to paint with.
In this case I want to lighten up my subject's face and lighten up this medal that he's holding
so I can really bring out the full story of this image.
I'm going to click OK.
Now, it's not making any adjustments to the image. That was just a preview.
Now if we go in with a brush--in this case by selecting my brush--
we can see that my flow and my opacity are set and I have a large brush with a soft edge.
Clicking away, I can start to paint in here.
In this case I want to lighten up his eyes, just like this,
and do an overall lightening of his face, just like that.
I also want to do a lighten here of the medal.
I want to make this shine a bit and not be so much in the shadows, just like that.
Perfect. There you go.
We've reduced the complexity of our background by blurring it
and making it a little bit darker,
then we came in and painted in with Dodge and Burn on the subject's face
and on the medal that he's holding to really bring out the story within this image.
Give these techniques a try the next time you want to enhance one of your images
and really make it a much better image.
[♪♪] [Executive Producer - Bob Donlon] [Producer - Karl Miller]
[Director - Kush Amerasinghe] [Post-Production - Erik Espera]
[ADOBE TV Productions - tv.adobe.com]
