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Beautiful Color Grade In Photoshop Homecoming Poster Copycat 6

Hi. Welcome back to another very exciting Copycat Wednesday here ar the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com. My name is Jesús Ramirez. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that you're staying healthy and safe during this lockdown. As you probably already know, Copycat Wednesday is a new series on this channel where I show you how to recreate your favorite designs including album covers, book covers, movies, or TV posters, and pretty much anything else. Last week, we recreated the Joyner Lucas ADHD album cover. And today, we'll work on recreating the brown and green color grade from the TV show Homecoming poster. I haven't seen this show, but I really like the poster and I thought it will be fun to recreate. Let me know in the comments below if the show is any good and if I should watch it. Also, remember that you can leave your suggestions for future Copycat Wednesday episodes below in the comments. In today's tutorial, we're going to work with gradient maps, adjustment layers, and smart objects to recreate this effect. As usual, I don't know how the original artist created the image. I'm just showing you my take on it. Like everything else in Photoshop, there is a lot of ways of achieving the same result. The point of Copycat Wednesday is to show you how I would reach a result and teach you new techniques that you can use in your projects. Although I'm using images similar to the ones found in the poster, I'm not concerned with subject matter in this tutorial. My goal is to replicate the color grade. If you would like to follow along with me, then check out the link to the tutorial images in the description. Okay, let's get started with today's Copycat Wednesday. Okay, this is the images that we're going to work with. I'm going to work with this background layer and this photo of this model. Let's start with the background. We want to make this background green and one of the best ways of achieving that effect is by using the Gradient Map. The gradient map allows you to apply a color to an image based on its luminance value. If I click here to bring up the Gradient Editor, you'll see that I can make the darkest colors of the image any color that I want by adjusting the swatch. So if I click here, I can now select a color to make the darkest colors to my image. So if I select blue, you'll notice that all the shadows become blue. If I make it black, then all the shadows become black and it basically makes a black and white image because the brightest color is white. So if I change this to maybe yellow, now the brightest colors will be yellow. So that's how this works. And this is what we're going to use to create this effect. And one thing I should mention is that I have reverse unchecked, so that way the colors on the left control the darkest colors of the image, and the colors in the right control the brightest values of the image. Anyway, so let me just open this up and this first stop, the one that has location as 0%, which means that it's right on the edge. I will make that shade of green, and the shade of green that I want is right about here. And I'll brighten that up a little bit. So maybe put it right about here, like so. And I'll press OK. Now let's work with the other swatch, which is on the other side at the 100% location. And I'll double click to change the color. The color that I want is a bright green. So once again, I'll select the green that's right about in the same area. And I'll press OK. I don't want this here in the corner. I actually want the location to be at 75. So I'm going to click-and-drag this over to the left so that it comes here at 75%. And then I'll click to create another point. And when you click to create a point in the gradient, you'll duplicate the last color that you had active. So that's why we have the same color twice. I can double click on it to open up the color picker, and I can just brighten this up and make it just a bright shade of green, like so, and I'll press OK. I'll press OK one more time and this is my resulting image. You can always adjust how the image is affected by the gradient map by creating a Levels Adjustment Layer. And then just adjusting the brightness of the image so that it gives you a different result. What I'm doing here is just creating more contrast, and maybe I'll brighten up some pixels here, and click-and-drag on this point as well to the left so that no pixel is completely white. It's just off white. So before and after, it's a subtle effect, but I think it works, it brightens the background here. Next, what I'm going to do is make sure that I have the brush still active, my foreground color set to white, and a hardness of 0% to paint with a soft brush. Then click in the New Layer icon to create a new layer and click once in the center to create this highlight and I'll call this layer highlight. Next, I'm going to blur the background a little bit so I'll select the background layer. It's already a Smart Object because it's the cloud element from Adobe Stock. If your image is not a Smart Object, you can right click and select Convert to Smart Object. In this case, I don't need to do that. But if your image is not a Smart Object, I recommend that you turn it into a Smart Object so that you can work non-destructively. That means that you can always come back and make edits to your adjustments. I'm going to apply a filter now. I'm going to go into the filter menu and select Blur, Gaussian Blur. And I'm just going to adjust the filter to about three pixels so that we get a blurry background. I'll press OK and that's my result. If I click on this down pointing arrow, you can see the before and the after. It just blurs the image a little bit, and that's what we want. So I'm going to select this background layer, hold shift, click on the layer on top, and press Ctrl G, Command G on the Mac, to put that into a group and I'll call this group background. So this is going to be our background layer. And to keep things organized, I can right click and give it a color and I'll select green. So now we have this green group here. So now let's work with a monolayer. You can click on the tab to open up your second image. And what I need to do is extract her from her background. The easiest way to do that in the latest version of Photoshop is to use the Remove Background feature under quick actions in the Properties panel. If you don't have the Properties panel enabled, you can go into window and properties. Make sure that your layer is not locked. If the layer is locked, you can click on the lock to remove it. And then you'll see the Remove Background actions button. And you can click on that to make a selection and a layer mask just with one button that gets rid of the background. This quick action uses Adobe Sensei, which is artificial intelligence machine learning technology that finds the edges of your main subject, and it creates a mask base on those edges. If you're on an older version of Photoshop, no worries. What you can do is simply use the Quick Selection tool, click-and-drag over your image and then click on the Layer Mask icon to create a layer mask based on your selection. What you can do now is create a solid color layer just so that you can have a background and you can better see what's going on. The color really doesn't matter, but it should be something that really defines the edges. And the first thing that I'll do is I'll click on this layer mask and then click on selected mask from the Properties Panel. I'm currently in the black and white view, which allows me to see my layer mask. And I'll smooth out the edges of this mask and increase the contrast, which makes them sharper and I can shift the edge inward and I'll press OK. In some cases, you may still have a faint color fringe here like this white outline and what you can do is use one of Photoshop's most underutilized filters. If you go into Filter, you can go into other and select either maximum or minimum to expand the mask or to contract it. Also, like minimum to contract the mask. And notice what happened there. Before and after this filter can contract a mask based on a number of pixels. In this case, 30 pixels and you can see the effect that that created. So we got rid of that fringe and that's what we want to do. You also get an algorithm that helps you preserve either roundness or squareness. In this case, is we're working with a human being, it's obviously an organic element, roundness will work best. I'll press OK to apply that adjustment to my layer mask. Notice that I haven't touched the hair yet, and that's because I'm going to do that in the next step. So I didn't want any of those previous adjustments to affect the hair because the edges of her hair are very different than the edges of the rest of our body. So what I'm going to do is go back into select the mask, and I'm just going to use the Refine Edge Brush Tool and click-and-drag around her hair, like so, to bring it back. And I can press OK when I'm done. So obviously this is not perfect, but we're going to adjust it. And the way that I'm going to adjust it as by holding Shift and clicking on the Layer Mask icon to disable it. Then I'm going to go into the Channels panel, and I'm going to see which channel has most contrast between the foreground and background. So in this case, the blue channel has more contrast. So I'll click-and-drag it into the new channel icon to duplicate it. Then press Ctrl I on Windows, Command I on the Mac to invert the color. So now anything that was white is now black, and anything that was black is now white. What I'm going to do now is going to image adjustment levels and I'm just going to click on the black point and drag it to the right to make all those pixels completely black so that they become invisible. And then I'll click-and-drag this one to the left to make all these light gray pixels white, and I'll press OK. With this channel, I could now create a selection by holding Ctrl on Windows, Command on the Mac, and clicking on the channel thumbnail, which will load the bright pixels as a selection. I can click on RGB, go back into the Layers panel and then create a new solid color fill layer. And I'll just select a darker color, like so. Then I can take this and drag it below my woman layer and watch the effect. I'm going to zoom in and I'm going to hold Shift again and click on the layer mask thumbnail to bring it back. And you can see now that we have this effect. And what I could do now is select the woman layer thumbnail, the one on top, and paint with a soft brush using black to hide of this layer. So I'm going to hide some of those pixels and I'm going to reveal the pixels in the layer below. And I don't have to be perfect because remember, I'm going to apply a color effect to this image. So you might be able to get away with a lot of these details that don't look right. So totally up to you. If you want to spend more time and fine tune it, like so. And what I'm going to do now is come back into this color fill layer, create a group, place that fill in there so that I can create a layer mask, and then paint with black to hide these edges. And the reason that I'm doing this is so that I can have the flexibility of bringing some of these pixels back if, for whatever reason, I need them. I probably won't in this case, but you always want to try to work non-destructively. So this looks pretty good. And what I'm going to do now is disable and enable this layer, and maybe I'll change the color to something that's more similar to the colors found on her hairs. You can just click-and-drag and find something that's appropriate, and you can press OK when you're done. What I'm going to do now is disable this layer, hold Shift, click on the layer on top so that both are selected, and I'll right click and convert it into a Smart Object. Now that I have a Smart Object, I can click-and-drag it with the move tool onto our tab with the background, drag over it and then release. And notice at Photoshop brings it in as a Smart Object, and I can now continue working on it in this image. If you need to, you can scale your image. In this case, I don't think I need to scale. I actually like the size that she's at, and I'm just going to bring it down a little bit. What I'm going to do now is create a gradient map over her. So I'm going to go into the New Adjustment Layer icon and select gradient map, but I need to make sure that I clip it to the layer below so that this layer, the Gradient Map, only affects the woman layer. Clipping Mask simply means that the layer below will control the visibility of the layer on top so the active pixels of the layer below will control the pixels on the layer on top. I can come into the Gradient Editor and apply a gradient. So I'm going to start with this gradient that is at 0%. And I'm going to open it up and I'm just going to select a dark brown color. And I'll press OK. Next, I'm going to create another swatch here at 50%. Then I'll double click on it to open it, and I will make it a brown color. So I'm just going to click-and-drag this up and I'll press OK. And now I'm going to work with this one here on the edge and I'll just make it white, like so. I think that the transition here is not working so what I'll do is I'll click here to add another swatch, and I'll edit that. And I'll make it a light brown. Like that one there, and I'll press OK. That's looking much, much better. And I'll press OK one more time. One thing that I'm going to do is zoom into her eyes because in the original image, her eyes actually didn't have this effect applied to them and also her teeth. This photo doesn't have any teeth so I don't have to worry about that but I do have to worry about the eyes. So with the brush tool active, I'm going to paint with black on this Gradient Map layer mask to reveal the original color. So that brings back the white on her eye. And it doesn't have this brown effect, like so. I'll then click on the Hand tool to fit the image to screen, and you can see our resulting effect. Next, I'm going to click on the woman layer and create a Levels Adjustment Layer. And again, with the Levels Adjustment Layer, you can control how that gradient map is applied to the image because if we change the luminosity by clicking and dragging on any one of these points, for example, this middle one, to change the contrast, the brightness will change. Therefore, the way the gradient map is applied will also change. So you can adjust that any way that you want. And this is why I was saying earlier that I didn't need to be too careful with the hair because I could just make those pixels darker and they blend in a little bit better. So you can get away with a lot. Then I can click-and-drag on this point and move it to the left so that no pixel is completely white. And this is looking pretty good. What I'm going to do now is select this top layer, hold Shift, click on the layer on the bottom and press Ctrl G, Command G on the Mac, and I will call this layer model because this is where our model is. And I'll make this group red. So now we have two groups that contain all the elements in our composite. And actually, the one thing that I'll do is I'll select this highlight layer, press Ctrl T, Command T to Transform and I'll click-and-drag while holding Alt to scale out just because I need to make that a little bit bigger so that you can see it behind her head. I'll collapse the group and this is looking pretty good. What I'll do now is select both these layers, right click, convert it into a Smart Object so I can work on this image as a single photo. Now, before I do that, I'm going to double click on the Smart Object thumbnail to open it up in a new tab. And I'm going to click on the crop tool to crop the image. And then I'm going to click-and-drag this handle down until it snaps. And I'm going to zoom in just 'cause it is not snapping right on that edge there. So I'm just going to use the arrow key and actually that went way lower than I wanted it to. Let me adjust this by clicking and dragging on it, like so, so that I get that edge there. And then I can click-and-drag this one up right about there and clicking the check mark to commit the changes. I'll double click on the Hand tool. And it looks like I missed that bottom part. So let me click-and-drag it up right there. This is where I want it to go. And click on the check mark to commit the changes. Once again, I'll close my Smart Object. And now I need to fix it on my working composition. Just select the Move Tool and drag it up, like so. And I can go into Filter, Camera, Raw Filter, and work on it as a single image, of course. And from here I can make tonal adjustments to the image like make the shadows darker by clicking and dragging the shadow slider to the left. I can add texture by clicking and dragging the texture slider to the right, and clarity, which is contrast and Edge Pixels. And I'm going to go into the effects icon. And since we blur the background, you'll notice that it's very smooth and whenever I blur backgrounds, I like to add just a little bit of grains so that it's not so digital and smooth. I'll fit the image to screen so that you can see what that looks like. And I'm also going to add a little bit of a vignette. This looks pretty good, but I think that her skin might be a little too saturated so I'll go into the HSL adjustments tab. And from here, I can go into the saturation tab and adjust the oranges. Reduce the saturation of the oranges, so you can adjust this accordingly and maybe even go back into the luminance tab and then adjust how dark her skin tones appear. When you're done, you can press OK. I'm looking at the image. And I think that the gradient overlay's a little too strong. So what I'm going to do is that will click on the layer thumbnail. And this is one of the advantages of working with Smart Objects, you can always go back and make adjustments. For example, I'm going to go back into my model group here and I'm just going to reduce the Gradient Map opacity to maybe 70%. I think that looks pretty good. I can close my Smart Object, save it, of course, and the changes will be automatically applied to my working document and I think that this looks much, much better. And this is my final result. Obviously, in your image, spend a little more time fine tuning these adjustments. Let me know what you think. How did this color grade compared to the original? If you liked it, click on that like button now. Also, let me know in the comments if you're enjoying this Copycat Wednesday series and don't forget to comment your suggestions for future episodes. Also, remember to check out the previous episode on recreating the Joyner Lucas ADHD album cover. The link is below in the description. I would also like to thank the following people for sharing their results using the hashtag PTC vids on Instagram. I really enjoy looking at everything that you all create. These are fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing them with us. And of course, if you create something using this tutorial or any of my tutorials, then upload them into Instagram with the #PTCvids. By the way, do you enjoy the Photoshop Training Channel? If you do, then make sure that you are subscribed. So click on that subscribe button now. And if you're already subscribed then do me a favor, click on that notification bell now. Doing so really helps up the channel and it lets you know when a new tutorial is up. Thank you so much for that. Stay healthy and safe. I'll catch you again in the next Copycat Wednesday.

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