To simplify it, we like to break it down by the three most important features. With numbers, sliders, drop-down menus, and buttons everywhere, there’s a lot to take in. The Levels dialog can be intimidating at first. Also, make sure to delete or disable those light samples you painted with the Brush Tool, you won’t need them. But they can be a little confusing, so let’s take a look.Ĭreate a Levels Adjustment Layer on top of your background image Layer, and below the reference image (you only want the Levels Adjustment Layer to affect the image you want to match, not the reference). Help with advanced projects like compositing and retouching? Easy. If you need to color correct a photo, they can do it. If you need to make lighting and exposure adjustments, they can do it. We can’t say enough about how great Levels Adjustment Layers are. Now that you have an idea of what adjustments to start with, it’s time to turn to a tool that can help dial in both light and color information the Levels Adjustment Layer. Make sure to check both the highlights and the shadows when trying to color match two images–some projects will take a little more work than others! Just keep in mind that this won’t always be the case. In this particular example, the darks of both images are pretty close, meaning we only need to focus on the highlights and the midtones. This gives us a clear direction, now knowing that we need to bring the highlights down in our photo if we want to match it to the reference. Side-by-side, it’s to see that the highlights from our image are much brighter than the highlights from the reference. The darker top line is from the reference image, and the brighter bottom line is from the image we’re trying to match. Looking at the image above, we painted two lines sampled from the highlights of each image. To compare the darks, follow the same process, choosing the darkest point in each photo. Just create a new Layer on top of the Layer Stack, select the Brush Tool, Sample the brightest point in the reference image and paint a solid line, and then Sample the brightest point in your photo and paint a solid line next to it. The Brush Tool can make comparing light levels very easy. With both images converted to black and white, the goal is to compare how dark the darkest pixels are in each photo, and compare how bright the brightest pixels are in each photo. Keep in mind that this Black & White Adjustment Layer is only temporary! Once we use it to compare light levels, we can simply delete it or disable it to get the color back.
In our example, both images are now visible only in black and white. This will convert both the reference photo and your photo to black and white. Create a Black & White Adjustment Layer and place it on top of the Layer Stack. If you want to compare the highlights and shadows between two photos, converting them to black and white will make it much easier to see the differences. Now color is great, but it can get in the way of analyzing light and dark levels. In fact, it’s so important to match the light levels that you should always do it first. Matching color is as much about matching light levels as it is about matching the reds, greens, and blues. The First Rule of Color Matching is… Remove the Color?
With your photo and the reference photo side-by-side, you can more precisely compare the color and light information between each, which will eventually help you dial in a perfect match. Having the reference image available in Photoshop takes a lot of the guesswork out of color matching. In the example above, we have the photo we want to edit as the base Layer, with the reference image scaled down on a Layer above. We recommend first opening the image you want to edit, and then, in the same Photoshop document, bring in the reference image to use as a guide. If you want to recreate that look, save that photo! The most important part of matching color is having a reference image that you can compare to as you edit. So you’ve found an image with color that you love.
0 kommentar(er)
