as i mentioned in yesterday’s daily post, i am going to start running through at least one photoshop lesson per week to step up my editing game. i’m going to be using only free tools like youtube and google to source my lesson plans, and i’m going to be treating this like it’s a real class.
i’ve already picked out a few lessons that i want to focus on right off the bat, and i’ll be picking one of these each week to run through. for this week, i am going to be working on color grading. there are two different techniques that i want to master, both of which are similar but useful in different scenarios. the first is the orange and teal look that is popular these days, and the second is the brendan woelfel look, which is more of an aqua and pink color grading.
i already finished watching one tutorial video and took specific notes on the process, but after trying that out on some of my own photos, it didn’t translate well, so i’m going to have to watch at least two more videos on each of these two styles and find the technique that fits my general shooting profile.
another lesson i want to integrate is eye work. i see so many photographers doing amazing things with eyes in their photos, and it’s all about the photoshop on this. eyes are going to be next week’s lesson.
other techniques i want to master are mostly tied to compositing, or putting together elements from different photos into a seamless image. packed into that are so many micro lessons, and i’ll have to unpack this and dole out those tasks across the next several weeks. i also need to make sure that i’m getting up to speed on landscape photography tutorials and techniques so that when i travel to europe, australia and asia later this year, i don’t fuck up my photos by shooting them all wrong. not like i’m going to get to go back to most of these places - maybe ever. so i need to get that shit right the first time around.
for now, color grading is, i think, the most important thing i need to get comfortable with, because i really want to develop my own style, and to understand which techniques are best for certain color and lighting scenarios.