From the course: Photoshop 2021 Essential Training: Photography

Using fill layers to create a hand-painted look - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2021 Essential Training: Photography

Start my 1-month free trial

Using fill layers to create a hand-painted look

- [Instructor] Let's take a look at two different ways to hint in a photograph. The first way is going to be using the neural filters to use artificial intelligence in order to hand color. And then the second way, we'll have a little bit more control as we use color fill layers. So in order to add the filter non-destructively, I'll right click on the background, and choose to convert to Smart Object, and then use the filter menu, and then neural filters. I'll click on the beta icon, and then choose colorize and Photoshop will use artificial intelligence to automatically choose colors and assign them to different areas of the image. Now your image might not look exactly the same as mine, because as Adobe improves the filter, the results will most likely change. But I think it does a very good job on this image. And if I wanted to add another color, I could just click in the color swatch, then use the color picker to select the color. And then use the preview on the right in order to assign that color to different areas in my image. And you can add as many of these as you want and customize them, as well as add an overall tint to the entire scene. Alright, so that's the first way I'll click okay. And then we're going to just hide that, while we take a look at the second way. Here, I'll want to begin with a selection. So I'll choose my object selection tool, and click and drag out a rectangle around the barn. Now in order to modify that selection, I'll tap the L key, that will give me the lasso. And then I can hold down the Shift key if I need to add to my selection, or we can hold down the Option key if we need to subtract from the selection. So here I'm just going to make a rough selection over all of these vines just dragging around here. And then I can hold down the Shift key again, if I wanted to add back in some of these areas. All right, in order to add the fill layer and change the blend mode, I'll select the layer and then new fill layer and solid color. Then for the blend mode, I'll choose color. And let's go ahead and rename this barn. Using the color picker, I'll select a brown color moving this a little bit more towards orange and then to soften the edge effect. I'll make sure to select the mask in the Layers panel and then add a relatively large feather. Let's go up to maybe around 20 here. Next, I want to add a little bit of green to these vines. So with the lasso tool still selected, I'll just drag in order to select these. I'll come up here and grab those. And then down over here to the right. And just make my loose selection there. Now this time I want to add my solid color fill layer using the layers panel. But before I click on the add adjustment layer icon, I want to hold down the Option key on the Mac or the Alt key on Windows. That way when I choose solid color, I get the new layer dialog. I'll call this vines and I can change the blend mode to color. Then in the color picker, I'll just select a kind of yellow green color. Again, maybe de saturated a bit and click okay. If I wanted to add a little bit of green to any other areas in my image, I can always tap the B key to select the brush. Target the mask in the layers panel and then make sure that I'm painting with white and I'll decrease the opacity to 50% and then just paint in order to add that color. I'll add a little green of the trees as well. And then switch back to the lasso by tapping the L key. I want to select this foreground area here because I want to add a little bit of a yellow to it. So with that selected, I'll hold down the Option key again the Alt key on Windows and add another solid color fill layer changing the blend mode to color calling it foreground and then I'll choose a nice yellow color in order to tint that area. Alright, let's add a feather to that as well. And if you prefer not to start with a selection and instead just paint in the color, we can hold down that Option or Alt key choose solid color. Change the color blend mode. Here I'll name this sky and then choose a blue color. We can see that the entire image is being tinted. But if I target the mask and use the keyboard shortcut command Delete on Mac Ctrl Delete on Windows to fill with my background color that will fill the mask with black. And then I can switch to the brush tool by tapping on the B key, I'll get a little bit larger of a brush and just paint with white in the sky area in that mask in order to reveal the blue. I can see that for some reason the layers aren't keeping the name so I'll just double click on that and type in sky. We can toggle the visibility of this so I know it is that grass in the foreground. And then at the bottom here, that was our barn so let's just double click and rename that. So there you go two different ways to create a hand tinted looking photograph. Either using the new automated neural filters or using color fill layers in Photoshop.

Contents