All language subtitles for 02-11-Stumpys-Cleanup.mp4

With the tools that we've all been used
to

cleaning up an image,

especially one like this, where on the
surface it seems

fairly straightforward, fairly simple.

There's not a lot of colors, there's
not a lot of texture,

not a lot of detail that we have to
worry about cleaning up.

But the problem is

that we have all of these soft grads,

and using a lot of our traditional
tools,

it's really hard to get these things

to

remain continuous.

We get a lot of

bumps and mismatched textures and
mismatched

tones.

And

even though our tools have improved
over the last few years, we've gone

from just using a clone tool or the
stamp tool

to healing brushes,

spot healing brushes, patch tool,

all of those seemingly magical

options that we have now in Photoshop.

And for the most part, they do a good
job in a lot of areas of this image.

I can see using a patch tool or a heel
tool,

even normal traditional

cloning would be possible here, and
we're going to use that.

But I'd like to

introduce you

to a tool that I've been using for
about the past two years

that was

born out of my frustration

with

the limited resources I had for

cleaning up images, fixing textures

and a million other uses that I wish I
could show you right now, but i'll have

to wait.

And that process, that tool, that
function, is frequency separation.

And it's an updated version of
frequency separation that

I wouldn't necessarily say that I
figured it out.

I just

put a lot of the pieces of the puzzle
together,

figured out a new process for the
bottom end, and

kind of discovered a tool

in our normal toolkit

that no reteacher ever uses.

That is, for me, the holy grail

of retouching

and of cleanup and of manipulation

of our low frequency information.

I'm not going to explain too much today
what frequency separation is.

I'm going to show you how to use it.

I'm going to show you the tools that I
use to make

an easier time of

manipulating and controlling our
frequency layers.

But the underlying theories and process
and history we're going to save for

another day.

And for right now, we're just going to
dive in.

I'm going to show you my steps to
create my separations.

I'm going to show you

what filters I'm using.

And then I'm going to blow your minds

with a tool that

you don't even probably know about

and I'm really excited

to show you how this is going to work,
and how we're going to apply it to what

is traditionally

not a frequency separation

image, because normally you do skin.

And today we're going to do products,

and you're going to

absolutely love it.

I

mentioned a few times,

as we're working through our rough and
then more precise, compositing

and masking, that I was going to do

a flattening of my layers.

And

I'm about to show you why I

needed to do that and

how that integrates to the process of
frequency separation.

And the way that works

is

essentially we're going to be creating
a new base image that will isolate the

low and the high frequencies of our
image.

And we're going to do it in such a way
that we maintain a lot of corner integrity,

edge into integrity, highlight
integrity, shadow integrity,

and

really just put the image in a state
that allows us to access

the more traditional frequency
separation tools, a few new tools,

and my holy grail tool.

And

part of that process

we're going to use on this image makes
it so that I don't have to create a

really bloated,

oversized file.

There are other ways to do this
technique.

But this technique that I'm going to
show you today involves

a flattening of the layers, but not a
flatten.

We're just going to do a copy merged,
or stamp up,

however you want to think about it.

And

I'm going to run in action.

I don't think I'm going to just walk
through all the steps right now.

You'll see what's happening in the
action.

I'll explain it a little bit.

So first thing I'm going to do is I'm
going to

turn off my mask,

because I want to make sure I'm

getting a copy

of my base image

without some edge interference.

That's difficult to explain, but

trust me,

it's an important part of this process.

What you see right now is

all of the

masking work that I've done,

minus

my

primary

mask, that is isolating me off the
background.

And I'm going to

run a two step action.

And the first part of that action is
going to

apply a median filter

to a copy

of the entire image.

And that's going to look something like
this.

You can see that I've created a
frequency folder.

I have a smart object on the bottom,
I'm running median.

And what I'm going to do right now is
I'm going to zoom into the image

and look for kind of a signature

in the low frequency texture

of this image.

And what I mean by that is, if I take my

radius down to one in the median filter,

you can see that I've introduced a
little bit of a blur

to the underlying image.

And what it's doing

when I run a medium of one it's

stacking two neigh ring pixels and it's
averaging them together, creating a

medium of those two pixels.

And as I increase that radius, a lot of
that surface noise starts disappearing.

Median is actually a tool that is used
often in smoothing out masks.

It's a fancy little technique

that

a lot of people use to just kind of
clean an edge.

But in this case, we're going to be
using it for our low frequency creation.

And when I said I was looking for a
signature in the base layer,

if you'll notice, and it's really hard
to see, i'll show it to you a little

bit later.

It's that

the areas that my medium is going to be
fixing for me are essentially the noise frequency

parts of the image.

And there's a certain level of

radius

that is going to wipe enough of this
low frequency information for me,

that

will make it easy

for me to use

my normal tool set on the low frequency

layer to clean up a lot of the
impurities that are present

from

normal photographic processes and all
that kind of get stuff.

And so what I'm thinking about as I
look at this low frequency

filter applied to my image,

is, I'm thinking about

using

the healing brush to be perfectly
honest, because it's such a good tool.

But when you have high frequency or
noise textures, noise textures on your image,

the healing tool kind of Falls apart a
little bit, and you get a lot of edge artifacts

that are undesirable.

So as I'm looking at my medium on the
low, I'm kind of thinking about,

will this

texture work well with the healing
brush?

And right now

it's

still a little bit too busy.

I think healing brush is going to have
a little bit of a difficult time with

that area.

This other tool that I'm going to show
you is going to have a little bit of a

difficult time.

So I'm going to go up at my pixel
another point,

probably two points, because I know
that's where I want it.

You can see that

my edges,

my corners, for the most part, are
intact.

I'm losing a little bit of detail.

Frequency over here

it's not really what I want, but I only
want to run my steps once.

So I don't want to create a bunch of
layers that are unnecessary.

But in these broader

regions,

I'm kind of seeing a low frequency

surface texture that is going to
respond really well

to the healing brush.

If you can imagine how the healing
brush works,

and you can imagine yourself

healing on this layer.

It makes sense

that those two were just kind of born
to be together.

And so with that in mind, knowing that
I can use the healing brush on a lot of

these textures,

the magic brush on a lot of these
textures,

I'm going to say that, for

pixel radius, is a nice

number to land on for this image.

But

when you jump up to the label, you see
that there is kind of a hatch pattern

on the surface of the low frequency
right now.

And this is the signature that I was
talking about.

So in determining

the

median maximum, let's say, so the
maximum number that you're running up

to in the median, you want to just kind
of like dance on the edge of a certain threshold

that

shows this hatch pattern.

Not all surface textures will have it

sometimes they're not around, and
sometimes they're just all over the

image.

And what I'm thinking about when I look
at this is that the next state stage,

and the separation, is going to apply
medium again,

and it's going to wipe a lot of these
hatches away.

And so as you familiarize yourself with
frequency separation, you'll learn to

recognize what I'm seeing right now.

I feel like this

area is going to respond well to the
next stage of frequency separation.

But I'm just going to go up

another two points just to see what
happens.

Hatch patterns still there,

but it's not really doing anything more
for me than I need.

And once I start going up higher, a lot
of these detailed lines get blurred.

And I really don't want that, because
it's just going to be more clean up and

more pain.

So I'm going to stick with four.

And the great thing about this process
is, if it's not really a number that

you like, you can just run it again.

Just takes two second.

So we're going to go with four.

I'm going to hit return again,

and it didn't go away because I'm
running median

twice.

I could run it three or four times if I
want, but I found twice was fine I've

never needed more than that.

I've never needed any other filters
than median.

That's a huge part of this process.

I've really been refining it over the
last couple of years, and it just works

for almost

everything.

And it's

just

makes me so happy.

So I run the filter again.

It's on four.

You can see this is super patchy.

It's just kind of weird,

but it's still something that the
healing tool is going to love.

It's just a natural fit for the evening
tool.

Even the stamp tool, low flow, is still
going to do a good job.

It's just a really easy texture to work
with.

I'm going to show you another tool
that's going to blow your mind.

So we're going to click ok again.

And in our layer stack, you can see
that we have a frequency separation

folder,

we've got a low frequency smart object.

We've got two median filters applied.

And then a duplicate of

the low that we just made.

And you'll see why I made that in just
a minute.

I run my mediums as a smart filter,
because if I come back to this in a

week or a couple days, I want to see

what I did in case I need to reproduce
it for some reason and I can just

double click

my smart object filter stack and see
exactly what it was I did when I

originally made this thing.

I was type it in a lot of Numbers.

This just kind of saves me the hassle.

And now, with our low frequency created
onto step two, which is just the normal

process for frequency separation

with a minor twist that some people
use, some people don't.

I know a lot of frequency separators,

retouchers like to

just use a single high frequency layer.

I think it's kind of weird to do it
that way.

It's a hassle.

You have to modify the tools to
compensate for the blending mode.

This way is a lot cleaner, allows for
more flexibility, allows you to rebuild

parts of the high frequency that you
want to be original.

Again,

it's just a really simple, elegant way
of doing it.

So, running my part to,

you'll notice I've got

two eye frequency layers

and a curve on top.

Right now I'm in a view

of my high frequency layer

with

a solarized curve on it, which is going
to allow me to

really,

really see all the junk

on the surface of this image.

This is all the stuff that I'm about to
clean.

And when I run my high frequency,

or when I run my frequency separation
stack,

at that point in my process, I'm
usually ready to start working.

I've already looked at the image for
who knows how long,

and I don't need to see it again.

So I have this kind of flat stack

that just allows me to immediately
click on my high frequency

layer and start working.

But just to show you how it works,

we're going to turn off our
solarization curve.

We're going to clip the upper high
frequency layer into our lower high

frequency layer, and we're back to our
normal image.

In case you're curiously, it works.

Low frequency

smart objects.

Two median filters duplicate of that.

Just so this is what we're going to be
working on.

Here's our traditional

high frequency layer, sets linear
light.

And all we've done with this other high
frequency is

duped

this one up,

set the linear light to normal.

So it's a normal layer.

And when you clip it

into the other high frequency,

it goes away.

And you can just use your normal stamp
tool on the upper high frequency, and

you don't have to worry about blending
modes.

The only thing you have to worry about
is this option, which is current and

below, or current with the stamp tool
we're going to be working on the

current layer,

and we're going to be working in

this view.

For the most part,

it's not necessary to work in this
view.

A lot of times when you do work in this
view,

you you clean up way more than you need
to, because what's actually visible on

the image is not quite that mess that
you're looking at there.

Some of these specks I didn't even
notice before.

Let's check out what those are.

Yeah, there's a few little things here
and there.

I can verify that what I'm looking at
with my high frequency is the same as

what I was looking at with my base
image by just turning off my fq layer.

I call it fq.

You can call it whatever you want.

I just think of it as frequency, plus
it stands out for me.

And so toggling between those two, I
don't see any difference.

So I know that my separations have
worked correctly, which I know they

always will, because it's just a script
that I made.

And we're ready to start cleaning.

We're not going to get into the glory
brush yet, but we're just going to do a

little bit of stamping, just to show
you how easy this is.

I'll do some combinations of only
frequency,

upper frequency view and also a
combination with all frequency view.

So just to start with, I'm going to
finally switch to my walk home,

normal stamp tool.

Going to go up to 100 percent flow.

I don't need any blending just yet.

And I'm just going to start scrubbing
away at this image.

And all of the areas that I know are
going to need cleaning.

One quick thing I want to do before
starting that process

is I just want to duplicate

my mask up to my frequency layer.

I'm going to turn off the lower layer,
because I don't need this anymore.

We

aren't ever going to really need to
access this again,

unless we, for some odd reason, need to
start over, which I'm confident that we don't.

But we have

our original layer set down here.

And when I said we were going to
flatten an image

or work destructively, it's

just that we are

starting from a fresh image at this
point.

So we've done a flat,

but we're keeping all this there.

I'm going to borrow the layer mask.

I'd like to just see the edge.

And with my stamp tool now, I'm going
to just

start getting rid of a lot of this
upper frequency noise and garbage that

was revealed when

the strobes fired.

And reflected off all of these little,
tiny specks that weren't visible to the

naked eye.

I don't even need to see the image

in reality right now.

All you need to see is the dirt and
grime.

I'm going to turn off shape dynamics.

I like being in control of my brush
size.

And when you're using shape dynamics,
you need to worry about the pressure,

plus what's what you're cleaning, plus
the size and it's just annoying.

So I just turn it off so I can be in
control.

This was a little magenta

stripe

in the glass.

I think it was just an impurity.

These cleans

just, I know they need to be

removed.

Sometimes when I'm doing this, I like to

get rid of my palates with a tab key.

That way I'm not looking at my layers.

I don't need to look at my layers.

I know it's happening with them.

I'm on a high frequency.

I'm going to show you in a second

what's actually going on in the image.

And you'll notice there's a real subtle
texture and grain

on this surface.

And I'm not worrying about it,

because the only thing that's causing
it to show right now

is my solarization

curve.

And if I were to turn that off,

it would disappear.

So

I'm not worrying about all of the
frequencies right now.

I'm worrying about kind of the most
obvious areas of

noise and disturbance on the surface.

These are areas I even saw before.

And just through a lot of practice, I
know what needs to get removed.

All right, it's real quick.

I'm just going to show you what that
did when it turn off

my solarization curve.

And as I said,

you won't even see this texture anymore.

And

that's how it is in reality.

It's not this really crazy, colorful
mess.

It's just a very subtle

gray

shape.

As I clip

the high frequency

back on to the original high frequency,

you'll probably immediately immediately
recognize that all of those specks are

gone now,

just like that,

didn't need to worry about matching the
underlying gradients.

Didn't need to worry about any strange
edge artifacts from the healing tool.

It's just straight cloned.

Perfect.

Seamless texture matching

it's just beautiful.

I really enjoy cleaning this way
because I'm not stressed out about

having to match 10000 things
simultaneously.

And now I'm going to show you kind of a
fun, weird,

awesome trick,

which is that,

as I'm cleaning this,

normally, I would need to worry about

different types

of surface texture and color.

I could never traditionally clone from
this area to this area because they're

completely different.

I don't know if it's actually going to
work in this case, but

i'll show you the idea of it.

you're going to get our layers turned
back on.

Well, actually, what we'll do,

this will clone from this area down
here,

which is one color, to this area up
here, which is

a completely different shade tone.

And the reason why this works is that
all we're cloning right now is high

frequency.

We're not coloring, we're not cloning
color.

We're not cloning,

you know, gradients or anything like
that.

We're just purely cloning high frequency

noise out.

And we can base that cloned source

on anything if we felt like it.

Normally, when you're cloning,

you need to worry about a lot of the
underlying colors, as you've seen with

what I just did on the souther section.

We don't need to worry about those
things.

But I'm going to show you a neat trick
now with frequency separation and

working on this high layer

that

a lot of people don't think about, it's
kind of

a strange concept to wrap your head
around.

But when you look at this high
frequency layer, and you don't think of

it as an image, you just think of it as
a collection of colored pixels.

You realize

that,

especially in this area, there's just a
lot of flat gray.

And so what I can do

is I can actually sample

this gray color and just use a normal
brush

to paint over some of these specks.

I don't have to heal, I don't have to
clone.

I can actually just do a straight
paint, which is really weird, because

I'm actually painting

gray on this dark black.

I don't need to do that in this case.

But I just want to get you started
thinking about the high frequency

as a non image, it's just a field of
color,

and it's mostly gray.

The only thing that separates

the gray, the only thing that creates
the surface underneath are areas

of value that are brighter or darker
than fifty percent gray.

But anything that doesn't change the
underlying image is just fifty gray.

So you can do some really weird things

with the upper frequency, if you just
think of it

as

a non image and just look at it exactly
as it is, which is color.

With that said, I'd like to keep
cleaning.

I'm probably not going to use a brush
up here, because there is a lot of variation.

That doesn't really matter, because
this is just black.

Let's just get into the cleaning.

I could also use a healing tool if I
felt like here.

In fact, I could use the spot healing
brush, the normal healing brush.

It works really well on a lot of these
areas,

but

it's

simple for me just to use the cloning
tool.

Another trick that I like to

use is the aligned key up at the top
and my options bar.

As you're cloning, you know that you
need to constantly be setting your

source sample.

This requires

a click with your left thumb,

and just kind of fatigues you more than
you need to be.

So what I like to do is, I like to turn
off my alignment.

I pick an area

that is consistent with the rest of the
field that I'm cloning to,

and then I can just take my hand off
the keyboard

and sample from the same area.

Every time I lift my pen off the tablet,

I don't have to keep resetting my
option point.

All of this color up here is basically
identical.

Everything that I'm cloning and placing
down is going to be identical to that

original area that I sampled.

So now I can just click

happy little clicks

and not worry about constantly
resampling

quick and easy.

As you can see, there's just a lot of
stuff up here that needs to be cleaned.

I'm not sure how much of it I want to
clean right now.

I don't know how

critical a lot of those areas are going
to be.

So I'm going to

just

briefly go over a lot of them.

All right.

Back to a new area.

Looks the same to me as the other side
that I was working on.

I'm going to go ahead and set a
different sample

starting point.

Clean up a little bit of this stuff,

if you want.

As you're working

to check out what you're doing and how
it relates to the underlying imagery.

I should probably set up a script one
of these days.

It does this automatically.

But for now, I just turned off my solar
layer,

clip my eye.

Look at the beautiful

color that in the past would have been
a giant paint in the, but too clean with

the cloner

or the healing brush.

This is really just an easy joy.

It's so consistent,

it's

so simple

and it just always makes sense.

You don't even have to think.

You just push a button and start
working.

You can see now that I transferred to

my product visibility instead of my
high frequency visibility processes the

same nothing's changed.

I'm just

placing a sample point down on the high
frequency that I know is going to work,

and then I'm just brushing out some of
the textures that are in there

photoshops sometimes.

Unfortunately, if you

double click

while you're optioned down, the
alignment will reset itself.

So I have to go back and turn that off.

They don't allow you to double click.

Turn it off.

Only double click.

Turn it on.

Not sure why, but that's the way it is.

I've got a little highlight over here.

I'm just going to go and take that out
for now,

because I think in my final coloring
process, I'm going to add some colored

shoulders onto here,

just to give it separation from the
black background that it's supposed to

go on

sometimes with

frequency step and cleaning.

You're going to encounter some
transitional areas that you're not sure of.

If I come over here

and try to clone out the high
frequency, I'm going to be getting

an odd

and

undesired shape in this area.

So what I need to do is

go back to my high frequency view

and check out what's happening.

I'm pretty sure rob's going to want to
keep this

highlight, right here.

Of course, he's not going to want any
of this.

So I want to make sure I maintain the
sharpness of this highlight.

The edge I can see that it's right
there.

This

gray mouse on the side has got some
high frequency information,

but it also has a little bit of low
frequency information.

This piece right here,

and all eventually get rid of that.

I'm going to just do a little bit more
cleaning on the high frequency,

but I'm going to keep this view, just
so I can make sure I know where my

edges, right here.

Do you?

Ok?

I'm just going to go back to my normal
visibility.

I'm curious what this lighter orange
line is.

Looks like, it's kind of a,

yeah, it goes all the way across.

I don't think that's anything too
significant.

I'm not seeing anything in the,

yeah, I need to keep what's there.

So we're going to use the old school
clone technique, where we've got to do

a lot of

texteral alignment, make sure that we're

exactly

on point.

Everyone has their own techniques to do
that, I just usually use the option alignment

to kind of zero myself into the middle
of the pixel range where the brush is

going to go,

just to kind of fill up that line.

There's no white specks in there
anymore.

So it should look a little bit more
uniform,

as you can see when you're looking at
the high frequency layer in this view,

you just think that you're going to be
cleaning forever and ever.

And in some cases you will be

with this product,

not necessarily, but we could do a
whole whole lot of cleaning if we

wanted to.

But our budget for this project

is

really determining how much time we're
going to be spending

on our cleanup for the clients.

Don't have

a million dollars to clean up every
single speck, then you've really got to

focus your efforts on what's important.

So we're just going to get rid of a lot
of the big chunks,

the things that are going to be visible
at print size,

things that are going to be visible at
websize,

and just a lot of the more obvious

textual flaws.

I'm not going to worry about this edge
right now, so I'm going to do something

with it in a few minutes.

So i'll keep cleaning

a lot of these big chunks here,

not liking this.

I'm thinking these bubbles probably
need to go away.

And you may have noticed,

as I've been cleaning, there have been
some kind of

areas on the underlying low frequency
that we're going to need to clean.

And I'm about to do that.

And when I do do that,

you're going to see a tool in action
that you are going to freak out about

lots more up here.

I'm not 100 percent sure yet what I
want to do with these areas.

On almost all product photography.

You get a lot of

a lot of neck reflections.

They're a little bit difficult to deal
with.

I think I'm probably just going to wind
up extending

this line here.

I'm not going to worry about making it

pristine and perfect,

because our print size is probably only
going to be that big.

Websize is going to be even smaller.

Don't obsess about details.

That aren't going to matter

when you

save your final output size.

All right, before I spend too much time
with all this stuff,

let's just get to some areas that are
going to need a little attention on a

low frequency.

Let me just take a quick look at

transferring this texture over here,

as I mentioned before, you can clone
from dissimilar areas

in ways that you never thought you'd be
able to.

because all we're doing is just matching

a surface texture.

You can see that I'm actually adding
some surface texture in there.

I'm not sure it's going to matter in
the long run.

If I toggle my high frequency layer,

you can see that I'm getting rid of the
dust, I'm adding a tiny bit of grain to

this area.

But that doesn't matter.

Because when I'm done with this
process, I usually finish my images

with a real slight noise layer,

just a kiss of noise to

tie the image together,

make sure it has a uniform surface of
grain

to it.

And I think it just kind of cleans it up

a little bit.

And in that way, I don't have to always
worry about my high frequency

textual matching.

So just keep working for a few more
minutes.

I'm going to go back up here, where I
was

and just

smooth this area out

a tiny bit.

I'm not going to worry about this white
line

just yet.

I know that by cloning down this edge
here, I'm going to be seeing a lot of

kind of smeary textures that are going
to start forming.

I'm not going to worry about them right
now.

This whole area concerns me I haven't
yet figured out what I'd like to do.

We've got this secondary highlight up
here, another one up here.

It breaks and goes to black behind the
highlight.

I'm pretty sure that's not desirable.

When I actually put this on a black
background, what happens

is the outline of the image disappears.

So I know at some point in the future
I'm going to need to create a solution.

And

for this area,

my initial thought is I'm going to add
some color back there.

I don't want to clip the image to the
edge of the highlight, because that's

just going to look like a weird white
edge.

I want to give it a little bit of tone,
a little bit of shape,

and show a transition from the back

edge of the highlight to the back edge
of the bottle

using frequency separation.

It's not going to be too challenging,

but

we definitely need to solve that
problem.

All right.

So,

back up to this area.

We've done a pretty good job cleaning.

This

here's before and after.

Nothing massive, nothing major, but

still a really

simple

technique to wipe surface noise

and not have to worry about all of the

traditional failings with our

cloning and healing tools.

And

what I'd like to do next

is

start getting rid of some of the low
frequency

issues that I'm seeing.

And the way that we're going to do that
is, we're just going to turn off this

high frequency layer.

We're not going to worry about it.

It's not important right now.

We can always turn it back on as we
need it.

And I'm going to switch to the healing
tool,

just the normal healing brush, and not
the spot healing tool.

We'll go to healing brush.

We've got some new diffusion settings
that had been introduced a year or two ago.

Some people like to use the

legacy healing.

I'm a realbic fan of the new healing,
especially at higher Numbers.

It's just a diffusion setting.

It essentially

relates to

how much it imagines you're trying to
clone in.

The lower Numbers are more of like a
cloning

tool.

They still blend, but

it's

trying to apply, if I sampled from this
area, it's trying to apply this color

over here, instead of blending

this region

as if it's still in that region.

So with a diffusion up to seven, I know
it's just going to create some really

nice blends.

I'm back to my upper low frequency,
which is just a duplicate of my lower

low frequency.

This just allows me to have

a reference

to where I came from.

Kind of like a clean layer that you're
normally used to.

You always put your cleaning up on its
own layer.

So we're going to

start

with a healing tool in this area,
because I know it's going to work perfectly.

I have turned my solarization

layer off, because if I turn that on
it's just a technical nightmare.

We don't need any of this stuff.

We just want to see it for what it is.

And I've got a pretty big feather on
this thing right now.

Doesn't necessarily have to be there.

We're just going to heal the areas that
we know are going to work

like that.

You should be very familiar with a
healing brush

by now,

in your own practices.

So I'm just going to quickly kind of go
through a few problem areas,

getting rid of the spots that I know
work well with the healing brush.

This area I'm not too sure about.

To a quick test,

seems to respond really well.

And in case you're curious,

you can, of course heal and clean with
the upper frequency on,

just to show you how that works.

Let's find a spot.

It's hard to see what's going on
exactly.

But

we will pretend.

Yeah, we don't even need to pretend.

I don't like this area.

I'd like to clean it up a little bit.

I can see what it looks like in the low
frequency.

I can see how I want to get rid of it.

So we'll just go over it with our
healing brush.

And it just kind of all blends away.

Although we do still have quite a bit
of high frequency information up on top

that I hadn't yet cleaned.

So it looks a little bit funky.

So I can

leave that for now, because I'm going
to use a different tool with that area.

We're going to keep on going here, just
using our healing brush.

I'm going to turn off

my high frequency, just so I can more
easily visualize the areas that I want

to clean.

And I'm leaving a lot of

the issues that I'm seeing, because I
really want to use

this other tool that I keep talking
about, that's some big secret for some reason.

But I just want to do a quick sweep

with the healing tool, just so that you
can see how that's working

and how easily,

the

underlying low frequency responds to

your normal healing brush

tool.

All right.

So I think we've got most of this
cleaned up

as much as I want it to be

with the heel.

That doesn't work out too well.

And you can see that when I clone that
area,

it just makes a really

bad line up there.

Not that you would really notice once
the high frequency is on there, but I

notice I don't want it.

So I'm going to leave it for now.

This is just

so much cleaning work up here.

I think these areas

i'll just go ahead and touch

that.

Yep.

Easy, a little bit

less pattern, e,

more random, which is what I'm looking
for in those areas.

Good, good.

I've got some highlights here that I'm
eventually going to need to deal with,

but I think we're in a good spot for
right now.

I'm going to

leave it as is.

here we go with some fun.

Now that we have our high frequency in
a good place,

and I've done a little bit of low
frequency work with a healing brush,

just to show you all how that works and
why I use it.

I'm going to switch tools.

I'm going to go to my brush tool,

and then,

instead of using a shortcut, I'm going
to click on it

and

reveal

that.

There are a few other tools in the
brush tool panel

that you're familiar with.

We've got a pencil tool, we have a
color replacement tool.

And we have this weird thing called a
mixer brush.

So I'm going to select that,

and I'm going to show you how it works,

and how I use it in my workflow

and in my frequency separation process,

and why it is just such a beautiful,

unknown tool.

And it blows me away that nobody has
been using

this thing in their retouching workflow

since

it's been around.

And I think it's been out for 1015
years,

not sure exactly how long,

but

I kind of ran into a brick wall

when I was

initially trying to

come up with this process.

I know what I wanted,

I know what I needed, and I wasn't
finding it.

I first started using just a normal
brush, low flow, low opacity, trying to

blend colors together, sampling all the
time.

I tried using the smudge tool, because
I knew I wanted to blend pixels

together, but the smunch tool wasn't
doing it.

And so I just kind of went on Google
and looked up blend brush,

something like that.

And there was tutorial.

There was a tutorial about the mixer
brush.

It was being used in a completely
different way.

Some fine art kind of stuff,
traditional painting.

But

the

second that I saw someone using it in a
tutorial,

I knew I had found what I was looking
for.

It was obvious,

just was this shining, bright light.

And

I immediately

just went to town,

matched it up with media, and figured
out what all these Numbers and sliders

up here do, what all these little
dropdowns, or for, what the buttons are

for up here.

And once I

put together the combination of
variables that

we're going to do, exactly what it is
that I needed them to do,

everything else that came after was just

fluid and natural

and

behaved like it was meant to go
together.

So I'm going to show you that right now.

I'm not going to tell you what all
these things do.

I think you should experiment and
figure them out for yourself, because

it's just really fun to use this tool.

So for now, I don't think I've got my
tool tips turned on.

So I want to do one quick thing that
we'll, I think you should do as well.

It will help you kind of navigate the
toolbar.

Go up to your toolball preference.

We're going to scroll down to the
brush.

I'd like to go ahead and remove all
this stuff, but that's not part of

today's plan.

We're going to kick our pencil tool
over,

kick our color replacement tool over,

and now

in our brush panel, we're just going to
have brush tool and mix your brush.

So every time we hit shift b, we're
going to go from one to another instead

of having to go shift bb.

Yep.

Easy.

I'm going to hit this little checkbox
here that says, disable shortcuts.

This is just going to make it so that
shift bb doesn't go to this here, which

is now going to be down there.

Click done.

Pop this out.

Show you that it's brush tool mixer,
brush

shift b.

Shift b just goes back and forth
between those two.

Did I actually do that wrong?

No,

yes, I did.

We're going to go back to this.

I think I inverted

my choice.

Disable, not enable.

All right.

Back to that.

Shift b.

Shift b, mixer, normal.

Go up to my options here.

I'm going to turn off

this option, which is pulling color.

I'm going to set all my Numbers to 100
across the board.

Just to get started.

I know those are the Numbers that I
want.

I'm not going to be sampling all
layers.

I'm going to be working on a single
layer.

If I had adjustments above this, I
don't want anything above interfering

with what I'm going to be doing down
below,

pull my brush down, make sure my

spacing is where I want it, which is

a very low amount.

Five.

Wish.

I could set defaults for all brushes to
be five, but

they like them to be at 25.

For some reason,

you never want to meet 25.

And what I'm going to do now is start
blending

areas of

color, dissimilarity,

anywhere where I've got

big, broad flaws that I want to smooth
out.

I'm going to

blend together using this

mixer brush.

Here we go

with a flow of 100.

The primary variable that I'm going to
use to

change

the amount of effect that's happening
is going to be flow.

I get to that

by using shift number.

I'm going to start at 100.

If I hit just a normal number, it goes
to wet what has its own uses.

But

for now, I'm going to be

using flow.

We'll start at 100 so I can exaggerate
what it is.

I'm about to do

so with hundreds in a mixer brush.

And when I

click and pull it's going to

just blend colors together.

It's a little bit like the smudge tool,
but it does behave differently, and it

does have all these options to control
how it blends.

And if I go down to shift ten

on on my flow, do the same thing, it's
a lighter version of it,

and back up to 100.

You can see how it's just sampling
where I click my brushdown,

and then pulling that region up, and
blending it all together.

Doesn't seem that useful

normally.

Yeah.

And even in this situation, it's hard
to imagine.

What good is that?

Watch

undo

come into this region where I've got
just a lot of

noise,

just a lot of non uniformity.

Don't necessarily need to clean it, but
I want to clean it.

And with this tool, I can clean it
really quickly.

And it's a lot of fun because it's very
painterly.

You're like,

you're just watching magic happen and
you're doing the magic.

And I think that's just

a really, really neat thing.

So I'm going to lower my flow a little
bit, because I know that's what I need

to do.

These areas are pretty

and I don't want to take a blunt force
approach

my brushes are

smoothing.

I don't need transfer.

Not sure why that was there.

Spacing down, zero,

slow down.

And I'm just going to kind of gently go
over these spots, looks like I need to

go lower flow,

and just kind of gently

kind of brush all these areas together.

I'm going to turn off my high
frequency, so you can see what I'm doing.

If I take a real high flow, and I kind
of just push all of all of this, you

can see, it's getting a little bit
streaky.

It's pushing all my light areas to my
dark areas.

And for this kind of retouch, I don't
want to do that.

So I'm going to go down to a pretty low
flow, and I'm just going to kind of

gently massage a lot of these colors.

I'm just sort of blending these non
uniform areas together,

just creating a nice smooth

gradation and transition across the
surface of the bottle.

Just concentrating.

From now on, the larger forms.

Sometimes there are some areas that
don't quite

blend together.

And for that,

you can just, you can just increase the

amount of flow

to where

all of those areas that you want to see
blended together

are starting to blend.

You're

going to

a little bit higher to thirty.

I'm going to show you before and after.

You can see that a lot of the dimples
are starting to smooth out.

I've got some other areas I still need
to address, but it's a really good start.

And it is

100 times easier than trying to clone

heal these areas.

So we're just going to keep working.

We'll talk about

some of the issues that I'm going to be
working on a little bit later with this image.

With this brush, like all brushes,

you can shift constrain and drag.

If you need click ones, shift,

push up,

you get a blend of the whole line.

We don't need that in this case.

We just want to kind of

still just keep gently

smoothing a lot of these zones out.

I could, if I wanted to use some other
tools in this area, I can use the blur

tool.

I can make a selection.

I can run a gauzian blur on it.

Again, it's not an image.

It's just

a bunch of

soft,

smooth

colored shapes

or

areas of luminosity.

It's not an image.

It doesn't have the high frequency

issues that we normally have.

It's

just a really delicate, simple
structure.

To refine

and smooth out.

One thing I might think about doing is

isolating the label a little bit.

So I'm going to keep bumping into this
problem where I kind of grab

a little bit of the edge

of the label as I'm smoothing.

And that's going to be a little bit of
a problem for me.

So a lot of times i'll just duplicate

that part of the low frequency

and have it above the areas that I'm
working on.

And I do have a mask

for the label as well that I can use to
quickly select that area and float it

up.

I'll show you quick how that works.

I'm going to make that selection

going to go down to my low frequency,
hit command.

J.

And now I've got to copy the label
below frequency, up above

the layer that I'm working on.

And that allows me to

be able to kind of cut

underneath it,

if that makes sense.

I can just drag underneath and I no
longer have the issue

of

this.

It

just allows a little bit more
flexibility when working.

Oftentimes my low frequency layers are
just stacked with all sorts of stuff.

So it's

really fun to practice with this.

And I hope you're enjoying it, because

it is

an amazing tool.

And an amazing process.

And there are.

There are other ways of

doing these separations that are a
little bit more

involved,

where you're going to be

separating the label in its own
separation layers.

The glass would have its own separation
layers.

The bottom would have its own
separation layers.

Creates a pretty large file.

I sometimes work that way for this

image though, because of time
constraints,

I just want to make it as simple as
possible

and just

push all of the layer stacks

into the same file

and have a nice lean

and efficient

file size.

So the one thing about the mixture, as
you're working

is the direction that you drag is
important.

If I drag this way, I'm getting

the label pulling out into the liquid.

I don't want that, but I do have a copy
up here,

so I can just kind of keep

pulling underneath that with the mixer.

Let me see what's happening

on

this layer

by itself, without my high frequency.

And as I'm working,

what you're probably not noticing is
that I'm constantly adjusting my flow rate.

There are just times when I want a
really heavy hand and times

when I want to go a little bit easier.

So I'm always adjusting that flow to
just kind of match what it is I'm

trying to do.

Sometimes I need to go into wet because
I'm just not getting a low enough

flow rate.

It's just pushing pixels around too
much,

and I'm lazy.

So I don't like typing shift o five

rot, which is kind of where I really
want to go.

It

makes me do weird things with my hands.

So instead, I just hit five.

And that takes me to a fifty wet, which
kind of does the same thing as a five

percent flow with 100 percent wet.

But I just need to stop being so lazy
and just hit shift o five instead,

which is what I just did.

So now I've got a little bit more
refined movement

on the mixer,

seeing a lot of

areas here that probably need quite a
bit more flow.

So we're just going to

just try to make a nice transition
happen over here.

I don't necessarily need to worry about
making things perfect.

If I mess up and I want to pull in a
part of an image back up,

all I have to do is go back down to the
low,

select the area that I want,

hit command, j, float it back up,

put it on top, the low again, and then
flatten it back down into the low and

then I can have this section back if I
went over it.

But for now,

we can just undo and undo and undo and
undo and undo and undo and

get back where.

We're

just like that.

You can also use a history brush.

If you don't know what that is, check
it out.

History States undoes, painting back to
histories.

It's kind of fun.

All right, I think that's looking
pretty for the liquid mixer.

There's a little bit more work to do up
here.

Let's just do a quick

pass on this stuff,

right here.

I'm going to turn off this layer

because I don't want to see it.

I'm going to restructure my high
frequency

to complement what it is that I'm
doing.

Down here's

a lot of kind of sharp edges,

kind of.

I think there are internal glass
refractions that are happening.

You're seeing the impurities in the
glass and the light shining through them.

And

while it might be beautiful, I have a
feeling that

either the photographer or the client
would want to see

a smoother shape in there.

So let's just use the mixer brush to do
that.

As you can see, it's just

really fun.

Painterly,

you don't have to think.

Just let your fingers

do the push in

and

your brush to the brush.

And

that's pretty nice shape in there.

I can obviously

spend all day if I wanted to on this.

But I

think for now, that

sort of

smooth out those distractions a little
bit.

Blend those shapes together, put my eye
back on,

see that it's kind of a mess.

Go back up to my high.

Click that on.

This is what it looks like.

I might be able to

get a sample

from this internal area

to pull from

to clean it all up,

because a lot of these details are
nonvisible.

So I don't need to worry too much about
some of the

issues that I'm seeing with that.

To a spot check, that's all fine.

Get this guy cleaned up real quick.

Easy.

Oh, that's nice.

That's looking good.

I want to

see what's happening with this edge
over here.

Not sure

how I want to handle that.

But for now, I'm going to go to just a
low flow

stamp tool.

Let me blend.

Those areas in

the mixer will not work on the high
frequency layer.

99 of the time.

There are a couple

instances where I use it to just smooth
out highlight

glares.

I don't know if i'll have any

samples to show you on this one, but

it's kind of the same as just using a
normal white brush.

When I'm doing that technique,

I just like using the mixer, because I
love the mixer.

All right, see how easy that was.

Just

a very quick cleanup

of some areas of distraction.

The surface texture is imperfect.

But once I add my grain, it's going to
go away.

I'm not going to worry about it for
this,

it's a little bit too micro detail.

Only the retetcher's going to see that.

So I'm going to do a bit more cleanup
on this image,

fix some of the more difficult areas
that I'm seeing.

Go back to

this

little piece here that we've noticed
before.

Watch how easy it is to do with the
mixer brush.

Just going to paint those

kind of smiry colors away.

I can take a look at the underlying
layers,

maybe just kind of get an idea

of how to create a little bit more
uniformity.

It's not really,

there's no recipe for it.

It's kind of whatever you want to make
it be.

And in this case,

I think it is.

One.

A really nice subtle shape up there.

Check the other side.

It's a little bit brighter.

I could paint a little bit more light
in here if I wanted

but I kind of like

the way the light is shining through
the bottle right now and creating an asymmetry

across the top.

All right, I'm going to

clean

these areas, which I'm sure have been
bugging

a lot of you,

as they've been bugging me.

And one thing I want to think about to
you when I'm doing this is

there are a couple triangles in the
corner.

I'm not sure what they're doing there.

I'm not sure if they're wanted there.

I think it's giving the bottle a nice
shape.

I haven't had any

instruction or direction about what to
do here.

Same thing with what's going on in this
area, which I know I'm going to clean,

and I know how I'm going to clean, but
we'll get to that in a few minutes.

For now,

let's consider

these

corners.

I know for a fact that I'd like to

fill

this in as a solid

to match this.

At least I'm probably going to want to

pull these two

elements together.

But what I don't know is

what I should do here.

I could, of course,

bring this line over,

and

let's see, what's happening down.

Here.

There's a little bit of a black

line that goes down.

But it's not really noticeable.

So I could of course bring this across

and just give it a little bit of a

curve to match

this highlight up here.

But I'm thinking I

kind of like that shape,

and

I'd like to see what happens if I bring
it

further down

the side of the bottle,

just to give a little bit of dimension

to that

curved surface.

And the way that I'm going to do that
is, I'm just going to take a quick look

at my

low frequency, because that's where all
of the color in shape is.

Take a quick look at my high frequency.

Really, nothing going on on the high
frequency that I need to worry about

it's all low frequency information.

Looks like

I'd done a little bit of cloning work
there before.

There's somewhat somewhat of an edge,

but nothing to be too concerned about.

Brushes are still behaving a little
strangely.

It's going to check out

smoothing the sky down a tiny bit.

And all right.

So too,

make this line go a little bit further.

All we have to do is

fill

a shape with color.

That's exactly the same as this color

from the top

to the bottom where we want it to
transition.

And the way I'm going to do that is by

first renaming

my label layer.

And

then I'm going to create

a new blank layer within my low
frequency set.

I'm going

to,

I think, just put a path down initially,

because it's a nice straight line.

I may want to

kind of randomly noise up the edge at
some point,

but for now,

I'm just going to

create a nice long

transition

down to the bottom of the bottle.

I don't need to worry too much about
what's happening up here and seeing to

make sure that it all blends together.

cut this in a tiny bit.

Ok?

I don't really need to worry about what
the path is called.

It's just

a workpath.

But at the same time, I don't want it
to get deleted.

So I'm going to name it

and then on this new layer,

and just go in with a normal brush tool

and sample

the darker

color underneath

current in below

brush tool.

My flow is going to be

all the way up to 100.

Sample this area,

and we're going to

hide extras

and just paint

straight down.

I'm not going to worry about this edge
just yet.

You'll see why.

And for now, we're just going to make

a really

weird stroke on this image, right?

Easy.

All the way down.

This just gives me a quick chance

to

check out the idea

and to make sure that

I'm thinking

of a solution that is going to work.

All right.

There it is.

It was that easy.

Again.

It's not perfect, it's just the idea of
it.

Obviously there wouldn't be these
beautifully straight edges.

I didn't put any

radius blur on the side.

I probably should have done that when I
made the selection.

Doesn't really matter.

I just want to kind of see what's
happening from a distance.

Let me turn this high frequency on.

I'm ok with it.

I don't know if

it's a real solution.

It's still a little bit distracting.

I almost want to see a clean line.

But I think I'm just going to leave it
there for now and see what Rob thinks

about it.

It was part of the original shot.

I've just beautified it a little bit.

So let's clean it up.

Well, fast.

Let's fix the one on the other side.

And I think then we'll be ready to
start color.

So to clean this up, I'm going to just

delete what I have just done.

I'm going to make a new selection, but
this time

I'm going to add a tiny bit of feather
to it.

I already have my color that I need

creating the layer.

Take that, hide it, just because I like
to hide things.

And we're going to pull this down

like that.

And I am going to

make a really

quick and easy selection of that area
of the white so I can unmask it.

I'm going to use a one tool

set to

a lower tolerance,

see what happens,

except I am on sample.

All layers.

These lects

come back up.

Here

is

the beginning of an edge.

I'm just going to

go down the length of the bottle,

figure out

and see if it's

kept.

All of the edge that I want has

return to my

triangle thing.

And I'm just going to hold down option,

invert

the mask

so that my triangular shape is hiding
behind,

seemingly, the highlight on the side of
the glass.

And it is

that easy.

I have high frequency texture.

Turn that off.

It's just a mushy blurry noise.

But because I have this high frequency
texture,

I don't have to do any clonework.

I don't need to worry about all sorts
of other stuff that you normally have

when you're just painting on top of an
image.

The one thing I might think about
looking at is,

maybe

I'm going to

change my mask up just a tiny bit.

And then I would like

to

get my selection back

and

switch back to my brush,

select a lighter color

and get a real low flow.

Go in.

And I'm thinking,

it may not work.

I think I need to

expand my selection just a

pixel.

I notice I was getting a little bit of
a black edge in there.

So with that, I can then

add

just a tiny amount of

light coming through

the front edge of

that.

And it's kind of an internal shadow, I
think, is what's happening.

But just to give it a little bit more
non uniformity, so it doesn't look like

it was drawn in there.

You can see I still have a little clean
up to do over here,

but let's just take a quick look at the
before and after to see if we like,

what's happening

there, and I think we do yep.

To perfect the same.

I probably

would add a slight bit of

variation to the edge,

because right now it's just a straight
line.

So I think I would just randomly

kind of come in

and just

paint a little bit of a mask in there,

just to give it

a more organic look.

If I was really fancy, I'd have a set
of brushes up here that I could choose from

that would already have

no non uniformity built into them.

But because I don't, I'm just going to

do a low flow brush down the side, just
like that.

You can see it breaks it up a little
bit.

This right here

was from earlier, when I got rid of this

nebulous shape that was probably caused
by some

glass imperfections.

But I never

cloned up on the high frequency.

So we'll just

clean the nepro quick.

I saw a selection go in.

Get rid of that

that's gone.

Still have some major issues on the
side that I haven't attended to yet.

I think the bottom's looking really
good.

There.

Definitely could be a little bit of
clean up down here.

Maybe we want to

get rid of these more specular

details, keep the larger forms,

get rid of the smaller ones.

More than likely when that print it's
all just going to be black.

But because we're already here, we've
got all of our

frequency layers built up,

we'll just go ahead and get rid of it,
because it only takes a second

heel tool.

One other quick thing that I

don't have as part of the action that I
ran earlier

is, I do like to have

a blank layer on top of my frequency
separation

that I use whenever I don't feel like
cloning and healing on two different

layers.

So what I do is

just

create a new blank layer.

And when I need

to

pay attention to some areas that I know
will just work with a normal healing brush,

i'll just go back to my heel tool, curn
a blow, usually just call this rt for retouch,

and then I can.

I can just quickly go through.

And this passes on top of both

my frequency separation layers.

It's really easy.

Sometimes there's corners and other
little

issues that pop up that you'll

figure out as you're working through a
frequency separation workflow.

It'll be really obvious when you

need to pop up to a different layer.

Holy smokes,

just shift key, hell, ok,

just like that.

Just like

this.

That goes away a big deal.

I'm not really concerned with
perfection, because this is black.

I think the bottom of that bottle is
looking a lot better now.

Less busy.

No big distractions are happening.

Sometimes clients want to get rid of
these Numbers down here that are built

into the glass, because sages don't
represent anything that's relevant

to the client.

So if we want to do that, i'll just

keep using the same tool, the same
layer.

I don't need frequency separation here.

It's faster just to do it this way.

So here's my retouch layer

on off,

simple.

And now

I think we're in a good spot

to

kind of

massage the top of the bottle here.

A few minutes of work that I need to do.

I just want to clean up this edge.

I think I want to

make it real straight,

because that's really what it is.

Or

this is kind of a tough call.

I like the randomness of it.

But at what I don't like are these
little,

these little tentacles coming down.

So using exactly what I was using
before,

because I think I've got some high
frequency in there.

Let's see what happens when we use the
old normal clone tool on this.

Yeah, it works, all right,

but it's

funny, because

once you get used to frequency
separation,

all of this other stuff just starts to
feel and look really primitive.

None of it's doing what you want it to
do.

You want a clone here with some low
flow, but then it smears the texture,

and then you just want to dive back
into frequency separation again.

I keep building files that I'm going to
work on

that I know we're going to go really
fast.

There's not a lot of requests from the
client.

But

I'm thinking, I'm going to get through
them quickly.

So I don't build my frequency
separation stack

because it takes more time.

Saves are a little bit bigger.

And every time I do that, I regret it,
because I start cloning and healing,

and it just doesn't do what I want it
to do.

And inevitably i'll wind up just making
a frequency separation stack, because I

should do that with every image that I
work on that I know is going to need cleaning,

because it just always works and does
what I want it to.

All right?

So this is getting rid of some of the
stuff down here.

As I'm working through this.

I'm just thinking to myself,

I should be using the mixer brush on my
low frequency layer, because

it just would be a lot easier.

But I just want to show you too, how
you can integrate

your previous

methods and techniques of cleanup

into a frequency separation stack.

You don't need to be scared of it.

You don't have to commit only to doing
that.

You can use both.

I do it all the time,

and

there's never a problem.

Ok?

I feel like that line's looking a lot
better.

Just tiny bit more smoothing on it.

And I'm thinking, now I'd like to

extend this line, smooth it out and
then bridge that gap.

And to do that is going to be the exact
same

process that you saw me use a minute
ago.

Going to pull out a couple points with
yo pintool.

I think I'm going to

come down to the same

region than I did before.

So let's just kind of

pull it down.

There doesn't need to be exact.

This isn't

anything

that requires that.

Let's.

Have a quick look at that corner.

This corner still needs to be
restructured a little bit

a bit too angular

for what we want.

I'd like to round this out, but before
we do that,

will

create a slightly better corner up here.

About like that.

Go ahead and save my path.

Make a selection.

I think I'm just going to use the
previous

layer that I had created for the side's.

Go ahead and label this,

and we are going to do the same exact
thing that we did before.

I'm going to select the color.

I think we can go for a slightly
lighter shade this time,

because

I want to.

Right?

So, back up to 100.

Flow

there's going to do a quick test.

Seeing that needs to be a little bit
darker.

I mean, do a quick resample here.

Quick test.

Yep.

All right.

start up here.

I just go to shift down.

That's fine.

Do you quick clean up?

Here?

Whoa

mask.

Here it is.

Ok,

again, I'm just doing a test

before I spend too much time with
something.

I like to

rough

it together,

just to know what's happening.

No, if it's the right move to make,

then I don't have to spend too much
time going down the wrong path.

There you go.

That's kind of nice.

It's a little glossy,

slightly elegant.

It's too dark right now.

That's fine.

But I think overall

creates.

A really nice shape of the bottle.

A lot of photographers really love
those little side internal shadows.

They'll have cards and flags and all
sorts of stuff set up

just to create

this

contrast variation.

And so I'd like to

exaggerate it a tiny bit.

I think it'll make Rob happy.

It's an easy fix for me to do.

There's definitely some areas up here
that need some attention.

I'm not a big fan of this.

Blunt

into the top highlight, don't think
that's mine either.

It's just in there.

So we're going to paint

a little bit of.

We're just going to use the mix of
brush and just kind of smooth that out

a little

sip.

For now,

I'm going to

clean up this area a little.

I'm

ok with the

base color?

No, I'm not.

Some lightn it up a tiny bit.

See what that looks like.

I think that's closer to what I want.

So I'm going to come in,

let's see what's going on.

My mask.

Is, there's something up here?

No.

Sure

why this isn't filling in, but we'll
figure it out in a minute.

All right.

So let's just keep painting on our side
layer.

What you're seeing up here, I believe,
is high frequency

information.

We're not going to worry about that
right now.

We're just going to go ahead and

get this area look in the way that we
want.

Pull down.

It's going to shift.

I'm not going to worry too much about
the

transition, because that's going to get
changed here in just a minute.

Make sure this is looking, all right.

That's good

enough for me.

I want to make sure that I'm not
pushing into those whites

very much.

I think I'm going to go ahead and pull
a quick mask

of this region, just like I did on the
other side.

This will protect

some of my layers.

From what I'm about to do.

Great.

You know, this isn't perfect.

I can make it perfect.

I do something that's worth it.

I like

that.

It's broken up a tiny bit.

So go back into this

mask.

And

we're going to,

one second,

I'm going to clean some stuff up real
fast.

I'm not sure why

this is here.

I think I made it a minute ago.

Go back to this,

back to my wand

get a good edge.

That's fine.

Come back onto here,

just so I can show you what I'm doing.

Filled that up with black.

Now I've got a blocker from a highlight
edge.

If I was fancy, I could float the
highlight edge up above and then smooth

it out with bezier and just make it
perfect.

If the client really wants to pay for
me to do something like that, more than

happy to do it.

But for now, I would just like to

clean up

what I've done here.

And the way we're going to do that is to

go back to our frequency separation.

I'm actually cloning from a non
relevant area, but it is relevant

because it's noise, it's just, what's
there.

I know it's clean, I know it's smooth,
because I've already cleaned it up.

So I'm just going to pull from those
areas.

If you want to see what I'm doing,

that's all I'm doing,

you know, there's just nothing there.

So I might as well clone from wherever
I feel like cloning from.

I think I'm on a little bit of a low
flow.

Sometimes I just don't want to look at

my solar layer on all this stuff,
because it makes me

just

flip out and try to make all these
things perfect when they don't need to be.

So oftentimes, as I'm further down the
line, I just turn this off

like that, because it doesn't matter.

It's not material.

So let's just get this

junk that I saw down there,

see what this stuff is here.

Not a big fan of that.

So we're going to get to that in a
minute.

Ok, just smooth that out a little bit

easy.

Go back to our normal view

and

a couple little finishing touches on
this piece.

We're going to

change our mask up a tiny bit.

Don't think I've got anything I can
pull from in there.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to
just paint over

this corner, and then I'm going to mask
it out in the shape that I want to be.

I want it to be.

Also going to

erase

my retouching layer up here,

clean this up a little bit.

Ok, go back to my mask,

get the edge I want,

create that corner.

So it

kind of feels like the same

angle as what's happening up here.

Nice round smooth transition.

Looks like I stall a little bit of the
retouch layer

up here.

I'm just going to go to the eraser,
because I don't need it.

If I need to remake it, I can

clean up this little piece here,

and

maybe some specs in there.

Let's, see

a little bit more high frequency

noise appear.

And I want to look really quickly at

these blobs,

maybe come in with my mixer brush

and see what I can do about

getting rid of them.

I thought, I think there's quite a bit
of high frequency noise

and there.

So let's go ahead and

minimize that.

I'm going to go to a low flow

clone,

clean that up a little bit.

And last thing I want to do up here

was

to

get this area first on the high
frequency, the way that I want it to be,

and come in with my mixture brush

and see if I can pull

this shoulder down a little bit.

I'm seeing two that I've got a

bit of this up here.

So let's just mask that out real fast.

Make sure that I don't have anything up
here.

I don't need, I can repaint this
section back in in a second,

because it's just a mask.

Mix your brush,

and there we go.

That's what I'm going to want to do
with it.

Ok?

So, back to high frequency.

There might be a little bit of schmag
up here,

but I think I just want to

gradually

kind of pull this shoulder down a
little bit.

I think I need to turn this off first.

Something like that, I think, is going
to help me see what's happening over here.

Some weird angles over here, too.

That's, the thing about

retouching is that you're constantly
uncovering

new areas with issues.

You have to learn

when to say enough is enough

and to send it off to the photographer
or the client for strand review,

because you can just keep on going

forever and ever and ever.

So we need to learn

when to say when.

So I'm going to take a quick look at
this,

see if I, like, what's going on,

clean up this little

nub appear.

There's no perfect here.

There's no

way of knowing how it's supposed to
look.

And all we're doing right now

is

making it look the way

we want it to look.

And just

it's important to remember that,

because

there's just no way of knowing

what

it is.

All right, zoomed in all sorts of stuff
going on.

Zoomed out.

Let's look on.

All right.

I think I want to just maybe not have
so much up here.

Just push that up a little bit.

I'd see that I'm going to the white
super, but I'm not going to worry about that.

Just kind of ease these transitions
into each other

like that.

Ok.

Now we go.

So from print view,

I think it's looking really nice.

I just wanted to get rid of that angle
right there.

Just like I want to do over here.

Same thing, mix a brush.

Figure out where it's coming from,

forty

it's coming from somewhere.

These selects.

Oops.

Like I said, I get lost in my keyboard.

Shortcuts

occasionally.

Got rid of that hard shape.

If I want to

repaint this area back in, I can
history brush it, or

I can just come in with white

and paint it out again.

Doesn't need to be perfect,

ok?

Stamp.

Tool

back to the cleanup.

And the last thing I wanted to do with
this

piece right here, and I just realized
something I needed to do on the other

side as well,

is I just want to

give myself a little bit of around this
there, like that.

That's good.

Ok.

One quick thing is I need to

lock my transparency.

I want to come in with a

brighter brush.

And I'm going to do one of those things
on the side,

a super low flow,

and give myself a little variation

here.

I think that's kind of what was
originally going on

with the light in this area.

Do have some issues down below.

Going to check to see how I can

fix that.

And we are going to

a, sort of

pack off a little bit of some of the
work we had just done.

Turn this off,

turn this off.

Who

smokes sometimes all these layers.

Do you get a little confusing

that's?

Ok,

just be patient.

Work with it, you'll figure it out.

Ok,

again, I can spend an hour just on that
corner, but I want to leave it as is

for now, because it's still kind of a
question.

We don't know for sure if that
transition transition is exactly doing what

we want it to do, what the photographer
wants it to do.

But I think for now it's looking

really

lovely, nice shape.

I did notice a

bit of a glare right here.

And I'd like to

just quickly smooth that out.

Because it's a

square shape on around bottle.

And I'm not a big fan of that.

We'll just

do a quick,

mix, a brush on it,

get it to look a little bit like the
other side.

I think that's good.

I mean, obviously there is

a ton we could do here.

You know,

you could just keep on cleaning and
cleaning and cleaning.

And as a retoucher, you're looking at
the stuff

way larger than it's ever going to
print.

So always remind yourself that's

a really good idea to zoom out and to
look at things,

to look at your image at print size,

because that's how everyone else is
going to be looking at it.

And

if you're looking at it one to one or
200,

you're just going to hurt yourself.

So really quickly, like I explained
before, I wanted to

get this line just to

using frequency steps, you'll see how
quick that's going to go.

Sample my area.

In fact, I might even just

do

a quick

stamp

even.

No, I can't use my combined layer.

But what I can do

is hope that that doesn't connect.

So we'll go normal, normal, brush,

somewhat medium flow.

And I'm just going to

pretend what

that would actually do if it were real.

Bam.

None of these are perfect.

They don't need to be perfect.

They just need to look like this
surrounding area

does have a little bit of high
frequency on it that i'll want to touch.

Just for a second.

I know it's so strange to actually

be painting and cloning in this kind of
stuff, because it just doesn't look

perfect.

But again,

this is

the reality of glass.

Photography it's always very imperfect,

unless you're rendering.

And at that point it no longer looks
like photography, looks like a render.

These little two little divits

clean those upril quick.

And for that i'll just use a heel tool.

Takes a little bit too long to mix
those areas,

maybe a tiny bit of mixer.

Yep,

we're just getting rid of distractions.

Nothing has to be perfect, because our
print size is no larger

than that.

Whereas just a minute ago, it was ten
feet tall,

all right?

And I think I'm happy with the overall
retouching, and I'd really like to get

started on color.

So let's move into that.