The X-Ray of Retouching: Check Layers in Photoshop

today I'm gonna show you how is the magic of check layers to see way more information than you normally would often image just like an x-ray sounds interesting actually it is first off what are check layers well have you ever seen those thermal cameras unlike light those thermal cameras capture what heat the super hot areas are represented by white the warm areas are represented by yellow and red and the cool areas are represented by blue similarly these check layers allow you to monitor just one single properties of an image that do visually like hue saturation

details everything visually in an image it actually helps you determine where you need to make that particular adjustments also it helps you to find out those inconsistencies by looking at just one property and that is why check layers are also called false colors because as the name suggests sheckler's do not form a part of the complete final image they're just there to check the properties today we're gonna go through several examples and learn how to create these checklists and how can they be useful in our day-to-day workflow also at the end of the video I

have a special little gift for you so make sure you stay tuned so without any further ado let's get started [Music] so here we on the mystical world a Photoshop and download any of the photos shown in the video make sure guide and check the links in the description so that you can download them and follow along alright so let's have a look at this image what is the flaw in this image this image looks flawless have a look at the background it looks amazing let's zoom in quite a bit ctrl or command + it

looks great right so the background looks fine the foreground looks fine the ground looks fine everything looks great however if you give it up for printing there might be some inconsistencies that might become much more visible when you print them which is not visible to the naked eye if we just look at the image and there comes solar curve into rescue so first off you'll be talking about solar curve now what is solar curve it's also called solar eyes now a solar curve is a curves adjustment layer that makes every detail visible it accelerates every

tiny imperfection every tiny change in color tone sharpness whatever it makes everything visible so here's how it works create a curves adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and choose curves now all you have to do create a zigzag curve you don't have to be super accurate about this just create a zigzag curve so click a point over here take it up click another point over here take it down take it up take it down just like that simple zigzag curve you don't have to be accurate but if you are one of those people

who actually maintains the pencils and aligns them on the table then if you want to be super accurate you can so keep this point between these two lines or in between this square or this one between the squares one as well this one as well level them up you don't have to do it but if you want you can now let's zoom in and let's have a look at the image have a look it has spotted a dust particle right over there it was not visible without that so if we turn this off see it's

not much of visible it's very faint so if I turn this on very visible have a look at these inconsistencies if we turn that off yes it is kind of visible but it didn't catch our attention in the beginning have a look here as well there is a line if I turn this off no much visible let's turn this on back again let's look on the ground there's a mark in which she's standing we need to remove that dust particles over there there's a lot of things that we need to remove and solar curve really

makes it visible so you can name this solar curve if you want to or you can also name this Solarize it's both the same thing two names same thing all right so how do we remove that very simple create a new layer between these two the background layer and the Solarize Yulin and then you can use any tool that you like I'm gonna go ahead and use the Healing Brush tool the regular healing brush tool and change the sample from currently to current and below we don't need a sample we don't need to take into

consideration the Solarize curves adjustment layer so do not select all layers current and below select that and we can take a sample probably from here and paint it over there and you get the idea so that way we are removing these and also having a look at the inconsistencies that we are creating so it's not perfect right over here we need to make it perfect so we need to take a sample from here okay that looks better now we need to remove these things take a sample remove take a sample remove you can use any

tool that you like but it makes things much more visible for you now if you turn this off have a look at this it's all gone before after before after it was barely visible but if you print it if you commercially make it visible to any website someone might notice it so it's always best to get it screened out from a solarized curves adjustment layer okay now let's look at example number two and let's have a look at this example it also looks pretty good pretty awesome everything great if you create a solarized curves adjustment

layer over here let's not create that again go ahead and drag this up so drag it and bring it onto this one and drop it okay now I have a look at this there are dust particles here as well so we need to remove them and this time let's go ahead and use the Spot Healing Brush tool so let's zoom in and its best for creating or removing those dust so if you click it won't remove it you need to check sample all layers and one of the greatest part about using the Spot Healing Brush

tool is that it doesn't take into consideration the Solarize thing but if you choose healing and if you choose sample all layers it will take that into consideration so click click click click click click and it's gone and it's taken care of very easy right now let's look at example number three let's turn this on and let's turn this off let's have a look at the before and after before after before after you can barely see the difference because if you zoom in at the dust particle so here was the dust particle if I turn

this off you can barely see it but after before after before I'm not sure where they can see it but it's very very fine and minut so let's move to example number three of the same thing here also let's go ahead and copy the Solarize adjustments layer and it looks pretty fine the background looks ok there are a couple of dust particles yes I accept that we need to remove them however how is this gonna be helpful in this case in this case you are able to see every piece of hair it really helps you

to clean out stray hairs so if I create a new layer right over them and one of the tips on removing stray hairs is this use the Spot Healing Brush tool and change the mood from normal to replace what it does it doesn't leave out a smear if you choose normal what happens is if you try to clear a hair at the end it kind of smears up so if you choose replace it doesn't happen so zoom in and simply just paint over this I know we need to decrease the size of the brush and

work on it one by one very easy and you get the idea have a look at it before and after before after before after so that way Solarize can be really helpful in exaggerating every little detail now the second check layer that we're gonna be learning about is luminance now what does this mean luminance luminosity and all that kind of jazz well the source is in physics don't get scared it's easy in physics luminous flux is the amount of energy or the amount of light being emitted per second and we don't need to get into

that but the idea here is this luminosity shows you the amount of light being emitted without thinking about the color without showing you the color so when we create illuminance check layer we just see the amount of light and not the color how is this gonna be helpful well when you see just the light and not the color it takes away all the distractions of color and allows you to do any adjustments that you need to do just with light for example dodging and burning or if there are any inconsistencies related to light we can

solve it using luminance check layer so how do we create luminance check layer it's very simple you might think okay let's make everything black and white and that way we just see the light so let's come to this example let's go ahead and create a hue/saturation adjustment layer click on that just with layer icon and choose hue/saturation now if you take the saturation all the way to minus hundred you see just the light not colors well this might be wrong this might be inaccurate why is this inaccurate here's why let me let me ask you

a question let's come to this example let's fill an ingredient so click on that just look layer icon and choose gradient and let's choose the color lists single click over here and choose any one with two colors and let's choose on the left hand side let's choose red ok this red and on the right hand side let's choose yellow or bright yellow just like that it's ok now let's have a look at this if we hit OK if we hit OK which is brighter the top or the bottom well mathematically both are off the same

brightness but if I take a yellow book bright yellow book and a red book obviously any person they easily tell that yellow is brighter than red but if you look at maths and logic well both are of the same luminosity if we go ahead and create a hue/saturation adjustment there right over here and decrease the saturation all the way to minus hundred have a look it's the same you cannot see any difference this will give you the wrong idea it may be right logically it may be right mathematically but according to human perception this can

be wrong so what is the right method well it's very simple as well so let's delete the hue/saturation adjustment layer and also just like that and let's create solid color adjustment layer okay you can choose any neutral color you want it does three American Jews gray you can choose black any neutral color and hit okay and change the blend mode from normal to color what that does is that have a look at this now at this point red is showing up darker and yellow is showing up writer what color blend mode does is that it

just applies the color of the color that you choose to the underlying layer in this case we chose a neutral color or in other words we haven't chosen any color it's neutral so if you choose black if you choose white it doesn't really matter because they have no saturation in them right so hit okay there we go as you can see yellow is shown brighter red darker so similarly here as well instead of hue/saturation here's what I suggest create a solid color adjustment layer choose white or any color that you like let's choose black hit

OK and change the blend mode from normal to color let's have a look at the differences so this is the one with the right method the human perceptual method and this is the one with just hue saturation saturation taken down can you spot the difference let me show you the difference so let's create a snapshot go to windows and then history so inside of history let's create a snapshot by clicking on this button it creates a snapshot over there now this snapshot is for hue saturation adjustment layer we'll just name name it that way and

let's create one more snapshot with the color film snapshot number two and we can name this perception human perception or whatever you like I think I just messed up the spelling but have a look at the difference so this is the wrong way this is the right way difference there's a huge difference so let's have a look at it again wrong way right away everything according to the perception so that's how you create a luminance check layer you can just name it luminance if you want to okay now this can be really helpful in dodging

and burning how is it helpful well it takes away the distraction of color and just gives you the light and dodging and burning is what shaping the light so more on dodging and burning in this video check that out let's zoom in and simply let's create a curves adjustment layer in between these two click on the adjustment layer icon and choose cur so we gonna burn this is just for demonstration and select the mask press ctrl or command I take the brush make sure the flow is somewhere around one or two percent let's choose two

and we gonna make the dark areas darker or anything was just facing away from the direction of light so for example this area will make it a little darker will just simply paint to white inside of the mask again white reveals black conceals black hides white shows up so let's paint in this particular area like that giving shape to the nose dimension to the nose let's make it a little darker over here okay doing a very quick job just to show you how can this be helpful maybe add a little darkness over here more darkness

here make this side a little darker a very quick burning I haven't even dodged this is just burning let's have a look at that before and after so this is the after before after before so you see the difference if I turn off this luminance now we have done that beautifully before after before after if you think it's getting too much saturated what you can do you can change the blend mode from normal to luminosity again so it doesn't affect the color now there are various other advanced ways to work with colors when you're dodging

and burning sometimes luminosity blend mode kind of decal arises your image so check out this video again it's a very in-depth video on dodging and burning the next check layer on our list is saturation our saturation saturation is simply the amount of color irrespective of what the color is it's just the amount of color the saturation check layer allows you to check which areas are very much saturated which areas are less saturated which areas have no color at all now let me show you how to create a saturation check layer there are two techniques to

do it I'm gonna show you both the first of all create a solid color adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and choose solid color and choose total red are 255 G 0 B zero red green blue or the hex code FF four times zero it's okay now change the blend mode of this one we chose red because it's very very visible change the blend mode from normal to watch this we need to see saturation so select everything other than saturation so let's choose hue in this one create a copy of this one ctrl

or command J to make a copy and skip saturation choose color make one more copy skip saturation again and choose luminosity now this shows you just the saturation the more the red the more color that area has now let's create a group of all of these three press ctrl or command and hold it select the other two or you can also use shift so select the last one hold the shift and then select the first one it selects everything in the road then press ctrl or command G so have a look if I turn the

check layer on the areas that are more red have more color in them as you can see this area is very much saturated inside the eye this area is very much saturated have a look if I turn this off see there's color in them if I turn this on have a look the white areas have not so much of a red in it here's why because they are neutral they don't have much color in them okay so that way you can see which areas are extra saturated and work on the saturation now let's show let

me show you is just another method another method is using selective color adjustment layer here's how to do it click on the adjustment layer icon and choose selective color so when you have red selected decrease the blacks all the way to minus hundred make sure absolute is checked not relative absolute yellows all the way to the left of greens all the way to the left we need to take away all the blacks from all these colors we need to make it even so see on all the way to minus hundred blue let's decrease the blacks

magenta now we need to also remove the luminosity from this so choose the whites we will add 100% black on it choose the neutrals 100% black take it all away right blacks again okay now all you see is saturation in the form of white color instead of red as we saw in the previous example so in this case the more the bright the area is the more saturated that area is now if it is getting difficult for you to see you can create a levels adjustment layer or a curves adjustment layer let's create a curves

adjustment layer and make it even more visible by taking this slider to the left just like that okay and stop right over here just when the details are losing when you're losing the details stop how to see that hold the alt or option and take it to the left and just when you begin to see the artifacts stop before that okay that way you are able to see all the saturation very much clearly let's make a group of both of them hold the ctrl or command select the other one and then press ctrl or command

G and name this saturation okay and now you can just work on the saturation for example this area as you can see it's very much saturated click on the adjustment layer icon and choose hue saturation and decrease the saturation like that now inside of the mask select the mask and then press ctrl or command I it inverts the mask creates a black mask it hides the effect from all over the image let's take the brush make sure the foreground color is white and increase the flow 200 this time and just increase the size of Photoshop

actually accidentally did that now this is very much saturated I'll just go ahead and paint over here like that don't worry we will decrease the opacity I kind of went too much overboard over here here as well there's a lot of saturation so let's zoom out and let's have a look at this let's decrease the opacity okay so we're gonna paint over here you can take as much time as you want to get this perfect now let's have a look at the before and after feet turn off the saturation this is the after this is

the before you can see these areas are very saturated and if I turn this on these areas are evened out now it's not very essential to do but if you really want to make something really perfect this can be helpful also it's very helpful in landscapes have a look at this image which area do you think is most saturated well it seems like this particular area this yellow area is very saturated let's create a saturation ad just check layer actually click on the adjustment layer icon and choose selective color I've already created that preset saturation

check to create a preset all you have to do just click on this grid kind of thing and then save selective color preset and then save that as a preset so since I've created that preset I can just go ahead and choose that and now let's have a look now what we thought that this area would be saturated this particular area and this particular area but instead if we turn this on have a look at this we thought this area would be saturated these areas are saturated and we need to work on them now here's

the thing it's very essential to work on the saturation especially if you're printing if an area is very saturated looking amazing in screen it might mess up when you print it so work with saturation have a look at this example suppose you want to increase the saturation of this now this is looking excellent but if you have an image and you want to increase the colors without losing the details this can be helpful as well let's go ahead and create the Selective color adjustment layer and then let's choose saturation check ok now we need to

increase the saturation without losing the detail let's create a vibrant adjustment layer so why bronze increases the saturation of the mid-tones it's very pure it looks nice so let's bring it down here and increase the vibrance first now if I go beyond a particular value I have a look if I go too much we will lose the details over there so have a look we are losing the details we don't want that to happen so we'll just go a little bit to 50% and then let's increase the saturation slowly and have a look at this

if I go beyond 20 to have a look at this area these areas are clipping these areas are losing details which means there's so much saturated that they're losing details so if I go very much see you have lost the detail over here you're losing the detail so it helps you find that balance let's decrease that and let's close it this is the maximum that can go you don't have to go this far but this is the excellent that you can go it helps you keep the check let's close it down let's turn off selective

color and let's have a look at it before and after so this is the after this is the before after very much colorful if you're looking for this look you can go forward with this again you can always go ahead and decrease the opacity if you want to but actually this sets the maximum limit for saturation or color the last check layer that we're gonna check out is hue now what is hue well if you take away the saturation from the equation if you take away the luminosity from the equation here stays the hue the

hue is the true color it doesn't matter what the amount of color is it doesn't matter how bright or dark the color is it's just the true color let me show you what you actually is visually and by the way this guy looks familiar I don't know why anyway so if we choose any color on the right hand side we have the hue slider okay so these are pure colors just pure colors it has no brightness attached to it no darkness attached to it it's no amount of color attached to it it's just simple pure

color okay now how is the huge check layer is gonna be helpful well it will be helpful in figuring out inconsistencies in change of color not the amount of color in saturation we looked at how much color hue is what color again I'm gonna repeat that for you saturation is how much color hue is what color so it is what color so what happens is when you have a skin captured so in this area if you have a little yellow patch in this area red patch so on and so forth saturation cannot capture that if

the saturation if the amount is color is the same you won't be able to capture that you just need to look at what color they are in order to solve it so let's have a look at this example okay so everything looks perfect because color correction is already done so it's before color correction let me show you the before color correction version before color correction after color correction now inside of color curves as you can see in this there are lots of things that we have done but this is the most important the color correct

before if we zoom in if you have a closer look there was this green patch before over here this green path this kind of yellowish patch and if I turn this on we removed them so how do we create a check layer for you it's simple and smells so let's turn this back on and let's create it on top first of all create a solid color adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and choose solid color and we're gonna choose 50% gray the hex code of which is eight zero eight zero eight zero in

other words our G and B all at one twenty eight and hit OK change the blend mode of this one to luminosity now as you can see it's just color luminosity is a blend mode which just affects the luminosity of the image or in other words the light so since we have chosen a flat color and we have changed the blend mode to luminosity it has left the colors behind as it is a neutral color and made everything flat and as you can see it's just the color but it's very difficult to distinguish so we'll

go ahead and create one more adjustment layer solid color and doesn't matter what color we choose just make sure that saturation is kind of around somewhere around 50% and the brightness is 100% and doesn't matter what color you choose II you can change that later anyway hit OK and change the blend mode to saturation now you still cannot see it is exaggerated so cannot see much let's create a curves adjustment layer and let's to repeat that Solarize thing that we did in the beginning like that okay now you can easily determine the inconsistencies now this

is color corrected let me show you before color correction so if I turn this off let's see the inconsistencies away let's turn this on and just turn off this one the color correct layer have a look at the inconsistencies you can clearly see them that really helps you to identify where the inconsistencies are if I turn this on color correction see everything is evened out that really helps you to figure out if there's any inconsistencies and if there are you can easily solve them by using hue saturation adjustment layer let's make a group of all

of this it's kind of this acting select all of them ctrl or command G and name that you okay hit enter now let's turn this off and let's create that again it's turned this off as well as you can see the green tint over here we saw where the inconsistencies are so simply create a hue/saturation adjustment layer just like that and there are tons of ways of correcting color you can check out this video as well so if you are interested it's it's another way of doing that alright now simply select that area click on

the hand tool and click on that area that area is selected then increase the hue all the way to the right and increase the saturation just for identification purposes and we're gonna make this arrange narrower and just move that around to see which areas are being affected okay so as you can see this is the perfect area that we have selected see we wanted to affect this particular area now let's make it wider and we can work on them let's make bring everything to zero so as you can see there was a tint over there

we can work with the hue to remove that yes we have added a little bit of magenta to it and you can just take away the saturation a little bit let's close it down so this is the after before the green tint I'm not sure whether you can see it this is the after the green tint is gone so that's just one way of correcting the hue you can check out other ways as well in the videos that are linked up in the description but here's how you can check the hue the saturation the lightness

or luminosity and also check out the details exact rate them to find out where those imperfections are inconsistencies are thank you so much guys for staying on until the end and as I promised in the beginning there is a little gift for you and the gift is this you don't have to create any of this checked layers all you have to do just download this action that I've created for you and play the action and it automatically creates all those check layers you can turn on and off each of them now if the action doesn't

work for you maybe you're using another version of Photoshop I'm using Photoshop CC 2018 you can create those actions it's very simple to do I already told you how to make these layers just hit the record button create those actions and save them if you want to and you can prefer this video on how to create actions just a very quick little recap first of what our checklist checklist allow you to check the properties of the image visually no matter whatever the properties are used saturation details luminosity so on and so forth I'm sure there

are other checklists for other properties as well check layers allow you to see the properties visually that's all there is we learned how to check the details by creating the solar curve what is solar curve it's simply a curves adjustment layer with zigzag and that's it then we learned how to check luminance what is luminance well it's the amount of light without looking at the color it's just pure light and it's not just black and white by taking the saturation all the way to the left there's a different technique to it and what's the technique

that we did according to human perception we created a solid color adjustment layer choose any neutral color that you want change the blend mode to color that's how we did luminance next up is saturation now what is saturation saturation is simply the amount of color doesn't matter what color there is it is just the amount and how do we create a saturation check layer there are two techniques as we learned we created a red solid color adjustment layer you can choose any color that you want just make sure you choose just one color and choose

the blend mode for each one of those three anything in the last category except saturation so hue color luminosity those three and that's done and the second way was using selective color so for all the colors red green blue science magentas we took away the black to the left and for white neutrals and blacks we took away the black to the right took the black to the right not away what am I saying so that's how we created the saturation check layer and at the end we tested hue now what is hue it is simply

the root color the pure color without any luminosity added to it without saturation it's taken away from the equation now saturation is the amount of color hue is what color so how do we check you simply create a solid color adjustment layer of 50% gray chase the blend mode to luminosity it flattens up the image and leaves just the color now to enhance that you can use probably a solarized curve on top of that you can also create one more solid color adjustment layer and keep the saturation at 50% brightness at hundred percent and hit

OK and change the blend mode of this one to saturation and that's how you create a huge check layer so that's pretty much it for this video I hope this video helped you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also do not forget to subscribe and do it too subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss a thing I would like to thank all these nice people for supporting this channel on patreon and helping keep fix imperfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching guys

I'll see you guys in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you [Music]