[Music] hi there this is umesh from pixel perfect how you doing i hope you're having a fantastic day and turning it into a brilliant and beautiful one and for some reason if you're feeling a little off let me know in the comments we are always there to support each other and if you come across somebody in the comments going through something please support each other please let's cheer each other up that's what the whole creative community is all about well in this video i'm going to share with you the three-point color correction technique and you might say mish you talked about the fourth point in the title what about the fourth point well at the end i have a twist for you that will completely take you back to what we were learning in the first place but to understand this twist the three-point technique is a pre-requisite the fourth point is an interesting magnificent magical one i'm excited to share this with you so without any further ado let's get started [Music] back in the magical world of photoshop and of course you can go ahead and download any of the examples that we show in the video by checking the links in the description now before we begin i wanted to quickly let you know that i'm doing a free photoshop live workshop with nars academy so please do join and comment for it it's on the 12th and we're going to be talking about the 12 incredible photoshop tips and tricks that you might be missing out on and that you probably don't know about that's going to completely revolutionize the way you work with photoshop see you in class i would love to see you there thank you so much for listening to this message all right let's go ahead and get started the secret to applying the three-point color correction technique precisely is to precisely figure out which three samples to use and there's a scientific way of doing that not so scientific but you get the point all right so let's go ahead and create a curves adjustment layer and of course we're going to be using curves for it but also we're going to be using curves to figure out what those three points are so let's create a curves adjustment layer and on top of that let's create a plain simple layer and this is just for identification let's come back to the curves adjustment layer take the rightmost slider to the left this makes the bright areas brighter we need to take it all the way to the left and notice as we are taking it further and further to the left hand side of the universe brighter areas are getting so bright that they're losing details so this will help us reveal which areas are the most resistant to lose all the details that would be the darkest areas right so when you take it further and let's take it all the way to the left hand side these are the areas which are left out and these areas have to be the darkest when we turn this curves adjustment layer off have a look these are the darkest areas of the image so that was our goal to find out which areas were the darkest so let's come back to the identification layer you can take the brush take a simple hard round brush and just mark those areas for the dark areas for the black point all right so let's simply just mark those areas all right there you go and there's a reason i marked it with black so that it's easy for you to identify it doesn't have to be black let's come back to this curve this curve is just for identification that's it for now it's just for identification now let's reset it by clicking on this button this is the reset button we need to find the brightest area of the image now if you looked at the image some people would guess it would be this area it might be some other area we don't want any guesses here we want the scientific method so we'll do just the opposite we'll take the left slider to the right and this will make dark areas darker and as you take it more towards the right hand side you will find which areas are the most resistant to becoming black so let's take it even further and at that point we actually lose all the details let's slowly and gradually start bringing it towards the left-hand side and these are the areas which turns out to be the brightest so let's come back to the identification and we can just paint or mark this area with white now it is also essential for us to find out which area of the image would have been gray in real life now if you look at the image you can clearly look at it and say that maybe the wall in the background might have been gray maybe this part of his shirt might have been grey but there's also an estimation technique and that is this all right so i've just turned off the curves adjustment layer for now and just above the background layer or the subject layer let's create a solid color adjustment layer right absolutely neutral gray all right so let's choose it and let's choose eight zero eight zero eight zero in the hex code or you can simply set the hue and saturation to zero and brightness to 50. this is neutral gray now we need to find the colors which are the most similar to that and how do we do that with the difference blend mode now why are we using the difference blend mode because the difference blend mode shows you the difference between two colors and if two colors are absolutely the same the difference would be nothing in other words black so just forget all of this for now all right if we have red here so let's take red all right if we paint with this color okay and we create one more layer and even in this layer i just paint this with red all right so we have layer one this red layer two this red both are the same color if we choose the blend mode difference you will see the intersection becomes black because both are the same color and the difference between the same color is just black all right it's nothing if this was some other color so we are in layer 2 if this was some other color like let's say green or something the difference would not be black it would be something else have a look it's something else if it was something like blue have a look the difference is something else but if it's the same color it's black so that's why we created a neutral gray layer let's turn everything back on and if we change the blend mode of this one to difference we need to find which area is the darkest that's all so let's change the blend mode from normal to difference now there's this area which is the darkest this area in the background which is the darkest so how do we segregate the really darkest areas well we can again use curves so let's go ahead and turn on curves and let's reset it we're just going to make the white areas or the bright areas brighter so let's take the slider on the right to the left take it all the way to the left and see which areas are left out that are the most resistant to becoming bright or white and those have to be the darkest areas so let's come back to the identification layer let's take the brush and this time let's take gray and this is just for identification so that you know which is the gray point which is the white point which is the black point so on and so forth so in here we know that this area might work so we are just circling down the possibilities that's all so there's this area which can be the possibility all right there's this area which can be the possibility so different possibilities we're just marking them that's all all right i think that's enough you can also try this area as well all right now once that is done you can just turn off or delete the color fill layer that we just created for checking and figuring out the gray area you can also just reset the curves come back to curves double click on the symbol of the curves adjustment layer to open up the properties and then click on this button to reset it now we know which are the different areas to sample the white point black point and gray point from so all we will do is first of all select the eyedropper for the white point first of all make sure that your curve is set to default if you double click on this one it should be set to white it's not double clicking properly with this pen so i'm going to use this mouse right here all right come on man all right there you go it has to be set to white just make sure it has to be set to grave 0 050 and this has to be set to black if you haven't done any experiments with this it should be fine for you so first let's start with the white point and let's zoom in and try these areas see what works the best for you zoom out a little and let's click on this area see what it does let's try clicking on that area i think that creates a better result for me and we're gonna leave it at that now sometimes when you're doing this the details can clip and you can lose details in the bright areas have a look we're losing some of the texture details here to balance for it in the rgb channel not in the red green or blue in the rgb channel just take it down we're gonna keep it right about there that's fine now for the black point always do the black and the white point first and then the gray point so click on the black point and which is the darkest area right here we marked it so let's try one of these areas all right again to compensate for it let's increase the shadows because we might have lost some details have a look right here it just doesn't look right so to compensate for it we're just taking it slightly up all right now that is done for the gray areas simply click on the gray point eyedropper and let's try these areas and just as soon as you do this have a look how wonderful this looks so you can try a couple areas see what looks good to your eye keep in mind this is art not photojournalism not any scientific experiment so click on each area see what looks the most natural to you and you can stop right there so this is fine you can also try clicking on right here see what looks good again so in my opinion i think this looks perfect and after that you can of course turn off the identification and there you go the three-point curve color correction technique so here is the before and here is the after how easy isn't it now some of you might say mish this was as simple as abc what is the twist what is the twist that you were talking about well the twist here is that you don't have to do any of this this all can be done automatically now some of you are upset and angry i know i'm so sorry the reason i told you all this so that you know what is happening behind the scenes when you're automatically applying this technique now how do we automatically apply it i'm going to tell you in a while but to be able to automatically apply the three-point technique you need to know the fourth point all of this might sound confusing we're gonna get to it and break it down one by one let's go ahead and get started this is the one that we did manually so let's name this manually all right we can apply the same three-point technique by first of all let's go ahead and create a curves adjustment layer and then you can click on this grid right over there these lines that you see and choose auto options and here you can choose one of these too enhance per channel contrast and find dark and light colors so let's choose this one see how it looks to you does it look good no that's for you to decide one important thing to keep in mind is to make sure that you check snap neutral mid-tones and there you go now once this is checked you can choose either of these two see what looks good to you the first one increases the contrast per channel so it goes to r g and b channel and increases the contrast accordingly and the second one just simply finds the dark and light colors and just expands the range in both the cases you have the option to snap neutral midtones so see which one looks good and more natural to you to me the first one looks natural for some images the second one might look nicer so it's all up to you hit okay and this is the one that we did automatically now you might say where's the fourth point that you were so raving about i'm gonna get to that with another example right now here's the manual one here's the automatic one and you can barely tell the difference by the way if you really want to tell the difference you can just turn on the manual one create a snapshot in the history panel by the way if you cannot see the history panel let's go to window and make sure history is checked so the first is manual now let's turn it off and turn on automatic one and create another snapshot so we have a snapshot for the manual one and this is the automatic one so you can decide which one looks good for you and for me i have to admit it the automatic one looks more neutral by now we have learned how to apply the three-point color correction technique both automatically and manually what about the fourth point let's come to this example and we're gonna apply the same thing right here so let's first of all create a curves adjustment layer and again in the auto options let's go to auto options right here and let's choose one of these two first of all make sure you check snap neutral midtones try the first one looks good not that much try the second one i think it looks a little better hit okay now since the saturation is too much let's create a hue saturation adjustment layer first of all and simply decrease the saturation now that looks more natural 22 is fine now even though this image looks right have a look here's the before here's the after there's so much improvement there's still something wrong with this image can you guess what that is have a look at the road it is still greenish and we know from our experience of looking at the world if it's not a strange day with green clouds the roads would be gray right and that my friend is the fourth point the fourth point is your own logic your computer won't be able to tell by just looking at it that the roads are supposed to be gray it is your experience of the world outside that tells you that so that is the fourth point so to correct that we're going to go back to curves even if we had applied it automatically we can select the middle one the gray point and simply click on the road to improve it so let's try different areas of the road and there you go have a look at the difference isn't that fantastic now we might have to come back to hue saturation increase the saturation back in and select the hand and click on the face to just target the reds and then decrease the saturation just for the reds if you really want to target it precisely you can increase the hue and the saturation all the way to the right hand side just make the target very narrow and we want to target these dark areas right here let's expand it a bit all right let's expand this one a bit as well and now we can just bring the hue and the saturation back to zero by the way if you're interested in learning all about the hue saturation there's a lesson to master it all from beginning to end i highly recommend watching this lesson so let's decrease the saturation let's slightly change the hue one or two and decrease the saturation that looks normal now we can come back to the master and increase back in the master saturation that begins to look more normal so here we go here's the before here's the after so much more better isn't it so remember the fourth point that's the most essential thing that's your logic my friend so that's how i apply the three-point color correction technique with a focus on the fourth point and let's do a quick little recap first of all we find those three points which is the brightest point of the image the darkest point of the image and the areas which are closer to gray how do we find the brightest point by simply creating a curves adjustment layer so we take the left slider to the right and the areas most resistant to change would be the brightest areas and taking the right slider to the left and left out would be the areas which are the most resistant to becoming white and those are the darkest areas and how do we find the gray areas we simply create a gray layer so 808080 remember the hex code and then we change the blend mode to difference the darkest areas of the areas which are the most similar to gray and you can also use the assistance of curves to exactly find out which areas they are now identify them mark them out and then you can apply a curves adjustment layer with the help of each eyedropper the black white and the gray just click on any of these areas and see what looks good to you and that's the manual way of doing it the automatic way is pretty simple all you do is click on this grid right over there and go to auto options make sure snap neutral midtones is checked and try any of these two see what looks good to you coming to the fourth point don't forget it the fourth point is your logic so if you did it automatically let's say we went to auto options and then we went to this one we chose snapchat neutral midtones there is a problem with this the road is still green and that is when your artistic sense your logic comes into play and that my friend is the fourth point then you need to click on this eyedropper and click on the road to bring everything back to normal i hope this video helped you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any other future tips tricks or tutorials thank you so very much for watching and i would like to take the time to thank all of these nice and amazing people for supporting pixem perfect on patreon and helping keep fixing perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching i'll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] true [Music]