 Okay, so I'm in Lightroom and I've already chosen the image that I want to work on in this series. And so what we need to do now, since this is all about using color effects control points is we're going to take this photo into the color effects software and get started. So let's jump in and do that. So to do it, it's very simple. We're just going to head up to photo and go to edit in and choose color effects. Now it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyways. The only way that you'll see these filters is if you've previously installed them. So hopefully you've done that. If you haven't done that, make sure that you go to Google Nick Collection, download it. It's free software. And once you install the software, you'll have to probably close Lightroom and reopen it in order to see these. If you're having any troubles with installation or questions as to what the hell it is I'm talking about, go ahead and leave us a comment down below and I'll go ahead and answer your question. But for those that already have done this, let's just jump in. So I'm going to choose color effects and here we are. So now we're inside of the color effects plugin. We've left Lightroom. We're actually in a third party plugin and when we're done, our photo will get sent back to Lightroom with all of the adjustments and changes that we've made. So now that we're in color effects, what we're going to do is we're going to apply an adjustment. Now, this is true for just about all of the Nick Collections and basically it works in a sort of filter system. So you choose the filter that you want to apply. You apply it to the photograph but the beauty about the control points, the reason that this is so powerful is that the control points allow you to add the adjustment or take away the adjustment from anywhere in the photograph that you desire. This is the same thing that you would do using a mask technique. Lightroom has one masking option and Photoshop has tons of really powerful masking techniques. But if you're not really familiar with Photoshop, then you're not going to get the same flexibility that these control points have to offer. And I think as far as ease of use goes, that's what makes these control points so amazing. And as we use some of the other filters, you'll see exactly what it is I'm talking about with respect to all the different variety of changes that you can make. Color effects is pretty straightforward. There's only a few things but some of these other filters that we're going to use are much more advanced. So we'll get to that a little bit later. We're going to start easy and then over the series of this video, they'll get gradually a little bit more aggressive. So over on the left hand side, if I'm under the Alls panel, you'll see there's a ton of filters that I could choose from. So let's just say hypothetically that I wanted to add some contrast to this photograph. I would go through my filters. I'd figure out what it was that I wanted to apply. And in this case, I know that I love tonal contrast, so I'm going to apply it. Now, this tonal contrast adjustment is being applied to 100% of the photograph. But if I want to not apply this adjustment everywhere, this is where the control points come into play. So if I just show you a quick before and after of what that tonal contrast adjustment did, you can kind of see what that's doing. And it's actually not doing a bad job at all. But for the sake of this demonstration, there are a couple of things that I don't like and I want to show you how to work this. So right now, this adjustment is everywhere. But as I turn the adjustment on and off, what if I said that maybe I wasn't crazy about the adjustment on the trees? And maybe I wanted to take some of that adjustment out of the trees. This is where the control points is going to play a factor. Because even if I go into highlights, mid-tone shadows, or these adjustments that are here, I'm only changing the effect on the whole photograph. That's not really what I'm looking for. But if I were to dive in here where the control points are, and even if I were to open this drop-down menu, you'll notice that there's an opacity slider. So with the opacity slider, I can control how much of this effect is being applied on the entire image. Again, this is the entire image. But what's great about this is just like you would have in a layer in Photoshop or in an adjustment, you can lower the opacity. So opacity to me is like strength. How strong is this adjustment everywhere? I'm going to just leave it at 100% for right now. So it's at 100% strength everywhere on the photograph. But now what I want to do is take away the adjustment on the trees or at least take it away to some degree. So I'm going to grab the minus control point. And what that means is that anywhere that I place this control point, it's going to take the adjustment away from that part of the picture only. So I'm going to go over here and you can see down in the loop view that it gives me a closer look into where exactly I'm going to put this point. Like if I were over here, I'd be dropping it on the tree branch. If I drop it over here, I'll actually be dropping it in the greenery. And that's what I want. So I'm going to just select it, click one time, and it's going to drop that point on those greens. Now here's where to Iris point, things went south. What I didn't do was I didn't explain what that control point actually did and what's being affected. So let's just take a closer look as to what that did. If I turn off the tonal contrast, you notice how everything to the left of that point is actually still being affected, but the tree itself is not changing at all. So here's on, off, on, off, but the tree stayed exactly the same. It didn't change. And that's because I took away the adjustment, minus the adjustment from those tree pine bristles. But what you can do now for this is there are two control points. There's a control point on the top, which will allow you to increase or decrease the radius. And the radius is like an attack zone. Anything within that radius is going to be affected. And since this is a negative control point, anything in that radius, the effect is being taken away. So you can control how large or how small you want that radius to be. If I only wanted to take away this adjustment from a small area, then I would just reduce the radius down. Or if I wanted more in the radius, I would adjust it up. Now it's important to know that if we look a little bit closer as to the characteristic of this little dot here, to me it looks like a donut. I love donuts. I could actually eat a donut right now, but that's neither here nor there. Let's get back to the control points. Focus, focus. All right, donut hole, okay? There's a hole in the center of this donut. Anything that's in the center of that circle is actually what's being affected in the radius. And in particular, it's a color or a tonality. So since these pine needles are green, that shade of green inside of that donut hole is what I'm telling Nick filters that I want to remove. So anything that has that shade of green or color in that radius will be removed. Hopefully that makes some sense. So now that I've decided the radius, the next point is the handle bar. Underneath it, and if I click on this, this here is the opacity, which is to say how much or how little of that adjustment do I want to take out? Do I want to take out all of it or do I want to just take out some of it? You get to choose. So what's great about this is in any other situation, you could reduce opacity of an adjustment, but it affects everywhere. The only way that would not be true is if you were using a mask in Photoshop, but that gets more complex. Here we can pick apart and then control with opacity how much of the adjustments being applied. That's really, really awesome. And so again, if I toggle this adjustment on and off with the opacity as I move this opacity back and forth, I want you to just look here at the tree. I'm going to actually zoom in so you can see a little bit better. So as I move the opacity back and forth, do you see how 100% is all of the adjustment being applied? Zero is it all has been removed and anything in between is a variation of strength. So it's either none, all of it, or some degree in the middle. So if I were to toggle this a little bit more, I'll notice up here at the top of these bristles, there is still some effect being applied that maybe I'm not crazy about. So I'm going to go grab another negative point to take it away and drop that up here. I can move the radius and then control how strong that adjustment is or is not being applied to those trees. So this is a really, really handy effect. And that's all there is to these points. There really isn't much else. You'll notice right here that it's keeping track of how many points we've applied and it's telling you the 46% if I go over to this point, control point one, 46 or 40%, you'll notice as I increase or decrease the radius, it's showing you how much of that effect or in that area it's being applied to. So you can turn off a control point if you don't want it to be affected or turn it on. It's really kind of up to you. So that's it in a nutshell. That's the control points inside of color effects. You're either adding the adjustment or subtracting the adjustment. If you wanted to see what the add adjustment is doing, if we click the plus button, let's say, and go over here and drop this pin, on this side we would end up with a third point. And again, I can go and reduce the opacity of that particular adjustment based on the tone or tonality that's being applied. So again, you're either adding or subtracting. That's it. There's no other functions here. Once you're done making those decisions, you have a couple of options here. You can add another filter. So let's say that I was done with adding contrast and now I wanted to add some detail. I could choose to add another filter, go over to my detail extractor and repeat the process because now the same control points add and subtract are here now for the detail extractor. It won't affect anything that you did in tonal contrast. For example, if I turn detail extractor on and off and I said, you know, I only wanted to add this effect to the water, I'd go click the plus button to add the effect and go drop it in the area that I was that I was thinking about or looking for. Then again, I could increase the radius and I could choose what my opacity of that adjustment was going to be. And I could add more as many of these points as I wanted. So if I wanted to add the same adjustment over into this water, I could do that. If I wanted to add this adjustment up in here, I can just drop the point or up in here. And then anytime I feel like I need to manipulate it, I can just move these opacity sliders back and forth to get exactly what it is that I wanted. I might even drop some down here in the water below. I really love how that water is flowing nicely down there and I kind of want to add to the drama of that detail down there. Another thing that I haven't mentioned is if you drop a point and it's not in the right place, you can always go back to it and move it around. So if I wanted to move that down here, I could or if I wanted to just move it way up here and you'll notice as I move it up there, you can see exactly what's happening as I turn this on and on. So really, really great, powerful tool. Once I was done adding filters, playing with the points, and I figured that I was done with this image, I just hit save and this will take the photo back into Lightroom keeping all of the adjustments and all of the points that I had made to this photograph. And so from here, you could just continue making any other necessary adjustments that you would make to finish or polish off this image. Now this is the most simplest of when it comes to the control points. In the next series of videos, these control points are going to get a little bit more complex and the things that we can do with these points are going to be also a little bit more complex. So make sure that you subscribe to this channel to see when we put out the next video and what the control points are doing for that as well so you can catch all of the videos in this series. And again, your comments and your feedback are really, really encouraged. It's how we get better at what we do. So if there's something that we missed or you just want to have a chat, leave us a comment down below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at PhotonerdsUnite. So hopefully you enjoyed this video and we look forward to bringing you part two of this seven-part series. Stick around. Thank you so much for watching. My name is Adam. I'm out.