MEXTURES SESSIONS: SPECIAL EDITION
This week we have a tutorial put together by one of our own who has requested to remain anonymous and to defer all credit to Mextures. What we can tell you is that this individual is both brilliant and beautiful and holds 7 olympic records in croquet. The end goal of every tutorial we publish is to provide our community members with a different perspective of Mextures use and also to offer an explanation of why certain overlays and adjustments might be applied to create different moods, colorations and textures. Our hope is that seeing these before/after images, reading through the process, and importing these formulas will allow you to become even more talented and capable in your creative process. Enjoy!
FORMULA CODE: TVICFVC
It's rare that I ever have any real plan when I begin to edit an image in Mextures. Mextures is such a phenomenal and simple tool for color-correction and provides users like myself with the ability to set their images apart from the pack. Because this shot (taken in Many Glacier along the Grinnell Lake trail) had so many great colors in it already and is a bit overexposed due to the morning sunlight peaking up over the mountain top, I decided to tone things down a little bit. I like to play around with Light Leaks - especially when there are already natural light leaks in the image - to create more overall uniqueness in an image. Here I applied the Jellyfish light leak but I blended it using the Exclusion mode which created some muted infrared lighting that I really enjoy. I used Autumn Skies to enhance the changing color of the leaves in the foreground and then just a touch of Vintage to darken the image and draw the viewer's perspective to the reflections on the water. I absolutely love to use Dust & Dirt overlays for a touch of grit. Here I used Dreck because I felt like it provided just enough fade and character to a bright and colorful image. I added Mauve from X-film just to further dumb down the brighter greens. I'm rarely strong enough to resist the seductive call of the film presets, so for this shot I applied F-ASTIA because it smoothed out my tones and set me up perfectly to use the adjustment tools to polish the image off.
FORMULA CODE: UWIDYHS
I've never posted a lot of black and white edits, but I've always loved them and admired anyone and everyone who consistently produces excellent mono work. Because this shot (taken at La Push on the west coast the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State) was already so dark and dreary and ultimately had very little color to begin with, I thought it would be fun to drain what little color the original had while adding imperfections to the image. Neutral Density is still my BFF, so I cranked it way up. This allowed me to practically make the beach sand disappear with all of that contrast. The West Chester light leak gave me a nice flair at the bottom right and then I added texture on top of that flair using Dusted (Grit and Grain) and Dreck (Dust & Dirt). Knowing that I wanted to continue to add both contrast, fade, and imperfections, I applied the Streaker light leak. I would have cranked it all the way up to make those streaky lines even more prominent, but I didn't want the light that would have been added by doing that. So I moved straight over to F-FORTIA film preset which helped me to overexpose the dull sky in the background while keeping the darker tones that I had already worked to build up. I added more exposure, contrast, highlights and shadows in the adjustment tools to smooth things out a bit and give me a polished end product.
Find heaps more tutorials here in the Journal and plenty more formulas here!
