Hello, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. I'm here in theCUBE studios in Palo Alto, California for SiliconANGLE news. We're here breaking down the telco disruption with cloud. You got the edge. The telecom industry just came off Mobile World Congress, MWC 2023. And big players emerged with new plans to reimagine the industry. And that's just the wave of the business transformation that cloud computing, data, AI, machine learning is all transforming. And the telco industry is one that is being disrupted. I'm joined here by Delpho Hernandez, Vice President of Global Telco Business Unit at Amazon Web Services, AWF. Delpho, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, thanks for having me. Good to see you as well. You guys had a big presence at MWC. We were there at theCUBE and we had a lot of conversations coming in around how telco is now transforming to the edge, moving from their old guard kind of environment to the new guard.  The infrastructure and the operations are evolving. Not as quick as some say, but it is happening unlike it was years ago with like a glacier speed of transformation, but a little bit much more acceleration going on this year. The big story was there's movement. They're transforming their business operations. You guys were a big part of many stories.  What was the big takeaway for you guys this year around the acceleration and what's this transformation look like? Yeah, excellent points. I think it's the speed. I think it's the speed and reality. So a few years ago, whether it was three, five years ago, we had a vision and we were talking about the vision of being able to accelerate the transformation of telcos by helping them move to the cloud, right? And engaging with our partner ecosystem and innovating on their behalf and really get that transformation going. But at the time it was a vision, right? We were talking about it. We were doing some modest first steps. And I think what you saw a couple of weeks ago is that it's happening, right? It's this from vision to reality. Is that no longer is if, maybe not even how, we are in between how and when. And there is a lot of interest. So there's a lot of engagement. People wanted to see, people wanted to sit down, discuss, people wanted to go and engage in typical problems that they have. And we love working with them. So, you know, work backwards on those problems and just engage with our partners and give them the acceleration that they need to move to the cloud and transform this wonderful industry that is telecommunications. You know, I'm always joking about the glacier speed of telco. And, you know, I know you can't say that, but I can. But people know that I love the telco industry. I think it's always been one of those innovation areas. If you look at all the transit of internet from the internet days to how phone calls are being made on the mobile side. Now you've got 5G, the convergence of data. This is an opportunity zone for more innovation and use cases. You're seeing IoT devices, industrial IoT specifically and getting an extreme focus. A lot more of our lives are now being identified at the edge where telcos will be playing. The towers are getting smaller, getting more powerful, more distance, more bandwidth. This is a big part of why this is the confluence right now. What's the impact of the cloud native piece specifically? What is Amazon doing? What is AWS doing specifically right now in this particular moment? So the advantages of the clouds are huge for an industry, right? It gives you that elasticity. It gives you that agility. It gives you that ability to pay for what you use. In the context of telco, it also gives you an infrastructure that you don't have to build. An infrastructure that is already there. It gives you an ability of not having to build networks for peak requirements, but just use it and flex up or down with the associated cost reduction. It gives you the benefits of a much more improved green efficiency from where you're there. And then it also brings everything else that we have done on the IT side of the cloud. It brings you all the services, 200 services that you can go on and use. It gives you integration of cameras, IoT, computer vision, machine learning, data services. It gives you all of these services ready for you to consume within the telco domain. And you don't have to go through those long cycles that you and I remember, right? Of building the project and securing the budget, deploying the equipment, doing testing here. You can just innovate at a much faster clip. You can just boot up, test, succeed and scale up. And if it doesn't work, you shut it down and try something else. So you bring that together. Everything that I just talked about together with all these partners that we have and the thousand partners, it gives you the developer ecosystem, which by the way, developers was a big theme as well, right? Everything that the GSMA is doing on open gateway. And then we bring out a marketplace already with 10,000 vendors in it that are ready to run in the cloud. So it's just the best of both walls coming together and delivering real value today. One of the things that was a theme was unlocking growth opportunities that came up a lot in terms of new business opportunities, extending the margin of providers. What are some of those opportunities that you guys are unlocking with 5G Edge and some of the enterprise transformations? We saw a lot of private networks, 5G. What are some of those growth opportunities that you guys are driving with 5G Edge and enterprise transformation? You know, Sporon, one of our big announcements was announcing a solution that we call integrated private wireless. And it wasn't a solution that we just sort of brought to market as such. It was something that we brought to market with leading telcos around the world, right? We co-announced it with Deutsche Telecom, with the KDDI in Japan, with Orange in France, with T-Mobile in the US, and with Telefonica. And it was about combining all the capabilities that private 4G and 5G technologies can provide to enterprises with the ease of deployment and the manageability and the access of doing it on the AWS platform. So it's a bringing a offering that is easy for telecom companies to take to market. It's very easy to deploy on AWS. And if you're an enterprise user who spends the time on the AWS ecosystem, here's a landing page where you can use, you can look for your needs for integrated private wireless and you don't need to go and start a whole separate design and do it all from scratch, because we've done that work to help the adoption of private wireless. So that was one of the big things we put out there. We demonstrated a number of other revenue generating opportunities, like a demo we have in standard, super popular. Something we did with Telus Canada, it's smart home 2.0, on how you could integrate third party devices by any manufacturer, not only Amazon devices, was all sorts of third parties. How you can integrate Alexa, how you can integrate Siri, how you can integrate everything and have a serial touch platform owned by the telecooperator that can manage the provisioning and the management of a smart home. That a few years ago, would it just been science fiction? We were demonstrating that today. Another example, right on the edge, Telia, they're doing a fantastic piece of work with a logistic outsourcer in Finland called Transvalweb. They have built a AI ML power solution where they can process a real time video on warehouses and really track inventory moves and optimize inventory, all managing the edge and managing cameras. So there's a type of tech solution that these guys wouldn't have been able to do a few years ago and it just helps them build revenue. Yeah, I noticed that was on your LinkedIn feed that the CEO of Telia Corporation, I was talking about the deal you guys announced recently news. That's an example, what is the virtual private 5G component? Why is the virtual private network so poppers? Is that because that's what the enterprise is like? They want that security, is that security issue or is that a limitation or a new feature of the new environment? It's like, listen, Wi-Fi has a lot of advantages, right? And some wire line solutions have a lot of advantages but sometimes you need something that is more flexible and less costly to deploy them and you've got now the ability to have high connectivity, a lot of more devices, sensors everywhere and you don't have the quality of service. You might not have the reach, you might not have the security of Wi-Fi. So this private wireless solution brings the best of both worlds, brings the security, the quality of service, the security that it's available in 4G and 5G but you can deploy it in the context of your campus, your logistics center, your airport, your hospital and it's a really good use case of 5G, not only being used for consumers but also used to transform other industries and help us get that digital transformation accelerated. Adolfo, what are you investing in right now for your team? What are you looking at? What's the focus? What's the priorities? So it's a lot to be done, right? We talked about sustainability earlier and sustainability and decarbonization is a big topic for Amazon, as you know, for AWS and for us in AWS Delco as well. We sincerely believe that running a lot of these old workloads and certainly the new workloads on a more modern, more efficient, energy efficient infrastructure is going to save the planet. We had a demonstration by Entity Dockomo demonstrating how they can get a 72% energy efficiency by running on gravity to an infrastructure. One big area and it's a lot of stuff that we can do there. The other announcement that we made and it got quite a lot of headlines during last week is about the Delco Network Builder. It's about orchestration of network capabilities at the Delco standard level and then have a translation internally that sort of maps that network mapping that network engineers create and map that automatically into instances, pops and things like that. So we're just removing a lot of the complexity. That's another area. You've seen the area of private wireless. You've seen the work that we're doing with SageMaker to make it more relevant to some of the use cases that Delcos are accelerating. So, you know, we've been announcing outposts, innovations, snow, some of our mobile disconnectable ragerized devices for some complex use cases. So basically what we're doing is we're trying to bring the best of everything that we do at AWS and we make it relevant and value generating in the context of telecoms IT and telecom networks.  This is the focus. There's not so much to try to force the disruption. You guys are working hand in hand with the customers. We're working hand in hand with customers. Everything that we've announced is always partnering with someone. But we're also partnering with that ecosystem of partners that are critical in the telecommunication space, either in the IT domain, but growingly in the network domain, see the announcement we made with Nokia on Cloud Rand. How do we get the best of both worlds from Nokia's experience and platforms in the run and bring it to the cloud? We also did the demo with Juniper on energy optimization, but we're also partnering with Tec Mahindra, with CatGermini, with Accenture, with a number of other slalom critical SIs that are also adding a lot of value to those transformations. So for us in AWS Telecom, it's about partnering with the ecosystem and accelerating this. Yeah, I'm interested in that Juniper deal, but we have some other interview to get with those guys. Very interesting proposition. I want to sequence now to your themes at Mobile World Congress. I think these are going to be consistent with what we're going to be talking about over the next year, leading up to next year's cube at re-invent and also at Mobile World Congress. You guys had a couple of key things, networks cloudified, operations simplified, growth unlocked, and kind of simplifying and re-imagining the customer experience. So I have a couple of questions if you don't mind. Can you explain how Amazon's orchestrating the software defined network to provide greater scalability and security? Cause that's a big part. You kind of mentioned some of the automation piece, but what specifically, how you are orchestrating the SDN for scalability and security? So security is job one, right? AWS, everything that we do, when we build our cloud and we'll deploy it our infrastructure. And our services and our processes, everything is done with security in mind. And so it's scalability, right? So you see, you go and look at our cloud continuum, right, going from regions to be able to then go to local zones in the metros and be able to go to outpost or wavelength in particular operators or then out into snow devices. All of that is a cloud continuum where you have a common set of services, common set of APIs and tools that people can use. And everything is being built with security and scalability in mind. Then when we go and look at particular workloads, we have the ability to go and target what part of the network continuum is best suited for what particular workload. You wouldn't deploy a BSS in the same part of the architecture that you would deploy around because they have very different requirements in terms of processing and network throughput and others. So we are optimizing by workload, but we are keeping the basics, common security, scalability, flexibility and commonality of our tools and interfaces for developers. Yeah, and I think that's why that's the number one theme I noticed on the rank, networks cloudified is huge because networking is a big part of this industry, obviously, but also you have old school networking and kind of new school networking. The cloud native networking obviously is the new school. How are you guys approaching that integration of the cloud native networking technologies with the existing on-premises infrastructure-related hybrid cloud or old school networking? Because, I mean, right now there's more virtualization migration to say containers and Kubernetes than I've ever seen before, but still there's still smaller numbers than the legacy on virtualization. On the networking side, what's the equivalent on-premise migration integration dynamic? Can you share your thoughts on how you're approaching that integration of the cloud native networking with existing on-premises? So, I think the best way to go after this challenge is acknowledging that we're starting in two different positions, right? From one side, as you say, we're coming from sort of on-premise bare metal type networking capabilities on the cloud. It's networking is virtualized. So that was the starting point. That's where the two industries were. And we're doing a lot of work with our partners with the likes of Nokia as an example to go and figure out for every particular workload and this particular case that ran, what is the best possible solution? And there we came up with a joint engineer solution that respects the principles of being cloud native in everything that we do at AWS, but also addresses some of the design and architecture discussions that considerations that the likes of Nokia bring it. Just being an example as many others, but the key word and how we solve it is really running up our sleeves and getting our engineering teams talking to each other, trying to figure out what is the best solution for the customer and work backwards from the customer so that we end up having the right solution for the customer. Yeah, and I think that's a hot area. We're going to continue to explore that. We're seeing a lot of traction on cloud native networking and kind of creating this cloud operational model which is the next pillar of your themes, the operation simplified. Okay, this is now the ops side. Networking, a lot of work to continue to be doing there. I know you guys got good networking capabilities there. And in bridging that, it's going to be a challenge, but we can talk about that another time. On the ops side, this is really with a simplification of ops that the customers comes in. Can you talk about how you guys are addressing the challenge that customers have in managing the increasingly complex and distributed systems in a way that's both scalable and easy to use on the customer side, because as they get more scale and automation and it gets more distributed with the edge, the complexity is increasing, but also the scale and ease of uses. And that opens up a lot of things like configuration errors, potentially security. So this is the challenge. Can you share how you guys are addressing this? Yeah, Joe, let me sort of push back a bit. I think the challenge is not that particular configuration error. The challenge is that there is a lot of capital and talent deployed against these operations. And in many cases, they are legacy, overly complex, and they haven't been updated for a while. And they're actually holding the businesses back, right? There are still customers out there. Did you not have the catalog solutions that they need for a efficient go to market as a telco? There are telcos out there who still have very legacy, decades old BSS systems that need help with, right? And some of the work that we're doing with the likes of Amdox and Optima and a number of other partners, Eriks and BSS, because towards modernizing that those old infrastructures are moving them to the cloud so that they can get that agility. You also have some pretty large ERP systems that are maybe dated, maybe don't old expensive infrastructure that need to be migrated to the cloud. You might have particularly telcos, tens of thousands of Windows machines that are running out there, that are running out of date, out of maintenance, or very expensive maintenance hardware, that you could very quickly move to run on the cloud and virtualize. And then at the macro level, they sit on a very rich infrastructure of data centers. Some of them, they might wanna keep. Some of them, they just wanna exit because they're sitting on costs and energy costs that you don't have. And for some of them, John, the teams that build those operational centers and systems are of a certain age. Some of them are gonna be working through the workforce. So you wanna get the skills, the cloud skills to be more pervasive inside the telco operations departments. So as on when these workloads are moved for cost simplifications, for operational simplifications, for business agility reasons to the cloud, there is going to be a team there that is cloud native, they're born in the cloud, train in the cloud. And that's another area that we work with our customers and partners with. So your premise is that obviously the operations is outdated and antiquated. So it's not even simplified yet. So there's an error, there's one use case of the challenge of modernizing the existing old school ops, which is systems and process workflows. Get that modernized shift to the cloud, then simplify with cloud native. There is no, we have our migration tools and assessments and methodologies. Some things you can lift and shift, some things you have to simplify before you move them. So there isn't a universal solution. Some of these solutions in OSS, PSS in particular, they're rather bespoke. So it's not like the new one necessarily exists on the cloud. So the migration actually comes with some work that needs to be done. And again, I think they're working with someone like AWS. It has co-development relationships with the likes of Amdogs, does make these moves a lot easier. They're never painless, but they're just easier. And I think that's really why I've always called it the glacier speed movement, because I think their ops has hamstrung them a lot. I think you're right on on that. I think that's really the bottom next bin. But the beautiful thing about the pandemic that we saw during the pandemic was people were agile when they changed their ops. We saw Amazon Kinect, for instance, do well with during the pandemic. So I think a lot of people have opened their eyes to the fact that they could reboot ops quickly, that will change the customer experience and unlock the growth. So for the customers that have done that, if they have, the ones that have done that, okay, you believe that to be true. I'm sure you agree, you would agree with that. I do, I do and connect, it's a very good example of that. Connect highlights that you don't have to get stuck in hugging your old stuff. You could really kind of move that out, bring in the new quickly. And if there's pain there, you can solve it. But this unlocks the experience of the customer, okay, and unlocks growth. So can you talk about that piece of it for the folks that have been successful with Amazon? How have they leveraged the AI and machine learning? What tools are they using to help them? You see the rise of the chat bots are here. You're seeing that kind of vibe going on. So clearly the direction in the new model will be leveraging technology, driving operational efficiency for customer value. Can you share anything insights there? Yeah, so if you think about it from a, first of all from a simplification and a cost reduction perspective, we will be moving in connect from legacy telephony systems used by college and serving customers that only have the information that they had to fully on the cloud systems that you can deploy as a super fast clip. You can get hundreds, thousands of agents enabled very quickly in a virtualized environment. In an environment where all the data is there for you to use. And then within that data, you can start using some of the AWS AI ML services that would allow you to do things like on the fly, real time transcribing. You can do sentiment analysis. You can start predicting what the subject or the context of the next goal is going to be. You can start generating through some of the tools what our next best offer could be. And then you might even, you might not always do it just sort of for efficiency. Sometimes you might have an outage. Sometimes something might go down and you need to have something like connect. You can very quickly just pin out the systems which that's why they were so popular during the pandemic to give you that flexibility. There is a pick. There is a campaign. There is an outreach. And then you're doing all of this by capturing all your data by being able to understand all the calls, by being able to understand what's happening, by being able to predict and influence behavior. And that's just a paradigm because in the old days, you know these projects used to take tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in CAPEX. It would take a long, long time to deploy. And then they were quite static. Once they were done, this is flexible from day one and integrated with the AML services from day one. So it's fantastic. You know, I wrote an article when I interviewed Adam Sileski for the re-invent exclusive. One of the things we talked about was this new dynamic of the benefits of the, I call it the next gen Amazon. He didn't really like that, but that's what I called it. As you guys go out 13 years later, 15 years later, 17 years, it's been around the cloud. The CAPEX investments throwing off more value. As you point out, there's now customers sitting on top of Amazon, building ecosystems, and that look like at their own cloud, but they're really being powered by AWS. This is creating new growth opportunities. And that was one of the themes that you guys had out there at MWC. Can you share the kind of like, what's going to be that explosive edge growth that you're unlocking?  But it's basically the edge, telco and the edge networking. This is going to be a new business model opportunity for companies. What do you see as unlocking growth for people who are working with AWS? What kind of value propositions? I was just seeing the AI wave coming. We're going to see that part of the edge, IoT devices, industrial IoT. What are the big growth drivers you see out there? I think this is fundamental to transform other industries. So if you look at the edge, if you can look at what edge type solutions a private Mac deployed inside a manufacturing plant can do, right? Enabling a number of use cases that were in there before, you can have now real time processing. Well, you can capture all possible sensors, cameras. You can process them on premises and you can only send back what you really need. So now you go from very rigid manufacturing to e-manufacturing. If you think about what you can do now in healthcare hospitals, what you can do in airports, the user experience that you can give to fans in stadiums and arenas and different cameras, different projection. These industries are being fundamentally transformed by injecting 5G into their industries on top of the edge. And there is why we are so invested in our cloud continuum going from the region all the way out to the edge because we believe that to really transform these industries you're going to need ISVs, solution developers who are going to be writing these solutions and writing these ideas on top of those edge platforms. And we want them to be writing them with our telco partners and we want them to be writing it on the AWS platform. So, you think of entertainment, transportation, think about manufacturing and you can think of... Automotive. Automotive. So all of that, we just at the beginning of those industries being transformed and telecommunications on 5G edge is going to be the catalyst. And I would also highlight, not that first I agree with everything you said, I also highlight that role of data is becoming very clear at the edge. Now that you have intelligent, secure connectivity with 5G and Wi-Fi, you're going to have that now new dynamic of the business value of data at the edge with high compute power, with AI at the point of processing. So that's... It's going to be a really big opportunity. Well, one more comment before we go. I know we're coming up. Can I say, John, just real quick, if I may, because I think data, in data we're going to see the two dynamics, really important. One, you describe absolutely data that is acquired and processed on the edge. But we also seen more and more and more the emergence in telecom of the need to create telco data lakes internally. How do you connect without migrating everything that is impossible to migrate? But how do you create a single pane of glass view of all the data that you have inside a telecom operator whether a creator of content in the telecom operator and the consumer of content have access to each other much faster? So data is absolutely at the core and we're seeing volumes of data that is now being processed, stored and analyzed, just going through the roof. Yeah, and also compliance where it's stored, it's at location, if it's in a country, you've got a region, you've got a local zone. It's going to be everything is going to be changing. It's going to be pretty exciting and renaissance at the edge for sure, but also challenge is an opportunity. So, that brings us up on our time here, but I want to say thank you for coming on and doing a little recap for our news team here. You guys are really kind of staying ahead, scaling up with security, orchestrating the network. You know, the future of business is going to happen at the edge and you guys are doing a good job and we're going to keep following this. Again, next year, we'll be at Mobile World Congress again with theCUBE. I'll tell, great to have you on again, theCUBE alumni, I don't know who Nan is, her vice president, Global Telco business unit. I'll give you the final word. What should we expect next year at MWC? I think we're going to see a lot more of two things, more around sustainability and we're going to be seeing a lot more about Telcos becoming tech cars in how they go to market. All right, well, we'll be there. We're going to be covering it end to end all year. You'll see a lot more SiliconANGLE news coverage. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.


This meditation is designed for you to let go of any attachments you may possess due to the nature of meditation. Please make sure you find a quiet and uninterrupted space where you can get comfortable and be still for a while. Please do not listen to this meditation while you are driving, operating machinery or doing any other activities that require your focused attention. So begin to get yourself in a nice and comfortable position, either sitting or running down. I'm going to offer some suggestions and images. It's totally up to you whether to accept them and however you experience them, that is just perfect. Know that you are completely in control and you can allow yourself to relax as much as you choose. To begin with, take in a nice deep breath and release it out slowly. Take in another deep breath and as you release it, allow yourself to get comfortable and relaxed with your eyes closed. 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It's so peaceful and so delightful, calming your mind and comforting your heart.  You find yourself sitting and reclining in a peaceful spot. Imagine yourself resting there. You feel the support of the earth beneath you, breathing the fresh air deeply and allow yourself to relax.  Another deep resting and as you release it, you let all the muscles in your arms relax and let go, sinking deeper and deeper down. Now another deep resting and as you release it, you let all the muscles in your chest, your stomach and all the way down through your toes relax and soften. You sink deeper and deeper down to the most beneficial and harmonious level of relaxation as you enjoy a moment of relaxation. You feel a gentle breeze on your skin. It's soothing and relaxing. You notice that there are many dandelion seas peacefully rolling in the air.  On the breeze, you follow the floating seas with your gaze and see them moving into the sunlight. 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You can find joy and peace within yourself. Now take in a few deep breaths and feel yourself come back into full awareness, feeling calm and refreshed, feeling return into your fingers and toes, all energy in complete balance. Your aesthetic body closed, become more aware, more alert and more present, feel the sensation and the vibration of your own inner energy. You are at peace and highly delighted when you are ready. Open your eyes.


moves here some big moves here today GPS we got some weird moves HP moved up Etsy moved up everything else just kind of flat today I mean it's kind of expected right today before Thanksgiving I don't think a lot of people are really trading that much and I'm not expecting a lot of trades to be honest with you I didn't touch any trade today either I feel like today I just kind of chill today I was actually I woke up pretty late and then I because I didn't have my alarm didn't go off I got into this one trade this morning on TSM I was so goddamn sleepy man oh my gosh I don't know if you guys can relate I don't know if any of you guys have ever done this before but I had woke up I was looking the market it was kind of floppy today right kind of dropped this morning pretty hard and then I was looking at this TSM trade and I was like hmm interesting right pretty low came back to like the support area right here it was actually under support it was under the support I drew around 119 so I figure at worst case I can come back to the support at 119 here or resistance now so it was like at 118 I slammed the order and I saw like spy was covering so I slammed the order and and I got in I got in and then I tried to set a sell order right I tried to set a sell order on it but instead of setting a sell order I did a double buy order so as it was going up to like here at 119 I tried to set a sell order but instead I did a double buy order so instead of having like 20 contracts or next week I'm having 40 contract like oh no I was like what have I done oh man and I was like you know what this is the kind of day where I need to just go back to sleep and I just left and I went back to sleep on that contract and I woke up again and it was up it was up to like 120 and up selling it and they get in out of that position thank God man but it was a pretty pretty crappy day overall we think the TSM that this truck can still be profitable which one because we have to open if you're talking about the 135 calendar that's if the I know that was risky getting to that if you're talking about the December 17 125 to 130 that's down a little bit where we have to see the support level here so let me pull the chart on the daily right the 135 calendar we need a big move for that so that could happen I mean the possibilities there that's why I got two weeks out because I did expect someone for pullback coming in I just wasn't sure if it was gonna be one of the situation where we have like a mini pullback and they just like go on B small because like over here when it tests the resistance and pull back right and then with B small here so I thought there was a momentum here that could carry it further up but obviously that didn't happen right so we're coming back here we need the next level we need to hold is we needed to stay above 116 117 if it can stay around it can stay above 116 117 then I would expect to see another bounce right here and then this time it's gonna test 123 again and then just gonna break right through it to 125 and hopefully this time it just breaks above 125 maybe to like probably I would say probably to like 128 ish for the back test and coming back up here so I think it's possible I mean we're burning the premiums for this week we can attempt to burn the premium for next week as well depending on where the range is what's up guys going on Simon OJ Boomin so I hope you guys didn't go too big on that because that was somewhat of a lot of plays a small position they say generally we did take a look back at it yesterday too and generally after the holiday it is pretty bullish so we'll see how that plays out what else are you guys trading today what's everybody looking at today you guys finding good deals for black Fridays what's up RB Nicko took a big hit on JWM how Yankee Thanksgiving tomorrow so Amazon we took the look at it yesterday I think if it holds that $35 range you can bounce here because this is pretty good resistance from before consider this a good area to look for entries it did test that area yesterday and today and you know if we continue to stay green here it could potentially come back to the next level let me post this chart in discussion channel where's that channel Costco Russell's Amazon GG PI let's see what the GG PI dude today hey we going we going it wants to break out let's go GG PI looking yummy I didn't get in here honestly I didn't even do like a single tray today other than that that morning tray after that why are you trading Costco Costco's just been grinding huh play the earnings had a good inverse head and shoulder but just dropped let me see so you're looking for this head and shoulder to play out here and you're thinking that's gonna break above right 38 break above to 43 I'm guessing I can see that that makes sense I mean you know I actually checked the flow yesterday on a Nordstrom and you're not the only one there's a lot of people that made a bet that it was gonna go above to there was a lot of people betting for $37 plus so I saw that on the flow and then there was a lot of people betting on the $26 side I went with the bearish side but I think I might actually get wrecked because I needed to stay around $26 range so senses like consistently dropping further and further down that's gonna hurt I'm a little surprised honestly that is dropping so much because we've got major support at the $22 area here too COVID right this triple triple top quad area from COVID so I think this $22 should be the bottom man if it's not the bottom I don't know so hopefully hopefully that's the bottom how could it not be the bottom right it was it wasn't that bad a very different market open again on Friday yes it will probably open again on Friday but you'll probably get very similar volume probably really crappy volume if you guys start looking for deals on Black Friday because I tried to like I was trying to search on Amazon and some of the other sites and I feel like this year I don't know if it's just me or what but I feel like this year a lot of the deals are pretty trash like they aren't even any good deals wow go EV canoe their special acquisition company looks like they're breaking out a little bit oh EV sucks they must have been hell of a bullish today yeah even Tesla's kind of bullish had a little bounce from that that here he he of course I've seen sand coin bro sand coin is a beast mo wait you didn't get into the tray oh my gosh bro you know how many times I have talked about sand coin is like what are my my most favorite coins out there we were just joking about it man I had this one position left over right because I I have already sold like so much positions I weak-handed I got in like super early I saw some at like a dollar range and then I think I saw some at like $3 range and like almost all my position was out I had only one last position left at 800 like about 800 coins and I acquired them like super cheap so you can see like the cost here I acquired them for around I think like 79 cents right and I set a sell order I was like I was like man this is either gonna hit $8 or not but if it's $8 I set a sell order at $7.95 because I want to sneak in the tray before anybody else and I sneak that trade in at $7.95 and it literally hit today around $1.23 ish and I'm getting a 10x play from that yo imagine putting $600 and getting $6,000 from that tray holy smokes that's probably one of the craziest tray ever had yo I could have been a millionaire if I wasn't like if I didn't paperhand the other half because at one point I had almost 50k in it but I paperhand it man I paperhand it I sold some of those for less than a hundred percent my future self will be disappointed myself that's why I'm not paperhanding this crypto.com since we're on the topic of crypto I'm not paperhanding this man I'm I'm saving majority of my holdings like once it hits a dollar I'm gonna cash out my initial investment I'm just gonna sit on the other half until it hits like $2 like I'm not selling until it hits $2 on my other half of the investment. That's it man. That's Razer on Amazon.com? Lux? Where did you see it? I think the stream is like 30 second delay probably last time I checked it was somewhere between 30 seconds to one minute delay just never sell the other half yeah okay never sell the other half it's gonna go to zero yeah crypto is so crazy right now I feel like right now crypto is like so easy money or we're at like the point where it's like meme week I don't know if you guys did you guys you know for some of you guys that may or may not have gone in during February or like January 27th but January 28th was the end of the meme week but during the later months of January 2021 we had a huge excitement in the market right everybody's getting in everybody got into a bunch of the meme coins and everything like literally every single coin you got in you were making money if you didn't make money you were probably retarded but like pretty much every single coin you got in you made money so I remember like we will get into Nike Cyrus XM any small cap you it would just run so I feel like that's where we are right now like pretty much every single metaverse coin to the moon yo like look at this this is my this is my watches on crypto side right got KDA I actually I'm not that sure KDA is not really a metaverse coin it's more like things like a DeFi coin it's something that Amizo actually picked out so that's our favorite coin we have Galaxy which is like a play to earn coin it's been on beast mode man it's just like I mean ran from 10 cents to 50 cents man 500% and you have crypto that calm just breaking every trend line out there break out after break out after break out freaking monster man then you have ENJ which is like a OG gaming coin gaming token and even this has ran up like ridiculous just when I thought $4 was the top of this coin pull back almost like $3 and change and and moving up even higher everything is moving inbox one of the other favorite coins a lot of stuff here that's very interesting have potential to run it's just so much easy money I remember when I looked at waxp and I play it I think I talked about this like a month ago man I was talking about how I was gonna try to get into play to earn games because I thought that was the next big thing in addition to like NFT I felt like that was the next move and I and I started like getting into like industry research and like looking into all these points and stuff and then I got into a bunch of scam games do I actually lost money playing some of these play to earn games I think I lost like $700 playing one of those play to earn games like I mean not necessarily lost money but I just burned $700 investing into the game trying to make money where it's not gonna it's probably not gonna make me money until like a year later right so I burned some money doing that actually I burned like probably like $3,000 doing that but along that way of burning money I also learned so much about all these different types of games that I actually end up quad-triple in my investment so it's been like it's been a pretty good move so far kind of excited to see Sanquan at least that's gonna be pretty cool but crypto has just been nutty right now and the whole crypto market is going down so we might see some buying opportunity soon may or maybe maybe I'm buying the top man because you know when when you see stock guys going into crypto that's the end yo that's the end like today I just like I just open I just brawl a bunch of margins on cool coin looking to buy the dip so I'm trying to set up myself up to buy the dip so I just brawl a bunch of them I just put like I just put some money down because in cool coin like you can put down 100,000 and brawl like 400,000 it's pretty wild how much they that you but I just kind of essentially did that looking to see if I can like pick the drop so either I'm gonna be really really successful I'm gonna make four times the money or I'm just gonna take big L man this is the make-or-break I think this is like any stock I thought the Tom Brady commercials and when everyone's grandma asking about BTC when the market wait which what's this Tom Brady commercial can I see is this it god damn it so they scare me man so what was this commercial release I'm surprised I never seen that commercial so that was in September 8th oh that was kind of the top I remember that I remember we did get into a little bit of bearish territory yeah we did we got into bearish territory that day so the day before the commercial right it was September 7th and and and it just kind of like flop Bitcoin went from 52 and down to 43 and dropped like 10 Ks overnight and we just kind of chill in bearish territory from that beginning of September all the way to the end of September so FXX just that was FXX so crypto.com they just announced that they were buying a stadium kind of drop Bitcoin a little bit Bitcoin is coming down ideally I would love for Bitcoin to come to this range over here at $53 that would kind of be in line with that last drop to last time it dropped 10 K so 65 to 55 is around 10 K that's where is that right now 53 is a little bit further there would be a good loading zone if it comes back down if Bitcoin comes back down to that area and then hopefully over like you know over over Thanksgiving Christmas break everybody and their mothers start hyping people up about crypto again and you know can you imagine like everybody at Thanksgiving party and like Christmas party and be like yo you heard about Bitcoin yo you heard about Sancoin you know all that stuff and and like and then like everybody will get into it and then it'll blow up the market it will like start going so high and then money makers at the end those MM the market makers they will they will finally be able to unload on everybody in their face Apple let's go so we're gonna look at Apple on the on the on the intraday chart 48 minutes if you're doing the a short-term trade looking for this Friday Apple is holding support so far over here in this range so if it holds that range it could test the top again if Apple breaks under 159 you're in trouble let me post that in discussion channel right now it breaks on the 159 it's bearish so that's an apple let me see what the intraday chart looks like the intraday the half day chart looks like it's sitting at the reverse so as well the daily chart looking a little bit bearish daily chart if I was looking at daily chart I would look at it I'd be like ideally I would want this to test like 157s on the half day chart it's looking like it's moving back like a bull flagging up further and further so you see that bull flag setting up on that short a time frame at 36k how long do you think it'll take me to hit 100k without YOLOs are we talking about stocks or crypto she's gonna take short positions that's crazy that sounds that sounds wow man I'm not sure how that's gonna work out for her cuz so far a lot of shorts has been getting wrecked I'm not sure if that's gonna be a good decision for her but um I mean Cathy Wood is good at like selling things and stuff so in the way she's been like a self-fulfilling prophecy for so long she's built such a following and she has so much power so that could work I mean who knows man well ARKK has been going down maybe maybe she'll come back up again maybe she just maybe she'll like you know come back to the rain you know but she's she's very smart in what she did you know every every trade she did she released it out and and she released it to the market to follow so once the market follows it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy even if her trade doesn't work out or is not supposed to work out once everybody jumps in and do and do what she does it'll end up working out so if she starts shorting companies and she's like oh I'm shorting this company because it's trash and here's the X reasons why XYZ why is trash and everybody else starts shorting it it could cost a lot of selling pressure or people with on low and they could cost selling pressure so that might work it's not a bad idea oh my bad long-term potential I mean I don't even think Nvidia and AMD are in the same league anymore bro I I I don't think like I don't even think AMD can be compared to Nvidia at this point in time and videos on a whole nother level right now it just leveled up man like with the whole metaverse thing and videos on a whole nother like whole nother planet yo AMD is like the moon and Nvidia is like the Sun right now and a whole nother whole nother category like with the whole metaverse AI thing AMD is just a product they just make the product and video is not just making products they're doing all types of stuff no so so in that sense I would say like for long-term and video but obviously I don't I don't like it at the current price I would love for it to see a bigger pullback for consideration like I probably would not be adding any more at this point or for a while so I mean maybe if we get like a crazy crash I would definitely put a lot of my money in video that would be a super safe bet if I had to choose like let's say everything gets a price cut of 50% right what's a NBA right now and these are 157 videos at 300 so let's say you know let's say something crazy happens and both of these stock comes down 50% the stock price drop 50% and and I have a chance and I have $10,000 and I can only invest in one stock you know for the next 10 years and you asked me what I pick and video or AMD I'd be like I'll tell you and video any day you know 10-year-old I pick and video any day but but but if they start if they both drop it 50% and AMD comes out and says boys we're doing a stock split we're doing a stock split 521 AMD yo forget about it I'm all in AMD at that point because that would be crazy man you know because if AMD does a stock split ooh it's gone you know how much I love stock splits man but that's a good question though man wait where's this rumor on Wall Street Bets or something can you link me I haven't seen the rumor I mean like probability wise is pretty low for them to do another stock split because they just did a stock split like last year right and and they did run up a lot but I mean is it possible I would say yes it's definitely possible there's there's a possibility that maybe like 20% chance just because Elon Musk is like unpredictable and if he does do that if he did do that you know if he is planning to do that that would be a genius move that would be a very very very smart move on Elon's part to do a stock split when the price is all time high I mean and for somebody like him to do a cash grab against investors like that why not I could see him doing that because I'm sure there are a lot of people that want to buy Tesla and like Tesla shares and they just haven't had the chance yet so if Tesla shares goes back down to $200 range I'm sure he would get more people to buy people love the company he has how the food changes here that's crazy oh but then he just unloaded shares yesterday though this video came out 19 so he kind of I thought I read that he unloaded more shares yesterday and that would kind of cancel out that theory a little bit but I mean interesting concept it could happen but I'm not gonna make any fits on it until after it happens because we play a lot of stock splits before and and like this is not the first time I've seen a stock splits and a lot of times usually with stock splits right when the announce you can still get in you can get in the next day and still make that move up you know so it's not something that I mean it's great if you get in early and you and you make big money on on that pre-run but you can still make money on like getting a later too so wouldn't I wouldn't worry about it too much man I wouldn't be too worried about like missing that boat because if it happens we'll still have plenty of time to get in so I think we'll be okay because I have tried to speculate Amazon's run before every time Amazon does the earning I try to speculate that they would do a stock split and run up and and you know what happened man I will get wrecked absolutely destroy because premium would burn out and they wouldn't do the split and then you just lose a ton of money lose like 50% Wow the whole crypto market is actually pretty red looking through a lot of these coins what are you gonna invest in RV nickel what are you gonna get everything is so top now it's kind of everything is so parabolic wish that calm oh my gosh yo deluxe were you here last time when I'm wish that earnings this was a huge opportunity to sell hey man you too thank you so wish that calm right last time when they had earnings I read the earnings report we were all very excited every there was a few people here that was very excited about wish that calm we were looking for a phenomenal earnings and they had that earnings and then there's just kind of like it was bad man I remember reading that earnings they speculated we're gonna make less money this Christmas despite it being a great holiday season and I just read it and I started getting like more and more depressed as I read further and further in the report actually had to close the report because I didn't want to spur any more foot and then you know the CEO left and and everything so it's tough man it's tough like the board of directors for wish that calm we have to hire somebody from Amazon or like Etsy or something to really boost the stock up like that's the only way I could see them like saving the company like they were out to either a hire some former loser Amazon exec or that's a higher some former like loser Etsy exact or they could potentially hire maybe like what else is popular a former like a former loser target exec or see or you know COO CCO whatever hire one of those somebody from those three companies one of those three companies and and that could potentially have enough momentum for for everybody to be like oh my god wish that calm is making a turnaround you know and and that could potentially like boost this company back to ten dollars but so far they've been losing so much money man it's kind of hard to be bullish on it with that set I still have shares I still have shares I couldn't unload like this I saw some cover calls at five dollars but I still have shares I don't think my cover cause gonna get taken away I'm still back holding I do want to see recovery at some point another I just don't know when aware or how but it's looking interesting right now my indicators actually I actually saying that it's a little bit bullish here so it could has potential to run the indicators are pointing the bullishness we got some money flow coming in from here and money flow coming in from here so maybe we will see a move on Friday to to back to point of control around five dollars hopefully what do you think what are you trying to do you back holding to I assume you've been holding six and six dollars I do you man I might have to average down it's like low threes I might have to average down again because I think my cost average is somewhere around like it's around like five eighties or something I want to say I think that's my cost average right now have to keep averaging down and selling cover calls against it yeah I think that's pretty much it here I'm gonna end it here today I'm gonna go do some stuff get ready for tomorrow I don't think I'll be back here from Friday but if I have time I'll try to come back here on Friday and hang out with you guys but otherwise have a great Thanksgiving you know our friends giving or whatever you guys having you know you know enjoy the time with your family and friends don't think about the stock market too much maybe the crypto market but don't don't worry about the money it's time to you know enjoy family and friends that said take care and have a great few couple of days


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Hey, how you doing? It's Greg back to here in this video. I'm gonna walk you through this stylized portrait I'm gonna take it from this To this all right a little backstory on this this image was shot by my sister now Here's the edit that she did and she asked me if I would do my own unique interpretation So I said sure and I'm gonna shoot a video and walk her through it now She's a travel photographer and I'll put a link below in the description box where you can go to this page on that Geo and see more of her work. All right, let's get started. So we're in capture one 11 for this and this was shot on a Sony a7r2 With a Zeiss 35 mil f1 4 now if we go down on the bottom you can see this was that ISO 3200 Shutter speed 2000 at f4 now the only critique I have about this is that I would have shot this at ISO 100 Because it was shot outdoors during the day. So you don't really need that boosted ISO She shot it in auto. I'm assuming and it just sort of made these settings for her That's the only thing I would have done differently. I would have shot this at a lower ISO So it would have been less noise I maybe would have shot this at f2 to get a little bit more blurry background But other than that, I think the composition is great I think the image is really unique and I'm gonna walk you through how I would edit this image So let's get started over here and I'll show you the adjustments that I would make So the only thing I would do to this you can see as shot 5400. I'm gonna try this at 52 Just cool it down. Just a touch see how that looks That's pretty good there, and I think I'll take this tint to one And then let's just compare that so to do that and capture one you hit the option key and you hit that backwards arrow So that's a shot pretty warm and then that's what I adjusted it to so again That's a shot a little bit warmer, and then if we go back, that's what I adjusted it to I think it looks a little more realistic right there a little bit more realistic looking skin tones now Let's go to the exposure tab overall I think the exposure is pretty good Let me just see what happens if we take it down a bit because I can always bring it up in Photoshop Yeah, you know, it's pretty good as shot. Let's go brighter. No, I don't like it brighter I'm just gonna go with maybe just very small on the minus. We don't really have that many highlights I'm gonna take it up to about 18 and then I think I'll bring up the shadow detail a little bit in the hat I think I'll bring it up to about five. So those are the only adjustments. I'm gonna make I think I might just give it a little more clarity Let me just say like a six just make his face a little more gravelly and then we're gonna go to Photoshop So file and then we're gonna say edit with and here's the settings. I would use in Photoshop It's gonna be tiff uncompressed Adobe RGB color space, and you can see Adobe Photoshop 2018 and we're gonna edit the variant and we're gonna go to Photoshop. All right Okay, here we are in Photoshop The first thing I do is duplicate the image command J on the Mac now we have another layer that we can work on So the first thing I do is assess the image and I like this image I think it probably needs a little bit more sharpness I'd like the background to be a little more darker to put some emphasis and then I'm gonna try to do a smoke technique You can see there's some smoke I'm gonna try to make the smoke say Cuba and see if that looks okay. We'll see what happens It might look a little cheesy. I don't know so we're gonna go first with the healing brush You can see it over here the healing brush tool.  I just want to tweak just so that you're not distracted by any of these little little details in the image And it's not really anything crucial really these little tweaks. You probably won't even see them I'm gonna zoom in a little more and then just clean things up a little bit So I think right here maybe his hairline I'll clean that up a bit. There's a hair there. I'm probably overdoing it already I'm gonna make this brush a little smaller option Clean up some of these little details here These are probably not even gonna make a difference in the end scheme of things But just gonna tweak a few more things here Sort of blend in this image and the goal really is so that you're focused on The portrait not distracted by some little details. Let's get this cleaned up a little bit more And I think that's pretty good right there. Just zoom out a bit. That's really way too close for this guy But that's pretty good right there So one thing I noticed about this image was it wasn't shot with flash So you notice there's no catch light in his eyes his eyes are really dark I think eyes are important in a portrait. So I'm gonna try to bring up his eyes a little bit I'm gonna add an artificial catch light where I think it should be and then I'm gonna sharpen this a little bit Maybe he's saturated a bit more and then just dark in the background. So that's what we're gonna do next So the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna lighten the eyes And I think man, maybe the easiest way is to add a curves layer. So what we'll do is go here We'll say curves now. I'm just gonna bring up the brightness here So now I can see his eyes a little bit better And then what I'll do is I'll put this on luminosity so that it doesn't affect the color saturation of the image And then what I'll do is say command I now we have a black mask now I can paint in with the brush tool over his eyes Just brightening his eyes so we can see his eyes there And I'm gonna come over here or hit the B key either or and then I'm gonna just make that smaller with my bracket key And I think what I'll do is probably take this up a little bit at a time So maybe 20% for the flow you can see my opacity is 100 The flow is 20% if we go to our brush We just have a soft brush right there and then I'll minimize that and I could see his eyes I'm just gonna bring up the areas where I think they should be a little brighter. Of course, we're gonna keep the pupil dark We're just gonna bring up the eye around the pupil and then what we'll do is we'll add an artificial catch light So over here too looks like his eyes might be rather dark normally anyway But let's just see what we can do to just bring up a little bit of that brightness Now what you can do to see if The areas are highlighted option and you click on the mask now you can see the areas that I've Worked on and now what I can do is just sort of tweak those areas a little bit more Make sure that that mask of brightening is even so I've done that Option and then click on it again And then if we toggle that on and off you could see his eyes have become brighter We can always adjust that opacity that'll be the next step So what I'll do next is I'm just gonna add another layer and then I want to add a catch light So I want to try to make this look Like it's real. So I'm gonna put it at about I'd say the 12 o'clock position So the catch light should be between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock I'm gonna put it right there at the top of the pupil and I'll do the same right here 10 and 2 I'll try to make it in the same position. So it looks like it's uniform Same equal brightness. Now. The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take that I'm gonna try soft light first see what that does and that dimmed it too much So I'll keep it on normal, but what I'll do is I'll take the opacity down So it looks a little more natural So I'll take that down to about 60 and then let's just toggle this out now once we go back Let's just see if his eyes are any brighter. And if they're too bright, they look to me like they might be too bright So what I'll do is I'll take that down the curves layer I'll take that down to about let's say 70 percent. Let's see how that looks Toggle that on and off still. I think a little too bright.  Let's toggle the catch light I think we can go down to about 50 on both. Let's try that So we'll do 50 there on the curves and then we'll go to about 50 on the catch light And then if you go to the bottom layer the background layer hit the option key You can toggle all changes right there So you can see his eyes have gone from dead to a little bit more life Although I think I'll take them both to 40 percent So it's about 43 there and about 43 there So just subtle changes to his eyes, but I think it looks natural It doesn't look like it's totally overdone, but I think you can see his eyes again option on the background a Little more life in his eyes. So I'm happy with that now The next thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to cut him out from his background So I'm gonna hit shift option command E and Push everything up to a new layer and then what I'll do is I'll come up here And then I'm gonna cut them out with the quick selection tool out of the background So I'm gonna just zoom in a bit and we'll refine this and it should be pretty easy because he's a different color than the background Now the reason I'm doing this is I want to separate him from the background because I want the emphasis to be more on him So that you're focused on him It's a portrait and I find the backgrounds a little bright This is gonna happen naturally unless you're shooting say with a flash and then you can bring the background down But if you're just shooting a natural light This is gonna be something that you're going to have to deal with basically and so I'm just gonna make these Quick little adjustments here and then hopefully this looks good and I don't have to tweak it too much But I'm just sort of going over this and we can do some refinements as we get more of him cut out He's gonna command minus to zoom out Make sure I get everything and then we'll go in and we'll take a quick look make sure everything looks good All right, so I'm just gonna keep going around So if you have any comments or questions post them below I haven't done this image yet So I don't know how it's gonna turn out But I can try to create a realistic looking smoke look with this smoke And then I think what I'll do is export two different versions So one with smoke saying Cuba and then one just plain that way I'll just take whatever looks the best and I'll show you the technique I use for making The smoke look somewhat real. So I'm just gonna zoom in check the outline. It's looking pretty good so far It's doing a pretty good job. I think there's a little bit here in his beret that we could tweak Right there to get that outlined a little better Don't want to go too far and then it'll bleed into the background But over here on the right side. It looks pretty good. It's up by his ear. You hold the option key to Retract some of that mask.  I know this is like watching paint dry really isn't it? It's not that bad really some portraits are easier to to cut out using this tool this one's Turning out to be a little more harder than I thought it would be but it's still looking okay though It's gonna get his neck tweaked up here. We'll just look at this plaid shirt plaid can be difficult sometimes You want to make sure that all areas of the plaid are chosen and we'll just sort of do this here And we're getting there. We're almost done the more I get this refined here The less I'll have to do to kind of tweak it at the end. All right, so the shoulders looking good I'm just gonna go over to this side and make sure this is cut out properly. That looks pretty good I'm checking out the outline of his hand and his cigar that looks pretty good. That looks good there I just see I can miss in his thumb a bit right there. I just want to make sure I get that All right, that's looking like it's gonna be a pretty clean cut out I just want to check the beret again. You can see it's not perfect at the top I'm just gonna tweak it a little more and That's pretty good. Let's just see how this goes. So we're gonna go up to select and mask We'll click on that. Now. I've got this set for red so I could really see what's happening here Now I can just tweak this a little bit here So what I can do is I'll just go over this a little bit more right here in this area here Just a tiny bit there and maybe just a tiny bit right there. And so that should be okay There a little bit right here on his face I can make the smaller using my bracket key now another thing we can do too is what we'll do is we'll go output New layer with layer mask. We'll say okay. I could tweak just the layer mask So you can see here we have the white mask So if I want to bring in an area or take it back if I hit the D key and then the X key If you look over to the left I can toggle between black and white and what I could do is just disable everything in this photo Now we can just see the white I can zoom in command plus and you can see right here We have a part of his neck that looks a little off. So if I hit the X key I'm on black and make my brush a little smaller than what I could do is I could just tweak this back a bit So I'm on the wrong brush right now So I need to hit the B key and then we'll be on the right brush So to deselect I go command D. Screw it up a bit there I'll make that a little smaller and I could just tweak this gray right here and really get a little bit closer So that it's a more even of a cutout. We look at his ear. You could see it's a little bit jagged But what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take down the back a little bit So you're probably not going to notice this X key here to bring the image back in So if you miss some of the image you could just hit the X key to bring that back So I'm just going to do that. But overall, I think it's pretty good for what we're going to do You'll see that this should work pretty good. All right So I'm going to bring everything back and again an easy way to look at both Hold the option key and the background key and you can see we've only got the eye adjustment showing So I'm going to do next is take a curves layer You can see right here curves and then before we brought the the brightness up I'm going to bring it down to about there And then what I'll do is hit the option key and I'm going to click on it You can see that downwards arrow right there What that does is it applies that curve darkening to this mask But you could see it's the opposite So what I want to do is click on the mask and click command I and now you could see how the background got darker And there's more emphasis on him It's almost like we lit him up in the background darker So command I again so you could see the darkening layer is applied to him But if I command I on that mask command I now the background is dark Now if you think that's too dark You just go to the curves layer and then also to put that on luminosity So we don't affect the color information on the back And then you could just slide that back and forth the opacity So if you just want to bring it down a little bit If you felt like you went too far you could do that with the opacity slider I'm going to go to about 80% I'll toggle that on and off so you can see it So that's without the curves layer on the background And that's with So you could see he really stands out a little more So I'm really starting to like the look at this Now I'm going to merge everything to the top And I'm going to try to make this look a little more gravelly So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go up to filter Other I'm going to go to high pass And we're going to add a high pass filter to get some added sharpness So I have it at a radius of about 30 And I'm going to say okay And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to soft light Now you could see I'm going to toggle this on and off You could see how this adds some added sharpness But it also is a little jagged But in this image it's kind of working But I think it's too much I'm going to take this down to about maybe 50% And we'll toggle it off and on again You could see it adds that added sharpness I still think that might be too sharp I'm going to go to about 40 Now another thing I'm going to do is add a contrast curve So we're going to go to curves layer And what I'll do is I'll bring the darks down a little bit And then I'll bring the brights up a little bit So I've created a contrast curve there Now I can toggle that on and off You could see that contrast Now we could go to soft light and see what that looks like That's way too much contrast I think We could also go to vivid light And you could see how this really affects this You could also go to hard light And that's too much too I'm going to go to soft light And then I'm going to drag this down to maybe about 20% We'll see how that looks Now we'll toggle that on and off So you could see how it adds that pop of contrast there And I think that might be too much I'm going to go with about 15 We've just added some contrast So let's go back to the background option And now you can see the differences We've made in this raw image So I think that's really coming together I'm starting to really like this Now the only thing I'm going to do now I think is I'm going to add A little bit more saturation to this I want this to be a little bit more Like an HDR type image Easiest thing I think would be To bring this up to about a plus five And let's have a look at that I'm going to toggle that off And then we'll toggle that on You know what? That might be a little too much I'm just going to tweak it just a bit I'm going to bring it down to about maybe just plus one That's about it there Now one thing I like to do when I get to this stage Is you can add some different colors To different areas So if we go to selective color You can see we can just adjust the blacks So we could put a little blue In the shadows if we want So if we go to the blacks here And then we're on neutrals If we go to blacks If I take the cyan to the right You'll see how we're kind of adding cyan to the dark So I like to do that with my images But not too much I'll say maybe let's add two to that Also you can go with your magenta slider You can see how that looks a little more purple Looks a little more green I like to take that to about a plus Plus one plus two Then you can take your yellow slider Again, looking at what colors you want to bring I think I want to go with maybe like a minus one on that And then if we just close that out And toggle it on and off You can see it just added a subtle difference To the darks Give it a bit of a bluer And then if we wanted to We could take some of the brights And add a little yellow Another way to do that too Is if you go to your levels Right here, click on levels, blue channel Now you can see here If I take the shadow slider You can see we're adding a little blue to the shadows And then if we take the right hand side The bright side, we're adding a little yellow So I think what I'll do is 255 is normal I think I'll go maybe 252 there And I think I'll add maybe two Ah, three there Now if any of this is too much for you Alls you have to do is adjust the opacity slider So I'm gonna toggle it on and off again I think that's pretty good I'm just gonna take it back to 80 I always like to kind of do a setting And then just take it back a bit So I'll put those both at about 80 And then we'll go to the background So option and then background So that's the before And then that's the after I'm gonna zoom in So you can see that a little bit better So that's the right image right there And then this is what we have Now I'm gonna do the last thing Is the smoke And so we'll come up here And I'll create a new layer And what I'm gonna do is go to the brush tool So I hit the B key I'm gonna pick a soft brush So if you come up here You'd see I'm on a soft brush And then what I'll do is I think I'll just take it in at about maybe 30% We'll see if that works And then what we'll probably have to do Is add a bit of a blur to this Now this may or may not work at all I haven't tested this so we'll see what happens I think I wanna make this to be about the same size As his smoke strand So I'll probably go about there And then what I'll do is I'm just gonna write Cuba And try to attach it to this part of the smoke We'll see what happens So I'm just gonna say Cuba And then I'm gonna attach it to that smoke Now that doesn't look real at all So what I'm gonna do Is I'm gonna go up to filter And I'm gonna go to blur I'm gonna go to Gaussian blur And then I'm gonna blur that So it looks like it fits with that smoke Which it doesn't at 40 I'm gonna try it at 30 We'll see if that looks a little more realistic Vaguely there Let's try 35 Let's see how that looks And we'll try 25 35, it's a little bit blurrier Let's try 25 Cause if it looks too sharp It's not gonna look right That's probably too sharp I'm gonna go with 30 And then what we can do Is adjust the opacity of that So I'll say okay And bring this over Now I don't know if that adds Anything to the image at all It's kind of neat I think I'm gonna just fade it out A little bit more So it looks like it's barely there And you'd have to kind of look to see it So I think we'll go with about 70% Let's just toggle that on and off Now that's too much I'm gonna toggle that to about maybe 50% And we just vaguely see that I might even go 40 And maybe it'd be subliminal Actually you won't even see it I better go about 45 So I've got a little subliminal cube over there I don't know if that does anything to the image or not I just thought I'd show you How to do kind of a fake smoke effect So that's what I would do If it was me I could probably also do some Dodging and burning of this image I could probably lighten up His eyes a little bit more But you know overall This is pretty good I kind of like it the way it is I just made a few tweaks Let's have a look one more time At the before and after The option key I click on the background And that was before And then so just look at his eyes And look at the sharpness And the colors of the image And how the background gets a little more darker And detailed And then we've got our added cube there That's just subliminal And then I could always take that off It's barely there I could maybe take it up to 50 Why not? All right so If you enjoyed this video Just leave a comment below Also hit that like button Share this video On the web with your fellow photographers And if you're not already a subscriber Just click on that subscribe button Also if you click on my name Craig Bechda You'll get to see a listing Of all of my videos I have over a hundred free videos So make sure you check out some of those videos as well All right hit that like button Leave a comment below Subscribe if you're not already a subscriber And I'll see you in the next video