Photoshop 101 – Learn the Foundations

1. Introduction to Photoshop 101: my Photoshopped. One or one video course is the perfect way for anyone to get started using photo shop Photoshopped. Such a huge program. It could be really hard on a where to start there was. It's possible, quite easy, to pick up all kinds of Photoshopped skills on YouTube. It could be much harder to get a real solid foundation of the key skills on which to build . This is where my photoshopped one a one course fits in its practical hands on it will teach you the fundamentals. Photoshopped quickly and give you an understanding of selections, brushes layers on many more things. Most importantly, you'll learn why to your specific approaches, as well as how so your confidence will grow alongside your knowledge of the program. By the end, of course, you have the skills and understanding to crop photographs in crew. Put the contrast, perform basic color correction, apply creative effects with selections and brushes, remove areas of photograph, check their sizes of print on resize them for the Web. Since the perfect cause to give you the foundational skills you need to use photos show 2. Before You Start: just a couple of quick things before we get started properly. Firstly, as you can see, I'm recording discourse on a Mac so clearly if using a PC it looks slightly different. The only thing you really need to be aware off intense forward doing on this course is that if you use a keyboard shortcut that would be using the command key on, the Mac would simply replace that with the control key on the PC. I recorded this course in 2015. That was the latest version of C. C at the time. Subsequently, there's been a new one out, but you can have noticed very little difference if you use that version or indeed you use an earlier version. If you do want the very latest version of photo shop, you can download that from Adobe's website. So if you Google Adobe downloads photo shop, then you will find her a version that you can use their A couple things I would recommend to get the most out of this course firstly, is that you follow in order. So even if the stuff you think you know it's pretty good to just start the beginning work straight through. Secondly, if you want to use the same file that I'm using, you can download them. There's a link below that you can use to do that just to give you better context. We're working on things for a couple of imaginary companies to kind of give it a bit more of a real world feel. That's one thing, then. The other thing is, I'm deliberately not using layers to early on in the process, so you know a bit about fellowship already. You might know about layers, and you might be wondering why I'm not using them. That's entirely deliberate. Believe having talks for a long time that it's it's easier to know introduced into early. So if you know about layers, don't worry, they will come along soon enough. 3. Context: before we look specifically a photo shop, let's look for a moment of the context in which it's used on. I would suggest to different ones. Firstly, print So in design. Also made by Adobe, is the program normally used to put together. Things will be printed, so newsletters, flyers, posters, that sort of thing. And here's one example which happens to come from all in design one on one course. But I show you this because clearly most of this is text, as with a lot of flies newsletters, Sambi. So that's put together and in design, everything's in a frame. So Texas in a frame. Images of a C is what we're interested in here. So we got a photographic image here that would come from photo shop. But just say you're away. You've also got things like this. Logo's infographics charts that kind of thing. They're different from what we do and Photoshopped, and I'll get specific in a minute. But for now, I just want you to be aware that photo Shop is not the only program used to create images that go into print or, indeed, the Web. So let's take that a bit further by going into photo shop where we can see the original off this image, which is brought in. So discuss the kind of difference between where illustration were Photoshopped fits in, so this image, as you can clearly see, is a photograph. And if I zoom in, I'm just using command or control. Plus, to do that, you'll see that for maybe seemed down a bit so you can see more pixels. So what was an image of a motorbike and sidecar? In reality, it's just a whole bunch of squared, which you may well know I known as pixels. So basically what happens is the digital camera. When you take photograph breaks, what's down in front of you into syriza? These little square on each square can have its own unique color. So depending on what it is, you're taking a photograph off that gets broken down. Three old fashioned word for this is rest arised. So something that isn't digital kind of become the digital. If you if you're scanning an old photograph, the same thing happens when it goes through the scanner. So fellowship everything is made up out of pixels. Now that's not true for this kind of image down here. Let's take a look at this in Illustrator So Illustrator. It doesn't news pixels. If I zoom in repeatedly on this, you see the closer I get. There's no pictures involved it all. Instead, it uses things called anchor points, and this creates what is known as a vector graphic. And it's perfect for something that needs to be really crisp and sharp on that you can blow up to be any size that you like. So that logo would work on the side of a house. It would work on a tiny business card, whereas in photo shop, because these are made of pixels, the large you make this, the larger the pictures become on, the quality will start to go down so different programs that use for different things. But in the world of design, certainly print design. You got these three programmes working together, so in design generally is the place where you pull everything together. Photo shop is the place where you create photographs that will then be brought into in design illustrators, the place where you'll create things like logos. Infographics. Okay, so that's how it works in print in terms of the Web, his Ah, yes, today's BBC page and I would suggest you that these graphics here have probably gone through photo shop so they will have a specific size to go onto their particular Web page on. I would suggest that photo shop has been used, so in some cases, maybe just to resize or to crop in other cases, possibly here to blow out this guy's face. So in the Web context that there's so many more ways of putting webpages together, it's hard to say you do this program, but Photoshopped much like in in design, it's just used to create the image that's gonna get inside there so back into photo shop. And but I've got exactly the kind of thing that you might do in photo shop for the Web. So if you've got this original photograph on, you want to make like a Web banner or something like that on Gabbert, that's going to get on a specific size on the Web in this kind of example of what you could do in Photoshopped. So these days you can use for a little bit like in design and that you can bring other things in. So this will look at this near the end of the course, but here it's possible to bring in text. It's also possible to bring in vector graphics that this has been brought in from illustrator, so it is possible to do that kind of thing in Photoshopped as well. So that kind of gives you an idea of the context in which photo shop is used. So generally you'll be using it. Take photographic images, improved, um, tweak them in some way to either go on a website or to go into a printed document. But he may well do more creative things in that, including doing a specifically size image for a Web banner or whatever. 4. 1st Approach – change every pixel: We're talking in this first section about change that you can make that will change every single pixel in some way or another. And for many people, the first thing you do when you open an image is the crop it now The images I've got here, taken about 15 years ago before digital photography released decent digital photography. So they're taken with slides, which means there's edging here. You might jealousy around the edge, a photograph that we want to get rid off. Now. I'm not suggesting things particular uses what you'll necessarily abusing the crop tool for , but it gives us a good way in. So I've chosen the crop tool, which is this one here, and you'll notice that we get this little handles around the edge and you can simply click and drag. And as you do that, you notice these are the guide to come up on. We'll talk more about these in a second, but that the most important thing is that you drag and you define the area that you want to keep. So for this image, I'm just clicking and dragging to make sure that I'm not including the kind of black edging them. That's the first thing. Secondly, you get these guides that come up and it's quite interesting, because by default they break the image into nine different squares that you may have heard about. What's in is the rule of thirds, and that's just a theory. But the idea is that you should have points of interest in a photograph. Let's say on these intersections or possibly in the middle so you can see here. This guy in the foreground is pretty near one of these. So you might say, Well, that's near enough. We don't need to crop innately further. But if you wanted to make sure that he was kind of lying on one of these areas than we could crop it a bit further now I'm gonna hold down the shift key as I crop. That keeps it well in proportion. I think if I want to get him on there, I'm gonna nieto maybe lose this area here. So the trick is just to kind of keep your eyes open as you make adjustments, what I find you need to really for sort of creative reasons. Keep your eye on the edge, so work out what you're gonna crop, what you're gonna lose and try and make sure that you don't have things right on the edge like this, for example. Now, I'm not sure that's gonna make much difference or not. Um, probably. I want to get rid of that entirely. Or keep it entirely. So a useful trick it is. If you simply press the h key that hides the extra, you can see what you're gonna get. So personally, I don't really like that there. But if I'm gonna keep it will in proportion, then I don't want to keep this guy here. Then I've got to make some sort of sacrifice. So if I crop a little bit more that, then you can see I've lost a bit more sky. I don't want the sky back. If I do, I just need to drag down a bit. You can see that he's not. He's no longer on that on that point There. Now, I'm not suggesting that that's critical, but it gives you a sense of have the, uh, have images composed. So my foot here is that I might drag this in bit further, but I don't want to leave that detail there. So actually, I'm gonna keep it pretty much like that. So when you're using the crop tool because for this trip is going to throw away a lot of pixels. Potentially, it would allay do anything else until you approved the crop. So I haven't been 20 menus yet, but you'll notice that they're all great out. And that's because I need to press this tick button to say yes, I'm happy with the crop or this button to say cancel. So I'm gonna press tick and there were gay. So that's our first image. And that's a look at the crop tool. So 2nd 1 again on old Image again, another image taken with a slide film camera. At this time, we're gonna crop a bit more severely. So the idea here is that I'm actually gonna turn this. I'm gonna zoom in a bit and I'm using a Mac. So I'm going to use command plus on a piece of that be controlled. Plus, do that a couple of times and you can see that the bit of the photograph you can see now on the screen. That's kind of what I want. I want to turn this from this doing. Command minus now does in back out. So I'm a crop. So instead of this portrait shape, I want to go for a landscape shape. So I just click and drag like that with the tool and then to see more clearly what I'm doing. Come on, plus again. And you can see here. We've got some different points of interest. So maybe the person on the balcony there person people here on so on. So this isn't gonna fit particularly neatly with this rule of thirds theory, but it should just give you an idea that these air possible areas of interest. So I think maybe these guys here and this one, this car here, just seeing what I can do, You could see that as I press the agency before I can't see the area that's cropped. All those ghosted rather safer. Press H, maybe control minus two is the amount of it. Come on. Monitors him out a bit. You can see what my options are. So do I want more of the building there on the side or not? I don't want to focus right on these people. There's no right or wrong answer, really, But we'll just play around with it and see what we get. So I'm looking at the edges, looking at things that might be half cropped in half cropped out prison HK to kind of get a sense of that. But I'm I'm liking the threesome distinct areas in the image now, but I think I want a bit more detail on the side there while that detail over there. So these are purely subjective decisions, but you get a sense of hope of how the crop tool works and how you might use thes rule of thirds. So again pressed, a tick toe approved, and I just want to compare and contrast for you. So this is where we are now. This button here is the history panel, and we can see where we were before. So it did look like that. And now it looks like that it started to sort of get a complete before and after, cause I gotta keep zooming out and zooming in, but I hope you'll see that by cropping it as well as using crop toe. Get rid of edges that you don't want. It can really help recompose a photographed eso in this case. That's the photograph it would have taken had I had a longer lens at the time. But you can see now it's it's composed are given in a in a better way. Okay, so this one, same again, my interest here is in the city Cuba sign. I'm gonna click and drag. I'm gonna keep my finger down on the shift key, Keep it the same shape. And I know this is the area that I'm interested in, so I'm not gonna zoom in a bit. So control or command Plus And now I'm just looking at these rule of thirds trying to decide. So do I want certainly part of this sign on there so I can drag that round something like that. So no, I'm start to look around the edges, unlike this sort of feature that building down this I think I'm wanting that because it sort of balances out the interest of for the viewer having done that, it's not quite on the rule of thirds, but it's kind of looks pretty good. I think so. I think I'm happy without so I'm gonna press return key. That's another way of approving the crop. So return is another way. That's what is pressing the tick. Okay, so you get a sense of how the crop tool works. That's one example of when you're changing every pixel. It might not seem like it is, but actually it's having toe throw away a lot of data. So it's affecting every pixel in the image. But now we're going to get a bit more creative, and you can see that this image well, it's kind of interesting, but it certainly it lacks much in the way of color. So actually, what I'm gonna do, I think we might get a better result but actually removing all the cover. So we're going to do that by going image mode and gray scale. Now it's tell me that there's a kind of better way of doing it, which the right there is. Of course, we're not gonna do that right now. We're gonna just do the kind of basic approach on that if we compare that with the previous one so interesting. But it's a little bit kind of on the dark side. So a commander here's a lot in for the shop in the image money under adjustments levels. So we're gonna take a look at this in a few examples. But here's a simple example and notice as I drag the sliders. Just turn the preview here, on and off, you could see the image really starts to come to life. We try explain why that is so. Previously this white triangle represents what's absolutely white. This black triangle, what's absolutely black on these pixels here. Sorry, these said this hissed a ground. This bar chart, if you like, shows the number of pickles of a particular shade. And the fact that most these pictures are right down this end means that this image is really dark and it was very under exposed. So without going into huge detail, we will go into more detail subsequently. If I drag this white slider back gradually, you can see get lighter. Basically, what's happening is every pixel to the right of the white triangle becomes white, so the pixels are represented by this, which actually these ones in the sky they're losing detail. But as they get brighter, we get more contrast. So the lighter areas, an image get lighter and if we trying this one. So this represents the black pixels. As we drag this up, the dark pixels get darker. Now you don't go too far with it unless you're looking for a very special effects like this . But just generally speaking, I don't wanna go too far there because I'll be losing a lot of details. I Maykel these black pixels darker for just compare and contrast. You could see the image looks a world away from how it looked a minute ago. So this particular way of doing it kind of ignoring what these pixels are is great for this kind of image on color images. As we'll see shortly, you need to be a bit more careful on. There is more to say about levels, but for now, if I okay that we just compare this to the original, there was the original, thoroughly unremarkable image. But what's interesting is in the reason why I took the photograph. Is this wonderful old sign? So we're trying to kind of do justice of that by bringing it more in tow, kind of focus for the viewer and then by making a grayscale that helps a little bit more by using levels that helps a bit more so if we just look at the crop version, so we kind went from that. So that so, even though it's no longer in color, I would suggest that this image starts to look much punchier and certainly for those of you who are working in really small details. So for little thumbnail images for social media role for websites or APS, whatever, hopefully you get the idea that this could be quite useful approach. So again, it's part of our first approach. The changes we make change every single pixel somehow. 5. Colour Correction Essentials: we've already used levels to improve the contrast of an image. What we gonna do now is something far more challenging, but a great skill tohave right. The beginning of your use of photo shop, which is to adjust the colors in an image to make them look right. This is technically known is just in the white balance or color correction or removing a color caste. I don't mean the same thing, but if you look here at the before and the after, you'll see that even though the after isn't a perfect image by any means, you can see that the color that looks kind of muddy and a bit wrong there. That kind of looks right for me. It took me many years to really understand how this worked on, and I would try all sorts of different things that lowers what prince you can use. But I was never really sure that I got a better result until I understood the theory, and that's what I want to teach you right now. And here's a theory. If we look at a grayscale version of this image, where there's no color, a tool and in the window menu. We choose the info panel. That's where you get all the panels in photo shop. I gotta zoom in a little bit so you can look at these RGB values. Ignore the ones on the right. So notice if I put my cuts over a dark Harry and the image, the numbers are low, so that's because it's measuring light so the numbers are low. There's less light. If I put my cursor over a lighter area in the image, the the numbers are high. Ampex is more light, but noticed that wherever I put my cursor, whether it's darker or lighter, the red, green and blue values are all the same. And that's of course, because there's no color. But this is all black and white. It's all brace scared. It's all neutral, depending on which of those terms you like. But it means essentially, it's just shades of tones of grey. No color. Now, if we look up original image, the trick is to try and find something in the image where to your best kind of knowledge of the world. From what you know, that things look like you can kind of guess something that you think should be great. So shouldn't have any color in it. And in this example, the best one is the road. Because that road, really I would I would guess that it is a guess I would guess should be great. So we want to be a todo is kind of measure that as we make an adjustment So what I want to do is kind of point towards my curse. I want to point to these numbers here, but noted the moment I move my curves, then the numbers change. Of course. So I want to kind of measure that on the way I do. That is, by hovering over the I drop it'll pressing down and choosing the color Samp little. And with that, I'm gonna click on the road. And now we have a sampler here are gonna zoom in, say, considers numbers. So as we can see, it measures the red, green and blue. And as you know, we're going for a neutral value. So our guess is not Guess it is a guest should be the same. So there we've got the red is 45 the greens 35 the blues 44. So I guess then is the green should be a bit higher. So what we're gonna do is use levels to increase the green upto 44 45 we'll see if that makes a difference. So where we do that is simply by using levels, image adjustments and levels. Notice that we are by the fort using the RGB channel, which means this will change the red and green and blue channels all at the same time. That's not what we want. We just want to change the Green Channel to get the values up to match the red and the blue . So we choose the green, and then we use this middle slider notice. If we drag it up, the value goes down. If we drag it down, the value goes up. So I'm hoping that you can see the numbers on my screen here In case you can't, I'm gonna zoom in. Leave that alone for a second notice. We got t values. We've got the ones on the left. They were the originals on the ones on the right, which are the new values, depending on what we're doing at the moment. So noticed that the only one that's changed at the green. So by adjusting the slider, the green is now equal to the blue and more or less equal to the red. So if our theory is correct, we would have improved the image. But it's just a theory. So we zoom back out again and look at the preview, gonna move this out of the way so you can hopefully see it as well as you can. If we turn the preview off. That's what the image did look like and notice. It's muddy and it's kind of pink. You might be on the notice. Now turn the preview on and it looks much, much better. So in that case, our guest was right and the place I put the cursor walls, in fact gray. Now, honestly, you might find when you do this yourself on another image, that something you think is great actually doesn't turn out to be. That shouldn't be great tool Andi. So at that point, you just cancel. But in many, many images, you'll find an effect. Maybe not quite as bad of this, but so but where there is some sort of color shift that's taken place when the image was taken or scanned or whatever. So try this process and you might find that for the autumn is you make a new, awful lot of difference to it. 6. 2nd Approach: Selections: The first approach we've looked at is to do something which changes every single pixel in the image. The second approach is to just change particular pixels that you selected. So his three examples You can see the before and after. So here's the before the 1st 1 on the after, you'll notice the color has gone out of everything except for the image of Che on the wall . There, secondly can operate. Cut it sign and again in the after the color goes away except for the sign and then the third thing again, but on a slightly more complicated selection. So that's what we're gonna look at now. So here we are in the first document and, uh, the command. We're gonna use his image adjustments de saturate and just to keep it simple, we're gonna do that. Come on all way through the's different exercises. So if I was to do that now, it d centuries everything. So that's the first approach reality edit undo. And instead I'm going to use this rectangular marquis toe, and with it I'm gonna draw a click. Drag over the area doesn't need to be 100% accurate, but that cures you can, and there's your first look at a selection. So if I have to do de saturate now, it would be saturate everything inside there, which is actually the opposite of what we want so often. When you're working with selections, it's easier toe Select the opposite thing. And then in the selection such to do that, you go to the select menu and choose inverse. I know you might be to tell that everything is now selected except for this. So now image adjustments do such a right, just so you can see that clearly in the select menu, choose de select on they go. So that's a really popular effect. It's used sometimes imprint, sometimes and video, but it comes in and out of fashion. But never. This is a good, quick example. There's something you can do, so that's the first of three. Secondly, to this time, the sign is not quite rectangular, so it needs a bit more work on the tool that we're going to use here. It's underneath. The last suitable is called the polygamy, or lasso tool. So the political lawsuit to works in straight lines and he was simply click on the first corner. Haven't you click again? I could just see been actually notice that in this version of Photoshopped just cc 2015 there's a little arrow that points exactly where I'm gonna be clicking. You might find you haven't got the arrow, which makes it a bit more tricky. If that's the case, I would encourage you to press the caps lock key on your keyboard and that will change it toe Very accurate cursor like that because that's the caps lock key in this version that I don't really need to do that. So I'm happy with that. Also, I should say that if you make a mistake in this tool this tool only you compress the backspace key and that gets rid of the lost kind of point that you've placed. Okay, so two more clicks one there, actually one there and then the final one here just gonna zoom in their secrets a little circle that tells you that you will be closing the selection. So when I click is the section it's again, don't invert that. So select and in verse come again. Image adjustments do such a rate. Okay, It's just the select again. If we can compare with history this time, you can see that we started off with kind of throughout the image by means off the selection. Then selecting the inverse we were able toe just de saturate Thea selected area. Okay, so 3rd 1 So using the same tool, but it just is a little more tricky. So for that reason, I'm gonna use command plus or control plus on the PC to zoom in and then the kind of mouse I've got. I could just kind of scroll with my fingers here to move that round. But if you haven't got the cut amount of the track pad that enables you to do that, you can hold down the space bar temporary. That gives you the hand, and you can drag around with that. So I'm gonna just use this same tour again, and I'm gonna do kind of what I was encouraging you not to do early, which is cut something in half. But I'm gonna just do very rough color selection here. So the whole idea is that we're not getting it Absolutely pixel perfect. We're choosing this building. And this is the building that's gonna change. It is possible toe amend a selection after you've done. And it's possible toe combine different selection and will start to look at that in the next lesson. But we can't go too far with selections on this course, but enough to give you a sense of how it works. So I'm just zooming in there so you can just see the I haven't quite done that I wanted. So I'm gonna press, press the backspace key and then really that. But really, I'm not suggesting that for simple selections like these that you need to zoom right in and get it Absolutely pixel perfect. It just depends on the kind of work you're doing and that the nature of what is your you're doing in the effect we about to apply? So here I might need to just get around. It's signs here. It was obviously a time and a place for things being absolutely accurate, but something like this when it's a sort of general effect, I don't believe anybody's gonna worry if things don't look absolutely, uh, 100%. So a couple of commands I've used that. Come on. Plus, dizzy men. Come on, minus to zoom out. Also. Come on. Zero. To see the whole thing, you just substitute command for control. If you're on the PC, then again, a good short cut you might wanna start learning is toe invert the selection notice That's command shift I or control shift. I also Comotto control d for D select. So let's do in verse image adjustments He hopes to such right then de select Great. So there we go three simple examples of what you can do with selection the casing There is not necessarily de saturate command, but that using an appropriate selection tool to make inappropriate selection, you can very, very quickly create a whole range of effects. 7. Adjusting Selections: having looked at some relatively simple selections. Let's take a look at what you might do if something is a little bit more complicated, like with this car, where you can probably see if we want to keep the color in the green car but remove everything else. That's not such a straightforward selection, so there's a couple of missing pieces. One of them is that there are slightly more complex selection tools, and this is one of them called the Quick Selection tool. And the idea with a quick selection tool is that you can click and drag over an area a bit like that. Just zoom in a little bit sake and see Moakley so it has taken a certain section. It's kind of try to guess the areas I wanted to select Onda, and it's done those and selected thighs you might be thinking. Okay, great, but it hasn't got the whole car. That's kind of what I wanted. The clue in the other sort of trick is this little plus right in the middle of the tool. So that means that if you continue to click and drag, you will add to the selection. So the existing selection stays and you add to it. So this is the other kind of trick, which is that you don't always have to get your selection right straightaway. You can add to it or you can subtract from it. So currently I'm dragging and I'm adding to the area that I'm selecting. But you might notice that the area I'm also starting to get into this area up here outside the car, which I don't want. So notice the plus in the center of the kind of cursor there, if I would on the whole turkey that same on both Mac and PC's, your noticed that had changed to a minus. So with that in mind, I can paint and painting quite slowly, deliberately to give Photoshopped an idea what I'm trying to do, and it will try and guess the pickles I want to keep and try and guess the ones that I don't want to keep on. Guess is an appropriate word from 80 years here, because it doesn't know, but it is guessing on the relative color values of the area and also on the size of the cursor that I've got on also were in painting. So in terms of the size of the cursor, I compress. If you look at your keyboard and look at the keys to the right of the peaky the square brackets, the left one makes the curse of smaller on the right. One makes it larger so you can make that smaller or larger in my case here, smaller so I can paint in this area, so basically you will keep painting. If you go too far, you can hold down the or key to get rid of areas. But generally, by making the curse of larger and smaller where appropriate painting in a painting out, you'll be ableto get the kind of selections you want again. Obviously, this is designed. I'm chosen this particular image because I know it's likely to kind of work well enough. But in reality, if you're transit work on a selection, which is more complicated in this, you can use other tool. You can combine any combination of selection tools so this particular till you get the plus their by default. But with other tools, you might need to use one of two keyboard shortcuts on bear quite important, so world were worth writing down the shift key will make mean you add to the selection. Yorkie means you will subtract it from the selection. So if you know those two keys and you know that there are, you give any combination of selection tools to add or subtract, then you're well on the way to getting the kind of selections you're gonna want. So in my case here, I've selected the green in the car. So now I'm going to select the inverse so select in verse. Then again, image adjustments do such a right on de select, and that gives you a sense of a more complex selection in this case, using the quick selection tool and adding and subtracting from this election. 8. 3rd Approach: Using Brushes: the next couple of images we're gonna work on for go adventures. And again, the idea is to bring a bit more prominence to certain features of the image. So this 1st 1 you can see that we got this text bienvenido us on that wants to be kind of more obvious. So we're gonna make the background a bit more blurry. Andi, we're gonna de saturate the background a little bit and we're gonna make this sharper. Now, we could do that with selections, but we're now talking about our third approach, which is not to change the whole image, not toe make a selection, but to directly brush in a change. And there's a variety of brushes available in photo shop. When we look at some of them in this exercise, So focusing over here, we got some brushes on we're gonna use firstly, the Blur, it'll so like the tools we're looking at notice my cursor is around here. If I press the right arrow, it gets larger left there. Oh, sorry. That left square bracket on the right square bracket gets smaller and larger. I actually would like a square shape for this. So because I've already been to this little button and choose chosen. The square brushes I've got square Bush's added to my brushes. And as I've done this before, I've size went up at 500 pixels. Again. I've done using the square brackets and you can see now here it is, and some literally I can click and drag as I do that the background is just getting slightly blurrier. Now that strength slider here determines how strong that will be and you can experiment with that slide. We're trying to avoid that middle fence post there sort of looking just a little bit less in focus. We'll see. If I want that to happen quicker, I can increase strength. This is gradually gonna just blur. So what's progressively? Okay, next one, the sponge tour, which is in amongst Dodge and burn Notice the options here are de saturate or saturate. So de saturate we talked about already, and I'm gonna de saturate the background. So I'm gonna just take some of the color out, which again, well, just give a bit more prominence to the foreground. So just to compare what we got so far and what we had a minute ago. I go back in history, you can see already your eyes more naturally drawn. It's the text. Okay, so I'm gonna do a similar thing here. So de saturate this slightly and below this slightly. I'm gonna do it very quickly because you really get sense of how this works. I'm going to use a soft edged brush here so that if I accidentally go over the foreground, it won't matter too much. So I'm gonna just be saturate their just good, generally being quite rough for this, they might be thinking, Why doesn't he do this a selection And and I obviously could do as a selection. One of the reasons I'm showing you brushes it is that it's another approach. But also, sometimes it's just easier and quicker just to get in and on working directly. Okay, so that's a bit more the saturation that's again do a bit more blur. Okay, so enough with sharpening. So this does the opposite. And the idea here is that we're gonna just give a bit more prominence to this now. Normally, you wouldn't want to sharpen too much because it really will accentuate details that you might not want to accentuate, But you can see as I do this. It's just bringing a bit more definition. The text of those cracks are starting to look a bit more prominent. Let's just compare before and after. So that was the before. We don't 70 steps now. We need to go right down to the bottom. You can see it looks so much more kind of graphic image and again for the purposes of our company, it's going to really help to get that seen in the in the context that we're going to use it . So there's a few examples of brushes. 9. The History Brush: another example of use We brush is a not often used brush called the History brush. I find this quite interesting toe to use occasionally. So let's have a look what we're gonna do here, we're gonna change this so that instead of looking like this again, we're giving prominence just to a particular area on the way I'm gonna do this is by choosing image adjustments, de saturate, and that's using our first approach here, and that will take out the color of everything. Looking in the history panel, I'm gonna focus on this small area here. This I can I'm clicking on here says sets the source for the history brush. So what that means is when I paint with the history brush the areas where I paint those pixels I paint on will take it back to this point in time. So when it was first open, sigh The history brush is this one the icon? Much is the one in the history paddle And then, using appropriately sized brush again using the square brackets run left of the peaky I just click. Once there, you'll see that because I've got a soft age, I just sort of subtly bringing in some of that so I could leave it like that. Or I could choose toe paint a few bit more on. As you can see, I'm just kind of wiggling that around a little bit just to bring a hint of that. Call it back. In course, I could go for a smaller brush to make sure I got a lot of that bowl. You can see that because I was using a soft edged brush. We've got a hint of the color leaching in kind of around the edge, and that might be exactly what you want. If it isn't what you want, let's suppose it's not. I just go back by clicking on the de saturate state in history, and I'll make sure that I'm not using a soft edge brush, so I'll check the hardness and make that 100%. This time. You can see it's much more clearly defined if you are there in this and you realize you want to paint something back out again. So let's suppose I make a bit of mistake here and they realized I want to paint them back out. Then I would just point this a bit of time here when I've de saturated, and then I can get that back after again. So you're kind of able to paint in and paint out. History is a wonderful thing to be able to manipulate here, but I should warn you that this only works while the document is open. So even if you save it, even if you're using layers things technique doesn't work terribly well. And and I know we have mentioned layers yet, but we will do fairly shortly on once you. Once you start to use layers, you'll probably find that the history brush isn't useful. But I introduce it partly because it's it's a useful way for you to understand one of the key aspects of Photoshopped, but also because for certain types of work, it's, I find it's the quickest, easiest way of doing something, even though possibly it's not the most flexible in the long term. If you want to change things later but nevertheless a really good creative option. So there's the history brush 10. The Clone Stamp: the final type of brush tool we're going to look at is the original and in one sense, least sophisticated options that used in terms of cloning. So where this one is called the clone Stamp tool and it be used in the concentration here where you want to get rid of people on the beach. So again, for go adventures we got this lovely beach on that was shot, but sadly, these people they're on, wouldn't it be nice if they weren't there? So you can't just paint I with him. You can't just delete them. What you need to do is copy over with something that would be there if they weren't there. So what you do is you choose an appropriate size brush. So I'm gonna use the square bracket keys, and then you find an area that sort of represents what you think in this case, the beach would look like if they weren't there. So I'm thinking that where my mouse is is over now is pretty useful. Hold on the altar key and click ones. And that kind of samples the target area, if you like, And then when I drag over, you can see, I get a preview of what that would look like. So they literally a press my mouse button down and paint over. And you might, if you look really carefully noticed that there's a cross where I were kind of plus, where I originally clicked on that shows me where I was sampling from. But as you can see, if we just go before and after with the history, you can see that we've done pretty good attempt there of copying. So is one example of how you might use the clone stamp. Here's another one, which is a little bit more complicated, but but nonetheless, not too difficult again. We could find something that we imagine. Um, the water would look like if the boat weren't there. So again, appropriate size brush. Actually, it's still cloning from the previous ones. That's not particular helpful. I'm gonna try an area like this. So again, I'll hold down the or key and click on the water to sample well, paint a lot. Still the same thing again. This time I think I'm gonna biltmore kind of business. So I'm gonna click around there somewhere. What you might need to do sometimes is toe kind of cover your tracks a little bit by sampling somewhere else on just painting I over again. As I said, this is the in fact you could see that's made that a lot worse. So zoom in on that. You'll see that looks much, much worse. If I just get back, then go back again. You can see, actually, the kind of edge that's not too bad on the 1st 1 I'm gonna just have another go at the 2nd 1 I think I probably get away with that part. The reason is that the edge of the brushes are 100% hard. If the brush was softer, that would have helped. So I'm gonna just do that one more time. So make that brush edge soft again sample up here. I think we're quite well. Maybe a bit of a larger brush would work, too. That blends in much, much better. There we go. As I said, this is the least sophisticated. This is the first in a long line of brushes that attempted to do this In many contacts. It's it's still the best one, so that's a clone stamp. So that's our last look at brushes on this course, but in subsequent courses will look at some of the slightly clever, newer tools. 11. Introducing Layers: something that I mentioned in passing, but we haven't looked at properly yet. Is a concept known in layers not been using Photoshopped long enoughto know what it was like before they invented layers. And trust me, it's a lot easier to use, never really have got them. But I'm deliberately not include them until now, because I wanted to give you a sense of the three different approaches that you would ordinarily use so changing every pixel, selecting certain pixels to change or directly painting those three still hold. But when you introduced last, things start to get a little more complicated. So to try and show you what I mean by that we're going to review for the different exercise would already done. But I want to show you how by using layers, things get a bit more flexible. And I suppose the headline here is that layers give you more flexibility. Sometimes that's useful and welcome, sometimes not so much so you can kind of use your own judgment once you understand the process. So just to get into a bit of terminology, if we look at the layers panel here, you'll notice that this the layer that we've been using so far on all the images is known as the background layer. That's the default way that photo shop has always worked, so the background layer is the one at the back. It's the default layer. So let's talk about one of the issues that layers is here toe address. And that is that If I made the changes that we made last time and maybe just for clarity, I'll go through that again. So with the rectangular marquee tool, select the Che poster, select in verse and then de saturate. If I was to save that now and close it, I would have changed a lot. The Pixies on the background layer, which is fine, except for if I then want those pixels back again, those those previously color pixels. I can't get them back. So even if I save it, that simply won't happen. So Photoshopped refers to that as a destructive change because Europe only changing pixels . So the alternative is this. Now I just got back in history. There's a bit more history that because I was playing around with this early, so that's Ah, that's the start point. Okay, so the alternative is I'm gonna assume in on the layers panel so you can see this more clearly. So in the last panel, we've been working on the background Liar. But if you drag the background layer onto this new layer icon, it duplicates it, giving you a new layer cord. Background copy. I noticed that that new layer is slightly highlighted, indicating that's the layer that we're not working on. So I cannot go through the same sequence before so select in verse, do such a right on day select. So the result is the same. But the difference now is that we've got two versions kind of after on by clicking on the I that will hide the background copy layer recover before as well. So if I save this in photo shopped formats effort to save ours and important thing is that the former is photo shop, there are other formats that support layers that the trick is that layers is checked and photo shop is It's just the best way to do that. I'm not gonna go through that, But if I say that I could close it, I could reopen it on. The layers are intact Okay, so there's our first look at what layers offer so creatively. So far, no great difference. But in terms of flexibility, quite a lot. So let me close that one down. You'll see that one in a minute because of, secondly, the boats. So again I could duplicate on, then rub out. That would be one way of doing it. But I'm gonna do slightly different technique, which is to use the clone stamp tool on the default is that you will sample just the current layer he chews current and below, or indeed, all layers. Either of those will mean that you can create a new layer to clone Ah, the the water on T. So to create a new layer, you pressing the same button. But rather than dragging a copy, direct dragging the layer onto it to make a copy, just simply click that button, and this is something you haven't seen before. This is a new empty layer on the what they called checkerboard pixels, the sort of squares of gray that is trying to indicate transparency. So that's a completely transparent layer. There's nothing on there, so what I can do now is used my clone stamp. So again, I'm using the okay to sample, and then I'm gonna point So just a very quick version of this sample again, paint. So looking closely at the layers panel, you'll see you might notice that layer one has got a couple of would look like smudges on them. But essentially, I've copied from the background layer onto the new layer. So again we get a before and after we can hide or show la one. So the original pixels are still wear That just covered up with my one. So this is another example of a way that you might choose to use layers again. No great creative benefits yet, but it does give you another more flexible approach. So you can do it that way. Or indeed, you could do it the way that we just did. You could duplicate the background liar on. Just work on that one. Okay, so on this image, we cropped, so I can't remember exactly how he did it. But we ended up with something a little bit like that. I can't. It's close enough. Press the tector approve. So we're on the background layer. But you remember that we changed the pixels to black and white on. Then we also adjust the levels. Now, these two things that you can do using a thing called an adjustment layer because again, the process with the last time again, if we wanted to go back, that wouldn't have been possible without saving a duplicate version or something. So I this little bun here gives you access to adjustment layers, okay? Or just seem out of it. Site. I'm gonna choose first, see the black and white option. There's loads of options, loads of things you can play with. But for now, we're going to just stick with that. So this is a special kind of late. It's ah, it's an adjustment land. It basically adjusts every pixel underneath it. So if I hide it the pickles as they were. But if I show it, then all the pixels beneath in this case justice one layer appear black and white. So that's an adjustment. Layer would do the same thing. Using levels do it as an adjustment layer. So you might remember we drag this up here to get the, uh, to get the white whiter, but here we could maybe be a bit more aggressive if we wanted to be. Because we know that we can come back and change it. So, for example, if I leave that there, I could close a file. A Sometimes I save it when I reopen it. All this stuff is still here. So I could choose toe hide that effect. I like that one. But if I felt actually I want to go in, I want that image to be a bit more contrast. E Then I would click. I double click on the little Latham now like that and that is it opens up the properties panel and I can come back and I can change it. Anyone I like Come what? I said I was gonna dinner might get more contrast here. Great. So it gives us more of a creative option then we had previously OK, finally, I've made the selection previously here. Just so that so A bit of time. So what? We went before we met our selection. We inverted it. We it took the saturation out. Okay, Now, if we wanted that to be more flexible, then there's a lovely command in the layer, many to have been to yet said layer new layer via copy with a shortcut Commander controlled J. So look on that if we look down here, you know, just something quite interesting has happened is Christian new layer, and the layer is completely transparent against see those checkerboard pixels, except for its copied the pixels that I'd selected, in other words, the green bit of the car that is on that lap site. What we did last time. It was like the rest of it, black and white. So if I selected the background layer and did black and white again, then that gives us the result we had last time. But now this is on a new layer. Then there are other possibilities on. That's the kind of thing we're going to start to look at in the next video. 12. Text and Shape Layers: Now we've introduced Lioce. All sorts of possibilities start that happened that we could simply not do without using them. So in the previous lesson, we looked at some examples of where you could make things a bit more flexible and then towards the end, once offered a few more creative options. But this takes it a step further because none of these sieges that you're seeing frontier now could really be done without using last. So if you look in the layers panel we've got several layers on, I'm gonna click on each eye in turn to hide the layer so you can see which is which. So this is the original photograph and then most the tea here. This is a thing called a type player, so surrender type, you need a type player. And then there's a what's called a shape player so that it gives me a bit of kind of relief from the background. So that text above it on this lab onboard more easily be read. And finally we got a logo that's been placed in something called a smart object. So to do all of these different features, you're using special kinds of layers. So this is very much something that is a a layers only feature. So I'm gonna stop for the beginning. Yes, that is the original photograph. First, let's work with type. So to put some type on here, you'd simply click once with the type tool. And I'm using a typeface here called Permanent Marker, which you can download from a site like my fonts, Dr Kham or funds Girl. I think you get it from either of those. I'm just changing that the size you can see this is much too small. So it's gonna be roughly 140 point something like that. Now, to move this round and you tool for you is the move tool. This only works when you got layers on labels you to move things around on Lioce, not just the the magenta guide there that's going to talk to bottom. That's tell me that this is central on the page that you may or may not have this, depending on the version of photo shop that you're using. Certainly, the last few versions of CC of photo shop have really made this kind of approach much, much easier. So that's that bit of text. It's also possible to put text like you might in in design kind of more like in a frame. So I'm gonna click and drag to create a shape a bit like this. Now, I've already typed in the the text. Ah copied it from the other advert, actually, so that you wouldn't have to watch me typing it. So I'm gonna just to edit and paste known that comes. But if I just selected, you'll see that again. This is using permanent marker 24 point. So that's two examples of using the type tool. I just used the move tool again. You can see that as I drag this. It helps me line up with the other text. So that can really help with getting my linemen together because of two more things. Firstly, a shape layer. So the's layers here, these these, these real different shapes. So I picked up for a rectangle or a rounded rectangle. That's exactly what I'm going to go for it. I'm gonna click and drag. I want to let that go again. In recent versions of Properties panel would have opened up, which enables you to mawr fully round or not the corners, for example. So that's that's pretty interesting. I'm gonna leave that alone. But that's empty, My explorer should a recent version. Something else, by the way you could do in properties is to change the color. So, for example, you can sell, been playing around with other Carlos here, and when I click on them, they'll change. Okay, so that's another option that you've got. But far more important is the fact that this lady is above the text that it's supposed to be underneath. So the way you change that, but no makeup back to the move to here and then just drag the layer underneath like that and then a key feature of layers is their ability to be more or less opaque. So notice here the A pass ity value. So as I track that down in this area becomes more or less visible. So before you put the final logo in, then you can use the move tool to move text around, and you can select different layers either by clicking on them here or if auto select is turned on. Then you should just be electric on something, and it will pick it up much like it. It would do, let's say in a program like in design, because the finally if I was to do file and place nine early version, it would just be placed. You've now got the choice toe, place it and embed it. So in other words, it's not linked to the original file. So if the original file changes, it won't be updated or placed linked. So linked is probably good if you suspect that you're the asset you're bringing in is gonna change. In my case, I'll do links right now. I'm not gonna bring in the logo. So notices a doctor. I I file that has been put together an illustrator on when I press. OK, it comes. You might notice the college doesn't look great. That's because it is just a kind of temporary version just so weaken sort of see roughly what it is you notice of just lined up to the bottom of the, uh this if rectangle and also the right of the text. And I'm gonna just grab one of these corner handles with shift K help down to make that bigger site. I could run line up with the, uh, the top of that script rectangle. I'm not sure that that's gonna look great, actually, and it's not helping me anyway, so I just make it a little bit larger, and then when I'm happy, press tick and there we go. So personally, that's the kind of work I would not be doing in design rather than photo shop. But this gives you a kind of way into, if you were thinking about doing adverts to go on the Web or even this is a kind of very you could think of. This is very, very simple example of if you're gonna do a mock up of a Web page or indeed create a Web page in Photoshopped. So you know those things impossible without layers on a particularly catalyzed we're talking about so shape players and texted last 13. Saving for Print: I've tried to leave out technical things as we've gone along, but there's a few things that you really should know before going too far in photo shop. And first we'll look at things that pertain to settings up to go in a printed document. So my assumption is that most of things we created will be going into print on. They would go into in design, the program most commonly used by design professionals, toe toe work on layouts and magazines, adverts and someone. So that's the assumption for most of this stuff. So one of the things that you should really do before spending too much time working on any image is making sure that its size is OK, So what I mean by that? Well, in the image menu, you gotta come on court image size. That's quite a lot of information here. I'm gonna Zemin Best I can so you can fully readable. So the most important thing here is the re sample check box, because that means when you change numbers, it will either add more pixels or throwaway pixels. Now I don't want to do that. So by turning it off it almost kind of turned into a calculator. It will enable me to see the actual size of this image in a useful way. So lettuce, that it's saying that this image is 29.39 centimeters wide. No, it's It's a centimeters rather than pixels or whatever, because I've changed it to that. So it let's suppose an in design that I created a frame for this that's gonna be, let's say, four inches wide. Okay, so I can change it toe inches. I can type in four inches. When I do that, it calculates. It tells me that in terms of the pixels, the number of pixels in the image, the resolution there is only 208. Now The resolution resolution is a term that gets kind of thrown around quite a bit, but effectively it means the number of pixels in every inch and for something to look reasonably good in print that the number that you're ideally aiming for is around 300 pixels per inch. So if my image is going to go into a frame and in design, that's four inches wide as this is quite a lot less than 300 I would be probably thinking, OK, this image isn't isn't really the right one now. That's not to say you couldn't make the image larger. If I turned on re sample and changed it to 300 for the shot would do its best to. It would have pixels in, and it would effectively make it that resolution. The problem is how it does it. It's not magic. All it can do is look at the pickles that air. They're adding extra pixels on, try and make sure that they blend in, so that might be okay. My suggestion is, though, before you do any can a serious creative work. Just check the side of the image. So again you go to image image size, turn off free sample and then type in the size that it needs to go into an in design and see what the resolution is. Alternatively, you could type in a resolution of 300 it'll tell you how long that you can have the image. So if that's it is not large enough, My advice is not to suddenly make it larger and photo shop, but to go back to the original go back to the photographer. See if there's a larger version before you. You go in and pixels What kind? So that's how it works in print. 14. Saving for Web: in terms of size car images for the Web. The likelihood is that your Web designer or, um, the particular application you're using or however I will say to you, We want an image that's so many pixels wide or so many pixels high or so many pixels by so many size pixels. So a good policy would be if you did a new document, you can see that this is gonna be 600 by 800 pixels, So it's entirely possible for you to create a new document and type those numbers in to start with. So that's that's one possibility if you already got something like this that you want toe size to a size that you've been given our size that you know that you want if you go to the file menu. This has changed little bit in this latest version of Sisi. Previously, it would have been filed save for Web. Now it's under file export, safe for Web or quick export, the PNG. So we'll look a safe for Web in a second, but really most most the time most people would export thes days is a PNG, so if you know you got the size right. Unless you really want to get into it, you probably fine just doing file Export. Quick exporters, PNG. If you're gonna put something on the Web site, let's look at the safe Web, which and I quote legacy because it's kind of seem to be the a way of doing it. This is useful because it enables you to change the size after you've created it. I notice that there's a padlock that locks the width and height together because if we change that in, the image would get distorted. But let's just say for the sake of argument that the particular place we want to put this advert has said to us, Okay, The width of the image needs to be, let's say, 800 pixels wide. So we just change that 800. And then, if I click in one of the other fields, it should resize that you can start to see that's got a little bit smaller on Then there are various settings here that are about the file side, which is a bit old fashioned these days. Now that the Web's got a lot faster. It's not quite such a big deal to bed it control the size, but you'll notice down here it gives you the file sides and how long it would take to download on particular devices that you can choose here. That's not such a big deal these days, but it's still important, I think, to be able to change the size on the other option is that you could change it instead of being a PNG. You could say that is a A gift or a J. Pink or one of these things here. But most people, most the time these days would save as PNG. This is how you change the size of something after you've created it needs to be per save on. It leaves original where it is, but it would create a PNG for you. 15. Goodbye and Next Steps: I hope you've enjoyed working through my Photoshopped one on one course on that. It's giving you the confidence to start using it and to be creative with it. My suggestion is the work through the many. These exercises yourself is you want to and then using these foundations Gulf and explore some different avenues that appeal to you. You'll find all sorts of ideas and inspiration online, not least on skill. Share some things you already be equipped to do. Others will require to learn a few more skills. Finally, I do wish you all the best with it and have enjoyed this. Do look out from my other one or one courses on skill share until next time farewell.