Create Instagram Content in Photoshop

1. Introduction: Dave, this is Chris Barron, adobe certified instructor. Welcome to this project, where I'm going to show you how you can create great content for the Instagram without having to break the bank or slave away for hours on end. We're going to explore various tools and techniques that's going to allow you to boost your social media profile, and I'm not talking about, you know, buying bots, buying followers, stuff like that. No. For me, it's all about working smarter and making choices, that's going to free up your time. I'm going to show you how I create 60 posts in a method of hours, how I schedule them, how I upload photos from my computer, and so on. Now more importantly, we're going to go through the design process and we're going to have lots of projects that cover various scenarios. I'm going to cut through all the noise, and I'm going to show you how I see things as a designer and the business owner because I do actually have a profile for my company. Now, all of the projects are going to revolve around a single image post. We're not going to design stories or videos for obvious reasons. This is all about photoshop, static images. So let's get to 2. Instagram Content Creation Hack: There, this is Chris Barron. Let's talk about making content for the Instagram and photo shop. Now, before we get to work, I want to set the scene. I started a healthy food company in my own country that makes desserts. Now, all of a sudden, after making it, I have to create a lot of content for my social media profiles, which is a must in this day and age. You got to post on social media. Now, the issue is I'm incredibly busy. I'm stacked all the time. So even though I'm great at photo shop, the lack of time is killing me. Now, I set a minimum goal, so I would know how I need to adjust my efforts. So I decided two posts on Instagram per day every day for a month. Now, that may be a lot. That may be a little depending on how you see it. I want to post that seven in the morning and then maybe 3:00 in the afternoon. Now to schedule things, I have several options later.com or pally.com. And some of these are quite affordable. So have a free plan as well. But, yeah, that's the plan. 60 posts per month. Make them in a few hours and then be done with it for the entire month. Ideally, I'd like to be able to work on these 60 posts, no more than maybe 4 hours, something like that, and then be done with it for the rest of the month, and that would be fantastic. Then each month, rents and repeat. Now, this plan is quite bold, but it's actually quite difficult to achieve. How can you come up with so much content in a timely fashion, right? Now, I'm happy to say I think I found a solution, at least for this specific company. So here's what I did. First of all, I e mailed photographers. So my request was quite simple. I needed great photos of my products. I tried snapping them myself, and I actually did post some of them, but they were a seven out of ten, nothing special. I needed something better for this plan to work. I got various quotes, but in the end, I hired the guy that was asking for about seven bucks per photo, finished photo. And that's a decent price. I ended up buying two sets, one in isolation mode, so without any background, so I could integrate it absolutely anywhere, and another set with acute background, though I did make a mistake with the aspect ratio. I went for portrait mode. Landscape would have been that much better for the Instagram. Anyway, with these isolated photos, I had amo, and I started putting them to good use. Now, the perspective wasn't perfect to work with. This was my first go at it that something I later realized. But to cut it short, I got the isolated photos, and I put them into different backgrounds into various other scenarios in photoshop. So that was half the key. And that's the thing with these clean images that were taken at a certain angle and the photographer set, we could use any free website, for example, Splash, or even a premium one like Free Peck, to integrate those jars, those products, into various scenes. So what you're seeing here is then result. Most of them are quite realistic, though they're not perfect to be honest, but they get the job done. Now, if I didn't tell you that these were photoshopped in, that this was an isolated jar, and I put them inside the new background. I'm not sure you would have called on. Lus, keep in mind, on a mobile phone. On Instagram, you're not going to see any small imperfections. Those are going to fade away. Now, this may not sound like a groundbreaker, but this was the best approach. We actually tried taking real photos in various situations in the grass during the cooking process, in the fridge, on a desk and so on, but there were always issues. We wasted a lot of time, energy and money, and basically, we gave up and we decided to go for this route. So again, for physical products, this is what I strongly suggest. You get high quality isolated photos, so PNGs taken at a certain angle that's going to allow you to insert those products into various scenes. And we're going to use photo show for that. Now, the second half is a bit more controversial, but I think it's a good idea for some companies. And that's means. You heard that right. Means. Now, I'm not sure if you're a big fan of imager, red it, or even Nine gag. But this is one of the best ways to go viral nowadays. Means are a fantastic way to get your brand out there in a funny relatable way without too much effort. Most of them have some witty texts that truly makes them shine. But yes, some are just funny from a visual standpoint. So this is how I came up with 60 posts for an entire month and just a few hours. 30 fake shots, and then 30 means. Now, this second approach it means may be a bit risky, but I believe a lot of companies can benefit from it quite a lot. It can attract new employees, young customers, it can cut down on the amount of time spent on content creation. Honestly, it's a good idea for some businesses. Now, even big ones are actually doing some of these things, some gal stuff. For example, Ryanair, which is a huge company. Now, to be fair, they mostly do this on tech Tok, but yeah, overall, it's quite good. And you can browse read it for lots and lots of means. Now, I had no idea how many big businesses are actually leveraging this culture, this niche culture. But yeah, it's one choice. So I encourage you to keep an open mind. But yeah, overall, that's my Instagram content creation approach, and I hope it's going to help you as well. Now, let's get to work, let's open photoshop and create some stuff. 3. Clean Product Presentation – Part 1: Welcome back. Let's kick things off with an Instagram post for the physical product that I want to promote. So I have a good high quality photo of the product without a background and a few bits of texts I need to include. So launch photo, shop and create a new project. The settings 1080 by 1080, no art board. This is the recommended size for Instagram. They are changing a few things, but this is a great starting point. Now, this style, I have in mind, is actually quite clean, VD product oriented, and it relies on typography and striking colors. So let's get to it, drag your image inside the canvas and scale it down to about 380 pixels. This is the first thing that's important. You got to keep it small. Don't overdo it. Don't try to occupy the entire canvas with this product. Nine out of ten times that becomes unbalanced. It's not pleasing to look at. Okay, sent of the product, both vertically and horizontally. Use control late to select the entire canvas and then use these alignment tools. Okay, great stuff. Now, let's add the text, which I've already prepared, and you have it attached. But the main headline, we got to use incredibly tasty, nothing all that fancy. Now, before we format it, here's a kat track. So we have the type tool active, right? While still here, focus on the options bar and choose centered text. It's this icon here, or you could use the property spanel. You can also find it here. Okay, great stuff. Use the check mark or the numerical enter to finish. Now, let's use Control A and the alignment tools. And here's the thing. Here's why we did that, why we centered the text. Now, say we want to make it bigger, right? Maybe 130 pixels or something like that. The layer stays centered on the Canvas. So this means we don't have to constantly go back and realign it every time we make a change. Now, for the font family, I went ahead and I looked for something handwritten, that's actually easy to read. And I ended up using relation, which is available on Adobe fonts. If you don't have it filed up Google Fonts, have a look and look for something similar. Remember, you got to make your own version, so no worries if you can't use this specific typeface. Okay, for the weight, make it bold. Then for the color, let's actually make it orange, something that really stands out. The colored code is the following. It's FF 3c00. Now, this is the brands color. So even though it's quite harsh, it's quite in your face, it is the brands color, so it is going to fit. Though the product's name is visible on the label, I think we got to be aware that on a phone, you're not going to be able to see it. Most people on Instagram aren't elite snipers, so let's add another text here. And this should say Kia pudding with whatever, Goji berries, something like that. Center it on the Canvas, that's super important. And for the size, let's go with 70 pixels also. Give a take of course. Now, when you're dealing with a handwritten font, the rest of the design needs something fairly standard. Now, in this case, the brand's website relies on something called Nunito. So this is a type face that's quite interesting. So we're going to stick to that line, but be aware that are a couple of variations of this font family. This is the one that we're looking for in its black weight. And here's another important thing regarding negative space. Though we are not touching the sides of the canvas, this is still not very nice to look at. Each element needs to have enough breeding room, and our size is getting in the way of that. So take it down to 65 pixels or so, which should give us a bit more of a balanced look. And yeah, think this is a bit better. As for the color, we can't go overboard with that orange. It would be too much. Now, we could use a dark gray, something like 333, but I'm going to steal as many colored codes as possible from the company's website. Now, this is how I ended up using 212f, or nine. Okay. Good stuff. This is a dark blue. Okay, we have a few more text items that we have to include, and that's price, that's weight, calories, no sugar, and then the location. Now, that seems a bit much, especially for the Instagram post. However, with a lot of attention to detail, we are going to create a visual high key, so it won't be off putting. So let me paste the disclaimer that says the product doesn't have any sugar, any preservatives, or chemicals. This has to be placed underneath the products flavor, but it doesn't need to attract a lot of attention. So change the way to regular. And for the size, maybe about 40 pixels maybe even less. Now, from time to time, you can take matters into your own hands and change up these values. On your first go, I suggest you do follow my steps, and when you're happy with it, make your own version. Okay, when you're done, take a step back and see what's going on. So with using two different type faces here and with using various weights, get the message across in an aesthetically pleasing way, in a way where it flows nicely. Now, for the shop's location, it's going to be hard to visually separate it from this line. Ideally, we would use a big chunk of empty space, but that's at a premium. So what we're going to do is we're going to do our best to rearrange some of these elements after they're all placed, but know that we can't rely on negative space alone. Now, if this were a website, I would simply add the one pixel grade divider. Unfortunately, those types of separators aren't really all that popular on Instagram. So for those reasons, I'm going to add an orange bar. So get the rectangle tool and click to put in your values. It's going to be 1080 by 120. Now, this is going to be quite shouty, so to speak. It's going to beg for the tension, but that's going to make sense in the grand scheme of things. Please bottom line it because we'll need it to be perfectly positioned. Now, for the text, paste it in and format it like so. We're going to keep the same font, Nunito Black. Okay. Now, for the size, I'm thinking about 50 pixels put white. This is orange, so I think that works best. As always, center it horizontally and vertically. We have to do that at every single point. Now, I always use the rect angle as a reference point. So this is why you have to have it in the right place. So here's the scoop. The star of the show is the jar itself. The handwritten fondo is quite flashy, but it's there for decorative purposes to make it look nice. That doesn't really help the user all that much. The flavor is important because it provides an essential bit of information because if you don't know what's inside the jar, obviously, here's the explanation, here's what it is, it's chia pudding. And for my money, I think that's the second thing that needs to stand out after the jar. Then the third thing to set up a hierarchy. The user needs to notice the shop's location because that's how sales are done. If you're not in that city, obviously, this won't matter. Considering all that, we're in a good place. Time for the quick break so you can catch up, and I'm going to see you in a second. 4. Clean Product Presentation – Part 2: Welcome back. This post is clearly a challenge in terms of organizing content. If you're not careful, it's going to seem busy, cluttered. Now, the thing is, we still have a few things to add price calis and weight. Let's get to it. So my plan is to place these on either side of the jar. On the left side, I'm going to paste the first two elements. 15 bucks and 300 grams. These should use the same blue as before, but we're going to format each line differently to show that there's a clear hierarchy here. That's a difference. The price needs to be fairly big, say 55 pixels. For the weight, let's go with black to really have a standout. By the way, I know that this is a bit confusing, but I'm talking about the weight, the style, not the actual color. So you can remember black like being double bold. Okay. Now, the second line is key because it needs to show it's less important. We can achieve that by scaling down the weight to bold, maybe even less and then changing the size under 40 pax ols. By the way, never go for something like 50 for the first line and then 44th for the second line. The difference needs to be clear. It needs to show this is a conscious choice on your end and not a mistake. If they're too similar, it may be a mistake. Now, like I said, you may even consider regular instead of bold, but I'm planning on adding a decorative element. That's going to require a bit more contrast, so it is what it is. Okay, now, the left side, this is done. Let's create a copy for the calories and place it on the right side. You can use Alt drag or can throw J J as in James to make a copy. Okay. Type in 469 for the first line, and then calories for the second one. Again, use the type two. Doing it this way is going to keep formatting, our styling. Now, you may have noticed that I actually didn't tell you to sent these three items vertically. And that's because the jar. Well, it looks like it's floating in space. Now, we could potentially add a subtle drop shadow, but on Instagram, I don't think that would be the best choice. You're not going to see it. So instead, we're going to use a rectangle, a good looking rectangle. So grab this tool and click to put in your dimensions. Now, I'm going to go with something very specific. It's 965 by 170. That specific width is going to make our kia pudding line up perfectly with this shape. Okay. Good stuff. Center it horizontally and place it appropriately in the layer s panel. I actually didn't mention this, but the stacking good is important from time to time. It should be the first layer from the bottom up specifically underneath the jar. Now, for the color, we're going to stick to this navy blue. I am tempted to use some type of shade of brown to show that this is based on chocolate, but a third color would be a bit too much. So no brown. Now, you may want to use orange. But again, that may be a bit over the top considering this handwritten font and the location at the bottom of both orange. It's a fine balancing act when you're dealing with so many components, but this is why we're working on this project. I found that a lot of business owners are trying to cram as much information as possible into one single post. And if your client wants the same, this is the project for you. Okay, now, let's start putting things into place. Select both text layers and make them wide. Okay, Good stuff, Control click, by the way, directly on the Canvas to pick up those elements. You got to have the move tool activate it, and this auto select feature disable. Okay. Good stuff. Next, select the rectangle and center it vertically. The entire element should be placed near the bottom of the jar. So it's going to seem like the product is resting on top of it, which is awesome. Now, to further illustrate that point, let's leave about ten pixels in this area. This is a fine touch that works wonders in most cases. This is attention to detail. And speaking of margins, the first line of text should be placed somewhere near the top. Not too close, though, as that's going to make it look weird. I suggest anywhere 70-100 pixels, and you can use the control key to check out the current measurements. And here's a great technique that will allow you to quickly select and move all of these items. The old fashioned way would be to use the layer panel and multi select through the control key. Whether here's a better way that only works when you're dealing with a locked background. You can tell that's the case by checking out this icon here. In case you don't have it, it's quite easy to enable. Go to the top of the layers panel and hit this lock icon. Okay. Now, I'm on the move tool. I don't have auto select checked, right? Hold the control key and drag out a selection that's going to give you all the layers that you want to move. That's it. Did you get it? So let me deselect and go again. So you're going to hold down the control key that's the command key on the mac and drag out an imaginary box, if you will. Everything that's inside that box is going to be selected. And you can see all those layers are going to be lit up in the layers panel. Now, I didn't release my mouse click, so I can show you how based on the size of the box, various layers light up in the layouts panel. Try it out for yourself, and you're going to fall in love with this technique, the box selection technique. The only problem is it requires a locked background, and sometimes that's not an option. In case you want to check out my measurements, you're going to have the finished PSD attached to the course. There's no magic here. I just want the top margin to be somewhat the same as the bottom one. For that to happen, all of these elements have to be close enough that they're perceived as one unit. Not too close, though, because we're going to fall into that busy category, that clutter category. Okay. Pass forward so I can show you another suite technique that's going to make this shape layer look a bit better. So select it and changes color to a V gray. This is a tempo y switch, so you can better understand the process. When this layer is selected, photoshop will help you snap any guide to its center. So here's how this goes. Use Control R to activate the rules. If these don't show up, go to the top menu to view. From here, choose Rulers. From the top side, click and hold and drag out a guide. And as you're moving it closer to the rectangle, you'll see it's going to snap into the exact middle of this shape, and this is going to become important in a second. Please keep in mind the snapping only works if the layer is selected. Okay. Next, grab the direct selection tool, hot key A. It's this tool right here with a white arrow, not the black one. Now, let's make a selection like so, and that's going to reveal the shapes path and anchor points. Now, we're not interested in those, but we do want to add more anchor points. So switch to the pen W H key P. It's this one in the toolbar. Zoom in and go over this specific point. We have the guide intersects with the rect angles path. You're going to see the cursor is going to change. You're going to get a plus symbol. And this means you're going to make a new anchor point. No worries, you're going to see what's what in a second. Click it and we're good to go. Without doing anything else, hold shift and tap the right do key four times. Things are going to become crystal clear after you do that. So see where this is going, we are making a ribbon of swords. I'm not a fan of this rounded look, so hold down the old key, that's the option key on the mac and go over this anchor point. The cursor is going to change it again. Bear in mind, you don't want the minus symbol. No. If this shows up, that means you're not holding down the old key. This is what you actually want. And that's going to straighten things literally. Okay, now for the other side, the same procedure. With the pent we go over that intersection. If you're seeing an asterisk, you're not where you should be, or you don't have the path selected. In which case, you need to use the white tattle yet again. Okay, now click, hold shift, and tap the left do key four times. Hold down Alt, of course, and then click again, and we have golden. If you need help, go back rewind and watch it one more time. Now, to get rid of the path, simply hit enter, and that's it. We've done a lot in this lecture, and I hope you managed to keep up. Of course, you got to change the color back to that specific blue. Now, regarding the guide, you can drag it away. One thing about these text layers, they're not centered in the ribbon. So select one of them, get the Marquee tool, hot key, and drag out a box. Then switch to the move tool and the line it correctly. Finally, D select with control D and do the same on the other side. So again, we are making a box with the Marquee tool and we're telling photoshop to place the text in the middle of it. That's fast and efficient. Okay, let's talk about this design and how we can test it in the next lecture. I'm going to see you in a minute. 5. Instagram Mockups – Easy!: Welcome back. We've made a first Instagram design, but at this point, you should know you should always test your designs through a markup. Lucky for us, Instagram has a great tool that helps us do just that. It's called creative Hub, and it gives you an Instagram feed mark up that's intuitive and easy to use. This is obviously tied into Facebook since they have the same company Meta. Now, let me show you how this works. The first fields are there to provide an extra dose of realness to the markup. Now I'm going to skip them because what we actually want to see is the design itself. Click here and you're going to be able to select a photo or upload one from your computer, and that's what we want. I didn't mention it, but use Alt Control Shift W to export your design as a PNG. So that's Alt Control Shift W. If that doesn't work, go to file, export, Export as awesome stuff. Okay, right. So after that's done, it's going to show up here and you can analyze your design. Now, in this case, I'm very happy with the layout, and I think this is a flexible style that allows you to quickly switch out this chia pudding jar with a wide variety of products. Now, this post would have been even better if we had a website on this orange rectangle. But those were the specs of the project. So that's what we executed. We put in a physical location, and address. Now, regarding the white background, I think that's a smart choice. Now, even a neutral shade of gray is going to muddy this navy blue text, which actually looks like it's pure black, and any other background, any abstract one, would have crowded the design. So I stand behind my decision. But you know, you can always prove being wrong. Try something else, and if it's better looking, I'm going to own up Now, for the number of calories and weight, there is something to be said about using regular instead of bold. I think it's worth a shot, but again, I'm going to leave that up to you. On the other hand, I don't think making this shape orange would have been a smart choice. It would have been two in your face. And the entire thing would be way to orange. My advice is cleaner is always better. Now, regarding the product size, that's one thing where your clients might fight you. In this particular case, we could have made it bigger. Maybe say about 450 pixels wide. Now, I think that would be the absolute maximum limit. As you can see, this eats up a lot of precious breathing room. What, it can work. Try out this creative hub tool and see what works best from your point of view. As for the difference between this markup and one that I would create for myself to a screenshot, I think that would be minimal. It's worth making one from scratch, just so you can practice your skills. But here's the cool thing. After you put in a URL for this post, you can actually preview it on your phone. That's fantastic. Save your mockup, give it a name, and you'll see this sent to mobile button is going to light up. It will take a few moments, but then you can check out your phone and make sure it's spot on. So yeah, overall, this sent to mobile feature seems awesome. Obviously, you got to be logged in. But yeah, overall, that's how you can create Instagram mockups and just a few clicks to the platform. If that doesn't work, you can always make one in photo shop. Happy design. 6. Inspirational Content – Part 1: Come back. In this lecture, we're going to make an Instagram post that's quite popular and timeless, an inspirational quote. As long as you stick to certain rules, you can make tons of these designs without too much effort. The first thing that we need is obviously a quote. Now, let's fire up Google and let's start looking. You're going to be flooded by websites that offer this type of content. So that's actually anther problem. Now, the number one rule when you're creating this type of post is to stay consistent through and through. This means all of your design choices have to point towards one direction. I'm going to give you a few examples as we move along. But for now, let's use this quote by John F Kennedy. Those who dared to fail miserably can achieve greatly. Okay, a lovely quote. No question about it. Start photoshop and make a new project as always 1080 by 1080, and then grab the type to hot key t and paste it in. But now, make it pure black, no particular styling. Make it big, maybe 100 pixels also. Again, that's tempo. Okay. After the consistency, typography is the next big thing on my list. For these types of posts, it's essential. Quotes have to be shown in a gorgeous typeface. That alone brings up your post quality quite a lot. This means you should never ever resort to random fonts that you have on your computer. Instead, file dobe fonts and take your time to look for something special. You're going to have to log in with your adobe information, of course, the same e mail and password that you use for your photoshop subscription. Needless to say, you do need a valid subscription. Otherwise, you won't be able to access this library. If you can't manage, use Google Fonts, a nice and free alternative, Okay. The very first thing I do is I replace the sample text with my own. Next, I use the filter system. Now, this brings up my point about consistency. John F Kennedy is a very well respected historical figure, right? He was the president of the United States of America. Now, these traits demand a certain look. Let me show you a few examples of what you should avoid, what not to do. So, have a look here at Gala. Now, do you think that this is appropriate? Would the United States president use such a typeface, or how about this one called Bastly? Now, this has a totally conflicting vibe. It's way too creative. It's way too out there, too whimsical. It's certainly not a good look for this project. On the other hand, Jello light is a decent choice. It's elegant, it's sophisticated without being pretentious. It has character, but in a decent dose. So here's what I mean by pretentious, by the way, Quita. This is a type face that's a hard to read, but more importantly, B, it is far too in your face. It screams for attention. So when you're browsing around, keep in mind the person behind the quote, but also the message itself. Another way you can fool yourself is by selecting something that's super difficult to read on your desktop computer. For example, Timber line regular is a key example. Though it looks great, when you actually try to use it, you'll see it requires a good level of concentration. I especially like the details on the T character, but that's all for nothing because when you shrink everything down on your phone, barely be able to understand it. After much searching, I ended up with Pointer Old style. This type face has three weights. It's interesting. It's in line with both the author and the actual quote itself. So for me, this is the winner. Now, let's start to search for an image that's going to fit. Unsplash.com is my first go to Source Totally free, but it does have some premium photos as well. Now, those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly. It's about challenges. It's about overcoming obstacles by being fearless. A mountain or a deserted place would work best for the backdrop for this quote. Now, here's what I selected. You do need to take some time with it and find the right one. Now, this is consistent with the vibe that I'm trying to put out, but it also allows me to use white text in this top part. So drag it into photoshop and position it correctly. Remember, use the coordinate handles to resize it if needed. When you're happy and the layers panel is sorted out, obviously, this should be placed appropriately. Make the text it, and let's use that specific typhas. That's pointed with a y, by the way. Okay. This is going pretty well. As for the size, I think 80 pixels should be okay, but here's how I want to arrange it. So see the curvature of this mountain. I think the best way to complement it is to write align the text. By the way, it's really a flip between using italic versus the Roman or the regular one. See what you like best. I think I'm going to stick with the Italic one for the quote itself. By the way, we forgot to add the author, and that would be a shame. So write the President's name, but this has to be much, much smaller. I would say maybe 22 pixels this time in bold. Write align it with the text, though we still have a bit of editing to do. Now, I want to remind you that it's fine to offset your do element. You don't have to place it exactly in the middle of the photo. No. The rule of thirds says it's totally okay to place things to the side. Okay. Back to the quote, I think I want to increase the line height, this part right here, to about 100 pixels or so. So we have more than enough breeding room. This really helps a lot. Now, the default value was pretty good, but I think this is better. As for the right margin, something the likes of 70 pixels is going to be great. But here's the kicker. Break up the text into lines that make sense. So here's how I would do it. But the first line, I would keep those who dare to And then the next line would be fail miserably. Then the next one can achieve, and finally greatly. Now, this subtle track can improve your design dramatically. And that's because I formed an imaginary diagonal line. This flows nicely, and it's aesthetically pleasing to look at, even though you may not notice it immediately. You have drawn to it, though instinctively. This is why I chose such a small size for the author's name. I wanted to maintain that line, that diagonal line. Now, there's a second reason, but I'm going to cover that in the next lecture. Take your time with it, pause as often as you need to, and I'm going to see you in a second. 7. Inspirational Content – Part 2: Welcome back. Another thing that I want to achieve with this formatting is to underline certain words. Now, by placing fail miserably and greatly on separate lines, those are going to stand out. Those are the keys behind the quote. There's a jetaposition here, a high level of contrast between these two Keeping them as they are is pretty subtle, but it gets the job done. Now, you could trust them even further by changing that color. For example, F F, F zero, zero, zero, works quite well with this background. Now, for me, that's a bit too much in your face, but I know that this is a popular technique. Another way to go is to add the rectangle behind the most important part of the quote. And I would say that's the second line that really catches your attention. So get the rectangle to w and then click anywhere to put in these values. So I went with 560 by 100. Place it underneath the text layer, and then when you're happy with it, change the color. We're going to use the exact same colored code. That's F F, F zero, zero, zero. This, of course, means that these particular words need to be changed. So go to pure black. This is one of those few cases where pure black actually makes sense. And here's how we need to align this rectangle. This is a bit tricky because if you approximate it, you're just missing the mark. It's not going to be good enough. Now, if you try to use the alignment tools, they won't work because this content is placed on a single layer. While you could potentially break up this text layer into multiple parts, that still wouldn't be ideal. Instead, I recommend the reverse approach. So instead of aligning the text layer to the shape, you arrange the rect angle based on the text position. So here's the thing. Select it, the shape that is, and then activate the marquee tool. Hot key M, M for the marquee. Hizontally, there's nothing special. Start from the left side of the F all the way to the right side of the Y. Switch to the move pool and use the appropriate command. This one here. Now, regarding the height, repeat the process by selecting the first character. Now, in my first years of designing, I really struggled with these cases. When I discovered this solution, I was blown away by its simplicity. But yeah, awesome job. While this is all fine and well, notice the width of the rectangle breaks up our imaginary line, the right of this quote. Though that's not a huge deal, it's still a slight imperfection as far as I'm concerned. Having said that, you should never shrink it down like so. This is a terrible look and a clear cut mistake. Was the previous scenario had a slight imperfection. Okay, moving on, I'd like to enhance the feeling that this is a quote. For that to happen, I'm going to add some decorations in the form of quotation marks. Give the type tool and add that symbol. Use the same phone family, but keep it in the regular form. Now the fun stuff for the size, 300 pixels. Huge, I know, but it has to stand out. Place it in the horizontal center of the screen, and about maybe 40 pixels or so from the top. Next, a little fine touch by way of a rectangle, activate the rectangle tool and click to put in these values. So we're going to go for the width of 940. And then for the height, this is going to be a thin line. Let's go with four. Both of these should be white. No question about it. Now, after you align them, you'll notice that they actually overlap. This is a chance to work with a mask, so here's the thing. So let's add another rectangle. But this time around, this should be 180 pixels wide. The height really doesn't matter. Put whatever value. Now, we're going to use this shape to create a gap in our line. And here's the process. So you have to control, click the rectangle thumbnail, and this makes a selection. Notice the marching gans. This is a selection. Then go to the layer spanel and hide it and move to the line layer. So again, the line layer has to be selected. Then hold the old key, that's the option key on the mac and click on the Layel mask button at the bottom of the ayel spanel. This one here. And that's it. That's the technique. We made the gap. We can change its color, we can resize it, and so on. This is the correct way to work. You can't just use the eras of tool and remove it. That would not be okay. All right. Now that we have the top part, we can use the lt drag technique to add another one at the bottom, basically with making a copy. If you don't like t dragging, just use control J, and that's going to make a copy as well, though you're going to have to move it manually. And that about wraps it up. An inspirational post that follows all the rules. It's consistent in every way. It features a beautiful typeface. It's well organized via the rule of thirds, and it has great contrast. Overall, this is a winner. Now I want to see your concepts. Make a few and upload them to the platform so you can get feedback. Have fun with it. 8. Black & White Content: Welcome back. This lecture is about interesting techniques that you can use to spice up your posts. The end result is going to be a black and white Instagram post with a grungy feel. Stick with me and you'll see what I mean. Now I'm going to use another quote to kick things off. The only journey is the one within a shoe in for an Instagram post. Now, when you're planning on doing a black and white effect, the photo is essential. I honestly spent a long time on Unsplash trying to find the right image for this job. And I finally ended up with this one. Like I said in a different video, the vibe of the photo has to match the quote. In this case, that's very much aligned as far as I'm concerned. I couldn't find Duter, so that strips away one component from the project, Dauter himself, but I'm fine with that. Back to the photo, the stair is what really makes this work. Now, drag it inside the canvas, and you're going to have to resize it quite a lot because we don't want to see too much of the coat in the composition. Whenever you can't see the coordinate handle because of the zoom level, you can do this. Select the width field, hold, shift, and start to scroll. As long as the chain icon is pressed, you're going to be golden. This is how you resize if you don't see the coordinate handles, or you could just zoom out with control zero, and that does the same thing. Okay, now move the photo down to a point where you're barely cutting a small part of her hair. Something like this should work well. Now, for the Black and White effect, there's nothing to it. We have an adjustment layer that does just that. So click here at the bottom of the layout spanel on the Sing ang looking symbol, and you're going to see it right here in this list. Now, you do have various sliders in this properties panel. You can adjust the effect. But we're going to skip that since it's really a subjective thing, which is something that you can play with. Now, let's add the text, but we're going to break it up in two layers. I'm going to quickly handle that with the type tool. But here's a good thing to know. You can quickly remove all of the previous formatting from the character panel by using this tiny icon here. From this list, choose reset character. And that's going to bring all of these values to the defaults. That means you're going to see myriad pro, regular, 12 pixels, pure black. The vibe I'm going for needs a strong yet a worn out look. Luckily, I know a typeas that features a bit of texture without requiring any type of effect. This is called Pulpo Rust. This is actually quite popular, and I know it by heart because I used it in several projects. This is only available on Adobe fonts. So unfortunately, I can't really share that with you directly. Now, here's the thing. You can always use Google Fonts and replace it with something somewhat similar. Now, for the first line, we're going to use Pulpo rust 70 pixels, give or take. And what's interesting is that we don't have weights the way you would normally expect to find. No. Instead, we have the amount of distress shown in the text. So 25 makes it look fatigued. That may be a bit too much for this scenario. 100 features a low dose of texture, and I think we're going to go with that. But now the color really doesn't matter. Just make sure you can see it, and of course, center it on the canvas. Okay. But the second line, we're going to use the same font size, but we're also going to enable the all caps transformation with a bit of variety. Okay, change the style to 75. So far, we're looking good, but there's nothing too special that's going on. Here's the thing. Launch free pick, if you have it. If not, no worries, I'm going to attach the resource to the course. And then search for the grunge. Again, you can find grunge all over the Internet for free. I already made the selection off camera. I chose this particular set. Now, double click on the text element to select it. And once you have it, remove it. Now, make a copy of this thing with control C copy, and then switch back to photo shop, and here's the thing, use Control V. But here's the thing. In general, I always recommend smart object, not this time though. Choose shape layer. This has a lot of implications. To begin with, this works because the element has one single color. It doesn't feature any details that might get lost in the process of pasting. If you want to try to paste the detailed vector, It wouldn't look good. It would look awful. Now, photoshop strips away all of those details to import it as a shape layer. So that's why it would look terrible. Now, being a shape layer is great because you can resize it infinitely without losing any quality. Now, you can also double click a stubnail to change its color. However, because it has so many anchor points, you might feel photoshops slow down. If you want to see what I'm talking about, just drag a selection with a direct selection tool, Hockey A. And yeah, you're going to see the program is really going to slow down. But yeah, still, the point remains. If you're dealing with a simple object, importing them as a shape is, in most cases an advantage. Now, there are other reasons in the mix, but I don't want to bore you, so let's keep this short. Now, if you want, you could potentially rasterize it or convert it to a smart object if photosa becomes unusable. So if it's too slow, just click it and the lay a spanel and make it happen. Smart object or rasterize it. Okay, now I'm good to go here, make this shape white and place it underneath our text layers. Now, here's the thing. Make the text black, and then sent of it horizontally and vertically. But be aware you might want to tone it down if you're looking for something a bit softer. You could use 333333. That's a dark gray that has a bit of warmth to it. So a bit softer. Now, the background element isn't wide enough, so we can fix that with control, T as in transform. And I usually like to hold down the old key when resizing, so this can go a bit faster. So that's control T and then the option key, the old key. Now I'm going to move this element towards the right, even though I'm a big fan of centering everything. Now, offsetting it makes sense because the shape is irregular, plus the whole vibe is rugged and imperfect. Now, for the second line, for the sake of variety, I'm going to use a different ribbon from Illustrator. Specifically this one. Though it has a slightly different height, that's fine considering all the previous reasons I just mentioned. So paste it and increase the width, so the text is going to fit. Now, one of my concerns is legibility, being able to read the text. But you can experiment with various levels of texture and see what feels best to you. Okay. Now, I want to mix it up by adding a bit of color. I was initially tempted to leave the second background element set to black. But I changed my mind. Here's what I decided on using. The colored code is 3d05 CC, and this is a much better option from my point of view. Now, considering this particular style, I think we should shrink down the second font to about 60 pixels or so. And that's going to occupy the space much better. I've said it 1,000 times in all of my courses, but I'm going to say it again, elements need space to breathe, especially when we're talking about a button like situation, meaning there's a bit of text inside the shape of sorts. So you need breathing room. Okay. Take a few moments to button up everything. Make sure everything is nicely labeled and organized in the layout spanel. The distances are correct. The sizes are spot on, the works. I want to give you one extra technique, adding texture to pattern overlay. So here's how this goes. First, the number one, go to site for patterns is subtlepatterns.com. They have updated the website a few times, but hopefully you can still find it. They have lots of beautiful patterns, and it's easy to use. Here's how this goes. So first of all, I've selected this particular pattern for that first background layer. This is called Gravel pattern. So you've got to download it, and you're going to get a zip archive, extract it, and you're going to find the PNG inside it. This sep is essential. Open the file by using control, no other technique. Now, if you can't manage with control, you could go to the top menu to file and then open, it's the same thing. But don't drag and drop it. Now, in this tab, the layer should be locked like so. Now, this means you've used the correct method of opening. This is a good sign. Next, go to the top menu to edit. Then from this huge list, choose the fine pattern. You're going to be asked for the name, write whatever you want. And then when you're ready, hit k, and that's that. Okay, let's go back to our project, select the wide shape, and then enable a pattern over layer fat. By the way, in case you don't want to use the F X icon from the bottom of the layer spanel, you can actually open your layer styles window by double clicking next to the layers name, not on the name though, because that's how you rename it, but next to it. Okay, so I said Pattern Overlay. Click here, and you're going to get a bunch of options from your library. The Vy last one is what we just made. Click on it, select it, and this is going to be good to go. This is how you create patterns and photoshop. In this case, the default look is the right way to go, but you could experiment with the blend mode with the opacity, and so on. Now, that may be something interesting down the road. Okay, try it out and see how you do. Good luck. 9. Personal Branding – Part 1: Come back. In this lecture, I want to create some Instagram content without having to do any serious editing. So here's a simple photo of myself, and then we're going to go through some simple steps to make it look nicer. Now, we'll then add a bit of text that can be customized to promote something. Now, in most cases, this approach is best used to showcase your own personal brand. Use it to share who you are, what your values are, and what you stand for. Okay, drag the photo inside a 1080 by 1080 canvas and resize it by using lt and resize it as needed. Remember, use alt on a coordinate handle to keep this going. It's fine to cut out a small part of the hair, but not too much though. Okay. The colors are quite washed out and dull. So here's a great technique that's super flexible, but it produces great results. Go to the bottom of the layers panel, L on the Yen ang symbol to get this list, the adjustment layer list. Choose solid color. Now, I'm going to go with a specific shade of blue, though you don't have to be this precise. I'm going to use this code 07 30a4. Drop the opacity to 50% so we can see what's going on. By the way, this is a very safe approach, but feel free to use yellow, orange, green, or any other color that suits you of style. Okay, in this default blending mode, the image is still very much plain, but the secret here is to experiment with these options. Go through them one by one and see how dramatically things change. Now, the idea here is the color fill layer is going to interact with your background image and produce something totally different. And every time you change the photo or the color or the blending mode or the opacity, you're going to give something new. For me, color dodge really makes an impression. Now, as a tip, if you want to quickly change the opacity level, -50% at the moment, you can use the numbers on your keyboard. Three means 30%, seven means 70%. And when you type in 53 quickly, that's going to give you 53%. All right. This is all fine and well. But there are two more adjustment layers that are super easy to use, but they often improve the look. Now, start with vibrance. Vibrance is great. Now here's the thing. Amp it up all the way to 100%, but note the difference. Now, all adjustment layers affect all the layds underneath them in the lay of spanel. So this means the dv is incredibly important. I found it best to keep the color fill layer with that cul of dodge blending mode at the top of the stack or at least above any other adjustment layer. Okay. The second thing I want you to do is increase the contrast. And that's done through the same procedure. Only this time, I'd like to keep it at about 50. In general, you have to be careful because increasing the contrast too much may reveal noise, may reveal imperfections in the image. You're going to get some strange artifacts, which are going to destroy the project. But yeah, this so far is looking good. But remember, the essence here is that this concept is very flexible, and you have a lot of options with minimal effort. The next step is to add some texts, and we're going to use a rectangle for that. The sides I often use tends to follow this rule. The height should be about twice the width. Now, in this case, I'm going to go with 400 for the width and about 700 for the g. For whatever reason most people prefer this portrait look, even though it does limit your options regarding the amount of content you can actually put in. Still, since this is the most popular choice, that's what I'm going to show you. Make it pure black and drop the fill to 0%. The fill. That's quite important. Now, as you can see, it becomes totally transparent, but this is a great technique. Here's how it works. Enable a stroke from the layout styles window. Now, the stroke has to be this gold yellow, F d, dd07. This is the difference between 0% vopacity and 0% fill. If we use the opacity field, 0% opacity, then the stroke would not be visible. The entire thing would be transparent. But because we chose 0% fill, that means our layer styles are excluded, which means they're visible. Make a note of that, since this is one of the best ways to create empty shapes that have a border around them, a stroke. Now, another thing you should be aware of is this position drop down. First of all, increase the size to about 15 pixels. If you set it to outside, notice the corners are fairly rounded. You might be surprised by that considering that we use the regular rectangle and not a rounded one. To prove it, I'm going to quickly disable the stroke. Now, see the square edges. But if you place the stroke outside the shape and you make it fairly pick, photo shop automatically rounds it out. This is why I prefer to set it to inside. Ok, and now it's time to add some texts. Now, get a type tool, hotkey t, and I'm going to go with a classic. If you don't believe in yourself, no one will. Okay. Now, let me show you another thing you have to avoid. The layer is selected, correct? Now I'm going to get the type tool, but notice its path has appeared. This means you're about to confine the text layer to that specific shape, and that's not what we want. Now, as you can see, this looks odd, plus it limits your flexibility. To avoid this, no worries. If the shape layer is selected, simply hit enter before you click with the type tool. And that's that. Notice the path went away. So that means you can type and you won't have any issues. I'm going to do something else, though. Instead of clicking and typing, I'm going to drag out a box to keep my text inside it and subsequently inside the layer. You might think it's the same thing from a few seconds ago, but this is actually called paragraph text, and a lot of designers use it. Now, I'll quickly paste my text, and I'll format it. I've decided to use a Google font that I absolutely love. It's called doses. Now, this typhas has a lot of weights, but it's also sleek and interesting in the right doses. Make it pure white, 60 pixels for the size. Obviously, you have to break it up into several lines, but that's not the focus right now. Instead, I want to center it inside this shape. Nothing too difficult, right. Select both layers and use the alignment tools from up top. Well, if you've seen some of my other quotes, there is no surprise. It doesn't work. To find out why, please watch the second part of the project. I'm going to see you in a second. 10. Personal Branding – Part 2: Come back. Let me explain what's up with the alignment tools. They actually work just fine. The problem is with using a paragraph text layer. If you activate the type tool and click on it, you're going to see that photo shop did exactly what you ask for. The layer is in the middle of the rectangle. It's just the fact that as the program is concerned, this is its size. Now, to get around this problem, you could use these handles, but even then you might not get it right. So what I propose is this. You go to the layouts panel and you rich lick. From this list, look for convert to point tax. That means the box is going to be thrown out the window, and then the size of the layer is going to be accurate as far as we are concerned. So now you can repeat the alignment command, and we are going to be good to go. By switching from paragraph to point text with not losing anything because it goes both ways. At any point, you can switch back, albeit the constraining border won't be as big as it was before. Instead, it's going to hug the edge of the text, but that's fine since it has handles for easy resizing. By the way, the contrast here is quite poor. So let's increase the fill to about 20, maybe 30%, something like that. Knowing the difference between these two really pays dividends, to take it even further, change the blending mode to something that's a bit more interesting, that's going to darken it. Now, the mouse scroll is by far the best way to explore these options. Now, in my case, I'm going to stick with linear burn. But yeah, take a moment to sort out the layo s panel. And then when you're ready, when you've made your decision, we can move on to a different element. Now, this can hold the website, a certain discount percentage, or in my case, my name. So get the rectangle tool and click. Now we're going to add a shape that's 350 by 80. After the certain point, you're going to begin to nail these proportions without any issues. Now, I'm calling out these values just so you can see the width in relation to the height. That's always a specific aspect ratio that I'm going for. Okay. Back to w, yellow works great with pure of black, especially when used in decent mounts. Regarding its placement, align it with the bottom left side of this shape. Then use your ado keys and shift to move it a little bit outside this rectangle. I would say anywhere from 30 to maybe 50 pixels, just enough, so it's a bit more than interesting to look at. Okay, put in my name, and in most cases, you're going to see that I like to use the all CAPS transformation. But keep in mind, you should only use it for text items that are fairly small. Sort. For example, this quote here is just about the maximum length that I would be comfortable with. And why is that? Well, for whatever reason, our eyes actually prefer reading something that's actually regularly formatted. It seems like we're not actually reading letter by letter. Instead we're looking at the word, and we're identifying it based on its shape. But if you have it in all caps, it's a bit more difficult to recognize. So that's why legibility goes down. Now, the only exceptions are those big famous slogans that everybody knows, like just do it from Nike. So yeah, short slogans or catch phrases, those work well in all caps, but that's about that. Okay, this is sorted. By the way, this is doses 40 pixels, extra bold. Okay, take a moment to handle it. And then when you're ready, we can continue. Overall, this is great progress, but I want to whip out the direct selection tool, hot Key A, to spice up this rectangle. So let's do this. Select both anchor points from the right side, and we are going to change this layer. Hold shift and tap the up to key until you're happy. We want a dramatic effect, so somewhere about ten taps should do the track. All of a sudden, this transforms into something much more visually interesting to look at. Now, all of these small details add up. Though, to be fair, we do have to adjust our elements. But the label that holds my name, we need it far enough from this bottom left corner so we can see a little bit through we. Not too much, though, as I wanted to overlap with this edge here. This is where those ten taps really make or break it. But yeah, we can always change our mind. We can always work on it some more. Like I said, flexibility is a big part of these projects because the goal is to be able to produce content around the clock without too much effort. Okay, you may want to rest of your text layer, yet again, take a step back and have another look at the entire project. As always, test it out, see it on Instagram, use a markup, and see how it would look like. Now, there are no surprises here, so I won't waste time. Instead, I'm going to take a moment to tell you you should always avoid the drop shadow for this text layer. This approach is much better to look at. Tramatically, this shade here matches the overall blue tent that's applied to the original photo. And another point, we already raised the fill value for this layer. In case you're not happy with the contrast, raise it a bit more. But yeah, overall, this is our project. You have the PSD attached just in case you want to check out some values. Have fun with it. 11. Food Content: Welcome back. If you're posting on Instagram, chances are you're going to post something that's related to food. So here's a simple template that's highly customizable that you can use for just about anything visually appealing. Food included. Now I'm going to kick things off with a nice image of a pizza that I found on unsplash.com. Obviously, if you are hired by a restaurant, you should use that own product. Well, yeah, open a new project, 1080 by 1080 and have the photo covered the entire thing, the entire canvas. Make sure you explore the best image, by the way, before deciding what part you want to feature. You should avoid showing the entire thing like so. What you want to do is leave a part out and include some of these decorations. Okay, this is fine. The idea behind this template is flexibility. So I want two layers of content. I want a hash tag at the bottom left side, which is best used to show the company's name. And in the top right coordinate, we want a few words, maybe something about a discount, maybe something funny, maybe inspirational, something to that end. Let's handle the hashtag as that's pretty straightforward. Type in a Dagio pizza, which is a random Italian name off the top of my head. For the styling, it's important this is as legible as possible without any decorations. So here's what I chose, Monsat and black. This works well just about everywhere. Now, for the color, pure white, because this is quite easy to read, and with the size of about 50 to 60 pixels. Now, regarding the placement, I would say about 40 pixels from both edges. Now, to get exactly 40 pixels, you can use your add of keys and shift to make that happen. Now, this technique is actually required in most cases, because you could try to use your small guides. But because the background photo is much bigger than the canvas, your measurements may not show up correctly. So those ping measurements, they may not be correct. Now, as you can see here, this is wrong. Now, the easy part is handled for the top area, get the rectangle tool and click to put in the following values. 1080 by 550. Now, the width always stays the same, but the height can be adjusted. Use control A and use the alignment tools to align it to the top edge, and then to one of the sides. Now, to make this easier to follow, I'm going to change this color to a light gray. And that's because we're going to work with a path. So here's the deal. Grab the direct selection tool, that's the hot key A, that's the white arrow, not the black one, and then grab the bottom left corner. You can tell it selected because it turns blue while the other ones remain white. Now, this is what you want. Okay, now, hit the delete key. Photo shop is going to ask you if you're sure that you want to do it because this is a live shape. Okay, that's totally fine, hit ok. And now with this shape, we can get to work. Make it pure white, but don't worry. We're going to add another shape. That's going to have the brands color. Here's how this goes. Create a copy to control J and move it towards the top right side. You might not see what's going on, so double click a stum nail and put in this colored code. It's going to be 66 15b9. Okay, see what this is going. You can adjust the thickness of this wide strip by moving the top shape. You can make this thinner, or on the contrary wider, thicker. Now, another option is to grab both layers and drop the width and half by using control T. When you get to 609 pixels, 609 pixels, you're going to feel photoshop point that out. Now, in this particular case, this element is covering the pizza, but we can click while we're still in free transform mode. And then from this list, we can choose flip horizontal. Now, in this case, this makes much more sense. But the goal here is to get used to these techniques. And if you can flip it horizontally, you can, of course, flip it vertically. This means you're going to have to bottom align it. But I wouldn't add the design element for the hashtag alone. Press escape to remove these changes. Now, this purple might be a bit plain for some, but you can always add the pattern. Though B warned, there's a good chance your users may not be able to see it. After all, all the best sets for patterns is called subtle patterns, right? Subtle. But yeah, I already have one installed that's called full bloom. So I'm going to enable it, and I'm going to change the blending mode to linear burn, for example. You're going to have this attached so you can work along. Now, this doesn't really tie into the pizza motif. But the idea here is to customize the template. If you want something food related, just look for the food pattern, and you're going to be just fine. Though, in most cases, you're going to see that most entries on subtle patterns, at least aren't all that descriptive. They're mostly abstract. But yeah, here's one closer to that subject. Download it and open the PNG that's inside the archive. As always, open it in a different project. Control, that's totally fine. Or you could potentially just drag it, but again, drag it inside the new tab, not in an existing one. Okay, good stuff. Now, go to the top menu to edit, and then you're going to define a new pattern. Again, for the name, you can use whatever you want. Now, the newest pattern is always going to be placed last in the list. Now, you may have noticed that the pattern has a peach background, which really doesn't fit on negative, but not a problem. Try out various blending modes and see what works best. Another thing you may want to use is the scale feature. For example, 200% is going to make these symbols a touch more visible. Yeah, even so, they're not exactly in your face, but that's fine. The point still stands. Overall color dodge seems to be a decent choice as far as I'm concerned. Another cool thing you should know is that you can move the pattern simply by clicking and dragging. That might come in handy. For example, if you want to feature a certain part of it. Finally, let's add some texts. I'm going to go with something classy. The answer is pizza. That's pretty cheesy, but I think it gets the job done. As for the formatting, I think I'm going to use something that's quite popular down on Instagram. It's this one Amatka S C. I'm not sure that's how you pronounce it, but you have it here. Regular form, 100 pixels. You also have a bold style, but this is a bit more popular, albeit at a much bigger size. Now, have another look and see if this is all buttoned up. The goal is to create a template that you can easily customize. A, you can change the color by using the color picker like so. Simply move up and down and see how the blending mode changes your element. And then B, you can choose another pattern if you feel that adds any value. And of course, C, you can flip this triangle and place it to a different corner. And that's it. Have some fun with it and enjoy. 12. Content Striking Colors – Part 1: Welcome back. I have a sweet project, and as always, you can quickly replace a few elements, and you're going to get brand new content for your social media. So start with a decent photo of yourself. In this case, I'm going to use this one, which already has a black and white effect. Remember, there's an adjustment layer exactly with this look. Now, drag the image inside the 1080 by 1080 project and make sure it fits just right. So far, we've used the rectangle to for most of all shapes. But I want to show the pen to Wilson Love. Though it might be intimidating, you're going to see it's actually quite easy to use. Now tap the P key shot for the pen tool and make sure you're using the correct one. Now, the options bar is the key here. Specifically, this drop down, where you want to have shape selected. Now, the color isn't very important as we can always double click the thumbnail and change its color to the color picker. Now, the stroke, it has to be disabled. While you could use this field to nullify it, it's best you click here to the left of it, and you can choose this symbol with the red diagonal line that's going across it. This means the stroke won't show up no matter the value that's written here. Okay, for practicing purposes, let's do this. Click anywhere once on the Canvas. That's the first anchor point. Then click again in a different place, and that's the second one. The thing is, any shape requires at least three points. Otherwise, it's just a line, right? So click to the side and there you go. Now we have a visible shape. We're not done yet because it's best practice to close the shape. That means you have to circle back the original anchor point to the first one. Now, look for this symbol. See the circle. That means you're about to complete the shape. You're going to close it off. And there you go. This is how you use the Pen tool to create any shape whatsoever. And like I said, you can double click here and then changes color. More than that, you can actually switch to the direct selection tool, hot key A, and now you can reposition any of these points. Just make sure you don't select all of them like so. This is very easy to do by mistake, especially if you're using the other do tool, the Black one. What you have to use is the white one. And yeah, when in doubt, hit enter and start over this time with the correct tool, and only select the anchor points that you want to use. Okay. As you can see, this is actually quite easy to do. Though, here's the thing, you could potentially click on an anchor point directly, and then move it around. But my advice is you actually dry out a small box that's going to include that point. It's much easier to select it that way. When you're dealing with a couple of them, this doesn't sound like something you should keep in mind. But for the complicated shapes, that behavior is far superior, the box technique. Okay, hit the lead, and I can show you something else. Maybe you don't want straight lines, right? It's not a problem. Set the initial anchor point, and then move to another one, but here there's a difference. Click and hold. That's the key. And as you move around, you're going to get two handles that help you control the shape and find unit. Hold the control key, and that's going to change a cursor to a white arrow. With it, you can play around with these guys. Now, I won't lie to you by saying that you're going to create incredibly complicated shapes and photo shop. No, when you need something that's fairly complex, that are websites filled with custom shapes and various resources that you can use as a shortcut. But even so, it's a good idea to get a hang of the pen tool at least for simple shapes. So click and drag a few more times and see how we're creating, well, this is a blob in this case. But yeah, that's the general principle. Believe it or not, that's how I actually use it for these types of elements. We might do something with them in a different lecture, stay tuned for that. But in the meantime, in case you messed up and you want to remove an anchor point, just go over that. Just make sure you're seeing this minus symbol on your cursor. Click once, and that's it. And to add one, simply go over the path and look for the plus symbol. Here it is. Please be aware there's yet another symbol that's available, the asterisk. Now, if you're going to use it, this is going to make a new shape, and chances are you don't want to do that. Okay, Trash that and let's create some shapes. I want two triangles that intersect. So start from the top left side and here something curious. You can actually click outside of the Canvas area. Okay, move down and set another anchor point. But if you want to have a straight line, don't approximate it. You can just hold down shift. Great stuff. Now, move towards the right, but not too much, though. I don't want to dag on a line across the middle of the photo. Just fall short of this order. Okay. Now close it off. All right. Now, for the second shape, start on the right side, somewhere around my shoulder level. Great. Move to the other side, around the bottom corner. Beautiful, good stuff. Now, circle back and wrap it up. And yeah, believe it or not, this is the base of a very interesting project. We're going to refine it in the next lecture, so stay tuned. 13. Content Striking Colors – Part 2: Come back. I know this doesn't seem striking, but a dash of color is going to completely change things up. So select the left shape and enable the color picker, double click on the thumb nail. Now, I went ahead and I selected something interesting. Here's the colored code, e90 945. This is a hot shade of pink, which is probably the total opposite of what's going on here up top with this black and white effect. I'm going to leave it like that for now because I want a big reveal in a few seconds. Grab the second object and change the color to a nice shade of blue. The colored code 09 78e9. I chose something that would balance out the luck. Pink is considered a feminine color. So this blue would counteract that. Now, here's the thing. Select both layers and change the blending modes. Most designers have a couple of favorites from this list. In my case, that's overlay, and boom, there you go. Our composition has been injected with live. Still, it's a bit empty, so let's add a quote. Though it can be just about anything. I decided to use, Don't worry about your progress. Keep going. Something super cheesy. But yeah, it works well. Place it on the left side of the screen, and let's see how we can make it look nice. One lovely type face from Google Fonts is Quicksand. White text on this vivid pink is gonna look lovely. Okay. For the size, about 60 pixels should do the track. Thin fonts require these types of circumstances, high contrast, saturated background, and the generous size. If one of these elements is missing, go with something with a bit more weight we. Speaking about the weight, change the last two words to bold, and then enable the all caps transformation. I didn't say a lot about the text placement because it's really up to you. Just make sure that it's far enough from the edge without going too much over the subject. In this case, that's me. Another nice touch is a quotation mark, though, don't use two of them. In these situations, one is enough. Use the same quicksand bold, but raise it up to something dramatic, 300 pixels. Okay, take your time with it and left align it with the text and move it somewhere around here. Leaving it pure white is going to attract a bit too much attention, but you should stay away from other colors, especially yellow, which seems to draw a lot of beginners like asi. Yellow is no good here. We have more than enough color. So here's what I propose. Change the blending mode to overlay as well. What's great about it is the symbol interacts with the background, and you can see that this gives a unique look. It's all about these small details that add up. And consider how much time we actually invested into it. To be fair, I did spent the last lecture teaching you about the pen tool. But yeah, this is fantastic. It's actually super quick. Now, overall, you've learned how to use the pen tool. So that's a big bonus. But yeah, before we go, let me give you another technique that you can use, especially on the left shape. So here's the thing. Add the layer mask without using any modifier keys. So just click and that's that. No ult, no control, no ship. Okay. Now, hit G to activate the gradient tool. G for the gradient. Now, back to the Canvas, swipe and this is going to give you a faded look. Of course, you can adjust it as needed. Simply take your time and, you know, make it look exactly like you want it. But yeah, from a bright, incredibly saturated pink, all the way to fully transparent. Now, you can have an abrupt transition or something that's quite smooth. It's really up to you. By the way, I like to hold shift when I'm dragging because that's going to give me an even fade. What you could do is attack it at an angle like so. That can work too, especially around the bottom area where these two shapes intersect. See how nice this is. And because we're using a mask, these edits are not permanent. So if you want to change in mind, you can simply disable the mask. R click it in the layout s panel and use the first option from the list. Or if you want to start over, just delete it, but don't use the delete key because that's going to trash the entire layer. Instead, click again and use it from here. Okay. Before we wrap this one up, this is a perfect example of how a high contrast level can ruin the photo. So let me enable a brightness and contrast adjustment layer and crank it all the way up. Now, I'm not sure if you're watching this at ten ATP, which is what I strongly recommend, but hopefully, you can see the problems. Notice these strange lines. These artifacts are not okay. The information in the photo gets distorted, and all of these imperfections jump out. So while increasing the contrast, a little bit is fine, in most cases, you have to be aware of these ugly little spots that may show up if you go overboard. I'm going to remove it so we can have one last look at the project. Remember, swap out the photo, change up the colours, play with the blending modes, and you have an Instagram content machine at your disposal. Obviously, you can't post them one after another, but you can always cycle them at a certain interval. Use this template once per week, for example. And that's it. This is how we can create content for the Instagram in no time at all. This is Chris signing out, and I'm going to see you real soon.