Transcripts
1. Welcome to the course!: Hi, My name is Derrick, and I'm so excited to welcome you to the graphic design food camp. I created the graphic Zain boot camp to help people just like you quickly learn the skills and the programs needed to create stunning, high quality designs about having to sit through hours and hours of random General How to videos Do we just launched a brand new software update for the creative cloud. So this is a great time to enroll because you'll be getting all of the latest and greatest content as I update the course over the next several weeks to reflect the latest software updates to have access to the latest and greatest tools and teaching resources. These lessons and projects are based on my 18 years of experience from the design industry on our strategically crafted to teach you exactly what you need to know to either become a successful graphic designer or to use the adobe programs as a hobby, from business cards to photo manipulation, from posters to social media and Web graphics, I'll walk you through every step of the process so you feel confident creating things on your own moving forward. If your dream is to start your own graphic design company, work as a freelancer, carve out a career working for an agency or in house designer. This course will give you the ground level skills you need to begin turning that dream into a reality. I love that a career and graphic design gives me the freedom to spend time with my family while also providing a great income and the ability to use my creativity on a daily basis. That kind of freedom is what you're looking for and what you're after. Then you've definitely come to the right place. This course has over 100,000 students across multiple platforms with over 7005 star reviews . So when you enroll, you have a chance to also join the community on Facebook that also has over 14,000 members . The purpose of this group is to put you in contact with like minded graphic designers and piers from all over the world, literally from every country of the world, so you can help one another with feedback and encouragement as you perceived through the course materials on your graph design jury as a whole, since the software we use as designers is constantly updating and changing. You need to be able to state educated on the new trends and tools. When you join this course, not only will you have lifetime access, you also get free updates to the lessons and content as a new software and updates are released so excited to have you join this course and to dive in and show you everything you need to know about graphic design to get you up and running fast.
2. Adobe Creative Cloud: in this lecture, I want to show you exactly how to download the adobe creative cloud app, the desktop app and then from there, download all of the apse. You need to be successful with this course. Now there's a good chance that if you've already purchases course, you already have done this. So feel free to skip this lecture at any time for the rest of you have never done this before. I'm gonna also walk through some of the subscription and plan pricing structures that they have available and guide you toward what might be the best fit for you. So, first of all, let's go to adobe dot com and their home page changes frequently, so this might look a little different when you get there. But up at the top, we've got their main markets and sections available, and we're looking for the creativity and design. So I'm gonna click on this link here and from there and the drop down, we have some really helpful links that you should consider checking out if you have more questions than what I've answered in this video. But what you're looking for is the view all plans and pricing button. Now that this has changed since I've recorded this and looks totally different, you might have just as good success by going to google dot com and typing in Adobe Creative Cloud from their pick, which everyone looks like the best link for you here. They've got an Adam's gonna click on this one right at the top, and that should take me right to that same plans and pricing page. In this case, it's just the home page for the creative cloud. So it's got some Mawr tabs about what's new learning and support all products and a free trial. Now, one thing I want to point out. Their free trial is only seven days long. So what I suggest is, if you're taking this course and you've just purchased this dive right in and do this right away, because I want you to know that it's a good fit or not a good fit as soon as possible. If you discover this isn't a good fit for you, go out and get a refund for this course as well doesn't hurt my feelings at all. I want to make sure this is something that you love So from there, let's go ahead and click on the Choose A Plan button, and that should redirect you to this page here. Now I want to point out there are four different tabs across the top. They have plans and pricing for individuals, which will probably be 90% of you business students and teachers and schools and universities. So if you're currently a student at an accredited college or university, definitely check out this plan and stepped through the different processes. Here. You can click on the learn more button and see if your school qualifies for this, cause if it does, it's a substantial savings. Now for the rest of us. You'll probably end up choosing the individuals plan. Now, within this plan, we've got a few different options here to consider. So one approach you might take two following along with this course would be to do the trial version tried for the seven days and then go from there and reevaluate whether you think you want to continue on or get a refund for this and the course as well. The other thing you could do is a majority of this course currently touches on photo shop. We do get into illustrator, we do get into in design. But I would say if you get stuck on an island with one app, I would choose Photoshopped because with photo shop, you can do a majority of the graphic design tasks you'll be doing as a beginner. So the way you could do that is you could come over here to single app, choose an app such as Photoshopped, and then click the buy Now button. You'll be asked to make your own account, and it will give you the download. You'll notice this is only $20 a month if we choose annual plan paid monthly. So what that means is you are signing a contract essentially for one year, and they'll give you this discounted rate of $20 a month. If I click monthly plan where there is no commitment, you'll notice it's a little bit more expensive or I can choose to pay prepaid for the whole year, and it's about $240 for the year Now. I know that might seem like a lot when I first started and learned you had to buy the entire creative suite it was over $1000 to buy. So this is actually a really good deal. To be able to kind of put your big toe in the water and see if it's something that you enjoy. You could also consider this photography plan depending on the level you choose will notice the options down here change. And this includes both photo shop and light room. So for those of you who might be leaning towards photography but dabbling in photo shop and some graphic design, this could be a really good plan for you as well. It also, depending on the plan you choose comes with 20 gigs. A terabyte. Oh, I guess one terabyte of storage with just light room. So something to consider for sure. Now I use the all APS bundle, and I would suggest that for you as well, if you're if you're set on doing graphic design and learning mawr, even video editing and photography. By doing this annual plan with all of the apse, you have access to absolutely everything from video editing, photography, the Web design, APS and all of the photo shop in Illustrator in design, Creative APS as well. So This is what I actually have. Recently I upgraded, and I have the Adobe stock bundle as well, which then adds a monthly subscription for images. Now, before you choose any of these, especially the annual plans paid monthly where you're actually signing up for a contract. One more thing I want to point out is on adobes legal page. They mention that if you cancel, you have to do so within 14 days of your initial order. So what that means is, let's say, have a seven day trial and you go for the seven days. Then they would build your card on that seventh or eighth day and then 14 days from when they build your card, you need to contact them and say, Hey, I want to cancel that there's any any issue. Otherwise, what's gonna happen is you will be charged for 50% of the remaining contract obligations. So if you have a whole year left, they're gonna charge you for half of that year, so I won't be very clear to you before you dive in and then forget that you've got a subscription. Make sure that this is something you want to do And don't forget you've only got those seven days is a trial before you kind of get serious. So again, you know, if you're gonna be a designer, is what you want to do. It's just it's just a cost of doing business. There are some other APS that we can talk about a little bit later, such as pixel mater and a few other new ones, like Sketch, where you can pay for it out right and never have to do the subscription thing. But the Adobe creative cloud is by far the industry standard. So once you've selected what plans and pricing makes the most sense for you, you can click to buy now button at the bottom of any one of these. It will redirect you to the page where then you can set up your email account and create your ID, your adobe I d. And then from there, just follow the prompts. To download the software that you need, you'll be able to download the creative Cloud desktop app, which is a smaller app. So what downloads quickly you install it on your computer, and then, from there, you can open it up and see all of the different applications that are available to you, depending on your subscription level. From there, just click the button over here on the side that'll say install. If you don't have it installed yet, or in my case, I've got a few that need updated so I can go ahead and click the update button. Now the Adobe desktop app is a great way to keep all of your APS current as well as using these tabs across the top, where you can learn more about how to use the software manager assets, find Adobe stock free next project, or even create your be Hance portfolio.
3. Setting up your shortcuts to open apps: are. Once you get the applications downloaded to your computer, it's a good idea to create shortcuts. So that way, it's faster to get into the your applications. There's a lot of ways to access the programs. I'm on a Mac. One of the ways I do it is a command space. It's a shortcut for your spotlight tool. Appear in the top, right? I see my little spotlight so I can click on that, too. But again, command space for the apple space. I just type in photo shop, and I'll see it pulls up that way. That's one way to open it. Once it's open, or any of these APs or open, you can right click, go to options and then keep in your doc. I'll go ahead and close photo shop for now. So now when I quit Photoshopped, that icon will stay right in my dock. Another way to get there if I open up my finder window. I'm looking for applications in the sidebar, but I have apparently turned it off at some point, working on something. So if I come up to find her preferences over here, I've got the options under the side bar tab a launch under general. But if you click on the side bar tab up above, we can see that we can turn on and off different folders. So applications is one of them. We can turn back on to be totally honest, I don't really access my APS this direction, so that's why I have it turned off. But again, you can navigate here and find any of your APS that you've got going on. So, for example, let's go and add in design into my doc now. So I click wants on this in design folder, Little click and drag from this in design dot ap P file down to my doc and then I'll let go . So now I've got the in design shortcut there as well, and then another way we can access our APS is through the launch pad. So if I click on this, most likely your app got stashed in the very back end of I don't even know what the screen is called. But there's my photo shop icon. I can click and drag, and if you have an iPhone or IOS device of any kind, you're probably familiar with moving app icons around like this, but I can drag and drop. Put this wherever I want to make it a quick shortcut. So now another way to launch photo shopped for me would be to click on my launchpad icon in the dock, and they come up here and click on the photo shop icon, tow, Launch, motor shop. So those are all different ways you can get into the program, and you can do this for any app you want for me. I usually keep photo shop in design and illustrator in my Dock of God I messages and then slack and a few of the things in. This tends to change depending on what I'm working on. I like to keep my workspace clean and clear and minimal. So, for example, if I'm not using slack or something else, you can click on that icon, hold up until it says removed, and then let go. So obviously we didn't address the shortcuts on a PC, and I apologize. But I don't have a PC to show you that or I would. But as far as that goes, just use whatever is most comfortable for you, whether it's putting shortcuts on your desktop or down here in the in your start menu, on it on a Windows machine or in the dock on a Mac, all of Richard great again, use whatever makes you the fastest and whatever you're the most comfortable with.
4. Create a Poster: Introduction and setup: right now that we've got our application set up and are shortcuts in the right spot, we're ready to go. It's time to roll up our sleeves and actually make something so hope you're excited about this. I figured we could start off of the poster, and the reason why I want to start with a poster is well, actually, there's a couple reasons. The first is It's a rectangle, so the tools and the skills you learn in these next couple videos will hopefully apply to just about anything you want to use or create, such as a Facebook cover image. Something for Pinterest. Maybe something on instagram or a Web banner or postcard you name it. Just about anything you make as a graphic designer will be some form of a rectangle shape. So I figured a poster is a great place to start. Also number two. I want to make something that teaches you the skills but is also practical that you could actually use right away. So while I'm gonna give you some assets toe work with, if you don't have anything, feel free to deviate and create something that's helpful for you. So maybe it's something you want to sell. You could create a for sale poster and put it up in a coffee shop. Maybe you want to promote a social cause or an event of some kind. Feel free to take the skills and make something all your own. All right. The other thing I want to do is as we're learning some graphic design principles and elements. I also want to teach you how to use the software. So it's gonna be a mash up of both skills and techniques as well as theory. So let's go ahead and dive right in. Start off by opening Photoshopped in this case, I'm going to click on the icon of my doctor Launch photo shop. Once photo shop is open, you'll notice that we've got this start page in front of us just to make sure you and I are looking the same thing. Go ahead and come up to the top, right. I'm gonna click on this drop down, make sure it's selected as start and then hit reset, start and then that way you and I are looking at roughly the same thing. The recent files on the top left here shows any files that you've created now, in this case, you haven't made anything yet, so you won't see anything. But you can toggle between the list view or the icon of you, and you can see some of the projects have been working on lately. And as you create new projects, your most recent will be at the top. Your libraries are collections of assets for different projects, and you can create as many libraries you want and put anything in there that you want. So for me, I've got some clients that I've been working with. For example, this unearth logo was the logo is working on for the Discovery Channel, and I started collecting assets for, like, this background that I purchased as one of the earth patterns that are used in the logo. And I had some other resource is I was working on. I've got this tough country collection where I've got the clients colors, some photos of purchased the adobe stock and some of their logos and things like that. I've also got this foul core project where I've used all their color swatches, some different character settings for their fonts, their logos and more photos that I've purchased for the brochure. So libraries are a really great place to collect everything, so that's easily accessible. And libraries now work across the entire creative cloud. So when you open up illustrator or in design, you can see all these assets. No matter where you go, it's really handy. It's a great new feature. Then we also have presets, so we're making a poster. Today. We're gonna start making an 11 by 17 and I realize you probably don't have access to 11 by 17 printers, so we'll start big, and then we can crop it down and resize it at the end of this thing. If you want to just dive in within 1/2 by 11 you could click right here. Go ahead and try it. We'll click on that and you can see him up and running and ready to go out my blank canvas . I've got my tools on the left hand side and everything I need to start working in photo shop. I'm gonna click on his little X here to close that tab to get back to my presets and you'll see that we've got some photo presets, some Web design presets. Go and check those out as you want. Teoh. What we're gonna do now is create a new custom size because we're doing 11 by 17 1st I don't have as a preset yet, so what I'll do is I'll click on the new button here. A shortcut would just be command and on a Mac control and I'm a PC. I could also come up here to file new, and you'll notice that there's a lot of ways to do the same. Thing is, we work in these APS on these lessons. You'll notice that there's probably multiple ways to achieve the same thing. So just figure out what works best in your workflow and what you want to use to get started . All right. So I clicked on that new button to make a new document, and here's my new document window. You'll notice As you play in here, we can set different document types. I also have a few more presets, depending on what you choose if I come down. The Web, for example, is a document type. It has a few more sizes for me to choose from, which is kind of handy. I can go ahead, and I'm gonna come back up here to us paper, and I'll just kind of set my club my settings closer to what I need for print. So I'm gonna set my size right here. I'm gonna set at 11 inches wide. Make sure set inches and not pixels. Set the height at 17 and then we want a resolution at 300 her color mode at C m. Y que. Let's take a quick time out here. I want to talk to you about resolution and color mode. All right, let's go ahead and define and talk about resolution first. So this is a term you're going to use universally, no matter what application you're using. So it's important that we get this before we get too far down the road. So resolution. It's a measurement of the output quality oven image. Usually it's in terms of samples, pixels, dots or lines per inch. The terminology varies depending on the intended output device. So, for example, if we're gonna talk about screen resolution, we talk about PP I or pixels per inch. We're gonna talk about print in this case, our poster, N B D p I or dots per inch basically dots of color dots of ink on the page. So for every inch how maney dots of theirs every square inch. So, in this case, 300 dots for every square inch on our paper. Often images referred to his high resolution or high rez or low resolution low rez. So this poster is gonna be a high resolution file. It's gonna have 300 dots per inch, whereas some of the Web based projects will do. Down the road will be a low rez at 72 dots per inch. So if you tried to print out low rez image and there's only 72 dots per inch, it's gonna look really jagged and what we call pixelated, where it doesn't look smooth and the colors don't look very good Now at a distance, it might look fine, and that's actually a trick we use with banner design or bus wraps or things that have to be really, really big. If you get up really close and look at those print projects, you'll notice you can see the dots. They're actually printed low rez, and the reason is because you're viewing distance is so far back, your eyes actually blend those colors together. If we tried to print a higher resolution, file 300 d p I. And it was huge, like the size of a bus wrap. The fire would be so big your computer would crash to get it out. So we use a low rez file, so that way it doesn't get too big, so you can print it. And then we let our eyes blend it at a different at a distance, so hopefully that clears up resolution. Now let's go ahead and talk a little bit about the color modes. The reason why this is important is because we have two different mediums were working with your either Working with Scream. We're working with print, and they both handle colors very differently. So unfortunately, you're designing on a computer in its shining light into your eyes. But when we print this, we're printing ink on a paper that is in reflecting light. So the way that the printers behave compared to your screen are gonna produce different color results. So in order to achieve the closest color match from what you see on screen to what you see on print, it's important that we pay attention to what color modes were using. All right, so the 1st 2 that I really want to talk to you about, I know there's a couple others in photo shop here that you see in this menu, but RGB and see him like a Those are the two that you're really gonna be working with, the most RGB we use for print or I'm sorry for screen based projects. So it stands for red, green and blue, and basically, those are lights. If you look really close that your screen or at your TV, you'll see little led is shining, so you've got a red, green and blue and depending on how bright they are, if they're all on all the way, you actually get a white light and then print. We have C M y que, which stands for science magenta, yellow and black. So think of that, like mixing inks on paper or maybe finger painting or painting right. When you mix those colors together, you can achieve different results. So, for example, science is like a blue color. Magenta is kind of like a pinkish color when you mix them together. You get more of a purple color. So same theory price applies to what you've probably learned in traditional art. So we're gonna use science Magenta, yellow and black C M y que for print projects. So while you're looking at this on photo shop, it's going to display RGB colors because it automatically corrects that for you. But when you said it to a printer, they only have cyan, magenta, yellow and black to print from those think tanks. They don't have RGB colors to mix, so we need to convert the file to see him. Why K to get the most consistent print results? Hopefully, that makes sense. Let's go ahead and dive back into the project. Okay, so now that we've defined our color mode, let's go ahead and get back to this new window dialog box here and make sure our sayings air correct. So we're making a print project. So just to verify, we'd better with their heights that inches with a resolution of 300 better color modes at the C m. Y Que looks good to me. Let's go and hit OK to open up our new canvas to get started. Now, before we do anything else, make sure you save this, so I'm gonna go to file and hit, save as. And then let's give us a name. Typically, what I'll do is call it whatever the thing is. So in this case it's a poster. And then I might even give the size two. So this was gonna be 11 by 17 and we make other sizes. I might name it in half by 11 or whatever. Just so it's easier to tell what I'm making right out of the gate. Make sure your format is set to photo shop. That way you can come back and edit it later. When we're all said and done, you can export things like J pegs or tips or different file formats. But we want to leave us as a native Photoshopped files. We can come back and make edits over time. Now, I've already got a folder on my desktop called Poster, and I structure my files like this. You don't have to yet. We'll talk more about this as we go, but set up your design. I've got mine in the design files folder, and I put in a folder called PSD. So these are all of my design files that I need to make this project. My file centers where I put things when it's ready to go when I've sent the project a printer to a client and then my assets folders where I collect ideas and photos and fonts and things like that. So we'll talk more about that as we go. But right now I'm just put this in my design files folder called PSD. I named it Poster 11 by 17 and I will go ahead and hit. Save. Okay, this is a great place for us to push, Pause, and we'll go ahead and start pushing pixels around in the next video.
5. Gathering assets for your poster: in this lesson, What we're gonna do is pull in some of the photography we want to use and start building our general layout. So first things first. What I typically do is open up safari or chrome or whatever happens to be the browser of choice for that week, and I'll usually do a Google search. So in this case, we're just gonna look for a band poster and then all choose images up here on the top. So I just want to see all the images available, and you can see right away that there are a ton of really creative band posters, which is part of the reason why we're doing this in the first exercise. It's something fun. It's something that will teach you how to use brushes, textures, typography, photography and and use all these different pieces to create something fun that you enjoy. So what we're gonna do right now is just briefly look at some different ideas that might be inspired. And when I look at poster ideas or any idea for anything that I'm trying to research, I usually I'm looking at either fawn set. Inspire me. I'm looking at color schemes that I like or layout designs that I like. So, for example, looking at this real quick, I like that. It's not just straight horizontal text on this waterfront poster. It's got kind of, ah, not quite afford five degree angle. But you know, it's at an angle, which adds some visual interest. This Linkin Park poster. I like the color, and I like that the guys air kind of cut out. So what? I'm gonna do these things that I want when I find something I like you to do one of a couple things earlier, right? Click and I will save the image to liken ideas folder. So if I come in here and I'll make a new folder on, I was called Ideas It save or What I can do is I can click and just dragon image straight over the photo shop icon in my dock. Hover until it comes up, hover, tell come back there and then let go, and I dropped it right into my workspace. Now, in Photoshopped, the way you can scale things up, the shortcut is command T or control T on a PC. So the way you would find that If you forget, it's up under here at it, and we're looking for free transform. And that shortcut right there is command T. So, what it does it gives me these little handles that I can start to drag this up larger, and the photo shop will let you skew an image. Right? So we want to keep it proportionate. So we're gonna do is hold down the shift key. And now when I click and drag, it stays. Uh ah. In the in the right perspective here. So when I get it where I want it, I can hit the enter key. Or it can hit this little check mark up here, toe finish my transform. And I'm just gonna start building in a bunch of layers here into this poster file just to start getting some ideas and things I can work with. So come back over here to safari. And, uh, let's just kind of see what else we've got here. Things that inspire me this Mumford and sons. I kind of like how they've got, um, this illustrative instead of a you know, photographic poster like the illustration behind it. Some of the right click I'll save image as on the throat in that ideas folder, so I can refer to it later. Usually I'd work one way or the other. Either save it into that folder or I would click and drag and drop it right into Photoshopped for me to work with later. And I let go too soon. Let me try that one more time. Click and drag hold, Bring it back. Okay, so we could spend a lot of time researching and grabbing a lot of things. So what's best practice, at least for me, is almost a literally set a timer for maybe 10 minutes. Otherwise you could start to get overwhelmed with the possibilities and what you could Dio and all of a sudden you lose your entire day just looking for images or just trying to find inspiration for different things. There's when I saw earlier Oh, here it is. I really like this. Ah, this I thought was really cool. So I'm gonna click on that right click save image as my throat in that folder so I can refer to it later if I need Teoh and in this case, was gonna throw it right into photo shop Command T. And then I'm holding down the shift key. And I'm also going to the altar key by holding down the altar key. Let's see if I just hold down the shift key it it anchors it to the top left. But if I hold on the altar key, it scales out from the center. So just just faster, it helps me scale up faster. I return. Actually, this case that my in turkey okay, and now you can see on the right. I've got my layers. I'm gonna shift click floats right now. Layer three selected all hell downshift and I'll click down there one and it will select everything in between. And I'm gonna hit this little folder icon down here. What that's going to do is put it into a folder. I could have also hit command G on a Mac Control Guiana PC. And now I've got my group and I can double click on this and I'll just give it a name. It's really good to keep your file organized. We'll call it ideas. Okay. And then now is a really good time to save So command s control that's on PC. Always save your work. It should be like a nervous twitch that just happened. So you don't lose anything. All right? So the reasons why I like thes this blue color was inspiring. I also liked the, uh, just out of the organic nature of this is creative. It's Mumford and sons again. I liked how the high contrast of this darker illustration and against the white background and then this Lincoln Park image here is gonna drag this up a little bit so I can see it. I liked that, um, they've got if you look closer, the guy. So this blue triangle that kind of interacts these layers merged together, toe kind of color them, and Ah, it. I think we're gonna probably take that approach on this poster. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm going to turn out that ideas, and we're gonna pretend you'll have this this photo in your in your, um, in your assets file that will provide for you. But I'm just gonna drag this image. We're gonna pretend like this is a new artist. It's coming to a venue here. We've gotta make a poster for him. You confined this image in your downloads or this is on ah website called pixels dot com. So p x e l s dot com and he's right it here. So what we could do is click on it and then click free download, and it will bring to this window I could right click and then save image to downloads. Okay, so I got that one and then about a couple other voters that I found in pixels dot com that were inspiring That might work for this project. We've got some guitars, and then we've got this, uh, soundboard here. So what I'm gonna do with these same deal are right. Click save image to downloads. Click on this one, right click, save image to downloads. So I'm starting to gather all my assets. Okay, so we've brought him into our workspace. And now what we're gonna do is in the next lesson. We're gonna cut him out or isolate this photo so well, crop him out. And that's one of the moat between layers using layers and photo shop and making really good selections. Those were the two probably most critical skills you'll learn and photoshopped because once you master those you can really do just about anything and composite anything together. So we're going to go ahead and shut this down for this for this lesson, and the next lesson will dive into making selections and starting to work with all these assets we started to collect.
6. Making selections in Photoshop: Now that we've got some ideas to pursue for our poster, we've got a photo of the main artist. It's time to start building up layers. But before we do any of that, we have to start isolating things. So imagine that this is really truly if, let's say it's a four by six photo. Uh, anything below this layer is not going to show through. So this little icon down here next to the trash can is a new layer icon. If I click on it, I've got a new layer to work with. I'm clicking back in this photo If I command, click some Homeland Commander Control on PC, and I click it will put the layer below it. So just a little quick shortcut here instead of just clicking a new layer and putting at the top, I want Slayer below And the reason why I'm gonna come up here my colors and just get a bright green right here. I'm gonna hit Ault. Delete all delete is the short cut to fill your foreground color to the canvas. If I command delete, it fills it with whatever is behind here. So this background colors that's white So I basically fill this layer with white all the lead again. I could go toe edit, fill right here or shift F five. That's another way to do the same thing. So one thing you'll discover in photo shop, there's probably 100 different ways to do the same thing. So these air to short cuts that I've discovered that I use in my workflow. So all delete the whole reason I wanted to show you. This is I've just filled this new layer with green. So if I turn off this photo layer, you can see my campuses green behind it. Turn that back on. So this whole white area needs to go away, right or something else. We can explore our layer styles. So right here we've got normal. But I can play with different layer styles and what a layer style is. It controls how whatever layer you're selecting interacts with the layer below it. So right now I'm just clicking on it multiplies. One will probably use a lot, and you'll see what it does. Multiply hides the lighter tones but keeps the darker tones revealed and then merges that with the layer below it So, um, you know, if we change this campus color, let's say to in this case, a purple add new layer. I'll just click on it so it put it above the other layer and I'll hit Ault delete to fill my foreground color. So now he looks purple, But maybe I just want my background to be, you know, purple or green or a texture of photo, and I don't want him to be part of that. So I'm gonna come back over here and you could explore more. So here's another shortcut I'll have. Make sure your move tool is selected. Okay. With that selected on the layer you want, you can hit the shift and plus or minus keys to cycle through us right here as I'm hold as I hit Shift. Plus, I'm basically scrolling through all these options without having to click on each +11 at a time. So sometimes, but then that's kind of a creative effect right there. But sometimes, you know, that's that's all. Find something I want to work with all hit shift plus, and I'll just cycle through real quick and just see what different layer styles effective My image in different ways. In this case, I'm gonna start with normal because I'd like to keep him black and white. Keep his skin tone how it is. I want to just cut him out. So this is one of the most critical skills you learned in photo shop. There's a lot of different ways to cut images out. One of the rough ways I can hit the letter l. A Get my lasso tool and I could literally start to just, you know, we'll just do a super rough cut here. Whatever I trace around, I'll get what we call these marching ants case. I've made a selection, and there's a lot of different ways to isolate the selection. I could delete it. In this case, I usually hit Command J, which jump cuts it up to its own layer. So if I turn up the original, what I've done now is I've brought this letter to the front. Obviously, it's a terrible selection, and it's it's not edible. Are smart object. It's it's destructive editing like I can't ever bring back here where I didn't make a good selection. So making a selection with the marching ants tool and then just jump cutting. It isn't probably the best way to work. A better way to work would be, too. If you make a selection toe, add a mask. So down here next to the FX, we've got this little square with circling that this is a mask, and when I click on it, it remembers what's behind it. But now we're masking it. So anything black hides anything that's white reveals, and I can click left or right here. If I click on the main image now, anything I would be doing would be on the actual image. If I click on this mask now, I'm working on the mask. So, for example, let's say you want to refine my selection. I could get the brush tool. I had to let her be. Get the brush tool and I'm gonna go to window down to brush. And now I can change different settings, like how hard the brushes I can select right here. Maybe a softer brush will turn my spacing down. I'll bring my size up a little bit, and I've also got some other things going on. I'm gonna uncheck these for right now. These things will get into a little bit later. So I've got a soft brush so I could actually come in here. And if I paint with black, So I'm painting with my foreground color, which is black on the mask. So black is hiding. Have hit X X is a shortcut right here to toggle, which is in front. So if my white chip is in front now I'm painting with white and light reveals so you can come back in here. And you could really I mean, this is one way to work. You could zoom in and really refine your selection exactly like you want it. Okay, That's one way to work. I'm gonna go ahead and turn off this mask. I can hold down, shift and click, which just hides the mask. It's still there. Shift click to bring it back, or I can drag it to the trash. Okay, Now I'm now I'm back to the original image here. Another way to work. A newer tool is this magic wand tool, which is kind of ah, combination. I'm signed up the magic one, but the quick selection tool, it's kind of a combination between a brush and like the lasso tool, but in this case it's smart and it detects the color around the edges. So I kind of just drag over everything here, and it's smart enough to know what to include and what to leave now. A problem you run into his areas like this was not a lot of contrast. Technically, his shirt is still over here. But if I use that tool in a try and you know, try and add that it might work in this case, photo shop is pretty intelligent and it sees. But it's not perfect. They're still, you know, down here it's it's having a really hard time. So but let's say you're just trying to make a quick calm for somebody just to see if they even like it. You don't want to spend a bunch of time cutting out this image. You could do a rough cut like this. Now, if I want to add more to this election right now, it's really tough to see. But there's a little tiny plus sign inside of this icon. If I hold down, alter, it turns to a minus sign, and what that means is now. I'm now I'm subtracting from my selection. So, groups, I took too much of his neck away. So I'll zoom in here, command an option. It's a short cut for my zoom tool. Or you just click over here and zoom in any time. And now I'm hitting space bar to get my hand tool, which is right here. So any time you can use your keyboard is a shortcut, it's obviously better. You'll be much faster. So command space bar and now zooms in or command option space bar and I get up and I get my zoom out tool case. Where were we? Oh, yeah, We were on our quick selection tool. I'm gonna hit the Ault key. I'm sorry. I'm gonna leave it alone because I want to add back to this neck. Here. There we go. All right, so now I'm gonna zoom out Command. I'm sorry. Space bar command and all to zoom out and let's do the same thing they did last time. Let's add a little mask. All right, so this is better. A little bit better, but you can see we still didn't get everything in the shirt. The selection isn't quite right. Still So this would be enough, though, if I wanted to just quickly mock it up and see if I like it. All right, So for me, the best way to work when I end up doing all the time is using the pen tool. So we're gonna zip through this pretty quick. It's kind of a complicated tool. I just want to get the principle to you, and then this Something will learn more as we as we go. But what I'm to do is get the pen tool and I wanna make sure path is selected instead of shape. If it's a shape, you can actually draw new shapes and you can change the field color, which is great. But right now, all I want to do is I just want to use it to create a path and then cut out that path. So I'm gonna delete that my shape layer still selected, will hit, delete, and that goes away. I'm gonna hit P to get my pen tool and I'm gonna changes from a shape to a path. Okay. With the pentacle again, it's something you'll need to practice. But you can click and drag and then click again and you'll notice I've got my anchor point right here is where the path starts. It's gonna go towards where this handle is, so it's gonna bend towards that and then get down to here where this other point is, and it's bending up because of this anchor point. If I hit command, I can get my selection tool and grab that anchor point and bend the path. So again, these are just handles to control this busy a curve here what we call it, uh, and what I like about it is you can get really, really precise. So, uh, what we're gonna do now is we're gonna zip through this real quick over here, My paths later. I've got that path, that work path. I'm gonna delete it. Yeah, we'll come back to my layers. All right, so here we go. I'm just gonna go quick, so you can see, however, do this and then we can practice these skills more later. So I hit the caps lock key. It changed my icon from his dependable to the precise marker here. So I've got my caps lock on his human real close. I'm holding down the Space Bar Command. All right, now we're gonna start cutting this guy out here. I'll click and they'll drag a little bit. Now hold on the altar. Key to change to my, uh, this tool here, This is called the Convert Point tool. And it just helps you grab these anchor points because otherwise, what would happen is if I did it my command to We'll see how it grabs that lower curve to, and it bends this one. Well, I'm happy with this being here, and I want him all to key to start bending this around. All right, here we go. So we're just going to zip along this line real quick. It's not going to be perfect, but it's gonna be good enough here to get our poster going. So let's just zip through this real quick. So I click and I dragged a little bit. And the reason why is that? When my curves are a little bit softer and they're not, that's that. You know, like, if I just click like this or not jaded if I click into rag right when it commands, eat now in Photoshopped, have to command options, your control all Z to step back. Multiple. Otherwise, what happens if you just want to undo commands? It just Hol goes back and forth between the last thing you did. So you want to step forward or step backward by using command options? E Okay. All right. So let's keep going with my selection here. Click and drag. All right. And what we're gonna do now is when we get close to the hair, we're gonna do a different selection of method, and I'll show you that here in just a second. So we're gonna keep right along his shirt, click once, and then I'll click again and drag my handle this way. So my curve comes along here, click out and the reason I'm clicking during this way. So my handle, man, it's really tough to see on this image, but so my handle comes this way and that curve, which you probably can't even see Europe's comes along that neck now would have the old key . I'll grab that handle. I'm gonna bring it right around here. So it follows his neck, I'm gonna come up towards his hair, and then what I'm gonna do is zoom out real quick and I'm just gonna get close. There's another selection method to get all this hair isolated. Okay, I'll come up past the canvas and, uh, will come down here around here. I'll click once, and then I'll click again And drag, click, drag, Come down here. Click drag to bend that curve. Okay. And now I just need to close that gap. So I'll come down here, Click, click. And then when I hover over that open point where we started, my cursor changes to this icon with the pen to one in a little circle. Next meeting, we're closing that path. Okay, so I've got my path over here, and what I usually do is I double click, and I'll call it something usually call it just cut out And what it does that way it saves this path in this file. Okay, Now, what we're gonna do is I'm gonna hit command, return or control return to turn this into a selection, you could also grab that path again, right? Click and make sure that your pencil selected and say, make new selection. We'll click on that and will make a selection. So again, we're just giving those marching ants. Okay, now I'm gonna click on my little A mask tool, and I've got this nearly perfect selection if I zoom out. Okay, so the other thing I would do to polishes up a little bit, I need to add this little chunk here. So let's get my pen tool and I'll start. Same thing. I'll just cut him out real quick. Okay, close enough. Command return. Got my selection now because I'll come under this mask and I can fill it with blacks. Remember when I was feeling with green and purple? I was holding Ault delete to fill it with black. We'll make sure I've got you can see this sudden little box and make sure I've got that selected around my selection. Blacks on top of it all delete. And I've added that to my selection here. Okay, so now we've got a pretty good selection. Now, what we're gonna do in the next lesson is we're going to really refine this hair, So go ahead and play with this on your image. Play with that pen tool practice, making your selections, and then the next lesson we're going to learn how to make really, really, uh, difficult selections with things like hair
7. UPDATED: Refine edge selections: Now that we've learned how to make basic selections, we're gonna try and tackle hair, which is a much more complicated selection. Obviously, we don't want to try and cut out by hand all these little strands of hair. And luckily, Photoshopped makes this easy for us. So as I look at this, though, I realized I probably could have cut this a little bit closer to make voter shop a little bit happier about life here. So I'm gonna do with the letter L my lasso tool. Okay. And I'm just going to make a closer selection That's a little bit closer to where his hair actually is. And this will help us out here in just a second. You'll see why I'm gonna come back over here and then says I let go. It closes that gap. I'm gonna make sure that selected will hit all delete command D to de select. I could have gone up to select de select. Okay. And now I'm just gonna keep working around here. And the reason why I'm only doing his little chunks and hit off the lead is because if I if I had to try and trace all the way around and then hold on the space part of move and then keep coming over here It then I have to see if I just let go. Here it closes. The gap is a circle across his forehead, and I don't want to do that. Um, So what I would have to do then, is come back all Iran. I'm still holding down the mouse. Hit the space bar to move still holding down the mouse to basically make this like, loop shape. Okay, so that's why I'm just quickly grabbing little chunks, all delete again, making sure I'm still in my mask layer and again just trying to get rid of some of extra white space that I left. So over here, it's not too bad, But we'll just remove a little bit of it, getting it closer to the hair that I want select. And the reason why is what we're going to do now is I'm gonna hit command and click right on this mask with command. Click on the icon. It brings the selection back, and that's a shortcut, actually can. Using any later, I command click on anything. It'll put a selection around that layer. Ah, quick detour. Let's say I have a shape here, this random shape that have drawn hit command and click on that layer It puts a selection on whatever pixels it sees in there. OK, so delete that layer. Click back of my mask, Hold down command. So I get that little tiny being even see it But that's square on my hand Cursor click ones in my eye my marching ants My selection comes back. All right Now I'm in at the letter m to make sure my square selection tool selected. And the reason why is because when I hit that letter M key, let me go back to let's see what was on. Maybe the pen tool. You see, I've got a pen tool. Options appear in my heads up display by hitting letter M. I've got my selection tool or one of my selection tools. I could do that on the lasso as well. But what you see is up here. I've got this refined edge option that shows up when I have the lasso tool or the selection tool. Hey, sorry to interrupt. Let me cut in on this lecture real quick. I have an update for you. I was about to show you how the refine edge tool worked. But in the latest version of photo shop, when you go to the letter M instead of the same refined edge it now says, select and mask The other thing that I'm about to show you is I When I made this video, this layer was a smart object and I found it had better luck with my selections. If I right click on this and May in Rast arise the layers Let me go ahead and decent like this Command d to de select I'm gonna right click Amazon Rast Arise layer Now that rast arise all command click on my shape or on my mask layer again Well, at the letter M And now I'm gonna click appearance, Select and mask. Now what I'm gonna do over here on the left hand side I have the letter R, but this brings up my refine edge brush tool And now I can start painting in here and you'll notice you'll get a much better selection right away. And that should help you out a lot. I've been getting a lot of questions about this, and I hope this clears it up. Go ahead and watch the rest of this lecture. There's some great tips and tricks. And then be sure to catch the video that I made That gives you even more detail about the new photo shop. Selected mass tool. All right, continue on. Thanks, guys. You see, I've got a pen tool. Options appear in my heads up display by hitting letter M. I've got my selection tool or one of my selection tools. I could do that on the lasso as well. But what you see is up here. I've got this refined edge option that shows up when I have the lasso tool or the selection tool and click on that refine edge. And now it brings up this dialog box here where I can paint over the edges and photo shop is smart enough to know what dark and what's the hair that it's trying to keep. And I'm just kind of guiding it to where I wanted to make the selection for me. So I just kind of paint over the hair a little bit and look at that. It just knocks out everything behind. That's not hair. So this refining edge tool is amazing. It really saves a Thanh of time so I can click over here, and it's kind of drag around the image to finish my selection. And in this case, this is why I you can see it's kind of struggling with this orange edge a little bit, which is why I went through and cleaned up that white selection. Just It was a little bit tighter and on things, okay, and I could spend a lot of time doing this. And if you have a hard time seeing what it's actually doing, I can click on this view button, and I could put it say, on White. In this case, it's a white background, so maybe I want to put it on black and see what my selection is doing. You can see we've got a little bit of bleed through. Well, my computer catch up here, Let's put it back on the overlay. Okay, so we're coming through and we're just getting the selection refined and you could spend a lot more time on this for the sake of this video. I don't want a linger too far here. I just want to show you the principle of how we could do this. So once we get it close to how we like it, I'm using the space bar again. I'm only on the space party in my hand tool to kind of move around and see if it's close enough. And then once were done the output, we could put it to a selection to a layer mask to a new layer. Right now, I'm gonna leave it as a selection, okay? And I want to add it to this other selection I have Now here's the catch. Its selecting everything on the inside. So if I hit command, delete and fill it with white Well, that doesn't really do me any good, because I've already got that selection there. If I hit, all deleted, filled with black Well, that doesn't help me either, because now we're filling the inside of my selection with black and it hides my image. Some of the command Z. So what we really need to do is invert our selection. So if I zoom out, you can see we've selected the image here. But honestly, what I wanted elite is this white space around it. So I want to select everything but that so come to select inverse or could hit shift command I. And now my selection is everything except for the middle. So I can add that to my mascara Click here. I'm gonna fill it with black. So it all delete, and now you can see I've got a pretty good selection of his hair. And agai
Derrick Mitchell, Designer | Teacher | Artist | Innovator
