Learning Adobe Photoshop 2022: The complete picture

1. 1.1-Introduction: Hello and welcome to my brand new course on Photoshop CC 2020. To my name is mankind. And I've been teaching about Photoshop and other Adobe programs for over 12 years. This is actually my tenth online course on Photoshop, which contains over 11 hours of video and over 100 files that you can use to follow along and learn as you go. Throughout the 14 chapters of this course, I will focus on not just teaching you the essentials, but really go in depth into which tools are best to use, in which situations. You will learn how to extract subjects from a background, how to combine several images into one. Use Photoshop to make your own creative compositions and working with texts and shapes and much, much more. Photoshop is an incredible tool for creative CPUs. And after following this course, you'll be able to conjure whatever you wish onto the screen using its many, many features. 2. 1.2-About the exercise files: Before we get started with Photoshop, I would like to explain something about the images we will be using throughout this course. These are images that I have created myself using my camera, my drone, and of course, Photoshop. And you can use these images to follow the course and to practice what I actually show you in the videos. You can also create things for social media, for example, but you are not allowed to use them for commercial purposes. So if you want to use my images on a website or in a brochure, or on a commercial social media feed, polices dropping a line first so we can discuss it, but did not publish them in any commercial way without my permission. 3. 1.3-The Creative Cloud library: Along with making all the exercise files in this course available as downloads in the first lesson of each chapter, I've also created a creative cloud library that is free for you to use. Here in Photoshop, I have the Creative Cloud Libraries panel, and I have here the library PS 2022 or Photoshop 2020 to and all the exercise files are here in these folders. So instead of opening the downloaded files, I can just simply double-click them here. And that's going to open them in Photoshop. So to get access to this library, you will find a text file in the exercise files containing a link. If you follow that link, you will end up on the Adobe website where you can log into your Creative Cloud account using this sign-in button at the top right. And then you can either create a copy for yourself of this creative library or you can follow the one that I have created, giving you access to all of these files. 4. 1.4-Interface and options: It's time to familiarize ourselves with the Photoshop interface a bit. And this is the screen that you'll see when you start up Photoshop. And this screen gives us some interesting options. First of all, we have the menu which you will always have available to you in Photoshop. We have here the overview of our current Cloud Storage. I seem to have another 1.7 terabytes available. We can search for functions within the program with this search icon here. So if, for example, I searched for selections, it's going to find some resources for creating selections. I'm just going to exit out of this search for now. When you click here, you get the splash screen for what is currently knew in the current version of Photoshop. So I'm just going to close out of this for now because I will be showing you those. You don't need that splash screen. You can click here to end up in your Creative Cloud membership area. So that opens the Internet browser and you end up on the Adobe website, can look at your account. Here we have the ability to create a new file, which we will be looking at extensively later in this chapter. We also have the option of opening an existing file, which can be either an image file, a Photoshop file, or even a video file. Here we have the Home tab being currently displayed and that gives us an overview of recently opened documents which you can sort by either recent name, size, or kind. So if I sort by kind, it's going to show me Photoshop documents first and then J bags and then PNGs, et cetera. We'll go into those file formats a bit later in this chapter as well. We also have a Learn tab where Photoshop publishes some online materials for you to peruse to get better to grips with the program. So if you click on, Get to know the app, for example, it's going to show you a guided tour of the actual program. So you can click here to start tutorial. And it's just going to go over these separate documents with this Help window for new users, this can be a useful experience. So if you don't feel very confident opening the program just yet, you can always go into these tutorials. I'm just going to close out of this for now and out of this one. How I did that. I will show you later. Here I have your files or my files and these are the files that I have saved in my Creative Cloud documents. More about that later. But you can basically save your documents to the Cloud so you can access them from any system that you login on. And you could just dive straight back into editing once you login to your Adobe account. Here you haven't shared with you for when people share files with you, which is something you can do in Photoshop, you can give people access to your Creative Cloud files. You have access to all of your Lightroom photos as long as they are linked up with the Creative Cloud. And here you have an overview of the currently deleted items. Now, to get to grips with the rest of the interface, we need to actually open a document. So for now I'm just going to open a new file. And then I'm just going to choose Default Photoshop Size. And then I'm going to click Create. We'll go over this dialogue box more extensively later in the chapter. So I'm just going to click on Create. And now we end up in Photoshop proper and we have all the interface panels at our disposal. First of all, the menu bar here we have File, Edit, Image, Layer, and a few others. Below the menu is the Options bar. And whatever is displayed here is dependent on the tool that we have active. So I currently have the Move Tool active, which is shown here in the toolbar. So I have some options for alignment and transforming the layer. But once I activate the Type tool here in the left toolbar, you will get the type formatting options. So font, font family, font size, font color, et cetera. So whatever is displayed here depends on what tool you currently have. Active. To the left, we have the toolbar and all of these tools can be accessed by shortcuts. So let's say I want to access the brush tool. I just press the beaking on my keyboard and that gives me the brush tool. Let's say I want the type tool. I'm just going to press T for the Type tool. And if I ever want to switch back to the move tool, so you can click and drag things around. You can press the V key for move. Now onto these panels on the right of the program. These are the default panels. And I am not particularly fond of their initial configuration. For example, for reasons explained in Chapter 67, actually, I want the Properties panel and the adjustments panel to be available separately. Currently, I can only have one open at a time, so I can click on either properties or adjustments, but I can't have them both on screen at the same time. So what I'm gonna do is just click and drag this properties panel. Into this sidebar to the left of it. And that's going to place the properties panel right there while also giving me access to the adjustments. So you can just click and drag the position of these panels around. And you can also get rid of panels. For example, this comments panel, which I currently have no use for by right-clicking on it and choosing Close or close tab group. And the tab group currently is the history panel and this one, and I just want to close the comment section. So I'm just going to close for the adjustments. I currently have a bit too much screen real estate here I have this huge empty space which is not being optimally used. So let's say I want to increase the size of the Layers panel. Then you just place the mouse cursor in-between these panels. And you can click and drag to change the spacing of these panels. Now, there are some additional panels that can also be useful when you're working with Photoshop and you can add those to the interface at anytime. So let's say I want to add my brush settings to these, to this workspace as we call it. I'm just going to go into the Window menu. And this is an overview of all the available panels within the program. So I'm going to find the brush settings panel and then just click it. And that's going to add it to this workspace. You can still click and drag them around if you want. You can place them somewhere else or you can delete them outright from the workspace by right-clicking and choosing Close. So you can add whichever panels you want at any time by going into the Window menu and choosing the panel of your choice. Now at sometimes happens that you make a mess of things and you just have too many panels open and they're all spaced in correctly and you don't know where to find stuff and you just want to go back to how things used to be. So you can reset the workspace in a couple of ways. You can go into the Window menu here at the top and choose workspace. And here you have a few default configurations of panels available to you. Essentials 3D, which is now actually defunct in Photoshop 3D and Photoshop just doesn't work anymore, which you will see as soon as you switch to the 3D workspace, actually, you have Graphic and Web. You have motion, painting, photography. And here it's the option to reset the workspace to its defaults. So if you ever want to go back to a fresh how Photoshop looks when you first open the program, you can just reset essentials. Well, you can also do is create your own workspace for different purposes. So let's say this configuration appeals to me for photo editing. Then I want to create a new workspace based on these panel configurations. Then what I can do is go into Window and then workspace, and then just choose new workspace. And I'm just going to call this workspace PS2, 1000, 22. And you can also include your own keyboard shortcuts, your own menus, and even the configuration of the current, current toolbar. And then I'm going to click Save. And when I go to Window and then workspace, it gives me this separate workspace now. And you can find those workspaces here in the Window menu. They are also available here at the top right. So the second icon from the right actually is the Workspace Manager. So what I'm gonna do now is go back into essentials. And because I have this layout saved as the ps 2022 workspace, I can just reset the essentials to its defaults. So I'm going to open the menu and I'm going to choose Reset Essentials. And that's just brings everything back to where it used to be. 5. 11.5-Opening and closing documents: There are many, many ways to open files in Photoshop. And in this lesson I'm going to show you quite a few of them. First of all, we have here the start screen, the home screen. And as we saw earlier, we have here an open button which brings you into a file browser, allowing you to find the file you want to open and just double-click on it. I just cancelled out of that. You can also go into the File menu at anytime. For example, when you have a different document open, you don't have this button available to you, and then choose Open or press Control O or Command O on Windows. And that again is going to bring you into a file browser. Well, you can also do is find the desired file in your file browser. So that would be Explorer on Windows and finder on Mac. And you can just click and drag it into Photoshop like so, and just release it here on the program. And that's going to open up the file. Now, let's say I have a file open and I want to do that. Well, you wanna do then is just click and drag the file into Photoshop. But don't release it here. Don't release it on this image that is already open. You want to actually release it here at the top of the program to open it into a separate window. Otherwise, you're going to place this document into this other document, and that's not what we want, so I can just release it up here and that's going to open this secondary document. Now, what we've seen so far is that we rely very heavily actually on explorer interfaces. So file browsers and file browsers come with a bit of a downside. I'm here in Windows Explorer looking at these files. And for these to 1.61.10, I can see a preview because these are JPEG files and Windows has no problem reading JPEG files before these three Photoshop files, I am currently not getting a preview. And that's because Windows cannot interpret these files and render a preview of them. And that can be a bit of a problem because it makes it more difficult to see which file you actually want to open. So you have to look at the title or its version history or its size, for example, to determine which is the correct file. Now, another way of working is using Adobe Bridge. And bridge is a sister program of Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. If you have a Creative Cloud subscription, you also have access to Adobe Bridge. In fact, even if you only have a subscription for Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator, you have access to Adobe Bridge. And bridge is no different from Explorer or Finder on Mac in the sense that it is also a file browser. I have here, my PC with my C drive and some favorite folders. I have my desktop, I have my Dropbox, and I have the folder for this specific course. So you can just click through these folders as you would on any other file browser program. But here it renders a preview of these Photoshop files and InDesign files and Illustrator files, making it much easier to find, the one you want to open in Photoshop. Another nice feature of bridge is that it automatically associates images with Photoshop. So if I double-click on an image here in Explorer, it's going to open it in the pictures app from Windows. But if I double-click the same image here in Bridge, it's going to open it in Photoshop immediately, which is far more handy. Now bridge has another few tricks up its sleeve that I go into later in the course. But it is my preferred way of working because I often use Photoshop documents like a Photoshop document being the end result of what I am creating. And bridge just makes it a lot easier to work with those documents and to find them. Going back into Photoshop. I'm going to open a file and I'm going to do that using Bridge. So I'm just going to double-click and Enbridge. And now I'm going to open another file through Explorer. So I'm just going to go into Explorer and double-click 1.6 opening documents. So now I have two files open. I want to show you how to quickly and easily close out of documents. Never click this button if you just want to close the document, the x at the top right of the screen or top-left if you're on Mac because that closes the program and it has to start all the way up again. When you open a different document. If you want to keep the program open, you just want to close the document. And you can do that by going into the File menu and then choose either close or close. All. So close closes the current document and close all closes all open documents. There are also shortcuts for these, which I use every day, Control W to close and Control Alt W to close all. So I'm going to press Control W once to close this document and Control W again to close this document and Control W actually works in all programs. So if you're an Excel, you can close the document by pressing Control W. If you want to close a tab in Chrome, for example, you can press Control W. So that is a very handy shortcut to be aware of. 6. 1.6-Zoom and navigation: There are a ton of different ways of zooming and navigating through your documents in Photoshop. And that's what this lesson is all about. So looking at the document 1.7, Zoom and navigation, and I'm just going to show you a few ways of zooming in. First of all, we have the zoom tool here, and I want you to forget that it exists. It is the least handy way of zooming and navigating over your document. Save for going into the View menu and then choosing zoom in or zoom out. So don't use this tool. Why you don't want to use this tool is, let's say I am editing something on the image with, let's say the spot healing brush, which I will tell you all about in Chapter 6. I'm making an edit and I want to zoom in a bit to see some more detail than I have to switch to the zoom tool. Then click or click and drag to zoom in, and then switch back to the spot healing brush. And when I'm done and I want to zoom out, I again have to switch to the zoom tool and then click and drag to zoom out. So the zoom tool is the least convenient way of actually zooming on your document. And I know a lot of people that use Control plus and Control minus or Command Plus and command minus to zoom in and out respectively. But that is actually a static zoom that just focuses on the center of your current view. So if I press Control plus, it's just going to zoom in on the island. But if I want to zoom in on the church spire, I now have to navigate through my document to get to that point. So that is also not the most handy way of zooming in and out. So the best way of zooming in and out in Photoshop is something for which you do require a mouse. So if you're following this course without a mouse, I would, I suggest that you get a mouse before you continue the course. So the best way of zooming in and out is the best way of zooming in and out, because you can use it in any situation. You don't need to switch to a different tool. And it's a targeted zoom that follows your mouse cursor. So that's why it's the easiest way of zooming in and out. And you hold down the Alt key or the Option key on Mac, and then you just use the mouse wheel. And on Windows you have to scroll up to zoom in. And on Mac you have to screw, scroll down to zoom in. And the reverse then zooms out. So here on Windows, if I scroll up, I'm going to zoom in. And if I scroll down, I'm going to zoom out. And it zooms in exactly where the mouse cursor is currently placed, which makes it such an easy and convenient way of zooming in and out. Now, let's say you don't have a mouse. There is a different way of temporarily switching to the zoom tool. And that is by holding down the Z key. Don't press it, but hold it down. And as long as you hold it down, it's going to switch to the zoom tool. And then you can either just click to zoom in or click and drag right to zoom in, and click and drag left to zoom out. When you're zoomed in like this, It's also very handy to be able to navigate over your document without having to think about it too much. So let's say I want to have the church spire here centered. I'm going to have to scroll up a little bit and then use this navigation bar to go right a little bit. Or alternatively, I can just hold down the spacebar to temporarily switch to the hand tool and then just click and drag over my document to end up where I want to go. So if you're in a zoomed in display, you can always hold down the spacebar to temporarily switch to the hand tool and navigate around your document. So for a few other shortcuts that can come in handy. One of them I use every day actually. And that is Control Zero. Control 0 just puts the document full screen, so it just zooms out until the entire document is in view. You also have control, one, which zooms into 100%. So the actual pixel dimensions of your document, That's another really good one. And if you really don't like holding the Alt key or the Option key on Mac. You can also hold the Control key and the spacebar at the same time to temporarily switch to a version of the zoom tool. So holding control and space temporarily switches to the zoom tool and adding all then lets you zoom out. So the most handy shortcuts for zooming in and out is Alt or Option. Scroll. The space bar to navigate in a zoomed in display and Control 0 to zoom out to the actual document size. 7. 1.7-Rulers and guides: Guides in Photoshop can help us align layers to certain positions and to align layers with each other among other things. And that's what this lesson is about. The first thing you need to use guides are the rulers that Photoshop has. Mine are currently displayed at the top and the left of the program. And it's these rulers at the top and the left that display the pixel dimensions of the document. So this document is actually ate 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels. And, and that is actually the 42 megapixel photo that my maverick Er2 took. So if you don't have these rulers displayed at the top, you can always press Control R or Command R on the Mac, or go into the View menu and then choose rulers. Now, using these rulers, we can create guides. So I'm just going to place the mouse cursor here on the ruler at the top. And then I'm going to click and drag down. And I'm going to try and find the exact center of the umbrella on this boardwalk. And I'm just going to zoom in using Alt scroll, which I taught you in the previous video to see if I placed it correctly. It's slightly out of position. So what I'm gonna do now is just place my cursor on the guide and I'm still able to click and drag it around because it's currently not locked. And I can do the same for the vertical guide. So I can just click and drag from the left ruler to the center of the umbrella. So here I have a little X marking the spot indicating the center of the actual umbrella, which can be useful in a lot of situations. If you temporarily want to hide the guides because you just want to look at the image. You can always press Control semicolon. So the point comma. And, and I'll Mac that would be Command semicolon. Obviously, you can also press Control H to hide all the extra interface elements that you may have on screen. I prefer Control semicolon. Well, you can also do is lock the guides because currently I can still hover the mouse over them and drag them around. Now, it's very possible that you want those to stay put. So to do that, you go into the view menu here at the top, and then you go to lock guides. And now they cannot be selected anymore and you cannot click and drag them around. Well, you can also do here in the View menu is clear the guides, so you can just delete them, take them out. So clearing guides just gets rid of them altogether and you can't bring them back unless he used Control Z. I'm quite happy with the guides gone for the moment to demonstrate this next point that you can do with guides. If you want a guide at a certain location at an exact point of the document, you can always go into the View menu and then choose new guide. And here you can enter the exact position of the guide. So let's say this document is 8 thousand by 6000 pixels. I want. Then at 4000 pixels on the horizontal axis, I would like one guide, please. Oh, actually I switched those around. So I did use Control Z to go back a step and going into the View menu and choosing new guide. So I want a horizontal guide at 3000 pixels. And then I'm going to click Okay, so this is the exact center of the actual image. And then I'm going to go into View again and choose new guide. And I'm going to add a vertical guide at 4000 pixels. And then I'm going to click Okay. So this would be the exact center of my document. 8. 1.8-New documents: Besides opening existing documents, Photoshop can also obviously create new files itself, and that's what we will be looking at in this video. I'm looking at the home screen right now and there's a big button here that says new file. I can also go up into the File menu and then choose new or use the shortcut Control N to create a new file, or at least to end up in the New File dialog box. So here we have an overview of my recently used document presets. So I usually work on 1920 by 1080 or 1920 by 1920, or 1080 by 1080 in pixels with a resolution of 72 pixels per inch, which is something I will clarify later in this video. But for you as a new user of the program, this dialogue will mostly be empty. So we will be looking at the available presets initially that we have here. The, the presets or the destinations that you can use these files for our listed here at the top, we have recent, we have saved, and those would be mostly empty then for you, we have photo, and if I click on photo, the presets here are targeted towards printing photos at sizes at which photos are usually printed. So I have 16 by 12 centimeters, for example. And if I click here on view, all presets, you see all the presets that Photoshop comes installed with. Now because we also have a saved category, you can obviously also add your own. But these are the defaults for the photo category. Then going into the Print intent, we have letter, legal, tabloid A4. And if we view all presets, we have a whole lot more. We have a 3, we have B5, we have S4, B3. So for most purposes, you would be able to find what you are looking for. Now, switching over to the Print intent, actually switched the units to inches because I am working with the US version of the program and the resolution switch to 300 from 70 to down, or a 118 actually for the photo category. So those are the things that these intense determine the dimensions that you are working with. So the units actually and the resolution. And in a lot of cases also the color mode, which I will get to in a little bit. Then going into art and illustration, we are again working in several dimensions. Actually. We have here pixel dimensions and we have values in inches relating to print. So I would usually pick something like 1920 by 1080 at 300 PPI. If I'm creating something for print, that's just the size that I like to work with. But for art in the illustration, the units by default are set to pixels and the resolution is set to 300. Then going into web, we have a lot of standard screen resolutions. So I have 1366 by 768. We have a MacBook Pro 13, MacBook Pro 15, iMac 27 Desktop HD design. So these are some standard screen sizes that you can develop for. So 1920 by 1080 is the defacto standard nowadays, at least on Windows systems. So you can just choose that right here. The units are configured for pixels when you're looking at web design and the resolution is set to 72 pixels per inch. Then going into mobile, we have a bunch of phone and tablet size presets. The dimensions are also set the pixels and the resolution is set to 72 pixels per inch. Film and Video. This relates to film and video as the name would suggest. So you, again are working with standard screen sizes. So here we have a 2k preset. For example, we have an ultra HD preset, or rather a fork preset. So these are also presets that you can just pick out from these categories. Now, I am just going to go into the web presets here and then we're going to go over all the options we have on the right. The first thing we can do is actually save our own preset. So I'm just going to name this our own preset. And then I can specify a width, and I'm going to make that 1920. I can specify the units and pixels is fine for my purposes for now. And I'm going to set the height to 1080. You can change the orientation of the document by just clicking these buttons. I can switch the basically all it does is just reverses the width and the height. So if you want to work with a wide document in landscape mode, you, which is this one if you want portrait mode. So a straight up picture, you would use the other one. The resolution is the pixel density of the document. And that doesn't really become a factor until you actually export the document for print. If you're just publishing on a screen, 72 pixels per inch is absolutely fine. And you don't need to even change that value to anything else. If you're going for print, you want the resolution to be ideally 300 pixels per inch, because that just produces a lot more fidelity when you actually print it. If you print something at 72 pixels per inch, you will be able to visually distinguish the pixels from each other. The image will be grainy, it will be of less quality. So if you want something to show up well on paper, you're going to want to set the resolution to 300. I'm not gonna do that for now. Most of my work is actually screen-based, so that is fine. For my purposes, the 72 pixels per inch, the resolution also dramatically increases. If you increase the resolution, it also dramatically increases the document size. So not the actual pixel dimensions, but it changes the file size of the actual file on your hard drive. So that is also something to take into account the color mode for digital work. So screen-based work is usually set to RGB color because we work with RGB color. On any digital screen. The bit depth is how many basically determines how many colors are able to be used in the document. It's standard is a bit. Most cameras nowadays shoot in 16-bit or 32-bit. But if you're working for design on the web, 8-bit is fine because most monitors will not be able to display all the colors that are actually possible with 16-bit color. For example, you can change the background color of the document from white to black to the current background color which we do not have on our screen right now. You can also make it transparent or you can set it to a custom value. So for now I'm just going to leave it at white, which is what I usually do anyway. And the advanced options are something where you are available here. If you click Advanced Options, you can let Photoshop color, manage the new document that you are creating. I usually don't let don't let Photoshop do that color management. And I configure the actual color space based on what kind of material that I'm working with, what kind of and assets that I'm working with, what kind of images that I'm working with. So you're better off leaving these options alone. So now we have a document set up for 1920 by 1080 pixels in landscape orientation. Obviously, the unit set to pixels or resolution of 72 pixels per inch in RGB, eight bit color. Now, let's say I want to save this preset for later use. Then I can just click this button over here. And then you have to actually Tidal the preset. So our own preset is what I will enter here and then click Save Preset. And now it's in the saved category with our chosen title. So now I can just click Create to make this new document. And that is all there is to it. If you want to change the document size and its resolution, that's something I'm going to go over in a separate video. But once you've actually created the document, you can still go into the Image menu here at the top and then choose Image Size. And they can still change the pixel dimensions and the resolution. This does come with a few caveats. Kavita caveats, actually, which we will go over in the separate video about image size. 9. 1.9-Saving files: In this lesson, I'm going to teach you how to save your files and about common file formats in Photoshop. So I have here the file 1.9 saving files dot PSD. And right now I'm just going to make a slight change to this document. I'm gonna make sure my Move Tool selected shortcut V, and I'm going to make sure the island layer is highlighted in the Layers panel. And I'm just going to slightly nudge this island to the right a little bit by holding down the Shift key and then pressing, pressing the right arrow key on my keyboard. So that just moves the island over to the right by ten pixels. So this is a change to the document. And if I now go to close the document by pressing Control W, for example, it's going to ask me if I want to commit those changes. And for now I'm just going to click Cancel, but I'm just showing you that any change that you make to a document will ask you to confirm it in this way. Now let's say I do want to save these changes. If I wanted to save it to this particular document, I can just press Control S or Command S on the Mac, or I can go into File and then Save, and that's going to commit the change to this file. But let's say I want to save it as a separate file. Then I need to use the Save As command. And that is by default, Control Shift S on Windows, Command Shift S on Mac. Or you can just go into File and then choose Save As. Now, you will get this popup, which gives you the option of saving the Photoshop document to your Cloud documents. Or you can save it on your computer. Saving it to the cloud is going to upload the Photoshop document to your Creative Cloud and will allow you to access it from other systems that are also attached to the same Creative Cloud account. I did this for a lot of my compositions actually because I like to, for example, sketch something on my iPad in Photoshop and then bring it into Photoshop on my desktop to continue. And you can do things like that with the Cloud documents function. But for now we're just going to save it on our computer. So I'm just going to click Save on your computer. And it's going to ask you where you want to save the file. So I'm going to choose my desktop. And then you can enter a filename. And then you can choose the file type for the document. Now because this is a layered Photoshop file, our options here are somewhat limited. We can choose a Photoshop file. We can choose a large document format, or PSB, which is actually only use for files larger than two gigabytes. We can choose Photoshop PDF, or we can choose tiff. And tiff is basically an open source variant of Photoshop files. So tiff retains layers, it retains paths, it pertains adjustment layers, et cetera, and allows you to edit them after the fact. But TIF can also be opened in other image editing. Image editing software and Photoshop files are not always able to do that. So we also have some buttons here for saved Cloud documents so you can always change your mind and still save it to the Cloud. And you can also save a copy, which is what we will be looking at after this. So I'm just going to save the file on my desktop here. Click Okay. This is for the compatibility. This is usually not an issue for new users, especially Creative Cloud users, because they always have access to the newest editions. But it might be that some of the functions that you use to design your document are not available in older versions of the software. So this is just a notification of that. So I'm just going to click Okay. Now, let's say I want to save this file as a JPEG to my desktop. Then I cannot go to File and then Save As because we, as we just saw, we have very limited options for file types that we can choose. In the newest edition of Photoshop, the only way to get a JPEG out of this is to save it as a JPEG, at least go into File and then Save a Copy. And that is the shortcut Control Alt S. And at the beginning of this year, this function was the bane of my existence because I'm so used to pressing Control Shift S to save a document as something and just using the JPEG. But that doesn't work anymore. You have to press Control Alt S to use, save a copy. So. This pop-up is essentially the same as when we use Save As previously. And I'm just going to save it on my computer again. I'm going to choose the desktop again. And it appends copy to the filename automatically. So that's something that Adobe added. For my purposes that wasn't really necessary, but you can always remove it here. So let's say I'm just going to take this out. Okay? Now, looking at the file formats that we can choose, this is already a slightly larger lists. We can choose Photoshop, we can choose PSB just like previously, but there are only a few file formats that are in general use. Generally speaking, the Photoshop format is nice because we can then retain the layers and transparency and just continue editing the document when we open it again. But you can't upload a JPEG to a website and display it in a banner, for example, for that, you need a flat file that has image compression. And JPEG is the defacto standard. Still, that's going to change over the next few years, but JPEG is still the de facto standard for images. So if you choose JPEG, it's going to flatten the file. So when you open it again, you will not have the layers. You will not have any edit stability in the document that you've created. So you cannot change layers that you don't have and it flattens transparency. So transparency is not supported in JPEG files. So that is something to keep in mind. If you have a logo that you want with a transparent background, JPEG is not for you. So I'm just going to save this to the desktop. And in this dialogue box, you can specify the quality. I usually just leave it at 12, which gives you a slightly larger file. But qualitative qualitatively speaking, it is the best that you can get out of JPEG. So I'm just going to click, Okay, and now on my desktop I have a jpeg of this Photoshop file. Now, let's say I cut out the island by just removing, by just hiding the background, which I can do by clicking this little eyeball here. And I want to save this island with a transparent background. So I'm going to press Control Alt S, NOT Control Shift S, Control Alt S. And I'm going to choose save on your computer. I'm going to save it to the desktop. And now I want to choose the PNG format, which stands for portable Network Graphic. And PNGs actually support transparency. You also lose access to layers and all the flexibility that, that brings. But you get a relatively small file which supports transparency. So if you've ever downloaded a logo from somewhere or design point yourself, you're going to want to have that file as a PNG. So you have this transparent backgrounds. If you want to save something with transparency and to share it online, to publish it on a site, or to use it in a different program. You're going to want to save it as a PNG. So I'm just going to save this out to the desktop. For PNG, I follow the same standard. I try to stick with the qualitatively best file. So the larger file size is actually better in this case. So I'm going to leave it set to this, the top setting large file size. And I'm going to click, Okay. And now I have a transparent PNG on my desktop, which I'm actually going to open in Photoshop. So I went to my desktop here. And the first and this is the PNG. I can see that this is the island without the background. I'm just going to click, click and drag this into Photoshop, release it up here. And as you can see, I no longer have the layers of the original document. So that is something you lose with PNG and JPEG. But PNG save transparency. And JPEG is the higher-quality of the two. 10. 2.1-Working with layers: Working with layers is one of the absolute core principles of Photoshop. And that's what we will be looking at in this video and a few of the preceding videos as well. Here I have this document called 2.1, working with layers dot PSD. This is a Photoshop document and it contains several layers which are visible here in the layers panel. The layers panel should be part of your workspace. But if it's not, you can always go up into the Window menu and go to l from layers and just click layers to enable visibility of this panel. Now we have here four layers, birds, clouds, Island, and the background. And this is a composition that I made. The actual photograph doesn't contain this fog and not doesn't contain these birds either. But because they are on separate layers, I can just click and drag them around to place them elsewhere in my composition so I can change the position of these birds. I can also click on the clouds layer and then click and drag that around. I can even grab the island and reposition that. I can also transform it and rotate it and scale it and do whatever because it's on its own layer. Now the order of the layers is very important because whatever is on top in the layer stack is on top of everything else in your composition. Currently the birds are on top of the clouds layer, and I can demonstrate that by zooming in a little bit using Alt scroll. So I'm holding the Alt key and I'm scrolling up with my mouse wheel. And now if I click and drag the birds down one layer to below the clouds, you will see that they become a bit lighter because of the color of the cloud. Now, what I can also do is click and drag the clouds layer below the island to show you what happens then. So I'm just going to press Control 0 to zoom out. And then I'm going to click and drag the clouds layer to blow the island. And now you'll see that the island is floating on top of the cloud. So whatever is on top of, everything else in the layer stack is on top of everything else in the layers of your composition. I'm just going to rearrange the layers again by putting the clouds here at the top, besides having these separate layers. And I will show you throughout this course how to create a composition like this and how to add these extra elements. You can also create empty new layers. You can do that by looking at this little icon at the bottom right of the layers panel, this little plus sign, if you click that you create a new layer. And if there's no layer with Layer 1 as the title, it'll be tired. Layer 1. There's actually a keyboard shortcut for this, which I use every day. And on Windows, that is Control Shift Alt N. And on Mac that would be Command Option Shift N. And that just creates a blank new layer on top in which you can draw shapes on which you can paint it using one of the brush tools. You can use it to edit your photographs. All of that will be covered in later chapters. So let's say I wanted to delete this empty layer. There are several ways of doing that. I usually just highlight the layer in the layers panel and then I can press the backspace key to delete it. I'm just going to undo that deletion with Control Z. To show you a couple of other ways, you can click on the garbage bin icon at the bottom right of the layers panel that asks you to confirm your choice. I usually don't need to confirm. So that's why I prefer the backspace or delete key, which perform the same function. You can also just click and drag the layer to the garbage bin. And that skips the confirm. So that can be quite easy unless you have a lot of layers in your composition, you might have to scroll a bit more to find the right layer. Now, the next thing I want to show you is this little check mark here at the top left, when the move tool is enabled. By default, this check mark checkbox is enabled on a fresh install of Photoshop. And this checkbox can make things kind of difficult. Currently, the birds layer is below the clouds layer. Now let's say I want to move the birds because this little checkbox for auto select is enabled. It's going to select whichever layer I click on, then allow me to reposition that. So if I click on the birds layer and then try to click and drag the birds around. You have to click exactly on the birds to be able to do that. So that can be quite tricky. To select the exact layer that you want just by clicking on it with this check mark. So let's say I want to try again. I'm just going to highlight the birds layer and I'm going to zoom in a little bit and then I'm exactly on this bird going to make sure the layer is highlighted in the layers panel. And then I'm going to click and drag. I still can't drag around the birds because the cloud layer is on top of it. So I'm not actually clicking on the bird layer but on the cloud layer. So I prefer to disable this checkbox. And if you ever want to use it, if you ever want to get back to it, you can just hold the Control key on Windows or the Command key on Mac to re-enable it temporarily. So as long as you're holding control, it will be enabled. And this just makes working with layers a lot easier. 11. 2.2-Grouping and merging layers: It often happens that we want to influence several layers at the same time because we want to move them or scale them or apply an effect. And that's why in this lesson we will be looking at grouping and merging layers. I have here these two top layers again that we saw in the previous lesson, the clouds and the birds. And let's say I want to be in, to be able to influence these layers together. I am then going to highlight them in the layers panel by clicking on the top layer of clouds and then holding Control and clicking on the birds layer. And that's going to select both of them in the layers panel. And now I want to create a group out of the selection. And there are several ways of doing that. We have this little folder icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, and that creates a new group. And it also places the selected layers in that group. I'm just going to Control Z that for now. So I press Control Z to undo my most recent action. And the shortcut for this is Control G. So if you want to group several layers together, you can just press Control G or Command T on the Mac. To do that. I can also rename this group by just double-clicking on the current title. And then I'm just going to rename this extras and press Enter to confirm. Now, when I grab the Move tool and I have this folder highlighted, this group, I can just click and drag them around together. I can also press Control T to be able to transform these elements together. So I can just grab one of the corners and drag it inwards a little bit to make it a bit smaller. And then I can confirm my changes with its little checkmark here at the top. This is something we will go over extensively in the chapter about transformations. Now, just because I grouped them doesn't mean that I cannot affect them separately anymore. I can just expand this group by clicking this little arrow. And there I have again, the clouds and the birds. You can always click and drag items into a group or out of a group to affect whatever is in that group. So let's say I don't want birds to be part of the group anymore. I can just click and drag birds downwards a little bit, and now it's placed outside of the group. And the same applies for dragging in. So if I want to place birds in the group again, I just click and drag and release, and now it's in the group again. If you want to disassemble a group, so if you want the group to not be a group anymore, you just click on the Group and you can either press Control Shift G or Command Shift G on a Mac, or you can right-click and choose Ungroup. So those are the easiest ways to work with groups in Photoshop. I'm just going to ungroup this group for now by pressing Control Shift G to cancel the group. And now I'm going to show you how to merge several layers together. Let's say I want the clouds and the birds to become one layer. I'm just going to highlight them in the layers panel by clicking on the top layer and control clicking on birds. And then I can right-click anywhere here in the layers panel. And then I can choose Merge Layers. And that's going to merge the currently selected layers into one. So now it is actually one layer and it will take on the name of the topmost layer. So that is something to keep in mind that you might have to change the title of the merged layer. And there's a very handy function in Photoshop, which I use very often because I make a lot of photoshop composites. And at the end of making such a composite, I like to make a merged version of all the layers. So I can apply, for example, a camera raw filter to it to equalize the lighting and the colors of the image. But in doing so, I don't want to lose the edit stability, the flexibility of having all these separate layers. So there is a keyboard shortcut, which is only available as a keyboard shortcut. You won't find it anywhere in the menus, which creates a merged version of all the layers while keeping the layers themselves separate. So it just creates a merged copy of all layers in the document while keeping the layers themselves. And that shortcut is Control Shift Alt E. So this merges all the layers below it into a top layer, but you still have the editing flexibility of these bottom layers. So that is very useful, in my opinion. 12. 2.3-Layer opacity: Another important aspect of layers is their opacity and the ability to change that capacity. And to demonstrate this, I have here the file to 0.3 opacity dot PSD, which is almost the same file as in the previous lessons. Except we see here that the cloud layer is a lot less transparent than we've previously seen. And that is because of its opacity. You will find layer opacity here at the top of the layers panel. And currently the opacity of this layer, the clouds layer, is set to 100%. Now, let's say I want to make these clouds a little more transparent than I can lower this opacity to any value below a 100, and it's going to increase the transparency of the layer. Now there are several ways of influencing opacity. I'm going to show you some of my favorites. You can either enter a value manually. You can actually expand this little menu here and then click and drag the opacity around to change it. But that is a bit too much effort for my taste. The, one of the easiest ways is to just place the cursor on the word opacity. And now if you click and drag to the right, left, actually, you will lower the opacity. And if you click and drag to the right, it actually increases the opacity. So that is a very handy tool, this so-called scrubby slider. And that works for all numeric values in Photoshop. For example, text size, fill, distance, et cetera, the values of different filters that we can apply. If you just click and drag on the text itself, you will be able to influence that value. Now, another very handy shortcut to influence opacity or the numerical keys of your keyboard. The only condition for that is that you do not have a brush tool active. So I have the brush tool active. These keyboard shortcuts won't work more about brushes in a future chapter. But if I have the Move Tool, the default tool active, I can just press the five key on my keyboard to change the opacity of the layer to 50. And I can press 33 to decrease it to 33. I can press Zero to put it back to a 100, and I can press 0 twice in quick succession to change the opacity to 0%. So I just increased it again by clicking and dragging on the word opacity. But these numerical keyboard shortcuts are something I use every single day. So the lower layers opacity, the more transparent it is. So if you want a layer to be partially transparent, all you have to do is just lower its opacity. 13. 2.4-Copying layers: Another essential skill is the ability to copy layers, and that is what we will be looking at in this video. So I have here the file to point for copying layers. And this is a photo I took in Rotterdam of my friend Michael. And I've already taken the liberty of putting Michael or a copy of him on its own layer, which you will see here in the layers panel. So that allows me to grab the move tool shortcut V, and then I can just click and drag Michael to a different place in the image. So I'm just going to place my goal a bit to the right care of himself. Now, let's say I want to duplicate this layer and put another clone of Michael here on the left of the image. Now, there are several ways of copying layers, and I'm going to show you a few of them. One way is to just simply right-click the layer in the layers panel and then choose Duplicate layer. This is going to give you a pop-up in which you can specify a name and also a different document. Currently the only document open is this one, but you can also just copy this layer to a new document if you so choose. So that is one way of doing that. Another way of doing it is clicking and dragging the layer to the New Layer icon at the bottom right of the layers panel. So doing this creates a copy of layer one. I'm just going to undo that with Control Z for now. Another way of doing it. And also to create a copy in the exact same location as the original is by simply pressing Control J or Command J on the Mac. And that jumps, the layer, has a copy to its own layer and Control J is one of my most used shortcuts in Photoshop. Actually, what you should know about control J though, is that if you have a selection active, which we will talk about a lot in Chapter 4, you will only jump the selection to its own layer. And that's something I will also show you in that chapter. I'm just going to delete that layer using the backspace key. Now, another very handy shortcut that I use all the time, and not just in Photoshop, but in every Adobe program, because this works in pretty much every Adobe program is the ability to drag out a copy of a layer. So I have layer one highlighted here in the layers panel, and I have the Move Tool active shortcut V. Then I can hold the Alt key on Windows and the Option key on Mac. And you will see your cursor changes to this double mouse cursor. And now I can just click and drag the layer over to the other side to drag out a copy of it. And notice also, once I place these over each other, that the newest layer is in front of the other layers. And that is because this is the newest layer, so that one is on top of all the others. So I can just click and drag out a couple more copies to make a whole group, a whole herd of Michael's over here in Rotterdam. So Alt clicking and dragging is a very handy shortcut to use next to Control J, to jump a layer to its own layer. 14. 2.5-Layers panel options: In this lesson, I want to show you some additional options of the layers panel. So here I'm looking at document 2.5 layers panel options. And we will be looking at the layers panel. So we've already looked at opacity, we've looked at stacking order. We have looked at moving layers from one spot to the next in the layers panel to change the order. What we can also do here is filter layers based on certain properties. By default, this property is set to kind to, so to what kind of layer it is. And we can filter for image layers, adjustment layers which influenced color and lighting, etc. More on that in Chapter 7, we can filter for text layers, shape layers, and smart object layer. So if I click the T here for text, it will only show me the text layers in the Layers panel. Mind you, the rest of the layers are still displayed in the actual document, in the composition. But it's just a quick and easy way to get to certain types of layers. I can disable the filter by clicking the T again. And then let's say I want to show only the image layers and the smart object layers more on smart objects in Chapter 6, I believe. So. You can use these buttons to filter for certain types of layers. You can also search for names. For example, if I choose name here and I type in Cl, it's going to give me the layer that I've titled clouds. So this is just something you can use to easily find layers when you have a composition consisting of many of them. Another property of the layers panel is the ability to hide layers temporarily, not by influencing their opacity, but just making them invisible. So let's say I want to look at this composition without this text frame and without the shape layer, I can just find the layers it concerns. And I can either click on these eyeballs separately or I can click and drag across them to hide them at the same time. So clicking and dragging allows you to actually hide or show several layers at the same time. Now, let's say I want to only look at the island. So I want every other layer besides the island to be hidden. Of course, I could hide all the other layers manually, but the easiest way of doing that is actually holding down Alt or Option on Mac and then clicking the eyeball. And that is going to hide every other layer besides this one. And if I Alt click it again, it's going to make those layers reappear. So that is something that I find exceedingly useful when you want to look at one layer specifically. You also have the ability to lock certain properties of a layer and to demonstrate that I'm just gonna go in to the birds layer, you can lock transparency, meaning that you cannot alter the transparent pixels of the layer in anyway, you can disable painting on the image with any of the painting tools or any of the destructive tools, can lock its position so you cannot actually move it. So let's say I place this lock on the birds layer and then grab the Move tool. I'm not going to be able to click and drag the birds because they are locked in place. If you want to release this lock, you can always just click the lock icon and that locks it. So another interesting thing about the layer, layers panel is the size of these thumbnails. Now, it could be that you have a very low resolution screen and the default size is a bit too large for you have a high resolution screen and you would like these thumbnails to be a lot bigger. What you can do then is go into the hamburger menu at the top right of the layers panel here. And then go to panel options. And going into panel options, you can choose from no thumbnail, small thumbnail, medium thumbnail, or a large thumbnail. So that is a quick and easy way of actually increasing or decreasing the size of these thumbnails. And the last hidden secret with the layers panel that I want to show you is the ability to color-code layers or layer groups. Let's say I want to highlight a certain layer for a student, but you will see me doing a lot in one of the later chapters in this course. What you can do then is just right-click around the eyeball icon and that's going to allow you to color-code the layer. So I can change this one to read, for example. And going to the clouds layer, I can turn this one yellow. And the text layer, I can make blue, et cetera. So you can color code the layer so you can easily find what you're looking for. And if you want to go back to the defaults, you just right-click once more and choose no color. 15. 3.1-Image size: In this lesson, we will be discussing Image Size. And when we're talking about image size in Photoshop, we are talking about the actual pixel dimensions of our images. So this particular image is 8 thousand pixels wide by 6000 pixels high. And I can just see that from the rulers which I have on the screen, these goes from, these go from 0 to 8 thousand and the vertical goes from 0 to 6 thousand. Even though that can sometimes be sort of difficult to see. But you can also grab this information from the image size dialog box. And you can find that under Image and then Image Size or Control Alt I. So here we have the dimensions of the image in pixels currently, you can pick some different units if you like, but for now I'm just going to leave it up pixels. So here we have the width of 8 thousand, the height of 6 thousand, and the resolution, or the pixels per inch. So the resolution is basically the pixel density, or how many pixels can be printed at this quality on each square inch. So 240 is actually a pretty decent resolution, meaning that at this size, I can print these, this picture with a fairly good result. Now, I want to show you what happens when I start resizing this image. Let's say I don't need this much resolution. I don't need an image of quite this size. Let's say I want to use this on a website banner, for example. Then I can just turn down the width to 1500 and the height we'll scale proportionately. And resample is currently turned on, which I will get into in a moment. And I'm just going to click Okay, so now the image is significantly smaller. If I press Control 0 to put it in widescreen again, on full screen, you won't see much of a difference. And that is because the initial quality was so high. Because eight thousand, six thousand is a 42 megapixel image. So you can actually scale it down quite a bit before you start seeing a significant drop-off in quality. Now, let's actually get to that significant drop-off in quality. So I'm just going to press Control Alt to get into image size. And then I'm going to downsize it to 300 pixels wide by 225 pixels high. And then click, Okay. Now pressing Control 0 again, you will see that the image is now degrading quite significantly because we just have far fewer pixels to display the image with any kind of fidelity. And why I wanted to get down to this size was first of all, show you that you end up with severe pixelation at some point because there are only 300 pixels in the width now instead of 8 thousand. But also that you can't just upscale a low quality image to any significant degree without even further degradation in quality. The, these actions that I'm performing art destructive. So you were actually discarding information from the image. And you can't just get that information back when you increase the size of the image again. So again, I'm going to press Control Alt I. And I'm just going to go back to the original size. So let's say 8 thousand. And you can already see that this is not going to be a very clean image. So I'm going to click OK. Press Control 0 to zoom out. And the quality is, the visual fidelity is essentially the same. But as the size at 300, you just have a lot more pixels to display that lower quality essentially. So you don't get any of that detail back. And Photoshop does its best to imagine pixels to figure out what should be displayed at what pixel in the image. But it's never really a clean result. So from a low quality, low resolution image, you can't really get to a point where on a larger size, for example, a print size, you would have any noteworthy increase in quality. So going back to the image size dialog box, I'm actually going to cancel out of this and I'm going to press Control Z to get back to the 8000 by 6000 pixels. So the original state of the image, I'm going to go back into the image size with Control Alt I, and then I want to show you what this resolution actually does. So let's say I don't want to print at a resolution of 240 pixels per inch, but 3000, 300 pixels per inch. So I'm just going to up this number to 3000. And you will see that the width and the height scale at a commensurate rate. So it figures out how many pixels on the height and the width are needed to comply with this resolution criterium. So it's imagining new pixels to fill out this resolution, which is essentially the same process as going from 300 pixels wide to 8 thousand pixels wide. But because this is a far smaller change in scale, it's not going to degrade in quality significantly. So it's going to be slightly less. It's going to be a slightly worse picture, let's say, but not to the extent where it wouldn't look good on a print. Now, it changed the width and height of the image at a commencer rate because this checkbox for re-sample was enabled. And re-sample basically recalculates how many pixels are needed to fit the resolution criteria. So if I cancel out of this for now or hold Alt and then click Reset, It's going to reset everything to the defaults, or at least the point where you open the dialog box. And now I'm going to de-select, re-sample. Now, when you de-select re-sample, you lose the ability to see this image in pixel dimensions, and now you only have a width and a height. So now we can actually specify how large we want to print our image. So let's say I want to put the width at one meter, for example, then I'm just going to go to a 100 centimeters. But you will see a drop-off in resolution because you have fewer pixels over a, over the same area. So you have less pixel density. So if I want to print it at a 100 centimeters wide with a resolution of 300 pixels per inch, I have to enable the resample dialog box. So now changing this to 300 will scale the image up through the same lossy process as we've seen before. But the quality difference will not be so significant because I'm not scaling it all that far. So if you want to have a larger image or a smaller image, the image size dialog box is where you want to be, but you don't want to get too crazy with your scaling because photoshop cannot significantly improve the quality of an image and it needs a certain threshold of quality to figure out what looks like what actually in the, in the eventual image. 16. 3.2-Canvas size: In addition to image size, we also have the concept of canvas size in Photoshop. And canvas size doesn't change the size of the actual image. It just changes the size of your Photoshop document background. So going into canvas size is essentially the same process. I can go up into the Image menu and then choose canvas size or press Control Alt C, or Command Option C on the Mac. So getting into this dialogue box, you will see the following. You see the width and the height of the image. We have a relative checkbox and we have an anchor. So let's say I want to increase the canvas size by 400 pixels. Now, I could do some arithmetic and figure out that 1920 plus 400 is 23, 20. Or I can just enable this relative checkbox. And then I can just enter how many pixels I want to add on either side. So I'm just going to enter 400 pixels and leave the anchor alone for now four. So I can show you what that does after this. And I'm going to click Okay, and what it does is actually add 200 pixels to the left of the canvas and 200 pixels to the right. So it scales from the center. So going back into the image, canvas size dialog box using Control Alt C, you will see that the width is set again to 0 because the relative checkboxes enabled. So let's go back to the size that we had before. So I'm just going to enter minus 400 for the width. And then click Okay. And you will get this dialog box to confirm that you are actually deleting pixels from the Canvas. These are not empty pixels. These are filled with the background color. So I'm just going to click Proceed to scale the actual image. Because it doesn't matter that we lose the pixels on the right and the left. Going back into Canvas size, once more, control alt C. I want to show you what this anchor does. Let's say I don't want to scale the canvas from its center. So adding space to the left and the right, I only want to add pixels to the left. That's where the anchor comes in. And if I want to scale the canvas to the left, I have to actually click on this right arrow in the anchor, and that creates this empty space in the left side here. And then the canvas extension color is something you can also define. You can set the foreground color, which is currently black. You can set the background color white, black, gray, or other. And if you click Other than you can just specify a color off your own using the color picker. So I'm just going to stick with white for now. And I want to add 400 pixels to the left side of the canvas. So then I'm just going to click Okay, so it's 400 pixels in addition to what we have now. And the anchor is set to the left, so it's added to the left side of the canvas. And then clicking Okay, it gives me 400 pixels more on the left side of the image. So that is how you can scale your canvas to suit your needs. 17. 3.3-Cropping: Cropping an image essentially means scaling the canvas to change what is actually visible in the photo. And for that example, I have the file 3.3 cropping dot JPEG. And to get to the crop tool, I can just press the C key on my keyboard. You will find it as the fifth tool from the top here in the toolbar. And going into the crop tool gives you these transform controls on the corners and the long sides of the image. And you can just click and drag these around. And it will display a grid currently, according to my settings. But the default is actually the rule of thirds. I'll show you those settings in a minute. So then you can determine what you actually want in the image. So let's say I'm going to make this crop window a bit smaller. You can still see the pixels outside of it. And you can then click and drag the image around to determine what you actually want to be in the center. So let's say I want the umbrella and these, this walkway to be centered, but I don't want these pillars on screen. So I'm just going to crop it a little bit further and then click and drag the image around again to get to approximately this point. So this is essentially how cropping an image works. Now, let's say I want to scale the image again later that I want to change the crop again. If I would click Confirm, now, I would commit these changes and the pixels outside of the crop area would be discarded because this little checkbox at the top is enabled delete cropped pixels. That is a way of saving space within the document, essentially because you might not need those pixels for editing later. But let's say I wanted to keep them. Then I can just disable this check box and then click Okay. And now I'm going to switch to a different tool, the move tool here, and then press C again to get back to the crop tool. And now as I increase the size, again, if I change the crop, you will see that those pixels were not discarded, that they are still available there. You can also crop at set ratios and set sizes. So let's say I want a perfect square, then I can just change the race ratio to one to one. And that's gonna give me a perfect square. And I can still click and drag the contents of that square around to put different things in the viewport. Let's say. You can also pick set and resolutions here. These are kind of specific for when you want to print something at exactly a certain size. So we're going to leave those alone for now. So we can also clear the contents of this. It's going to leave whatever it was set to. So now it's back to ratio with empty settings. And it's also possible that you want to straighten an image with this particular tool that you want to make sure everything is just lined up perfectly. So if you click, straighten, then you can click and drag a line of whatever, you know is straight in the image. And it's going to rotate the image to accommodate that. It's going to straighten that line. So it's just going to turn the image to make whatever you clicked and dragged over was straight. Speaking of rotation, we can also place our cursor outside of the crop window and just click and drag to rotate the image and it's going to crop it accordingly. So if you put it at an angle, you will also change the size of the image in all cases, because you are essentially making sure that there is less of the image available within the viewport because you are rotating it. And then we have some display options here you can choose rule of thirds, and the rule of thirds is a bit of a, is a bit of a thing in photography. Like lots of people seem to think that if you place the subject of your image on wherever these lines meet, you get a more interesting and visually appealing image. Now, I'm not necessarily in that camp. I don't necessarily agree with that at all. I just use these squares of the rule of thirds to basically align my subjects and to make sure everything is centered or that everything is straight. So I wouldn't necessarily follow that rule if you want to know a bit more about it, it's a quick Google search away, but I don't necessarily agree with the rule of thirds. You can choose diagonal. This actually gives you a very handy target to determine if your subject is actually in the center. So currently it is not. And I can just click and drag this around to make sure that it is. And then if I commit here, now my image is cropped to where I would want it. And if I'm not satisfied with the crop, I can always go back to a different tool and then the crop tool again, and then make more changes because the pixels are not actually being deleted because I disabled this checkbox. Now there's one other way of cropping that I tend to use when I am creating images for a website. And that is just based on selections. Selections is something we will look at extensively in the next chapter, starting with the rectangular marquee tool, which I'm going to enable now, which is in the second tool group. And then I can just click and drag to create a selection. And let's say I want to crop the image to the selection. I can just go to Image at the top here and then choose crop, and it's going to crop the image. Now, the pixels are deleted when you use this way of cropping. So that's something to keep in mind. But if you just need a quick crop to a certain size or certain aspect ratio, that is also something you can use. 18. 4.1-Rectangular marquee: Creating accurate selections in Photoshop is one of the true core skills of working with the program because using selections, we can isolate subjects from a background or we can limit editing of an image to a specific section of that image. So that's what we will be looking at in this chapter. And we will be looking at most of the selection tools at our disposal and also looking at why certain tools are better suited for certain projects. We aren't going to get started with the rectangular marquee tool. So I've opened the exercise file for 0.1 rectangular marquee. And the Marquee Tools are the second group of tools in the left toolbar here. Now, when you activate the rectangular marquee tool, you can simply click and drag on your canvas to create a selection. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to click and drag and I'm going to hold the mouse down to show you some shortcuts we have at our disposal. Initially, you can draw freehand. So you can draw a rectangle of any size and any proportion. If you hold down the Shift key, you constrain the proportions to a square. So every side is as long as every other side. Something that's also very useful using this tool is the ability to move it as you are still drawing it. Because you will often find that you start clicking and dragging in just the wrong position. So being able to direct opposition is very useful. Holding down the space bar while I am still dragging them are key allows me to move the mark key to the desired spot. So when releasing the space bar, I can again influence the size of the marquee. And I can try to get an accurate selections of one of these squares, which is actually a light projection at an art installation in Amsterdam. And there we have our original marquee. Now, when you put the mouse cursor inside the Marquee, you are able to move it. So I can just click and drag and move the marquee over to one of the other rectangles. If you click and drag outside of the original Marquee, you will delete the old marquee, so the first selection will disappear, and all that will remain is our new selection. So every time you click and drag in the default behavior of the tool, you will delete the old selection and just leaving the new one. Now, every selection tool has several different modes that we can use, and you will almost always find those here at the top-left. This tool is currently set to new selection, which defines that behavior. If we enable add to selection, the second icon here, I can draw an additional marquee and the original Markey will remain. And now I will have to mark keys here. So I've expanded my selection using this mode. You also have subtract from selection. So the third icon, once I enable that, I can click and drag a marquee again. And now when I release the mouse, the part of the marquee overlapping with this new selection will disappear. So now I have removed that section from my selection. And the fourth setting is intersect. So if I enable that and click and drag, all that will remain is the area that intersects with my current selection. So releasing this, I now have 2.5 mark key selections over these rectangles. So those are the different modes of this selection tool. And you will find similar, or you will find similar modes on every selection tool that we will be using in this chapter. A couple of handy shortcuts. If you press Control D on Windows or Command D on Mac, you will remove the the active selection. You can also go into the select menu and then choose Deselect. But as I'm sure you've figured out, by now, I am a big fan of using keyboard shortcuts, and I advise you to use them because it increases your efficiency with the program greatly. And it also feels a lot nicer to use the shortcuts to just fly through your edits and fly through the program. Now, you might end up in a situation where you want to re-select your selection. So you want to recall a selection that you've made previously. On Windows. If you press Control Shift D, you reload the previous selection. And on Mac that would obviously be Command Shift D or Control D to deselect and control shift the two reselect. 19. 4.2-Eliptical marquee: The second tool we will be looking at in this chapter is the Elliptical Marquee Tool, which allows us to draw elliptical selections or oval selections using the same keyboard shortcuts as we use with the rectangular marquee tool. Now, to activate the Elliptical Marquee Tool, you can simply right-click or hold the mouse down on the Marquee Tools, and that will open up the other tools in this tool group. You will also note that there is a shortcut associated with these tools, the M key for marquee. And that means if I press the M key, I activate whichever Marquee Tool is at the top currently. And if I press Shift M, I will switch to the other marquee tool. So now I have pressed Shift M to switch to the Elliptical Marquee Tool. And again, this tool just allows you to click and drag to draw a selection. And let's say, and I've already done it here. If I want to select this circular swing set here where my kids are swinging. And this is an image that I shot with my drone, DJI, maverick Er2. You never want to start on the edge of the ellipse that you want to select. Because if I click and drag here, you will see that the ellipse falls into the shape that I'm trying to select. So you always have to kind of visualize the square box or the rectangular box in which this ellipse would fit. So I would look where the vertical and horizontal lines would intersect. And then I would start clicking and dragging. And then you see that I can end up with an accurate selection of this area here. And if you want to correct the position of the marquee the same way as you would for a rectangular marquee. You can just hold down the spacebar and move the mouse to relocate it. Holding Shift, you draw a perfect circle. So you can also use that. And once you release the mouse, you have your first selection. And again, these selection tools have these different modes here at the top. So I can draw a new selection. I can add to my current selection. I can delete from my current selection or subtracted, or I can intersect with the current selection. So if I choose Add and then click and drag another Markey, I can also select the circle surrounding this little swing set here. And if I choose subtract, I can draw another ellipse within the original ellipse and then de-select that specific area. So click and drag, and I'm holding Shift now and releasing the mouse. This area is now de-selected. So that's how these different modes work. And you will find that almost every selection tool, at least that we find in the toolbar, has similar modes. I can press Control D to deselect, or I can go into the select menu and then choose de-select. And I can always reselect it using Control Shift D. And that only works mind you if you have not resized or cropped the image. So that's one little caveat concerning that shortcut. 20. 4.3-Single row marquee: If we look in the group of the marquee selection tools by holding the mouse down on them or right-clicking. You will see that there are two other tools which do not have a keyboard shortcut associated with them. The single row marquee tool in the single column marquee tool. Now, these allow you to select a single row or column of pixels in an image. And it might be difficult to think of a practical application of these tools. But I'm going to show you one that I like using in my edits nowadays. So I'm going to select the single row marquee tool looking at the exercise file 4.3, single row marquee tool. And what I'm gonna do is click in this image somewhere between the model here and these two spots on the divider of this road. This is an image I took with my cell phone, by the way, as part of a project. And I'm just going to click here and it's going to mark selection of one row of pixels. So zooming into the image, you will see that only one row of pixels is selected. And I'm just going to press Control 0 to zoom out to fill my screen again. Now, I'm going to copy this single row of pixels to its own layer by using the shortcut Control J or Command J on the Mac. And I'm going to just call this line. And now I am going to transform this line to fill the image all the way to the bottom. So I'm going to press Control T to transform this layer. I'm going to drag the, grabbed the transform point here at the middle. And I'm just going to hold Shift and drag this down so I can transform it disproportionately. I'm gonna release the mouse and then the Shift key. And you don't really see anything happening yet. But you will once we click on confirm here. And that has transformed this single row of pixels into a rectangle of pixels going all the way down, making it look like the road. And these light trails are disappearing to the below. Then I'm going to re-select the background image by just clicking on it in the background layer. And I'm going to click once more, right where this divider starts. So I'm just going to click here and create a selection there. And I'm gonna do the same thing. So I'm going to press Control J to copy that selection to a new layer. I'm going to call this line two. And I'm going to transform this using Control T. If you don't like that shortcut, you can always go into the Edit menu at the top and choose Free Transform. I'm going to hold Shift and I'm just going to drag this all the way to the top and release. And this time I'm going to press the Enter key to confirm my transformation. So now we've created this image. And I think in the final result that I ended up posting on Instagram, I cleaned up a lot of the background elements and I worked on the blend between these different planes a bit more. But I personally really like this effect. And if you're working with light trails, for example, it can have some really interesting results. 21. 4.4-Lasso tool: The next tool we will be looking at is the Lasso Tool, which is part of the third group of tools here at the top left of the toolbar. And we are going to use this to create a selection around the opening in the roof of this bird observatory, which I also shot with my drone. So the Lasso tool is right here, the third one from the top. You can also press the L key to activate the Lassa tool. And I'm just going to zoom on this image using Alt scroll. The Lasso tool is a tool that allows you to just freehand draw a selection around an object or an area. And it's very difficult to do this accurately if you are not using a drawing tablet, which I am not, I prefer using a mouse and keyboard. Some people prefer to use a drawing tablet, but I am simply unable to make that work. So I just prefer using a mouse and keyboard. But using a mouse, a mouse, it is quite difficult to draw an accurate selection around something. So this tool is usually reserved for situations where accuracy is not that important and you just quickly need selection of roughly a certain shape around an object or an area. So using this tool, I'm just going to click and drag around this opening in the roof. I'm just clicking and dragging, clicking and dragging. And then when you release the mouse, it automatically draws a line to where you started drawing the selection, and it closes it and loads it as a selection, as we can see with these marching ants. And again, this tool has four different modes. New selection, add, subtract, and intersect. So let's say I want to bring this to the edge of the selection a bit closer to the actual hole instead of this whole wide area here, I'm just going to enable, remove from selection or subtract from selection. And I'm just going to click and drag an additional more key, let's say around this area. And that brings it closer to where I actually want it to be. And let's say I overdid that a little. And I now want to add to my selection again. I just enabled add to selection and I draw another line around this area. And as soon as I release the mouse, it is added to the selection. So if you need a quick and dirty selection within an image, this is something that you can use and you can also use the Marquee Tools for that. But it, it very often happens that you want a selection like this that is not a rectangle or an ellipse. And in that situation, the lasso tool would be my recommendation. 22. 4.5-Polygonal lasso tool: In this lesson, we will be looking at the polygonal lasso tool, which allows us to draw more accurately around objects in our images. You will find the polygonal lasso tool by holding the mouse down on the Lasso tool and just choosing the second tool here, the Polygonal Lasso tool. And using this tool, I'm going to create a selection around one of these domino blocks. So I'm going to Alt scroll into this particular block. And how this tool works is you just click on a point and it sets it as the start of our selection. And when you move the mouse, you will see that it draws a straight line to another point that I can define. So I'm going to use that to just click here on this corner of the domino block. And for this I'm going to use a shorter line and then there's going to be a longer one. And for angles like this, you can just use shorter lines. And it doesn't have to be pixel perfect for this specific example. And then I'm going to use a longer 11, shorter one or two, then just click on the original to close the selection. And you will also see a little circle next to your mouse cursor indicating that you are about to close the selection. So this allows you to select geometric shapes that are not rectangles or ellipses pretty accurately. And I find myself using this tool when I really need to get the fine details of a selection, because you can just zoom in as far as you want and put the points wherever you need them. So I'm going to de-select for now using Control D or Command D on the Mac and show you some handy shortcuts associate associated with this tool. I'm going to start my selection and let's say I click in. I just continue this for a little bit and let's say I click in the wrong spots a bit further on. You can delete the last point you made by using the backspace key. And you can do that until you end up at the beginning of your selection. You can also cancel the selection outright by pressing the escape key, and that just removes the frame that you were drawing currently. Well, you can also do is temporarily switch to the regular lasso tool and that's a shortcut not many people know in my experience, if I want to draw a more seamless edge around this corner, I can actually hold Alt and then click and move my mouse to temporarily switch to the regular Lasso Tool. And releasing Alt. And releasing the mouse actually sets it back to the polygonal lasso tool. So you can always switch between the regular lasso tool and the polygon or lasso tool by using the Alt key and holding that down. Now, let's say I just want to close my selection, even though I'm not quite finished yet, I can just press the Enter key and it just draws a straight line from wherever the mouse cursor was at that time. And as any other selection tool, it has new selection, add, subtract, and intersect here at the top. 23. 4.6-Magnetic lasso tool: The next tool we will be looking at is the Magnetic Lasso Tool. And I have a bit of a strange relationship with this tool because I don't like it. I never use it and I never encounter a situation where I would prefer the Magnetic Lasso Tool over the other selection tools at my disposal. Yet, I've been teaching about Photoshop for about 12 years and I keep running into clients who rely on this tool above any others. So I'm going to show you how it works. And I'm also going to tell you why I personally don't like it. And you're just going to have to make that decision by yourself, whether you choose to rely on this tool or the other tools that I will show you as we go on. So the Magnetic Lasso Tool is in the Lasso Tool Group, so I can switch to it by pressing Shift L. I currently had the Polygonal Lasso Tool selected. So the next tool in the list is the Magnetic Lasso Tool. How this tool works is it finds lines of contrast to stick to as you drag your mouse along the edges of a subject. So that's what I'm going to do for this building here. And I'm just going to click and drag along the edge of the building. And if you are following along and doing this yourself, you'll notice that the selection line or these anchor points stick to the shape that we are trying to draw. And as we go on, you will see that we get c. This is part of the reason that I do not like this tool. I just change my zoom level to get a bit closer. And as I zoomed, obviously my mouse moved and it attached new points here that I do not want. So right now I'm pressing the backspace key to delete those points so I can keep dragging. And that's the thing about this tool, at least to me. It keeps putting these points where I do not want them. The number of points is also often an issue. Like sometimes there are too many, sometimes there are too few, and you can actually change the settings up here, the width, for example, to get different results. But the other selection tools at our disposal are just more reliable than this. And I have all these extra points here that I really didn't want in my original selection. I'm going to have to delete all of these or get removed them from my selection, which I could do with these different modes that this tool also has. But I just do not like using this tool. I think there are much better ways of creating fast and accurate selections. So you're free to experiment with this obviously, and I'm sure there are situations where the tool does produce good and reliable, which is also important results. But to my findings, there are, is almost always a better way to create a selection outside the Magnetic Lasso Tool. 24. 4.7-Quick selection tool: The Quick Selection Tool which we will be looking at in this lesson, is actually one of my favorite selection methods. And we will find this tool in the fourth tool group from the top. So I can just right-click on this icon where it says Object Selection and then switch to the Quick Selection Tool. Now, something you should know about this tool is that it is a brush tool like many other tools in Photoshop, such as the Spot Healing Brush, the clone stamp, the regular brush tool, the eraser tool, et cetera. And brushes have certain settings that you have to be aware of. First of all, they have a size property, and the size property is displayed in pixels here at the top left. And you can extend this little drop-down and you can change the size here. But that is not the best way of doing that because of how this specific tool works. See, this tool looks at the pixels that you click on and select adjacent pixels that look like those pixels based on contrast, color, and brightness. So it's basically finds the edges of the objects that you click on it to create a selection. And in that context, we want our brush to be large enough to quickly work within whichever subject we are trying to select. And we want it to be small enough to stay within the silhouette of that subject. So we want to be able to neatly, yet quickly draw within the lines of whatever we are trying to select. So if we use this menu here at the top, I am going to have to increase the size, but I don't know by how much I should increase it. So I'm just going to put it at 50. And then I have to move my cursor back to the Canvas to see how large my brush it currently is and how much larger or smaller it should be. So to change brush, brush size, I'm going to learn you a shortcut and later a different shortcut, which is used for every single tool that is based on brush mechanics. And those are the square bracket keys of your keyboard. And on most QWERTY keyboards, you will find those to the right of the P key. And the right square bracket increases the size and the left square bracket decreases the size. So at a full-screen zoom control 0, I am just going to use brush size at 90 pixels. And I'm just going to click on the hood of our model here. And as you will see, the selection grows to encompass the entire top of his hood. So I'm just going to click a few more times. And you can also click and drag using this tool. And as you see, the selection keeps growing. Two, whichever area I am currently touching. And just to show you how this works exactly, I'm going to zoom in on the hand here, which is currently not selected. And I'm going to decrease the brush size using the square left bracket or left square bracket. Because brush size does not scale with zoom level. And I'm just going to put the edge of my circular mouse cursor right outside of what is currently selected. So just overlapping part of the hand. And as I click now, the selection immediately grows to select most of the hand. So that is how the tool works, like if you touch an object by clicking and dragging, it will find the edge of that object and place your selection. So as I'm going on, I keep varying my brush size to paint over different areas of the image. And as we can see, as I increase the selection along the hand here, we also get some areas that I do not want selected, like here at the back of the shoe or hear some of the floorboards are selected, which I obviously do not want. And as you're building the selection, you will see a plus sign within our mouse cursor. And that is indicating that we are currently adding to the selection as any other selection method that we've previously looked at, this tool has different modes. It has new selection, add to selection, and subtract from selection. Now, with this particular tool, I tend to stick away from, stay away from these icons because you can just quickly switch to the ultimate mode by holding the Alt key or Option key on the Mac. So currently I'm holding the Alt key and my plus sign, it turned into a minus. And now I can click outside of the model on the area that I do not want selected. And it's going to change the selection and basically push it back in. So to select, we worked from within a subject to its edges and to deselect, we work from outside of a subject towards its edges. And I'm just gonna do the same thing here. And for this part, I'm going to decrease my brush size quite significantly. And then it selects too little because I want this part of the shoe as well. So if I click on it again, it's going to expand again, but not to the same extent from which I corrected it. So this tool basically learns from what you are doing, not in An artificial intelligence sense, but it basically decreases the band of contrast that it is looking at to build your selection. So as you make these corrections, it starts to improve. And we are going to be spending a lot of time refining selection such as this in later videos. But what you should know about this tool is that you basically don't want to do your entire selection in one go. It's always a good idea to regularly release the mouse button. So that gives you a reset point. Because let's say if I remove the selection and I increase my brush size again, and I'm making my selection here. And then I run into a problem here. When I go over a shoe and I go way outside my subject. Now, I could use Alt to correct this, but it would be easier to just not make this mistake in the first place. So now if I use Control Z, I have to start all over again. Because the clicking and dragging and creating this initial selection was one action and Control Z and does your previous action. Now if I've clicked several times, like if I release the mouse button at certain intervals, and then I make such a mistake, I can just use Control Z. And all I have to do is this area again. So it's always a good idea to regularly release the mouse as you are creating selections such as this. And if you really are working on some finer details, it's actually a better idea not to click and drag, but just click and grow the boundaries of the selection incrementally. 25. 4.8-Select subject: About two years ago, Adobe introduced select subject into Photoshop CC, I believe it was the 2019 addition. And while I was not very impressed with it initially, it has seen dramatic improvement over the last year and a half or so. And I find myself relying on it more and more to create fast and accurate selections. Select subject is basically an automatic selection. So it looks at the image and makes an estimation of what the subject of the image is, and then puts a selection around it. And you will find this function when you have certain selection tools active, such as the Quick Selection Tool or the object selection tool, or the magic wand tool. You can also find this function in the select menu here at the top, and then you can choose subject. For now I'm going to activate the quick selection tool, and I'm just going to click on Select Subject here at the top. And Photoshop is going to do some calculation and it is going to put a selection around my subject, my son here. And as I zoom in, you will see that this selection is pretty damn accurate. So we have these extending hair lines out of his hood. And if we look here at the arm and the sword that is holding, there are some smaller issues that still need fixing. And here at the bottom of his shoes, we also need to correct for the shadows. But overall this is an excellent place to start. And that is what I use this function 4. So I just click on this button. Photoshop makes a relatively good initial selection, which I can then use the other selection tools on to keep working. So to get to the preferred result. And I'm just going to show you the selected mask function, which we will go over in detail in the next lesson. But if I click on Select and Mask here, and then I switch the mode to black and white, the display mode. And there we see the actual contours in black and white of our selection. You'll see these really fine details that would be very difficult to select manually using any of the selection tools without refining the selection initially. And this selection has not been edited. This is something that photoshop created completely on auto mode using select subject. So I am, I find myself using this function more and more because it's just a faster way to get where you want to go. So for now I'm going to click on cancel here at the bottom right. And I'm just going to zoom in on a sword where I saw a couple of problem areas. And with the quick selection tool active, I'm going to decrease my brush size using the left square bracket. And I'm just going to click a few times to add this area to my selection. So in the next video, I will show you how to remove little details like this. But this is a very good starting point for improving our selection. So this tool is basically an automatic selection. And I recommend trying it and see if it works for you and the types of images that you work with. But if you work with a lot of models, let's say I give you do a lot of portrait photography. This is a very reliable tool in my experience. 26. 4.9-Object selection tool: In the October update of this here, photoshop has seen some drastic improvements to the object selection tool, which I'm going to show you in this video using the file 4.9 objects selection. And I'm just going to activate the object selection tool. And when you activate this tool, you will see some new options here in the Options bar, which we are going to look at in a little bit once we actually get used to using this new tool. So as you mouse over your image, photoshop will actually highlight the subjects that it detects. So if I hover here over the leftmost model of this image, I can just click once and it's going to load a selection of my model. And this selection is deadly accurate. This is better than what you would get with the Quick Selection Tool, for example. And the preview is actually not that accurate because as you can see, as I hover over the model, you'll see some splotches on her skin here, which wouldn't be selected by our initial impression. And if I hover over the model here, you will see that the left side of her face isn't highlighted in blue, indicating that it won't be selected. But once I actually click on the model, you will see that she is actually completely selected and that part of her face was also part of the selection. So this mouse over just gives you a very quick instant preview of how your selection is going to look. But the actual selection is a lot more refined once you actually click on the model. There are some issues. Sometimes, for example, if I look at the model on the right here and I click, then you will see that the part below her chin and above the address here is not selected while I would have is selected when I wouldn't have wanted that to be part of my selection. But for that then I can select the subtract from selection setting. And I can just click and drag and it's going to de-select whatever I had selected there as the subject. So this is really quick and easy and I'm actually kind of a fan of how this work works. And I'm just going to show you how the rest of the new settings work here. We have a checkbox for object finder. And if you disable this checkbox, it actually resets to working like it used to work in the previous edition. So now I can just click and drag a marquee around whatever I want selected. It's going to look within that marquee to find my subject. And it does have to actually be an Add to Selection mode while it was still in subtract from selection. And there we go. Now, it did forget her watch here, so I'm just going to add that to my select selection using the Quick Selection Tool. And now going back to the Object Selection tool. So real enabling the object finder, we have some options here. We can actually reset it to its default settings. We can refresh it. Then we can click this button to show all objects that are currently being detected in the image. And note that this is not like a final preview of it. Then we have some settings here for objects. Subtract that we can auto refresh it or manual refresh it. We can choose the overlay color, the outline of our subjects, the opacity of the overlay, and whether the overlay is shown automatically or not. Here we can switch between a rectangular select or a Lasso Select. We can set it to sample all layers. We can determine whether the edge should be hard or soft. We can give it. There'll be some feedback with this button. We can go into Select Subject like we were able to do previously. And we can dive straight into Select and Mask. And going into Select and Mask. This also has an object selection tool, including the object Finder. So you won't just find it within the default workspace and Photoshop. It's also added to the select and mask workspace. So that's a quick overview of this new version of the object selection tool. And I can see myself using this quite a bit. 27. 4.10-Select and mask: The select and mask workspace allows us to improve our initial selections by playing with certain settings and by using certain tools. And we briefly ended up in that workspace in one of the previous videos. But right now we will be looking at the different settings you can use to improve your selections. So I've opened up four-point 10, Select and Mask. And I'm going to create an initial selection here by going into the Select menu at the top and then choosing subject. And that's going to create roughly the same selection as we had previously, which is pretty accurate as a starting point as pointed out earlier. So without going into any improvements here with the Quick Selection, like our previous example, I'm just going to go into the select menu here again and then choose, Select and Mask or shortcut Alt Control R. And that brings us into Select and Mask. And initially we will see our selected subject against this checkerboard background, which indicates transparency in Photoshop as we've gone over previously. Now, here on the left we have some tools which we will look at in the next video. This video, I only want to talk about the settings here on the right. So initially, we can determine the view of our subject, and the view is currently just a transparent background. So if I extend this menu by clicking the down arrow, you can choose marching ants, which just displays it as a selection as any other selection, you can set it to overlay. And that overlays this red color on everything that is currently not selected. You can choose on black or white. And if I close out of this menu by clicking outside of it, you can see that I can also increase and decrease the opacity of this overlay. So I can really see the contours of my selection. So if you want to edit out a subject out of a light-colored background, you would use on black, which allows you to see the light contours around the edges of our selection. And if you want to edit out some, someone or something out of a dark background, you would use on white, allowing you to see the contours of that background. So for now I'm just going to leave it to on Black. And I am going to take the opacity of the overlay down to about 80 percent. So here we have the refined mode and you can set that to color aware or object to wear. And it also gives you a short explanation of what this actually does. You can change it to Object Aware mode, which gives you this pop-up. And it is possible that you wind up with a very different selection at the end of it. But my selection here seems pretty similar. So this is more suitable for selecting hair or complex background and color are aware is more suitable for simple or contrasting backgrounds. So I'm just going to stick with color aware for now because it seems to have similar results. And then we have the edge detection. And this is a smart process which basically looks at the edges of your selection and tries to decontaminate it. And to demonstrate that, I just want to zoom in on the head of my son here. And I'm just going to increase the radius slightly. And what you will see is that we get a softer feather along the edges of his hood, at which I can visualize a bit better by changing the overlay to black and white, decreasing the radius to 0 again, and now increasing it to, let's say three pixels. So this is our before, and this is our after. And it has produced a more accurate selection at the top here at least. Because often what you see with using edge detection is that you get de-selected areas within our subject. And that's something I do not want. So I'm just going to decrease the radius again. And then I see that they're still there. And that with the radius, I actually had a better result. So I'm just gonna set it to three for now. There's also a smart radius, which is an automated process. And it tries to get the best results based on the image. So I can leave that on or I can turn it off. The results weren't drastically different. In this case. Here we have a slider to make our selection more smooth. And that is going to remove some of the jagged edges that we see along his jacket and his pant legs. So if I increase the smoothness and I'm just going to increase it too much. So you see what's happening at, it just kind of makes the edge blur together. So a low smoothness means lots of contrasty edges. And a higher smoothness indicates a smoother edge along our selection. Now the feather is basically a blur for our selection. So if I increase the feather, you will see that the edges blur and you get partially selected pixels outside and inside our subject. I never really use this. I tend to prefer to stick to using the other settings and, or the tools that we have on the left here, which we will look at in the next video. But it's something you can use to feather a selection. If, for example, want to select something that is not in focus, that this can help you get a better as around that, that you can also increase the contrast, which is another way of decontaminating the edges of our selection. And let's say we increase the smooth ER, the smooth value doesn't discriminate between pixels that you do and do not want to select. And you can eliminate some of the problem, problems that leads to by increasing the contrast of the selection. So I'm just going to leave it at 20 percent. And you can also use Shift Edge to shift the edge of our selection into our subject or outside of our subject. So moving back to the top here, you'll see that if I shift the edge, it will push the selection inwards. And if I change it to the right plus 100%, it increases the radius of our selection. Now, I'm not actually a big fan of what the smooth did with the top of the hood here. So I just change that back to 0. And I am going to display the selection on overlay mode for now. And this is looking pretty good. So now we're going to look at what we can do with this selection that we currently have. If I extend the output settings here, you can see that we can output the selection to an actual selection just like we've created with many other tools previously. We can apply this selection as a layer mask, which we will be looking at in the next chapter. We can put it as a new layer, a new layer with layer mask, a new document, or even in a new document with a Layer Mask. Now without going into what a layer mask actually is, because that's something we will be talking about extensively in the next chapter, I usually choose new layer with layer mask because that allows you to create these selections non-destructively. So I can always go back in and edit what is actually within the layer, shown within the layer or not. So I'm just going to choose new layer with layer mask and click OK. And then when we look at our Layers panel, the background layer, the original is currently hidden. So the I here is deactivated. And we have a new layer here at the top with a layer mask attached to it. And I'm just going to visualize that a bit better, better for you by increasing the thumbnail size by clicking, right-clicking within the layers panel and choosing large thumbnails. And as you can see, within this layer mask, everything that is filled with black is currently hidden and everything that is filled with white is currently visible. And that is the essential inner workings of layer masks. White is visible, black is invisible. So it outputs, outputs our selection to a layer with a Layer Mask. And the next video we're going to go over the different tools of the select and mask workspace. So let's get working on that. 28. 4.11-Select and mask-2: In this video, we will be looking at the tools that the select and mask workspace offers us. So I'm just going to quickly activate one of my selection tools by pressing the W key on my keyboard, which switches me to the fourth group of tools, the objects selection tool in this case. And I'm just going to click Select Subject here at the top. Now, with this initial selection, I can just go to Select and Mask. Note that you don't have to actually do this stuff first because Select and Mask also contains a button at the top for Select Subject, but I prefer to get started here. So I'm just going to click Select and Mask here at the top. And I'm going to leave it at this red overlay currently. So I'm just going to choose Overlay and leave it out read. And then we will look at these tools here. We have a Quick Selection Tool, we have a Refine Edge brush tool, the regular brush tool, an object selection, the lasso tool, and also the polygonal lasso tool. Actually note that we do not have the Magnetic Lasso Tool. And then we also have a hand in the Zoom tool. But for those, there are shortcuts, namely the spacebar to use the hand tool. So we'll bring that down switches to the hand tool and Alt scroll for the zoom tool. So we can use these tools to further refine our selection. So I'm just going to zoom in on the sword and I'm going to switch to quick selection. And it is currently set to add to selection and its size seems to be adequate for the area. I want to add some just going to click on the sword a few times to increase the selection. Now note that I went a bit too far and I painted over this area in between. So I'm just going to Alt click on this area a couple of times with varying brush sizes to paint the selection back and cure at the bottom, it is actually better to switch to the brush tool because I want to make these lines around the shoes a bit more neat, a bit more clean. So I switch to the brush tool. It's currently set to add to selection. And using this, I can just paint across the edges of the soles of the shoes to add those to the selection. And I can also do that for these areas. So this doesn't look for edges or any difference. In contrast, you can just paint straight over what you want to select or deselect, and that is what the tool will do. And then I'm going to look at the top here. And I'm also going to use this tool to paint over this little area. And then I would like to increase the selection of these outline hair's a little bit. And the best tool for that is the Refine Edge tool. So this is going to look at what's inside and outside of our selection and kind of calculate an average of what should and shouldn't be selected. So using this tool, I'm just going to click and drag along the edges of these hairs and release the mouse. And then we see that we get a bunch more hairs added to our selection. And I can demonstrate that a bit better by switching to the black and white overlay. So we have a lot more bushy hairs around his hood selected currently, so this would be a better result. And then I see that I am missing a little bit here. So I'm just going to switch back to the regular brush tool and just paint in these pixels. Now, let's say I went too far and I selected an area that I did not mean to select. Obviously I can use Control Z or Command Z on the Mac to go back a step. But I can also just hold the Alt key and then just paint over what I do not want selected. And then release the Alt key to, again, add to the selection. So you can use these tools to create far more accurate selections. And if you use these in addition to using the settings here on the right, you can really quickly get accurate and fast results. 29. 4.12-Selecting hair: In this video, I want to give you another example of how well Select Subject actually works in many cases. Here I have a photo of a motto in a forest from the mind, Dominique. And I'm just going to click Select Subject to create an initial selection. And when you look at the selection initially, it seems very jagged, like there are selections or partially selected pixels that I do not want my end result. But once I click on Select and Mask here, and I show her in overlay mode. So I set the view to overlay, which allows me to quickly see which pixels are selected and not selected. You will see that even these out flying hairs are very accurately selected. And there are a couple of areas where I would like to improve, such as between her hair and her arm here. But for that I can just use the either the brush tool or the quick select tool. And then just Alt click or Alt click and drag over what I want to deselect. Now, there is another button here at the top four refine hair. But in my experience, unless the image purports a certain preconditions, it doesn't really work that well for better results. Like I'm currently very happy with my selection here. But if I click on refining hair, hair, you will see that it removes a lot from the selection. And this is a very good result. And even if I switch to object to wear and click on Okay, it has improved like it's better than it was, but I'm still missing this whole bottom section of her hair. Even if I click on Refine here now, I will not get those details back. So I prefer to use the standard automatic selection and then incrementally improved by using the Quick Select tool and the brush tool. Or you can use the Refine Edge brush tool, which we went over in the previous video. 30. 4.13-Quick mask mode: In this video, we will be looking at Quick Mask Mode. And Quick Mask Mode is not a selection tool in and of itself, but it's something that we use to refine our selection we already have. And for that demonstration, I've opened 4.13 Quick Mask Mode, which is a photo of my daughter I took here on the water, water side. And I'm just going to click Select Subject here at the top to create an initial selection. And that's selection is missing some areas such as on the umbrella that she is holding up. And it also selected a bit too much. This would, in the background of this Bannister, and also little too little of her shoes. Now, I couldn't use the Selection tools that we've already gone over to improve the selection, for example, the Quick Selection tool. But I'm going to show you how to do that using Quick Mask Mode. To get to Quick Mask Mode, I can just press the Q button on my laptop. And you will, this will look familiar if you've seen the previous two videos where we worked with the overlay in selected mask. By the way, you can also get to this mode by clicking this little icon underneath the foreground and background color in the toolbar. Now, in Quick Mask Mode, I can work with white to add to my selection, with black to subtract from my selection. So I'm just going to activate the brush tool, just the standard brush tool, shortcut B. And I can use the bracket tools or the bracket keys on my keyboard to increase or decrease its size. I can also right-click to get to the size and hardness properties. I'm going to teach you a shortcut right now, which I use every day and which works for every single tool. That is a brush tool in Photoshop, which I find very intuitive to change the size and hardness of a brush that you're using. So on Windows, I'm going to hold down the Alt key and then I'm going to hold down the right mouse button. And now I can drag right to increase the size of my brush and drag it left to decrease it. And I can drag up to decrease the hardness of my brush and down to increase the hardness of my brush. So now you have a visual reference point relating to the brush settings, which I find exceedingly useful in most cases. And it's also a lot faster than using the bracket keys. So you can just visually determine how hard and how large your brush needs to be to perform whatever action you're doing. And this is very useful because as stated earlier, a lot of the tools of Photoshop such as the quick selection, the brush tool, the Spot Healing Brush, the clone stamp, et cetera. They're all Brush Tools and they all work with this shortcut. So for this particular task, I would like a small hard brush and I want to paint with black to remove this Bannister from my selection. So I'm making sure that black is set to my foreground color. And then I'm just going to click and drag along this edge to remove it from my selection. And initially this doesn't seem like a very accurate way of doing this. But you can actually zoom into the pixel grid and use a one pixel brush to determine exactly which pixels you want selected and which ones you do not by switching between black and white. So currently I'm using black to subtract from my selection. And I'm just going to change my brush size slightly again. And I'm not doing this in one go mind you I'm releasing the mouse button very often as I go so that I have a restore point to which I can revert with Control Z or Command Z on the Mac obviously. So I've added these pixels to mice or removed these pixels from the selection. Now here on her tights, she, we have some unselected pixels which I would like to select, some just going to switch to white as the foreground color. And I can use that by using this little elbow arrow where the four and background color are. Or I can use the x key on my keyboard. And I'm just going to click and drag over these pixels to add them to my selection. And I'm not gonna do this to accurately. This is only for demonstration purposes, apigee, obviously. So I'm just dragging over these pixels. And I also want these pixels. And the pixels. Okay? So, oh, I accidentally dragged out the window. Now I can move that to the top here and use white to paint in her arms to actually add them to my selection. As you see, Select Subject didn't do an excellent job of it, to be honest, in this particular case. And I'm going to use black to de-select these and white to select these. And I'm just using the X key to switch between black and white. And now I'm going to use a slightly bigger brush and white as the foreground color to add the umbrella to my selection. And it's not going to be too accurate unless I really take my time and zoom in and just do this on a pixel by pixel basis. But this is just to demonstrate that you can make it as accurate as you want. I can just zoom in on the edge of my umbrella and then choose white and just paint in these pixels, but not these pixels. So you can make it as accurate as you want using this particular method. Oh yeah, the shoe, I'm just going to add this to my selection with a slightly larger brush. And now, when we exit Quick Mask mode by pressing the Q key, again, we have this selection. So quick mask mode is a way that you can edit in or out pixels from your selection to get the desired result. And it basically works the same as painting in these pixels in Select and Mask Mode. But I just wanted to demonstrate that you don't need Select and Mask Mode to perform this kind of edit because this function has been in Photoshop since before I started using the software about 15 years ago. 31. 4.14-Magic wand tool: The magic wand tool is a tool that most Photoshop users are familiar with, and it allows us to create selections based on color and contrast between colors. So here in exercise file 4.14, magic wand, I'm going to hold the mouse down on the Quick Selection Tool. And I'm going to select the magic wand tool. Now at the top here, this tool also has similar settings to the other selection tools we've already looked at. We have new selection, add, subtract, and intersect. We can select a sample size which at currently selects a single point that we click on. And the others create certain grids around the point that we click on to extend our selection. The tolerance is how many lighter and darker values will be selected once we click with our mouse, which is set to 32 by default. So the lower this value, the narrower, narrower the range of pixels that are to be selected is. Then we have anti-alias, which when you use selection tools like this and also when you look at text, anti-aliasing is a thing. And basically it kind of makes the edges of selections and of texts less jagged. So it becomes smoother. So that's something you want to leave on by default. And there's another checkmark for contiguous, which means that it will only select pixels that are in one uninterrupted area. And because this is enabled currently, once I click here on this top left segment of this heart, it will not select any other parts of the heart, even though they are within the same tolerance of the pixels that I clicked on. So here is my initial selection, and I can obviously click on another segment of the heart, which will move the selection to there because currently new selection is on. So if I change this to add to selection, the second mode, I can just click on the different segments of the heart to add them to my selection. But this can be a lot of work and I would prefer to select the heart in its entirety with one click of the mouse. So currently I'm going to use Control D to de-select or Command D on the Mac. And I'm going to disable this checkmark for contiguous. And then I'm going to up the tolerance just a bit because I saw that some of the darker shades of orange of the heart, we're not selected initially. So I'm just going to change this to, let's say 42 instead of 32 and press Enter and then click on the heart. As you see, we have a nearly perfect selection of all the pixels that are actually part of the heart. Now, if I also want to select this bar here, just going to click on this again and again, or click and drag over it to add this to my selection. But what you will see is that her face is also starting to be selected. So I should have actually enabled the checkbox for contiguous again, to limit the selection to this area and not these areas of her face which I do not want to select. And I could change this tool currently to subtract from selection. But the quick selection tool is actually more suitable for this. Because I don't really want to de-select based on color. I want to just deselect this area. So I'm going to switch to the Quick Selection Tool. And I'll make sure it's about 40 pixels in size at this zoom level. And I'm just going to Alt click on her face to push the selection outwards. And there we have it, our selection. So the magic one tool allows you to select based on the color values of the pixels and the differences between them by changing the tolerance values. And if you want to select one area of an image where the color is contiguous, so it's all together and there's no interruptions between them. You can enable contiguous. And if you want to look at the whole image, when you use this tool, you de-select this particular checkmark at the top. 32. 4.15-Color range select: Another method of using color to create selections is a Color Range select. And I actually prefer this method over using the magic wand tool because it's a better visualization of which pixels will be selected and which ones will not. So to demonstrate this, I've opened 4.15 Color Range dot JPEG, which is essentially the same image as we saw with the magic wand. And in this image I'm going to go up to the Select menu and then I'm going to choose Color Range. And this is our initial view in this panel. Basically, the black pixels are not selected. The white pixels are selected or going to be selected once we click Okay, and the gray pixels are partially selected. So now when I click on this heart, you will see that we get most of the heart, but some pixels will not be selected and some will partially be selected. Now, I could change this in two ways. I can increase the fuzziness, which is basically the range of pixels that the program will be looking at. Or I can enable this Plus Eyedropper. Because currently the new selection is active, meaning that every time I click it recalculates which pixels will be selected and which ones will not. If I enable the plus eyedropper, I can keep adding pixels to my selection and thus increasing the area of selected pixels. So currently this is looking pretty well with a fuzziness of 48 and several cliques of my mouse on the heart. We don't see any selected pixels outside of the heart. There's a couple on the face of the model, which we can correct with the Quick Selection Tool. So for now I'm just going to click OK. And there we have our selection. So now I can zoom in on the face of the model once more. Take the Quick Selection Tool and just Alt click on the pixels that I want to deselect. So this is another way of using color as a method for selections. And I prefer this method over the magic one tool because it just feels a little more exact, like I have more control over what will be selected and what won't be. 33. 4.16-Focus area select: Focus area select allows us to select the pixels of an image that are in-focus and not select pixels that are out-of-focus. And for that example, I've opened 4.16 focus area. And we will find this function in the select menu at the top, and then selecting focus area. And Photoshop. Photoshop is going to do some calculations to see which areas of the image are in focus and which are not. And initially you might see this on a white preview, which is not what I want because I cannot see the image, the parts of the image of which are not selected. I don't have an opacity slider here, so I'm just going to choose something with partial transparency, which is the overlay here. So now on the image, I can determine which pixels I want to select and which I do not. So here we have this rose. And I'm just going to click and drag over this. And it's going to use the quick select function to increase the selection to also include this rose. And I can do the same here. And again, it's going to use the quickselect function to grow the selection to its bounds. And I can also select this by just clicking and dragging over it. And for removing from the selection, you simply hold the Alt key and drag over the areas you want to deselect. And it might have to do a little bit more than you would like. But this is how it works. Note that I do not use this function. I believe there are faster and more accurate ways of selecting. And my pictures tend to have a lot of depth in them. I showed them with a very low f-stop, so a larger aperture. So yeah, There's a very gradual difference between what is in-focus and what is not in focus in my images. And I, I just prefer other selection methods to get what I want. So I want to deselect this branch here at the top. So I'm just going to Alt drag over this and these. And that's the nice thing about this particular overlay, is that it allows us to instantly see what is selected and what is not. So from here, I can choose where to output this selection to a selection layer mask new layer, new layer with layer mask, new document or new document with layer mask. What I can also do is just from here, dive into select and mask. So if I click on Select and Mask, I end up in the select and mask workspace where I can use these tools on the left that we've looked at earlier, or the settings here on the right. To improve my selection. Let's just say I want to output these two new layer with a Layer Mask and then click on OK. And there we have it. So we have our isolated rose petals here. 34. 4.17-Select sky: There are many possible situations where you want to quickly and accurately select the sky of an image to replace the sky, or to brighten it up or to darken it. There is actually a Sky Replacement function in Photoshop that we will be looking at in a different chapter. But there is a specific selection function, specifically for Skies, which we will be looking at in this image, 4.17, select sky. I couldn't use, for example, the Select Subject function or the Quick Selection tool to quickly select my subject. And then I can easily invert the selection by going into the Select menu and choosing inverse or pressing Shift Control I. But there's also a specific menu function for this, but in the select menu. And then choosing sky. And once we do that photoshop looks out what it thinks the sky is in this image and creates a better selection than I could've made by hand in the same amount of time. And looking at the details of this selection, like even the horizon here and these extruding pieces of hay from the hay bale are not selected. And this mountain hearing in the distance is obscured by some haze. But I could still actually select this or deselect this by Alt clicking on the horizon with my quick selection tool. So this function looks at what the sky in an image would be and creates a pretty accurate selection of it. And there have been situations where I've used this function to quickly select the sky. And in those situations, I have not been disappointed. 35. 4.18-Editing selections: In this video, I'm going to show you how to use the Select menu to edit selections that we've already made. And there are many possible situations where that can be useful. And to demonstrate this, I've opened 4.18 editing selections. And I'm just going to zoom in on this rose petal here at the top. And I'm going to take the object selection tool and make sure the mode is set to rectangle. And I'm just going to click and drag a rectangle around this rose petal to create a selection. Now, let's say I want to remove this rose petal from the image. I just wanted to fill in with the background. For this, I could use content aware fill, which we will be looking at in a later chapter in detail. But to use this function, I can go into the Edit menu here at the top and choose Fill. And then when you end up in this dialogue, by default, Content Aware will be set for its contents. So I'm just going to click Okay. And it's going to fill with content aware. And I click the wrong button there. And I'm going to deselect. And you will see that you can still see the contour of this rose petal. And that's because the selection wasn't pixel perfect. And for Content-Aware Fill, you usually want the selection to be outside of the subject so that it removes the subject in its entirety and you don't end up with this bending around the subject that you're trying to remove. So what I'm gonna do is increase the size of this selection by using the Select menu. So I've gone back with control Z before I use the fill command. And now I am going to go into the select menu here at the top, and then I'm going to select Modify. Now you can create a border which will actually de-select the center of this selection and create a one pixel border around it which will be selected. I can make the selection more smooth, which is similar to the smooth command in the Select and Mask dialogue. I can expand the selection, I can contract it so making it bigger or smaller by a set pixel value or I can feather it and feathering it means that you just make it softer towards its edges. So in this case, I want to expand the selection by about three pixels. So I'm going to choose Expand. And I'm going to enter a value of three pixels. And you don't get a preview of this unfortunately, but I'm just going to click Okay for now. So now you see that my selection has grown by exactly three pixels, which I can also visualize by zooming in a little bit. And now if I use the fill command, and instead of going to Edit Fill, I'm just going to press Shift backspace for the same dialogue box. And I'm just going to leave it a Content-Aware and click. Okay. And now once I de-select, you will not see the contour of the rose petal because the selection was, I'm far enough outside of it that no pixels of the edges were selected. And in similar fashion, you can decrease the size of a selection. You can feather it if you choose. And you will find all of those functions in the Modify menu of the select menu here at the top. One other function of this I'm going to elucidate on right now. I'm just going to use the object selection tool to select part of this rose petal. The Select menu has a couple of other options that I want to expound upon a little bit. If I press grow, it's going to use a Quick Selection Tool like algorithm to grow the selection to the first edge of contrast that it encounters. So if I click grow, it's going to grow the selection to the edge of this particular rose petal. And if I use Control Z to go back one step, I can also use the command similar phi via the Select menu. And that's going to look at the entire image and self select pixels that look like the pixels that were already selected. And this is a very inaccurate process. It almost never gives me the results that are won't grow. I sometimes use, but similar is one that I've never really encountered a practical use for. So usually you use the Select menu to either get to one of these commands. Color, range, focus, area, subject, or sky, or use it to modify and expand or contract a range of selected pixels. But these ones further towards the bottom, the grow and similar are not ones you typically use if you want to wake, work quickly and accurately. 36. 4.19-Saving and loading selections: In this final lesson on selections, I'm going to show you how to save selections and load them within the same document or in different documents. And for that, I've opened 4.19 saving and loading selections and using the object selection tool set to rectangle mode in ads add to selection. I am just going to quickly select a few of these petals. And what you'll see once I drag a marquee around these two here, the area between them will also be partially selected. So I'm going to switch to subtract from selection at the top left. And I'm just going to drag a smaller marquee around this area to deselect where they meet. And then switch to add to selection again. And I'm just going to select a few more of these. And again, when you're dragging more keys, you can always use the space bar to move the mark key to a different location. So if you click and drag in the wrong initial position, you can always use the space bar to reposition your Marquee. Okay, so let's say I want to save this selection to use it later. For that, I can go up in the select menu and then go to the first one from the bottom, save selection. Here you can choose a document and I want to save the selection in the current document, but I can also choose a new document. I can choose a channel here and it's going to create a new channel, which I'll talk about more in a minute. And I can also name this selection, and I'm just going to call this collection. And it's going to put it in a new channel. And once I click, Okay, the selection is now saved. So I can de-select now using Control D. And I can always recall this selection in a couple of different ways. The first and most simple way would be going into the Select menu and then choosing Load Selection. Now, there's only one saved selection, so it's automatically set to this document and it's already set to the correct channel which I have just created. And it's going to create a new selection because I don't currently have a selection active. If I did, I could add to that current selection using this saved selection, I could subtract it or I could intersect it if I so chose. So I'm just going to click Okay, and it's going to reload the exact selection that I had before. So that's way number one, that's method 1 for reloading a selection. I'm just going to click press Control D for now to deselect. And now I am going to look at the Channels menu where you don't really have a lot of business being in, especially if you're a beginner working with Photoshop. But basically this gives us a collective channel for RGB, for red, green, and blue. And it also gives us the grayscale values for the red, green, and blue channels. So here we have all the information in the red channel, the green channel, and the blue channel. And the RGB is then a collective channel, combining those into actual color information. And here we have the selection channel which has been added by using the Save Selection command. Now, if you enable the visibility of this channel, it's going to distort the image. So it will display actually in the true colors, the objects that we selected, and in red what is not selected, similar to what Quick Mask Mode would do. So this is not something we want. The easiest way to reload. A selection from this channel's panel is holding Control on Windows and Command on the Mac. And then just clicking on the thumbnail of the channel. So if I click on this black and white rectangle here, it's going to re-select the channel. And that loads the selection as it was saved. And that actually works for layers as well, which I will demonstrate in another video. So by control clicking on a layer, you select all the active pixels within that layer, provided that it's not a background layer. 37. 5.0-Combining images: Working with layer masks is another core aspect of working with Photoshop because they basically allow us to combine several images together into a single image in a non-destructive way, either based on selections which we looked at in the previous chapter or working with grayscale values, which I will demonstrate in this chapter. So this chapter is all about working with layer masks. And to get started with layer masks, we're going to need two images, at least two images in one Photoshop file. And there are several ways of doing this, a few of which I will demonstrate in this video. So I have Photoshop open here, and I want to combine the first two images of the exercise files of this chapter into one Photoshop file. Now what I can do is basically open both of them separately by going into the File menu. Choose Open, find the file in my folder structure. Here they are. So I can select both of these, and then I can click Open. And it will open both images in Photoshop, but it won't put them into a single document, it will open them separately. So let's say I want to add this image to this image or the other way around. Let's say I'm going to add this image to this image. So I'm just going to open the image here in Photoshop and I'm going to grab the move tool, and I'm just going to click and drag onto the other file, the tab that's open at the top. And then I'm going to hold down Shift as I'm still holding down the mouse button and then I'm gonna release. And that's going to place the other image as a separate layer in the dead center of the original, which is what the Shift key was for. So now I have both of them in one file. I'm going to undo that with Control Z. And I'm going to close the other image, and I'm going to show you another way of doing. Let's say I've opened this single file, then I can just go into Explorer or Finder on the Mac. And I can find my second image and I can just click and drag it into Photoshop. And again, holding down Shift, place it in the middle of this other image. Now, this is going to place it in a Free Transform. So you see these transformation points along the corners and the long edges. So this is something you have to confirm initially. So I'm just going to click this check mark here at the top that confirms the placement. And now I have two layers in this document. Now, please note that when you do it like this, when you use this method of combining images in Photoshop files, you place the second image as a Smart Object. And there's a whole chapter on smart objects later on in the course. But you should be aware of that it is a smart object. So you cannot use destructive tools such as the Spot Healing Brush or the clone stamp tool on this specific layer. Now, I'm going to show you my favorite way of placing several images into one Photoshop document. And to do that, I'm going to close out of this image by pressing Control W or Command W on the Mac. And I'm going to open Adobe Bridge, which I talked about for a bit in the second chapter of this course. So using Adobe Bridge, I can select both of these images in this directory, which I already opened before I started recording this video. And then I can go into the Tools menu here at the top. And there is a photoshop dropped down here. So I'm going to open Photoshop and then I'm going to choose load files into Photoshop layers, which is exactly what I want. And the number of images that you do this for doesn't matter. You can do this for 20 images at the same time. Even though depending on your system, it might take a while to open all of those into Photoshop layers. But I'm just going to select these two, click that option. And a few seconds later, both files will be opened in Photoshop. The background layer is not locked. It in fact, this document doesn't actually have a background layer. So I can just click and drag the order of the layers to adjust whichever one I want at the top. Because as you saw, it takes the file order of the folder that you opened and places the images in that order in the layers panel. So this, according to me, like that, my humble opinion, because there are always several ways of doing things in Photoshop concerning most of its functions. This is the most convenient way of putting several images into one document. 38. 5.1-Getting started with masks: Now that we have two images in one Photoshop file, we can start combining the two. But first, let's look at what these images actually are. The top layer 5.1 Introduction to masks. One is a photo of my friend Michael standing on the edge the roof of my apartment building. The second layer, which I can make visible by hiding the top layer by clicking the icon. Here is a photo of Michael's shoes here at the edge of the roof. Now, the way I wanted to combine these images is to make it seem like only Michael's shoes are at the edge. But his reflection in the puddle here is in fact showing. So basically I want to hide Michael in the end result at the top here. So I want to leave his reflection visible but hide Michael himself. Do that. We are going to basically make the top half of this image transparent. Now, we already looked at layer opacity, as stated in the previous video, where we can just change the opacity of the top layer to reveal the bottom layer. But that's not what I want. I want to localize this partial transparency. So I only want to make this top part of the image transparent. Now, we used to do that with the eraser tool. So here I have an eraser tool with a size property that I can change here at the top if I want. And with the eraser tool, you can just click and drag over a layer to erase that layer. But this is a destructive edit. So I am actually discarding the pixels that I'm dragging over and I cannot get those back unless I use Control Z. So if you've saved the image or if you want to undo part of the erasing that you've done, you are unable to do that. So to combine images in a non-destructive way, we are going to add a layer mask to this top layer. So I'm going to click on the top layer here to make sure it's selected. And you see it's selected by the gray highlight. And then I'm going to look at the bottom of the Layers panel to the third icon from the left, this little rectangle with a circular hole in it. That tells me like if I hover the mouse over it and add layer mask. So I'm going to click on that and you will see next to the image, thumbnail is now a mask thumbnail. So this indicates that the layer has a layer mask applied. And this mask is currently filled with white, indicating that the entire layer is currently visible. Now we can hide parts of an image by working with grayscale values within a layer mask. So if we want to hide something completely, we can just paint over those white areas of the layer mask with a black brush. And if we want to partially hide parts of an image, we can use a gray scale value between white and black to partially hide it, which I will show you in a later video. So I'm going to make sure the mask is highlighted because note that you can select either the layer itself or the layer mask by clicking on either of those. And I'm going to activate the brush tool. That's this regular paintbrush here in the Tools panel. You can also press the B key to activate the brush tool. Now, there are certain properties of brushes that we have to go over. There is a separate chapter on working with brushes, where I go into a bit more depth for these particular settings. But basically, there's three settings that you have to keep in mind when you're working with brushes. And that is the brush size, which is the size of your cursor. So the size of the brush you'll be painting with. There is the hardness, which I will give you a short demonstration of. And there's the brush opacity, which we will be looking at a couple of videos from now. So the brush settings can be found here at the top left where you see this brush indicator. Now, the size property is something you can change here as well as the hardness below it. And you can just enter a numerical value. You can drag this slider from right to left or left to right. Or you can actually put the cursor on the word size and click and drag to alter the size of the brush. But this is not the most convenient place to alter these properties because you don't get a preview of how big your brush actually is. So let's say I grab the default size, which is 30 pixels. So that should be. What your current size is, approximately 30 pixels. Then I have to move my mouse back to the image to see if it's actually big enough to paint out what I want to hide. So let me just increase the size here to 50. Well, that's still way too small. This is a 43 megapixel image, I believe. So. This is not the best way to change these properties. So I'm just going to click out of it. And I'm going to put my cursor on the image. And then I'm going to use the square bracket keys, which you will find right, of the P key on your keyboard, on most keyboards on accorded keyboard anyway. So with the left bracket key, I can decrease the brush size. And with the right bracket key, I can increase the brush size. And I'm going to set it to about 1000 pixels. And now I want to make sure that black is my foreground color. Now, the foreground color is displayed here at the bottom left of the toolbar. White is currently my foreground color, and I can switch that around by pressing this little elbow arrow. Or you can press the X key on your keyboard to switch out black and white. It will always be black and white when you first activate this, when a layer mask is selected because masks work based on grayscale values. So now I have a black brush of adequate size and I have the layer mask selected. And that means that I can now just click and drag over the image. And wherever I click and drag will be hidden in the composite image. So I can just paint down to Michael shoes. And there's my composite. And as you can see here in the layers panel, the top half of the image of the mask is now filled with black indicating that it is invisible. And the bottom half of the image of the layer mask is still in white, meaning that it is visible. Now, there's a few handy shortcuts that you can use when working with layer masks. I can use the X key to switch back to white as the foreground color. And then I can just paint back over the layer mask and bring Michael back. So this is completely non-destructive and I can change whatever is hidden or visible at anytime by just switching out the foreground color from black to white or from white to black. And just painting over the images, over the sections of the image that I want to hide or reveal. Now, let me give you a demonstration of brush hardness, which is a concept we will be using in several lessons in this chapter. We already opened the brush properties here at the top-left, and my hardness is currently set to 50 percent, 0%. So let me change that to 50 percent. Now, if I switch the foreground color back to black using the X key and then click on the image. You'll see that there is no longer such a strong gradient as we saw before. The brush has a lot less feathering and the shape of the brush is much more defined. So let me just change that back to 0. As a demonstration, it is now set to 0. And if I click now, you will see that only the very center of the brush position is transparent and there's a very heavy feather towards its edges. Now with 50, as we saw, we have a much more defined circle. And if I set it to a 100 percent, there is no feathering at all and you just cut a circular hole in the image. If you click on the layer mask with black, that is now what size you want to use is dependent on how well-defined the lines are that you want to paint out. Now, I have this angular roof here, which would be easiest to do with a harder brush. But if you want something to blend into the background more seamlessly, you will want to use a soft airbrush. Not usually 0%, more like something between 25 and 50, but it really depends on what you're trying to blend, which I will give you some examples of later. So let me just complete the composite. So I'm just going to set the brush size to approximately 50%. I wanna make sure black as my foreground color, my size is still set to about a 1000. So now I can just click and drag over the top part of the image to complete my composite. So the workflow is pretty much always put two or more layers into one document. Apply a layer mask to the topmost layer. Just paint with a black brush to hide what you want to hide from that layer. So what you're basically doing is cutting a hole in the top layer. So you can see the bottom layer through it. 39. 5.2-Masking with selections: In this lesson, we will be looking at creating layer masks based on selections, which is of course, something we've looked at extensively in the previous chapter 4. And we will be creating a composite it using two images. This image of a cooling tower, an abandoned cooling tower in Belgium where I went, wants to take some pictures and this image of a passing plane overhead. And we're going to make it seem like this plane is flying over the cooling tower. Now, you've probably seen a lot of images like that where a plane is exactly in the center of a lookup shot. And most of these are unfortunately faked. Like it's almost impossible to get the timing right, to get the position right. So, I'm sorry to ruin this for you, but almost all of those images are faked. There are some real ones out there, and they usually show there behind the scenes. If you look on Instagram, if you're on Instagram and you're into that sort of thing, you can usually tell when it's fake or not when it's too perfect. It's usually faked afterwards in Photoshop with either an entirely different plane or a plane that was moved to the exact right position. So what we will be doing is opening these images into one Photoshop file. And just as a revision, revision exercise, I'm going to show you two ways of doing that. So I'm going to select both of these images in bridge, both five-point two. And I'm going to go into the Tools menu, go to Photoshop and choose load files into Photoshop layers. And that's going to put the airplane here at the bottom, which is not what I want. So I can always click and drag to change the order. And I'm actually going to show you two more ways of doing this. So I'm just going to close out of this image for now using Control W. And I'm just going to open both files from Photoshop. So File Open. And I'm going to select both of these images. And I'm going to click on open. Now to get them both in the same document. I'm just going to grab the move tool, shortcut V. And I'm going to click and drag the airplane into the other file. And I'm going to release the mouse holding Shift to place it in the center. Now, I also have both of them in one file. And the third way of doing this is using the Creative Cloud library that you have access to through this course. So I'm just going to open my Libraries panel and just going to find the image of the airplane. And from the library. By the way, the library is organized into groups. So in group 5 layer masks, I can find the airplane image and just click and drag it into my Photoshop file. And then double-click to confirm. So that's something you can do using Creative Cloud Libraries. Now what I want to do is isolate this airplane from its background. And there are of course, several ways of doing this. The fastest way in the current edition of Photoshop is using select subject. So I'm just going to activate the quick selection tool, which will give me this button here at the top for Select Subject. If you don't want to switch tools, you can always go into the select menu at the top and then choose subject. Now, because this airplane layer is selected, it automatically finds the airplane as the subject. With this selection active, I can click on the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers panel to just add the layer mask. And as you can see, the layer mask is in the exact shape of my selection. So you can first create a selection and then add a layer mask to basically cut out what you have selected, which is exactly what I wanted in this example. Now, there are a few minor mistakes that photoshop made here. Like the sky is still visible through parts of the wheel wells here. And what I can do to change that is just grab the brush tool and decrease its size dramatically. To make sure I can paint over these blue areas. Make sure black as my foreground color. And I can just paint over these areas to hide the blue. But this is something that isn't really necessary for this composite because I will be scaling down this airplane to such an extent that you will not be able to tell that there is still some blue in between the wheels. So let's forego making these final little corrections. You can if you want to, but you don't have to get the same end result as we're looking for. So I may want to transform this layer. I want to make it smaller. So to get into a Free Transform, I can either go into the Edit menu here at the top and choose Free Transform. Or I can press Control T or Command T on the Mac. So that's usually what I do because I am shortcut maniac. So with this layer selected and without the menu open, I can press Control T to get into a free transform. Now, note that the free transform actually applies to free transform to the entire layer, not just the map, the masked area. You see this transform frame is a lot bigger than the airplane and it encompasses the entire original image and not just the mast area, which is something you should keep in mind when you're working with larger images out of which you want to cut a much smaller part. So now I can transform the layer. And I can either just click and drag one of the corners. Or I can do that using the Alt key on Windows or the Option key on Mac to transform the layer to its center. So as long as you're holding the Alt key, you will transform the airplane to its own center instead of to the opposing corner. Whatever corner you're dragging from. And I'm going to make it about, let's say 200 pixels wide. The size should be displayed next to your mouse cursor, by the way. And then I'm going to first release the mouse key and then the Alt key. And then I can just still drag this airplane around. Or I can nudge it around using the arrow keys on my keyboard and just put it where I want it. And then I still have to confirm the transformation by clicking this little check mark at the top, pressing the enter key, double-clicking or just switching to a different tool. So I'm just going to double-click on the airplane and there it is. I can still nudge it around provided that the move tool is active. So I can just use the arrow keys on my keyboard to make sure that it's actually centered on the chimney, on the smokestack or cooling tower. I'm not sure what the word is. So and now we've created a composite where an airplane is flying in the perfect center of a lookup shot, which is something you very often see on Instagram. And this is how those images are almost universally created. 40. 5.3-Brush opacity: So far we've looked at the basics surrounding masking in Photoshop, combining two images into one document and working with brush size and brush hardness to combine two or more images together. There is another property concerning brushes that you should be familiar with if you're going to be combining images into one end result. And that is brush opacity, which we will be looking at in this lesson. And for that purpose, I am going to open the file five-point brush opacity one by just double-clicking it in Bridge. You can also obviously you go to File and open to open it from your File Explorer or Finder program. Now here I have a drone image that I shot of the island in the lake of bled, Slovenia. And what we are going to do is make this island float on the shell of a turtle. So for that purpose in the library, you will find the turtle image five-point brush opacity too, which is a PNG file indicating that the background is transparent. So I've already isolated the turtle out of its background. So I'm just going to click and drag this into my image from the library. You can also obviously do this from bridge or Explorer or Finder, as we've seen in previous videos. And dropping it in from the library puts it in free transform. So I'm just going to grab on to the edges and holding Alt, I'm going to increase its size from the middle. I'm also going to stand right outside the layer boundary and just click and drag to rotate it a bit. And as you can see, I can't really see where I want to position my turtle because the island is obstructed. Now, while you're in free transform, you can still change the layer opacity of the layer you're transforming. So we can see a bit more clearly what we want to do. So now I can see the island a bit better with an capacity of about 50 percent. So I can rotate it a bit more. Something like this. And I want like the neck to stick out of these trees at the front. Maybe increase the size a little bit, holding ALT. Okay? That looks about right. So I'm going to commit the transform by pressing the Enter key and then just increasing the opacity again to make the turtle visible again. Now what we want to do is basically cut an island sized hole in this giant turtle. And for that purpose we are going to hide the turtle. And we're going to click on the background layer to make that the active layer. And now what I want to do is create a selection of the island. And for that, again, we are going to use Select Subject. So I'm just going to go into the select menu at the top, making sure that the background layer is highlighted. And into the Select menu we are going to choose subject. And that creates a relatively accurate selection of the island depending on which version of Photoshop you're using. It didn't miss a few items though, the church spire and some of the orange rooftops on the island. So I'm just going to switch to the Quick Selection Tool, increase the brush size using the right bracket key. And I'm just going to click on these areas to add them to my selection. Okay? This looks about right for our purposes. So I am going to really visualize the turtle. Just make it visible again by clicking the eyeball. And I want you to think about what's going to happen when we add a layer mask at this point. Because as we've seen in the previous lesson, applying a layer mask leaves the selection and hides everything that is not selected. So in that case, we would actually get the reverse of what we want. So if I click Add Layer Mask now here at the bottom of the Layers panel, it's going to hide everything except the turtle where the island is sitting. So that's not what we want. It's also what we can see in the in the Mask thumbnail. By the way, everything is white except for everything that is not the island. So I'm going to, there's a few ways to fix this. Actually, one way of fixing it is just pressing Control or Command I on the Mac with the mask highlighted because this inverts the layer mask and turns everything white into black and black into white, giving us the desired end result. I'm just going to go Control Z back to this point before applying the layer mask is there's two other ways that you can fix this. So I can go into the Select menu and choose Inverse, and that inverts the selection before applying the layer mask. So now I've everything that is not the island is currently selected, giving me the desired result when I click on Apply Layer Mask. I did Control Z again and one more before inverting. So there's one handy little shortcut when applying layer masks. It's often the case that you want to apply a black layer mask instead of a white layer mask. And that is exactly what the Alt or Option key on the Mac does when you apply a layer mask. So with this selection that we started with initially and the turtle layer highlighted, I'm going to Alt, click on Apply Layer Mask, and that gives me the immediate desired result. So this requires the fewest amount of actions to get the mask that I would want. Now, I'm not quite happy with the position of the turtle. I would like to move it down a little bit more. And that presents a problem because I can grab the layer here. Once I start clicking and dragging, you will see that the mask also moves with it. So the cutouts changes basically. And I want the cutout to stay the same, but I just want to change the position of the turtle within the cutout, within the mask. Now, this is because the layer and the mask are currently linked, which is displayed by this little chain link icon between the layer and the mask thumbnail. Now if I release this by clicking the chain, clicking the link, then I can move the mask and the layer independently. So I can either click the mask and move that. Or I can click the layer and just move the layer. So now the mask stays in place and the layer is repositioned when I click and drag using the Move tool. So now it looks in about the right position. So now we finally get to talk about brush opacity. And to demonstrate that I'm going to highlight the actual layer mask and not the layer itself. And I'm going to grab my brush tool using the B key on my keyboard or just clicking it here in the toolbar, my brush size is currently set to one pixel, which is obviously a bit on the small side. So using the right bracket key, I'm going to increase its size. So using basically what we want to do is make it seem like parts of the turtle are submerged because currently it's just floating on the water. There's no shadow, There's no difference in transparency, and it doesn't really give a compelling result that way. So basically what I want to do is make the parts of the turtle that would be further underwater in this composite, a bit more transparent than the other parts to make it seem like there are some actual depth there. And for that purpose we're going to use brush opacity. Now, the brush opacity is displayed here at the top and it's currently set 100%, meaning you paint with a 100 percent white or a 100 percent black, depending on which is your foreground color. So now with a 100 percent white, nothing happens unless I paint over the island. So I'm going to put black as the foreground color. And as you can see, when I click and drag over the turtle, the entire turtle disappears. And this is also displayed in the layer mask by this big black spot here at the top. So that's not what I want. So what I'm going to show you is what happens when I lower the brush opacity, which you can also do in a few different ways. I can expand this slider and just click and drag this. I can enter a number manually. I can also just put my mouse on top of the word opacity and click and drag. But a very handy shortcut for brush opacity are the numerical keys on your keyboard. So if I press the five key, you will see that my opacity jumps to 50%. And if I press the three key, you'll see that it jumps to 30 percent. With the two key, it's 20 percent and that's about where I want to get started. So with my brush opacity set to 20, black as my foreground color. And then the layer mask here highlighted. I can just click and drag over the turtle. And it's going to incrementally increase, decrease the opacity of the turtle. So now everything is becoming a little bit transparent. So now what I'm gonna do is just click and drag over certain parts of the image again. And that's going to double up on that 20 percent. So 20 plus 20 equals 40% opacity in total. So that's going to increase the transparency of parts of the image that I go over once again. And that's what I'm gonna do for a like this shoulder part of the fin. And I'm just gonna do this a few times to really double up on the effect. And I'm going to make it seem like this part of the turtle is a bit deeper. And I'm just going to go over this edge. I'm going to take the head down a little bit. So I'm just clicking and dragging over parts of the image until I get the desired effect. And that is already looking a lot better. Now I can zoom in on the image a little bit using Alt scroll. And as you can see, the shadows of the trees aren't showing, showing through to the turtle like he can't see the turtle through the reflections. The trees which were also included in the selection. And to get around that, we are actually going to put white as the foreground color because this is currently filled with black in the mask, meaning the turtle is invisible there. So using a slightly smaller brush, white as my foreground color and an opacity of 20 percent. I'm just going to go over the reflections or the shadows of the trees. And that's going to allow me to paint through the shadows to the turtle, making the turtle partly visible, which increases the realism of our composite in most cases. So I'm just going to go over these shadows. And there we go. That is already a lot better. Now, normally, I would take a lot more time to refine this composite and really get the depth right. Add some shadow below the turtle and mix a few other additions here and there to really finish the image. But this video is about teaching you how to work with brush opacity. So with brush opacity, you can incrementally increase or decrease transparency by just painting over parts of the image that you want more or less transparent than everything else. 41. 5.4-Project airplane: In this lesson, we will be looking at a practical application of layer masks. And we are going to take a photograph of my son and we are going to make him float in the air. If you look in the exercise files for this lesson, you will find two images, five-point for project Airplane 1.45, project airplane to now I'm going to load 5.4 project Airplane one into Photoshop first by just clicking and dragging it into the program and letting it go here on the splash screen. Now, for the next step, I am going to import the second image, which is in the same folder. And I'm just going to click and drag it into Photoshop and release it on top of the background layer. Now as we know, this puts it in a Free Transform. So I'm just going to confirm that free transform because I don't actually want to transform it. And now let's take a look at these two images in the top layer, project airplane to my son team OEM is laying on this piano stool and the bottom image is just the background. So without our model here, and what we're gonna do is basically paint out the stool to make it seem like T-Mobile is just flying in the air. So with this top layer selected, I'm going to click the Add Layer Mask button here at the bottom of the Layers panel, and that adds the layer mask. So now I can start painting with black over the areas that I want to make transparent. So I'm going to select the brush tool and I'm going to increase my brush size a bit. I'm going to make sure that black is my foreground color by pressing the X key. And I want my brush opacity at a 100 percent. So I'm just going to press 0 key in this case because the brush tool is active, 0 puts the opacity at a 100. And now I can just start painting over this foreground here. And that's just going to disappear. That's going to become hidden behind the black layer mask. And first I'm just going to do a rough outline of the floor here and I'm doing the entire floor because there is a difference in lighting on the floor between both images. And I want them to look consistent. I want the Florida look consistent as far as lighting is concerned. So I'm just painting out the entire ground here from the top layer, revealing the ground of the bottom layer. Now I'm going to want to increase the hardness of my brush a bit. And as we've seen, we can do that here at the top, at the brush settings here where the size is displayed. Or I can hold the Alt key, hold the right mouse button, and then I can move my mouse down to increase the brush hardness. And then I can just grab these more exact lines around our model here. And once you get closer to these edges, you're going to want to zoom in even more and scale down your brush even more. So you can do this in detail. And I'm not going to make this pixel perfect. Usually I spend quite a bit of time adjusting and readjusting my masks to make sure that it looks realistic. Even the slightest difference in lighting or color or blend of the background can ruin the illusion and make your composite look unconvincing. So I'm just painting along these edges. And we're gonna do that again over here. These edges are a bit too, too well-defined, so I'm going to come back to those. Again, decreasing my brush size using Alt and right mouse. And I'm just painting between his fingers. Because as you can see, there's inconsistent lighting. And that's not something that you can prevent in a case like this. Like we took these photos outside, outdoors in a parking garage. And for one shot, the sun was out. And for the other shot, the sun was hidden behind some clouds. So that gives you a difference in lighting no matter what you do. So I'm just going through all of these edges and note that if I go too far, like if I remove a bit too much of his jacket here, I can always switch to white as the foreground color and just paint it back in. Easy as that. Now, for this next part, I can zoom out a bit and increase the brush size again. And I'm just going to do my best here to paint all this out. And initially, I don't mind that I'm taking out a bit too much of his collar here because I can always switch to white and just paint it back. And I'm just varying my brush size as needed. And now I'm going to decrease my brush hardness as much as I can because this top part doesn't have to be as precise like the illusion is created by having him floats above the ground basically. And this background here, it doesn't look unconvincing that this is a bit different. So I noticed that I painted out a little too much of his shoes. So I'm just going to put white as the foreground color and just paint this back in his note that if I paint over to moan with black, he will disappear. So just be mindful of that when working with layer masks like this. So using black, I'm just going to take care of these final little edges. And here I'm going to grab a very soft brush. So I'm going to lower the hardness to 0%. And I'm just going to paint over the edges of it with a black brush to kind of put in a feather to make it seem like it's a bit uneven. And there we go. There is my son floating in the air. Now to make it look a bit more realistic, we can add a shadow to Cimon. So I'm just going to click the New Layer icon here at the top of the layer, at the bottom of the Layers panel. I'm going to name this shadow by double-clicking the current name. And I'm just going to drag this down under the, under the second layer. I'm gonna grab my brush tool. I'm going to go and hit the D key to set it to the default color. So black, in this case. I'm going to increase the size of my brush and decrease the hardness to 0. And I'm going to switch it to 40% opacity by pressing the F4 key. And now I'm just going to paint under T-Mobile here, like so. And now I can still change the opacity of the layer to make it a bit more transparent. So I'm going to set this to, let's say 60 percent, something like that. So this is with the shadow added, and this is without the shadow added. And the shadow makes it a bit more convincing. It's a tattoo big so I could grab the eraser tool and just paint over some of the edge here. Maybe make a small indent just to change its shape a little bit and make it conform a bit more to what my son actually is shaped like. So this is our final composite with Tim OEM floating in the air. These floating pictures are really easy to take. You just take two photos from a tripod, one without a model and one with the model on top of a stool or some other kind of object. And you just put them on top of each other. You add a layer mass to the top layer, and you just paint with black to remove what you want to be hidden. 42. 5.5-Project dice: Now that we've looked at the essentials concerning layer masks and use them in a practical sense. With the airplane project, we are going to look at how to use several layers with several layer masks. And for that we need to have several images in one Photoshop document. And by far, the easiest way of achieving that is using Adobe Bridge, as I've demonstrated in the first video of this chapter. So I'm going to select these four images within the exercise files. All the 5.5 images, which isn't image of a friend of mine throwing a bunch of dice towards the camera, which I shot on a very wide angle lens. So I'm going to select these four images, and I'm going to go up into the Tools menu here in Adobe Bridge, go into Photoshop and then choose load files into Photoshop layers. And that's going to load all these files into Photoshop layers within a single document. These images are all the same size. There were all taken from the same position. And basically the purpose of taking the several images was that I could decide how many dice are actually in my final image. So here we have four images. And what I'm gonna do is work from the bottom up towards the top to decide which dice I actually want in the image. But for that, I'm going to move the top layer to the bottom because that is actually what I call a clean plate, which doesn't contain any of the dice at all. So I'm just going to drag this down to the bottom of the layer stack and I'm going to hide the three top layers. And I can do that in several ways. Like you can just click the eyes to hide the other layers. You can also click and drag across the eyes to hide them all. Or what you can do if you want visibility on a single layer and no other layers, you can also click on the I icon of that layer, and that's going to hide all the other layers. So here we have our clean plate and now for the second layer, project dice for, I'm going to make that visible and then decide which dice I actually want visible. Let's say I want this one right next to his hand. This one here at the front, and this one here in the middle visible. So what I'm gonna do is hide this layer behind a black layer mask. We've already seen that we can add a white layer mask by just clicking the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, which adds a white layer mask. Now if I'm holding Alt or Option on the Mac and then click this icon I had. I add a black layer mask, hiding everything in the layer. And this is a lot easier because it's a lot more convenient to paint in what I want from the final image. Instead of painting out what I don't want, which is most of the image except for the dice. One problem though, is that now I can't see the dice because they are hidden behind a black mask. So I'm going to take a look at the properties panel, which should be in your current interface. If it's not, you can always go up into the Window menu at the top and then select Properties. Now with the mask selected, you get the mask properties here. And here I have a density slider. Now if I start lowering this to about 60 percent, you'll see that the image below the layer mask actually becomes partially visible again. You will also see it filled with a dark gray or 60 percent gray here in the Layers panel. And you can always undo that by just increasing the density to a 100 again. But now I can easily see where I want to paint with white to make those dice visible in the end result. So I'm going to grab my brush tool. I'm going to press 0 to make sure that the opacity is set to a 100 percent. I'm gonna make sure white is my foreground color and I'm going to decrease my brush size and increase the brush hardness a bit so that I can easily tackle these dice. And again, for this, I was using the shortcut, holding down the Alt key, holding down the right mouse button, and just moving the mouse left and right to increase or decrease size. And from the top and the bottom to increase or decrease the hardness of the brush. If you're working on a Mac, that would be the Control key and the left mouse button, if I'm not mistaken. So now I'm just going to paint over this dye here. And this one. And this one. And then I can just increase the mask density again to a 100. And there we have the end result. Now, I want to add some more dice, so I'm going to grab the next layer, project dice three, and I'm just going to make that visible. And let's say for this one, I want this dye, this dye visible in the end result. So I'm just going to hide the layer behind a black mass by Alt or Option, clicking the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, and then set the density to about 60 percent so that I can actually see the dice. And to make things even easier, you can also hide the layer you did previously. So I'm just going to hide the second layer from the bottom so I can easily see which dice I actually want in my image. And then I'm just going to paint over this with white. And over this with white. Increase the mass density again. And there they are in my end result in if you still notice some missing edges or whatever, you can just still paint over it with white. Now that the dice are at least partially visible. Here is the image so far. So let's take a look at the final image, the top layer project dice 2. So I'm just gonna make that visible and I'm going to hide the other layers for a moment. No way. I'm going to leave those visible. And I'm going to hide this layer, bind the black layer mask Alt, clicking the Layer Mask icon, and decrease its density, and then hide the previous layer so I can see which dice I actually want. And let's say that I just want this one from this particular layer. So I'm just going to grab my brush tool, white as foreground opacity at a 100. And I'm just going to drag over this to make it visible. I'm going to increase the layer dense, the mass density again. And there I see I'm missing like a little corner from this dice die. So just paint over that with white, make these layers visible again. And here then is my end result. So I can Alt click on the icon of the bottom layer. This was my starting point and all clicking it again makes the other layers visible again. And this is then my final composite. And I create images like this all the time. Just to make it, we're just more dynamic and to decide for, to be able to decide for myself which objects I want in the final image and which I don't need. 43. 5.7-essential shortcuts: In this lesson, I want to highlight some of the more useful keyboard shortcuts when you're working with layer masks. And speaking of keyboard shortcuts, there is no keyboard shortcut by default for applying a layer mask with either black or white. And that's something that we can change ourselves. And that's exceedingly useful because layer masks are something that comes into play every time you open up Photoshop basically. So let's set up a couple sheet keyboard shortcuts for applying a black layer mask and a white layer mask. To do that, we are going to go into the Edit menu here at the top and then select Keyboard Shortcuts. The default keyboard shortcut for opening keyboard shortcuts is Control Shift Alt K. So I'm just going to click here and then we have an overview of all the menu options we have at the top of the programs we have File, Edit, Image, layer, type, et cetera. And the Apply Layer Mask functions are in the Layers menu. So I'm just going to expand this menu option. And then I'm just going to scroll down and it's quite a ways down to the layer mass category. Now reveal all is applying a white layer mask. So I'm just going to click this and then assign a keyboard shortcut to it. And my keyboard shortcut is going to be Control Shift Alt M, as you see displayed on the screen right now. Now that keyboard shortcut is already assigned by default to changing the menu options. Now, that's something that I never really do because I don't need to change what menu items are available and in which order they are. I think the program is fine as it is in that aspect. So I'm just going to overwrite that standard keyboard shortcut with this one applying a white layer mask. So when I click Hide All that is for applying a black layer mask to hide the entire layer behind a black mask. So to assign a keyboard shortcut to that, I'm just going to press Control Shift Alt K. And that is already assigned to opening up the keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. But I don't really need to be in that part of the program a lot. So and I do often need to apply a black layer mask. So I'm just going to overwrite that current keyboard shortcut with this one. So with these keyboard shortcuts entered, I'm just going to click Accept here and then click Okay. And then with this layer selected in the File five-point eight essential shortcuts, I can press Control Shift Alt M to apply a white layer mask. And I can undo that with Control Z, of course. And I can press Control Shift Alt K to apply a black layer mask, which is exceedingly useful when you're working with masks pretty often. And if you're working in Photoshop, you will be working with masks pretty often. So continuing on, some other useful keyboard shortcuts that are on by default is what we will be looking at next. And to demonstrate those, I'm just going to apply a layer mask, a white layer mask to this layer by pressing Control Shift Alt M, you can, of course, click the Layer Mask icon here at the bottom. I just want a white layer mask. And now I'm going to create a selection of my daughter here in this image. And to do that, I have the quick selection tool active, and I'm just going to click Select Subject here at the top to create an initial selection. Now, accuracy is not really important because this is just an example of some keyboard shortcuts pertaining to layer masks. So I'm just going to improve my selection a little bit by using a small brush and clicking on some of the other parts of the image. Now, let's say I want to hide my daughter from this image. I have the layer mask selected, and white is currently my foreground color, and black is my background color. So I want to fill this selection with black, for which I can use the keyboard shortcut Control Backspace or Command Backspace on the Mac. So using Control Backspace, you fill with the background color, which is currently set to black on my system. So I can Control Z to undo, and then I can press Control I to invert that layer mask. So I've turned the white within my selection into black so I can invert again to bring, to shout back here. So control, I inverts the layer mask. You can also fill with the foreground color if I just invert it again by pressing Alt Backspace. So Alt backspace fills with whatever is currently set to your foreground color Control Backspace fills with whatever is said to your background color and control. I inverts the colors, meaning it hides whatever is selected. When there's a selection active. I'm just going to press Control D to de-select, which we've often used in this and the previous chapter. And I'm going to show you what happens when I press Control I with the entire layer mask selected. So with no active selection, I have the layer mask here highlighted and I'm just going to press Control I. And that's going to invert the layer mask as you can tell. The next thing I'm going to show you is how to copy layer masks from one layer to the other. And to do that, we are going to duplicate this current layer. So I'm just going to press Control J or Command J on the Mac to duplicate the layer. And I'm just going to hide the bottom layer for now because we don't need it at the moment. So what we're gonna do is recreate our previous selection. So I'm just going to click here at the top for Select Subject since my quick selection tool is still active. And that's gonna give me the same selection as before. And I'm just going to touch that up a bit. And I'm actually, I actually have to paint out a little bit here on the side. There we go. So let's say this is my selection. And I'm just going to fill the selection with black, which is currently my background color. So I'm just going to press Control 0. Actually. The first thing we're going to want to do is invert the selections. We can actually hide the background. So I'm going to go up into the Select menu and choose inverse. You can also press Control Shift I or Command Shift I on the Mac to invert the selection, to select everything but my daughter. And now we're going to fill this selection with black to hide the background. So I'm going to press Control Backspace, command backspace on the Mac. And that gives us my isolated daughter here. Now, if I re-enable visibility on the bottom layer, That's just going to restore the image. So now we have a full, the full image again. And let's say I want to copy this layer mask to this layer mask which is already applied to the layer below, I can just hold the Alt key or Option key on the Mac and click and drag the mask from one mask to the other. And once I release, you get this confirm dialog where you can specify whether you want to replace the layer mask or not. So I'm just going to click Yes. And now I've copied the layer mask from one layer to another. Now, a situation where this can be useful and I'm just going to press Control Z for now is when you're working with adjustment layers, which we will be looking at in a future chapter. So I'm just going to click here for the adjustments panel. If you don't have this in your interface, you can always go into the Window menu and then choose adjustments. And I am going to choose the hue saturation adjustment layer here, the first icon from the middle row. And let's say I want to completely desaturate my daughter. So remove all the color. I'm just going to click and drag the saturation slider all the way to the left. But that the saturates the entire image. But if I want to apply to only my daughter, I can just hold the Alt key here and click and drag the layer mask from the middle layer into the top layer, which is the adjustment layer. I can replace the layer mask and that applies the effect only to my daughter. So those are some handy shortcuts. Another couple I'm going to show you is you can temporarily disable the layer mask by holding the Shift key and clicking the thumbnail. So that disables the layer mask and shows you the layer with the layer mask. And what you can also do is Alt click on the layer mask, which gives you the mask in grayscale values. So now we see in white what is visible in the image and in black what is invisible. So this is another handy shortcut that you can use to more accurately paint out or in what you want in your end result. 44. 5.8-Clipping masks: Another way of affecting layer visibility is by working with clipping masks instead of with layer masks. And how clipping masks works, it works is basically you limit the visibility of one layer to the position and scale of another layer. So basically you're determining that one layer is only visible where the other layer is visible in the layer below it. And to demonstrate this, I've opened up exercise file 5.9, clipping masks. And what we're gonna do in this document is draw a circle using the ellipse tool here on the left in the toolbar. So there's this group of shape tools. It's, the default is the rectangle tool. If you hold the mouse down on this group, you can select the ellipse tool. And using the ellipse tool, I can just click and drag for an ellipse and then grab shift to constrain it to a circle. And using the space bar, I can still change the position of this circle. This is something we will be practicing in the chapter on shape layers. But for now I just want this circle. Currently, my settings have determined that this circle does not have a fill, so it doesn't have an actual color. So to change that, I'm going to look up here in the Options bar, and I'm just going to click the Fill Color and select one of my previous LEA used colors. The actual color doesn't matter because we're going to be using it as a clipping mask. So for clipping masks to work the mask, so the actual shape that you want the layer to be visible in needs to be below the image layer. So I'm just going to unlock the background layer by clicking the lock icon. And I'm just going to click and drag the ellipse down in the layer stack. It's still there, it's just hidden below this image layer. And now I want to create a clipping mask. So I want to limit the visibility of the top layer to wherever this bottom layer is positioned. We can do that in three ways. We can go up into the Layer menu and then choose Create clipping mask. We can use the shortcut key Alt Control G or Option Command G on the Mac. Or what I usually do is just go into the Layers panel, hold down the Alt or Option key. And you will see this like branching arrow downwards. And now if I click, I apply the layer as a clipping mask. And you will also see this downward arrow and the thumbnail scoots over to the right a little bit to indicate that it's a clipping masks. Mask, besides what you can see in the actual document, of course. Now a few interesting things about clipping masks is that the mask or the masking will move wherever I move this ellipse. So if I select the Ellipse and have the Move Tool active, I can just click and drag and move the circle around. And that's going to affect the visibility of the top layer. But I can also do is click on the top layer and move that. And that just moves where the image is visible or which parts of the image are actually visible. So this is an interesting application because you can use this for many different things. For example, you can put and the image inside of a text or a shape, or inside of another layer. So the only downside is that it applies to single layers only. So I can only clip this layer into this bottom layer and not other layers below it unless I put them in a layer group. And I'm going to show you that just for demonstration purposes. So I'm going to release the clipping mask by again, Alt clicking in between the layers. And I'm going to go back to my shape tool, grab the Ellipse, and I'm going to draw another ellipse. Right care at the bottom. It's a smaller one away. Actually, I want to click and drag and release it. So now I have two layers and I cannot clip this image to both of them currently. So when I Alt click between the layers, it just masks it to the newest layer, which is on top of the previous one. I can move this one up and then create a clipping mask by clicking between the layers. But then this smaller circle is not taken into account. Now what I can do is select both of these shape layers and put them in a layer group, which we looked at in a previous chapter. So with this layer selected, I'm just going to press Control G to put them in a group. And I'm just going to call this group circles. And now if I Alt click in between the layers, you will see that the effect is applied to both of these layers because they are in a group. And you can't clip to several layers at once, but you can clip to layer group as I've just shown you. So applying a clipping mask is as easy as Alt clicking in between the layers. And you can always release it again by Alt clicking in between those layers, again. 45. 6.1-Content-Aware fill: In this chapter, I'm going to teach you all about the Content Aware tools in Photoshop. And Content Aware mostly allows us to remove parts of an image that we do not want there. And there are some other uses for Content Aware within Photoshop that we will also be using. But the main use of content aware is to remove unwanted objects from your photos. And as an example, I have here 6.1 Content Aware Fill. And here we see a drone taking off or actually it was landing when I took this image. And we are going to remove this drone from the image. And to do that, we are first going to need a selection around the drum. So I'm just going to grab the Lasso tool here, hotkey L. And I'm just going to click and drag a selection around the drone and it's propellers. And when I release the mouse, when I'm close to the starting point, I will have my selection. Now what we're going to be doing is filling this selection with content aware. And Content Aware will look at what is around the selection. And based on that, we'll make an estimation of what should be within the selection or what it should fill the selection with to remove the unwanted object. And there are two ways of working with content aware fill. One, which is an automated process, and a second, which gives you more control over what is actually used to sample the contents of our new selection and also gives us some options to put the result on a new separate layer, making it non-destructive. So where you are going to be looking at the expanded options, a Content-Aware Fill first. So to get there, I go into the Edit menu. And then we have here about halfway down Content Aware Fill. And when I click on Content Aware Fill, we end up in this secondary workspace. This is basically a pop-up within Photoshop. And this pop-up also gives you some selection tools. So I can add to my selection. I can use a paintbrush or the lasso tool. And obviously also we have a hand tool and zoom tool. And here we see the actual image as it currently is. And in green is where Photoshop is allowed to look for sample pixels. Now, this looks pretty good, and I can already see the end result here, which is basically fall us. But it also has some of the tree tops here highlighted. And I don't want those to be sampled. So I'm just going to paint over these to remove them from the green highlighted section. And as you can see within my mouse cursor, there's currently a minus sign. If I hold down the Alt key or the Option key, I can turn that into a plus sign and then I can add to my selection again. But I'm just going to undo that with Control Z, which thankfully also works within these pop-ups. So here I have my selection. I have the area highlighted in green, out of which I want Photoshop to sample. And then here I see my end result. So what we're going to be looking at is the sample area options first. And you can put this on auto, which bases it on a selection. We can put it out rectangular, which is just going to highlight the entire image. And we can create a custom which gives us a blank slate, and we can just paint in whatever we want. So this basically starts you off from scratch and is only really useful if you don't make an initial selection, which we did of course. So I'm not going to be looking at this further. I usually pretty much in every case make my selection. First. Here we have the Fill settings. You can use the defaults in most cases unless you see some strange results in the final image. Here. And here we have the output, which is an important setting because we can output to the current layer, making it a destructive edit. We can put it on a new layer, or we can duplicate the current layer and just put it on top of the original. Now I'm going to choose new layer, which is the default also. And I'm just going to click Okay. And now when I press Control D to de-select, here we have the edited image and as you can see, it's pretty much flawless, like you would not be able to tell that a drone use to paint flying there and the clouds are absolutely perfectly filled in. So in many cases, especially with backgrounds like this, your results are pretty much done and dusted as soon as you click OK. Now this put the result on its own layer. So if I hide the background layer, you will see that the selection is perfectly filled in with this bit of sky and the clouds. And you can also move this separate layer. But once you do, you will see some. Edges, obviously which we don't want. I just put it back where it was. By accident really is, is quite difficult than it needs to be pixel perfect. It, even if I move this result a little bit, it's going to show up in the edges. So there's also a person, a friend of mine here in the background which I would like to remove. And to do that, I again need to highlight the background layer because this person is not in the result layer from the previous edit, but in this layer here. And again, I'm just going to use the Lasso tool to draw a marquee around this person. And now I'm going to show you the second way of working with content aware fill. And this is a destructive edit. So what I should be doing actually is creating a copy of this background layer to stay consistent with my non-destructive editing, which can be difficult sometimes and sometimes a bit unnecessary like in this case, because I'm just going to close out of this image without saving it. But because I'm showing you for, for demonstration purposes, but I'm still gonna make a copy of this background layer by right-clicking it and then selecting duplicate. So I'm just going to make this edit in the duplicate layer while retaining the information in the background layer. So with this later highlighted, I can go up into the Edit menu and then choose Fill. You can also press Shift F5 or shift backspace, which I usually use to end up in the same dialogue. So just click Fill. And where it says contents, it should have content aware already highlighted. That's the default. You can choose foreground color, background, color, your own color, Content Aware a pattern history, which will reset the image. At that particular point. You can fill it with black, grey, or white, which pertains to masks mostly. But for now we just want content aware. We want color adaptation, we want normal blend mode, and we want it at a 100 percent opacity. So I'm just going to click Okay. And Photoshop is again, just going to look at the image and what is around my selection. And based on that, fill in the selection. And as I zoom out, like nobody would be able to tell that there was a person standing here. And it's not quite perfect. Like the path doesn't really line up here, but it's just a sand trail. So none of those details matter for your final result and nobody will be able to tell. And that's the whole point of editing like this. If you can remove it cleanly so that a pair of new eyes will not be able to tell that the image was edited, then you have achieved your goals as a retouched. So if somebody you've never seen the image can tell that it was edited in this way, then that's all you need to do. And Content-Aware Fill is often a tool you can use to achieve results like this. 46. 6.2-Spot healing brush: In addition to content aware fill, there is also a tool which allows you to just paint with content aware. So just click and drag over your image to remove whatever you are clicking and dragging over. And before we get started with that tool called the spot healing brush, I am going to explain something about non-destructive editing. So non-destructive editing means that you are always working flexibly and that you can always make alterations to the alterations that you are making to your image. So that basically you can always just get back to the original or look at the original for reference to. Always be able to change up what you are doing to use a different tool or to approach the edit differently without having to close out the image and opening it again. So this is what we call non-destructive editing, where you can always edit your edit at every step of the process. So for these content aware Options, these are destructive edits. So you are permanently altering the pixels of your image and once you save it, there is no going back. So to make these edit non-destructively, we often use just a copy of the background layer to do our editing and then the background layer is saved as our original. So we are going to make a copy of the background layer by pressing Control J or Command J on the Mac to duplicate the layer into its own layer. So we're going to be doing our editing in this layer and the background layer, it's going to be saved as our original. Now in this image which is drone photo which I took about a year ago of my model, Claudia. I want to basically fill in this background and remove this tree and the dirt around it. And I'm actually, while I was taking this, I was in the image without noticing. So I also want to remove myself from this image. And what you can see here is that this image has a vignette. So it has like this darker edge towards the edges of the image. And that vignette makes it more difficult to use things like the clone stamp tool or the regular healing brush, which we'll be looking at in a different video in this chapter. But it is actually very suitable for the spot healing brush, which I will activate now by pressing the J key on my keyboard. The Spot Healing Brush is up here in the toolbar, and it's this little band-aid with a dotted line coming out of it. There's also a regular healing brush, which we very rarely use, which I will also illustrate in the video about these tools. So we're just going to stick with the Spot Healing Brush. And as the name suggests, the Spot Healing Brush is a brush tool, which means that it corresponds with the shortcuts to increase or decrease its size. So currently I'm using the left and right bracket keys to change the size of the brush. And I'm going to put it at about 250 pixels. Looks good, bit smaller, 175. And now I'm just going to click and drag over my self-care to see if I am convincingly removed from the image. So I'm just going to click and drag over this part of the image. And it merely worked, but it filled in part of this tree with content. Aware. When you're using it from the Spot Healing Brush tool, you have less control over what is actually sampled from the image. But it's not a big deal because I can just click on it again and the algorithm runs again. And now we see that it is filled in and you wouldn't be able to tell that something was there in the first place. So now I'm going to start working on this tree. So I'm just going to start clicking and dragging over this area of dirt including the tree. I'm just gonna do everything in one go, release the mouse button and it's gone. And I can also fill in the section of leaves a bit better by just clicking on it again. And I'm seeing some other spots which are a bit less populated with leaves. So I can just click on those. And as you can see, the result is pretty much flawless. Like you wouldn't be able to tell that there used to be a tree here and you wouldn't be able to tell that I was standing there. Now, let's say I want to go back to a different point of the image where I am still actually in the frame. Now, if I was working destructively, so not on copy of the background layer, I would just have to go Control Z until I ended up back at the original image. But because I made a copy of the background layer, I can just add a layer mask to this top layer and then switch to my brush tool using the beak key or the tool button here, I can increase the size of my brush a bit and I can put black as the foreground color using the X key. And looking at the thumbnail, I am right here in the bottom left corner. So I can just click and drag over this and bring myself back into the image. So not then I, not that I necessarily want my, want myself in this final result, but this is one added bonus of working non-destructively, that you can always just add a mask and paint down to the original image. So the spot healing brush and I just use Control Z to undo that is a way of just being able to click and drag over your image and remove whatever it is you want to remove. It's basically the magic disappear button in Photoshop. And it works in almost any context. When you have a very and symmetrical and well-defined background, it can be a bit tricky, which we will also look at in a different video. But for things like this, just removing people from a background where you don't want them. It is absolutely fantastic and it works in almost all cases. 47. 6.3-Healing brush: Another tool that can help us remove certain parts of an image is the healing brush tool, which is different from the spot healing brush tool. The spot healing brush is basically an automated process. So you just click on a bunch of pixels and it calculates based on the surrounding pixels, what pixels it should fill in. So you have very limited control over what parts of an image or actually sampled. The regular healing brush gives you a bit more control over where the sample pixels are coming from by sampling a part of the image and then painting over what you want to remove. But it doesn't necessarily lead to better results, which we will see in this lesson. So I have here the exercise file 6.3, Healing Brush dodge JPEG. And I'm just going to get the healing brush from the category where the spot healing brush is. So I'm just going to choose the Healing Brush and to work non-destructively. I'm just going to copy the background layer by pressing Control J or Command J on the Mac. So we're going to edit in this layer and keep this layer as the original. Now, to use the Spot Healing, to use the healing brush. When you click on the image, you get this popup saying Alt click to define a source point, be used to repair the image. And that means we have to define what we want the sample to paint over this tree and the dirt here. And I just want to show you what happens when I select a spot at random, semi-random. So I'm just going to Alt click on this part of the image. And that samples this part of the image. And when I start painting, Photoshop tries to emulate the color and light of the image that I'm going to paint over. So the actual image is sampled from here, but it's lighting and color are sampled where I'm actually painting. But this doesn't really lead to good results because you can definitely see that there's a spot here where something else used to be. So I'm going to Control Z that for now. And I'm going to sample a different part of the image. So I'm just going to Alt click over here, and then I'm going to paint over this area again. And that is a slightly better result. Let you blends a bit more into the rest of the leaves. And now I'm just going to Alt click here again to sample once more. And I'm just going to paint over it again. And it's decent, but it's still not as good as what you would get with the spot healing brush tool. So what you see is that you're basically painting the texture where you sampled with the color and lighting of where you are painting. And that in my experience, leads to less reliable results as the regular Spot Healing Brush, I'm just looking at this part of the image where I'm standing and in frame, I'm just going to Alt click over here to the right of me to sample. And I'm just going to paint here. And as you can see, like the, there's too many of these light colored leaves because that's where I sample the image. So I'm just going to Alt click here again and try this once more. And it doesn't really give me any better results. So just for comparison sake, I'm going to delete this copied background by pressing the back space key. I'm going to read duplicate the layer by pressing Control J. And now I'm going to grab the spot healing brush tool just for comparison sake. So I'm just going to paint over myself here. And again. And this is a much cleaner result, like there is no distinguishing between this area and the area around it because it just removed me far more cleanly. So there are certain situations where you want a little bit more control over where Photoshop is actually getting the pixels that you're painting. But they are, those situations are a lot less frequent than just painting over them with the Spot Healing Brush Tool. 48. 6.4-Clone stamp: The Clone Stamp Tool is an old staple in Photoshop, and it essentially works by copy and pasting pixels from one part of an image to another, another part of an image. So in that sense, it's not a Content Aware Tool at all, but it is a tool that is often used to fix images and to remove parts of an image that you don't want there. And in this video, I'm first going to show you an example in which the Clone Stamp tool does not work, followed by an example in which the Clone Stamp tool does actually work when there is a more complex background that needs to be filled in instead of this sea of leaves. So the clone stamp tool is down here in the toolbar shortcut S. So if you press the S key, you will go to the clone stamp tool. And the clone stamp tool, like the previous tools we've looked at, is a brush tool with a size and a hardness property and also an opacity property here at the top. So using the square bracket keys, I can increase the size of the clone stamp, or I can hold down the Alt key and the right mouse button to increase or decrease its size and decrease or increase its hardness, whichever is relevant for the current situation. So let's say I want to remove the model from this field of leaves. I'm just going to copy the background layer by pressing Control J or Command J on the Mac. And with this tool, you also first need to sample a part of the image. So first you sample the part of the image that you want to copy and paste to a different section of the image. So I'm just going to click Okay in this dialog, and I'm just going to Alt click here in the image where the leaves appear similar to the leaves of the model would be laying on. And now I'm going to start clicking and dragging. So I'm holding the mouse down and it's difficult to tell. But the part where I Alt clicked actually contains a cursor. And that cursor is telling me which part of the image I am currently sampling. I'll show you this in another example right after this. But as you can see, the result is pretty good. The model is not visible, but that's because of how these leaves are filled in. Like you wouldn't be able to tell this part of the leaves from this part of the leaves, except based on the lighting on them. Now, it becomes a lot more tricky when you look at parts of the image like the tree over here. Because to fill in those pixels, I need to get them from somewhere based on how this tool works. So I could try sampling up here at the top by Alt clicking and then moving the mouse down here. And what I'm going to actually do is decrease the hardness of my brush. So I'm just going to hold down Alt, hold down the right mouse button. And I'm just going to move my cursor up to decrease the hardness of my brush. And now I'm going to start painting it in. And as you can see, this is going pretty well until I end up at the part where the tree used to be with this additional interface cursor. So this little plus sign above my brush. Because now I'm just painting in the tree again because I'm just copying and pasting pixels from where I used to be to where I am currently. So that just moves the tree basically. So that's not what I want in this situation. But the pixels here are not large enough like the area that I'm sampling is not large enough to paint in the entire tree. And that gives me some problems. So I'm just going to start painting it in again. And to get the rest of the tree, I have to sample it again by Alt clicking. And I'm just going to keep painting over and that is a relatively good results. It's not seamless. The vignette around the image, around the edges of the image is now copy it over here so it doesn't look very good. Now, what you want to keep track of is whether or not this button here, this checkbox here at the top, is activated or not currently, it is inactive. The default is that it is actually active. The aligned sample allows you to keep painting from the point of origin. So if I Alt, click here to take a sample and I start painting, it works as it did before. But now, if I start painting again, it just continues where I left off. So it's aligned to where I took my original sample. I'm doing this with a checkbox deactivated. I can sample again by Alt clicking. And I start painting. And then I just released the mouse. And now if I start painting again, it starts off where I took my original sample, so it doesn't keep going from where I was. It just starts again at the source, which is sometimes what you want in certain situations. So if you want a seamless blend of the pixels, you want to decrease the hardness of your brush and sample intelligently. So you want to make sure that the pixels you're sampling will actually blend in where you are painting them in. Which can be a difficult process, especially in cases like the tree. It's pretty easy when you look at the model in the center. Now, I'm going to show you a different example which is not included with the exercise files, where you would need both the Spot Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp tool. So I'm just going to my desktop here and I'm going to grab an image. And I'm going to open it in Photoshop by releasing the image in the top bar here. Now, this is a photograph of my Father, which a friend of his took with this phone. So it's not like the other photos in my exercise materials. I get my father asked me to get rid of this foliage here at the bottom. Which judging by what we've done so far, should be pretty simple. We just click and drag over it with the Spot Healing Brush. And that would be the case if this was not a brick wall because the brick wall follows a certain pattern that isn't that isn't taken into account when you are working with the spot healing brush. So I'm just going to copy the background layer as always Control J. And I'm just going to zoom in and I'm going to show you what happens when I start painting over these little twigs here at the bottom. So clicking and dragging over this part of the image works fine. It just looks at the brick around where I'm painting and fills in the brick texture where I'm painting. Now, if I go over more of this area at once. So now I've, I'm going over the mortar between the bricks and the bricks themselves. If you look here between the bricks, it fills in brick and mortar because the algorithm for content aware is not able to see that this should be mortar and not brick. So to fix this, I can actually use the clone stamp. So from the spot healing brush, I'm just going to press S to switch back to the spot, to the clone stamp. And as you can see, I still have the pixels from my previous image. So I'm just going to decrease its size to approximately the width of the mortar. And then I'm going to sample, so Alt click in between the bricks to sample the mortar. And then I'm just going to click and drag down to fill in the mortar. And I'm going to have to do that for all of this brick here to make sure that the pattern of the bricks isn't broken. So here I'm going to switch back to the spot healing brush. I'm gonna click and drag here in between the bricks and here it works out a bit better. I can take this spot. And as long as you do those spots individually, you end up with slightly better results. And here and here. And I'm going to take down this one. And here it's sampled some brick again. So I'm going to switch back to the clone stamp with S Alt click to sample, and then paint over it. And I can also do this for larger sections at once. So I'm just going to increase my brush size and the hardness a bit. And then I'm just going to Alt, click here to sample this brick. And then I can just paint over this area to remove it. And for these bricks at the bottom, I can switch back to the spot healing brush and just paint over those. So this is a pretty meticulous process where you want to switch between the tools to get the best end result. And that is often the best solution to not lean on one of the tools, but use them in combination with each other to finally get the edit that you want. 49. 6.5-Content-aware move: The Content Aware Move tool allows us to move parts of an image to another part of the image using the Content Aware process. And the Content Aware Tool basically looks at what we initially selected, then fills that selection with content aware, while also moving what we selected to a different part of the image and making it look as seamless as possible. Now, this is not always seamless. It depends on what you're sampling and where you are moving, the selection too. But it often has some pretty cool results. So I have here the exercise file 6.5, Content Aware move. And to start off, I'm just going to copy the background layer as usual to work non-destructively. The Content Aware Move Tool you will find under the spot healing brush tool. So if you hold the mouse down on the spot healing brush or the Healing Brush, if you've been following along, you can select the Content Aware Move Tool. And the Content Aware Move tool starts out as a lasso tool. So I can just click and drag a lasso around the subject, my daughter here, who is pretending to be asleep and she is very good at pretending she's asleep. But if you look here, zoomed in, this is a drone shot that I shot on my DJI maverick air to us by the way. And here I have my selection. And let's say I want to move a bit to the left. Then using this tool, I can just click and drag. And initially it seems like it's just going to copy here to this part of the image. But what it does instead is it leaves the selection highlighted and it puts the selection into a transform, into a free transform. So I can scale her or I can rotate here her and that's what I'm gonna do. So I'm just going to click and drag from one of the corners holding Shift so I can rotate her exactly 180 degrees. And then once I click OK here at the top or press the Enter key, she will be blended into this stack of leaves and where the initial selection was will be filled with content aware fill. So I'm just going to click the check mark here at the top. And there we go. And once I de-select, you will see that this area is now filled with content aware, which worked out pretty well. And now she is placed here in the image. And as you can see, it's pretty difficult to actually spot the edges of my selection. So here we have the original, which I can show you by just hiding the top layer. And here is my Edit. And you can kind of tell that there was a contour here and I could have mitigated that by making my selection slightly bigger. But this was pretty much the result that I was looking for. So Content Aware move allows you to move parts of an image, such as a person or an object, or a vehicle from one part of the image to another. And a prerequisite of that is that you can accurately select that subject, but you can use any selection tool for that purpose. So I could have selected, if I just control Z back, I could have just used the Elliptical Marquee Tool to select my daughter here. Then switch to the Content Aware Move tool. And of course, I actually have to go back a little and just remove this layer Control J to copy her. And then create my selection. Switch to the Content Aware Move tool and just click and drag her over here, like so. And I'm not going to flip or this time I'm just going to leave it as is, and then click the check mark at the top. And then this is my result, which is actually a lot better than what I had before. So that was just using one of these selection tools. You can use any of the selection tools to create your initial selection. And then just click and drag the subject to whichever part of the image you want it to end up in. 50. 6.6-Patch tool: The next tool we're looking at is going to be the Patch Tool. The Patch Tool basically functions identically to the Content Aware Move tool without actually moving the content. So basically what we do is draw a lasso selection around the subject that we want to remove from our photo. And then we drag the selection to a part of the image which is then sampled and then filled in to where our original selection was. So the patch tool is a tool you will find in the Content Aware healing group here. So I can hold the mouse down on this group and then choose the Patch Tool. Using the Patch Tool, I'm going to draw a selection around this bale of hay, hay. So I'm just going to click and drag here, drawing my Lasso selection. And once you release close to the point of origin, you will have this selection. Now, this tool works well in some cases when you have a clearly well-defined source to drag too, because it matches exactly the pixels that you are going to release the mouse over. So you want to release it on an area that looks like the surroundings of the air of the object that you want to remove. So as you can see, once I click and drag here to the right of the image, not only is the color different, but the angle is also different from the lines that are in the field over here. So once I let the Moscow, it matches the color to where the pixels originated, but the angle is wrong. So it copies the pixels and matches the color and light to the area of origin. But if you have non-contiguous lines like that, if the perspective is wrong, then it's immediately obvious that the pixels have been altered. So instead of dragging to the right, now I'm going to drag down. I'm going to try and match the lines up as well as I can. That looks okay. And then I'm going to release, I'm going to use Control D to de-select. And that looks pretty okay. But you can see that it's a non-contiguous line where the wheels of the tractor or whatever vehicle was driving there was, but it still kinda works. So the patch tool allows you to sample an area and just fill it in elsewhere, matching the texture, matching the color and lighting of the original area, which works in some cases, but in most cases, it's actually better to lean on the spot healing brush, as I stated in a previous video. So if I just switch to the Spot Healing Brush, increase its size, click and drag over this. Usually you end up with a better result as I have over here. 51. 6.7-Combining different tools: In this lesson, I want to look at a situation where none of the tools that we've previously looked at solve our problems on their own. But we need a combination of techniques to get to the best final result. And for that in the exercise files. So you will find the file 6.712 when not to use content aware. So here in Bridge, I'm just going to select both of these images. And I'm going to go into tools, Photoshop, and load files into Photoshop layers, which as I previously shown you, is the easiest way of getting two files into one Photoshop document. Now, it's going to put the layer sec in the right order. I want the picture of my daughter on the bar stool here at the top and the empty background at the bottom. The idea for this edit is to make my daughter float in this little archway here, which is constructed out of some brushes or bushes or trees. I'm not sure. Anyway. So what we want to do is get rid of this burstable to just make her float in the air. And this is also why I select, I chose to shoot two images because it's easier to just paint out the bar stool instead of removing it with Content-Aware, which is something that I'm going to show you now. So here on this layer I have the spot healing brush. And I'm just going to click and drag over these supports here, the legs of the bar stool. And as you can see, it's pretty good, but you can still see that there is like a line here and also this part of her jacket or actually this part of the bar stool now contains samples of her jacket and it's just not perfect. So if I grab the horizontal one, again, I have to drag multiple times to get to any kind of satisfactory result. And the same is going to go for this area here. I'm just going to have to click and drag a few times, at least to get the best results. And what helps me in this case is that the background is so blurry. I shot this on an 85 millimeter at 1.4. So yeah, I have a lot of background blur, but there's an easier way of doing this and also a non-destructive way of doing this by just applying a layer mask to this top layer with the layer mask button here at the bottom of the Layers panel. Grabbing my brush tool, making sure black is the foreground and that my opacity is set to a 100. And now I can just paint through this layer to the layer beneath. And I can decrease my brush hardness a bit to make it blend more into the background. And as we're getting closer to my daughter here at the top, I'm going to decrease my brush size and increase my brush hardness to get some more definition in the lines, I'm just going to up it to 100%. And now I can just paint through. And now I'm running into a bit of an issue because I'm going to have to work with a very small brush to get the rest of these areas out. So what I'm actually going to do is create a polygonal selection, several actually. So I'm just going to grab the polygon lasso tool. And I'm just going to create a selection over here. And now that I have a selection, I can only paint within that selection. So I'm gonna go back to the brush tool. And I can just paint out this area here. And this I can grab using the brush. And for this area I feel more comfortable creating a selection. So I'm just going to click on these different points. And if you're trying to select a curve with the Polygon Lasso Tool, polygonal lasso tool actually, you just need to use smaller sections because the curve is basically just a chain of smaller straight lines. So that's still relatively easy. This doesn't look very natural. My daughter apparently does not have a bum. So we're going to fix that in a bit using the clone stamp tool actually. So the idea is to get rid of all the bar stool pixels. And this is pretty easy to tackle with the brush. So I don't have to create any selections over here. We're gonna go over here. Now, these two photos were shot from a tripod with identical settings and yet there is still some lighting difference. And that's just because this is natural light. Like at some point, the sun might be obscured behind some clouds. And that gives you a difference in lighting. No matter if you have the exact same settings. Okay, that's looking pretty good for now. But before we continue, I want to show you how this would work if I tried to do it with content aware. So let's say I grab the spot healing brush and I tried to remove this bar stool. The bar stool doesn't have any of the pixels around it that I want Photoshop to sample. So if I just click and drag, I got to actually click the layer. If I just click and drag here, it's going to sample pixels out of my daughter. Mostly. Here we see some hair and parts of her jacket, so there's no information around it that I want Photoshop to fill it and so that's not going to suffice. Content Aware move is obviously not going to suffice. The clone stamp isn't going to suffice because that can't fill in the details of this archway in the back that I want to see there. So none of those tools are actually going to be good enough. I could try the patch tool, but again, it doesn't fill in any of the details of the archway, so that's just not going to be good enough. So this is why you need a, a so-called clean plate, which is this layer where you can just paint two with masking on the top layer. So now I want to fill in this part of her leg. And again, Content Aware isn't really going to cut it there because I want Photoshop to fill in pixels that look like the pixels of her pants. So the best way of doing that is to just clone them out of other areas. So I'm going to grab the clone stamp tool with S. And I'm just going to sample this part of her leg holding Alt and clicking bit further down here. And then I am going to actually this part of the image is now hidden. So what we're actually going to do is create a new layer above these two. So I'm just going to click here for a new layer. And I am, I have sample all layers enabled here at the top, meaning that I can just sample out of any layer and paint on any other layer. So now on this layer, because this is not hidden behind a layer mask, I can just paint in pixels that are exactly like the pixels of our pants. And I'm going to increase my brush hardness because we're working with tighter lines. And I'm keeping an eye on the little plus icon. That's telling me where I'm sampling from. Here. I'm going to go down a little bit. And I'm going to click here once here. It's like that. And once you zoom out, like if you zoom in, you might see that this has been edited extensively, but zoomed out. If you post this on social media, nobody is going to notice, which is the whole point of editing like this. So here we have an example where you want to use a combination of content where tools, masking and the clone stamp tool, for example, to get to your final composite. So that's something that you should keep in mind. Usually there is not a single solution to a problem that you might run into, but you have to lean on several tools in Photoshop to get the best results. 52. 6.8-Content-Aware scale: In this lesson, we will be looking at the content aware scale function in Photoshop, which can be useful in certain situations. Content aware scale allows you to increase or decrease the size of a layer. And it uses a Content Aware process to maintain certain details of a layer without compromising the image. So as an example, I have here 6.8 Content Aware Scale. And let's say I want to turn this image from a landscape orientation into a portrait orientation. And obviously I can just crop the image, but that's also going to remove part of the image that I would like to keep in a frame, which is the walls here on the side like this little alleyway where I shot this image is something that we want to remain visible in the end result. Now I shot this in landscape mode when I was still shooting mostly in landscape mode. Nowadays, I shoot mostly in portrait. Actually, I pretty much shoot everything in portrait nowadays except the videos that I create, which I'll give you some, some, some demonstrations of later in this course. So let's say I wanted to turn this image into a portrait. A portrait, portrait image, while keeping most of the image in frame. Because again, once I select the crop tool and I start cropping it out, I'm going to lose all of these walls here on the side. So that's not something I want to do. Now. I could tried to transform the layer just using a free transform. So for that, I'm going to unlock the layer by clicking the lock icon in the Layers panel. And I'm going to press Control T or Command T on the Mac, which gives me these transform controls. Now I can just click and drag here and that's going to proportionately scale the image down. That's not what I want. I want the image to transform disproportionately. But obviously that's going to distort the image as you will see. So I'm going to hold down Shift to constrain the proportions are unconstrained the proportions. And I'm going to also hold Alt to scale towards the middle of the image, holding Alt and Shift. And now I'm going to drag one of these transform handles. And as you can see, this does not lead to great results. I still have the walls and the foreground here, but my friend Michael is becoming completely distorted. So this doesn't suit my purposes at all. Transforming without constraining proportions is almost never a good idea because it just distorts the image. So that's something you want to be mindful of. And that's also why the default Photoshop behavior is to constrain the proportions. So you don't for pixel layers anyway. So you don't distort the images. Now, there is a way of doing this and it's pretty easy to find with the layer unlocked. I'm going into the Edit menu here at the top and then select Content Aware Scale. And basically, what we're doing when we are scaling a layer like this is discarding rows and columns of pixels, like they are just discarded. They're thrown away, and you can't really get them back in a non-destructive way. So this is a destructive transform. And content aware is also a destructive transform. But what Content-Aware does is it looks at the image and it looks for details that should be preserved like a person or a vehicle, a subject of any kind. And it starts discarding other columns of pixels first before it starts removing columns of pixels from the actual subject of the image. So once I start dragging this down with, again holding Shift and Alt to transform proportionately towards the center of the image. You can see that the walls are closing in, but Michael is mostly left on transformed or a lot less transformed, a lot less warped then everything around him. So now I'm just going to close this end a little bit. And I'm actually just going to exaggerate the effect. As you can see, Michael is still completely untouched and well, almost completely untouched. I can see he's losing part of his arm. But the face and the mask are almost entirely the same as when we started. His leg is being transformed with a little bit. And as you can see, the mask is actually the last thing that Photoshop starts distorting. So now I can get to something like this and then confirm my transform. And now I have a portrait image which I can crop using the crop tool, which I've activated using the C button. And I can just Alt, drag this towards the middle. And there we have it. So there is a way of scaling layers like this non-destructively. And you can, without cropping the image when there are details on the side of an image that you want to retain. So there is a way of doing it, and it's called Content Aware Scale. And it doesn't work in nearly all circumstances, but it does work in this one. 53. 7.1-Brightness/contrast: In this chapter we will be looking at adjustment layers. And adjustment layers are tools that we can use to non-destructively change lighting, color, and other aspects of our images. And we used to have to make those edits destructively so we could copy the background layer, for example, and then go into the Image menu and then look at the adjustments. And here you have brightness contrast levels, curves, exposure, and a whole bunch of other ones. But these are destructive edits. So these permanently changed the lighting and color values of our pixels. So these are changes that we later can not change again. So once you commit those changes by pressing OK and the dialogue, they are committed. And you can Control Z to undo them, but you cannot edit them further. And you cannot also locally decide where you want those changes to take effect. And that is something that adjustment layers do, let us do. So I am going to show you where we can find these adjustments. I have them here on the right in the adjustments panel. If you don't have those in your interface, you can always go into the Window menu and then choose adjustments to bring them up over here. Now, we're not going to look at all of these in as much detail, but we're going to look at the most important one's a bit more extensively am looking at the less practical ones in some summary videos. So the first one we're going to look at is brightness contrast, just as an example of what adjustment layers can actually do. So I'm going to click here on brightness contrast. And what that does is it creates a new layer above the background layer. Now. And this new layer also comes with its own layer mask, which is important to remember for later. The properties panel then shows us some controls for the brightness and contrast of the image, which as the name, which is what the name of the adjustment layer would suggest. So here I have a brightness control, a contrast control, a checkbox to use legacy, which I will show you in a bit, and an auto function which automatically changes the brightness and contrast of the image to what Photoshop thinks they should be. So here if I start changing the brightness, you will see that the image overall becomes brighter. And if I lower the brightness, the image overall becomes darker. So all values Our changed uniformly. When I reset this to the default. So I'm just going to put it back at 0 and I start changing the contrast. The bright parts of the image become brighter and the dark parts of the image become darker to create more contrast. And once I lower the contrast, you will see that the image flattens out and the dark and the light areas of the image are more uniform. Now, as I said, there's also this legacy checkbox here, basically that uses the old version of brightness and contrast, which is a lot more flat. So if I increase the brightness now you will see that the eye, it looks a lot more uniform and the image is just made a bit lighter. And once I switch this to dragging to the left, you will see that the image overall becomes darker, but you lose a lot more detail in both the shadows and the highlights when you use the legacy format. And the contrast also has much less visually pleasing results in general. So don't use this check box unless you are using a very old document that uses this older version of brightness contrast. Now, I also want to show you the auto function here. There is this auto button here at the top left of the properties panel. And by the way, I always have my Properties panel here in the secondary column because then I can always add another adjustment without having to click back into the Properties panel. Because the default is actually that you have the adjustment and the Properties panel in one panel group. But if I add an adjustment, I switched to the Properties panel and then I have to switch back to this panel to add another adjustment. And use. Very often you're working with several adjustment layers in one document. So I prefer to add these in different panel groups as such. So once I click the Auto button, photoshop estimates what the contrast and brightness should be in the image. And this overall gives me a much more appealing image. So if I hide this layer by clicking the I in the Layers icon, this is my original and this is now my edit. And my subject is a lot better highlighted. And overall, I'd say this image is more pleasing than the original. Because I'm working with an adjustment layer. There are still several ways that I can change how this layer affects the layer below it. For example, I can decrease the opacity of this layer to tone down the effect. So I can just grab the opacity scrubby slider here and I can decrease it to 50 percent for example. And now it's basically like a filter that is 50 percent transparent. So if I hide the layer now, you'll see that the result is a lot more subtle. The walls are pop a bit more. The model. My fiance here also pops a bit more. So you have a lot of control over the strength of the effect. Let's say snap. That's not the only thing we can do because this layer comes with its own layer mask. And as we've seen in Chapter 5, having a layer mask allows me to just grab the brush tool, increase, increase the brush size and lower its hardness. And let's say I want the ceiling to be, to not be influenced by this effect. I'm just going to put black as my foreground color. Make sure that my brush opacity here at the top is set to a 100 percent. And then I can just paint through the adjustment. And as you can see in the layers panel, the ceiling is now removed from the adjustment. And if I just control Z that you can see that I get some detail back in the roof here. Because upping the contrast made it a bit darker. So that's something you can easily do using adjustment layers. And we will be using this technique extensively throughout the whole chapter, which is why we always look at masks first and then look at adjustment layers in Photoshop. So you can locally decide which parts of the image you want to be affected by these adjustment layers. And that doesn't just go for the brightness contrasts which we're looking at now. But that goes for every single one of these. 54. 7.2-Levels: The second adjustment layer we will be looking at is levels. And levels is found here as the second icon in the top row of the adjustment layers. And levels is also an adjustment you will find under the image and then Adjustments menu. But as I said in the previous lesson, these are destructive edits that permanently alter the image and that's not something I want. So that's why we are using adjustment layers. So I'm just going to click on the Levels adjustment. And that's going to create a new layer above the background layer with a Layer Mask already attached to it. And here in the properties panel we are looking at a histogram of the current image. And a histogram is basically a graph representation of our images light values. So here we see a lot of darker areas in the image because the left of the histogram is raised. Most of the image is here in the midtones. And then again, we have some lighter pixels which are blown out to white. So the left most area of the graph, or the black levels, these are the midtones and the right is reserved for the lighter tones or the white tones of the image. And these sliders give us control over which pixels are, which light values, which luminance values are mapped to, either black or white. So if I raise the number of black here, so I can just grab the black slider and drag it to the right. More of these pixels, like all of the pixels on the left of this slider, are going to be mapped to black, giving us more black pixels in the image. So a darker image overall. I'm just going to reset that by dragging it back to the left. And if I drag the white slider to the left, that's going to map more of the lighter pixels to white. So as I drag this further, you'll see that more of the lighter pixels are being blown out to completely white. So that's basically how this adjustment works. I also have a midtone slider, and basically this works in the sense that whichever side you give more room, we'll have more of those pixels in the image. So if I drag it to the right, I darken the image because I map more of the pixels of the image to black. And conversely, if I drag it to the left, it will also increase the brightness of the image overall. And notice that as I drag the slider on the right, so the white slider, the shadows of the image are mostly left undisturbed. If I drag this one and give white more room, you will see that the darker areas of the image also become brighter. So that's something to keep in mind. Just going to reset this. Here at the bottom we have the output levels. Basically every image contains 0 to 255 levels of brightness. And we can determine the number of levels by dragging these sliders. And you will see that if I drag the black slider to the right, the image becomes brighter overall. And if I drag the right slider to the left, the image becomes darker overall. This is not something you often use. Pretty often you just use this to create a bit more contrast in your image. So dark and the blacks a little race the highlights by dragging these sliders around until you get the desired results. So in this case, I would darken the shadows a little bit and I want to brighten the highlights a little bit just for a little more contrast. Now, there are also ways of having Photoshop do this automatically, because here we have these eye droppers. This is the black point, this is the great point, and this is the white point. So let's say I want to properly correct this image. What I'm gonna do is look for either a point that I know is fully black or fully white. So I'm just going to click on the white eyedropper here. And I'm just going to click on an area of the image that I know to be completely white. And that automatically corrects the values of the levels adjustment to determine that this is white. So this is now the rightmost point on the histogram. Now the same I can do for black. I can just click the black eye dropper here and click on the silhouette of my girlfriend here. And you get basically the same adjustment because this is already completely black and this is completely white. Now, one additional feature of this adjustment is that you can also manage the car channels individually. So currently we are altering the RGB channels of the image together. But we can expand this drop-down and then choose either the red, green, or blue. And you can use these to correct for our color cast or to create a color cast of your own. So let's say I want to give the reds in the image a bit of a boost, I'm just going to click red. And this is then a representation of all the red values in the image. And if I increase the black point, I'm basically removing red from the image. So as you can see, it becomes a lot more bluish purple. If I increase the red values by the number of red values by dragging the right point to the left, you'll see that the purples and the magenta start to pop a lot more because more red is available. And I'm also going to grab the blue. And I'm also going to give those a little bit of a boost by clicking the white point and dragging it to the left. And this overall makes the image pop a bit more. But now I see that the face of the model is visible and that detracts from the overall effect. So I'm going to go back into the RGB. And now I'm just going to darken the blacks a bit by dragging the black point to the right. Then I'm going to look at my before and after. So I'm just going to disable this layer by clicking the icon here. So this is before and this is after. And this is a much more saturated, much more vibrant version of the image that I'm quite happy with. So this is something that you can use the levels adjustment for. 55. 7.3-Curves: Next on our list is the curves adjustment, which is another adjustment you can use to control the lighting of an image, the brightness of an image really. So I'm going to look at the third icon of the top row here, this S curve. And I'm just going to click that to add it to my image. And again, that just adds an adjustment layer to the image above the background layer, including a layer mask, which we will be looking at in this video as well. And just like the levels adjustment, the curves adjustment gives us a visual representation of all the brightness values of our image. And here we see a lot of black, a lot of darker sections of the image. Some highlights in the mid-tones, and few, very few lighter colored pixels. So this basically, if you can read a histogram, you can tell whether in an image is very bright or very dark based on where these peaks are, these are mostly in the black. So this naturally is a darker image. And again, here we have these black and white sliders at the bottom, which I can grab to map more of the image to black or white. So if I just click and drag the black point, you will see that the darkness of the image increases overall. And if I drag the white point to the left, more of the lighter pixels start being mapped to white. So I can just take down the brightness a little bit by grabbing this black point and shifting it to the right. And basically now what we can do is add anchor points to this diagonal line to make it a curve. And that basically allows us to alter the contrast of the image so we can raise the highlights, we can darken the shadows, or we can raise the whites of it more to change the brightness of the image. Let's say I'm just going to grab the middle here and I'm going to click and drag that up to the left. And that's just going to brighten this part of the image. So only these luminance values are altered now by this adjustment layer. And then I can choose to click and drag this section down to darken those parts of the highlights to bring some more detail back from the clouds. Now, I'm going to expand the black levels again a bit by clicking and dragging this to the left, giving me back my silhouette. Basically, this is in the mountains in Colombia. Well, mountains, it's more of a jungle, slash beach, air slash mountains. Colombia is pretty weird like that. But here again, we have the ability to pick a black level, a gray level, or a white level. So let's say, I know that this part of the sky is blown to completely white. Then I can click that part of the image and it adjusts the image according to those values. Now, I'm not necessarily happy with that adjustment, so I'm just going to undo that. I think this version of the image is a bit more dramatic. And I can do the same for the black. So I can just pick this black level Eyedropper and click this part of the image to darken it up again. But again, I was happier with my manual version, so I'm just going to go back. There's just a little bit more contrast here. You can still make out my silhouette and the sky has still a lot of detail. So I'm just going to leave it at that. Now. I can also take control of the individual red, green, and blue channels here. So let's say I'm just gonna go to red. And I'm just going to fill in a little bit of red by clicking the middle and clicking and dragging this up. And let's say, I don't want that adjustment to expand into the pool. Like, let's say I only want the sky, the mountains, my silhouette to be affected by this adjustment. Now I'm just going to pick up the brush tool here. Shortcut B, I'm going to make sure black is my foreground color. And I'm going to decrease my brush size a little bit so I can accurately paint over the pool. So I'm just going to click and drag here. And as you can see, I'm painting through the adjustment to the image layer below. And then this would be my final image. I could still tone down this effect a little bit by grabbing the opacity and dropping it. But I'm quite happy with how dramatic this looks. So I'm just going to leave it at that. 56. 7.4-Exposure: The next adjustment we're looking at is the exposure adjustment. And the exposure adjustment has limited settings that you can tweak and limited use in a practical sense. So we can be pretty brief about it. It is the fourth adjustment from the top row. So when I click this icon, it's going to add the adjustment above the background layer with a Layer Mask as all other adjustment layers. And in the properties panel, we now have an exposure control, an offset control, and a gamma correction control. Now, the exposure control is basically a pretty dumb process, which makes the image brighter overall or darker overall. So if I drag this to the right, It's going to brighten up the image and dragging it to the left. We'll darken up the image without taking into account any contrast or other luminance values of the image. The offset basically increases or decreases the contrast. And increasing this value decreases the contrast and makes the image lighter overall and decreasing the offset increases the contrast, making the image darker overall. The gamma correction has to do with the fact that cameras interpret images differently than our eyeballs do basically, which is a pretty technical explanation that would need in-depth video of its own. Basically, it darkens up or brightens up the image depending on how much correction you enter. Also, this adjustment has the standard eye droppers for the dark values, the black values, the gray values, and white values. So you can use those to automatically correct the image according to your own preferences. Now, we've worked with several adjustments up until now. And because this is a shorter video, I'm just going to explain some of the things that we see at the bottom of this panel. The first icon here is a way to clip the layer 2, only the layer below it. So let's say that we have several layers in this image in this document. And I want this adjustment to only affect the layer below it. Then you can use this icon to clip the layer to the layer below, making it only affect the layer directly below it. And you can also release this by pressing this icon again, click in between the layers or pressing Control Alt G. Then we have the possibility to basically hide the layer temporarily by holding the mouse down on this I icon. So I can hold the mouse down on this and it hides the layer temporarily. We can also reset the adjustments settings by clicking this circular arrow icon. And we can turn off the visibility of the layer using this icon here. And we can also remove the layer with this garbage bin icon at the bottom right. This actually gives you a confirm. So yeah, uh, confirm dialog. So you have to click yes. I usually use the backspace key to delete a layer, so I'll just click on the layer thumbnail, press backspace and that deletes it as well. And one more thing about these adjustments. You can use the same shortcuts you use for layer masks, namely the Alt or Option key and Shift to determine to alter the visibility of the mask. Basically because this layer comes with a layer mask. So let's say I'm just going to paint part of the image out with black, which isn't visible currently because I have no adjustments settings. So let me just go in here and adjust the exposure a little, increasing it slightly. So now we see that the bottom of the layer is masked out with black. Now clicking the shift, clicking the Mask thumbnail using the Shift key, I can disable the layer mask temporarily. And you can see that by this red x that appears over the mask. And you can also click on the mask to make the mask visible only. So now I have the mask visible and I can determine which areas still need to be masked out. Like if you missed a spot within this black. When you see a white spot within a black mask, you can still correct that. And Alt clicking on the mask thumbnail again disables that function. 57. 7.5-Vibrance: Now that we've looked at the adjustments that concern lighting in our photographs, we are going to look at the adjustments that pertain to color, starting with the vibrance adjustment, which is the last icon at the top row of adjustment layers. So clicking this icon enables the adjustment and it adds it to the layer stack along with a Layer Mask. Now, vibrance allows us to add saturation to unsaturated areas of an image while leaving colors that are already saturated pretty much alone. So looking at this image, we can see that the reds and oranges are already pretty saturated. But the ambient lighting of the scene, which was blue when I was here to photograph, this is pretty diminished, comparatively speaking. So let's see what happens when we start increasing the vibrance. You can see that the reds do become a bit more saturated, but the image gets a blue color cast from the overcast clouds and the street light, which is just out of frame. So the reds are mostly left alone and do not get as much saturation as the areas of the image which are unsaturated. And to illustrate this a bit further, I'm going to just flatly increase the saturation across the entire image by also increasing the saturation slider, which is below the vibrant slider. So I'm just going to up the saturation. And that's going to uniformly increase the image's saturation. And as you can see, there's hardly any difference between how the sky ended up looking by increasing the vibrance. But the reds are now completely blown out and the orange also becomes a bit unpleasant from the flying sparks. So in this case, it makes a lot more sense to increase the vibrance, which kind of adds a bit of saturation to the reds, but mostly to the surrounding Blues, which was the ambient lighting situation at the scene. Now, Let's say I want to desaturate the reds in the image a bit further. Because we are working with adjustment layers which come with their own layer masks. I can just grab the brush tool and then decrease the brush size a bit. Make sure that black is set to my foreground color. And then I can decrease the brush opacity to 40 percent by just pressing the F4 button on my keyboard. And then I can paint over the reds. And you'll see this little gray spots showing up in the mask indicating that I have partial transparency here. And then I can also tackle the reds over here and the oranges of the main stream of light, let's say. And the other shoe. So undoing those changes, Control Z, Control Shift C to go forward again. So you kind of D saturate the reds a bit further while keeping the added saturation in the sky and in the tiles and the water here on the corner. So this is one way of leaving saturated colors mostly alone while adding saturation to colors that do not have a lot of saturation on their own. 58. 7.6-Hue/saturation: Another adjustment that gives us control over the colors of our image is the hue saturation adjustment layer, which is the first icon from the middle row here. So clicking this layer adds the adjustment layer to my layer stack hue saturation here along with a Layer Mask. And before we actually perform our edit, which is going to be changing the color of only these traffic cones of this art installation. I'm just going to show you what all these buttons do in this dialogue box. So the hue basically shifts all the colors beneath it, which aren't masks, to a different color. So it basically shifts all the colors along the color wheel to change the colors that you want to influence. And also the colors that you don't want to influence because it influences all of the colors all at once. The saturation manages the saturation of the image. And if I drag this all the way to the right, you get these really blown out colors and dragging it all the way to the left or removes all color from the image. Then we have the lightness, which increases the lightness of the image or decreases it when we drag it to the left. We also have a checkbox here for colorize, which basically turns the image into black and white first and then adds a hue to it. So I can hear, find a hue that I would like and then paint out whatever I don't want colored blue for example. This is what they use to actually colorize black and white images, at least until Photoshop improves the neural filters, which I will talk about in a, in one of the next chapters. To automatically add color to an image. But the colorized checkbox here is usually used to actually add color to a black and white image. We also have a color selection here, which I'm going to discuss in the next video. Basically, the first thing I want to show you as a practical exercise here is how we can limit the adjustment to the red traffic cones only. For that purpose, I'm just going to delete the adjustment layer for now. I'm just going to click it and press backspace. And we are going to start by making a selection of all these traffic cones, which is the subject of this photo. So enabling one of the selection tools here, or going into Select and then Select Subject. Photoshop is going to look at the image and determine what the main subject of the images. And it got it down pretty well. There's some parts of the sky selected here which wasn't necessary. This part of the building in the background wasn't necessary. But we can work with that after we add our adjustment. And I'm also seeing some areas that should have been selected but aren't. But we can correct that later after we add the adjustment layer. So now that we have this selection, I'm going to add the adjustment layer by just clicking on it in the Adjustment Layers panel. And here we see our layer mask. And again, Alt or Option clicking the mask shows you how the mask actually looks. So now what we can do is click on the adjustment here. And now I can just start shifting the hue. And I'm going to look for this like darker side of magenta, cyan here actually. And as you can see, the traffic cones change color, but also some of the background elements. And some of the traffic cones don't change color, which is something we need to fix. So what I'm gonna do is grab my brush tool and I'm going to make sure the mask of the layer is selected. I'm going to make sure that my foreground color is set to black and my opacity, my brush opacity is set to a 100. And then I can just paint over the areas that I do not want to be affected by this color adjustment. And that's pretty much it. Decreasing my brush size. I can also tackle these smaller areas, but I'm not going to sweat the details too much right now. So I'm just going to paint over these areas which were also affected by the adjustment. And here we have some traffic cones which should have been colored blue but aren't because they weren't part of my selection. So I'm going to switch the foreground color to white using the X key or this elbow arrow at the bottom left of the toolbar. And then I can just paint over these traffic cones to add the blue color cast to them. And I'm also gonna do that over here. This obviously wasn't part of my selection, so I'm just going to paint over this to add the color cast. And this little edge over here, this entire traffic cone. There we go. And just painting over it. And so painting over it actually applies the blue to it. Because now it's part of the white area of my Layer Mask. And like I said, I'm not going to sweat the details too much. I can zoom in and do this on a pixel by pixel basis. This is just a quick and dirty example of what you can do with this adjustment. There we go. I painted out too much, so I'm just going to paint this back along the edge here. What else are we missing? Okay, there are some parts of the sky here at the top that I don't want. And what I could actually do is create a selection with the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Like so. And going back to the brush tool, I white, black as my foreground actually. And now I can only paint within my selection. So that speeds up the work a little bit. Make sure that it's as accurate as can be. And again, for this area, I can just press L for the last row. Create my selection. Click on the point of origin. Use B to go back to my brush tool and use black to paint in the color of the sky. And I could do that for every part of the image which is still not included or is included in the adjustment where while I don't want it to be. So just closing out this selection B, and I can just paint out the color. So this is one application of the hue saturation adjustment layer. It allows you to edit the colors of a part of the image as well, by just creating a selection and then masking out what you don't want to be influenced by the adjustment layer. 59. 7.7-Hue/saturation-2: In the previous lesson, we looked at using hue saturation adjustments based on selections so we could alter parts of an image, but there is another way of selectively altering colors with this adjustment that I'm going to show you in this video. So here I have 7.7 hue saturation to jot dot JPEG, which is essentially the same file as the previous lesson. And again, I'm just going to add a hue saturation adjustment layer by clicking the first icon of the middle row here in the adjustments panel. We get the same adjustment layer as in the previous video. And in this video I'm going to show you how to selectively edit color. So here we have these red slash orange traffic cones, and I want to alter their color and their color alone. So I'm going to go into this drop down where it says Master. And this allows you to choose which parts of which colors of the image you would like to influence, master influences all of them. Then we have the reds, the yellows, the greens, the cyan, which is in between green and blue, the blues and the magenta. Magenta, or then again between the blues and the reds, which you can also see in these colored bars. We go from red to yellow to green to cyan to blue to magenta, and back to red. Looking at this line by the way where it says whew, it starts at read and it ends at red again. And that's because this is a one-dimensional representation of a two-dimensional color wheel. So we're here, we have the same colors. If I drag all the way to the left as we do when I drag all the way to the right. So this is basically just a representation of the color wheel. So let's say I only want to edit the reds of this image. I'm just going to click where it says Master, choose the reds. And then I can click and drag the hue. And what you'll see is that the sky and the floor are completely unaffected. So I can again find this cyan that I wanted. And there are some problems in the image with this background here on the right and on the left. If I go back to the original by hiding the adjustment layer, you will see that this building has some orange unit. The leaves on the trees have some orange in it because it's autumn. And here there's also some structure here on the left, which contains some orange. And those are also affected by changing the reds. Because oranges next to read by the white skin tones are almost always in the orange spectrum. No matter how light or dark a skin is, it is usually within the reds that you will find those. So let's say I want to remove those from the Edit. Then I'm just going to grab my brush tool with an opacity of a 100 percent and black as my foreground color. And then with a slightly bigger brush than I had, I can just paint over these areas to remove them from the edited colors. And here I'm just going to zoom in a bit. Like so. If not happy, how the cyan as applied, I can always just change the values. Here. I can always just play with the hue slider a little bit to get a better result. Now, another way of doing this is with the on Image Adjustment tool, which I'm going to show you now. So I'm just going to go back to the default settings of the adjustment and note that the mask is not reset when you go back to the defaults. So instead of choosing a color from the drop-down, I'm just going to click on this icon here, this hand with an extended finger. Now, when I put the cursor, which is now an eyedropper on a section of the image and start clicking and dragging. You will see that I'm affecting the saturation of those colors and those colors alone. I'm just going to Control Z that holding the Control key or the Command key on Mac, I can click and drag to alter the hue of these items. So now I'm changing the hue. And I can find whichever cue I would like. And I can also grab this over here to change that a bit so you can control drag or Command drag on the Mac to alter specific colors. If you're having trouble choosing which of the colors you should choose from the drop-down. 60. 7.8-Color Balance: In this lesson, we will be looking at the color balance adjustment layer, which as its name suggests, allows us to change the balance of colors in our image in a few interesting ways. So that's going to be the second adjustment from the middle row, these scales here, color balance, I'm just going to click that and that's going to add the adjustment to my layer stack. And here with this adjustment, we have the option to change the mix of colors in either the shadows, the mid tones, or the highlights, allowing us to add a color cast to any of those. So the shadows, mid tones and highlights. And I'm just going to show you how that works with the default settings and set the mid-tones currently. And if I click and drag this top slider into the cyan, you will see that it adds a cyan color cast. So it's basically removing some red and adding some cyan. And undoing that with Control Z. I can do the same for magenta and green. So I can increase the greens while removing some of that magenta in the image, adding a green color cast. And I can do the same for the yellows and the blues. So increasing the yellows decreases the blues and increasing the blues decreases the yellows. Adding a color cast to your image. You can achieve some interesting results with this by switching between these different tone range of tonal ranges. So shadows, mid tones and highlights, and adding different colors to each of them. So I'm just going to switch to the shadows and I'm going to add a little bit of cyan to the shadow. So I'm just going to click and drag this to the left set to add a bit of cyan. And already I feel like this makes my image a bit more dramatic. And I'm just going to show you that by hiding this adjustment here in the layer stack. So yeah, that's looking pretty good so far. I'm now going to go into the mid-tones and add a little bit of magenta. Giving me a bit more contrast here in the pool, which is the spring of the patina river in the Croatian mountains. And now I'm going to go into the highlights. And I'm just going to add a little bit of yellow. So put blue at minus 20 basically. And that's going to be my edit. I think this looks a lot better than what I started with. So I'm just going to hide the adjustment to show you the before. And this is the after. And it's seems a lot sharper, a bit more contrasty, the colors pop a little bit more. So this is how you can use this adjustment. And it's basically kind of like the HSL panel in Lightroom. Or you can just add different colors to different tonal ranges of the image. And it gives you a lot of control over the look and feel of the image. It basically acts as an Instagram filter without giving you too much control over the actual brightness of the image and the tonal ranges that pertain to brightness. But at least where the colors are concerned, you have a lot of control over how they actually translate into a final image. 61. 7.9-Black and white: The next adjustment we will be looking at is the black and white adjustment layer, which allows us to convert our images into black and white. And obviously, we've seen another way earlier to create a black and white image. And that is by adding a hue saturation adjustment layer and then just dropping down the saturation to minus 100. But the black and white adjustment layer gives us a lot more control over how black or how white colors in the image will appear. So I'm just going to delete the hue saturation layer. And here I have this photo of these traffic cone art installation. And I'm just going to add the black and white adjustment layer, which is the third icon from the middle row. And that adds the black and white adjustment layer. And as you can see, the image immediately appears black and white. Now, we can determine how black or how white colors in the image appear by playing with the sliders. They all have a default value based on the luminance of the image and the colors. So what I can do here is actually increase the brightness of the reds. And as you can see, all the red pixels in the image, or all the red pixels below the adjustment layer shift to a lighter luminance. I can also alter the yellows. And because these traffic cones are actually orange, you will see that whether I alter the reds or the yellows, both will affect the traffic cones because orange is a mix of yellow and red. So you will see that the traffic cones are also affected when I change the yellow value of the image. Now, the image contains maybe a few pixels of grain, but nothing much. So I can just click and drag and nothing will happen because there are no green color values. The cyan will affect the sky. So I can darken up the sky by just dragging this slider to the left. The blues will also affect the sky because it next to cyan, there's also some blue in there. And then the magenta has effects like the edges of the traffic cone because they're backlit by this blue sky. So now I have a much more dramatic image than we originally started with when I applied the black and white adjustment layer. And I can show you the before and after by just clicking the reset icon here in the properties panel. This is what we started with. And using Control Z, I can go back. Now. Let's, I still would like to darken up the ends of the traffic cones, the top of the traffic cones, I can just click and drag the yellow slider a bit further into the darker tones. And there we go. So let me just check the before and after. This is my before, and then this is my after. So this is what you can use this adjustment for. You have a great amount of control over the contrast of the colors of the image by clicking and dragging these sliders. Now, you can also use this adjustment layer to apply a tint to an image. So if I click this checkbox here for tint, it's going to add this Instagram like color filter. And I can click this color swatch here and then I can actually choose the color that I want to apply. Let's say I want a bit of a blue cast in it. I can just click OK. And you can also just click this check mark again to disable it. And when you enable it again, it's going to remember the tint that you set before. So that's pretty useful. So this is how you work with black and white images in Photoshop nowadays, because this way of working, this workflow really gives you the greatest amount of control over how black and white images appear in the end result. 62. 7.10-Photo filter: Up next is the photo filter adjustment layer, and it does exactly what its name suggests. We can apply a filter to our images based on a certain color. So looking at this image, 7, 10 photo filter, I'm just going to look here at the fourth icon of the middle row and click that to add the adjustment layer. And immediately the image changes to a warmer tone like there's an orange tint to the image which is determined by the filter here. Now, there are a number of useful presets that you can pick here from the top drop-down, It's currently set to a warming filter. And I can choose different kinds of warming filters here. I can also choose cooling filters to make the image cooler, lowering its color temperature. Let's say I can add all kinds of color casts with bread, orange, green, cyan, blue, magenta, et cetera. And it just applies these as a filter to the image on top of it. So it's just transparent color layer basically of which we can change the color here. Now, we can also alter the density of the filter by just clicking and dragging the density here. And that increases the how dominant the color cast is. So I can choose a warming filter here and you will see that it has this orange effect over it. I can pick a cooling filter and just tone that down a little. And besides these presets, you can also choose a color yourself. So I can just click the swatch here and I can look for any color with the color picker. Click Okay, and that changes the color again. Now, there's a checkbox here for Preserve Luminosity. This is something that you in most cases will want enabled because it preserves the luminosity of the pixels below the adjustment layer. So if I unclick this, if I uncheck the checkbox, you will see that this darkens the image. So the denser the filter, the darker the image becomes. So it's better to leave the Preserve Luminosity checkbox enabled so you don't have to later go back in and alter the brightness of the image with, for example, a curves or a levels adjustment. 63. 7.11-Channel mixer: The channel mixer adjustment layer allows us to add a color cast to an image based on the different color channels in the image. So every image, every RGB image has three color channels, red, green, and blue, with certain values. Now, the color balance allows you to add a bit of green to the reds or subtract a bit of reds from the blues, et cetera, to change the color values of the image. So looking at this image here, I'm going to add the channel mixer adjustment layer. And here, by default you end up in the red channel. And as you would expect, you see value for a 100 for red and 0 for green and blue. Now, I can add some green to the red channel by just clicking and dragging this slider. And it's going to increase the strength of the reds in the green values of the image and the image overall. So let me just dial that back again to 0 using Control Z, I can do the same for the blue channels. And as you can see, no matter what value I choose for either green or blue, it enhances the red channel because I'm currently working in the red channel. Now, I can also go into the blue channel, for example. And here we see 0 for red, 0 for green, and 104 blue. Now I can tone down the blues, which does not actually give me a very nice image at all. So let me just Control Z that for now. There we go. I can add some red, which is going to increase the strength of the blues. And I can track a little bit of green. And this is actually like a more pleasant version of this image. So let me just hide the adjustment to see my before. Yeah, there's much warmer tone to the image, mostly because of the work I did in the red channel. So you can just play around with these sliders and the results are always going to vary based on the images that you're working with. But by playing around with it and understanding what changing these values does to your image can lead to more pleasing results, such as this one. 64. 7.12-Lookup table: The lookup table adjustment layer is one of the more complex adjustment layers that we can work with. And not necessarily because it's difficult to use, but to understand how it works. By using color lookup tables, you are basically assigning values for the luminance and color of an image based on a pre-generated map. So basically, this lookup table says, Okay, this tint of orange should be this color and this luminance value within a certain range. And we're just going to look at what this adjustment layer actually does to create that understanding. So I'm going to look at the last icon of the middle row, which is the color lookup adjustment. And initially nothing changes. So initially nothing happens to the original image because we have not applied a lookup table yet. We need to do that by actually clicking here in load 3D LUT or LUT, as it's commonly known, or which is obviously an abbreviation for look up table. So here you have some standard lookup tables that you can use. And you can just click these to see what they actually do to the image. So I can click this to strip. And as you can see, it D saturates all the greens of the image and it really highlights the orange and the blues. Here I have three strip which also brings back the color on the greens. And you can always go back to the previous state of your image by using Control Z. Obviously. For this particular image, I know there is one lookup table that works really well, and that is the foggy night. So I'm just going to click this and that's going to dramatically alter the image. Really desaturated, the saturates it, it really highlights the elements of the image that have color. And it also really highlights the fog and the transparency of the fog here in the top middle of the image. But it's a bit too strong. This adjustment currently. So what I can do now is just click and drag the opacity a bit to the left, let's say 70 percent, let's say 65 percent, something like that. So I can show you the before by just hiding the adjustment by clicking the icon. So this was my original composite, which is built out of several different images, a 3D model of these astronauts, a photo of my daughter, a photo of this forest and some trees in the background and the fog I painted in manually. I will show you how to do in a next chapter. So enabling this adjustment again, this dramatically improves my image. And sometimes it's a bit of a puzzle looking for the appropriate lot. But if you know what these do and if you've seen how they work on a few images, you will know exactly what to go for once you apply them to your photos. Now, these are the pre-built lots that are part of any Photoshop installation. You can also load in your own Lutz by going into the drop-down here at the top, and then choose load 3D LUT. And if you have a let like if you Google Photoshop, bloods or Premiere, Let's or Lightroom lets like it doesn't matter what program the LUT was originally designed for. You can basically use any LUT for this process. So you can use for video or you can use it for photo, and you can load them in using this setting here. 65. 7.13-Other adjustments: Now that we've seen the adjustment layers pertaining to brightness and color, we are going to look at the next category here, which allow us some more creative edits of our image. But I must say in a practical context when editing photos, I very rarely use these, and I've only seen a practical application for my own work with one of them. So I'm just going to show you how all of them work. This bottom row here in this video. And then you can try them out on my images or one of your images to see what they actually do. And I'm sure a lot of people have found some creative way of applying these adjustments. But for my particular workflow, they are not especially useful. So here I have this photo of a parking garage spiral in the center of my city, Eindhoven. And I'm just going to look at the invert adjustment layer. And as its name suggests, the invert adjustment layer actually inverts the image. So now I have an inverted image, which is not particularly useful. But if you want to invert an image, this is something you can do. It might be useful if you have like a scanned negative of a analog photograph that you want to invert. But you can also just invert an entire image, in that case by pressing Control I. So this one does not have a lot of practical applications. So I'm just going to click the layer here in the layers panel and then delete it with Backspace and look at the next image. The posterize adjustment layer basically limits the amount of colors in the image. So let's say that this image has 265 luminance values between 0 and 255. And 0 is a value as well as far as luminance goes. So here, the luminance levels in the image are basically limited to two, which is then multiplied by the color channels, even me, six different. So we have 3 times 2, giving me six tones within this image. Now if I change the number to three, that already gives me nine different values. Going up to four, it gives me 12. And after 12, it really progresses into a regular looking image. Basically, even with higher values, you still get this banding in gradients within the image. So where it changes from one color into another color, like we have here in the sky. And it basically kind of makes your image look like a comic book. So if this is something you find useful, if this is a creative effect that you like, you can apply that using the posterize filter. Now, threshold basically does the same, but then in black and white. So here all the pixels of the image are assigned to either white or black. So all pixels lighter than 50 percent gray or turned to white, and all pixels that are less than 50 percent gray or darker than 50 percent gray turn into black. And that is a process that you can control by just changing the threshold level here. So as I'm dragging the slider to the right, more of the pixels are assigned to the blacks. And if I drag it to the left, you will see that I get more illuminance values in the whites. So if this is a creative effect you like, again, you can just apply it through the adjustments panel. Now, there are some interesting things that you can do by changing the blend mode of this adjustment layer. Like for example, changing it to overlay might give us an interesting effect in certain parts of the image, but it's just not something that I use on a regular basis. So I'm just going to delete this adjustment layer by. And this is something in the newer additions to Photoshop that can sometimes be a bit tricky because if I press the backspace, backspace key right now, I will not delete the layer. I can right-click it and then choose Delete layer. But I almost exclusively use the backspace or delete keys to delete my layers depending on what I'm doing. But I was just in this blend mode drop-down menu, which I will tell you a lot more about in next, in one of the next chapters. And you will see that it is highlighted in blue, meaning that Photoshop is still focusing on this blend mode drop-down. And that has its advantages like I can use the arrow keys at the moment to cycle through the different blend modes, but I want to delete my layer. So what I actually have to do is press the Escape key to get out of this little drop-down. And then I can press the backspace key to delete the layer. Now after a threshold, we have here selective color. And here you can actually add different color casts based on the different colors of the image. So let's say I choose the reds here, then you can see that I can add a bit of cyan to the reds, or I can actually subtract the cyan to highlight the reds. I can also go into the cyan values and give those a little bit more cyan, which slightly alters the color of the sky up here. I could also add a little bit of cyan magenta to my science. But for this to work, the color has to actually be present in the image. So for this image, there is mostly an orange color cast. So I'm going to have to go into the yellows are the reds to dramatically alter the image. So I can add a bit of yellow to the yellows and that saturates the yellows a lot more as you can see. And I can do the same for the blacks just to make these oranges a little more dramatic. And if I ever overdo it and I wanted to go back, I can always just decrease the opacity of the layer. So this is something that can be useful in certain situations, but it works almost the same as the color balance and the Channel Mixer does. And I prefer those because of the types of controls that I have in those adjustment layers. So I'm just going to delete that adjustment layer for now. And now we will be looking at the last adjustment layer here, the gradient map. The gradient map basically assigns the colors of the image to a color gradient. And you will see what that means when I actually apply the adjustment here by clicking it. And the gradient of the image is currently set to black and white. And as you can see, the image turns into a black and white image. Now, I can go into this drop-down. So into this actual black to white bar here. And I can click that and I can select different tones or different gradients. And let's say I'm just going to choose this yellow to red gradient. And what that does is basically almost the same as the threshold adjustment, but it does it with the different colors of this gradient. So pixels above 50 percent gray in luminance are mapped to the lighter color of the image or the other way around actually. So the lighter pixels are mapped to one color and the darker pixels are mapped to the different color of the gradient. And you can choose from these presets here as we've just seen, and there are many of them. Or you can actually click this colored bar and alter the colors yourself. So let's say I want a darker shade of yellow. Then I just double-click on the yellow and I end up in the Adobe color picker. And I can just decrease the luminance and saturation of that yellow a bit with this result. And I'm just going to click Okay. And again, you can play with the blend modes of these adjustments to get very different results. So I can change it to, let's say, Color Dodge for this dramatic color filter. And I'm just not personally a big fan of edits such as this, but if you are, then this would be the place to go. There are some uses for the Gradient Map 2, for example, more naturally blend a composite images together. But for that situation, which I'll also show you in a next chapter, the photo filter and the lookup table adjustment are more suitable or using a camera raw filter. So these items on the bottom row of the adjustment panel, I'm just showing you for to make it this chapter as complete as it can be. But they lack practical applications when you're actually trying to make your images better. 66. 7.14-Project colored dresses: In this lesson, we are going to apply some of the skills I've shown you in the previous 14 videos. By looking at this image of these, this woman in this color dress in different poses. And obviously these, this was not a set of quadruplets. This is a photo composite based on four different images. And what we will be doing is making each dress a different color. And we're gonna do that by using different adjustment layers for each dress. So what I'm gonna do is grab the rectangular marquee tool and just click and drag to create a selection around the leftmost model. Now, I'm going to apply a hue saturation adjustment layer by clicking on the first icon of the middle row. That creates my adjustment only where I had my selection active. So only there do we see this white rectangle. And now I want to change the color of the dress. And what I could do is just click and drag the hue. But that is also going to shift the color of her skin, which also contains color information so it is affected by this adjustment. But what I can do now is select a different single color that I want to effect here where it says Master. So I'm just going to expand this drop down and then choose magenta. And magenta is actually going to shift the colors of the dress only and leave the pixels of her skin alone because those do not contain any color information in magenta. So dress number 2, I'm going to again click and drag using the rectangular marquee tool. And I am going to add another hue saturation adjustment layer through the adjustments panel. I will again limit the colors to be changed to magenta. And I'm just going to click and drag this into like a dark burgundy red. And now I'm actually going to click and drag across the final two dresses at the same time. And again add a hue saturation adjustment layer. Now, both dresses are affected when I choose magenta and then click and drag for a different color. And I'm going to go for this blue here, minus 65. And again, whether you choose minus 65 or 65 doesn't really matter. And now I'm actually going to restore the third dress to its original color to purple to get four different colors. And for that, I am going to grab my brush tool. I'm going to increase my brush size and hardness so I can easily paint across the model. I want to make sure that my mask here is selected of the adjustment that is affecting this third dress. I'm gonna make sure my foreground color is set to black and that my brush opacity is set to a 100. And then I can just click and drag across the dress to cut it out of the adjustment, which you will also see here in the Mask thumbnail. And it's as easy as that to change the color of these dresses. When you want to change a different color to a different color, you just add another adjustment layer and you mask out which parts of the image you do not want to be effected. 67. 8.1-Smart objects: It's often the case that we want to scale, rotate, or otherwise transform our layers. And that's what this chapter is all about. Before we get into creating actual transformations for layers, I'm going to tell you something about working with smart objects, because when you import layers into Photoshop in different ways, you get them into Photoshop as Smart Objects. And smart objects are generally just a part of the modern Photoshop workflow. For most workflows actually, because it allows you to non-destructively transform layers. And I have an entire chapter about working with smart objects in this course, but this is just an intro to show you how it works actually and what it actually means to work with smart objects. So here I have the document 8.1, smart objects dot PNG. And I am going to show you what a smart object actually does. Let's say I want to scale this layer down by quite a bit. I want to make it about a small as the height of his shoe here. For that, I need to transform the layer and to get to a free transform, which is something we've seen in previous chapters on few occasions as well, I need to transform the layer by going into the Edit menu and then choosing free transform or pressing Control T or Command T on the Mac. That gives me the free transform box. And in the current version of Photoshop, you don't have to hold down Shift to actually transform it proportionately. And I'm just going to make them as small as an admin right there. And then I'm going to commit the transformed by clicking the check mark here at the top. Now let's say I increase the size of our model here again, I'm just going to transform the layer again by pressing Control T or Command T on the Mac. I'm going to grab one of the corners and I'm just going to make them larger. Now as you can see, we currently have a very pixelated view of the layer. And even when I confirm the transformation by pressing the enter key, in this case, we don't get any of that detail back. Because when you transform layers like this, you are basically discarding rows and columns of pixels to accommodate that transformation. And Photoshop just discard that information and you cannot retrieve it once it's gone, except by using Control Z, which is not available if you've just saved the document and close it and open it again. So for now I can just go back using Control Z. Let's say I want to non-destructively transform this layer so that I can always go back to the original and the quality of the original is saved within my Photoshop document. For that, we are going to turn this layer into a Smart Object. And there are several ways of doing so. The easiest, as far as I'm concerned, is just right-clicking here on an empty space of the layer in the layers panel. And then here at the top you have Convert to Smart Object. You will also find this in the Layer menu here at the top. And then Smart Objects and convert to smart object. And we use this function so often that it might actually be useful to create a shortcut for it. So let's say I want a shortcut to convert a layer to a smart object. I'm just going to go into the Edit menu here at the top and go to keyboard shortcuts. I'm going to find the Layer menu and expand it. And I'm just going to scroll down a bit until we find the smart object. Subcategory. New Adjustment Layer, Layer Mask. Vector mass Smart Objects Convert to Smart Objects. And let's say I am just going to turn this into Control Shift Alt P. So the shortcut is currently already set for the function file print one copy. I never use this function, so I am comfortable overriding it. So I'm just going to click Accept and then click OK to commit that change. And now with this layer highlighted in the layers panel, I can just press Control Shift Alt P, and that converts it into a smart object. Now, I can tell that it is a smart object by this little icon here at the bottom right of the layer thumbnail. This indicates that it's a smart object. And now when I go into Free Transform by pressing Control T, you won't just see the transformation points like the standard transfer free transform box. You will also see this cross over the middle. And that's a link cross that indicates that it is actually a linked object or a smart object. So what I can do now is just create the same transformation. We're just going to scale them way down and then commit the transform by pressing Enter. So he is way down there. Then I'm going to press Control T again, and I'm going to increase the size again. And there you see that the quality of the original layer was saved within the Photoshop document. What a smart object does, it just saves the current state of the layer in like an attachment file with the Photoshop document or a PSB as it's called. And I'm going to show you how to edit smart objects on how to do some interesting things with it, like creating product mockups and stuff in a next chapter. But this is basically what smart objects are and how they work on a basic level. 68. 8.2-Free transform: At this point, we've used Free Transform in several lessons already. But in this lesson we're going to look at some of the deeper secrets that the free transform holds. So I have here the document 8 to free transform dot p is the, and this is a layer document where I have the image of a lake and the island within the lake. This is an island in Lake bled in Slovenia, which is shot with my drone and I isolated the island from the background to be able to transform it as such. So I'm going to show you some secrets of the free transform. And to do that, we're just going to go into the free transform using Control T or Command T on the Mac. As we've seen before, we can grab one of the corners and just transform the layer like this. We can also grab one of the center handles along each axis. And that always scales it proportionately, so it doesn't distort the actual layer, it just makes it smaller or larger. There are some cases where you want to distort a layer where you want to change its length and width ratio so that it fits better within a certain composition. And for that you want to hold down the Shift key. So if I transform holding Shift, I can actually distort the layer into different proportions. Now, this only goes for pixel layers actually and smart objects. So it doesn't apply to shape layers, for example, that you can draw, which are also have a chapter on. But for pixel layers like this, you just want to hold down the Shift key to transform it disproportionately. It also often happens that you want to transform a layer to its direct center, to its own center. And for that we can hold the Alt key. So if I start clicking and dragging using alt, you will see that I'm not scaling it to the opposite corner anymore, but to its own center, which can be very useful if you don't want to actually change the position of a layer, but you just want to change its scale. Because let's say that I wasn't aware of this Alt key function. Then Just want to make the island a bit smaller. First I'm going to have to click and drag it. And then I'm going to have to click and drag it again to position it properly, which is not very handy. So I'm just going to press Escape to cancel this transformation for now. And then press Control T again to end up in the Free Transform. So knowing this, we can also use Alt and shifts simultaneously to transform a layer to its own center. Disproportionately, Sahni can actually distort the layer from its own center, which in some cases can also be useful. Well, we've also seen is when we put the mouse cursor outside of the free transform box, we get this little elbow arrow. And we're using this cursor, we can actually click and drag anywhere outside of the layer boundary to rotate the layer. And this is initially a free rotation. So you have to be very mindful of how much, how many degrees you're actually rotating it. If you hold down the Shift key, you constrain the rotation to increments of 15 degrees. So if you want to rotate something exactly 45 degrees, you can just hold down the Shift key and move down a couple notches. And if you want to rotate something 270 degrees, you just go to minus 90. And now I've reset the position using the Shift key. So this is also exceedingly easy to remember. If you want to rotate something to an exact amount of degrees or an increments of 15 degrees, you can just hold down the Shift key to accomplish that. Now, there are some other shortcuts within the free transform that a lot of people are not familiar with. These are still pretty basic so far. And those are actually the skew and a few other distort functions that you can use. Let's say I want to change my perspective on this island. So I want to make it seem like the front of the island is a lot closer than it is at the back of the island, a lot further away. Now, what I can do is actually hold the Control and Alt keys or the Command and Option keys. And then click and drag along these corners. And what you see is that it changes the position of the corner I and dragging and the opposite corner of what I'm dragging. So if I click and drag the bottom right anchor point here, the bottom right transform point, it also changes the top left transform point. And the same goes for the other way around. So now I am transforming the bottom left and the top right, while the top left and the bottom right actually stay in the same position. Now if I add the Shift key to this, so I am currently holding Control Alt and Shift. You don't flip around the transform point, but you change the transform point you are dragging and the adjacent transform points. So now I'm clicking and dragging the left bottom transform point and the right bottom transform point is also being changed. So using this, I can make the island appear a bit more flat and distort it a bit, as you can see. Now, it's going to be pretty difficult to put these points exactly back where I where I started. So I'm just going to press Escape to cancel this Free Transform and then go back into Free Transform using Control T. Another transform property which I very often use to change the perspective on layers, especially when I'm creating my own smart object mock-ups is the ability to click and drag just one of these transform points. So if I hold the Control key or the Command key on the Mac, I can just click and drag one of these points. And as you can see, the other three transformed points stay in their original location. So I can just click and drag this. And it doesn't actually improve the picture. But this is useful in many, many situations. And if I click and drag one of the middle transform points here along the shorter axis, along the x axis. You'll see that I am also changing the perspective on the layer. So this is very useful if you want to transform something to appear, to be stuck to something. Let's say you've made a logo and you want to present this logo as a sticker, you can just transform the logo, logo into the position that you want the sticker in to make it appear like it's actually part of the scene, which is what the next chapter is actually going to be about. Now, a few more secrets of the Free Transform, going back into Free Transform using Control T, you also have all these controls here at the top in the option bar. Here I have an x and y position for the layer. So this is currently its x position from the middle of the layer. And the y position. Here we have a scale property. It's currently, currently set to 100% scale. Obviously, if I want to make it smaller, I can just enter 80 here, for example, because this chain icon is enabled, this link, the width and height are linked. So changing one always changes the other. Here I also have the rotation property. So I can also click and drag here on this little icon for the rotation to rotate the layer, I find it a lot easier to just click and drag outside of the layer unless you're looking for a very specific number of degrees that you want to rotate four. And then here we have the skew values and we can add a horizontal or a vertical skew. So here we have a horizontal skew. And that kind of misaligned the transformed points by the same amount for the top 24, the opposite amount for the bottom two. And then here we have a vertical tilt skewed that we can actually do the same for the vertical points or for the vertical axis. We'll be looking at the warp function in one of the next videos. But these are basically the options you have available for the free transform. When you are in free transform, by the way, you can also right-click and then choose scale, rotate, skew, distort, perspective, warp, which we'll be looking at later. And I very often use these two here at the bottom actually flip horizontal, flip vertical. So if you want to just mirror a layer to the other side on either the vertical or horizontal axis, you can just use these buttons here so I can flip it horizontal. And then you see the island is mirrored horizontally. And I can also flip it vertical. And I can do that again. To get back to my original blood island. These are very useful functions which you will also see in a few practical cases later on in the course. So you can find those over there. And basically these options here, the skew distort perspective are ways of getting only the modes that we used with Control Alt and Control Alt Shift and control through this menu system. So I can choose skew, for example. And now I can only skew the layer by dragging one of these anchor points, transform points actually, I can choose distort. And then you see it uses both of these anchor points. So that's just a way of getting to those different transformations. I prefer using Control Alt Control, or Control Alt Shift depending on what the situation calls for. And in most cases I only need the control because I just want to change the perspective on a layer. So once you're done with your transformation, you just press Enter, press the check mark here at the top, or just switch back to the Transform tool. And then your transformation is committed. And please remember that once you commit a transformation, there's only a certain amount of steps. You can actually go back to undo the transformation. So it's very often a good idea to create a smart object out of your layers so that you can Middle East always get back to the original state of the layer and work non-destructively. 69. 8.3-Warp transform: In this lesson, we will be looking at the warp transform in Photoshop. And warp gives us a bit more control of the distortion of a any given layer. So to get to warp, first, we're going to just press Control T or Command T on the Mac to get into free transform. When you're in free transform, here at the top we have a toggle for switch between Free Transform and warp. And once I click on this icon, I end up in the warp mode. Now, warp mode works quite differently from Free Transform. We still get this transformation box, but we are seeing a bit more like a few more points along the outside edge. Now we can click and drag these points. And what you see is that I am basically folding the layer in on itself. So I can distort it along any axis. And I can actually click and drag so far that I can see the back of the layer making the island look like basically a piece of paper. Which is actually a good analogy for this work transform initially because you can just treat the corners like a piece of paper and fold it like an origami. So besides the actual corners, we also have these transformed points in between these handles as they are known. So watch what happens when I click and drag this point down a little bit. You will see that this handle extends. And this handle actually determines the curve between this point that I am currently changing and this point here. So if I click and drag this up, you will see that I am basically shortening the curve between those two points. And if I click and drag, click and drag it further than the actual transform point, you will again see that I basically folding it in on itself. So this handle determines the curve between these different points. And every point has two handles. So here we have a point for the top-left here. And changing this one changes the curve between this one and this one. And changing this one determines the curve between this one and that one. So if you want more of an equal curve between two points, you always have to alter both handles to get something like that. Now I'm just going to cancel out of this by clicking this arrow icon at the top to reset my warp. And I'm going to show you that you can actually and add transform points and warp points to whichever part of the layer you want. And you do that by either looking here at the top where you can split the warp grid. So you can add a vertical and a horizontal with a cross wise. You can just add a vertical or you can just add a horizontal. So you can just click these and then your mouse cursor changes and it actually enables you to add a vertical split. And if I click this one, it will allow me to add a horizontal split. And this one gives me both. So this just adds another distort point to both axes. I'm just going to undo that for now. And I'm going to show you that there is an easier way of doing that. And you will add both a cross, you will add a cross section actually, and not just a vertical or horizontal. But if you hold down the Control key or the Command key on the Mac, you will add another transform point to both axes. So here clicking once with control gives me another intersection to alter with my warp. And as you can see, I can just click and drag this point around now. And I can alter its handles. I can even rotate it like so to kind of folded in on itself again. And I can just click and drag these lines. And as you can see, it alters how this section is curved. And you can really get some cool distortions like this. And I'm just going to reset that by using Control Z. Well, you will also see if you want to add another warp point. If I hold down the Control key and I'm not hovering over a pre-existing line, I get both the vertical and horizontal axes. But if I'm hovering over a vertical line, it just adds the utter. It just adds the horizontal line. And if I'm hovering over a horizontal line, it only adds the vertical. So that can be pretty useful. And if you want to add only a vertical or horizontal, you can just follow along the edges of the transform box. So hovering over the edge here on the left enables me to only add a horizontal axes, axes, axes. And I'll bring down the bottom here allows me to add a vertical point. You can add as many points as you want to increase the complexity of the possible transformations. So now when I click and drag this point, you can see that I am only distorting this part of the image because the other points are not affected when you just start clicking and dragging like this, I can transform individual segments of an image. And note that when you add a point, you always get a handle, a Bezier handle for both the beginning and the end of the curve. So that's something to keep in mind. You can also select several of these transformed points at once by holding Shift and just clicking on them in this transformative slits. And I'm just going to grab all of these for now. And now when I'm clicking and dragging, you can see that I can alter larger parts of the images, but the points that are not selected are not affected by my transformation. So you can also use this to create some interesting subjects here. Okay? So you can always delete these points by just pressing the Delete key with them selected. So let's say I want to make this a bit more simple. I can just click on these and use delete or backspace to get rid of those extra warp lines. And then I can either reset, cancel, or commit my transform using these icons at the top. And that's basically all you need to know about warp transform, which lets you really pull layers out of context and create your own dynamic transformations. 70. 8.4-Puppet warp: Another transformation that we can use, but which has less practical applications is the Puppet Warp. And the Puppet Warp basically is another way of distorting parts of an image to suit our purposes. And one use case for it is when a model or an object that you photographed and isolated to its own layer doesn't have the exact right position, let's say. So I'm looking at 8.4 Puppet Warp dot P and G. And let's say I want to change the position of the arm of my model. Now, I can't go back to this specific location under the specific conditions, so I can't retake the shot. So I'm going to have to edit it here in Photoshop. And to enable Puppet Warp, we can go into the Edit menu here at the top, and then about halfway down we can choose Puppet Warp. Puppet warp is first going to show up as nothing until we actually click on the image to activate the initial warp point. So what I'm gonna do is click here on his fist to add a transform point, a puppet point, let's say. And then the actual mesh shows up in the mesh. Basically all these triangles are shapes that we can distort individually. And you can actually change the density, density of the mesh by going into here and choosing more points. And it will make the mesh more complex. But I'm just going to stick with normal for now. Then I can right now actually, when I click and drag this point, I am moving the entire layer. So puppet warp doesn't actually work until you add two or more points in total. So I'm just going to add another point where his shoulder would be. So now I can click and drag and you'll see that I am rotating the layer around the second here. That's also not quite what I want. So what I'm gonna do is add yet another point to where his elbow would be. So now I have created a puppet for his arm essentially. And I can just click and drag these points. And the other points are going to stay in place, enabling me to distort the layer. So I'm just going to grab his fist here. And then I'm just going to click and drag that down. And you will see that there is some additional rotation to the layer currently. And I can disable that actually by adding a few more points. So I'm just going to put some points over here because I don't want these areas of the image to distort. And then I can just click and drag this onto his knee. But as you can see, the fist actually goes below the mean. So it's behind the knee. And let's say I want to move it to the front. If I look here, you will see the pin depth and you can move points up, down to alter their position in the composite. So if I move it up, you will see that it is now in front of the knee. And if I move it down, you will see that it is now behind. And I can actually click them, drag this point down a bit to get rid of some of the distortion. And I can make the arm a bit less thick by adding a few more points. And it doesn't look great. And this is something you really have to practice to get a hold of properly. But if, like I said, this also lacks general practical applications. But if a model is positioned in a way that you slightly want to change, this is something you can use. Now, let's say I wanted to remove a point. For that I can hold the Alt or Option key and just click on a point to delete it. And then the transformation of the point also actually resets. What you can also do when you click on a point. When you click on a point and then hold the Alt or Option key, you actually get a rotation property that you can use and you can just rotate a layer like so. If that's something you need to do in specific circumstances, doesn't happen very often, but it is something that can be useful. Now once you commit the transform by pressing the check mark here at the top, the transform is committed. And also keep in mind that when you again go into Edit and then puppet warp, it doesn't reset. So you don't get the same transformed points that you had before. You're basically starting fresh and your original transformation is no longer available. 71. 9.1-Poster mockup: This chapter is all about smart objects. And in the previous chapter, I already gave a short explanation of what smart, smart objects are and how they work. And we will be expanding on that in this chapter. And we are going to be using the smart object function in Photoshop in this lesson to create a poster mockup. And a mock-up is basically a sketch of a certain product, like a poster or a logo or anything else. Concerning digital imagery, really, that you can show people without actually having printed the poster, for example. So let's say I've designed a poster and I want to show it to a customer or a coworker. And then I can just send them a JPEG or a PDF of that poster. Or I can show them that poster in an actual environment where a poster would make sense. So let's say I've designed to poster and I wanted to show Bush somebody might nice poster. I can just easily Photoshop it into a, an image like this to create a poster mockup. And that's what I will be teaching you in this lesson. So here we have this photograph of two blank posters and we are going to be Photoshopping our poster design, which is going to be very modest, consisting of a logo and a text frame into the posts are here on the right. And the first thing we are going to do for that is to draw a shape across this larger poster here in the front. And it's easy, easier to have a front-facing image like this for reference. So you get the proportions of your shape correctly initially. So what I'm gonna do is go into the toolbar here and I'm going to go into the Shape Tools and select the rectangle tool. I'm going to make sure that the rectangle has a fill color by clicking here where it says Fill and just choosing any color. It doesn't matter which color it can be black, it can be white. It doesn't matter for our end result because the color is actually going to be covered by our mockup. So I'm going to set the stroke to 0 here at the top, I currently had a black stroke of one pixel. And now using this tool, I'm going to click and drag across the poster to draw my shape all the way down to the frame here at the bottom. And then I'm gonna release the mouse and there is my shape. So before we do anything else, I'm going to convert this shape into a smart object so I can use my shortcut for that which I set in the previous chapter, Control Shift Alt P. I can right-click on the layer here and then choose Convert to Smart Object. Or I can go into the layer menu, smart objects and convert to smart object. I prefer to use the shortcuts, so I'm just going to go ahead and press Control Shift Alt P. And please keep in mind if you didn't watch the earliest chapter or you missed it. I set that keyboard shortcut as a custom shortcut through the Edit menu and in keyboard shortcuts. So now it's a smart object. And I want to basically transform it onto this poster here on the right. And to do that efficiently, I'm going to reduce the opacity of this Smart Object layer to about 50 percent. And I could do that manually over here, or I can just press the five key of my keyboard to decrease the opacity to 50 percent. Now, I'm going to move it over here and I'm going to go into Free Transform. So I'm going to press Control T or Command T on the Mac. And initially I'm just going to hold down the Control T, the Control key or the Command key on the Mac. And I'm going to grab the individual corners and just drag them to approximately where they should be. And I can do this for the individual corners currently because I'm holding the Control key. And now that I have a rough outline of the position, I'm going to zoom in using Alt scroll. And then I'm going to do it in a detail view. So now I'm actually looking where the actual corner is and I can drag them to the right place. It's a bit tougher to see here at the top right, but we can work around that. There we go. And I'm just navigating across my document holding the space bar. And once I'm happy about where those corners are placed, I'm going to confirm my transformation with the checkmark here at the top. Now, these posters are suspended through these clamps here at the top. And obviously I don't want my mock-up to hide those clamps. So what I'm actually going to do is apply a layer mask to this Smart Object layer by pressing the Layer Mask icon here at the bottom of the Layers panel, which we've looked at extensively in Chapter 5. I'm going to grab my brush tool by pressing the B key. And I'm going to decrease my brush size and increase the brush hardness so that I can use black as my foreground color to paint out these clamps. And I'm not going to go pixel perfect for this. This is just a quick sketch. Let's say. Here we go. And then I'm going to use the space bar to navigate to the right clamp. And I'm just changing my brush size wherever that is pertinent to do. Remember I want to tackle a smaller or larger area. And I'm just painting over these. Okay, that looks pretty good. And now what I can do is actually start designing my poster within the smart object. And I can open the smart object by just double-clicking the layer thumbnail in the Layers panel. And that's going to open my original rectangle and show me the rectangle as I originally drew it in the first steps of this exercise. So if I double-click here, and if you've never done that before, you're gonna get a pop-up saying, okay, just edit the smart object, save it and close and then it'll be, the changes will take effect. But we don't have to do that here because I've clicked, Don't show again on that particular checkbox. So what I'm gonna do now is just hide this layer because I don't need it. I don't want this blue shape here. And I'm just going to import my logo. So I'm going to go into the exercise files. Here we have logo dot PNG, meaning the background is transparent. And then I'm just going to let it go here on the canvas. And I'm going to place it a bit higher. And I'm going to confirm the placement with the checkmark here at the top. And then I'm going to grab the type tool here on which I have an entire chapter later in this course. And I'm just going to click and drag for a text frame. And I'm going to type online courses. Then I'm going to select the text and using the Properties panel, I can just decrease the text size. And I'm going to set this line spacing to auto. And then I want the same color for the text as the logo. So I'm just going to click the color here at the top. And again, I'm going to show you how exactly all of this works in one of the next chapters. For now, I just want a text frame with this and I'm just going to commit my text with this checkmark here at the top, which is the same as the free transform. Then I can center my text by just clicking and dragging it using the Move tool. I'm going to move it down a little bit. And now I am just going to save. So I'm just going to press control S. We're going to file and save. You don't want to save as you want to just save, because that saves the current state of the smart object. And then I'm just going to close out of the smart object by closing the tab here at the top. And now you'll see that my logo and this text is actually in the perspective that I put my smart object in. And I still have to correct the opacity. So I'm just going to increase that back to a 100. And there we go. Now we have my logo and this text here in perspective. And you can still apply my adjustment layers to it. You can still go into the smart object and edit the text and edit the logo. So what I could do if I wanted to, let say increase the size of the logo, I'll just double-click the smart object. I'll select the logo layer, press Control T, and using Alt, I can scale it up. Confirm the transformation, just move the text down here a bit way. I accidentally undid the transform on the logo. So I'm just going to make that bigger again. There we go. Move the text down. Okay? And we're gonna save it again. Just Control S, close out of the smart object. And there is then my mockup so I can replace the contents of the smart object with anything and all the masking I did and the transformed, the transformations that I did to put it in perspective will remain in place. So this is actually already the basics of how you create your own smart object mockups. 72. 9.2-Laptop mockup: In this lesson, we will be creating a mock-up of a laptop. So here I have just a straight JPEG image of a laptop. And we are going to create a Photoshop document in which we can easily replace the contents of the laptop screen for when we've created a website template, for example, or a digital illustration or anything else we want to put there. Now, there's something different about this image compared to the image we were working on in the previous lesson in the sense that we do not have a front facing screen here the screen is tilted towards the camera and that can make it difficult initially to draw our first rectangle. So the shape layer that we will be creating in the right proportions. Now, most laptops screens actually have a set width to height ratio, which usually 16 by nine. So for every 16 horizontal pixels, we have nine vertical pixels. So knowing that we can actually constrain the proportions of the rectangle that we can draw. So I'm going to go to the rectangle tool here. And then I am going to look here at the additional settings for the shape a path. And then I can, I can pick a proportional rectangle that I can draw. So I'm going to set 16 by nine. So for every 16 pixels in the width, we now have nine pixels on the vertical. So using that, I can now click and drag roughly the size of the laptop screen. Just like so. Then I can change the fill color here at the top for a swatch I recently used. And then I can create my smart object. So I'm just going to right-click on the layer and choose Convert to Smart Object. I'm going to decrease the opacity of the shape layer to 50 by pressing the five key on my keyboard. And then I'm gonna go into Free Transform using Control T or Command T on the Mac. And then again, just like in the previous lesson, you holding Control or Command on the Mac, I'm just going to click and drag the corners of the rectangle to approximately the right place on the image covering the laptop screen. And then once they're in roughly the right place, I'm going to zoom in. And I'm going to do this in a bit more detail. So I'm just going to put them exactly on the corners, making sure that I cover the entire screen. And when I'm navigating from point to point, I'm actually holding down the space bar so I can just click and drag across my image to navigate. And I'm just going to place that here. And zooming out. I can see that I've covered the entire image. So I'm just going to click Confirm here at the top to commit my transformation. Now, I can see that I'm actually missing a few pixels here at the top. So I can go back into free transform, and I can just grab these handles and drag them up ever so slightly to cover up those corners as well. And then recommit my transform. Now, let's say I would just want to put a screenshot of my own personal website here on this laptop screen, I'm going to go to my web browser and I'm just going to press Print Screen to create a print screen. And back in Photoshop, I can then reset the opacity for the layer by just clicking and dragging the opacity to the right on the text value here. And then I can replace the contents of the smart object layer by double-clicking on the layer thumbnail. And I'm just going to paste my screenshot here using Control V. I'm going to scale this up using Control T and holding Alt to scale it proportionately from its center. To fill the entire screen. I'm going to commit my transform here. And then I'm going to save the smart object layer by pressing Control S or Command S on the Mac. And going back to the laptop image, now you will see that the contents of the screen has been replaced. Now, an additional trick that you can use to make mockups like this, a bit more realistic is to add a transparent gradient overlay to your screen layer. So I'm going to show you how to do that in more detail when we get to the Layer Styles chapter. But for now I'm just going to give you a quick demo of how that would work. So with this layer selected, I'm going to go to effects here at the bottom of the Layers panel. And then I'm going to choose Gradient Overlay. And that's going to put an overlay on top of this layer. Now, I currently have this overlay. I actually want to reset it to the defaults. So I'm going to click Reset to default, and that gives me this subtle light gray to white gradient. Now I want to darken that gray a little bit. So I'm just going to click on the gradient. I'm going to double-click on the gray. And then I'm just going to put the color picker a bit further down. Let's say a bit more than halfway down on the gray-scale. I'm going to click OK and OK once more. And then I can play with the angle of the gradient to match the lighting of the scene. Now, the lighting seems to be coming more from the left here. So I'm just going to rotate the angle of the gradient to reflect that. And obviously through the gradient, we currently cannot see the screen. So I can either choose to lower the opacity. And it looks about right at 35 or 40 percent. Or I can actually change the blend mode of the overlay to something like multiply and then decrease the opacity to match the screen a bit more. So now it looks like it's low. It looks more like it's part of the actual scene, instead of just paste it on there. So this is a little trick that you can use to add some realism to your product mockups. 73. 9.3-Types of smart objects: Not all smart object layers are the same and that's something I want to teach you in this lesson. There are actually three types of smart objects that we use and can use in Photoshop. And those are embedded smart objects, which we've already seen so far. We also have Linked Smart Objects, and then we have Creative Cloud smart objects. They're just Creative Cloud items, but they are usually linked to the original in the Creative Cloud library. So they essentially function the same way as Smart Objects do, but not from a local file, but from the Creative Cloud library. So the first thing we want to show you is the embedded smart object, which is the most common smart object and most workflows. So here I have opened 9.3 types of Smart Objects. And I'm just going to look in the exercise files for the logo element here, which is just a PNG of my company logo. And I'm just going to click and drag this into Photoshop and release it on the canvas and confirm the placement here with the check mark at the top. Now, this is now a Smart Object because the default Photoshop behavior is placing images from into a different document in, in a imbedded Smart Object. And you can tell it's an embedded smart object by this little icon here. And that means that any changes I make to the contents of the smart object, which I would do by double-clicking here on the layer thumbnail, will only be limited to this specific document. So it's not going to show up anywhere else. These changes will not affect any other photoshop documents. This just affects this current Photoshop document. So let's say I'm just going to add a hue saturation adjustment layer. And I'm going to click and drag the hue to change the color of the logo. I'm going to save it with Control S, which I cannot do currently because it is a PNG which I placed. So I'm just going to merge these layers using Control E, press Control S to save. And then you will see the color of the smart object layer has been changed. Now I'm just going to undo that. And I'm just going to delete. I'm just going to save this again using Control S. And I'm gonna make this a little smaller to make room for our next smart object type. Using control team and confirm here at the top. So I'm going to name this to imbedded. Actually. The other way of placing embedded images besides clicking and dragging them out of explorer or bridge is going into the File menu and then choosing place embedded. And that's going to bring you into this dialogue box. And you can just pick which document you want to embed. Now placing a linked image works slightly differently. Let's say I want to place the same logo, but I want to link it to the original file. I can do that by just finding the file on my hard drive in bridge or Explorer or Finder, or going into File and then Place linked. And I'm just going to pick the logo. And now initially we don't see any difference. But once I confirm this placement, you will see a link icon here instead of the embedded icon for the other smart object. And that means that when I open this smart object, I'm not opening an embedded file. I am opening the original file on my hard drive. So once I make any changes to this, it's not only going to affect this Photoshop document, but every Photoshop document in which I use this logo or any InDesign documents that are used as login or Illustrator or After Effects or anything. Really, I am altering the actual document that I have just placed instead of using an embedded smart object layer. So any changes made to a Linked Smart Object layer will affect the original file as well. So that is something to keep in mind when you're working with Linked Smart Objects. Another way of placing Linked Smart Objects, and I'm just going to delete this layer by clicking on it and pressing Backspace is just finding it on your hard drive. Clicking and dragging it into Photoshop and holding down the Alt or Option key on the Mac, then releasing the mouse button. And once you commit the transform, you'll see that it is now a Linked Smart Object layer and not an embedded smart object layer. So I'm just going to rename this to linked. I'm going to scale it down Control T and confirm the transform with the Enter key. Now, the third way of placing smart objects is working with Creative Cloud Libraries. And creative cloud library items are linked to the original in the Creative Cloud library. So what I'm gonna do here is open up my Creative Cloud library here. And I'm just going to click and drag this logo file onto my canvas. And I'm going to confirm the placement cure with a double-click. Now we're here, we see the Creative Cloud Library Smart Object indicator. So it's this little cloud icon that's telling me that this is linked to the Creative Cloud library item. So once I double-click the layer thumbnail here, it opens up this file which is actually in my Creative Cloud Library. And when I change its color and then save it, oh wait, I have to flatten the file once more. So I'm just going to merge these layers, use Control E and then save it. And then when I look at my Creative Cloud Library, the file has also been changed here, meaning that it's also changed in any document that I have this logo elements placed. So that's something to keep in mind when you're working with creative cloud library items. Now there is a way of disconnecting Creative Cloud lightweight. I actually have to save the file using Control S, and then you will see it will change here as well. Now, there is a way of placing a disconnected version of any element in your Photoshop documents. And that is by holding the Alt or Option key and then clicking and dragging from the library. And that's just places an unlinked logo element. So this is not linked to the original. Here, it just functions as its separate layer, which is then not a smart object. So we have embedded smart objects, which you can bring it into Photoshop. I'm just clicking and dragging onto your Canvas. We have Linked Smart Objects, which we can place by holding down the Alt key when doing the same. And we have Creative Cloud, smart objects or creative cloud library items, which we can just click and drag from any creative cloud library that we have access to. 74. 9.4-Destructive editing: An aspect of smart objects that we haven't really touched upon yet is that you cannot use destructive editing tools on them, such as the clone stamp tool or the Spot Healing Brush. And in this video, I'm going to show you what that actually means and how to work around that problem. So here I have the exercise file 9.4, destructive editing dot JPEG. And I'm just going to look in the exercise files for this chapter. And I'm going to pick 9.4 destructive editing dash T2. And I'm going to click and drag this into Photoshop and just release it on the canvas to place it as an embedded smart object. I'm going to confirm the placement here at the top. And let's say I want to get rid of some of these flying rose petals here. This is a composite, by the way. She was actually laying on a Barstow which I placed there. And I'm just going to pick the spot healing brush here. And as I mouse over this layer, you will see the stop sign on my mouse cursor. So when I actually click on the layer, it's going to tell me this smart object must be rasterized before proceeding. Editing contents will no longer be available. Rasterize the smart object. Now, rasterization means that it basically just stops being a smart object. And it can always be the case that that's not really an issue. But I prefer to keep the smart objects that I place as smart objects. So I'm going to show you a few workarounds to solve this problem without rasterizing the image. So one thing you can do is open up the smart object and then edit its contents. So I'm just going to double-click here on the layer thumbnail. And here I have the spot healing brush available so I can just start removing these rose petals. Now, one drawback of this is that you cannot see how these edits translate into the document where you have the smart object placed. So you have to actually save it and then go back to the original document in which the smart object layer is placed to see what your edits are actually doing in the grander scheme of things. So that is not the most efficient way of doing that. So I'm just going to close out of the editing without saving my changes. So I'm just going to click, No, I'm back here in the document. I'm just going to create a new layer. Now, I've shown you in previous chapters how to create new layers. You can just click this New Layer icon here at the top. I usually choose to use the shortcut for this, which is Control Shift Alt, Enter or Command Option Shift and on the Mac, and that just creates a blank new layer. Now when I have the spot healing brush selected here, I have a checkbox here at the top for sample all layers. Because right now with this layer selected, this tool does nothing because the layer is blink, it's completely empty. There are no filled pixels in this layer at all. But once I click sample all layers, It's not just going to look at the current layer, but also to the layers below it. So all the visible layers where I'm clicking and dragging basically. So now I can just edit away these rose petals if I want to, by simply clicking on them. And to show you what's actually happening. I am just going to get rid of some more here. And then I'm going to hide the smart object layer. And there we see what Photoshop is actually done. So it just took pixels from the layer below and fill them in over here using content aware. So this is how you can perform destructive editing on an indestructible smart object layer by just adding a layer on top and making sure sample all layers is selected. And what you will find is that this checkbox here at the top for sample all layers is also available. For example, the clone stamp tool. Only here It's drop-down menu and not an actual checkbox. But if you then look at the other tools here, the Dodge and Burn tool, for example, you do not have the option to specify whether or not this affects all layers below it. Obviously because it's not a sample brush. So that's basically how you can use destructive editing tools on indestructible smart objects without losing the ability to edit the smart object itself. 75. 10.1-Adding text: In this chapter, I'm going to teach you all about working with text in Photoshop. So here I have the file 10-point one, adding text to which we will be adding some text. To add text to our documents, we can use the type tool here and the left side of the program in the toolbar. And we can either just click to activate the Type Tool or we can hold the mouse down or right-click on the tool to select three other type tools. The vertical type tool, which allows us to type vertically, and the vertical and horizontal Mask Tools, which allows us to type in selections, which I will show you later in this chapter. We're just going to start with the horizontal type tool. Now, when we activate this tool here at the top, we already have some style options for our text. Here we can choose a font, and this is, generally speaking a, an enormous list of fonts that have been installed on your system already. And once you choose a family, a font family, for example, Calibri, which is a pretty standard font from the Microsoft suite of programs. We can then choose a style for the font. So for Calibri, I have light, light italic, regular italic, bold and bold italic. Now the options you have available here are independent or dependent on which fonts and families are installed on your system. So your list might differ from mine a little bit. Even though Calibri should be pretty standard on any Windows or Mac machine. So here we have the family, here we have the style, and here we have the size of the font. Now, these are not the default settings. These are the settings that I most recently used to format my text. So let's say I just want to reset the formatting to the defaults, which you would also have if you've never used the type tool before. Then I can go up into the Window menu, and then I can choose Character. And then I can go up into the little hamburger menu of the character panel. And then I can choose reset character. And that's gonna give me Myriad Pro, Regular in 12 points with a black fill color. Now, we'll be looking at this character panel more extensively in one of the next videos. So I'm just going to close out of this now by collapsing the panel. Now, there are two ways of adding text to a document. We can either just click on our Canvas, which gives us an infinite text frame. Basically, this is a point text, text frame that will just keep running off into the right of the document. So I can just keep typing and it's going to go on infinitely. And as you can see, as I keep typing this gibberish, the text cursor will actually run off of the document until we use an actual line breaks. So if we just press the Enter key, it's going to break to the next line. And you can always navigate to the beginning and end of a text frame like this, using the up and down arrow keys. If you want to go back to the front, you can press the up key. And if you want to go to the end, you can press the down arrow key. Now, selecting this texts to format it or delete it, for example, is a matter of clicking and dragging. You can also click three times within any text frame to select all of the text. Or you can just press Control a or Command a on the Mac. Now, something you may have noticed, and I'm just going to delete all this extra text that I added by selecting it, by clicking and dragging and then pressing Backspace. Photoshop filled in this Lorem Ipsum. This is what we call placeholder text. So this allows us to format our text without actually having to type anything first. So it's placeholder text that we just used when there hasn't been any actual copy written. So before the actual text of our document has been written. And this is something you might like to use. I like to use it for demonstration purposes. And because not all of my exercise files have text pre-built in. But it can be a bit bothersome when you start working with area type, which we will be looking at after. And I explained to you how we can deactivate this placeholder text. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to commit this text by pressing Control Enter or Command Enter on the Mac. And that just commits the text. That is basically the same as pressing the checkmark here at the top. And in the current version of Photoshop, you can actually also commit text with the Escape key by default, which used to be one of the ways to cancel entering text. But now you can actually commit text by pressing the Escape key. So this Lorem Ipsum is something you can deactivate. So I'm going to go into the preferences of Photoshop. And here on Windows, I will find that in the Edit menu. On the Mac, you want to go into the Photoshop menu and then go into preferences all the way at the bottom. And then we're going to choose type. Here in the type options, I can then disable this check mark here, the bottom checkmark, fill new type layers with placeholder text. So if you don't want that placeholder text, this is the place in the program where you would deactivate that. I'm going to leave it on for now for demonstration purposes. So I'm just going to click Okay. Now I'm going to delete this text frame by making sure it's highlighted in my layers panel by clicking it and then pressing the backspace key. And I'm going to go back to my type tool using the T key, which is the keyboard shortcut for the Type Tool. Now, the second way of entering text in Photoshop is just by clicking and dragging. And that's going to create an area type field. So it's going to constrain the position of my text to whatever boundaries I click and drag initially. So I'm clicking and dragging and I release the mouse. And you will see that I already have some placeholder text in there because that option is still enabled in the program preferences. Now, these texts frames can be scaled, so you can just click and drag the corners to expand it or contract it. And the type will scale along with the text string. Now at some point, you might end up in a situation where there is more text in a text frame, then you can see. So if you make the text frames small enough, you will get something called overset text. And that is a problem, generally speaking, because not all of the text in the text frame is visible. And this is indicated by this little plus icon next to the text string. If I zoom in here, the UI element doesn't actually scale, so it's still quite small, but there's this little plus icon here at the bottom right indicating that there is currently overset text. Now, if you want to get rid of that, you can just scale the text frame up. And that's going to make all of the texts visible again. And here within this area type, you can use all of the standard text formatting options. So we have the font family, we have the font style, we have the size, aliasing, which I will explain in one of the next videos. Alignment, color, and the warp options. So those are the default text options we have here in the Options bar. So that's two ways of adding text in Photoshop. So you can just click on your Canvas to get a basically infinite point type text frame. And you can click and drag with the type tool to get an area text frame. 76. 10.2-Character formatting: In the previous lesson, we looked at some of the basic character formatting options relating to font family, font style and font size. And in this video, we will be looking at all of the character options available to us in the Character panel. Now, I already have this character panel available to me here in the workspace. But if you don't have it added here on the right side, you can always go up into the Window menu and then choose character to get those expanded options. So we're gonna, we're gonna go through all of these options here. And we are going to apply some formatting to this Lorem Ipsum text frame that I have here at the top left of my composition. Now we are going to need to enter this text frame to select the text and edit it or edit its formatting. And there are several ways that we can do that. We can just double-click on the text frame. What we can also do is just double-click on this large T in the layer thumbnail. So if we double-click here, we also enter text edit mode and we can select the text automatically. Now, the first thing we are going to look at here is again, the font-family selection, the font-style selection, and the font size. So these are the most basic character formatting options available to us, and they are right here at the top of the program in the Options bar. Now, the expanded character options are here in the character panel. So I'm just going to zoom in on this text a little bit by using Alt scroll or Option scroll on the Mac. And I'm going to change the font family of this font, of this text to one of my favorite fonts, quicksand. Now, you might not have quicksand installed on your system. It's not one of the Windows or OSX is a default fonts. It's just a font that I really like to use. In one of the next videos, I'm going to show you how to add fonts to your system using Adobe fonts on which you will also find quicksand. So I'm just going to change it to quicksand. Then I'm actually going to reselect the first word here, Lorem. And I'm going to change the font style of that to quicksand bold using the style selector here. Now, I want to increase the text size. And as you will see, you have here a drop-down list from which you can choose certain number of presets. Now, these options are pretty limited. And usually the one I want is not in that list. So I'm going to show you a keyboard shortcut to increase or decrease the font size. So on Windows, that's going to be holding down Control and Shift and then using the comma and period keys. So the greater than and smaller than symbols. And using those shortcuts, I can increase the size of my text to 46 points. And the text sizes in points, obviously, just like in any other, uh, programs that have rich formatting text. So that is the font size here. Here we have the line spacing. So I'm going to actually put Ipsum on a new line by just pressing the enter key before it. And now I'm going to select the text and I'm going to show you that if I change the line spacing, actually change how far the lines are spaced apart. Now, six points is obviously too little. You always want to have this be more than the actual font size, because that's how far the text needs to be spaced apart to be read separately. So what you can actually do with the lines selected, you can hold down the Alt key or the Option key and use the arrow keys to increase the line spacing. So that's a quick and easy way of changing the line spacing of the selected text, which I have now increased to 48. Then the lower two items here are the kerning and tracking of the text. Kerning is individual character spacing. So you can change the kerning of two characters or a character to increase the space between that character and the next. So let's say I want to create more space between the O and the R of lorem. Then I can just go here into the kerning options. And I can select a value of 50, for example. And you will see that the spacing between the O and the R has increased without any text selected. So just with my text cursor in between two characters, I can also use the alt key and the left and right arrow keys to increase the kerning of that character. I am, however, going to just set this to auto again or to optical actually, which is the auto function. When designing a font, the designer has already taken into account the ideal kerning and tracking for tax. So you don't want to play around with this too much. But if two characters, if two adjacent characters look that look like they are too far spaced apart or too close together. Then you can use this to play with that a little bit. So then we have the tracking of the text. And with tracking, we change the overall spacing of selected text. So if I select the top line here, Laura, I can then change the tracking to 50 for example. And as you can see, the spacing of all the selected characters has been increased. I can also, when Texas selected, hold down the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, and then use the left and right arrow keys to change the kerning or, or the tracking of the text. So the kerning determines individual character spacing and the tracking distributes the text overall. If the text has been selected. I'm just going to put Ipsum on the same line again by pressing Backspace in front of it. And I'm going to re-select the text and then show you the other character options here. Here we have a vertical scale and a horizontal scale which you can use for kind of an illustrative effect. But it's not really a practical application of character formatting. I've never really use this in a practical sense in neither Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign, which also have these options. But if I increase the vertical scale by 100 to 200, you will see that I'm stretching the text up and I'm just going to Control Z that. And if I change the horizontal scale, I can stretch the text horizontally, which is something you can use if that's a creative edit that you want to put in your texts. But I've never really use this in a practical context. Here we have the baseline shift which allows us to change the height of the text on the character line. So if I start increasing the baseline shift for this selected text, you will see that are in placing it higher upon the line on which the text is typed, which you can also use for a creative effect. Now, we have the character color here, which is currently set to black. So if we click this, we end up in the color picker and I can change the text color to white. For example, if you have a set value you want to change it to, you can enter RGB codes, you can enter the hexadecimal color code, lab, HSB, hue saturation brightness, or the CMYK colors of whichever value you want to enter. Then here we have some other basic character formatting options. We can change the text to all caps or to Fo bold. Actually, the first one here is Fo bold and it just makes the text a little bit thicker. So if you don't have a bold variant of the text, or you want to make your bold text a little bolder than you can use the faux bold. We also have faux italic, which italicize the text by just twisting it on the baseline. So it's not actual italic text. The characters are just slightly tilted on the baseline. So if you don't have an italicized variant of a text, you can create italicized texts with this little toggle here. And then here we have all caps, which I'm turns the selected characters into capital letters no matter what their formatting is, and they are all uniform. Then we have small caps and with small caps, actual capital letters are the actual size of capitals. And the small letters, or regular letters are smaller capital letters. So this is also something that I use quite often actually. Then if I disable the small caps, superscript and subscript, which respectively set the text on top of the baseline or below it. So here I can put the text up on the baseline or within the text line actually, and we can put it down. And this is something that you would use for measurements, for example, like square feet or square meters. So m2 for example, M. And the subscript is usually for stuff like disclaimers and source linking and stuff like that. So the options are available for you there. Here we have an underline and strikethrough and underlying and Photoshop is actually really basic compared to the other Adobe programs that have underlying because it just puts a line under the text in the same color as the text itself. You cannot alter its thickness. You cannot alter the offsets, so you can't change the distance of the underlying from the texts like this is all it does. So if you rely on underlying texts, I would either work with drawing those underlines yourself using the line tool, which we will look at in the next chapter, or just choose a different program to format your text in. And here we then have the strikethrough, which puts a line through the text and crosses it out. Here we have some stuff concerning fractures and discretionary ligatures, which really goes very far into how text actually works in programs like this. And now text, how fonts in general work. I'm just going to show you this first one which can be useful in certain situations. These are the discretionary ligatures of Photoshop. So I'm going to type the characters F and L next to each other. And I'm going to put it in, and I'm going to change the font family to a font family of which I know that it supports these ligatures. So I'm going to change the font family to Myriad Pro. And that's MAY IRI a, D and Myriad Pro Regular. And what you see here is that the F and the L are not just adjacent, they are connected. So for certain characters, in certain situations, you get this connecting arch between the characters and that's, that goes for the F and the L. It doesn't go for the F and the T, It goes for the F and the eye for example. So this gives you a brand new character essentially. Now, when you have to take in something called accessibility into account, this actually can lead to some problems. I don't necessarily like the formatting of this text. So all of this new character, so you can always disable it using this little toggle here. And those are basically all of the character formatting options available to us in Photoshop. If you want to commit the text, you can always just press the Escape key. You can switch back to the move tool or you can click the check mark here at the top of the Options bar. 77. 10.3-Paragraph formatting: In this lesson, we will be looking at paragraph formatting in Photoshop, which is obviously different than a character formatting, paragraph, formatting those snake concerns, alignment and spacing of paragraph. So we are going to create a paragraph on top of a shape layer to give it a bit of a background color, Let's say. So what I'm gonna do is go here into the shape tools, selecting the rectangle tool which is spaced two tools below the Type Tool here. And I'm going to pre-select a fill color by clicking here at the top where it says Fill. I'm going to click on this white rectangle here to select a color. And I'm actually going to go into the color picker to select a color. And I'm gonna go here into the darker blues. And I'm going to select about this color. Or what I could actually do is sample a color from the water. So I'm going to click here at the top left, a bit below the text to sample that color. And then I'm going to click, Okay, using this tool, I'm just going to click and drag here on my composition to create a rectangle. And there I have my rectangle. And let's say I still want to be able to see the image partially through this rectangle, then I can change the opacity of the rectangle here in the layers panel to about 60 percent. And there we go. So in front of this rectangle, we are going to create our texts. So I'm just going to grab the type tool, the horizontal title. And actually, when you click the type tool on top of a shape layer, it converts. We're actually creates a text layer in the exact shape of that shape layer. So if you want some more control over the position and size of the text frame, I'm going to actually click the Escape key and then the backspace key to delete that text frame, I'm going to start clicking and dragging outside of the rectangle. And while I'm still holding down the mouse button, I'm going to hold the Spacebar and then drag the text frame on top of the rectangle. And then I'm going to release. Now, what you'll see is that this text is far too large because it remembered the previous formatting that I used so well while the text is still selected. And you can always press Control a to re-select all the texts within a text frame. I'm going to go into the character panel here. And I'm going to go into the menu and then select reset character. And that's just resets it to Myriad Pro, Regular and 12 points with a black fill. Now I'm going to change the font family to quicksand, once more, quicksand, regular in this case. And I'm also going to decrease the text size to, let's say ten points here. And then we're going to look at the paragraph formatting options. Now, here initially in the top line we have the alignment of the text which you should be familiar with from other programs. It's currently left aligned, which is the default setting. And that means that the text runs off from the left to the right and just breaks to the next line going from left to right when it runs out of space within the text frame. I can also center the text by clicking this icon here. And that's centers the entire paragraph. So not all the texts within the text frame, but only the current paragraph that my text cursors in. And note that you do not have to have the paragraph selected. It just requires that the text cursor within the paragraph. And then of course I can also write align the text if I so choose, then we have the justified options. And if I click left justify here, you will see that it's spaces, the words to such an extent that they all fit the text frame exactly. So some of the lines have too much spacing currently then I would rather see, but That's something you can very tacitly influenced by going into the Options menu here of the paragraph panel and then select justification. So you can actually change the minimum, desired and maximum values of the justification to end up with a better result. But for now I'm just going to leave it where it is to demonstrate the rest of the paragraph options. You can also select center justified, and that basically only changes the alignment of the last line of the text frame of the paragraph. And I can also choose justify rights. You can also justify the entire text, justify all within the paragraph by clicking this one, and that fills every line in exactly the same spacing. Now, I usually choose either align left or justify left depending on how it looks in the end result and depending on the project that I'm actually working on. So then we have the options here below that, these little dialogues. First, we have the left margin or the indent. So if I increase this value by just putting my cursor inside of the value and pressing the up arrow key, you'll see that I'm moving the text away from the left side, the texts frames. So I'm creating an indent for that paragraph. I'm just going to change this back to 0. We also have a right indent. So if I increase this value, you will see that the text is moving away from the right side of the text frame. And I'm just going to change this back to 0. Here we have the first-line indent, which only in density first line from the left. And I do not hear have right in dense because I'm working, I'm not working with Arabic script and with Arab script. Then we have the space before and space after. And we use these options to create space between paragraphs. And in most cases you use either the space before or the space after. And I'm going to show you what I mean by just creating a secondary paragraph by pressing enter in front of the word Magna here on the third line. So now I actually have two paragraphs. One heart enter is creating a new paragraph basically. So what I can do here is increase the space before, and this creates a space before the current paragraph. What I can also do is give the first paragraph a space after. So if I increase the space after the first paragraph here, that actually pushes the next paragraph down more. Now, this is something to keep in mind that you want to use either of the space before or the space after. Because once you start working with paragraph styles, which I will show you in the next lesson. These effects will stack on top of each other. So if I create a paragraph style with three points space before and three points space after the first paragraph is first going to. The second paragraph will actually first have three points space before, and then three points space after, based on the character style giving me six points of spacing. So you want to use either the space before or the space after. There's a checkbox here for hyphenate, which enables or disables hyphenation. So if I enable hyphenation, you will see that words are hyphenated here and then break to the next line with this little hyphen. I usually disable this to keep the text more easily legible, Let's say. And those are all the paragraph formatting options we have available here. In the next video, we will be looking at the paragraph styles and character styles that Photoshop makes available to us. 78. 10.4-Character styles: Character styles allow us to standardize our text formatting so that we can quickly apply that formatting two different texts layers in the same documents or even across different documents. And that's what I'm gonna be showing you in this lesson. Now, to do that, we need a few panels in our interface. I've already added the character panel here in previous lessons. And I also need the Character Styles panel. If that's not part of your workspace, you can always go up into the Window menu and then select Character Styles and it will become available over here. Now, what we're gonna do is format this text here at the top left to be quicksand, bold in 42 points and a white fill. And then create a character style based on that formatting. So to do that, I'm going to double-click the text. That puts me inside the text frame and it automatically selects the text. And then I can either use the options here at the top or the character panel, or even the Properties panel to apply all the formatting. So for this, I'm going to just use the properties panel because it's already opened over here. And I'm going to change the font family to quicksand. And then I'm going to tab over to the font style and choose both. Then I'm going to enter a size of 32 points. And then I'm going to change the fill color down here to the white. And then I'm going to press Control Enter to confirm my text entry, which is a shortcut I use every day. So now I want to take a look at the Character Styles panel. So I'm gonna open up this panel and it says here none. So that's a style that is always present in this dialogue in this panel whenever you open it within a document for the first time. And you will also note that there's a plus sign next to the style name. That means that the non style is actually applied. There's no character style active there, but it is overwritten. So I've added formatting on top of this style, and that gives you that plus sign. I'm going to show you exactly how that works in the next video. Now, to create a character style, you want to have at least one character with that formatting selected. If I create a new character style. Now by just clicking this plus here at the bottom of the Character Styles panel, it's going to create a new character style. But when I open that style, you will see that all the character formatting is empty. There is no font-family specified, no style, no size, phil, nothing. So you want to actually select a character that has the desired formatting. So I'm just going to delete this style that I just created by pressing the garbage bin icon here and then press yes. So I'm going to double-click on my texting in all the text is currently selected. You don't have to select all the text. It just has to be one character that has the desired formatting. So I'm going to go up into the character styles panel menu and then choose new character style. And it doesn't give you the option to initially specifying a name for the file. So I'm just going to double-click it here. And that's going to open the character style options. And I'm just going to name this quicksand Bold 40 to PTS for you two points. And here you see quicksand bold 42 points and a white fill. So you can also still change these here in this dialogue, but I'm just going to leave them as is. I prefer to format my text exactly how I want before actually creating the style. So now that we've changed the name, I'm just going to press, Okay. And that gives me the example for you two points style here. Now, what I want to show you is when I add a new text frame. So I'm just going to grab the type tool here and I'm going click for a text frame. And initially I wanted the none character cell applied. So I'm just going to click None. But that's not actually going to change the formatting of the text because we still have this plus sign here. So I'm just going to clear the overrides. So the actual style applied to the text by pressing this circle arrow at the bottom of the panel. And that resets the formatting too quick to Myriad Pro, Regular 12 points in black. And now look what happens when I click this character style in the Character Styles panel. It automatically changes the formatting, but not exactly to specifications. So I'm just going to clear the overrides again and then it is exactly what I want. Now, this is a little bit of caveat that sometimes you have to actually clear the overrides when applying a style. That only applies when you have applied another style or when you've overridden the original formatting. So that is something to remember. But it basically boils applying text formatting down to just a couple of mouse clicks instead of going into the text again, selecting, changing the family, changing the style, font size, and other options that you apply on a character level, which we've looked at a couple of videos ago. So that is one way of standardizing your texts within a single document. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to work with these overrides a little more. And in the video after that, I'm going to show you how to work with Creative Cloud Libraries. 79. 10.5-overrides: In the previous lesson, I showed you how to create character styles based on text formatting, which is to say you just format the text. You select one character. With the desired formatting, you go into the character salesman you, and then you choose new character style. Now, I want to make working with character styles and overriding character styles a little less ambiguous. So what I'm going to show you is that I can just highlight this text frame here in the layers panel. And then I can just switch between these two character styles whenever I want. So I can click None, and I can click the quicksand bold 42 points again. And it's just going to change the formatting for me. Now, I want to show you what happens when I actually change the formatting when a style is applied. So with this style applied quick simple for you two points. I'm just kinda go into the character panel and I'm going to change it front, quicksand bold to quicksand regular, and that changes the formatting of the text. So going back to the Character Styles panel here, you can now see that there is a plus sign next to the file, meaning that in addition to the style, additional formatting is applied. And you can handle that in a couple of ways. You can just reset the style which removes the additional formatting. And you can do that with the circle arrow here at the bottom of the panel. And that's just going to reset it to whatever the style is. You can also use the Character panel for this. Because in the Character panel, and by the way, I did overriding the style using Control-C. And in the character panel, I can also go into the menu. And then I have here at the bottom reset character. And that's not going to reset the character to Myriad Pro, Regular, regular 12 points. That's going to reset to whatever style is applied. So if I click Reset character, it's going to go back to quicksand, bold 42 points with a white fill. So also this way you can override the formatting that you've chosen. So going back to the Character Styles panel, you now see that the plus sign is gone and that the regular style is applied again. Now I'm going to change the formatting once again, this time using the Properties panel. And I'm just going to go into the style selector and I'm going to make a quick standard, regular. And now let's say I like this formatting a bit more and that I actually want to redefine my style as this formatting and not the bold variant. What I can do then is redefine the style using this formatting. So I can do that with this little checkmark here at the bottom. So this says redefine Character Style by merging overrides. So I'm going to click this and it's going to apply the style and then redefine the style using this new formatting. Obviously it's not quick sampled anymore. So let's say I want to change the formatting, change the name of style, then I can just double-click it. And then I'm just going to remove bold. And let's say I also want to make it 46 points. So I'm just going to enter 46. And this also updates the style immediately and wherever it's apply it. So if I enter 12 and tap out, you will see that the text is now 12 points. And if I enter 46 than it is now 46 points. So I can also change that in the title here. And then click, Okay, that has redefine the style and also change the formatting of the text itself. And that wouldn't have just been locally here on this single text frame. If I had used this character style or different texts frames, those also would have updated with this new style. So basically, Character Styles connect the formatting of different texts frames to a single entry point here in the Character Styles panel. So they're formatting is always connected to the style and updating the style updates the formatting of every text frame to which that style is applied. 80. 10.6-Styles from libraries: Besides being able to standardize character styles within a single document, you can also use character styles within Creative Cloud Libraries. And we are going to be demonstrating that by adding the style of this text to a Creative Cloud Library and then applying it to this text frame. And that is going to be within a single document, obviously, but this works across any Photoshop document and even across different programs because character styles, unlike a paragraph styles which I will talk about in a later video, can be applied between different Adobe programs. So character styles that you've designed in Photoshop can also be used in InDesign and Illustrator, for example, but not character, not paragraph styles, which I will talk about later. So let's say we want to base a character style on this formatting and then also add the character style to our Creative Cloud Library. Now, with this text layer highlighted, which is the bottom Lorem Ipsum text layer here. The second one is this smaller text frame below it. I'm going to open up the Creative Cloud Libraries panel. And then I want to add the character style which is applied here to my library. And to do that, I'm going to go down to this little plus icon at the bottom of the panel. And then you can choose to add different things to your library. So I can choose the text color, the foreground color, the character style, the graphic, or add all of those. For now, I'm just going to choose the character style, so I'm going to click that and that adds it to this creative cloud library. And it also gives you a preview of the style here in the panel, which is also quite useful. Now, you can always rename a style by double-clicking the current name and then just overriding it. And now I want to show you how to work with this character style, not just within this document, but you can also use it across several documents. So this is a way of standardizing your text formatting in a creative cloud library so that not only you can use it in the future in different documents, but also people that are connected to this creative cloud library. So you can disseminate this character formatting to wherever you like, within a team of graphic artists or within a marketing team who work with Photoshop using this function. So let's say I want to apply this character style from my creative cloud library to this text frame here, I'm just going to select the text frame in the layers panel. What you don't want to do is actually go into the text frame and select the text. Because for this specific function, you just have to have the layer highlighted in the layers panel. And now I can just click the character style within the Libraries panel. And that's going to apply the text formatting immediately. So going into the Character Styles panel, you can now see that there is an override applied to it. But I can just click Clear overrides here and that's going to show it, display it correctly within this panel. And the formatting is applied, the silos applied, but it still shows that plus sign for some reason. Character styles within Photoshop are a bit different and a little more quirky then in the other Adobe programs that support them. But this is a very quick and easy way of standardizing your text formatting and to show you that this works across different documents as well, I'm just going to create a new document using Control or Command on the Mac. And I'm just going to set it to pixels, and I'm going to go for 1080 by 1080 pixels with a resolution of 72 pixels per inch. And I'm just going to change the background color to black because this white formatting will show up a lot better on a black background that a white one. So I'm just going to click Create. I'm going to grab my type tool. And before we continue, I want to reset the character to the default formatting. So I'm just going to grab the character panel and I'm going to go into the hamburger menu and I'm going to choose character to get Myriad Pro, Regular 12 points with a black fill. So I'm going to click and that's going to add a text frame with Lorem Ipsum. And then I'm just going to confirm my text entry here with the check mark at the top. Then we grab the Creative Cloud Libraries panel, and I'm just going to click this style. And as you can see, the formatting is immediately applied. Now it doesn't look quite right. Like the size appears to be different from the size in our other document of the scientists the same. The size of the document is different, and the text formatting doesn't scale with the document. So that's that's why it looks larger in this document then in this document. So the only thing I would have to do is actually change the font size to look similar to this document. You can also delete character styles from your library by just right-clicking it and then choosing delete. And you can also apply it with right mouse and then apply a character style if you want. So those are different ways of applying the same character style within not just this single document, but in any document that you create in Photoshop. 81. 10.7-Paragraph styles: Another way of standardizing text formatting in Photoshop is by working with paragraph styles. Now we already looked at character styles, which basically standardized the formatting of individually selected text. Paragraph styles actually not only contain the formatting of the characters, so the font-family, the font style, size, and color of characters, but also the alignment and spacing of our paragraphs. So you might say that these can be very useful in Photoshop, but I find their utility to be somewhat limited when you compare it to their cousins, the Illustrator and InDesign. Because first of all, Character paragraph styles in Photoshop are not interchangeable with paragraph styles in InDesign and Illustrator. Paragraphs, as you make an illustrator can be used in InDesign. Paragraph styles that you use in InDesign can be used in Illustrator, but Photoshop is somehow outside of that equation because of how paragraphs are rendered in Photoshop and the options it provides you. If I look at the paragraph panel, here, we have the alignment and justification of our text. We have the indentation and spacing of our paragraphs, but that is where the options n Now InDesign and Illustrator contain far more options for paragraph formatting and Photoshop does, so they are not interchangeable. These paragraph styles between these programs, which is a lot less useful than using paragraph formatting from InDesign and Illustrator for example. So when you're formatting large areas of text, I prefer to do so in InDesign because it just gives you a lot more control over the formatting of a paragraph with many more options available to you. And so the fact that they're not interchangeable with other Adobe programs makes paragraph cells in Photoshop less useful. But I'm still going to show you how to create them and how they work. So here in this exercise file, I have basically the same formatting as in the previous videos. What we're going to be doing is creating a paragraph style based on the formatting in this text frame at the bottom right. And to do so, I'm going to double-click on the text frame using the Move tool. And that's going to put me inside of the text frame. And to create a paragraph style based on a paragraph, you just want to make sure that the, the cursor, the text cursor is inside of that paragraph. So that's the only requirements. Here we have quicksand regular 12 points with a white fill. So that is the style that I want to apply. And I believe this text is left justified, which I can check in the paragraph panel. Okay, so now I can create a paragraph style based on this formatting. And to do that, I'm just going to click this plus icon at the bottom of the paragraph styles panel, and that's going to create Paragraph Style 1. Now, if I double-click that style, I can change its properties. I can change its name. So I can just change this to body, for example. It's quicksand, regular 12 points with a white fill. And here at the indents and spacing, we can specify the actual paragraph options so it's justified. It's a four-point left indent and a 4 right indent and a space after of three points, as we've done in a previous video talking about paragraph formatting. So that's, that all seems to be correct. So I'm just going to click Okay. Now, when you're inside of this paragraph, you will see that there is still an override active. So let me just remove the override by clicking this circle arrow here at the bottom. I'm not sure what the override actually was, but it was applied. So now we've overridden it. And then we can also apply the body paragraph style to this paragraph and also remove the override. So now I'm going to draw a new text frame. So I'm just going to confirm this text entry with the checkmark here at the top. And I'm going to create a new text frame using the type tool and just clicking and dragging. And that's going to fill it with placeholder text. And it's also going to apply the formatting which I last used. Now I want to reset that formatting, so I'm just going to put it on Basic Paragraph. And then I'm going to go into the character formatting. I'm going to go into the menu and choose reset character. And that just puts it at Myriad Pro, Regular 12 points with the black fill. And now look what happens when we go into the Paragraph Styles panel and click the body. Nothing happens initially until we clear the override. So I'm just going to clear the override here. And you will see it's now quicksand regular 12 points left justified. These can not be saved in Creative Cloud Libraries, making their utility between different documents also a lot less flexible. What you can do is put the entire objects, so the entire text frame in the Creative Cloud Library. And that's going to import the style to whatever document you place the library item in. But inherently it is less versatile just because of how paragraph formatting works within Photoshop as opposed to InDesign and Illustrator. 82. 10.8-Images within text: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to display an image within a text frame so that the image is only visible where the text is displayed. And to do that, I have here exercise file 10.8 images within text. And the first thing we're gonna do here is create a copy of the background layer. So I'm going to scroll all the way down in the layers panel, click the bottom layer, and then press Control J or Command J on the Mac on my keyboard to create a copy of the background layer. And now I want to make sure that this copy is above the text frame that I want to hide my image in. So I'm going to click and drag this text frame down one layer. And currently the image is hiding the text layer so it's currently invisible. You can always make it visible again by hiding the layer, by clicking the i icon here. And now what I want to achieve is that this layer, the background copy layer, is only visible within this text frame. Now, there are several ways of doing this. You can create a layer mask. You can work with the type masking tools. In. The Type Tool is here on the left. But by far the easiest and most flexible is by working with clipping masks. There's also something we discussed in Chapter 5. So I'm going to place my mouse between these layers and I'm going to hold the Alt key and you will see your cursor change. And once you click the left mouse, you'll see that there's this little downward pointing arrow indicating that the layer is currently clipped. This is not visible for us because the background layer and it's copied above it are currently in the exact same place. So what I'm gonna do is hide the background layer by clicking the i icon and there you will see our text appear. Now, you can actually influence the background copy layer and the text frame separately. So what I can do now is highlight the text frame in the layers panel and use the Move tool to just click and drag it around. And you will see that it also changes what is currently displayed. So we're basically using the text as a mask for the image. Now, once you, I'm re-enable the background layer by clicking the i icon again, the textual once again disappear. And that is because these layers are in the exact same spot. So the layer is there and the text is being displayed. It's just not visible against this background. So what we're gonna do is select the background copy here in the layers panel and then use the move tool to just click and drag it around. And you will see that we can independently changed the position of the layer being masked to highlight a different section of the image. And I'm going to find somewhere in the bottom right, I think just about there. So this here within the text is now approximately this location of the background image. So this is one way of putting an image inside of a text string. And this is my preferred way of working because you have full control over not only the position of the text, but also of the image within the text. And the text is still directly editable. So I can always double-click on the text frame or choose the Type Tool and then click within the text frame and change the texts, or it's formatting to whatever I want. 83. 10.9-Text on a path: If you're bored width, regular rectangular text frames, you can also use type on a path to stylize your text a bit more and really make them part of your composition. And that is what I'm going to show you in this lesson. So I have here the exercise file 10.9 ticks on a path. And what we're going to do is draw an ellipse around this island in Slovenia. And then we are going to create text along that ellipse. And to do that, I have here in the toolbar, the Ellipse tool, it might be that the Rectangle tool is currently displayed for you. If you hold down the mouse button or right-click on this tool, you can select the ellipse tool and the shape tools are hidden under the shortcut you, by the way. So I'm going to grab the ellipse tool. And I'm actually going to look up here in the top left where it says shape, because this dictates that I will currently draw a shape as I click and drag my mouse. Now, you can also create type on a path from shapes, but then you have to set the fill and stroke to none so that the actual shape is not being displayed. So what I'm actually going to do is click here where it says shape and I'm going to change it into path. And that is basically just going to draw an invisible shape or a path along which I can edit my type. This is something we will go over more extensively in the next chapter. But for now I just want the ellipse tool set into path mode. So then I'm going to click and drag around the island. And as I'm holding my mouse down, I can still use the space bar holding it down to change the position of the text string. And then I will release the mouse button. So now I'm just going to switch to the regular old type tool. So I have the type tool active. It's currently set to quicksand regular 9.34 points. I'm actually going to change this into 16 points once the text is actually place along the path. So now if you hover along the actual path, so if you are covering this shape here, the actual outline of the ellipse, you will see your mouse cursor change. And this cursor indicates that we can now add type on a path. So now once I click on the path, it will automatically fill the text frame with placeholder text. And this x goes all along the path here as you can see. So I'm just going to click press backspace to delete the text that is currently being displayed. And I'm just going to type on line Photoshop course 2022. Now as you can see, my type is currently upside down and there are a few ways to solve this. Actually, I can play with the alignment of the text, but that's only minimally going to affect it and give me a limited control over its actual position. But if I actually center the text, it's going to be displayed here at the top where I originally clicked with the cursor to add the text. Now, if you want to change the position of the texts, you actually have to go into the Path Selection Tool. With the path selection tool, you can hover over the beginning of the text and then you can click and drag to move the text around. Now, keep in mind that this also has an influence on the alignment of the text. So if you change the alignment, that x will jump over again. But that's something that's pretty self-explanatory once you notice any misalignments. So I can click and drag here to change where the text actually starts. And note that my text is currently centered. So when I click and drag, I want to center my cursor on where I want the center of my text to be. And you can also grab the end of the text and drag it downwards to put it inside of the actual text frame. So using this, I can actually click and drag it all the way down to the bottom. And the program also navigate in that direction to put it in the inside of the path on the bottom of the text frame. Now I'm just going to place it back here at the top. And you'll note that dragging the sex around is actually quite easy. It used to be that you had to find the actual start and end points, which was very iffy and very particular where you can place your cursor. But it's a lot more simple in the current condition of Photoshop. What I'm going to do is grab the Type tool again. And I'm just going to double-click in the text and I'm going to change the font style to quicksand bold. And I'm also going to increase the size a bit by placing my mouse on these two letters T next to the size property, and just click and drag to increase the size to, let's say, 18 points thereabouts. And then I'm going to click Confirm here to commit the text. Now, let's say I want to make this text flow into this image bit better to make it fit into my composition a bit better. What I can do now is actually add a layer mask to this text layer. So I'm going to make sure the text flame frame is highlighted here. And I'm going to click the Layer Mask icon here at the bottom of the Layers panel. Then I'm going to grab my brush tool. And my brush is currently of a ridiculous size. So I'm just going to use the left bracket key to decrease the size. And I'm going to make sure that black is my foreground color. And then I'm going to zoom in on the actual spire of the church. And now I can just paint over it with a harder brush to hide it from the image. This is going to make it seem once I complete, like the Texas actually behind the island. And this is a trick that you've seen a 100 times on magazine covers and brochures and online compositions. But it's quick and easy way to make your text feel like it's really part of the composition of the image itself. So that's another handy trick. You can create text frames along any shape that you draw using the regular type tool, finding the line of the path and just clicking to add the text. 84. 10.10-Warping text: Another stylistic choice we can make for our text is to warp it, and that's what this lesson is all about. So I have here 10.10 warping test.py ASD. And what we will be doing is warping as text frame here at the top, Lorem Ipsum. That is currently the second layer from the bottom. And to work, the texts actually have to go into the text frame. And for that, I'm just going to double-click the layer thumbnail here, this large letter T. And that's gonna put me inside of the text string. Now we've already spoken about most of the options here at the top, font family font style, font size, anti-aliasing the alignment, the color. And the next icon here is create warped text. Once we click that icon, you will come out in this little pop-up menu where you can choose a style which is currently set to none. And you can expand this menu and then choose one of these presets. So I'm going to just choose the arc for now. And what you'll see is that the highlighting of the texts currently is making it more difficult to see our end result. And I just wanted to see the text as it's going to be displayed once I click Okay and confirm my changes. So I'm going to press Control H or Command H on the Mac. And that's actually going to hide the highlight so that we can see what the text is actually going to look like in our composition. So now I've chosen the arc. I can also choose an arch. I can also choose a flag which is going to turn the text a bit wavy here. And you can choose to place this distortion on the text in either horizontal or vertical orientation. So once I change it to vertical, it's going to change into this kind of ridiculous distortion here. So I'm just going to put it back on horizontal. And then you can also change the bend of the text. It's currently set to 50 percent. You can increase this amounts to make the distortion of the text a bit more pronounced. Or you can decrease it to make it smaller. And you can also drag it into the minus to distort it the other way around. For now, I'm just going to put it back on 50 and press Tab to confirm. If you press Enter in any of these dialogues, you will automatically confirmed your changes. So I prefer to use tab to confirm anything in the side these dialogue boxes until I'm actually done with the edit. Now you can also change the horizontal and vertical distortion independently. If I increase the horizontal distortion, you will see it becoming more flat. So the horizontal distortion becomes more pronounced. And if you change the Vertical Distortion, you will see that the text is also displayed as being more flat. So now it's being tilted backwards. If I increase it and if I decrease it into the minus, it's tilted more forwards along the bend of this particular effect. So changing it back to arc. You will see that this effect, the horizontal distortion and the Vertical Distortion affect how much the distortion is being displayed on the text. So I'm just going to change these back to 0. I just want an art, not an arch but an arc, which is something completely different. And I'm going to have set it to about 40 percent. And then I'm going to click Okay, and once I confirm my changes, you'll see that my text is now being distorted and I can still click and drag it around using the Move tool. And I can still just edit the text to whatever I want by going into the text frame. And an easy way to do that is by double-clicking the layer thumbnail, which is currently being displayed as warped text. So this is different than a regular text layer thumbnail. Now the text is being displayed as warp text, which has its own icon. 85. 11.1-Rectangles: Drawing shapes in Photoshop is relatively straightforward. We have this shape tool here, the Shape tool category in the left toolbar and holding the mouse down or right-clicking on this tool gives access to the other shape tools. So we have the rectangle tool and Ellipse Tool, triangle, polygon, a line segment tool and the custom shape tool. And we will be looking at all of those and they're different options in this chapter, starting with the regular rectangle tool. Now, activating the rectangle tool or any of the shape tools really gives us these options here at the top in the Options bar. First, we can specify whether we want to draw a shape, a path, or pixels. Now, shape is an infinitely scalable vector-based object, so we can make it as big or small as we want to. Even after we've drawn it. A path is just a path or an outline of the shape that you can use to save or create selections, for example, and pixels is the dumbest of the options here at the top. Because when, once you draw your shape, it's, it becomes part of the current layer, which is pixel-based, so you cannot change its dimensions, you cannot change its properties in any way. It's just a set of pixels. So in this chapter we'll be focusing mostly on drawing actual shape layers. Now, here at the top, we also find the fill color which might be set to a different color depending on if you've accessed this tool before, which you can click to choose from one of the swatches currently in Photoshop. Or you can pick the color picker icon here, which gives you the Adobe color picker. And you can just enter color values or use the color picker to click and drag for a different color. I'm just going to close out of these. You can also specify a stroke which is just a line which surrounds your shape. My stroke is currently set to black, but it's also set to a width of 0 pixels. So my object will not have an actual visible stroke. And you can also change the stroke profile here from a solid line to a dashed line to a dotted line with some different options which we will be looking at later. These options here we will go over separately because they give us some more options for drawing shape shapes in certain situations. We don't need to look at those for now. So we have the rectangle tool, which is currently set to shape mode, and it currently has a black fill according to my settings. So let's say we know exactly how large we want to draw a rectangle on our Canvas, then you can just click on the canvas and it's going to give you the create rectangle dialog box. And here you can specify a width and a height for the shape. You can also specify the corner radii. So let's say you want rounded corners on this rectangle, then you can just enter a 10 pixel radius, for example. And it's going to change all of the radius values for every corner. If you want to specify separate radii for each corner, you can disable this chain link icon and then you can give them different values. For now I'm just going to click Cancel because I usually draw my shapes by clicking and dragging on the canvas. And very often, or in most cases, I don't know exactly how large I want them to be. So with this rectangle tool active, I can click and drag on my canvas to draw out a rectangle. And this way of drawing actually works exactly the same as strong rectangular mark keys as we did in Chapter 4. So clicking and dragging, you can just draw an unconstrained rectangle of whatever size and dimension you want. You can also still move this rectangle as you're drawing it. So as you're holding the mouse down by holding the space bar. So if I hold down the spacebar and move my mouse, it actually changes the position of the rectangle. You can also hold the Shift key to draw an constrained square. So now each side is, has the same length. And you can also draw from the center of your original mouse-click by holding the Alt key. And you can use all of these shortcuts at the same time. So I can hold down Alt and Shift to draw a constrained rectangle from the center of my original mouse-click and then grab the spacebar in addition to change the position of the rectangle as I'm drawing it. So using these shortcuts, I'm going to draw a 500 by 500 pixel rectangle, approximately. Because using the shortcuts, the pixel increments can be a bit difficult to grab onto. Now, when you've drawn the shape, you will see the properties panel pop up and that gives us some more properties of the shape. We can change. So here we have the width and the height. So if I wanted exactly 500 pixels, I can just change these values. And because this chain link icon is active, I can just change one and it's going to change the other in proportion. It also gives us an x and a y-coordinate, so you can change the position of the shape within the layer. You can also rotate the rectangle here. This is a bit difficult because it doesn't actually show you the rotation until you've entered a value. So I prefer to do this on the canvas itself actually, which we will be looking at in a little bit. You can reflect the rectangle horizontally or vertically. Or vertically and horizontally actually. And you can also change its appearance here with the fill, the stroke, the stroke width and profile, the stroke alignment, which we'll be looking at later and the corner options here. So looking at the shape on our Canvas, when we still have our shape tool active, we can actually see these handles along its corners and the long sides of the shape. And that indicates that we can grab these and actually changed the dimensions of our shape. We can also do is place our cursor just outside one of the corners of the shape and then use this little elbow arrow to click and drag to change the rotation of our shape. And if I do this holding shift, I will actually constrain the rotation to 15 degree increments. If you want to rotate something exactly 45 or 90 degrees, you can do that easily. Holding Shift. Now, objects with straight 90 degree corners are not just 90 degrees with straight angular corners. Also give us these live corner options. At this actually clicking and dragging these changes the corner radius. So if I just grab this little interface element here on the top right corner, I can click and drag this inwards towards the center of the shape, and it's actually going to round the corners off. You can also do this for individual corners by double-clicking one of these interface elements. So now I have the top right selected, and I'm just going to push this out again to make it a straight corner profile. And then I can do the same for the bottom left and just click and drag this outwards to give it to remove the radius setting. So we've already looked at the fill here at the top, which is currently set to black. I can just click on the color and then pick a different one. And I'm just going to pick this blue here. And if you want to specify your own colors, you can just click the color picker here and enter your own values. So I'm just going to click Cancel there. And then I can also change the stroke color. And for the stroke, I'm actually going to pick this orange. It doesn't matter if you have the same colors as I do up here. This is just to demonstrate that you can change the colors. But the stroke is currently not visible because it has a width of 0 pixels. Now you can enter a value manually, so I can set it to two, which kind of makes a stroke visible. You can also expand this drop-down here and use the slider to change the stroke width. What I prefer to do is just place my cursor on the word stroke and then you can click and drag to actually change its dimensions. Please note that it is currently scaling from its center. So as I increase the stroke size or decrease it, you will see that it scales towards the middle of the actual line, so it's getting larger inside and outside the shape proportionately. Now, that is something we can influence in the next drop-down here, or we can choose the stroke profile. So currently it's set to a solid stroke. I can click this dash stroke here to create a dashed stroke. And I can also choose this dotted stroke. Below that we have the alignment of the stroke, so it's currently set to center. I can also place it inside of the shape which constrains it to the inside of the actual shape. I can change it to outside, which places the stroke outside of the current shape. And then I can change the profile to a solid stroke again to get this makeup here. Now, the caps are not important for this particular stroke. That's only relevant when we have a more complex shape. But you can't change the corners here. It's currently set to a street corner. You can also change it to a rounded corner. And you can also change it to a beveled corner. And if I zoom in here using Alt scroll, you will see that it cuts off the corner to create a bevel. Now, you also have some more options here where you can actually specify your own strokes with their own alignment, caps and corners. And here you can actually specify the spaces of any dashed line so you can create your own dashed lines. Basically, you also have some presets here to choose from. And those are the basic options of all the shape tools that we will be looking at. There are some more options here for Pathfinder alignment, stacking and constraining, which we will be looking at in separate videos at the end of this chapter. But these are the basic drawing tools that we have at our disposal. And that applies for the rectangle that we've just looked at. But it also applies to most shapes that we can draw in Photoshop. 86. 11.2-Elipses: The next tool we will be looking at is the Ellipse tool, which you will find if you hold down the mouse button on the rectangle tool and then just choose the second tool from the top. Also, you can navigate between these different tools by holding the Shift key and then pressing the U key on your keyboard to cycle between the different shapes. So I have the rectangle selected here and the rectangle, the ellipse, actually gives us the almost the same options as we have for the rectangles. So we have the mode here, shape, path or pixels, a fill, stroke, stroke width, stroke profile, width, and height. Also, if you know exactly how large you want your ellipse to be, you can just click on the canvas and it's going to give you the option to specify a width and a height, and specify whether or not to draw it from the center of where you click with the mouse. I'm just going to click Cancel for now. Just the same as the Rectangle tool. You can just click and drag for an ellipse. You can hold the Shift key for a perfect circle. You can use the space bar to change the position of the circle and you can hold down Alt to draw the circle from the original mouse click. And using these options, I'm just going to draw a circle of about 500 by 500 pixels. 50 to. That's not too bad. If I need it to be exactly 500, I can just go into the Transform options of the properties panel, change one of the width or the height to 500. And because this chain link icon is active, it's going to change the other one to 500 as well. So we can change the appearance of our shape here by clicking the fill, for example. And I can again choose this blue shape here. And we can also specify a stroke which is currently not visible because the stroke is set to 0 pixels. So I can expand this panel here and then change the stroke width. And again, it only updates when you release the mouse button in this properties panel, which isn't always handy. Because up here in the actual shape options, you can see these properties change immediately. So I prefer to do it here, but you can also do it in this properties panel. You also have the stroke profile option, profile option. So you can create a dashed line and you can change the alignment of the stroke. And you can change the projection of the stroke corners. And you can change the corners themselves, which is not useful for an, a circle like we have here because a circle obviously doesn't have any corners. There's also some Pathfinder options here at the bottom, but we will be looking at those in a separate video. So those are basically all the options we have for ellipses and circles. So I want to take a little bit of time at the end of this video to tell you some more about shape layers. When we drew our shape, we saw this new ellipse layer form in the layers panel. So when you click and drag a shape, it's going to create a new layer. Now, I still have the Ellipse Tool active here. And if I click and drag and then grab shift and just place it over here, for example. And releasing the mouse creates another shape layer. So it's a new shape layer on top of the previous ones. So these two are on separate layers. Now, it's also possible to add a secondary or a tertiary or as many shapes as you want to, the same shape layer. So I'm just going to delete the shape I just drew using the backspace key, which worked because the second shape was the current highlighted shape. And now if I hold down the Shift key before I actually start clicking and dragging, you will see my cursor change from this little target to a target with a plus sign next to it. And if I click and drag now and release the mouse, it's actually going to add this second shape to the same shape layer. So if you want to add several shapes to the same shape layer, if you click and drag holding down shift initially. So before you actually start drawing, it's going to add it to the same layer. 87. 11.3-Triangles: The triangle tool is a relatively new addition to Photoshop from a couple of years ago. And you will find that when you hold down the mouse on the shape tools and there you have the triangle. Now, the triangle has pretty much identical options to the other shape tools. When you click on the Canvas, it gives you these options. You can specify a width and a height of the rectangle. And you can also enable this checkbox for equilateral, meaning that each side of the rectangle is going to be just as long as the other sides. And it's going to actually choose the width that you specify here. You can also change the corner to corner radius initially before you start drawing the shape. And you can draw it from its center when you click with the mouse here, I'm just going to click Cancel and again draw the shape manually. I can click and drag for a disproportionate rectangle holding Shift constraints it to an equilateral triangle. Holding the spacebar allows me to change its position and holding the Alt, I can draw it from the middle of my original mouse click. So I can use this to draw a rectangle of any size and proportion that I want. So I'm just going to draw this rectangle here and use the purple or magenta smart guide on the canvas to draw it in the center. There we go. So again, we have the the actual mode here, shape, path or pixels fill, stroke, stroke width, stroke profile, and the width and the height. And you can also change these options here in the Shape Properties panel. So I can choose a different fill color and I'm just going to turn it blue again and then choose orange for the stroke and then increase the stroke size. And I'm just going to use the option here at the top because I am more visually oriented. So there we go, and a stroke of 11 pixels. And you also have the stroke alignment here, the stroke corner profile. And here you can actually create a beveled stroke or a rounded corner. So I'm just going to leave it at straight and I'm just going to show you what we can do with the live corner options here. So here we have this little interface element on the inside top corner. And I can click and drag this inward to change the profile, the corner profile of the red triangle. And you can only do this for individual corners, so you can not change the profiles of the other corners using this method. At least. There is a method which I will go over in one of the next videos. But here you can change the overall shape of all of the corners. So if you want rounded corners on your triangle, you can just click and drag this icon here. And if you want it to be an exact radius, you can also specify that over here. So if I change it to 25 in the shape properties, it's going to change the radius of all the corners to 25. 88. 11.4-Polygons: The polygon tool has the most options out of all the shape tools that we are looking at in this chapter. And you will find that if you hold down the mouse on the Shape Tools and then select the polygon. Now, again, we have the same options as for all the other shapes here at the top, the Mode fill, stroke, etc. But if we click on our Canvas here, it's going to give us the Create Polygon dialog box. And it's going to give us the width and the height of the polygon. We can also enable this checkbox for symmetric constraining its proportions. You can specify the number of sides for the polygon, which is by default set to five. You can specify a corner radius just like we did with the triangle. You can also set a star ratio. Now I'm not going to show you what that is right now. But that is something that you can specify it here as you are drawing it basically you can indent the sides of the polygon to create a star. And you can also enable this checkbox for from sin to draw it from the center of your original mouse click. So I'm just going to click Cancel and I'm going to start clicking and dragging on my canvas to draw the polygon. Now, holding down Shift creates a symmetric polygon holding down the space bar. You can still change its position and holding down Alt, you can draw it from its center of a well, the center of the original mouseclick. So using those, I'm going to draw a polygon approximately 500 pixels wide, and that's actually exactly 500 or 500, 25 pixels. So I'm just going to change it to 500. Now, here, again, we have the same options as we had for the other tools here, the top of the options bar. But looking at the appearance of this polygon, we also have a sides slider and the star ratio. So if you want to change the number of sides of a polygon you've already drawn. You can change it to eight, for example, to draw an octagon. And you can change the corner radius here and that's going to round off all of the corners, creating this smoother kind of shape. And you can also change the star setting. And to demonstrate that I'm just going to change the radius back to 0 of the corners and then change the star slider here. And you can't drag it to the right because it's already at a 100 percent, but you can drag it to the left to increase the indent of the separate lines. And here we have a star. And look what happens now when I change the corner radius, it's actually only going to change the radius, the actual points. Now, if you expand the options here using this three periods, which usually indicates that a panel has more options than are currently visible. You can choose smooth start indents, and that's actually going to create a nice curvature between each point. So now we have this smooth blobby shapes start that we draw, that we drew with a five sided polygon as our base. 89. 11.5-Lines: Next up is the line segment tool. And despite the fact that you can only draw simple lines, it doesn't have a couple of options which can be confusing to new users. So that's what we'll be looking at in this lesson. I'm just going to choose the line segment tool from the toolbar here, holding down the mouse button on the Shape Tools. And then I'm going to make sure that it has a black fill color. So if you just click on the fill here, you can go into the color picker and put it in the bottom left for a hexadecimal value of 6 times 0, giving us black. And I'm not going to specify a stroke for now. So I want the stroke to be set at 0 pixels or the none swatch over here. So using this tool, you can't actually click on the canvas to draw a preset size. You have to actually click and drag to draw the line. You can change the angle and the length of the line. You can hold down the Shift key to draw a straight line. And if you move the mouse, you can change the orientation of the line, the rotation of the line to 45 degree increments. So not 15 like the other tools, but that is actually 45 degree increments. Releasing the mouse button now creates a black line of one pixel in height of the width that I draw the shape, drew the shape, which you can also see in the properties panel here we have a width of a thousand 26 and a height of one pixel. And this indicates that we can also change its height. So I can specify five pixels, for example. And that's going to change the height of the tool, but also its width because the chain link icon was enabled. So let's undo that using Control Z or Command Z. And I'm just going to disable the proportionate chain here. And then I'm going to change the height to five pixels, creating a thicker line. Now, note that the line itself is actually the fill color that I specified here at the top. Now, and this is where it gets a little bit. Counterintuitive. Lines can have their own strokes. So if I go into the stroke options here and then choose a color, for example, this orange. You still won't see it show up because it's currently set to 0 pixels. But if I up the value to one pixel, you can already kind of see the line here. I'm actually going to up it to three pixels. You will see that there is a stroke around the line while it's still actually showing the black fill. So now we have a line with two different colors basically. And how this works out is actually dependent on where you align the stroke. So currently it's set to center, meaning it's scales to the outside and the inside. If I just place it inside, you will see that it's completely filled with orange hiding the black fill. And if I change it to outside, you will see a five pixel black line and then three pixels on the top and the bottom, and also on its edges, obviously so protrudes from the actual line that you drew. So the confusing part is that a line that you draw can have a fill and a stroke depending on the options here. So if you're seeing a line which isn't the color that you want, it probably has something to do with how the stroke is configured. I usually choose to draw line segments without any stroke so that I have full control over the color of the line using the fill options. 90. 11.6-Custom shapes: Custom shapes out of the box in Photoshop allow us to draw different shapes of different categories, which you can also expand with your own custom shapes or custom shapes that you can download from the internet. So I'm just going to activate the custom shape tool, which is the bottom customer bottom shape tool here. And just the same as the other tools. It has a mode of fill stroke and the other options which we've already looked at. Don't worry, we will get to these options here at the top, at the end of the chapter. And here in the middle of the program, it allows me to choose a shape from different categories. So I have a wild animals category where I can draw an ostrich or a camel, or a rat, or a giraffe or whatever I want. You also have leaf trees that you can draw. You can draw boats or flowers. Those are the four default categories. So let's say I'm just going to choose kangaroo over here. So I'm just going to select the shape here and then click in this empty space at the top of the program to collapse the panel. Now, you can click on the canvas to specify its height and width. You can also draw from the center or preserved proportions, which is going to constrain the proportions to the original dimensions. But I'm just going to click Cancel again and click and drag to draw my giraffe. Now, you can draw a disproportionate giraffe so you can stretch it out until you hold down the Shift key. And then it's going to constrain the proportions to the original. I can also have the spacebar to move it as I'm drawing it. And I can hold the Alt key to drag it from the center of my original mouse click. So using this, I'm just going to draw a kangaroo about here. So we have a bit less options available to us in the properties panel where the appearance is concerned, we can only change the fill and the stroke and the stroke profile and alignment. So we don't have any corner options or any other options that we saw. For example, with the triangle and the polygon tool, those are not available as custom shapes. So you can draw these basic shapes that come with the program. Or if you want shapes from different categories, Let's say you want to be able to draw cars or arrows, or Christmas themed shapes. Those are usually just one quick Google search away. So I've already opened Google here and I've searched for Photoshop custom shapes. And what I usually do is look for the first link with brushes. Because they have a very expansive library of custom shapes that you can download. So I'm just going to click here on free custom shapes. And let's say I want to have some custom shapes available for poses of different people. Then I'm just going to click on these fashion silhouette, shapes, models. And Parcheesi is mostly a free website, so I'm just going to click here on Free Download. And I'm just going to wait for it to start. It downloads a zip file and the zip file contains a folder and then a COSH file or a custom shape file. And when I double-click this, I'm just going to choose Open. And it's going to bring me back into Photoshop where nothing initially seems to have changed. I'm just going to delete the kangaroo for now using backspace. But if I open the custom shape options now here at the top, you will find a new category for fashion models. And I can expand this and I can actually increase the size of the panel a bit. And here we have our fashion models. So I can just choose this first one and then click here at the top to close the panel. And then click and drag to draw a model. And I'm using shift obviously to keep a constraint. You can also make her a bit wider or a bit thinner if you want, but holding Shift constraints as proportions. And there you have this custom shape. Now, why wouldn't you use just a selection cut out or your own drawing of a fashion model. These are just very easily available and usually just a quick Google search away. And these are vector-based, meaning that they are resolution independent. So you can create them as big or as small as you want, and you can easily download these for free from the internet. You can also create your own custom shapes, which is what I'm going to show you in the next lesson. 91. 11.7-Creating custom shapes: So in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to create your own custom shapes based on illustrations or separate layers. And for that, we are going to import my logo into this document from the creative cloud library attached to this course. If you don't have access to this library, you can always go back into the first chapter of the course to read, to see how you can access those files. So I'm going to open up the library panel here in the, in the right toolbar. And if you don't have access to this panel, you can always go into Window and then tools, libraries, and these are always ordered alphabetically. So there are approximately in the middle. And then I want to place my logo into this document. So here in the library, I'm just going to search for logo. And that's gonna give me the logo in the graphics category. To get it into this document, I'm just going to click and drag it from the library and release the mouse. And before I commit my placement, I'm just going to increase its size a little bit, holding Shift to constrain those proportions. And then I'm going to confirm my transformation or the placement with the checkmark here at the top. I'm going to close the library's panel because we don't need it for now. And now I want to create a selection of this layer of all filled pixels within this layer. So if you think back to Chapter 4, there is a way to select all pixels within a layer, all the filled pixels within a layer. Obviously you can press Control a to select the entire document, but that's not what we want. So holding Control or Command on the Mac, I'm just going to click on the layer thumbnail. And that's going to select all the filled pixels within the layer, giving me near perfect selection of the logo. And now we want to create a path based on this selection. And to do that, we have to go into the paths panel, which you will find next to the layers panel in the same group over here. So I'm gonna open paths and initially the path panel is going to be empty. And again, if you don't have the paths panel available, you can always go into Window and then choose paths. So to create a path or a shape based on the selection, I'm just going to go into the hamburger menu of the paths panel and then choose make work path. And that's basically going to create a temporary shape based on my selection. I'm going to set the tolerance to one because I want the shape to resemble the selection as much as possible. And I'm going to click, Okay. And that gives me these shape points, this path based on my selection. And are using this path, we can create a custom shape. So to do that, I'm going to go into the Edit menu here at the top. And then I'm going to go down to define custom shape. And that's going to give me this little pop up and I can change the name so I can find it more easily within the custom shape tool options. And then I'm going to click, Okay, now I'm going to go back into the Layers panel, and I'm just going to delete the logo layer by pressing Backspace twice. The first Backspace deletes the path which was still selected, and the second Backspace deletes the actual layer. So let's say I want to draw my logo independent of resolution. Then I'm just going to activate the custom shape tool. And then we're going to go up to the shape selection here at the top. And here we have the custom shape based on the logo which we just created. So I'm just going to click it and then click here at the top to close out the panel. And I can click and drag to draw it disproportionately or hold down Shift to draw it in its original proportions. And I can release the mouse to just draw my logo. So this is a quick and easy way of using a vector-based, scalable logo within Photoshop. And you can create those based on selections, which you can use to create a path, which you can use to create a custom shape. 92. 11.8-Pathfinder: Pathfinder or Path Operations, is a tool that we can use to combine separate simple shapes into more complex shape layers. And that's what we will be looking at in this lesson. I have here the file 11.8 Pathfinder. And I'm going to start out by just drawing an ellipse. So I'm going to grab the ellipse tool and click and drag and hold Shift to draw a perfect circle and a place in about here and release the mouse. Now, the pathfinder operations are here at the top of the program. It's this little square which is currently set to new layer. We also have Combined Shapes, subtract from Shape, Intersect, and exclude. And if you're familiar with Illustrator and InDesign, you will have seen these operations before because we also use them in those programs to combine shapes into more complex ones. So what we're gonna do is first set it to combine shapes because I want to draw the shapes on the same layer. I could have also held down the Shift key, which allows you to switch between New Layer and combine shapes like we looked at in a previous video about ellipses, I believe. And what I'm gonna do now is put the cursor here at the top of the bounding box of the original ellipse. And I'm going to click and drag and hold Shift to draw another circle. And as you can see, once I release the mouse, it adds it to the same layer. And now what we can do is look at Subtract, Intersect and exclude. So if I choose subtract front shape, it's going to cut the secondary shape out of the first shape. If I choose Intersect, it will only show the intersecting areas of both shapes. And if I choose Exclude, it's going to do the opposite. And it's going to hide wherever the shapes overlap and only show the areas where they do not overlap. And if you have a solid understanding of this principle in, there's already a lot you can draw in Photoshop based on shape layers because most icons you see on the Internet, for example, are just based on combined basic shapes. So let's draw another ellipse. So I'm just going to choose Combine Shapes again. I'm going to click and drag and add a third ellipse here at the top. And now, if I choose Subtract, it's only going to subtract the front shape because it says subtract front shape. If I intersect, it's going to intersect all free. And exclude is also going to exclude the overlap of all three layers. Now, it can be a bit difficult to change these shapes after the fact. Because it might be the case that you want to change the alignment or the positioning, or the scale or rotation of a certain shape. Once you switch back to the move tool, you can not have separate control over these shapes. But if I switch to either the Path Selection Tool or back to the ellipse tool. It's going to show all these paths, paths within this individual shape layer. And now holding Control. Holding Control, I can actually still select the separate shapes once I click on an empty part of the canvas. So with control, you can switch to the path selection tool and you can select the individual paths and change them as needed. So here I'm just repositioning it. I can also grab one of its corners and change its size. And I can also change its rotation by rotating the layer, which will not have a result, a different result, because obviously it's an ellipse. So using these tools, you can create more concept complex shapes based on simple ones. And I've just demonstrated this using some simple circles, but this applies to all shape tools that you can use within the program. 93. 11.9-Contraining shapes: There are ways of constraining your shape layers to certain proportions or dimensions outside of just clicking the canvas with your mouse or holding down Shift to keep it proportionate. And those options are found here at the top of the program in the Options bar when you have a Shape tool active. And for now I'm just going to switch to the rectangle tool. And with a rectangle tool, obviously I can just click and drag to draw an unconstrained rectangle. Hold shift to constrain proportions. It's proportional to a square and use the space bar to move it as I am drawing it. I'm just going to delete that shape. Now, looking at these options here at the top, this little, I can't hear. You will get the path options initially. And this is just display option basically of how the path is displayed once it's been drawn. So throughout this chapter, we've seen this blue one pixel line around every shape that we drew. And this is what defines those properties. So you can change that here if you want, if you don't like the color blue, or if you would like the outline of the shapes to be a bit more thick. For example. Now, currently it's set to unconstrained, which means that when I click and drag, I can just draw an unconstrained rectangle. If I change it to square and get back to the program by clicking here in the empty space at the top. Now when I click and drag, I don't have to hold down Shift, It's always going to be square. I can also switch to drawing a rectangle instead of a square by holding the Shift key. So this inverts the behavior of the Shift key. I'm just going to Control Z to undo. I can also draw a rectangle of a fixed size. And this means that the size of the rectangle cannot be changed and it's always going to be the same size. So let's say I want a rectangle of 1080 by 300. Now, when I click and drag, it's always going to be that size and I cannot change its size. I can only change its position as I am clicking and dragging it. And I can hold down Alt to target it from the center of my cursor. So that is one way to draw an exact shape of a certain size. You can, you can actually establish the same result by just clicking on the canvas and specifying a size. But if you always want to draw rectangles of a certain size, this is the way to do it. You can also choose for a certain proportion. Let's say you want to create a mockup of a laptop screen, which we saw in a previous chapter. Then you want the proportions of your shape to be 16 by nine. So for every 16 horizontal pixels, you have nine vertical pixels. So if I change this proportion to 16 by nine, that is going to be the ratio of any shape that I draw. So I can change its size by just clicking and dragging. But the proportions like the ratio between the width and the height of the shape is always going to be 16 by 9. And then you also have a checkbox for from center, which is always going to draw the shape from the center of your original mouse clicks so you don't have to hold the Alt key. You can just click and drag this. And these options are, you can use these at the same time. So you can have AMD proportional and from center enabled at the same time, because this specifies the actual dimensions of the shape and this specifies how it's drawn. So those are the options that we have here at the top, the path options. So if you need shapes to always be or consistently be a certain size or a certain proportion of a certain ratio. That is something you can specify here at the top. 94. 11.10-Pen tool: The Pentel allows us to draw our own shapes in Photoshop, also in Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, and Premier Pro. It's a tool that's pretty widely distributed throughout the whole Creative Cloud. But for new users, it can be a bit difficult to wrap your head around because it doesn't behave like any of the other tools in Photoshop. You'll find the pencil right above the type tool here. You can also just press the P key to switch to the pen tool. And just like the other shape tools, the first option here in the Options bar is the ability to choose between drawing a shape, drawing a path, and drawing pixels is currently disabled because the background layer, the layer I have selected is currently disabled or locked. But for now I'm just going to leave it to path because it provides us some interesting options that the other shape tools do not have. With the pen tool, you can just click once on your canvas to create an anchor point, which is basically a corner point of all shape layers in Photoshop. And then I'm just going to click once again here at the top. And that is going to draw a line, a two-dimensional line between these two points. Adding a third turns this into an area. So if I were drawing a shape, this triangle would now be filled with whatever the fill color was set to. And so you can just keep clicking to add these anchor points and draw your own shapes. And I'm just going to make my way back to the original point. And once you've put your mouse cursor there, you will see the cursor change to a little circle icon next to the Pen. And that indicates that we are about to close the path. So I'm just going to close the path by clicking there. And there we have this path. And the pencil allows us to turn this path into either a selection, a mask, or a separate shape layer with these buttons here in the Options bar. So I'm just going to click Selection and then click Okay in this little pop-up. And that is going to create a selection based on the path I just drew. And this is a selection method that lots of people still use. I prefer the more modern and automatic ways to select in the recent editions of Photoshop. But this is something you can use to draw your own selections. Basically, it works essentially like the polygonal lasso tool, except that the pen tool also easily allows you to draw curves, which we will be looking at in one of the next videos. I'm just going to undo this by pressing Control Z or Command Z on the Mac. You also have the ability to turn the path into a mask. So with this background layer selected, I'm just going to click Mask here. And that is going to hide everything that is outside of the path. And this is a so-called vector mask, which are basically only useful for this particular instance. When you want to create a mask based on something you draw with the pen tool. So I'm just going to Control Z to undo that, I can also click shape here to turn this into an actual shape layer. So clicking the shape, you will see that I now have a new shape layer here in the layers panel above the background layer with its own properties. Now, speaking of properties, Let's say I want to change the settings of this shape layer. I want to change this fill or stroke or its corner options or whatever. Then if I look at the properties panel, these options are currently not available because it's actually drawn as a vector mask. So it's a shape layer, but it's not exactly the same as any old shape layer. So if you want to change the color, you can just double-click the layer thumbnail to get the Adobe Color Picker. Well, you can also do is temporarily switch to one of the shape tools with the layer highlighted in the layers panel. So if I activate the rectangle tool, even if it, even though this is not a rectangle, I can still change the fill of the layer here because it's currently highlighted in layers. And I can also add a stroke. I can have different stroke options. So this is something you can still influence once you've actually drawn the shape. Now, one little quirk of the Pen tool in Photoshop that I want to highlight is that it doesn't work like the Pen tool does in Illustrator. For example, the pen tool in Illustrator gives you a very nice preview of the next line you're going to draw. So let's say I click here once for an anchor point. I don't see how the line is going to look before I actually put down the anchor point. So what I'm gonna do is just Control Z to undo that first anchor point. And then I'm going to go into the tool options here, the path options, which we looked at in the previous video. And then I'm going to enable this checkbox for rubber band. And rubber band is just a display option that shows you how the next line is going to be drawn. So if I click here once and move the mouse, you will see that I get a preview of what my line is going to look like. And this makes it a lot easier to draw exact lines and also curves which we will be looking at in the next video. 95. 11.11-Pen tool 2: Something else that the Pentel allows us to do is draw curves, and that's what we will be looking at in this lesson. I start with the pen tool active, and it's still set to path mode. I'm just going to switch it to shape mode for now to actually show you how this tool behaves. So just like in the previous video, I'm going to start out with a single anchor points. So I'm just going to click here to draw one anchor point. I still have rubber band active, which is always a good idea. And I'm just going to hold down the Shift key, which allows me to just draw a straight line. And instead of clicking right now, I'm going to click and drag this anchor point. And what you will see is that two handles extrude from the anchor point that I am drawing and that it curves the line between the first, second anchor point. And this is where the tool gets a bit counter-intuitive because if I click and drag down to the right, it's going to curve the line to the top left. And if I drag it down to the top left, it's going to curve the line to the bottom right. So this takes some getting used to and practice to really get a feeling for. But once you can do this, once you can work with this tool, there is an incredible amount of things that you can draw by hand. So I'm just going to try and make this curve as even as I can and then release the mouse. And there we see this curved surface which is currently an open path because we just started drawing it. And what you will notice once you start moving the mouse without clicking is that the next line is also being curved by the clicking and dragging we did on the previous anchor point. So it's curving it to the same extent in the other direction based on the secondary handle extruding from the anchor point. So the length and position of these handles determines the curve, and the right handle determines the next curve, and the left handle determines the previous curve. But it often happens that you want to draw a different curve or another straight line after drawing a curve like this. So basically what you often want to do as you are drawing shapes with the Pen tool. Reset the Bezier curve by Alt, clicking on the previous anchor point. So holding Alt, I can click on this second anchor point. And it's basically just going to remove the secondary handle. What it's not removed. It's placed exactly on the anchor point again. And this allows me to then, to then draw another curve, which initially will look like this because it's curving over itself. And then I can Alt click on this third anchor point. And then I can draw it downwards and it's going to start completing the shape for me again. So now I can draw this curve and I'm going to Alt click on the a point. And then I can go back to the original anchor point and just draw a last curve to actually close the shape. So using these tools, you can draw your own shapes. And once you get a feeling for how this tool reacts to what you're, what you're doing when you click and drag the anchor points around and reset them by clicking, holding Alt, you can draw an incredible amount of things in Photoshop already. And just to illustrate that, I'm going to show you how to trace three shapes that I've drawn within this document previously. I'm going to delete this shape layer by pressing backspace. And then I'm going to go into this layer group and I'm going to make it visible by clicking the icon. Now, the layers within the group are actually also separately hidden. So I'm just going to expand the group and then make this first layer here visible. And what I'm going to show you is how to trace this illustration here. So what I'm gonna do is just click here at the bottom. And I'm going to work clockwise to trace the shape. So then I'm going to click here at the top. And then I'm going to click here. And then I'm going to click here. And something that happens is it fills the space between these anchor points. So currently I cannot see the actual shape itself. So to counteract that, I'm going to change the layer opacity here, which you can do as you are still drawing. So I can see the shape below it. And then I can click here to continue my illustration. So then I'm going to click here and I'm going to go to the left foot. And then click on the first anchor point to close the shape. And now I can increase the opacity again and there's my shape. So moving on to the second layer which contains some curves. So I'm just going to make that layer visible by clicking on the icon. And for this shape, I'm going to zoom in a little bit and put it approximately in the center of my composition. And then I'm going to click once here at the top. Now, as you can see and as you've noticed by practicing, it's a good idea to follow along with what I'm doing. You will see that I have a straight line when I actually want a curve between this point. And this point, so just where the straight segment of this shape actually starts. So I'm going to place my cursor there just, just after the curve. And instead of clicking, I'm just going to click and drag down. And that is going to create a curve between those two points. Now, I want a straight line back to the bottom of the shape. So I have to reset the anchor point. So I'm just going to Alt click on it and then move to just before the next curve in the shape. So I'm just going to click here to create a straight line between this point and this point. Then I'm going to move to the bottom center. And instead of just clicking, I'm going to click and drag and I want to bend it to the bottom right. So I'm just going to click and drag left to mimic the same curve. And then I want to draw another curve. So I'm just going to reset the anchor point by Alt clicking. And then try to mimic this curve as well as I can. It doesn't have to be pixel perfect. This is just an exercise after all. And because I want a straight line now, I have to Alt click on the anchor point. Then move to where the next curve starts and just click for a straight line. And then I'm going to place the cursor on the original anchor point and just click and drag to get the same curve. And tracing objects like this is a great way of getting to know this tool more intimately and to really get a feeling for how it actually works. So moving on to the next shape, the third shape, this one is a bit more complex and we will not be able to produce this curve with only one anchor point. So I'm just going to place the first anchor point right there. And then I'm going to move to approximately the middle of this curve. And I'm actually going to zoom in a bit using Alt scroll, which you can still use Azure using the pen tool. And then I'm going to click and drag to first try to mimic this curve. There we go. Now I want to draw another curve, a separate curve. So I'm just going to Alt click on the previous anchor point, and then click and drag again to mimic this one. So basically we are just tracing shapes like this. And these are ones that I have predrawn obviously. And then I'm going to Alt click on this anchor point and move on to the next point. And just click and drag to try and mimic it. And if you're finding that you can't really mimic a curve properly, it's best to pick a point a bit closer to the previous anchor point. There we go. I want to draw another curve, so I'm going to Alt click. And I can actually use a straight line for this. I'm just going to click there. Okay, The next one is a straight line, so I'm just going to click there. And for the next one I'm going to move approximately halfway down this larger shape. And then again click and drag to mimic the curve. Alt click because I want to draw another curve. And I'm going to move to the bottom center of the shape. There we go. And I'm already going to decrease the opacity of the shape actually because I wanna see what I'm doing over here when I get there. So for this next point, I'm going to move to approximately the same line as this anchor point. And I'm going to click and drag to get the same curve. And the most important thing to learn about this tool is how it responds to this clicking and dragging, then I'm doing. Okay, moving on to this point, I'm just going to click and drag to copy its shape. And then I can just Alt click on this anchor point to reset it. So I can draw a straight line to the original anchor point and then increase the opacity of the shape again. So this is some really good practice to get to know the pen tool and our response to what you're doing in the program. And I cannot recommend enough that you pick one of the custom shapes, for example, with the custom shape tool and just tried to trace it using the pen tool to really get a feel for it. 96. 11.12-Adjusting anchor points: All shapes that we draw in Photoshop consist of anchor points. And in this lesson I'm going to show you what you can still do with those anchor points. Not only with shapes that you draw with the pen tool, but any shape that you create. So for that demonstration, I'm going to switch to the rectangle tool, and I'm just going to click and drag holding Shift to draw a square here in the center of my document. Now, this rectangle, this square consists of four anchor points, one for each corner. And when we switch to the direct selection tool, which you will find in the tool group right underneath the type tool, you can switch to the direct selection tool. You will initially see that all four corners, all four anchor points are currently highlighted. Now, if I click on one of these corners, it's going to de-select the other corners, the other anchor points. And that allows me to influence this anchor point separately. So I can just click and dragging it, drag it around. I can also constrain its position by holding the Shift key. And this allows you to change basic shapes into more complex ones. So when you release the mouse, you get the notification that you are turning it into a regular path instead of a live shape, which allows us to influence its corners and such. So I'm just going to click no for now. And then I'm going to show you that besides influencing anchor points by just clicking and dragging them around, we can also add anchor points or delete them from shapes such as this. So to do that, I'm going to hold down the mouse on the pen tool and then I'm going to choose the add anchor point tool. And using this tool, I'm going to click approximately here in the middle of the top of this rectangle. And that's going to add an anchor point right there. And let's say I'm going to, when you highlight an anchor point with the pen tool, by the way, it automatically switches to the direct selection tool. So I don't have to actually go back to the white arrow here. I can just stick with the pen tool for now. And then I can click and drag this anchor point up. And I can do that holding Shift to again constrain its position. And that is going to produce this curve with these two extruding handles. So this handle influences this curve, and this handle influences this curve, which I can also click and drag around here to change the path shape. And what you can also do is instead of a curve, create a straight line between these points. And for that we need to convert the anchor point. And to do that we have to switch to the convert anchor point tool or Convert Point tool actually. So holding the mouse down on the Pentel, I can switch to Convert Point tool. And then if I click on this anchor point, it's going to remove the handles and just create a straight line. Now I'm just going to undo these changes by pressing Control Z until this new anchor point is gone. And then I'm going to again switch to the add anchor point tool. And I'm going to add an anchor point here in the middle. And another one on the right side of the shape. And then I can just grab this and use the right arrow key and the Shift key to push this anchor point in this direction. And I'm going to do the same for this anchor points. So I'm just going to click on it and holding Shift, I'm going to press the right arrow key a few times to push it to the right. And now I'm going to switch to the convert anchor point tool and turn these into straight lines. So I'm just going to click this point here and this point. And now we've created this little arrow icon based on the original rectangle that we created. So using these tools, you can create more complex shapes based on simple ones. 97. 11.13-The curvature pen: The curvature pen is a relatively new addition to Photoshop. It was first introduced in Illustrator in 2019, I believe, and since then it's been added to Photoshop as well. And it basically allows for a more free-form way of drawing with the pen tool or with a pencil. The curvature pen is found in the pen category of tools. So I'm just going to hold down the mouse on the pen tool and then choose Curvature Pen tool. And with this tool, I'm just going to zoom in on this shape that I've drawn here a little. And I'm just going to place an anchor point here in the middle at the top. And then when I add another anchor point right after the curve here. And then move on to the next point. You will see that it is automatically curving all the lines between the anchor points. And I'm just going to accept that for now. I'm not going to fine tune the shape as of yet. I'm first just going to draw a rough outline of what I'm trying to trace. So I'm just going to click here and here at the bottom and here right after the curve. And then right there. And then I'm going to click on the original anchor point again. So as you can see, we have this fairly distributed oval shape now, this ellipse. And it isn't an ellipse because all of these anchor points currently have a Bezier curve. Now, what you can do with this tool is hold down Alt and then reset the Bezier to a straight line. So I'm just gonna do that for this point here. And I'm also going to do it for the point at the bottom right. So resetting these two points creates a straight line between these two points. And I'm going to do the same for the left side of the shapes. So I'm just going to Alt click on this anchor point and all click on the one above it, and that just turns it into a straight line. Now, what you can do with this tool is just place your cursor on these lines and then just click, click to add another anchor point. And then you can just click and drag around this anchor point to change its position and mimic the curve that we're trying to get. Now, currently, the shape is hiding the shape below it so I can't accurately trace it anymore. So I'm just going to decrease the opacity of the shape to about 40 percent. So I can still see the underlying shape. Now, I want to bring it closer to the actual shape here. So I can just click and drag to add another point and drag it down. And I can do the same for this curve by dragging it outwards. And again with a separate point. So you can just keep adding points to push the curve to wherever you want it to be. And this is a much more natural way, natural feeling way of tracing shapes like this. Also, by the way, you can always click on a point and then press backspace to delete it. So yeah, this is a quick and easy way of drawing over other objects. And it might be slightly less accurate than the pen tool, but it is a bit more intuitive, let's say, because you have a lot more control over where the lines go and how they behave. 98. 11.14-Fills and strokes: We've already looked at applying different colors, fills and strokes on our shapes. But there are actually many different types of fills that you can apply to them. And that's what we'll be looking at in this final lesson of this chapter. Here in this file 11.14 fills and strokes. I have the rectangle tool active, and I'm going to use that holding Shift to just draw a quick square. Now, the square hat currently has a black fill and a black stroke of 0 pixels. So effectively, it has no stroke. Now, if I click on the fill color here in the Options bar, you will actually see four options for different types of fills here, five, if you count the actual color picker in the program, the first one is still apply no color, and that basically makes it completely transparent. You can also apply a solid fill which we've looked at previously. You have here all the color swatches currently configured for Photoshop. So you can look at the RGB swatches, you can look at the light category, you can look at the dark category, or you can create your own using the color picker. Next up, the third option is a gradient. And when you activate this option, the first thing it's gonna do is to supply a black to white gradient going from the bottom up to the top with a, with an even distribution. We will be looking at gradients more extensively in the chapter about layer styles, because I find applying gradients with Layer Styles is a bit more flexible. But I'm just going to give you a basic rundown here. The colors of the gradient are determined here at the gradient panel. And if you want to change these colors, you can just double-click on whichever color stop you want to change. And then you can find the desired color in the color picker. Then we're going to click Okay? And what we have now is an even distribution of a blue to white gradient, so it runs evenly from the top to the bottom. You can also change the secondary swatch. So I'm just going to double-click that and pick a different type of blue. I'm gonna make that a bit darker and then click, Okay. Now, as you can see, the colors have been changed and they flow evenly along this shape. Now. Now what you can do here is grab this little diamond in the middle of these Gradients stops and move it around to change which, which color of the gradient is dominant. So if I give the left color stop more space, That's going to be more dominant on the shape. And if I change it to the left, you will see that the lighter color is actually more dominant. Now, you can add as many colors to these gradient. You can add as many color stops to the gradient as you want by just clicking at the bottom of this gradient ramp. So now I've added another one, and I can double-click this and then choose another blue color, blue, green, let's say greenish, something like that. It doesn't look particularly pleasing, but I just wanted to show you that you can add as many color stops as you want. So for example, if you want to create a metal looking gradient, you would use several different values of gray to simulate a metal texture. If you want to remove color stops, you can just click and drag him away from the gradient ramp. And that's that. Now there are several different types of gradients that you can choose from. It's currently set to linear, meaning it goes just from one side to the other side. I'm just actually going to change the position of the gradient 250 percent. You can also choose a radial gradient which radiates out from the center. Now currently, the darker color is in the middle and the lighter colors on the outside, which is less visually pleasing. So I'm going to reverse the gradient with this little button right here. And that changes the order of the colors basically. So you can also choose an Angular, Angular gradient, which goes counterclockwise. So from this side to this side, you can also reverse it using this little button here again, and then it goes clockwise. So it starts with the blue and it goes around clockwise and it ends up in this cyan. You can also choose a reflected gradient, which puts the right side at the top of the gradient. Then it changes to the other color in the middle, and then it changes back to the first color. So that's also an option you can choose. And you also have a diamond gradient, which is just a variant of the radial gradient but in a diamond shape. So if I reverse this, you'll see how that works out. Now switching it back to linear, the gradient currently goes from the bottom to the top as long as it's not reversed. You can also change the angle of the gradient to, for example, 45 instead of 90. And then it will go from the bottom left corner to the top right corner. So you can always just change the orientation of the gradient to whatever you desire. So there's all these different kinds of gradients that you can choose from. You can look at the blues. You can look at the reds. And if you want to apply those, you can just click on them. And it's going to change the configuration of the gradient ramp to whichever gradient you chose. Now, you're not stuck with these presets. You can always just double-click whichever color, swatch, or gradient stop you want and play with the colors a bit more. The fourth fill option we'll be looking at is the pattern. So I'm just going to click the pattern type here. And there are a few standard gray patterns that you can choose from. You can choose trees, grass or water. Now expanding the water category, I can just click here and that's going to apply this water texture. Or this water texture or this water texture. Now let's say I find this texture a bit too prominent within the actual shape and I want to scale it down a little bit. I can just go up into, down into the scale slider and I can slide that down. And that's basically going to decrease the size of the tiles within the shape. So this pattern is actually configured of several different tiles which interlock. And you will see as I keep reducing the scale or increasing it now actually, you will see that it's just a repeating tile pattern. There are ways of creating seamless patterns where you don't actually see the edges no matter what you do. And that's also something I'll be showing you in the chapter on Layer Styles. So this is something you can very easily apply by just playing with the fill. You can actually also find these in the patterns and gradients panels at the top right of the program according to the default configuration of the workspace. If you don't have these patterns for gradients and patterns, you can also always go into Window and then add them to the workspace like that. And clicking those just changes the fill. It doesn't apply any layer styles, which are obviously if you're just following this course, still a bit of a mystery for you. But you can just apply these with a single click of the mouse. Now, if you want to go back to the defaults, you just go back into solid color or gray or the gradient fill or the none. And what a lot of people actually don't know is that you can also apply these patterns and gradients to strokes. So let's say I have my shape selected here and I'm just going to go into fill and to the gradients. And I'm just going to pick one of these right here. And then I'm going to go into the stroke and I'm going to find the gradients. And I'm going to apply the same gradient to the stroke, but I'm going to reflect it by clicking this button here. Now, the stroke is still not visible because it's currently set to 0 pixels. So if I place my cursor on the word stroke and just click and drag to the right. You will see that this gradient is also applied to the stroke except that it's reflected. And this also goes for patterns. So I can also go into patterns, strokes and that's just going to allow, that's just going to place those trees, those leaves in there. I can also pick the water here. And I can do the same for the film. So I can go into the patterns and this is going to apply the pattern. So this is a quick and easy way of applying fills of different types in the chapter on Layer Styles, I'm also going to show you how to add and create your own patterns. So stay tuned for that. 99. 12: We've already worked with brushes quite extensively in previous chapters, especially in Chapter 5, when we were working with layer masks and we were painting with either black or white to combine different images together. Now in this chapter I want to elaborate on brushes a little bit and tell you a bit more about them and how they work so you can work with them more efficiently. Here I have the file 12.1 about brushes, which is just a standard blank Photoshop document. And I've already activated my brush tool here, shortcut B, and it's currently set to the tool defaults. So if I look at the brush settings here at the top-left, I can see a size of 30 with a hardness of 0. And you can change those values here. Obviously, you can increase the size of the brush. You can change the hardness of the brush, and you can also change the orientation of the brush, which is not very useful in this particular case because it's just a normal circular brush. So you can enter whichever settings you desire. Here, a bit further down are also some brush presets that you can choose from. My list here starts a bit differently from yours because I've added some custom brushes that I like to use them my compositions, for example, painting with leaves or clouds or debris or things of that nature, which I will show you later in this chapter. But here a bit further down are the standard brushes. So the general dry media, wet media and special effects brushes. So you can always go into these categories and just see what they have to offer. So here we have a soft round, a hard round, a soft round pressure size. And if I look at the wet media category, for example, you will find some different types of brushes as well. So Kyle's paint box, wet blender, cows, real oils. Kyle's impressionist Blender one. So Kyle is actually an artist hired by Adobe to design some brushes specifically for Photoshop. So those can be pretty, pretty cool in certain circumstances. Here we have some splatter brushes and some scatter brushes. So these can be pretty interesting to work with as well if you want it to be a bit more artistic. Now, we've already looked at how to influence the size and hardness of brushes in different videos. Obviously, you can use the square bracket keys which are on the right side of the P key on your keyboard. On most keyboards, and the right bracket increases the size and the left bracket decreases the size. You can also increase or decrease the hardness of the brush by holding Shift and using the bracket keys. And it looks like the size is expanding, but that's just a hardness being affected. So let me just bring the hardness down to 0%, which I can double. Check with the right mouse-click. It's currently set to 0. And then I press Shift and the right bracket once and then check again and it increases the hardness by 25 percent. There is a different way of influencing brush size and hardness that I prefer. And it works slightly differently on Mac than it does on Windows. So first I'm going to show you Windows, and then I'm going to explain how to do the same thing on Mac. So let's say I want to visually have an indication of how hard large my brush currently is. What I can do then is hold the Alt key and then hold the right mouse button. And then I can move the mouse left and right to increase the size of the brush and up and down to increase or decrease the hardness of my brush. And this is a very quick and easy way of judging of configuring your brushes size and hardness. And it also immediately gives you a visual representation of that size and hardness. So that's something I really like to use in most situations. It also works on Mac. For that you have to hold Control and Option and the left mouse button. So Control Option and the left mouse button, if you hold those down, you will have the same tools at your disposal. K. Now that we've looked at those shortcuts, I want to explain these different options in the Options bar a bit better. So here we have the mode. And mode is actually something I'm going to be explaining in a different chapter because it pertains the blend modes which have their own theory and math behind them. And it's a bit of a complex subject that I prefer to go over in the chapter about layer styles when we're actually working with blend modes. But blend modes basically determine how the brushstrokes that you're putting down interact with the pixels that you are painting on. We have brush opacity. It's currently set to 100% the default. And if I paint here with black, you will see that I am just painting this black blob currently, which is perfectly black. And if I lower the opacity to, let's say 50 percent, I can paint again and it's going to be dark gray or 50 percent gray. And if I paint over it, again, it's going to paint 50 percent grade on top of that 50 percent gray. And again, it's going to add another basically 25 percent. To whatever I'm painting our. So this allows you to paint in more of a layered style because you're not making everything 100% opaque as you're painting over it. So I'm just going to Control Z, those actions. This is the flow of the brush, and that is actually how much ink or paint is leaving the brush as you are painting. So currently it's set to 100%, which means that I'm painting with 50% black 100% of the time. Now, I'm going to change the opacity back to a 100. And then I'm going to change the flow to something like 50. And now as I'm clicking and dragging, you will see that there is a fall off in each brushstroke. So basically it's losing paint for whenever I'm clicking and dragging, so it's not a constant stream of paint, it eventually runs out. So if I put the flow at 1%, you will see that very little paint is actually coming off of my brush until I start adding layer on layer and just clicking and dragging to let more paint flow out of the brush. So that's something you can do. Smoothing is a way of creating smoother lines. And I can demonstrate that by just putting the flow back to 100 and decreasing the size of my brush. And with these settings, I can just create these like really TM looking angles. If I bring up the smoothing, it's actually going to create a much smoother lines independent of how you are moving your brush actually. So it basically slows down the brush or the ink flowing off of the brush to create the smoother kind of lines. Here we have an angle setting, which is not useful for this particular brush because angles don't matter when you're working with a round brush if the settings are at the default. Here we have pressure sensitivity. Which means that if you are using, for example, a way com tablet like a Cintiq, you, the brush will actually be affected by the angle and the pressure of the pen on your tablet. And here we have the symmetry options. So if I click this, I can choose a vertical symmetry, for example. And now when I confirm this symmetry axis, and I just start painting and I'm just going to reset the smooth to 0%. If I start painting on this side, it's going to paint the same thing on the other side, but reflected obviously. So everything I do over here is being reflected on the right side. So I'm just going to undo that. I'm going to go back into the Symmetry Options. And this time I am going to choose a Mandela. And I'm going to place it at six segments. And that's gonna give me this configuration, which I still have to confirm here at the top. So I'm going to decrease my brush size a little bit with the shortcut when we went over. And if I paint in one of these segments, it's going to paint the same thing in all of these other segments. So if I start painting here, you will see that it is applied to every segment of the Mandela. And this allows you to create some interesting patterns right off the bat. And those are basically the brush settings that I wanted to go over with. You. As far as brush color goes, obviously, it always picks the foreground color. You can always put it back to the default using the D key on your keyboard. Or you can click here to choose another color. 100. 12: There are a lot of ways to acquire brushes besides the default brushes in Photoshop and ones you create yourself. And that's what we're going to be showing you in this lesson. If you just Google for Photoshop brushes of whatever type, you will find an incredibly large library of different kinds from different sources that you can use in your own compositions. So here I've searched for Photoshop smoke brushes. And if I click through to brush easy, you will see that they have all these different kinds of smoke brushes that I can just download and use. So let's say I want to use these brushes. I'm just going to click them. It's going to give me to the free download. You download the file, you open up the zip folder, which is actually quite large, apparently. And there will be an ABR file or Adobe brush file. And if you just double-click this, you end up back in Photoshop. And now the brushes are instantly available. So if I have the brush tool active and right-click on my canvas and close out the other category. You will see now that I have these free smoke Photoshop brushes. And I can just open these and then choose, for example, this one. And if I click on the canvas now you'll see that the brush is a bit too large. So I can use the left bracket key to decrease its size. And then I can just paint using the smoke. And if I want to change the orientation of the smoke to prevent duplicates, I can just right-click and then flip it around the other way and then paint like that. Or I can choose a different puff of smoke and also decrease its size and just paint in with that. So this is an incredibly easy way to use whatever type of media you want to paint. So you can go for snow crystals or you can go for different kinds of liquids or fire or debris. And all it takes is a quick Google search and you will most likely be able to find what you're looking for. You can also import brushes from Photoshop itself. If you open up the brush settings at the top, you can go into this little gear icon. And then you can actually import brushes, which brings you into a file browser and you're asked to find it on your hard drive. Or you can actually go here and get more brushes. And this brings you to the Kyle brushes, for example, if they are not available in your install, installation of Photoshop. 101. 12: In this lesson, I want to go a little bit beyond the obvious and show you some practical applications of ways that I like to use brushes to add to my composition is a little bit. And here I have three images. The island in Slovenia. Picture of me standing on a bale of hay in a German field somewhere. And this picture of my friend Oliver chopping a block of wood. And I'm going to use different types of brushes to add something to the composition here. And I cannot make the brushes I use here available to you because they are part of a pack that I do not have the rights to distribute four. So I'm just going to show you these and In the previous video, I also showed you how to acquire different types of brushes. So that should be enough for you to put 22 together. So here in this document, I'm just going to create a new layer so that I can paint on it using Control Shift Alt N, that creates a new blank layer and that's obviously Command Option Shift N on Mac. Then I have my brush tool active, and I'm just going to right-click on my Canvas to get to my different brushes. I'm going to increase the size of this panel a little bit so that they're easier to find. And then I'm go, going to go into this brush bundle and I'm going to go into clouds. And I'm going to be looking at this particular storm cloud. And I'm going to change my foreground color to white by pressing the X key at this point because white was my background color. And I'm actually going to decrease the size of the brush a little bit. And I'm also going to rotate it 90 degrees. So I'm just going to point it upwards. And now if I click on the canvas, it's going to add this pretty opaque white cloud over the island. Now, I can decrease the opacity of this individual layer, which is why I put it here on an individual layer to make it look like there is some fog floating on and around the island. And I'm actually going to name this one fog, this layer. And then I'm going to create another layer Control Shift, Alt N. And I'm just going to name this one birds. And I'm going to right-click again and then find the birds category. And I'm going to find a bit of a denser population of birds. Yes, something like this. I'm going to change the foreground color to black and then decrease the size. And then just click here once to add these birds. And let's say I want to place the birds underneath the cloud or fog. Then I can just click and drag this layer to the bottom to make it look like they are actual part of the composition. So this is one nice little or too nice little additions that have added to this particular photo. Now, going on to the main.js document, I'm going to press Control Tab to move on to the next document, which is Command tab on the Mac obviously. And again here I'm just going to add a new layer by pressing Control Shift Alt N. And I'm going to name this one moon. And I'm going to right-click and find the moon category that I have in here. And I'm going to choose the moon soft light. And I'm going to change the foreground color to white again. And then I'm going to decrease the size a little bit more and just click on the canvas. And I'm actually going to make it a little less opaque by lowering the opacity to something like 80%. And there we go. And then using Control tab, I'm going to move on to this splinters document. And let's say I want to add a bit more of these wood chips. What I'm gonna do then is right-click and go into, um, kind of free willing this one. So let's go into the special effects. And I am going to choose, let's say, Kyle's spatter brush. And what I want to do is add a new layer Control Shift Alt N. And I'm going to name this debris. And then I want to use the color of the actual what tips to paint in some more. So I'm going to hold down Alt and then I'm going to click on one of these bits of wood. Increase the size, and then I can just click here. And that's going to add some more debris. And I can vary the size of this brush at different places in the composition to just paint in a bit more and give it a bit more death. And there we go. So these are some, I think, nice and creative applications of working with brushes that are very easy to translate to your own work. 102. 13: Before we get started with Layer Styles in this chapter, I would like to tell you something about Blend Modes. We've talked briefly about them in previous chapters. Here I want to do it a bit more extensively. Blend modes are essentially a function of Photoshop though we can use to blend layers together based on, among other things, their luminosity and color. And to demonstrate this, I have here at the file 13.1 Blend Modes dot PSD, and this document contains two layers. The top layer is this blue streak of light going over this bus lane. And the bottom layer, which I can make visible by hiding. The top layer is this orange streak of light going the other way which I painted using a light stick attached to an E bike, of which I can specify the color. So let's say I want both streaks of light combined in one image. That is not that easy to do out of the box if you're not aware of blend modes because you can't just lower the opacity of the top layer because then you get partial visibility on both layers. So that is not going to suffice. It is also going to be very difficult to mask it out with a Layer Mask. Because of the light fall off. The light is projecting outwards and it's visible not just on the streak of light, but also on the street below and on these railings above here. So masking is also not an option that we can use for that, at least not for a convincing result. Basically, what I want to do is make it so only the pixels of the top layer that are lighter than the layer below are visible. And that will give me the desired result. Because then only the blue streak and the projecting light are going to be visible from this top layer. And that's where Blend Modes come in. And this is a top-level explanation of what blend modes can do. They are very deeply integrated with Photoshop. There are 27 of them, which you will find at the top of the layers panel. And they all have a different effect depending on what you apply them to. So again, this is one of the concepts within Photoshop that is very good to just play around with a bit to see what every blend mode actually does. For this demonstration, I'm going to stick with three blend modes, multiply, screen, and overlay. Those are the blend modes that are most often used in most cases. You will find in this chapter also some other configurations that half their own uses, but those are the three most important ones next to the normal ones. So let's check out these blend modes here we have normal and dissolve in the wrong category, dissolve does nothing unless you actually lower the opacity of a layer, which is going to introduce this noise like pattern randomly visualizing the layer below. So we're going to leave that one alone for now. Then we have here the darkening blend modes. And the darkening blend modes always give you a darker result. And they make it so the pixels of the top layer that are darker start interacting with the layer below it. The most used one is multiplied also always gives you a darker result. And only the pixels of the top layer that are darker than the one below should remain visible. Now, if we look at light, lighten and screen, we will see the desired result, especially in Lighten. Now that I'm looking at this, lightened does the opposite of darken and also somewhat of multiply. So basically lighten, heighten, hides every pixel of the top layer that is darker than the layer below it, and that gives us the desired result. And then there's overlay, which is a combination like an average calculation between Multiply and screen or darken, enlightened. So overlays something you would use to get, for example, a texture image projected onto another surface in a realistic way, which I will also show you when we start working with pattern overlays in this chapter. So for this specific effect, lighten is the best blend mode to choose. And the image has become lighter. And the pixels of the top layer that are lighter than the layer below it now are visible and that is the desired result. So these are the blend modes. You can apply them here through the layers panel. You can also apply them to all of the effects that we will be looking at in this chapter. So let's get to work on Layer Styles. 103. 13: Besides using the default brushes in Photoshop, you can also create your own brushes based on selections, and that's what I'm gonna be showing you in this lesson. So here I have the file 12-point to creating brushes. And what we will be doing is creating a brush based on this shape here at this little pop print so that we can paint a trail of pause going over our canvas. And for that we need a selection. So I want to select all the filled pixels within this layer. So I'm going to hold control and I'm going to click on the layer thumbnail. And that's obviously command on the Mac. And that's going to select the entire layer. And now I want to create a brush based on this selection. So I'm gonna go up into the Edit menu and then I'm going to choose Define Brush Preset a bit further than halfway down. And I'm going to name this pause. And then I'm going to click Okay, and now I already have a brush based on the shape. So if I hide the shape and click the background layer, I can just click and drag to paint with the plot. However, this is not a very interesting configuration because when you click and drag, it just puts infinite copies of these. Pause next to each other creating this blob. And I want to be able to paint the direction of the brush of the pause as well. So for that, we will be looking at the brush settings panel, which I already have in my workspace here. If you don't have this panel in the workspace, you can always go into Window and then choose brush settings. So here we have different properties of the brush that we can influence. I can change the size of the brush over here. I can flip the x and y. I can change the angle of the brush, which I can also do by clicking and dragging over here. So let's say I want to rotate it by minus 90% so that it's actually facing to the right. I can do that here. I can also change the spacing of the brush to actually make the paw prints separate. So now they are not contiguous. But if I click and drag on my canvas, you will see that they are oriented separately. And I can increase that spacing just a little bit more so we don't get any overlap when we draw diagonally. Okay? And I keep undoing my changes with Control Z by the way. And another thing I like to do is actually put the brushstrokes on their own transparent layer. So I'm just going to make sure the background is highlighted and then click new layer here in the layers panel. And I'm going to name this strokes. Next, we are going to look at the shape dynamics of the brush. We can change the size jitter, which creates a variance between each brush stroke in terms of size. So if I increase the size jitter, you will see that the size will change randomly between 0 and a 100 percent extra scaling. So if I paint now you'll see that they all have different sizes. You can also change the angle jitter, which actually rotates them along the z-axis. So now they will all be oriented differently and they will be of different sizes. And I'm just going to put the Size Jitter back to 0 in the angle jitter as well. And then I'm going to look at the angle control. Because when I click and drag, I want the orientation of the pause to actually follow the direction of my mouse. And for that, I'm going to change the control to direction when I choose direction and decrease the brush size a little bit using the left square bracket key. Now if I click and drag, you will see that the pause follow whatever I'm doing with my mouse, which is an interesting effect. Now, let's say I want to make this composition a bit more colorful. First, I'm going to choose a brighter color here. So set the foreground color to that. And then I'm going to go into the color dynamics of the brush. You can apply Per Tip. You can change the background and foreground jitter, which I'm actually going to put 200 percent. What I actually want to do is change the hue jitter, because I want the hue of the brush strokes to change with each application. So now if I click and drag, you will see that each stroke is a different color. Making it a nice and colorful composition like this. So these brush options are incredibly expensive and you can do many, many more things with it. Then I have just shown you. But a good way of getting to know what is actually possible is just trying out different default brushes in Photoshop and checking out this panel to see how they achieved the effect that you are looking at. For example, the different scatter brushes that Kyle designed for Adobe. If you go into the settings, they will be vastly different from the default settings or the settings that I have just entered. So once you get a bit of a hang of how to configure these brushes to suit your purposes, you become a lot more flexible in terms of what you can create with Photoshop. 104. 13: So this chapter is all about layer effects and Layer Styles. And the first style or effect actually that we will be looking at is the drop shadow effect, which allows us to place a shadow below our layers. So here I have the file 13 to drop shadow dot PSD. And this is a small Photoshop Composite I made of a hand reaching out of the darkness to grab this highway. Now to give this road a little more depth, I would like it to cast a shadow on the layers beneath it. So to do that, I have to find the road layer in the composition. I've marked in red here actually. So if you just find that layer, we are going to go into the effects options here at the bottom of the Layers panel. And then we're just going to choose the first option from the bottom, the drop shadow. Now, once you click this button, you end up in this dialogue box and the drop shadow is already active. But because of the settings and let me just actually reset it to the defaults. It's not very plainly visible. First of all, the blend mode is set to multiply with a black color, meaning that the shadow is actually only going to be visible on items that are darker than itself or lighter than itself, actually, excuse me. So what I can do here is actually change the mode to normal. And that's just going to display it uniformly. And then I can change its opacity to make it more or less visible. And as I increase the opacity, you will see that there is already a darker shadow running along the left side or the right side of the road. Now, you can quickly visualize this also, but just disabling the effect temporarily, as you can see now, there is no shadow and enabling the effect again displays the shadow once more. Now you can also influenced the angle of the effect. So this line here on this dial basically determines where the light sources. So I can just click and drag this around to change where this shadow is actually being cast. So I can change it to the top left, for example, I preferred it where it was about here. There we have Use Global Light, which is a global light setting for every effect that you apply. I prefer to apply these individually unless I'm doing something very specific. So I am just going to disable this and then take control of the lighting of this particular effect myself. So enabling this means that Photoshop is going to follow for every effect that has Use Global Light enabled, it's just going to basically equalize all the light lighting settings as far as direction goes. So I prefer to change these effects individually. Here we have the distance which allows us to cast the shadow further from the subject as you can see. And we also have a size property and yes, some skipping spread for now to get back to it. After we've gone through size, the size determines how blurry or stretched up the shadow actually is. If I decrease the size to 0 pixels, the road has the exact same contour, the exact same outline as the layer casting it. As you can see, there are no blurry edges of any kind. Now, if I increase the size, you will see that the shadow becomes more blurry and more stretched out and more even. So. And then the spread actually dictates how far that larger shadow area is filled with the color chosen up here. So if I increase the spread, the shadow is going to be pushed out of the layer more Onto it's very edge depending on the size properties set for the layer. Now, to complement the effect, I'm just going to decrease the opacity bit again. And I'm actually going to change the blend mode to multiply. There's also some Contour Options here at the bottom. Basically, this allows you to apply several different instances of an effect on a single layer. I'm going to go into that a bit more in one of the next videos where the results of this are going to be a bit more obvious. So for now we're just going to leave this alone. By the way, if you ever want to go back to the defaults, you can choose Reset to default here, or you can make whatever you're setting your applying the new default by clicking make default. Another option you have is holding the ALT key and that changes the cancel button into a reset button. Now, once you apply the effect, you will see that the shadow is actually applied in our composition and it's also listed here as an effect applied to the layer. So looking at the layer, we now have effects. And the effect currently applied is drop shadow. And you can apply as many effects to the layer at the same time as you want, which is also something we will be doing in this chapter. And you can actually disable the drop shadow individually or disable the effects globally. So I can just disable the eye icon for the drop shadow or disable the eye icon for all effects at the same time. If you want to edit the drop shadow, you can just double-click it in the layers panel. And that's going to bring you back into the Layer Styles Dialogue where you have the controls for the drop shadow. It's also possible to add several different job shadows to a single layer. That's something we will be doing in a future video. 105. 13: The inner shadow effect allows us to project a shadow on the inside of a layer. And for this example, I have the file 13.3, inner shadow dot PSD. And what we're going to do is kind of make it seem like this beach is depressed into this coffee cup. So what we wanna do is select the correct layer. So I've highlighted this layer in orange here, so I'm just going to click it to highlight it. And then we're gonna go down to where it says effects at the bottom of the Layers panel. And then we're going to choose Inner Shadow. Now, the inner shadow is going to project along the top here initially, when I reset it to default, these will be the settings that you have as well. And we actually have a lot of similar settings to the drop shadow. We have a blend mode, which for now I'm just going to change to normal. We can specify the color of the inner shadow. We can change its opacity. We can change its angle so it's location along the layer. We can increase the distance to project the shadow further into the layer. We can increase its size to give it more of a feather. And we can change the choke, which basically is the same setting as the spread in the drop shadow effect which we looked at previously. Now, let's say I'm just going to up the opacity a little bit. I'm going to decrease the size and decrease the distance just a little bit more and just put the opacity around 45. So I have a normal blend mode, black color, opacity of 45, an angle of a 102, a distance of six, a joke of 0 and a size of a team. Now, what you'll see is that this inner shadow effect is only projecting on one side of the layer. And let's say I also want to project this effect on the other side of the layer. Now, this effect on its own is not capable of doing that. But inner shadow is one of the effects that supports multiple applications of the same effect. So what I can do here is click this little plus icon next to where it says inner shadow. And it's going to add another inner shadow. Now, one thing you wanna do for this is disable global light because we don't want them to be affected by the same settings. So I'm going to click both, both effects and then disable, Use Global Light. And then I'm just going to pick one of them and flip the angle to also project it along the other side. And I can also decrease the opacity a little bit because, because of the angle we have on this, the shadow would actually be less visible. And then when we click Okay, you'll see two instances of the same effect applied to this layer. 106. 13: The outer glow effect allows us to apply an outer glow to any layer we choose as the name would suggest. And to demonstrate this, I have the file 13 for Outer Glow dot PSD. And what we're going to do here in this little Photoshop composition that I made based on a photo I took of my daughter is create a glow around her. So I have the layer selected here, the layers called Tushar, that's her name actually. And I've highlighted this particular layer in purple. Now I'm with this layer selected, I'm gonna go down into effects and then I'm going to choose outer glow, the second one from the bottom. That's going to instantly apply the outer glow. I've already reset the effect to default here. And the options again are very similar to what we saw with the drop shadow and the inner shadow. We have a blend mode, which is actually one of the lightening blend modes because this is a lightening effect, we have an opacity slider with which we can increase or decrease the transparency of the effect. We have a noise slider with which we can introduce some noise into the effect. We can choose the color of the glow. So I can click here for a single color. For example, create a dark red glow. Or we can work with gradients actually when applying this effect. So I'm just going to switch it back to white for now. And when I click this gradient ramp here, it's immediately going to apply a gradient that runs from 100% visible white to 0% visible white. So basically it goes from white to transparency. And you actually have a lot of control over what color this is and how transparent this side of the gradient and actually is. So when talking about gradient ramps like we're looking at now and what we looked at in the previous chapter, we don't just have the color we can specify or the location of the midpoint. We also have transparency options, and you will find those at the top of the gradient ramp. So if I click the top left here, it's going to display an opacity of 100%, indicating, indicating that this side of the gradient is 100% visible. Now if I click the top right of this gradient ramp, it's going to display an opacity of 0%, indicating that this side of the gradient is completely invisible. So you get this graduated grade hint. Well, most gradients are actually graduated. But it goes basically from one color to a transparent version of that color, which is when you, which is how you get this nice gradual transparency. So I can actually increase the opacity on the right side of the gradient. And you'll see that it becomes a lot rougher and well-defined instead of this softer glow that I'm actually after for this effect. So you can specify these different gradients. You can also choose from the presets here. You can add gradient stops by just clicking below here. And you can remove them by dragging them away from the bar. And I'm just going to click Cancel for now because I would like to stick with a solid color gradient. Now, we have two techniques here. Softer and precise. Precise is usually a bit more elaborate, Let's say like IT projects a bit further out of the layer. And I prefer the softer version. Actually, we have the size with which we can increase the size of the glow so it makes it more diffuse. And then we have the spread with which we can project this glow further into the diffused area. So the size makes it larger and more spread out. And then the spread dictates, dictates how much light is being, or how much glow is actually being projected into that wider area. And I think this effect is actually a nice place to start showing you what the contours actually do. And for that, I'm actually going to zoom in on the image a little bit. And what you will notice is that when you're in these dialogue boxes, the Alt scroll function doesn't work. You can use Control plus to zoom in or you can hold Control. And well, just control actually, and just click on the canvas to zoom in. So control temporarily switches to the zoom tool. And if you hold Alt, you can actually zoom out. And that's obviously Command and Option respectively on Mac. So I'm just going to open the contour dialogue here. And I'm going to, right now we are at this even slope. So just a 45 degree angle up. What I'm actually going to do is pick these two peaks in the valley. So once I choose this, you will see that an inner glow is applied directly outside of the layer. Then we get an area of nothing, and then we get another outer glow. So that is what these peaks specify. The first peak is the inner peak. Then we have a valley in which no glow is applied. And then we have another application of the same glow effect, effect on the right side of this graph basically. And you can take a look at what each of these do respective to the effect that you are applying. I tend to stick with the regular application of the effect, the linear application. You are free to experiment with this a little bit. So let's say that I'm just going to increase the size of it a little bit more. And also increase the spread a little bit. And I'm actually going to go from this white into more of a golden yellow here, something like this, and then decrease the opacity ever so slightly. Okay, So we are at Screen blend mode, 39 percent opacity, this yellow color spread of four and a size of 40. Now, let's say I want to save this effect so I can apply it elsewhere later, not just within the same document but in different documents. Now, the Layer Style dialog box allows you to save these effects as a style which you can use, which you can do by clicking this new style button. And clicking this button allows you to enter a name. And I'm just going to name this golden glow. I want to include the layer effects. The layer blending options are not required for now. We'll get into those at the end of the chapter. And I can actually add them to my current Creative Cloud library. So I can use them not just in different documents, but on completely different systems as long as they have access to my library. So right now when I'm about to create this golden glow, you will also have access to it because I put it in the public library that is attached to this course. So I'm just going to click Okay. And click Okay again. I'm going to clear the style, the effect that are applied by right-clicking. It opened the library's panel just now. I'm going to right-click on the layer. And here in the middle, we have three options for working with Layer Styles. We can copy it and we can paste it onto other layers or we can clear it. And for now I'm just going to clear it. So now the glow is gone. And now I'm going to grab the styles panel, which I have in my interface over here. If you don't have that panel and you likely don't, you can always go into the Window menu and find it under S for styles. And now here at the bottom I have my golden globe style. So just making sure the right layer selected, I can just click on this style and instantly apply the effect. And I could also do this from the Creative Cloud Libraries panel, because right now it's added here. So let me just undo the application of the style. And I can also just grab it from the Creative Cloud library. So just highlight the layer, click the Layer Style in the library's panel and it's instantly applied. 107. 13: The Inner Glow effect does exactly what the Outer Glow effect does, except on the inside of a layer. And that's what we will be looking at in this lesson. So I have here 13.5 Inner Glow, which is not a finished compost composite that I made. It was a concept that I eventually stop working on. So this is not the actual finished product, let's say. But I thought this Japanese castle would be a nice exercise for this particular layer style. So in this document I have highlighted the concerning layer in blue this time. And what I'm going to do is make sure the layer is highlighted and then go down to effects at the bottom of the Layers panel. And then I'm going to choose Inner Glow. I'm going to make sure it's set to default by clicking Reset to default. And because we are working with a glow effect, the blend mode is currently set to screen, which is one of the lightening blend modes. We have an opacity slider, just like we had for the other layer styles we've looked at so far. We can introduce some noise into the effect if we so choose. I usually do not. I'm going to leave the opacity at around 40. Just like with the Outer Glow, we have the option to choose for a solid color glow or for a graduated glow with this gradient. Again, I'm just going to leave it on solid. And I actually want to choose the one of the lighter tints in this cherry blossom behind the castle. So I'm just going to click the color here. And when you then place your mouse on the document, it's going to give you the color picker. So then I can just click on the cherry blossom here. And it's gonna give me one of these tense. And I'm just going to click around a few times looking for the right one and this looks about correct, d1e seven, B5. And then I'm going to click Okay. So again, we have two techniques to choose from softer and precise. Precise follows these values exactly and softer gives us a bit of fall off. For this effect, you can choose to have the glow emanate from either the edge of the layer or the center of the layer. Now, for the finished result, I want to choose the edge, but for demonstration purposes, I'm just going to choose the center for now. And that's going to make the globe radiate from the center of the layer. And just to demonstrate, I'm going to up the opacity a little bit to 80 percent. And then if I change the size that you will see that I choose how far this layer is actually being filled, its center outwards. Now I'm going to choose the edge again. And I'm just going to change the size to something like 25 looking at this. And I'm going to decrease the opacity just a little bit to about 50. Again, we have the different contours that we can choose. That's not a useful effect for this particular instance. But it's still educational to play with to see what your changes actually do in the composition. And let's say I don't find this inner glow quite enough to strengthen the composition. Let's say I also want to add an outer glow. So this is the first time we will be working with two different effects. When I click outer glow and mind you, I'm going to click the text here and not just the checkbox. The checkbox enables the effect, but doesn't give you the options immediately. If you click the text, it's going to give you the options and enable the effect. And I want a similar color to the Inner Glow. Actually, I want the same color for the, for the outer glow. So I'm just going to go back to Inner Glow and click on the color. And then I'm going to select the hexadecimal color value and copy it using Control C. Go back into outer glow, click the Color Swatch, and then just paste the same value. And then I'm going to increase the size a little bit, lower the opacity to something like 30 percent. And there we go. That is the effect that I was going for. So I'm just going to click Okay? And I can always look, I can always check how the layer looks with and without all of the effects and each effect individually by manipulating the eyeballs. So I can just disable all the effects by clicking the eyeball for effect. And I can change the visibility of the effects individually as well. So let's say I want to tone down the outer glow just a little bit. So I'm just going to double-click that here in layers. And I am going to decrease the size of the outer glow to something like 15. And there we go. And there is no golden rule for these settings, by the way, besides the blend modes, basically you are just free to experiment and they're going to look different depending on the resolution of your documents. So the actual pixel dimensions of your document and the size of the layer within your composition. So this is always a matter of experimenting. There's, there are no golden rules and you are free to apply your creativity as you see fit. 108. 13: Pattern overlays allow us to apply a pattern to any layer with a great measure of control. And to demonstrate this, I have here 13.6 Pattern Overlay, which is again a document in the concept stages. And what I wanna do is apply a texture to this model here to this mannequin. This is an actual photo of a mannequin that I shot and edited into this and added the damage and the broken door and everything. So what we're gonna do is make sure this layer is highlighted, the mannequin layer, which is highlighted in yellow here for your convenience. And then I'm gonna go down to where it says effects, and then I'm going to choose Pattern Overlay. Now this is the default pattern, which is actually not what I'm looking for. These leaves are far too large and because it has so many highlights and shadows, It's going to be difficult to make it seem like it's actually part of the greater whole. So I'm just going to expand the pattern options here. And obviously we have the trees that we can use. We can also use grass or water. And I actually, for this composite like this green grass texture that we have here. So I'm just going to click that. But initially it doesn't look like much because a pattern overlays just cover whatever layer you're working on in another image. So there's no transparency, there's no blending initially, which makes it kind of difficult to see the point of unless you have a flat object to which you just want to apply a texture or a pattern. So basically, I want the original image to shine through. And to do that, I'm going to use a different blend mode. As we discussed in the first video of this chapter, there are three blend modes which you will be relying on most of the time. The first one is multiply, which blends the pixels based on their luminance values. So only the pixels of the top layer that are darker than the bottom layer actually show up and it always gives you a darker image. As a result. The reverse is true for the Screen blend mode. It you always get a lighter result and only the pixels that are lighter than the bottom image are actually visible. And then we have overlay, which is usually a good place to start when you want to preserve the texture of the top layer, but also the contours of the bottom layer. If you want to apply a texture to a layer, the best place to start with the overlay blend mode. And now I'm just going to play with the opacity until I'm happy with what I'm seeing. And this actually looks pretty good. So I'm just going to leave it there at about 70 percent. Let's make it 70 percent exactly. We can also change the angle, which is pretty useless because this is actually a seamless texture. We can change the scale to increase the size of the grass blades basically. And that actually looks pretty cool. But then I want a slightly lower opacity. To compensate for these, this larger texture. I actually like this quite a bit. So I'm just going to leave it at that. So you can change the scale. You can make the texture larger or smaller, and you can change the texture at anytime obviously. Now, what is a bit detrimental to this composite is that I didn't include this effect before reflecting the mannequin in the water. So this is not showing up over here, but that is subject for a different video. So I'm just going to click Okay. And yeah, there is basically my all-natural mannequin in the middle of nowhere. 109. 13: This lesson is a bit of a call back to Chapter 5 when we first started working with layer masks. In that chapter, we made it so that this airplane was visible only inside the stack of the chimney. So at the end of the chimney basically. And that's exactly what we are going to do initially here. So I'm just going to make the layer visible and I'm going to make sure it's highlighted in the layers panel. And then I'm going to go to select and then choose subject to select the airplane. And then I'm going to apply a layer mask to my selection using the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers panel. And there is our airplane. Now, I'm going to scale the airplane down a little bit by pressing Control T or Command T on the Mac and holding the Alt key, I can scale it down towards its center and then just drag it around until it's actually centered within the chimney. I'm going to press Enter to confirm that transformation. And then I can, when the move tool is active, I can always use the arrow keys on my keyboard to push it to the exact right place. Now, to help this composite a little bit, I'm actually going to look at what the lighting situation of the images, because the plane should currently be backlit by the sky, but it is perfectly visible. And that is something that our eyes are very good at picking up on. So basically what I wanted to do is just darken the airplane at least a little bit to make it look like it's backlit. And to do that, I'm going to use a color overlay effect, which allows me to just display any color over any layer. And to do that, I have the layer highlighted here and I'm just going to go down to effects, and then I'm going to choose Color Overlay. And initially the color is set to great. So I'm just going to choose something like, well, basically it's just pure black. And then I can just roll back the opacity to get to where I want to be. And I think about 35 percent looks right to me. So I'm just going to click Okay, and it's very easy to see the before and after of applying this effect by just disabling it for now. And I like this edited version quite a bit more with the color overlay because it also gives the plane a lot more contrast against its background. So color overlay just allows you to apply any color to any layer, and you can use that as a solid color. But once you start changing its opacity, you're basically using it as a color filter over a specific layer, which can be very useful for situations just like this. 110. 13: What a lot of people don't know about Photoshop Layer Styles is that you don't use them as their name is designated. So you don't have to use a glow as a glow or a shadow as a shadow. You can use them as they're reverse. So you can use a shadow has a glow, and a glow as a shadow, which is what I'm going to show you in this lesson. So here I have this composite of my daughter jumping off of a mushroom towards this butterfly. And I want this butterfly to have a golden glow. Now, this glow cannot be established with just an inner glow or an outer glow. It's going to require a stacking of different effects. And just as an exercise, I don't even want to use the glow effects. I'm only going to use shadow effects. So what I'm gonna do is open up the layer styles dialogue box by just double-clicking the layer anywhere that is not the actual name. And then I'm going to choose the inner shadow layer style. So I'm just going to click the name of it to enable it and go to the settings. Now, the effect is currently set to normal, which allows me to just change the color to whatever I want. So I'm just going to open the color dialog box. And I'm going to enter F to D, a, a, a. And that's what we're going to choose. I'm going to put the opacity at a 100 percent. I want to change the angle to minus 45 to make it fall in from now, let's say a 117, something like that. I'm going to change the distance to 10 and the size to 10 to get approximately this effect. Now, this doesn't look too impressive initially, but we will get there at the end. The next effect we will apply is a color overlay to fill the layer with a color. So I'm just going to click Color Overlay. And then I am going to click the color here. And I'm going to change the color to f, a, f 8, 9. And then click Okay, I'm going to leave the blend mode at normal. Actually. I don't really need any transparency towards the actual butterfly below it. So I'm just going to leave that as is. And the next thing we're going to do is apply three drop shadows. So I'm going to click Drop Shadow to enable the effect and go to its settings. And what I want is to get a specific color of drop shadow. So I'm just going to click on the color initially. And the color value I will enter is B, II, a, C 8, 7, BAC 8, 7. This doesn't do anything because the blend mode is currently set to multiply and nothing below this is lighter than Multiply, then this color value. So it's not actually going to show up until I choose a lightening blend mode. So I'm just going to change the blend mode to screen. We're just going to give me this effect. I'm going to leave the angle of 30, change the distance to 0 to make it look like it's actually emanating from the butterfly itself. And I'm going to increase the size to 80 pixels. Now, this is without the effect and this is width the effect. And you can see it's subtly building up in the background. And that's the whole point of using three separate drop shadows to build up on the original effect. I'm going to add another drop shadow by just clicking this plus sign here. And actually I'm going to disable global light so it uses its own settings. So I'm going to add another drop shadow here. And I'm mostly going to leave the settings intact except upping the opacity to about 55. Then changing the spread to about 10. And then the size looks about right. So this is our previous step and this is our current step. And this is the current step without the previous step. So you see the glow is much more intense having these two effects stacked on top of each other than they would be separately. And yet another drop shadow here. So I'm just going to click the plus icon and this will be the final drop shadow there were adding. And I'm going to choose a different color as slightly more saturated orange. So I'm just going to click on the color. And then I'm going to enter C, E, B, 073. And I have these written down. I have I don't have them memorized. And I want to saturate the color a bit more. And that means that I have to choose a different blend mode because screen doesn't really protect a lot of color. So I'm just going to change the color to Linear Light, which you will find hearing the color blend modes. And that's going to saturate the orange quite a bit more. And I think the opacity, yeah, I could increase that to about 80 percent. Something like that. I'm going to change the spread. Okay? So the spread over blows the effect a little. So I'm going to turn the opacity down slightly to about 45, spread of 25 and a size of about 250. So that is a pretty pronounced glow, which I could actually turn down a little bit more by changing the opacity. And there we have our glowing butterfly. And if you look at each of these effects individually, they all add to the greater whole. And that is the whole point of these layer styles is that you can combine them on top of each other and change their settings. And it just influences the overall look of the result. And you don't have to use a drop shadow as a drop shadow. You can use it to add an even glow on top of using a glow. Because outer glows cannot be copied, you can't use two outer glows on the same layer. So that's why you could use different drop shadows to achieve the same effect. 111. 13: Now throughout this course we have worked with the layers panel extensively, but there is one option which we have not really looked at yet. And that is the difference between opacity and fill because initially they seem to perform the same function. We've seen that lowering, lowering the opacity of a layer decreases, it, increases its transparency. So if I lower the opacity, you will see that the islands slowly turns transparent to reveal the edited background. But when I change the fill, it does exactly the same thing. So what is the actual difference between the two? Well, the opacity influences the complete visibility, the whole layer. And the fill only affects the actual filled pixels of the layer while leaving the Layer Styles alone. So it keeps the layer cells visible, but it just decreases the visibility of the actual layer. So we're going to be looking at that by applying a few effects to this island layer and then lowering the opacity and fail to see what both of them do. So with this layer selected, I'm just going to go into effects and twos, drop shadow. I want to make sure I'm working with the defaults. And when you're working with effects like this, like the drop shadow, instead of changing the settings here, you can also just click and drag on your canvas to displace the layer. So now I'm changing the distance and the angle of the effect by just clicking and dragging on my canvas. And I am also going to add a color overlay, but I am going to lower the opacity by quite a bit. And just for good measure, even though it doesn't make any sense, I'm also going to use a pattern overlay, and I'm going to also change the blend mode of that to overlay. And I'm just going to decrease the visibility to about 35, something like that. So this is just a demonstration of what Phil and capacity do. I'm going to click Okay. And now when I lower the opacity, you will see everything slowly disappear from view. But when I change the fill, only the actual island disappears, but the effects that happen apply to it actually stay visible. So if you want to, for example, create a layer style that looks like glass. You can basically draw our circle and use some Bevel and Emboss and the satin layer style, for example, to create something that looks like glass. And the layer will be transparent, but the effects applied to the layer will still be visible. So that is the essential difference between Fill and opacity. Opacity affects the entire layer and fill affects the entire layer, except for layer styles applied. 112. 13: In this lesson, we will be looking at some of the more advanced blending options in the Layer Styles panel available to us at for that purpose, I have 13, 10 Blending Options open here in Photoshop. And we're going to go into this layers blending options of the island layer by just double-clicking on this gray background of the layers panel. So this is the panel we will be focusing on for now. Here we have a list of all the effects that we can apply, obviously which we've been looking at in the previous lessons. We can change the layer blend mode if we so choose, we can change its opacity. We can change its fill, which we've also looked at in this chapter. And you can hide or unhide the individual RGB color channels. So every image is comprised of a red, green, and blue color channel. And you can hide those individually here in the layers panel. I don't use this very often, but it's something you have available to you. Here we have a knockout drop-down list and you can choose none, shallow or deep. And I'm just going to quickly illustrate what this actually does. So I'm going to click Okay for now, and I'm going to switch to the rectangle tool, and I'm just going to draw a little rectangle over the island. And now I'm going to go into this layers blending options by just double-clicking here on the background of the Layers panel. And I'm going to choose knockout shallow. So then I am going to click Okay, and initially nothing happens. Because first you need to lower the fill of the layer to a lower percentage. It doesn't have to be 0, but I'm just going to put it at 0. And what you see is that it actually creates a mask through the layer below it. So this layer is now hiding the layer directly below it, which is something you can use for some creative effects. Now, altering the opacity actually removes the effect. So if you lower the opacity to 0, it actually hides the rectangle and it's not masking out anything anymore. So you want to influence the fill when you use this specific function. I don't use it very often, but it's an interesting behavior. The photos, photoshop allows you, I'm just going to delete this layer by pressing Backspace and I'm going to go back into the islands blending options. So that was the knockout. Here we have another interesting checkbox for layer masks, mask, hides, effects. And to demonstrate what that does, I'm actually going to just apply a basic drop shadow. So I've just clicked on Drop Shadow and that brings me to the settings and it applies the effect. I've a very dark drop shadow at a 100 percent opacity and a fairly large distance just for demonstration purposes. So the, the checkbox, if I go back into the blending options is currently disabled. And that means that if I go back to my document by pressing OK, and then apply a layer mask to this layer using the Add Layer Mask icon here at the bottom of the Layers panel, I wanted to switch to my brush tool and have black be my foreground color. And now I can start masking out the layer. But as you can see, the drop shadow effect is actually still visible and it's moving along with whatever I am masking. So this is what that checkbox does. If you want to hide the layer effects along with the layer itself, you want to enable the checkbox. So I'm just going to go back into the blending options, enable, layer, mask, mask hides effects. And I'm going to click Okay. And now when I click the Layer Mask here and then start masking, you will see that the effect itself is also hidden. So I'm just going to undo all of that with Control Z. Moving on to the last option we are looking at in the blending options. So I'm just going to go back into the blending options of the layer. And then we are looking at the Blend If options. Basically, this allows you to configure transparency for a layer depending on the brightness of the layer itself and the layer below it. So if I start moving this black slider to the right, you will see that it's starting to hide the darker pixels of this layer. So the darker, basically currently all the luminance values are visible. And if I start moving this to the right, it's starting to hide the darker pixels of whatever that point this is in the histogram. And if I do the same for the white slider here, if I start moving this to the left, it's going to start hiding the brightest parts of the image, knocking them out, and making the layer below it visible. And we can do the same for the underlying layer here. So I can actually move this around. And it's only going to show us the darker parts of the layer below, comparatively speaking. And then I can do the same for the brightness values, and that's going to hide them starting from the top. So those are some of the advanced blending options you have available. I don't use them very often, personally speaking, but you can utilize them to some creative extent. 113. 13: In this video, I'm going to show you some additional options concerning layer styles that can be useful in certain situations. I've already shown you that when you right-click on a layer with some layer effects like this butterfly here, we can actually copy the Layer Style and then we can paste it with another right mouse click and this secondary option here. You can also clear a Layer Style by choosing clear layer style. And that is basically going to remove all the layer styles that you have applied. Now, a couple of interesting things that you will find when you actually right-click on the word effects. Here are the settings for Global Light. So if I click this, we've looked at this global light checkbox in the layer styles a bit in a couple of previous videos, mostly concerning the inner shadow and the Inner Glow. And this is where you can change the Global Light. And that can be useful when you have properties that are not linked to global light. So if you disable the checkbox in the Layer Styles, you can still change that global light over here, which can be pretty useful. So I'm just going to click Cancel for now and then right-click on effects. Once again. You also have the option to create layers from Layer Styles. And that is going to basically expand the layer styles to their own layers. So if I choose this option for this specific layer, you will see that some aspects of the effects cannot be reproduced with layers. I'm just going to click Okay for now. So the actual style of the layer might change. But here we have individual layers for the layer styles that were applied. So this fill here I can visualize by holding Alt and then clicking on the icon. And that is actually going to hide all the layers except for this one. And we just saw what the drop shadow did. And then if I choose this layer, you will see the actual glow applied to the butterfly. So those are now on their own layers, which I find as an interesting option available to us in the layers panel. We can also right-click once more and we have the option of hiding all the effects on this layer currently. Not that interesting. I'm going to right-click once again where it says effects. And you can also scale effects uniformly. And that is applied to every single effect applied to the layer. Instead of editing them individually, you can expand the layer effects in here. So I can put it at 250%, for example, or let's go a bit over that to 500%. And that is going to make all the effects bigger that I've applied to the layer. So those are some additional options afforded to us in the layers panel. And you can find most of those by just right-clicking where it says effects once and effect is actually applied. 114. 13: Earlier in this chapter, I promised to show you how to create your own patterns which you can use as fills for different objects and also obviously as a Pattern Overlay when you apply layer styles. And for that I have 13.13 creating patterns. And we're going to be creating a pattern based on this stack of wooden blocks of firewood. So for that, I would like to actually create a selection around the entire document. So I'm just going to press Control a to select the entire document. And then I'm going to go up into the Edit menu and then choose Define Pattern. I'm going to name this pattern fire wood. And then click Okay. And that adds the pattern to the pattern fills that I can apply. So that means if I press Control D to de-select, I can then go into the Ellipse tool and just draw a circle holding Shift. And then I can apply this pattern to this shape by just clicking it here in the pattern fills. And I can click and drag it around because it's on its own separate layer, which you will see when, once you hide the background layer. Why didn't show up initially is because it was in the exact same location as the original. So obviously, you wouldn't be able to tell because the images are in exactly the same spot. So I'm just going to hide the background layer for now. And I'm just going to go back to a regular solid fill for this layer at the moment. And then I'm going to apply this new pattern as a pattern overlay. So I'm going to, with this layer highlighted, I'm going to go to effects and then choose Pattern Overlay. And where it says patterns, I can then choose this new one that I just created. I can increase the opacity and it's currently not visible because of its blend mode. So it's perfectly black, like it's a solid black color. So with overlay, this pattern wouldn't be visible. So once I switch it to normal, the pattern actually shows up and we can see it in the image. So here I can alter its scale. I can make it larger or smaller and you will see that it eventually tiles. It's not a seamless pattern. So you want to take that into account when you're scaling things around. You can also change its angle if you wish. And you can actually link it with the layer or unlink it with the layer. And that allows you to just change which part of the pattern is visible by clicking and dragging the layer around in the actual composition. So that's how you can create patterns. These are persistent, by the way, they're not going to go away when you open a different document or when you close out of Photoshop. So whenever you create these, they will always be available to you here in patterns. And also when you are working with layer styles. 115. 13: In this final lesson of the chapter, I'm going to show you how to create a seamless pattern. So in the previous video, we created a pattern based on an image which was non-repeating. So you eventually started to see the tiles if you scaled it down too far or if you applied it to a large enough background. Now in this layer, I'm going to show you how to create a seamless pattern so that it's infinitely repeating in all directions. And for this, I have the document 13.13, seamless pattern. And what we have here are four illustrations of some animals. So I have here a goat, which I can make visible by Alt clicking the icon, and that's going to hide all the other layers. I have a dog, I have a rhino, and I have a monkey. Now, let's create a repeating pattern based on these animals. So I'm just going to hide all the layers except the goat layer by Alt, clicking the i icon in the layers panel. And then I'm going to apply an offset filter to this layer. Filters is something that we will be looking at more extensively in the next chapter. But for now we're just going to go up where it says filter in the menu, then go into other and then choose Offset. And this document is 400 by 400 pixels. So it's 400 pixels wide and it's 400 pixels tall. And when you're creating a seamless pattern like this, your tile or your document should be a square. So these settings are the easiest to apply actually. And what you want is to offset the horizontal and vertical of this initial layer by half of the document size. So that's going to be 200 pixels by 200 pixels horizontal and 200 pixels vertical. And this checkbox for wraparound should be enabled by default. So then I'm going to click Okay, and as you can see, this goat layer is now split up over the four corners of the document. Then I'm going to enable the dog layer. So I just made it visible by clicking the icon. And again, we are going to apply an offset filter with some slightly different values. So with this layer highlighted, I'm going into Filter and then Other and then Offset. And now I don't want it to take on the same position as the goat layer. I want one of these axes, the horizontal or the vertical, to be 0. So I'm just going to change the horizontal value to 0. And that's going to split the dog vertically at the top and the bottom of this document. So that is the desired effect. Moving on to the rhino layer, I'm going to enable its visibility and make sure it's highlighted in layers. And then I'm gonna go back up into Filter, Other and then Offset. And I'm just going to flip these values. So I want the horizontal to be vertical or horizontal to be 200. I want the vertical to be 0, and that's going to split it horizontally. And then I'm just going to click OK. And for the final layer we're going to use for a pattern, the monkey. I'm actually going to scale this down a little bit. So I'm just going to press Control T with the layer highlighted so I can free transform it and holding Alt, I can scale it down towards its center and then confirm the transformation. And for this, we don't actually need the offset filter because I just want this to be the center of the repeating pattern. Now, what we want, what we want to do is merge all the layers in this document into one layer so we can actually create our pattern. So I'm just going to click on the top layer and then Shift-click on the bottom layer and then press Control E to merge all the layers into one. So now the layer is, the document is actually only one layer containing our pattern. So I'm going to press Control a to select the entire document Command a on a Mac obviously. And then we're going to do the same thing as we did in the previous lesson. We're just going to create a pattern based on this document. So I'm going to go up into Edit, and then a bit further than halfway down we have defined pattern. And this is going to be seamless animals. And then I'm going to click Okay. So this document is 400 by 400 pixels. I'm just going to create a new document using Control N of, let's say 1920 by 1920 pixels. And then just click Create. Now, this pattern is now integrated into my patterns panel. But I'm actually going to apply a layer style. So I'm going to draw a rectangle. And then I'm going to go into Layer Styles by double-clicking the layer here and then choose Pattern Overlay. This is currently still the wood pattern, which is not what I want. I want this seamless pattern. And once I click that, you will see that I can also scale it up quite a bit. I'm just going to set the rotation back to 0 and then click Okay. And as you can see, I now have an infinitely repeating, seamless pattern. And I just did this based on four layers, but you can do this with as little as one layer if you want, and just create a seamless pattern that you can repeat infinitely in all directions. 116. 14: In this chapter, I'm going to teach you all about filters in Photoshop. And to get started, we're going to look at one of the newest additions to the filters in Photoshop, the neural filters and the expressions, Neural Filters to be, to be specific. So in this document 14.1, I am going to go up into the Filter menu and then I'm going to choose Neural Filters. And that's going to bring me into this separate workspace. Or there are several neural filters available. By default. None of them are actually installed. So if you want to install one of these, you just click it here and then it starts downloading the actual filter. I'm just going to cancel it for now because I don't really have a use for the Zuber super zoom neuro filter. Basically, Neural Filters. Neural means that it is actually processed in the Cloud by a neural network. So it performed certain actions such as colorizing a black and white image or changing the expressions of one of your models, which is what we will be doing in this lesson, processes all of that in the Cloud and then brings it back to your own system. Because your own system, in most cases, not well equipped enough to actually do the processing itself. So we will be looking at the Smart Portrait filter. So I'm just going to click this here and you might have to download it by clicking the Download button when it appears, I already have it here in my system. So when I click on this, I get the options here, but they are currently grayed out because the filter is not enabled. Notice that the filter automatically does face detection. So it's detected the face of the model here. So when I enable it here with this checkbox, we get into the actual filter. There are some featured featured features where you can already start playing with some of the more popular sliders of the filter. I'm just going to close out of this for now because we will be looking at these tabs individually. Then I'm going to open the expressions category. And here you can see be happy, surprise, and anger. So you can actually increase or decrease the measure of those emotions. So if my model is looking a bit too sulci, I can increase his happiness by just sliding, be happy to the right. And I'm just going to increase it by about plus 15 for now. And it's going to process, process it in the Cloud and then sync it back to my system. And once that is complete, you will see that the expression on his face has actually changed. So Photoshop is computing in the Cloud what this man should look like if he was 15, happier than he currently is. And once you start exaggerating these values, very quickly falls apart actually. So once I put it to 50, again, it's going to process in the Cloud and he's not going to let you know, it's not necessarily a bad result. But he doesn't look like Dennis anymore. And that's what you will find. What this filter is, that it's just making up details of the face to correspond with whatever you set the sliders too. But this is a tech demo. This is still in beta, as you can see here, where you pick the actual neural filter. So this is something that is still in development and something that will improve as time goes on and as more people use it because it's processed in the Cloud, adobe takes in all of these use cases that people actually try to use a for and try to improve it based on its use. So you can do the same for surprise if you want. So I can make him more surprised. And that's going to process quickly. Does he look surprisingly? It looks a bit yeah. He looks a bit more sad actually. And I can make him angry or by just increasing the anger slider. And I'm just going to pick the maximum. And he looks very angry. So this is something that you can play around with. Like if a model has an expression that you're not perfectly happy with, you can play around with the sliders to get a better result. Here, if we look at the global edits, you can change the facial age. You can change the direction of the head, and you can change the light direction of the image. So when I check facial age here and start increasing its value, I can actually make Dennis a bit older or even older. And as you can see, is hair color changes like there's some gray gray streaks in there is Beard turned gray if we change it to the maximum value, you'll also see some more wrinkling in his face. And again, once you start pushing these filters to their extremes, they lose their believability. Let's say it is something that you can play with, something that works quite well in certain situations, not particularly this one is the head direction. Let's say I want to see more of the right side of Dennis's face, then I can just click and drag this to the left. And it's actually going to turn his head, like it's trying to map his face and then turn it in and convincing way. It doesn't look very convincing for this specific photograph, but I have seen some where it is actually quite convincing. So after we've seen what this filter can do, we can also see where it's going to output two. So if you click output here, it's currently set to new layer, which is non-destructive, which is nice. You can add it to a new layer with a Layer Mask. You can apply it as a smart filter or you can even apply to a new document. I finally smart filter the most flexible because it allows us to dive back into the filter and make future changes. And it also allows us to mask out certain aspects of any filter that we apply. I've all separate video about smart filters in this chapter, which we will get to in time. So I'm just going to click Okay. And that is going to give me the layer as a smart object, including a smart filter. And if I wanted to go back and make additional changes, I can just double-click on Neural Filters. And we end up back in this dialogue where we can make those additional changes. 117. 14: A fairly recent and interesting addition to Neural Filters is the ability to colorize black and white images. And to demonstrate this, I have here 14 to Neural Filters colorize. And in this document I'm just going to go up into the Filter menu and then choose Neural Filters. Now, colorize is actually out of Beta. So if you look here at the featured filters, you will see colorize. And if this is your first time using it, you actually have to download it. I've done so already, so I can just click on colorize. And Photoshop is going to process the image and turn it into a color image. And this is actually amazing. The result is very, very much like the original photo, which was a color photo that I shot with my camera. You will see this model Marley a couple more times in the course. And the result is actually really, really good. So for portrait photography, this is actually a really, really useful filter if you want to colorize them. If you have like a scan photograph from back in the day, like an old photograph that you want to restore and it's scan, then you will want to actually fix the photograph. As far as damages concerned like creases and cracks and stuff like that, you want to get rid of those with, for example, the Spot Healing Brush or the clone stamp. But, and then apply this filter. But for images like this, it is actually a very good result. You still have a lot of control over the saturation and the color mixing of the image. So I can increase the saturation if I choose, which doesn't actually give us a better result, I actually find that the default result without any edits is usually the best when you look at images such as this. So you can play with these sliders if you want. I'm going to apply it as a smart filter because I find that the most useful when I'm really impressed with is the feathering on the hair and the lips over here actually that they've applied the color. So gradually, let's say that it is actually a very convincing result. 118. 14: Smart Filters are an essential part of working non-destructively in Photoshop nowadays. Basically, we can apply any filter we want with any settings, and then we can determine where that filter is actually active after the fact using layer masking. And we can always dial it back into the effect and change the settings to change how our image looks. And to demonstrate this, I have here 14.3 smart filters. And what I'm gonna do is just convert this layer for smart filters. You can do that by simply turning it into a smart object by right-clicking or actually unlocking the layer first by clicking the lock icon, right-clicking and then choose Convert to Smart Object. But if you go up into the Filter menu, you will also find convert for smart filters. So you get a little dialog box here that you can just click through. And this converts the image to a smart object. That's basically all it does. It's the exact same function as right-clicking and choosing Convert to Smart Object. Now, to work with a smart filter, we just apply any filter. So I'm gonna go up into the Filter menu again. And then I am going to choose Blur. And then I'm going to choose Gaussian blur. And Gaussian blur allows me to blur the image like this. I can click here on the image to put something else in the preview. And what I'm going to do is enter a radius of, let's say six pixels. So the higher the radius, the more exaggerated the blur value of six suits my purposes for now, There's a wanna do is just increase the depth of field of this image a little bit by blurring the foreground and the background a little more relative to the model sitting there. And what photoshop has done now actually is applied the smart filter here with a Layer Mask. So first of all, I can always dial it back into the garden Guassian blur effect by double-clicking it here under smart filters. And I can still change the values. So it's a non-destructive way of working because I can always go back in and edit the values of the filters. And now let's say that I want to exclude the model and parts of the foreground here from this filter. I want the model to be in focus. For that, I'm going to select the actual layer thumbnail here. And then I'm going to go into Select at the top and then choose subject. And it's going to make a selection of the subject in the image. And it's actually done that based on the blur values. So what I'm gonna do is press Control D to deselect. And I'm just going to hide the smart filter for now by clicking the icon to disable it. And now I'm going to recreate my selection. So I'm just going to go into select and then choose subject. And Photoshop will automatically detect the model here. And then I'm going to re-enable the smart filter and then click on the Mask thumbnail of the smart filter. Now I'm going to switch to the brush tool with white, sorry, black as my foreground color. And now I can just paint over the model. And I'm painting through the filter to reveal the original image right there, which we also see here in the filter mask. Now, I'm going to de-select for now because I also want some of this foreground, middle ground to be in focus actually. So I'm just going to click and drag over here to bring this area back into focus. And let's say I want to gradually bring this out-of-focus again. So I don't want to go from focus in folk, folk in-focus out of focus. I want it to be more gradual. At the moment, I can just decrease the brush opacity to something like 50. Then I can paint over this and I'm not painting through the filter entirely only by 50 percent. And I'm also going to do that for this background over here. And that's also something you can see in the layer mask. So here at the bottom, it's white, then it goes into middle gray, and then it goes into black to indicate what is in focus. So this allows you to not only go back into the settings of whatever filter you're applying it also, 0 also allows you to specify where the filter is actually active by working with a normal layer mask. 119. 14: The most difficult thing about teaching about filters in my experience is that every filter has a different results based on what you apply the filter two. And that's why for this chapter, I've chosen to just show you a few practical applications of different kinds of filters to produce certain results. And in this lesson 14 for Cloud tunnel, I'm going to show you how to turn this image above the clouds into a Cloud tunnel, which you can use on its own or in a creative composition. If you look at my Instagram and scroll down a little bit to last year, you will find an interesting application of that filter. So we're going to be using a couple of filters to turn this field of clouds into a Cloud tunnel. And for that first, we're going to crop the image into approximately a square. So I'm just going to press C for crop. And then I'm going to hold Alt and scale this down towards the middle. And I just wanna make sure that it is actually a square. So I'm just going to go up into the ratio and then choose 11 square and then confirm the crop with the checkmark here at the top. So now to create our Cloud tunnel first, I'm going to unlock the layer by clicking the lock icon in the layers panel. And then I'm going to go up into the Filter menu and then distort the distort category. And then I'm going to choose polar coordinates. And polar coordinates is basically going to put the image through a cyclone, through spin cycle and just rotate it around itself clockwise. So once I click OK here, it's going to partially create this Cloud tunnel already. Now, it's not exactly very neat here because the left side of the image is completely different from the right side of the image which we have over here. So I basically want to copy the bottom half of the image and then flip it vertically to create a symmetrical cloud tunnel. So I'm going to switch to the rectangular marquee tool. And from the bottom right, I'm going to click and drag up to select half of the image. I'm going to copy this selection to a new layer by pressing Control J or Command J on the Mac. So now I have a copy of the bottom half of the image here. And then I'm going to press Control T or Command T on the Mac to go into Free Transform. And then I'm going to mirror it vertically. So I'm going to right-click on the layer and choose flip vertical. Now all I have to do is click and drag it up. And I'm holding shift for that purpose at the moment. So now it's at the top and it's centered. So I can just confirm here, and there is my Cloud tunnel. Now, what I wanna do is make the Cloud tunnel a little bit longer by basically pinching the center of the image a bit further inwards. So I want to apply that to both of these layers. So I'm going to merge them into one by selecting both layers in the Layers panel and pressing Control E for merge. If you're not a big fan of shortcuts, you can always right-click and then choose Merge Layers. So now we are going to use the pinch filter to make the tunnel a little bit longer. So I'm gonna go back up into Filter and then choose Distort. And then I'm going to choose pinch. And I'm going to go for an amount of, let's say 90. You can kinda see a preview over here. And then I'm going to click Okay, and that elongates the tunnel by punching it in words basically. Now, let's say I want to change what is at the end of this Cloud tunnel. What I can do then is just grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool and then click and drag and then grab shift to draw a circular selection. And then I basically want to hide what is in my selection. Now if I apply a layer mask and now it's going to retain whatever is selected and hide whatever is not selected. So that gives me the opposite result. So what you can do is hold Alt or Option on the Mac and then click the Apply Layer Mask icon to apply a black mask. So that is actually going to hide the selection. If you do apply a white mask by mistake, for example, you can always click on the mask and then press Control I to invert it to get the same result. But I prefer the Alt click feels a bit more user-friendly, let that way. So you can put anything at the end of this tunnel. You can make it look like a portal, which I believe I did in my creative composition. So this is just one application of these Distort filters. And like I said, they all have a different effect depending on what you apply them to. So it's really educational to experiment with these with your own images or something you found online. Besides just copying what I am doing. 120. 14: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to use particles and some motion blur on those particles to make images seem a bit more dynamic. And for that, I have the file 14.5, motion blur. And what we're gonna do is paint in some flying grass out of the wheels of the scooter that my kids appear to be riding through this Scandinavian landscape with a burning airplane in the background. And if you look in the exercise files for this chapter, you will find a grass, grass brush, an ABR file. Now, we already talked about adding brushes to Photoshop in the chapter about brushes. So if you just double-click this and it will bring you back into Photoshop and it will add this brush to your program. So what we're gonna do is paint this, these particles. There's these blades of grass on their own separate layer. So I'm going to press Control Shift Alt N to add a new layer. And I'm just going to say part in Coles. Now, when we are painting with this grass brush, we obviously want it to be the same color as the actual grass. So I have the brush tool active here. I'm going to right-click and make sure that this grass brush, which now should also be in your installation of Photoshop, is actually selected. And then I want to sample the color of the brush for from the original image. So I'm just going to hold down Alt and click on the image, and that is going to sample the color to the foreground. Now, currently this brush is actually pretty boring. We can just click and drag to paint with this blade of grass, but it doesn't look very convincing. So we're going to make this brush a little more dynamic by going into the brush settings. Now, the brush settings can also be summoned by going into Window and then choosing brush settings. So we're going to be playing with these a bit to make our brush seem a bit more interesting. So the first thing we're gonna do is click on Shape Dynamics. And I'm going to put the size jitter at 100, which gives us some variance for the size of the blades of grass. I'm also going to increase the angle jitter to 100 to give the blades of grass a random rotation. Then I'm going to go back to the brush tip shape here. And I'm going to increase the spacing to make them seem separate. And what we could also try is go into scattering. And then choose two for the count and then a 150% for the scatter. So this is basically going to paint with two of these brushes at the same time, with the same settings, but the, the same random variants. And it's going to spread those brushes out by a 100 and 50 percent approximately. So I'm going to decrease my brush size by quite a bit using the square bracket keys. And then I'm just going to paint out of these wheels here. And I'm going to do a couple of strokes. Also, some across the actual scooter. Like so. Okay. And let's say I'm going to grab some larger ones and just do it towards the back one more time. All right. So now it seems like these blades of grass are flying where the scooters riding. And now we're going to add some motion blur to make this seem a bit more realistic. So we are going to make sure the correct layer is highlighted in the Layers panel. Then go into Filter Blur, and then choose Motion Blur. Now, the first thing you can change here is the angle. So you can change the direction of the motion. Basically, I could make them blurry going up, but I want them to blur in the right direction where the scooter is actually driving or actually where the grass will be flying. So a little bit upwards like this. And then you can just increase the distance to increase the blur amount. This looks about right at about 20 pixels. So I'm just going to click Okay? And when I zoom in on the image, you will see that this blur is now applied. Now if I want it to go back in and change these values again for the blur, I'm not going to be able to do that because I didn't convert the layer for smart filters. So if I Control Z to undo the application of the motion blur, I can go back into Filter and choose Convert for Smart Filters. Then reapply the motion blur filter, which is also listed here at the top now because it's the last filter that I have applied. And then just apply the same values. And now if I want to change those values, I can just double-click here on motion blur and change my filter to whatever value I wish. So this is just a fun little edit. Adding these particles and some motion blur generally can really make your compositions a bit more dynamic if you want to make it seem like something is in motion. And I have another example of that further on in this chapter. This is one of my favorite applications of the filter. 121. 14: In this lesson, I want to guide you through some of the rendering filters that Photoshop offers. We'll be looking at most of them, not all of them, because not all of them are useful in any real meaningful sense. So I have here the file 14.6 rendering filters, which we will be working with. This is obviously a Photoshop composition consisting of about eight images. The moon, the starry sky, the foreground with my daughter. This bus, the fox, the buildings and the flames, separate elements that I have composited in here. So what we're gonna do is first copy the background layer for now. And we don't actually have to do that to work non-destructively with filters. We've seen that we can use smart filters to do that. But if we want to mask certain aspects of the image, It's still more useful to actually work on a copy and then convert that for smart filters. So that is what I'm going to do right now. I'm going to make sure the layer is highlighted. And then I'm going to go into Filter and then choose Convert for Smart Filters. I'm just going to click Okay on the pop-up and it is now a Smart Object. So the next step is going up into the Filter menu with the layer selected and then choose the render category. Now we're not going to look at these first three initially. We are going to look at the clouds filter initially. So the clouds filter generates random clouds based on the foreground and background color that are currently set. So before we got started, I made sure that my foreground and background color is set to black and white. The order of those doesn't matter as long as it's black and white, it's going to randomly generate clouds. So when I click clouds, you'll see that I now have some clouds. And those are applied with a smart filter. So there's not really anything to configure when it comes to Cloud. So you don't get a pop-up where you can enter anything. These are randomly generated. But if you double-click the actual filter, it will regenerate the clouds. Now, this is obviously not very useful in this context because it's actually hiding our image. So what I can do is actually change the blend mode of the clouds layer to something like overlay. And that's going to apply them as this kind of filter, getting the image a lot more texture. Now, there's a bit too much texture. So I can always just decrease the opacity of this top layer to make the effect a bit more transparent. And I can always look at my before and after by hiding this top layer. So I can just click this and hide it. I'm going to go back with control Z2 before applying the clouds filter. And now we are going to go back into Filter again to render. And then I'm going to choose Difference Clouds. And what this does is basically the same thing, except it creates a negative of whatever the clouds are hiding. So now we can kind of see through it. But the interesting effect actually shows up when we change the blend mode again to something like overlay. Now, this is not, again, not really what I was looking for, but as we decrease the opacity of the effect of the effect layer, let's say to something like 40 percent. It really makes the colors of the image, especially the oranges and the contrast, a lot more dynamic. So this is also an effect that you can use to put a little more contrast in your Photoshop compositions and make it seem like layers are flowing together at that better. I don't use it that often, but I do appreciate the effect and what it can do. So I've used Control Z to go back to before applying Difference Clouds. And now we're gonna go back into Filter and then choose render. Once more. We're going to skip fibers. It basically just puts a texture on the layer which you can use. To the same extent, you can change the variance and the strength of the fibers. And I'm just going to show this real quick. And then I can change the blend mode to overlay and just lower the opacity. And now you see we have kind of this texture going on almost like it's raining, which can be useful, but there are other ways of achieving that same effect. So I'm just going to Control Z and undo applying fibers. Going back into Filter and then Render. I am going to look at the lens flare. And that can be useful for composition such as this. You'll see a lens flare displayed in this little preview panel. You can change the brightness of the lens flare and making it larger or smaller if you so choose. And you can also choose different lens profiles. So it's currently set to 50 to 300. I can change it to 35 prime, a 105 prime, or movie prime. And all of these work out slightly differently. I usually stick to the 50 to 300 because I just like the way that effect looks more. And I'm going to place this lens flare over the left eye of the Firefox, let's say. And I'm going to lower the brightness to about 25. And then click Okay. So now the eye of the fox appears to be glowing, which I think is kinda cool. And now I'm going to go back into Filter and then apply lens flare once more, which brings me back into this pop-up. And there's now a second flare that I can click and drag. And then I can just place it by clicking OK. Now I'm not entirely pleased with the position. So it's kinda difficult to see in that preview panel. So what I'm gonna do is go back into the effect by double-clicking it. And I don't want the bottom one, I want the top one. And then I can just click and drag it around a bit to get to where I want it. And then I'm going to click OK. Okay, so that looks a bit better. Now, let's say you want to change the opacity of these effects. What you can do is just double-click this little icon and that gives you some control over the blend mode of the effect and its opacity. I don't actually want to change the opacity of these effects individually. And because we are working with a copy of the background layer, I can just decrease the opacity of the layer itself to kind of weaken the effect. The next two effects that we will be looking at cannot actually be applied to smart object layers. So what I'm gonna do is just create a new layer above this layer by pressing the plus icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. And then I'm going to go into Filter and again render. And then I'm going to choose tree. Now, tree actually generates a random eyes tree over which you have quite a degree of control. So I can choose an oak tree or a redwood. I can change the light direction of the tree being generated. I can change the amount of leaves. I can change the size of the leaves. I can change the branch height. And that's going to increase the size of the trunk of the tree. And I can change the branch, branch thickness as well. So there's lots of presets to choose from and you solve a lot of control over how the street actually looks. You can also choose to create an arrangement. And that basically randomizes a lot of these properties. But I'm just going to leave that for now and click OK. And that's going to generate this tree on top of this layer. Now, if you want to make this part of the composition, you're going to want to make it a bit smaller. So I'm going to press Control T or Command T on the Mac to transform and scale it down a little bit. And I could create a row of trees here on the right side. I could duplicate this a few times. I'd have to add some shadow and equalize the lighting and color of the composition. I think you get the idea here. So you can generate trees based on some values that you have a great degree of control over. So I'm just going to select these layers and delete them by pressing the bin icon here. And then again, I'm just going to create a new layer, this time by pressing Control Shift Alt n. What we're gonna do is set this fox on fire. And for that we need to use the generate flame filter. And to do that we need a path for these flames to follow. And I'm going to draw that path with the pen tool. So I'm going to choose the pen tool. I'm gonna make sure it's set to the path mode. And then I'm just going to click along the back of the fox a little bit going down the tail. Does something like this. And then I'm going to press Escape once. And now when I go into Filter and render, I can choose flame. And that is going to generate these flames along the path that we've created. And what you can actually do is select the type of flame. And what I wanna do is create multiple flames following the direction of the path. You can change the length of the flames. You can randomize length, which is actually one I'm going to do. You can change their width, you can change the angle. And I'm going to angle them quite a bit because I want the flames to follow the curve of the back of the fox. And you can change the interval, which spreads them out a bit more. I want to leave that to about 25. And then when I choose a fine quality, I'm just going to click Okay, it's going to generate these flames based on the values I've added. And they don't look great like they don't look like they fit into the scene very well. So what I'm gonna do is go into the blend mode and change it to, let's say, screen. And that is already looking a lot better. I don't actually want the path to be selected anymore. So I'm going to open the paths panel and just click away from this path to deselect it. And there we have our composition. So that was just a quick preview of some of the random rendering filters and what they can do. 122. 14: The liquify filter is a filter often used to change the proportions of somebody's face or body. And that's what we will be looking at in this video. So the first thing I'm gonna do is convert the background layer of this image of Marley to a smart object layer so that we can work non-destructively. So I'm going to go up into the Filter menu and then choose Convert for Smart Objects. And I'm going to click Okay on the notification. And now we can go into Filter and then choose liquefy. And going into liquefy by default, you will end up in the face tool. And the face tool allows you to hover your mouse over the face of your model and start clicking and dragging on these separate items of the face. So you have the entire face shape here. We have the eyes that we can change. We have the nose, we have the mouth and the face options also appear when you hover over the chin. And you can just click and drag these around to change the proportions of the face of your model. So I can enlarge her forehead, for example. Or I can bring in her chin a little bit and her cheekbones to make her appear even thinner. And I can change the position of the nose. I can change the position of the eyes, which is a bit tricky in this interface. Actually. I can just scale them up proportionately like this. Or I can increase the height or the width of the eyes. So you can edit all of these things individually. So if somebody, for example, has unevenly sized eyes, which is very common, you can actually make them more equal in size and position. And the position of the eyes is actually quite difficult to match exactly using these tools. So if we look and the right of this filter pop up, we actually have some exact, more exact positioning for the eye size, eye height, width, width, and I tilt. I can also change the distance of the eye so I can place them further apart or closer together. And I can also increase or decrease all of these items that we saw on the image itself with the face tool, with these settings here. So I can change the nose height, for example, I can change the nose width. I can increase the height of the forehead and the chin. I can change the jawline here if I wanted to, and I can change the overall face width as well. Now, this filter also has some tools that we can use. We have here at the top, the Forward Warp tool, which allows you to just push pixels to the side. So let's say I want to cough her hair a bit more. I can just grab the Forward Warp tool, which is subject, subject to the same shortcuts as the brush tool by the way. So you can use the square bracket keys to increase or decrease its size, or you can hold Alt and the right mouse button to do the same. So I can just push her hair around a bit. And you don't want to go too crazy with this tool because you will actually distort the image. So if you click and drag too far, you're going to distort whatever you are clicking and dragging over. We have a few more tools here. We have a twirl Clockwise tool and that is just going to rotate whatever we hold the mouse over. And I'm just undoing these changes with Control Z, we have the pucker tool, which pushes whatever we hold the mouse down on closer together. The bloat tool does the opposite, so that increases the size of whatever we hold the mouse on. Those are the most used tools within this framework. So if you actually want to reset all of your edits, you can hold the mouse. You can hold the Alt key or the Option key on Mac, and then the cancel button turns into Reset, just like in every other dialogue within Photoshop or almost every other dialogue. So now when I click Okay, our edits are in place and I can always disable the edits by just hiding the smart filters. So this is our before and this is our after. Not the most, not the best result. But I find this picture a very good example of using this filter. And what you can do with it.