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Finishing Touches

before the world of smart objects appeared and became my most favorite is Thing in the World in photo shop. One of things that I always like doing was a term function that I kind of started terming finishing touches and in fact, so much so that back in cost 2006 I wrote a book called Folder Soft Finishing Touches and the whole Concept. The book was You want this? Look, here's how to do it. And it wasn't a book where you read it from end to end. As you look in table contest ago. Island do that. Then you go to Page 47. It says, Here's the steps to do that. Um, if I were to rewrite that book and who knows that that may ever happen? If I do, I would take almost all those same techniques. But now make them smart because back then, smart object smart fillers didn't exist, So it's kind of just do these steps. But the only problem with that is for the most part they were kind, little stand alone. Okay, I've done that. Now that's it. I'm starting again over here, so I'm still very much enthused...

and enamored by any technique that does something interesting, like an edge effect or a border or texture overlay. But even better now we have the option. Do it in a way that's both flexible and reusable. So from a creativity standpoint, you go. I want to try something and see what happens. So, as an example, I love taking photos of ballet dancers. They can just pose in ways that regular human beings just can't even think of. Someone said to me day, Just pose like that. I'd be not if you want me to walk again for the next two weeks. So, um, I think that's awesome that people can do that. So I'm gonna need such a big file for the purpose of demonstration. But as should be no surprise by now, I'm starting off in camera with a smart object. So normally, when if this was just a standalone image, I would spend some time and camera looking at it. Go. Want to increase exposure will bit do some, but because this is gonna be part of a couple of steps, I'm going to start off saying, you know, I just get into Photoshopped because the other things I wanna do on top of this might have influence. So there's no point in me spending 20 minutes going. Let me tweak all these settings only to find that when I do the other step, I have to change it back again. So I would say, other than really obvious stuff of its, you know, really under exposed or something. I'm just gonna just get it open to begin with, just so I have it in there as a smart object, which, of course, means I can go back and edit it. So now I want to start doing some kind of texture. Look to it, and I As much as I said before, I photographed a lot of things for brushes. I have an equally large folder full of textures, right? Just walk around and go. That is a cool, rusted wall thing right there, and I take photos like that all the time because it could serve multiple purposes. Could be a brush could be a background or more likely for me, it could be an overlay texture in front. Add interest in texture to my photograph. So let's use this one to begin with even though my eyes really drawn to this one, that's kind of cool to Anyway, we'll get to that. So place in photo shop is we've seen before is the quickest way to say I want to take this other camera raw file and put it on top of my other camera raw file. And by the way, there was little exclamation mark in case you saw that that just because this was previously edited in the previous version of Kameron since has changed, It warns me of that by clicking on that little exclamation mark. It updates to this version off camera and again, I'm not gonna go too far. I think, ultimately probably don't want to change some settings in here. But at this point, same idea was trying to get it in there. Now, if you bring something in and it's too small normally in Photoshopped, that might cause concern. But because this is a texture that I'm gonna blend in in some way, I am not as much concerned. So normally is day to day. I would be worried about this was a portion of a person I wouldn't necessary want to stretch it, but because This is just a texture that's gonna be design element. That's gonna be a finishing touch, overlay kind of thing. I'm less concerned. Having said that, I wouldn't want in large at 4000% because then I might lose all detail. But I would say be less concerned over this than other methods. So this point, I have two layers, and I want to explore different ways of using them together. And this is one of those The sky's the limit part and pull all the things we've talked about previously, like layers and masking and clipping masks and blend. If sliders and all those things because they all come into play so very often the first thing we might do is just try. Well, let's just try a blend mode. So ignoring dissolve, which hardly ever has any purposes without before except like rain and snow and stars, I'm gonna start darkened and just kind of look at a glance gets potential. There are some people, and just like Ben Wilmore knows about curves, he can also explain every single blend mode. He's one of like four people that I know that can do it effectively. The rest of us just go. So this is the best shortcut ever invented in Voto Shop is if you're not sure what blend mode to use, you just use shift Plus and it just scrolls through all the blend modes. So I'm not even looking at the layers panel I'm looking at the image you wait was that shift minus goes back the other way? Oh, that was soft light. Okay, So as you're going through the blend, modes keep changing, and that's each one's gonna get very different results. There's never an easy answer to say. Always go to this blend mode because it's so dependent on the two photos, because the way blend modes work is it compares the pixels on the top layer with the pickles below and blends them together. You think some mathematical formula now, just to explain why I decided years ago that, unlike some people, I didn't really care to understand them. Years ago, I went to the Photoshopped help file or is like to call it the Photoshopped help file. Sorry couldn't help myself on. I looked up blend modes and under multiply mode, it said. Something like Multiply mode takes the pixels which haven't luminosity factor greater than the 50% pics or lower than the one want, want, want, want, want. And at the end I was like, I have no idea what that meant. So that's the day I decided. I'm just gonna kind of browse through them and go. I like that one. And because we're talking about creativity here, I kind of like that as a start. I don't think I would leave it like that, but that's got potential. So I'm kind of make note to myself Divide, which is one of newer blend modes that's even harder to understand. That's got potential not leaving it like that, but that it's got a possibility, because again, there's no rule that says you can only change the blend mode. No, you change the blend mode and you could mask it and you can try this and you can lower the opacity and and and so I'm going to keep going. But for now, I'm gonna make no divide was actually kind of cooler than I thought. Um, so I kind of go through there. All have their something like not so much that one, although you know who knows, but, um so I think there's a couple here that I am interested in, but I really like that divide. I think that was unexpectedly cool. Uh, so divide okay. Before we do anything else, let's remind ourselves a one thing. Both of these air camera smart objects. So now that I've changed the way the two layers are impacting each other, what would happen if I went back to this one and said, Well, what if I really pushed clarity and saturation? I mean, really push them far. I don't know. Let's explore together my click. OK, it re applies it. And now divide Mo does that. So that's telling me. Okay, that's not the direction I want to go because I liked it better before, so I would undo that and maybe that double click and try the other way around, say Okay, let's make it less vibrant and maybe pushed the contrast up a bit. Click. OK, all right, kind of interesting. Maybe it just lower the opacity of it, so it's it's less intense. Now let me also take a time out and say, I'm looking at this at a quite a zoomed out view just making kind of initial decisions. At a certain point, I going to say, but what is it really doing to her face? So at a certain point, I want to get closer, and I'm just for now, kind of getting the rough feeling for what are these combinations doing with each other? So lowering the opacity may help. To really see what I want to do, I think I'm gonna actually change this back to a blend mode like Multiply for second. Not that I would necessarily use, but I want to show you yet another way of me affecting the blend between these two layers and that is to double click and go these wonderful blend. If sliders I love thes sliders, I got to say, because it does things that would just be so hard to do otherwise. If you said okay, go to that layer and find all the lightly colored things and make them appear See through that would take a bit of effort, but in this case it's like take a slider and move it and see what that does. And all of a sudden it's changing the wear. So let's take the underlying layer or make it kind of push through. Or maybe this way would be better. I think I'm liking this top one. Maybe this the other slider than do that option are all split the triangle trick to make it more gradual. And while I'm in here, I can still try things like divide mode and see what that does. So it's all matter of just trying different things within this one dialogue box on This is something like people forget. They think of blend modes as going to that pull down menu in the layers panel. But it's also here. So you could say, I want to try soft light and see what happens when I play around with this blend. If slider a little bit, that's pulled this one this way. I don't have a secret formula here. I've never tried actually this combination before. I miss seeing what happens. You're watching me. Just experiment. This is the way I would do. It is set myself up by saying to camera smart objects. Now let's start playing, and a long way you can find something looks great, and if you're not sure, you can always change it sometimes and certain blend modes actually like this one, things like overlay. You can see that the colors are changing because part of what overlay mode does is it includes color. If you ever decide, Really, all I want to do here is play with the texture of this overlying layer and not the colors. The simplest way to do that is to convert it to gray scale, because now colored isn't in the equation. It's just different textures when I click OK, you see, I get quite a different result because now it's just more the texture interacting. It's not the colors as much. I still have the blend if sliders going on. So if I put these kind of back to square one, you can see mawr what it's doing, where the texture in this case, it might be soft, light and lower the opacity any time you're in a dialogue box like this, if you're experimenting and I mentioned a moment ago is that I'm realistically setting myself up for a problem by making every decision zoom so far out. So a certain point, even with this dialog box open, if you know the keyboard shortcuts in this case is command or control in the space bar. Then it gives me the opportunity to zoom in closer and make decisions looking a little more closely at what I've got. So overall, I like everything that's happening except her diseased arm. That's not sterling me quite so much because it doesn't look quite a way out. What? So at a certain point, this is why zoom in closer? Cause I'm like, don't like the little things that are happening here and here and here, But other parts I do like a lot. Well, how do you tell a photo shop selectively Stop doing that. How do you hide parts of a layer? Well, usual air math, saying, as typical Photoshopped techniques we've done before. So I would adul air Mass, take my brush tool very quickly. Check and make sure I'm not painting with maps or words or clouds. I mean, I could do that, too, but it probably would make better sense to go just sort of standard old brush in a decent size. And I want to make sure I my brushes in normal mode and I'm painting with black now. I keep doing this, but I keep forgetting to say, and I apologize. Habits For me, shortcuts are a habit I have to sometimes say out loud, and that is whenever I'm painting and I'm saying, I'm going about to paint on the mask. I'm glancing at the bottom where my foreground and background colors are. And if I want to paint with black and white is my foreign color, I'm just pressing X X swaps back and forth. So this very quickly says, Let me get the correct color that I want to work between black and white. So I want to hide things. I make sure black is my foreground color, and now I can start going in and painting on the areas where so I don't really want the texture in these areas that press the space bar to temporarily switch to the hand tools so I can move. This is where I can also take nice advantage of the pressure sensitivity of my tablet. So I'm not constantly having to change brush size people more detailed, and I just go into the areas that I say, all right, don't really want her legs and arms affected quite so much. And let's see that looks OK. So now I might zoom back out again, and now the effect is still there, but it's it's kind of subtle. I like it, but maybe now that I've mastered, it's almost too subtle. But luckily, nothing is ever cast in stone because I could go back and say, Well, let's take off that whole grayscale thing and update it and see if I like that better now that I've done that still pretty subtle, probably because I'm still in soft light and, uh, lower opacity. So change back to something else. Be so this is where it's kind of experimenting now to go. Well, what happens if I do this now as a important little tip? As I was doing all that, that layer was hidden, so I wasn't seeing any infected Alex going Wonder why not see any effect that was by so good. Good tip to make sure you turn your layer back on before you start playing around. So let me now go back and play around with some of these a bit more, so paint changing it overlay. Beginning of today, one of things that I suggest that was take advantage of the flexibility of things to make your life simpler. For example, the example was adding adjustment layer over adjusted so I can paint on the mask and then put it back again. Here's another example of the same thing. When I was painting before tryingto take that text away from part of her, it was pretty subtle. So clearly I missed a few spots cause when I'm now in overlay mode, I can see hoops Mr Few spots there. So there is nothing wrong with going into a mode like overlay so you can see the problem areas that you want to fix. And then either Lauren opacity or try like soft light is a kind of a scaled back version of overly. But in this one example, every single aspect of it is subject to change. I can change the blend mode, opacity, blend of sliders, mask anything I want and it because they're both camera smart objects. Both of them can be edited, so I can also go back to this one and say, What if I were to increase the clarity and make it a little less fiber because I want to have a more subtle effect maybe click OK and see what that does, and it will re calculate and go like that. So the the recurring theme here, with all these things, is that I'm never doing something where you get the point of going. Yes, that's it, because it isn't. And as an added bonus, when you have a layer like this that you played around with that texture that could easily be dragged onto another photograph and it's all ready to go because, you know, you already have some things in it, like a blend mode. Now, obviously, the mask would have to be redone. But that is an interesting aspect to say. OK, I wanna be ableto add textured overly. Okay, Now let me do one other thing here because I want to uses for another demonstration purposes in a moment. So let's take this mask. I'm just gonna fill the whole thing with white again. Hello, Bill. With white, he said, and nothing happened. Interesting. All right, then. Plan B make a new layer mask eventually. Okay. All right. So, back to our story. I want to try and make a reasonably accurate selection of our main subject here, and I'm gonna say reasonably and you'll see that I really do mean that. I'm just trying be relatively accurate. I want to get rid of these areas here. So I hold down Option are all to say, Don't select these areas between her legs. I'm we talked a little bit about selections before. We'll be talking more about it tomorrow and talk about compositing. But at a certain point, the automatic selection tools in photo shop are great, but they only conduce so much. So at a certain point, I'm gonna be like, OK down here, I might need to do a bit of manual effort is going to start trying to select the wrong area, and I have to keep on doing it in trying to fixing it. So switching to the lasso tool, for example, and at a certain point you're saying I understand Do this myself. Add these little bits and take away part using optional ault. So there will be a point that no matter what you do with the automatic selection tools, there may be some manual effort required, and particularly if, as in this case, my plan here is to end up creating a layer mask for my selection. Not that I want Teoh skimp on making a good selection, but if it's not great, at least I'll still have the mask to tweak it further. All right, so that's looking not bad. Let's press Q for quick mask and see. OK, there's part of their I missed completely. Didn't notice that. That's why I always use quick mask because it will show things that I would have just ignored completely use refined edge a little bit and make her hair look a little better. And I'm not again trying to make this a perfect selection because you'll see that the purpose what I'm doing this doesn't necessarily require perfection. But I want to be a little better than this. Gotta love that refine edge. It really does. I mean it. It doesn't always work, but my favorite expression compared to the alternative, it still gets you really, really close to the result. Now, normally, every time I show her financial, I almost always say and make a selection. Excuse me and make a layer mask, which is the way I would normally do it sometimes if I know for example, here when I scroll further hoops. I missed her hand completely. I might just go Let's go back and add on to that selection because frankly would just be easier to do that and then make a mass from there. So most of the time I'm going to say, Let's let's make a mask right from refine Edge. But in some cases, not necessarily the case. Now, I did all that because I want to use this for some other purpose. So I'm going to initially add the layer mask on here is not gonna end up there. But I just wanna put it there. In fact, I'll just move it up here so you can't even see it for now. Just a little storage place, because part of the reason and I'm gonna talk more about this tomorrow. But when I took this photograph, I deliberately positioned my subject a little off from the center. First of all, just because someone once told me, Don't ever put your subject in the middle because that's a bull's eye was like, Yes, sir, Mr McNally, I will always make sure I do that, but also because in my mind I'm like, that's canvas that I could do something within Photoshopped, some kind of finishing touch that makes it for someone who's passionate about dance. Maybe I want to build on that. So one of the ways I might do that has take my type, tool, type something like this and see what we have in the way of typefaces that I could use nice and big. Now, if I put the text over here like this, it's OK, but it's rather boring because it's just text hanging out there. So I'm thinking I might want to do something more interesting. Let's just change the color of that. For example, put the text here so it's partially behind her. Well, it will be parsing behind her right now. It's on top of her. But if I happen to take this layer mask, I already creating, just drag it down there and then inverted. Then all of a sudden I'm getting the point. Right now, it's starting to look like I can move that behind hers. You can still read what it says the wrong thing. My text. Change that blend mode to multiply some lower opacity. So it looks like someone many moons ago painted the word dance really well, like the typeface, Mind you like. They took a long time with a stencil, made it look beautiful. Now it turned my texture back on, and now we're starting to add more to it. But since we can in the photo shop, there's nothing wrong with having a word floating out over there. But to me, that's not anywhere near as interesting as slipping it. So it looks like it was actually painted on the wall behind someone, even though it takes a little more effort. Do that in photo shop. That's one of those things that distinguishes you from person who kind of knows how to use photo shop and says, I'll put type right up there because there's nothing in the way and I can put it there and again. Nothing wrong with that. But I just think this has more interesting possibilities is make it look like you know it was actually here. So it almost like let's have you posed right there because it happens that were dances painted right on the wall there, you know. So that's kind of the thought that going through my head as I see a beautifully textured wall like that. I'm thinking, Oh, that's just crying toe. Have something else there and maybe it's another picture of her. She's dancing a duet with herself. I don't know, but we'll talk more about that tomorrow as well. But that, to me, is just another of those little finishing things that you can add on. That makes it look a little different that I'm going to say, no matter how good you are in light room that be pretty tough to do in light room. Just it would just be really hard. It's quite easy to in photo soft once you know the basics of it and then you build in, and by the way, we're also gonna put some texture on top and play with that as well. Since I already have a mask there, I could option are Old Dragon and then invert the mask. So now I, no matter what I do with this overlay texture, it's going to put the one we go. So it's it's not going affect my dancer at all, so I want the texture toe on Lee be on the background. So now whatever I do in terms of multiply whatever. It's not affecting the dancer. That's a little bit strong to me. So I might lower the opacity. Or I might go back to camera. Say, now that I know that let me change the color temperature and but the exposure a little darker and see what that does. Why? Because we can. My longtime Photoshopped heroes has a great expression that used to always talk about adding a drop shadow. Why? Because you can, Because drop shadows air. Just cool a lot of the time. Not in this case, but come. Why not experiment when you have the option to try it? So let's sit back for a moment and enjoy this wonderful piece of art. Look at it for a second and think there's not one thing here. I should do it in double negatives. Everything here can be edited. I was gonna say there's not one thing that can't be edited, but that's kind of awkward. So everything about this can be edited. So you say this is a PSD. You save a copy as a J peg to show to your client, they go, Oh my gosh, I love that, But can you just that people dio, Can you just change? I'd love it if the word look more like handwriting than something so structured. Well, the answer is yes, because it's a type player. So I could go back in and say, All right, let's see if we can find something more like this cause that looks much more like something. Someone with a hand, right? No, it doesn't. What else we got here? I don't know. I have some really cool handwriting. Taipan smile, but don't have any idea what's on this machine, so we'll just pick something just to show you that I'm changing it. That's better. Not really, but anyway, but even there so that the font, the color, the position is important. Note that the mask and the type are not linked together because I want to be able to move this type anywhere, so it looks like I'm moving it on the wall behind her. But I'm really moving the layer, and it's mass to make it look like it's in behind. So I think one of the most effective things we can do that people don't expect, especially this person. They were there at that moment when you took that photograph, and they know that wall didn't look like that. So if you come back and go look at this option, I can give you a some art. I don't know many who go. No, let's go with just this one because it's, you know, much more interesting. I mean, they might, but at least you have a choice. So this is we're discussing during a break a little bit about the whole How do you show a client and safe use words like art and artistic collection or things that implies it takes some time. Many people look at that and go, Yeah, I would. I could see printing that big and putting it on my wall because it's not, Ah, portrait of me staying there, going like the senior portrait I normally get. This is a little different, and this is building on an actual background said tomorrow we'll talk about things like compositing where you're talking about things like put him on a whole new background. All right, so at this point, if this was a real project, I would have already saved this at least three or four times, you know, because I'm so adamant about saving constantly. Wish. Yeah, so let's pretend I had already say this. But now I want to continue working a little further on this. I want to take it even a step further because I love what's happening on the interior of this. But I absolutely love edges, something that's different where it's not just like, Oh, it's a rectangle with the border on. I want to make the edges of this more interesting. And when you have a photograph that's already kind of textured, it's like just crying to say, Make a better border out of me because I can. So I want to do this in a way that's gonna give me the most options. No surprise. Once again, that would be for me. Take thes three layers and convert to a smart object, because that way I know I've got lots of options to change my mind. So then let's try a couple of options. Option number one would be make a big rectangular marquee selection, but frankly, that would be incredibly boring, because it's just a smaller rectangle than the bigger one. But here's an interesting thing that I discovered one day by complete and utter. Except I absolutely love accidents like this, the whole happy accident thing, because refine edge, the whole purpose of her financials say you're trying to follow the outline of a person with their hair and make it all perfect. And one of the ways you can do that is if you move that radius slider a little bit of the time and then I guess I I'm not even sure of the reason I guess is trying to go. I truly trying to get a handle on what is a bigger radius do and I just did this. I made a selection and I made this huge radius, and as I started playing around with it, I was like, That's a really cool edge effect. I think what that's doing to the edge of the photograph. It's doing really interesting things Now. Here's the deal. You always have to put a radius of 65.8 for this toe. Work every single photograph. Sometimes it will be all the way over. Sometimes it will be just a little bit. Get just a little slight border. That's kind of need to I could might try. Smart Radius sometimes that will help. Sometimes it doesn't. I'm gonna say somewhere around there looking pretty cool. But then on top of that, the this little refine radius edged tool thing that's good for hair. Here's another choice. Go big normally with the refined everyone tells. And I agree when you're trying to refine the edge with this tool, make it a small issue. Can not in this case, go big because, as you do, it'll just try. Let me try and make another border for you. Edge. Based on that, sometimes you won't like it. Other times it will be better all part of your experiment. But I'm kind of liking the way most of this is looking for the most part, I think I wanna redo this little part here a little bit and I'm gonna add a layer mask now. Once I do that, this shows me. Okay, this is the edge that you created. But if we look at the mask, it's actually kind of a cool giving, except for that weirdness down there, and I'm not quite so thrilled about, but that happens. Sometimes You have to kind of rebuild over that. This edge looks a little bit too uniform, because when I was experimenting, that result didn't look all that great. But that's okay. We have pixels over here. So I would take these pixels and just usar mu tal and just drag him and then free transform. And I was too it wrong the first time. Flip horizontal like horrible boat. I always think Vertical blinds. Horse. Okay, now, I could just kind of say, Let's make this this side of the edge and fix up this last little bit whenever you want to copy something quickly. Optional dragon kind of give you effect one. OK, it kind of messed up that last part. Let me do that better if you see letters flashing on the screen. That's me pressing single letters to activate the tool cause I'm too lazy to go and click on them and this is way faster. So now I'm getting mawr what I want. But it's still a little hard to tell because remember, looking at transparency and Photoshop really can throw you off because it's not a true representatives not gonna print like this. You're not going to see checkerboard on a piece of paper. So before I go too far making decisions. I'm gonna add a layer below and fill it with white because now that's a little print, like on a piece of paper. So now why might have discounted this edge completely, Unlike and actually not bad. I still don't like that part there, but could be tweet. So that's just here is one example of a really simple way to make an interesting edge effect to make the edges not standard and square. And what I particularly like about this one is I love any time we can use a tool for purposes that wasn't naturally intended for refine edges supposed to say, make that edge look perfect. This is like pushing in our direction ago make it look really unusual, but it's not really helping the edge. It's turning into something that it really, really was intended to do, so that that would be one choice that I would make in case anyone was snoozing through any of the discussion of smart objects. Let me just say one more time, even at this point, I can say I love it, except I think this word is a little too high now, and over here it looks like all I have is that flattened kind of thing. But of course, is not flattened. It's a smart object, so I can click on, say, where is that type player? There it is. Let me nudge that down a little bit. Click on it first. There we go. Maybe over here, close it, save it, think about that. And then it will update and say, There you go. That's more what I had in mind. So this is kind of again. I'm tryingto do. I think it worked fairly well with the last thing with brushes. I'm just freestyling here. I'm not saying Look, these are the steps I always follow because I never do. I don't want all my photos to look exactly the same. I have kind of a core of things that I try on. Some photos like that Refine edge trick. Fantastic. If she was standing on a playing red background, it wouldn't work because there's nothing it wouldn't see any kind of texture. So by having two or three options available to you, that's kind of the approach you would take so that use refined edge. An unusual way is Option one when it comes to trying something unusual. Option two has an edge Effect would be Adul Air below on this layer, we're going to start building a shape and it could be filled with any color. It all doesn't really matter, and I'm gonna just add a little bit more to it here and there. I don't want to be just a regular old shape on to be a little more unusual, So I'm just making more and more little Marquis selections here and there, filling with the same color. I could also take a little chunk out of it and I'm trying to do is make initially make a shape. That's just not a rectangle. I want to be a little more unusual. You could just make a rectangle you could make a noble you could make anything you want. At this point, I would convert this to a smart object and start trying different kind of effects. Now, unfortunately, I never got a satisfactory explanation to this in my finishing touches book at a whole bunch of technique that said, put a shape on a layer, apply a filter and it would distort the edge of the shape and somehow magically, unfortunately, in, like CS four, that ability went away. So if you go to a filter and try doing something like, um, under filter gallery some of the ones I used to use where things like spatter and what spatter used to do, I could get this to see the edge a little bit. It would spatter the edge. Now it doesn't don't know why, boo. That's unfortunate. Luckily, there is a work around. Unfortunately, though, it doesn't work as a smart filter. So this is one of the rare cases where you have to kind of live with the fact you can't do it in a smart way. So you have to kind of think about that. At a certain point, you may have to kind of step, take a step back and go visit this so one thing I want to do this. The only reason I'm doing this is because, I just realized, would be really hard to see the next step unless I do this still doesn't really matter what the color is, except read was about the one bad choice to make for the next step. Even Dark Red is not better Dave changes to Green. A nice creative life, green ish. There we go. Okay, So now over here, I've got this start of a shape and I want the edges to be more interesting. The simplest way to do this and it's not gonna look simple at first. There's one of those things that we talked about previously. The first time you try this, it'll take a little longer. You have to look at notes and go. How does that work again? But then every subsequent time, it kind of makes more sense. I turned this into a selection by hitting commander control and loading it as a selection. Then I choose, modify contract and pick some number. Now, in this case, I'm gonna probably put something like so you can see maybe actually, a little more, because I want to really see what's going on here and again. There's no magic number here. It's gonna be a matter of the resolution of your file. So let's put 50 three. So now you see, my selection is a little bit smaller. Then I go into this function called Quick Mask, which is surprising letter Q and see where there's this kind of colored overlay that saying this middle part is selected. This top part isn't and this is where now I can go to something like Filter Gallery and you'll see now the spatter filter is working. So stick with me on this one for a second. Cause at first is kind of like So here's what's happening. When I made my selection, I contracted it and I went into quick mask. Quick mask is like a layer mask, but temporaries. That's why we're seeing black and white. So although you can't spatter the edges of an object on a layer, you can spatter the edges of quick mask, which means ultimately, when I click OK, I'll get a much more interesting selection that once I go out a quick mask and Adam ask Now if we look at our outer edges, see, they're much more interesting. Okay, so it takes a couple of kind of run throughs to go on. Once you've got the mask, then you can do the same thing to the layer mask. What to do that first, just to create a layer mask with a nursing edge. Now Aiken doom or filters, but keep in mind. Important note. These aren't smart. You can't make a smart filter on a mask. So if you're gonna build up like I want to hear more than one filter on top of another one, I have to remember that's what's actually happening is I'm putting one filter on top of another and I can't go back and change my mind like good with smart filters. So I'm gonna kind of go a little bit overboard. Here's you can clearly see what I'm doing. So there's my edge in the mask. When I look at the shape, there's my shape and the whole reason for doing this. Now I could have potentially just taken this mask and I'll show you this first. Actually, since it's there, I could just take this mask, copy it and get on edge effect. That way. That would be one option. The other option is just to say, You know what? I'm at this point already. I'm going to just do this thing called a clipping mask. Where you optional click to say on Lee, put the object above inside this shape below. When I do that in this case, I'm looking at it going well, it's not bad, but I'm a little concerned that again I've cut off the top of my text. So I would unlinked the to on here used free transform, and now I can at least start to kind of pull it up a bit or potentially click on the war button and start kind of experimenting by playing around with things of that nature. So this is not as edit herbal as some other methods. But once you have done this once, this layer mask could be saved in another document so I could select this and copy it going on the doctor to go paste and I get just this black and white, and I create a bunch of layers that have these in there. Then they become much easier to create, so I wouldn't necessarily say I want to spend my whole life on one photograph making this border effect. But once it's made than what I end up with is something like these, which are just different edges. I've created just a photo shop file that's just black and white. So this kind of thing where I said I wanted, we use that So then I just copy that onto a layer mask and go from there. So a lot of these things it takes a bit of an investment up front to create something. But then by nature, you just save it in some other file, and it's very reusable in that way. Once you have these files saved like this, do you use free transform to overcome the aspect? Ratio issues with different photos, right? Exactly. And again, normally, we want to avoid transforming too much larger. But because the whole point of these is kind of unusual edges I'm or willing to say, Well, when I rotate this to fit the orientation, it's a little too small. I'll stretch it up. That's OK. I mean, not you might looking who in this case that did bad things to the edge. But at least I'm or I'm less concerned with scaling something like this. I would be a portrait of someone or a building or something where I really worry about losing detail. Think Okay, so here's my little collection of things. Just these are all separate little Photoshopped files. So let's look at this one. I create this A long time ago I have no idea what it ISS see. So apparently it's an extreme close up of some Greenwood that's peeling and have blue on it. All right, then, fair enough. But also, the fact that I'm not seeing parts of it suggests something else is going on. And as of CSX, Aiken tell cause this little symbol. If I didn't know that, I would have to assume something like blend if sliders because there is no mask there. So the fact this has blend, if poking out there, suggest if I double click on this was like, sure enough, little blended sliders. So how would we? And by we I mean me. How would I use this since I have it on my machine, I would find a photograph that I want to use. And let's just it's this whatever. Not to worry about the quality of the photograph at this point, but one of the neat things about when you save a file like this it saved in multiply mode with blend if sliders. It means as soon as I drag and drop it, it takes on those tendencies. It's already in. Multiply with blend. If sliders now in this case. Clearly, it's not the greatest choice in the world, but it's more than demonstrate when you save a single PSD file that, in this case, is a smart object. So camera smarten up so I could edit that, and I've already decided that least to start with, I'm gonna do it in multiply mode. But when I look at this, what I'm like, yeah, I really like that so much so maybe overlay and lower opacity and go back and try these blend of sliders a different way. So it's just we're basically building a collection of little effects. Weaken, try. But again, none of them are ever permanent. Where say, Oh, well and I hope everyone seeing kind of, ah, recurring theme like the reason I use presets. It's because I can do them ahead of time. When I apply them, I can still change the settings of the preset. This is a similar principle. I make ah, one layered file that's got some stuff build into it like blend of sliders and or layer mask and or opacity and or blend mode. But when I pulled another photograph, I'm not stuck that way. I can say Well, let me try something different. So let's see what else I got in here. This little collection. Um, now, this is kind of cool the lens flare filter. This one always is kind of fun for photographers to spend the entire life trying to avoid lens flare and the people Oh, can you put that cool lens flare? And they're like, Seriously, I just took on my whole time to try and avoid that. Now you want to put it back in again? One of the problems with the lens flare filter has always been go back here so we can see example. All right, so I decide I want to put a lens flare filter on here. The problem with lens flare has always been you've got a postage stamp preview. You can't make that bigger. So from that little tiny preview you're supposed to decide. Where should I put that lens flare? It's like I think I wanted there, but I can't really tell. So the very least, making this smart. So this is a smart object Means the lens flare filter will also be smart. So at the very least, I could move. It doesn't change the fact that I'm moving it based on this little, teeny, tiny postage stamp size preview, that's just unfortunate. So with that in mind, another option is to create something like this. This is starting out with just a black document, and I've deliberately made this quite large, bigger than I'll probably ever need for a reason. You'll see a moment. Then, on top of that, I added the lens flare filter on this black document. Now I take this whole thing and I drag it onto my other photograph. And because the blend mode is in this already smoke called screen. Now I have a movable lens flare that put wherever I want. If there's anything I don't like about it, it's still there. So I can still change the lens type or the brightness or whatever I want. So this is an example of taking ah, filter, which has always been good, but it was kind of restrictive is Oh well, I have to put it there or I can't really edited or it can easily move it. In this case, the probably the one thing I would also do because my reason one was portrait orientation. I probably wanted give myself flip it around like this. And the reason is when you have lens flare on a black background and you change the blend mode to screen, theoretically, it gets sort of all the black. But if you really look closely when I move over, sometimes see if I can see it here quite as obvious in this particular photo. But sometimes you can still see a very subtle edge. So if you're black, layer is not wide enough at the very outset, you're like, What is that little subtle line I'm seeing there? So when I created this initially, I in my mind made it big enough that when I dried on other photographs, for the most part, it will be overlapping enough that I won't see it. So not to suggest that you're gonna have, like, Brazilian occasions to use a lens flare, but this is more to get again. Your thoughts going of some effect I want to reuse is saving it as a stand low little file. That's just the smart object with the filter in a blend mode that's going to get rid of the black when you don't see it right now because there's no underlying layer because I dragon another let layer the multiplier in this case screen mode comes into effect, says There you go now that's the effect that you want. One of the tell tale signs of Photoshopped Lens flare is the color cast that makes in this case. Couldn't you actually now start adding hue, saturation layers and that certain thing that's like anything this is just the start is get it on there and now, I could say, But I don't like that effect is doing so I want to pull it back. So in that case and this, I don't Actually, I'm really glad you asked that question, because I don't think I said this in so many words up until now. So now. Well, if you have something like this where you said I've got this, you know that the lens for you can see it's got all that readiness going. I don't really like the fact is doing that, So I'm thinking, let's add an adjustment layer like hue saturation. Or maybe let's just use vibrance and lower the saturation. The problem is by default. When you add an adjustment layer, it affects all layers below, and I want to tell it. Don't do that only affect the layer immediately blowing in my case, my lens flare filter and the way you do that. The last couple of versions of Photoshopped made it easier because right here and the adjustment layer, this little button right here says, only affect the layered neatly below. So now that adjustment layer is taking away that little bit of color. But still, the lens flare is still there, and it's still movable. Can put it wherever you want. Hey, so any time you're trying to keep the flexibility, But when you do, you say African and adjustment layer, it's affecting everything. That's the way to is actually two ways, well, more than two ways. But that button and in the adjustment is fairly new. If you didn't have that open, if you're just looking at it, the other way to do it is to hold down Option or Ault in between the two lines, and that creates clipping mask that way. Or, if you like to really slow way, go the layer menu and choose create clipping mask, which is all the same thing. And there's even a keyboard shortcut for But the most important part of that whole thing is if you're ever trying to say I wish I could put adjustment layer right in there between the and only affect that one layer. This is how you do it. I've had cases where people looked at my layers panel went, Why am I seeing four different vibrant slayers are adjustment layers? That's because, well, this one is affecting just this layer. And this one is affecting just this layer, and they're all slightly different. I wanted to affect them all globally. Then I just put one of the top and say affect them all. But the fact that you can choose to say this adjustment layer on Lee effects this one immediately below. And don't forget, still has a layer mask. So I could say and on top of that, not these areas. So clipping mass says only affect the layer below layer Mass says, but I only I only this portion of that area so you can build them up on top of each other. So for compositing, that tip is worth the price of admission alone. Yeah, really? I mean, it makes a huge difference because when we talk about compositing tomorrow, say one of things, that getting a person onto a background looking realistic is half the battle. The rest is making it look really realistic by matching colors and tones and lighting. And that's one of the one of the ways to do it. And you can also add a top adjustment layer for the whole thing Is that you keep working. Yeah, cool. Well, any photographer knows a great solution when you have, ah, photo that you didn't nail the exposure and just looks office. Just convert to black and white and call it art. So photo shop is put a black and white Justin there. So, yeah, it's art. I want everything grayscale because it looks better. So I tried in this section once again, and I hope everyone's getting the same idea that I'm not wanting to say. Follow these eight steps and you will get this effect because I don't want people to all do the same thing. I want you to see. This is the advantage of using two layers both camera smart object. This is where blend if can throw some curves, and this is why making a mask and let me do things and in each case, for the most part, with very few exceptions, were still trying to create things that can say Now that I've done that. I know I can use that in that other document and still tweak it so they don't look exactly the same. But I'm not redoing the same work over and over again. Because as much as Photoshopped does a 1,000,000 things many users find, I do a core of things quite often with slight variations on them. So if I can cut out at least part of that work by making these kind of reusable effects, then it's easier for me to say, willing to start with that and then tweak a little bit and make it look a little different and build on it. All those good things