Lessons
Bootcamp Introduction
16:22 2The Bridge Interface
13:33 3Setting up Bridge
06:55 4Overview of Bridge
11:29 5Practical Application of Bridge
27:56 6Introduction to Raw Editing
11:00 7Setting up ACR Preferences & Interface
07:39 8Global Tools Part 1
16:44Global Tools Part 2
20:01 10Local Tools
22:56 11Introduction to the Photoshop Interface
07:13 12Toolbars, Menus and Windows
25:07 13Setup and Interface
11:48 14Adobe Libraries
05:57 15Saving Files
07:39 16Introduction to Cropping
12:10 17Cropping for Composition in ACR
04:44 18Cropping for Composition in Photoshop
12:40 19Cropping for the Subject in Post
03:25 20Cropping for Print
07:34 21Perspective Cropping in Photoshop
07:11 22Introduction to Layers
08:42 23Vector & Raster Layers Basics
05:05 24Adjustment Layers in Photoshop
27:35 25Organizing and Managing Layers
15:35 26Introduction to Layer Tools and Blend Modes
21:34 27Screen and Multiply and Overlay
09:15 28Soft Light Blend Mode
07:34 29Color and Luminosity Blend Modes
12:47 30Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes
07:43 31Introduction to Layer Styles
11:43 32Practical Application: Layer Tools
13:06 33Introduction to Masks and Brushes
04:43 34Brush Basics
09:22 35Custom Brushes
04:01 36Brush Mask: Vignettes
06:58 37Brush Mask: Curves Dodge & Burn
06:53 38Brush Mask: Hue & Saturation
07:52 39Mask Groups
05:52 40Clipping Masks
04:11 41Masking in Adobe Camera Raw
07:06 42Practical Applications: Masks
14:03 43Introduction to Selections
05:42 44Basic Selection Tools
17:41 45The Pen Tool
11:56 46Masks from Selections
04:22 47Selecting Subjects and Masking
07:11 48Color Range Mask
17:35 49Luminosity Masks Basics
12:00 50Introduction to Cleanup Tools
07:02 51Adobe Camera Raw
10:16 52Healing and Spot Healing Brush
14:56 53The Clone Stamp Tool
10:20 54The Patch Tool
06:38 55Content Aware Move Tool
04:56 56Content Aware Fill
06:46 57Custom Cleanup Selections
15:42 58Introduction to Shapes and Text
13:46 59Text Basics
15:57 60Shape Basics
07:00 61Adding Text to Pictures
09:46 62Custom Water Marks
14:05 63Introduction to Smart Objects
04:37 64Smart Object Basics
09:13 65Smart Objects and Filters
09:05 66Smart Objects and Image Transformation
10:57 67Smart Objects and Album Layouts
11:40 68Smart Objects and Composites
10:47 69Introduction to Image Transforming
04:34 70ACR and Lens Correction
09:45 71Photoshop and Lens Correction
14:26 72The Warp Tool
11:16 73Perspective Transformations
20:33 74Introduction to Actions in Photoshop
09:27 75Introduction to the Actions Panel Interface
05:06 76Making Your First Action
03:49 77Modifying Actions After You Record Them
11:38 78Adding Stops to Actions
04:01 79Conditional Actions
07:36 80Actions that Communicate
25:26 81Introduction to Filters
04:38 82ACR as a Filter
09:20 83Helpful Artistic Filters
17:08 84Helpful Practical Filters
07:08 85Sharpening with Filters
07:32 86Rendering Trees
08:20 87The Oil Paint and Add Noise Filters
15:08 88Introduction to Editing Video
06:20 89Timeline for Video
08:15 90Cropping Video
03:34 91Adjustment Layers and Video
05:25 92Building Lookup Tables
07:00 93Layers, Masking Video & Working with Type
15:11 94ACR to Edit Video
06:10 95Animated Gifs
11:39 96Introduction to Creative Effects
06:08 97Black, White, and Monochrome
18:05 98Matte and Cinematic Effects
08:23 99Gradient Maps and Solid Color Grades
12:20 100Gradients
04:21 101Glow and Haze
10:23 102Introduction to Natural Retouching
05:33 103Brightening Teeth
10:25 104Clean Up with the Clone Stamp Tool
08:07 105Cleaning and Brightening Eyes
16:58 106Advanced Clean Up Techniques
24:47 107Introduction to Portrait Workflow & Bridge Organization
14:47 108ACR for Portraits Pre-Edits
21:27 109Portrait Workflow Techniques
18:46 110Introduction to Landscape Workflow & Bridge Organization
12:17 111Landscape Workflow Techniques
37:36 112Introduction to Compositing & Bridge
06:59 113Composite Workflow Techniques
34:01 114Landscape Composite Projects
24:14 115Bonus: Rothko and Workspace
05:15 116Bonus: Adding Textures to Photos
07:05 117Bonus: The Mask (Extras)
05:18 118Bonus: The Color Range Mask in ACR
04:54Lesson Info
Introduction to Compositing & Bridge
Everything comes together in this very last course, this last lesson of the course, which is the Adobe Photoshop CC Bootcamp. We're gonna talk about compositing. Compositing is basically taking one image and putting it on top of another image. So you can see how all of the things we've learned about layers, masking, selections, Blend If, everything, it's all gonna come together right now. So really if there's certain things that you're not quite sure on, go ahead and review those things in the past lessons before coming to this because this is where it's all gonna come together, okay? So what is a composite? The combination of two or more images of different scenes, or environments, to create a story. I like to do this to create a story, but there's many different things you can do. It's not necessary to create a story. Sometimes it can be just replacing a background in an image, or replacing a sky in an image. But typically when I do composites, I think about things from, I guess I do...
n't really, they are composites if you're taking two images and putting 'em together, but replacing a background to me, or replacing a sky just doesn't feel like the storytelling type of composite that I'm talking about. And I want you to think like a painter. So if you look at this painting and you see how it's a series of events that are creating this entire story. But then you also have things that are totally different that you wouldn't see in normal everyday life kinda happening over here in this corner. Parts of the story are happening down here that are then being brought up into here. So the whole thing is coming together as one big story. And painters, they don't necessarily have to care about what reality looks like. They just paint whatever comes to their mind and then put it onto their canvas. The things that brought me into Photoshop were not necessarily compositing, but it was putting the pictures together that I had within the spaces that I would shoot. So I didn't even know what a composite was. I was just going to the zoo and I was shooting a rhinoceros. And then this is a building in San Francisco that's like a dome that has these lights. It's actually shooting up this way. It's like a greenhouse, but to me it looked like this other worldly type of, I don't know, collection of things that could blow up the world if I put 'em all together. This big silver ring right here is actually a part of a sewing machine. And then these are just little nuts and bolts that were sitting around my house. This is not a little seismograph that will predict the end of the world. It was a seismograph in a museum that I had taken a picture of and then put into this. Adding some text here to basically tell a story that maybe we're in this ship looking at the destruction of Earth, trying to find our new place that we're gonna live in. Just a story that's being told here. What's the story being told in this? I don't even know. I was just playing around and I was learning Photoshop. I was making a lot of bad rasterize decisions. (audience laughs) But it ended up teaching me a lot about Photoshop by just going off on my own, having fun with my images, and putting them together. As I was developing composites like this, I started to get a little bit better at photography, so I started to enjoy photography and kinda separate myself from these composites. This one was a challenge to myself to say, okay, how many layers can you use to make this image? And I think it was 115 layers that built this one composite. Here's another composite that we've seen before. I was at a little da Vinci exhibit in Kansas City. The Mona Lisa was at the end, and all of his drawings were throughout the whole exhibit. So I took a bunch of pictures of all his drawings and then I composited at the very end onto the wall to make it look as if all of it was somehow unified. It's really cool. It makes a really nice canvas print. There's the before. There's the after. So kind of a boring, just picture of the Mona Lisa, but compositing other images on top of it to make it more appealing. This is a really fun one. This is a cannon that's actually in Platte City, where I live. This is a howitzer cannon that actually just hangs out in Platte City at the end of our street. It doesn't, like nobody even cares about it, but it's so cool, the history behind this howitzer cannon just blew me away. So I composited together to make it look like search lights were going throughout the sky and make the image look a little bit older, almost some border edge on here, which I typically don't use borders. I don't really care for them, but this made it look like an old, maybe Polaroid or something like that, that was peeled off from a print. Here's what it looks like if you actually go to that scene. It's kinda boring. But when you add paratroopers to the sky and searchlights all over the place, it starts to tell a story. And the history behind this cannon starts to come out, almost as if it's shooting something over here. This is shaving cream. It's shaving cream spilled in my hand and then take a picture of it to make it look like smoke happening over in the distance, whether it's smoke from this cannon, or smoke from the war that's happening in this image. The paratroopers, as we talked about before, was a brush that I just brushed along the sky to create a bunch of different paratroopers really quickly. Christmas cards. Our family Christmas cards are the bomb. I challenge you to try and beat us on our family Christmas card, okay? There was another side to this, where here we are looking like this, and then on the other side we were all LEGO characters. So it was a two-sided card. But each one of these pieces to this is a different picture. It's very difficult to get my family to do what I need them to do, especially with three boys, to get them to do exactly what I say to do all at once and then take one picture. So I take them over a series of pictures on a white seamless, it's not actually seamless, it's actually, you know what that is? I'm like the total budget studio guy. I went to like Jo-Ann fabrics or something like that and bought the long piece of material that is typically used for like swimsuit liners so that I could stretch it out and then put weights at the bottom and kinda make it appear like it's a white seamless. But that way I don't have to worry about all of the crinkling of things and buying a white seamless all the time. So when we put that together, we take all of us off of our white backgrounds, I can very easily put a Christmas card together with a background behind us and make it look seamless and then also add text. This takes everything that we've learned throughout this course, puts it all together onto one Christmas card, so to speak. Every year I do these for our family and our friends. And they're the ones, they actually, people tell us that they keep these on the refrigerator all year-round, which I think is kinda crazy. But we have a lot of fun with our Christmas cards. But this is a composite. This is a practical composite. Before I was telling a story with some of those elements being pulled together. This is more of us just putting together a Christmas card that doesn't necessarily tell a story, but it is a composite of images. Instead of it being one image, it's a bunch of images with a backdrop behind it and make it look like it all fits together. So let's go and jump into Photoshop and do some compositing.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Amazing course, but don't be fooled into thinking this is a beginner's course for photographers. The problem isn't Blake's explanations; they're top. The problem is the vast scope of this course and the order in which the topics are presented. Take layers for example. When I was first learning Photoshop (back when we learned from books), I found I learned little or nothing from, for example, books that covered layers before they covered how to improve/process photographs. These books taught me how to organize, move, and link layers before they showed me what a layer was actually for. Those books tended to teach me everything there is to know about layers (types of layers, how to organize them, how to move them, how to move them two at a time, how to move them two at a time even if there are other layers between the two you're interested in, useful troubleshooting tips, etc. ) all before I even know (from a photographer's point of view) what it is the things actually do. The examples of organizing, linking, and moving mean everything for graphic designers from Day One, but for photographers not so much. Blake does the same thing as those books. Topics he covers extremely early demand a lot of theoretical imagination for a photographer who doesn't already know quite a bit about what he is talking about. Learning about abstract things first and concrete things later only makes PS that much harder to understand. If you AREN'T a beginner, however, this course is amazing. I thought it would be like an Army Bootcamp, taking you from zero and building you into a fit, competent Photoshop grunt. Now I think it's more like Army Bootcamp for high school varsity jocks. It isn't going to take you from the beginning, but the amount you'll get out of it is nonetheless more than your brain can imagine. I've been using PS for years to improve my photographs, and even to create the odd artistic composite or two. The amount I've learned in the first week is amazing, and every day I learn something -- more like many things -- which I immediately implement to improve my productivity and/or widen the horizons of what I can achieve. If you ARE a photographer who's a Photoshop beginner, I'd take very seriously the advice Blake gives in the introduction: Watch one lesson, and practice the skills and principles you learn in that one lesson for two weeks. THEN watch the next lesson. You can't do that of course without buying the course, so it's up to you to decide whether you'd like to learn Photoshop and master Photoshop all from the same course. Learning it first and mastering it later will cost more money, but I think you'll understand everything better and have a much more enjoyable ride in the process. As for me? I'm going to have to find the money to buy this course. There is simply way too much content in each lesson for me to try to take on all at once, but on the other hand I don't want to miss anything at all that he has to share.
Robert Andrews
Blake Rudis is the absolute best in teaching photoshop. His knowledge and how he presents the instruction is clear and concise - there is NO ONE BETTER. Yes, his classes require some basic skills, and maybe I'd organize the order of (or group) the classes in a different order, but, let me be clear - if anyone is to be successful or famous in the Photoshop world, it should be Blake Rudis. I strongly recommend his teaching. I started photography and post processing in 2018, and because of this class, I'm know what Im doing. The energy you get when you create something beautiful is profound, it makes you bounce out of bed (at 4AM) like a 5 year old, to go create. It's a great ride! Thanks Blake, & Thanks Creative live.
Esther Gambrell
WOW!!! I've been purchasing CL classes for several years now and have watched HOURS of "How-To Photoshop" classes, but this is the first one I've actually purchased because of the AWESOME BONUS content!!! SERIOUSLY??!!?!? A PLUG-IN??? But not only that, Blake is SO easy to understand, and he breaks down concepts in different ways to connect with different people's learning styles. I REALLY appreciated this approach because I am a LEFT-BRAINED creative that has an engineering background, so I really connected to what Blake was saying. THANK YOU FOR THAT! There are TONS of Photoshop courses out there, but I found this one to be the most helpful in they way Blake teaches concepts so that you know WHY you're doing what your doing. I feel like he taught me how to fish with Photoshop to feed me for a lifetime instead of just giving me a fish to feed me for one day. This is the BEST overall PS course out there!!! Thank you!!!!