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Adobe® Photoshop® CC® Bootcamp

Lesson 96 of 118

Introduction to Creative Effects

Adobe® Photoshop® CC® Bootcamp

Lesson 96 of 118

Lesson Info

Introduction to Creative Effects

Now we're talking about custom creative effects. So it's all coming together now. We've talked about a lot of stuff, and we're getting into one of my favorite things, which is the workflow portion of our series that we're doing here. And this is where we get to jump in and take, just, put all the basic, beginning stuff to the side for a little bit, breathe a little bit, and allow our creative energies to flow. Creating your own custom effects, this is really important. We get to combine layers, layer masks, blend if, opacity fill, filters, adjustment layers, and, if we wanted to, even incorporate actions with all of this. So we're combining all this stuff that we have talked about to create things that make us unique in our workflow. And I have to talk about that uniqueness for a second here. I have this thing that I call tone, color, and artistic effects as a workflow. And this is exactly how my workflow starts every single time. You're going to get sick of this, because we're gonna t...

alk about it quite a bit over the next four lessons after this. Tone is just getting, making sure your shadows, your highlights, your mid-tones, all jive well. Color is making sure that your colors look good when they're on that canvas, that reds look like reds, yellows look like yellows, and maybe, you maybe adjust some tonal contrast in those colors. But artistic effects, this is where you come out. This is where you become unique. Anyone can do these things; anyone can do that. A trained technician of photos can do this. But this part right here, this is you. This is where your style lives. Now just to take a little aside here, I used to do this thing called an HDR concert on my website called Everyday HDR. And what the HDR concert was is this is where I would take a bracketed series of images, I would put them into a zip file, I'd post them on my website, and anybody who wanted to process them could download them, send me their version, and I would compile a post of all the people who built an HDR photograph from the series of bracketed images. It was probably around, I stopped doing this probably around 2015 or so. Well, what happened was, no matter who got those bracketed photos, everyone would come back with a wildly different image. And HDR is one of those things where, yeah, we could all take a little turn for the worst on some of those things, but they were really good. It was just really good works of art that I think the HDR process would force people more into this direction than into just this direction. And every one of those images, if it was from Germany, France, Italy, America, Wisconsin, no matter where that thing came from, they all had their own unique artistic expression in there. Some of those individuals would, they participated in every one of those HDR concerts that I did. I think I did like 15 of them. And what you saw from that was I could look at them without even knowing who the individual was, I'd be like, "That's a Jim, that's a Matt, that's a Blake," and I could see their artistic approach coming through in that image. This stuff anyone can do. This stuff is where I want you to start heading towards now. I don't care who you think you are as a photographer, you are an artist first, okay? I have a t-shirt that I wear. It says, "Hello, my name is artist. I am a photographer." (audience members giggle) As it's mind-boggling stuff, because if you think of yourself as, "Oh, I'm just a photographer," I hear that all the time, "Oh, I'm just a photographer." Really? Then that's all you ever will be. I am an artist first, and then I'm a photographer. That lets me play in this artistic realm a lot and have a lot of fun, and be a little bit more free with my creative expression. This is what's helped me develop a style. This is what's separated my work from all the other people. This would be an image that I would say tone and color-wise, is done. It's in the inside of the Notre Dame. Gotta love that 10 millimeter lens. But, in the inside of the Notre Dame, this is what I would say is technically probably good on tone and color. And I could've stopped there, but the next transition was my artistic effect, changing that image just so slightly to have my style and my unique flare added to that. Subtle, but it's a big difference. If you saw these, actually looking at them on a computer screen, you'd be like, like I'm looking at it here, I'm like, "Oh man, that is wildly different." Here's another image. This is what I would say probably technically, this is another one from Grinter's Farm, technically, for tone and color it's probably pretty good. But look what happens when I put my artistic flare on it. That's uniquely and innately me. Nobody else can create this style image in this exact same way, and I know that because all of this was actually done in Adobe Camera Raw. But putting radial filters here to pop this one. Put a radial filter here to pop this one. Drop a graduated filter here to pop the background. All of those adjustments that you make, think about the exponential amount of possibilities there are when you start combining all those things together. But this is uniquely me, and I'm the only one who could've done this to this photograph. If I gave you these bracketed photos and had you work on this, you're gonna come up with something completely different that's uniquely you and that only you can create. So what we're gonna do in this segment is we're just gonna take a look at all the things that we've talked about so far and start looking at ways that we can combine adjustment layers together to create our own artistic styles. Now we've talked about filters, so this is kind of gonna feel a little bit like what we did with filters, but we're not really gonna be using that many filters for this. We're really gonna be using adjustment layers, and, expanding the possibilities of those adjustment layers. 'Cause a gradient map can do so much. A regular gradient can do so much, but it can only do that much if you know all the things you need to do to make it do that to develop your unique style. So let's go ahead and jump into Photoshop and get started with our first creative effect.

Class Description

Adobe® Photoshop® CC® is a valuable tool for photographers, but it can also be intimidating. In this all-inclusive 20 lesson course, you’ll go from opening the program for the first time to creating images that really stand out. Join Blake Rudis, Photoshop® expert and founder of f64 Academy, as he shows you how to maximize your use of Photoshop®. Topics covered will include:

Week 1
• Class Introduction & Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw, Setup Interface, Cropping and Layers
Week 2
• Layer Tools, Masks, Selections, Clean-Up Tools and Shapes & Text
Week 3
• Smart Objects , Transforming, Actions, Filters and Editing Video
Week 4
• Custom Creative Effects, Natural Retouching, Portrait Workflow, Landscape Workflow, and Composite Workflow

Don’t let the many aspects of Photoshop® prevent you from maximizing your use of this amazing app. Blake will help you develop the confidence to use your imagination and create the images that you will be proud to share with your clients.

Software Used: Adobe® Photoshop® CC® 2018

Lessons

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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.

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!!!!

Sonya Messier

I'm been using Bridge, Adobe Raw and Photoshop for 12 years. I thought I knew those programs until I started to follow Blake and do this Photoshop CC Bootcamp. This course is AMAZING. I love the way Blake teach, brakes down concepts and tools... excellent teaching qualities! I'm half way in this course and I change all my workflow already. Much better results and better use of what Adobe offer me. This course is an investment! When I will be done, I will listen it again. Great job and congratulations on your success Blake!

1,500+ classes ranging from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

Adobe® Photoshop® CC® Bootcamp

Introduction to Creative Effects

Class Description

Lessons

a Creativelive Student

Esther Gambrell

Sonya Messier