Introduction to Selections

Lesson Info

Introduction to Selections

Selections are probably one of my favorite things because when we combine it with all the things that we've already learned leading up to this with our layers, our layer tools, our masks, blend if and now with selections, we just keep piling on more possibilities for our editing in Photoshop. So selections in a nut shell, what are selections? Selections allow you to isolate areas of your image and edit them without affecting other areas, of the image as a whole. Some might think, well isn't that the same thing as masking? Well in a way, yes and actually these selections can be used hand in hand with masking. They just make it a little bit easier in the masking process. These are called local adjustments and they're useful when you want to segregate two different areas so just a little reminder here what global is and what local is. A global adjustment is something that affects the entire canvas or the entire image. So think about an adjustment layer, curves adjustment layer, gradient m...

ap, gradient that has no blend modes, it's set to the middle or no, I guess I should say no masks on them at all. That is something that is affecting the entire canvas. When we go into a local selection, a local selection is something that is isolating that one very specific spot and that can be done with selection tools in combination with things like masking so that one area is locally edited and not affecting the global canvas as a whole. These are things like cutouts and sometimes these can be even very simple, subtle things that you're gonna see as we go through this presentation so this right here is what I call power house editing. When you can make a selection, you can make a mask for it, you can add blend if to it, you can add blend modes to it, you can add opacity to it, you have all kinds of possibilities for one simple and single layer in your photograph that allows you to do so much and there are a lot of programs and plugins out there that do allow you to do selections but not many of them do 'em quite as well and quite as easily as Photoshop, especially when we start to get into things like select and mask. So here is a background layer and with this background layer, I can then put anything I want on top of this background layer and I'm gonna do that with things like selections so here is a photograph of my wife where the background is transparent around her head and I want to put any background behind her. Now if you saw the before image of this, it was taken in my basement with one light next to her, with a power outlet behind her head and the windowsill right above her head and it doesn't look very attractive for the shoot but you know, I didn't have a big studio at the time, I didn't have any capabilities to do that so instead I just took her portrait, put it on top of that background and made it a more flattering portrait for her instead of it being in my basement studio, if you want to call it that. But what you can see is that we still have a nice edge and you can still see hair, you can still see what you would normally see in a regular photograph, it's just a very nice, clean selection. Here's another opportunity where you can use selections. This is in Yosemite, looking in tunnel view, looking down tunnel view, gorgeous morning to shoot, the only problem was we didn't have a very good sunrise, nothing beautiful was happening but I had a good quality image that I could use there. If you look at the top of this image, it's all a very white, blown out kinda bright sky. Typically this would be a photograph that you'd be like you know what, I'm just gonna dump it, I'm just gonna trash it but if you have clouds from another image, which in my defense, these clouds were also taken in Yosemite about five hours later, we can then transpose these clouds into this image and make it a little bit more attractive. We need to combine these things in multiple ways though, we can't just apply that sky there and think that everything's gonna be you know, peaches and cream, we have to make it look like they're gonna blend together, that light is gonna match so it's not just take that cloud and just put it in the background there. Now many people have reservations about doing things like this but the idea is that if I waited long enough, those clouds could be there, right? Okay, we'll just call it that, there's your justification, if you waited long enough, you'd have those clouds. So you don't need to throw away a good image like this just because the clouds are bad. Just take cloud photos and put them in there and I've included five cloud photos in this pack that you can download with this course so if you don't have clouds, you can go ahead and use some of mine to transpose them into some of your images that might not be as great as you'd want them to be. Another thing, this is a photo in San Francisco of a bridge, I think that's rather popular, Golden Gate bridge and I like the photo but it just didn't have the feel that I wanted to get out of it so I used selections in a different way. I didn't use selections in a way that I took the sky out and replaced it with a different sky. I used selections for the dark areas in the image, the mid tones in the image and the highlights in the image to push and pull them individually so that I could separate those highlights, mid tones and shadows in my photograph on masks through selections. It's a lot easier to do than you would think. And the result is something a little bit more like this so here was our before, here's our after. Very subtle application but separating the highlights, mid tones and shadows in the image to go ahead and segregate those areas so that I can edit them individually on curve's adjustment layers. So selections don't necessarily have to be used to make, to pull the sky away from an image or to separate a foreground from a background in say a portrait or something like that, they can be used even in subtle ways like this. So we're gonna go ahead and hop into Photoshop and we're gonna start with the absolute basics of some of the selection tools that you have available to you in Photoshop.

Class Description

Lessons

1. Bootcamp Introduction
2. The Bridge Interface
3. Setting up Bridge
4. Overview of Bridge
5. Practical Application of Bridge
6. Introduction to Raw Editing
7. Setting up ACR Preferences & Interface
8. Global Tools Part 1
9. Global Tools Part 2
10. Local Tools
11. Introduction to the Photoshop Interface
12. Toolbars, Menus and Windows
13. Setup and Interface
14. Adobe Libraries
15. Saving Files
16. Introduction to Cropping
17. Cropping for Composition in ACR
18. Cropping for Composition in Photoshop
19. Cropping for the Subject in Post
20. Cropping for Print
21. Perspective Cropping in Photoshop
22. Introduction to Layers
23. Vector & Raster Layers Basics
24. Adjustment Layers in Photoshop
25. Organizing and Managing Layers
26. Introduction to Layer Tools and Blend Modes
27. Screen and Multiply and Overlay
28. Soft Light Blend Mode
29. Color and Luminosity Blend Modes
30. Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes
31. Introduction to Layer Styles
32. Practical Application: Layer Tools
33. Introduction to Masks and Brushes
34. Brush Basics
35. Custom Brushes
36. Brush Mask: Vignettes
37. Brush Mask: Curves Dodge & Burn
38. Brush Mask: Hue & Saturation
39. Mask Groups
40. Clipping Masks
41. Masking in Adobe Camera Raw
42. Practical Applications: Masks
43. Introduction to Selections
44. Basic Selection Tools
45. The Pen Tool
46. Masks from Selections
47. Selecting Subjects and Masking
48. Color Range Mask
49. Luminosity Masks Basics
50. Introduction to Cleanup Tools
51. Adobe Camera Raw
52. Healing and Spot Healing Brush
53. The Clone Stamp Tool
54. The Patch Tool
55. Content Aware Move Tool
56. Content Aware Fill
57. Custom Cleanup Selections
58. Introduction to Shapes and Text
59. Text Basics
60. Shape Basics
61. Adding Text to Pictures
62. Custom Water Marks
63. Introduction to Smart Objects
64. Smart Object Basics
65. Smart Objects and Filters
66. Smart Objects and Image Transformation
67. Smart Objects and Album Layouts
68. Smart Objects and Composites
69. Introduction to Image Transforming
70. ACR and Lens Correction
71. Photoshop and Lens Correction
72. The Warp Tool
73. Perspective Transformations
74. Introduction to Actions in Photoshop
75. Introduction to the Actions Panel Interface
76. Making Your First Action
77. Modifying Actions After You Record Them
78. Adding Stops to Actions
79. Conditional Actions
80. Actions that Communicate
81. Introduction to Filters
82. ACR as a Filter
83. Helpful Artistic Filters
84. Helpful Practical Filters
85. Sharpening with Filters
86. Rendering Trees
87. The Oil Paint and Add Noise Filters
88. Introduction to Editing Video
89. Timeline for Video
90. Cropping Video
91. Adjustment Layers and Video
92. Building Lookup Tables
93. Layers, Masking Video & Working with Type
94. ACR to Edit Video
95. Animated Gifs
96. Introduction to Creative Effects
97. Black, White, and Monochrome
98. Matte and Cinematic Effects
99. Gradient Maps and Solid Color Grades
100. Gradients
101. Glow and Haze
102. Introduction to Natural Retouching
103. Brightening Teeth
104. Clean Up with the Clone Stamp Tool
105. Cleaning and Brightening Eyes
106. Advanced Clean Up Techniques
107. Introduction to Portrait Workflow & Bridge Organization
108. ACR for Portraits Pre-Edits
109. Portrait Workflow Techniques
110. Introduction to Landscape Workflow & Bridge Organization
111. Landscape Workflow Techniques
112. Introduction to Compositing & Bridge
113. Composite Workflow Techniques
114. Landscape Composite Projects
115. Bonus: Rothko and Workspace
116. Bonus: Adding Textures to Photos
117. Bonus: The Mask (Extras)
118. Bonus: The Color Range Mask in ACR