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Other Features in Photoshop

Lesson 20 from: Photoshop and Lightroom Creative Cloud Additions in 2015

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

20. Other Features in Photoshop

Next Lesson: Conditional Actions

Lesson Info

Other Features in Photoshop

Let's look at the same kind of features and photoshopped meaning here we're looking at just little things that air randomly dispersed so let's go to photo shop and I suppose we should open an image is so we have something to look at so let's open this one I just typed commanded e to edit it and good it's over here in photo shop. Now there are a few changes they've made over the years with sisi that can help us out. One is we've had the history panel for quite some time, and with the history panel, it's just gonna list what we've done to this image. Well, I'm going to take this image right now and she's save as and I'm going to save it on my desktop because it'll be a version I don't want to save, I'll just called trash me when I'm done, because I want to be able to just mess with it. I don't care the file format or anything, but you notice in my history panel, it just said save ass it didn't used to save that so let's say, I'm experimenting with this image like four months? No, I don't...

want to enable this when you weren't even in the foreground, okay? Light room wanted some attention there because it didn't like we went over to photo shop with sort of laid the I was jealous, I'm going to just start making any kind of change to this image I'm not going to make a beautiful image or anything I'm just going to show you that the history panel is updating each time I use my brush and so let's say I end up painting around these little um can use our kayaks and then I'm gonna type command us to save do you see how it marked where I was when I saved and that's knew it didn't use to do that? So what that means is now I feel a little bit more comfortable experimenting in photo shop because I know that if I save at some point when I'm liking the look of my end result I typed command ass I can always look now in my history panel and say, well, man, I really wish I wouldn't have continued to experiment with this image I really liked the way it looked to save zago well, I could just glance now in my history panel inside all right, there is where it looked like when I last saved and right there is what it looked like when I say it before it so I could simply go back in history to that particular point type command as to say no, I want to save that version instead of, uh what I might have ended up with through my experimenting so just give me a little bit more freedom to experiment where I know I can remember and get back to what it looked like when I saved it. Previously question or comment this was the difference between hitting saver save as the only difference is safe means use the same file format same file name, same location save it back into the same file save as means I want to use a different file format for a different name or different location and in general it's going to make a second a version of the file so if I chose save as I could type in a new name I will end up with two files though the original one that I saved in this new one uh but so you say that any time you need a different location, different file format, different name other than that they're similar years ago I took a photo shop class and I was told that if you continually hitting save your image will eventually start to degreed the only time that but that's true is in one general instance and that is if you use j peg file format whenever used j peg file format it ends up degrading the quality of your image a bit and see if I can find something there allow me to show you this I think I have an example and if you use the j peg file format, it's primarily trying to create a small file for you doesn't mean it's trying to maintain the absolute highest quality and your image can degrade you see how this image looks like it's made out of big square blocks, that's jpeg compression artifacts, and if I make a change to this image, save it over the original is ajay peg its going to compress it again in adm or of these artifacts? But if I continue making changes and continued typing command s make more changes the type command us it's not going to build up and build up because it's always saving from the version that was on my screen, it's never looking on the hard drive to say what is that newly compressed version look like in reloading it it's on lee, if I make a change save and close the image, then I'm forced to reopen it where it's opening that compressed version has mohr these artifacts in it, I make more changes saving close, I have to close the file, forcing it to reopen again, where it loads in the version that has had the artifacts. If I do that like fifty times it's going to start looking like this, file this, but if you're using photoshopped file format or tiff file format, then that doesn't happen at all the it doesn't degrade the quality at all, so you could do it as many times as you want. It's just j peg, I think of his j peg is a a final four format where a delivery file format my original stays is a raw file if I didn't need use photo shop, or is a tip for photoshopped file format. If I did use photo shop and it's on lee, if I'm delivering to somebody else, and I want the convenience of a smaller file size that I use j peg, I deliver that file to them, and then I throw away that j peg that I just delivered to them, and I keep my original tiff photoshopped or raw file and that's how I work. I have a lot of my iphone that was on my thing, but I have them in light room, and then I'll go play in photo shop you when you move from light room to photograph, it, says work on adjusted light room image let's say, if I want to save it as a psd, will it? And I just hit save, and it sends it back to light room? Does it have the original image that I had before I sent it to photo shop in that, and the new photo shop when let me think about that for a moment so what she's saying is which is in light rooms clicks on on a file and uh when she tides command iate asks her a question and let me adjust this image to make sure it's going to uh realize I've made a change in here and then I'm gonna take command e and hopefully I didn't actually ask usually the last I want to open the original or don't want to open the version that had light room adjustments and what that means is if I came in here and I took something like this tip file and I went to the developed module and I changed it whatever it is a changed and then I tell it to open this should it open the original to file as photo shop had saved it or should it open this version that I've adjusted it in light room? What happens is it's not able to give you both because it assumes that the document which is a tip for photo shop file format has layers in it and when you apply adjustments in light room you can't do it to the individual layers it has to kind of merge them together in order to be able to just in light room so if I choose at an original here I'm going to lose the changes I made in light room the brighton and I did in the contrast adjustments I did if I go over here and choose edit a copy with light room adjustments now what I'm going to get is a flattened version that doesn't have any layers in it that has those changes made, but you see how it's worded at it a copy, which means if I end up saving back, I should end up now with here's two versions, I should have three versions eso it's trying to make it so it's hard for you to permanently change something, because the way light room works in general is pretty much everything you do in light room is infinitely undoable where nothing's really becomes permanent. The only time it's permanent is when you do this either choose export or expert with preset that's. What actually applies the light room adjustments to the image and whatever resulting image comes out has those changes permanently made? You'll still have the original file sitting here, though, so I deliver that exported image to ever needed it, a website and email or whatever it is, and then I throw it away because I always have the original sitting in here, I could always choose export again, and is it that like, sometimes I'll work on the get it to where I like it in light room, go to photo shop, do something with it I have my new copy that I did with version, but then I decide I want to tweak a little something light room. Is that bad? Well, all it means is you won't be able t get to the layers that air inside of that photo shop file and keep those light room adjustments you won't be able to do both. Where you can still edit the layers, it doesn't mean you shouldn't adjusted. He should just make sure you're pretty sure you don't need to open it again and photo, shop and mess with the individual layers because it can't keep the individual layers, plus the light room adjustment that's on top of it, there are some ways to get around that one is you could open it, and photo shop and camera rock is available as, uh, as a filter, you could take the layered contents of that file and turn it into what's called a smart object. Go up to the filter menu and choose camera from the filter menu, and those are the same sliders you'd find in light room, but you're starting to get kind of fancy and everything, so I try to do as much as I can in light room, um, before I open it in photo shop. And then I on ly apply adjustments on top of that layered photoshopped file here in light room if I'm pretty darn sure I'm done working with those layers otherwise you can get into a little bit of complicated ah way of thinking and have to work around things and but going back safe from your photo shop document they put in light room you said you want to go back and work on it and floated up isn't going toe the quality is not going to go down now it's only if you're using j peg file format where quality goes down each time you kind of save into it again I think of j peg is a finalized for file format when I'm done working on the picture no longer need to do any more adjustments no longer ad any more layers and all that then I might say about ajay peg but I don't want that is what I would call a working file format we're gonna open it, make more changes, save it open it make more changes because each time that would degrade a bit so only use that at the end all right? So we talked about in the history panel that the it's going to record when it is you're saving they're also a bunch of other little changes they've made in uh photo shop so let's take a look at them let's say that again had that file open and I started doing things to this file let's say again I was painting remember how when I'm painting I can hold on the option key I can click on an area to choose what I want to paint with and then paint I go over here and hold on option click on another area in paint well it used to be that we have this thing called the swatches panel in there we could save these colors that would paint with their use in general and father shop but now there's something special at the top of swatches panel and that is these are my most recently used colors so if you ever choose a color to paint with or a color to fill with or anything like that and in this case I'm just using the eyedropper tool click on this area and watch what happens at the top of my swatches it just added that color because I recently used it and each time I do that we can have that in there now if you don't want to see those because you just don't need to see your recent colors you can go to the side menu of the swatches panel and in there should be a choice for hiding those recent colors and let's see here but I just pass it whether it is sorry my brains just blanked out there for second share reason colors and that allows it to show up and you can also get it to show up again. Putting away the recent colors could be nice if you end up wanting to reuse the same colors over and over again. Sometimes if I'm using text war things, I'll want to use one color for a headline and then used the exact same color from the bullet points and other things in a design, and that makes it so much easier tio be able to do that other things let's, see if I go to the info panel in the info panel you can use you move your mouse on top of your edge and it'll tell you what that area of your images made out of by displaying red, green and blue numbers. Well, some people like to have extra read outs in the info panel, and the way you can get extra readouts is you go to your tool panel, and if you go to your eyedropper tool, click and hold down on it. You have this thing called the color sampler tool in with the color sampler tool, you can click on your picture and let go, and it adds an extra read out to the info panel. Well, it used to be that you could add up to four of those, but now you're crazy, you can add ten. So you can just keep going until you get ten one little tip if used the info pallet at all. If he used the pope alittle line, you might find it. You don't use this area down below because it's just a little tip it's likely equipment to a tool tip that tells you something about like I'm in the move tool, it'll say click and drag to move layer or selection. If you're someone versed in photo shop, you already know a lot of the things that tells you here, but this takes up a lot of space. I like to hide that stuff to hide it, go to the upper right of the info panel and choose panel options in turn off the check boxes at the bottom if you turn off the check boxes at the bottom and click. Ok now your info panel will be nice in short trim. Um, that's what I always do so that it doesn't take up too much of my screen. Yes, those selected color points now I noticed to be below the trying a little of drop down arrow. Can you take those and drop him over to the main color and background color and use that it to select a new colors mean to paint prom in staff know what those little eyedropper at least not that I know of this little eyedropper is what they do is just they know any time you see a tiny little triangle it means there's a setting or menu hidden there and that's why when you look at your tools panel you'll find that some tools have a tiny little triangle next to him that means there are more tools hidden in the same slot well over here those little triangles next to the eye droppers means there's a menu there if you click and it allows me to choose how it measures the color that's there so I could tell it to measure how bright this areas and it would tell me that's thirty eight percent gray and I could tell this one two instead tell me how much ink would be there if I was printing and seeing why k mode he would say well, that's fifty seven percent think coverage that kind of stuff but it doesn't as far as I know in this men you have the choice of copying that to actually use it yeah if you ever add those little color sampler stir image and they annoy you you can go back to the color sampler tool and there's a choice at the top of your screen called clear all and that will get them off here's a feature that I'm really glad the app added because annoyed me like crazy that I could not when I'm zoomed out on my image move that image around if I grabbed the hand tool, you can't push the image to left or to the right sometimes I have something overlapping my picture maybe it's one of these little pop out panels and it's doing this covering up my image but if I'm zoomed out of my picture, it doesn't let me move it over and to me that was annoying so they've changed something and that is if you go into your preferences there's preferences for I believe it's under tools and there's just a choice he wouldn't know what it does but it's called over scroll and if you turn on over scroll now after I click ok even if my picture does not fill the screen aiken move it around in to me that's great because it's so often I have these panels that cover up an important part of my picture and if I can't move it over it can be annoying. If over scroll is not turned on, then the only time you can move your picture over is when you're zoomed up enough on it that you can't see the whole thing, then you could scroll it around, but if you could see the entire picture you wouldn't be able to move it so remember that's under preferences and under tools and it's called over scroll a bunch of other changes they've made that might take you a while to notice let's say that I have ah selection like this one and I would like to the edge of that selection to be soft well, usually you go to the select menu in one of the areas where you can do that is choose modify and then there is a choice called feather that would give you a softer edge. Well, let's say I type in a feathering amount of thirty and I click ok when I do that I could type the letter q for quick mask you're quick mass motive you were here yesterday to get kind of a preview and let's see what's going on and you notice that it's only here in there it didn't do anything on the edge of the document itself she's undo a few times to get back and if I tried a second time, you'll notice a new feature when you go into feather it is called apply effected candace bounds because I might have wanted to soften the edge also out here where it is touching the edge of my document all typing even higher numbers it'll be more obvious click ok and now if I type of letter q can you tell it faded out out there on that edge as well the same is true for many of the other selection choices if you come in here and choose um smooth you find it also in their smooth what it does in case you're not used to it is it takes any abrupt corners and arounds them off and so if I come in here and type in a high smooth amount by the way, if you ever want to know the highest setting just type in a ridiculous number like nine billion and it will tell you what the highest is and usually that would apply but it wouldn't do it to the corner over here, but now we can but that's something you might not realize unless you get in there and really look for the new features. Other things is let's say that I'm using the shape tools and I use our rectangle and I'm going to make a button for a website or for logo design and before I get into making it actually let me make sure I create a shape that way it will be filled in with a color when you use the shape tool to create rectangles. If you go to the property's panel and remember if the panel's ever not on your screen you could go to the window menu this list all the panels you can have and so if it's not visible you could go right down here to force it to be visible well, when used the shape tool and you make rectangles, you have what's known as live shapes or live properties in the main thing here is we can control how around the corners are of this particular shape, and if I come in here and type in some number like let's, say fifteen pixels or I might need to type in a much higher number is this is a high res picture. It's try a hundred fifty pixels. Do you see how it rounded the corner of this rectangle? Well, that's a live setting it used to be in a much older versions of of photo shop, you would have to spec how rounded you wanted the corners to be before you ever drew the shape. Now, with the newer versions after you've already drawn the shape, you can always change it one way that's, nice to change it where you don't have to think about numbers it's just click on the icon that represents the corners and just clicking that had come in drag to the right or the left to figure out the setting you'd like to use so you don't have to think numerically, but what's new is that now there's this little link symbol in with links symbol turned on it means that all the corners with the same setting if I turn off the links symbol, though, now each corner can have an independent setting, because I might want to say, make this corner so it's down at nothing. I just put it a zero. So therefore we have a sharp corner up here than the others around it, because sometimes you want a stylistic look. It's, not just around corner rectangle, it's, more of an interesting shape, and now we can more easily do that. Also weaken. Now, copy the settings right here. So if I wanted to apply that to more than one shape, I could just copy this switch to a different rectangle that I have and pasted in. Instead of having to fill in for difference numbers. It will just fill in them for me with that, so that could be convenient.

Class Materials

Bonus with Purchase

Ben Willmore - Class Handbook.pdf
Ben Willlmore - LayerComps Example.tif
Ben Willmore - Lightroon Dehaze Preset Pack.zip
Ben Willmore - DeHaze Preset Pack Quick Start Guide.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

TimK
 

Got to "know" Ben during Photoshop Week and a few other courses. He has consistently been one of my favorite Photoshop instructors. He is extremely easy to follow, stays on point without being cold or boring, and is immensely knowledgeable on just about everything Photoshop. He does not disappoint in this fantastic in-depth review of some great new features in PhotoShop and Lightroom CC 2015 ... there are some real hidden gems in there for you. Ben polishes them up and serves them to you with extra info, insight, and pertinent examples. He goes the extra mile to answer questions and delve into related subjects without going off the rails. GREAT, GREAT course. Thanks Ben, and Creative Live! -Tim K.

Jose A De Leon
 

I just purchased this course today and it's wonderful. Ben is one of the best Photoshop instructors I've encountered. I had purchased the complete Mastery course and this one is a welcome addition since it covers new features. Even though Photoshop and Lightroom will continue to evolve, the basic techniques and tools used are basically the same, so I find myself going back to the mastery course if I hit a bump along the way. Ben's knowledge is second to none, but his true gift is the ability to transmit all that knowledge in bite size and understandable portions that are never boring. Someday I will have the privilege to know him personally, in the meantime I will continue to buy his courses as they come out. Such a wealth of information. Thanks Ben and CreativeLive!

Larry
 

Ben is a wealth of knowledge and covers the material beautifully. Highly recommend his workshops to others!

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