Skip to main content

Layers, Masks, and Selections Part 1

Lesson 3 from: Adobe® Photoshop® for Beginners

Lesa Snider

Layers, Masks, and Selections Part 1

Lesson 3 from: Adobe® Photoshop® for Beginners

Lesa Snider

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

3. Layers, Masks, and Selections Part 1

Lesson Info

Layers, Masks, and Selections Part 1

let's do one more little thing in the realm of cropping. I promised you a slimming technique. Okay, actually, we're gonna open both of these guys here in a photo shop. So another way that you can true an area away from an images by using the trim command. So to illustrate that I want to show you my favorite super slimming five second technique that will drop £5 from your subject. Okay, so the first thing you want to do is press seed, activate the crop tool, and then you want to grab either the left handle or the right handle. Okay? So either this guy right here, or this little guy right here that you can't hardly see. Okay, Then what you're going to do is click. And actually, I brought the wrong tool that given all right back, we dio we're not going to use the crop tool. What we're going to do is use free transform. Then we're gonna trim around the transparent edges. Okay, so for the super slimming, take me open your photo and then we're gonna double click the background layer to make ...

it creditable cause photoshopped can squawk if you don't unlock that background because we're into a little bit of re sizing, so just double click it Press return now it's all edible now with the move till active this guy right here, you may already see the bounding box of a treat free transform box. It looks kind of like a cross box. Basically, it's a box that you can change the size of hay. You may not see that on your machine because most often times if you got the move to active, people will turn off the show, transform controls. So if you have that turned on, then you can skip the next step, which is bringing up the free transform command. But that's only if you've left that turned on. So that's the move tool. If show transform controls air turned on, then you don't have to do this next step. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and turn them off. Now we're gonna do is trot up to the edit menu and choose free transform. You're going to use that tool a lot that lets you resize layer content. Okay. So any time we want to resize something, make it bigger, make it smaller or rotate it. You're going to use the free transform tool. So it's a great one to memorize the keyboard shortcut for which is command t on a map or control t on the PC. So when I activate that command, see those little bounding box handles we've got going on over here? They're kind of similar to those of a crop box. Okay, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna grab either the left or the right hand middle handles, and we're gonna drag inward. Exactly 5%. Okay, so you've gotta with field up here in the options bar that you can watch. So as I drag this right handle to the left exactly 5% or as close as you can get. So now, my, with field reason 95.5% release the mouse button. Press returned. Let photo shop know that you are finished with the re sizing maneuver. Look quickly over your left shoulder over your right shoulder. Make sure nobody's looking now instead of cropping the transparency that we've got going on here out. So since we made that photo smaller, more narrow, we've got a little bit of transparent background going on here cause our documents now bigger than the photo so we could use the crop tool to get rid of that. But a handy or command, especially for graphic designers in a production environment, is the trim command. So let's trot up to the image menu and choose trim. When you do that, you get a dialog box that asks you Well, what would you like for me to trim? One of the options is transparent pixels, but another option is to choose. Hey, look at what the top left pixel color and this image is. And wherever you see that color around the image, trim it off. So when I'm producing Screenshots for my book, oftentimes they're much larger than they need to be. Once I get it all composed, the dialogue boxes in the image and the settings and so forth. We think it Once I get it composed, I need to make it a smallest possible. So I need to trim all the white or other solid color that's around the edges. This is a great command for that kind of thing, but as you can see, it also works on transparent pixels straight from the factory photo shop is gonna look to find that particular color or transparency all the way around the image. But if you only wanted to trim from a certain side, you can set that here with these checked boxes. So once we say OK, see how it just trim that transparency off. That is a really great trick for graphic designers. Okay, so now let's undo a couple of times and get back to our original image. Okay, There we are. So let's do that one more time. We opened up the image double click the background layer. If it has a padlock next to it, it just makes it edible. Then you're going to come up to the edit menu, choose free transform or press command or control T for transform. Then you're gonna grab one of these handles either the left or the right, and you're gonna pull it in until the Whitfield reads 95% or even more easily. Just double click the Whitfield and type 95% okay, and then press return to accept it now doing it that way. Photoshopped took it in. So we've got transparency on both sides of Doesn't matter now, Let's go back up to the image menu. Reach for that trim command Telephoto shot. What color you want. A tram, transparent pixels or the pixel at the top, left or bottom right click OK, info shop trims it right down to the smallest that it can be. That command is also handy if you're creating an image that has transparency. Let's say you've got a shape, Let's say a starburst right, you're put on a website and that Starburst has a nice, fluffy drop shadow behind it. It's really hard to see just using the crop tool where the edges of that drop shadow is because it's so soft and kind of semi transparent, right? So it's real easy to kind of nip that drop shadow. So then it's gotta square edge on one side of it with the trim command. You never have to worry about that, because it'll go all the way in to the very transparent edges of the drop shadow, so you don't have to worry about nipping a little bit of it off. So it's also handy in situations like that. So that's the image trimmed command, okay, and one more tiny thing on the crop tool. There are times when you need to do a little straightening on your image. So this image is a little bit cricket locked refrigerator at night people. So I want to show you how to straighten real fast. So what we're gonna do is press seed. Activate the crop tool and we're going to come up here and in the options bar. There's a tiny little level icon. This is new in CS six, So give it a click and then you simply mouse over cheer image and you just draw a line across what ought to be straight in any direction. Okay, so if I want this door to be straight, I drag. I'm clicking and holding and dragging to draw the line. When I get it just right, I release my mouse button in photo shop crops and rotates Really the image well in do that. It would also work if I wanted Teoh base it on a vertical line so I could click and drag to draw line. Doesn't matter how long the line is. Okay, just draw it across what ought to be straight horizon line or like the refrigerator door, and then when you release your mouse button foot a shot rotates the image. Okay. And then l z back out. When you press return to accept the crop, it crops out all of the transparency that you get from the image being rotated. Okay, so that's all the rest of that again. Just open the image. Click the crop told activated or press C trott up to the options bar. Click that little bitty level mass over teary image and draw line across what ought to be straight. Release your mouse button. Impress return. That's it. Now we're really finished with the crop. My promise. Okay. The next thing I want to show you is we're going to start talking about layers in just another word on these exercise files. I've divided them up into folders so that the folders air named according to the topic that were on. So, for example, we've got a photo shopped for beginners folder, and inside of that, the third kind of discussion that we've had is on re sizing and cropping. So inside of that folder is where you'll find all the images that I worked with. Okay, so now we're gonna go back to find a shot for beginners. And now we're gonna get into the folder marked number four layers. Okay. And now I'm going to explain layers to you as pizza. Oh, what is your fascination with food? I just got back from Italy four days since my last pasta fix. Okay, So layers and Photoshopped, we've seen them going on a little bit here in our layers panel. Okay, You can think of layers as the creation of a pizza for real. Hey, so let me just go into full screen mode for you. This is another great keyboard shortcut for you. I'm pressing f to toggle through photo shops, different screen modes where some of the tool bars and things are hidden, Which is a nice way to just kind of preview images here. Okay, so on the left hand side, we have a pizza. We have an aerial view of a pizza that is like what you see in the preview area of your Photoshopped document. Okay, You're getting an aerial view of the document. Okay, This right hand side exploded ingredient view is like your layers. Okay, so the dough is on the bottom. Most layer. Okay, whatever is on the bottom of a layer stack can be covered up either fully or partially by any layer that above it. Okay, so let's just make our pizza here. First we start out with the dough. Okay, That's layer one. Then we're going to cover with sauce. Right. Well, you can see her. We're here in the left hand side that the sauce doesn't go quiet to the edges of the dough. So the Onley dough you see is where the sauce isn't covering it. Okay, So layer one is our dough layer to is our red sauce. Let your three is our cheese. So layers can be depending upon what is on them. Partially transparent or completely transparent. It depends on what you put on that layer. As we Sprinkle cheese atop the red sauce, some of the red is hidden underneath the cheese. Right. So the cheeses on another layer, another layer is the pepperoni. Okay, Now the pepperoni is covering up the cheese, the red sauce, the dough. Okay, so it's a stacking thing. Whatever is on top has the power to cover up either wholly or partially. Whatever is on any layers underneath it just like a pizza. So now if we add the mushrooms are mushrooms, cover up everything that's on layers underneath that depending upon their position. Okay, then we add the green, the green bell peppers here, and they cover up everything that is underneath where those items overlap each other. So that really is what you're seeing in your layers. Paint on your layers pale. You're seeing an exploded view of the individual contents of those layers in your document preview, which is the big area where you see the picture. You're seeing a bird's eye view down through those layers. So it looks like the image is comprised of a single thing, even though a glance in your layers panel shows you that I've had six layers going on here. But it looks like a single image. Hey, that's my new layers analogy. I kind of like that one. I've got another one that I'll pop up for you here in a second, I think, before we do that allergy, Lisa, do it. Pizzas like the perfect analogy. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I should write a book. Okay, so in photo shop, we can have several different kinds of layers. Okay, so here's a fake ad that I made. You know it's fake because there is no Rainbow Lane in Boulder Tofu Lane. So here's our layers panel. Okay, As I accumulate more layers in my layers panel, I can have this little scroll bar that helps me move through the layers panel to see what's where. Okay, well, I'm using back out here. What's at the very bottom of this layers panel? Well, that's a solid color fill layer. Okay, so that's a type of layer. Photoshopped calls them adjustment layers. Okay, so those air adjustment layers adjustment layers don't really have any pixels involved. It's basically like set of instructions saying, Hey, fill this whole area with this color or this pattern or lighten this area. OK, so they don't really contain pixels. They are instructions coming from settings that you determine. For example, if I double click this little preview area of any layer that has that kind of icon, and you can see that it's basically a preview of what that kind of layer, what that particular layer is, plus, this little adjustment slider there table triangular slider that lets you know that That's an adjustment layer. And when you see that, that means you can double click this icon and whatever settings that layer has available to it will re open so that you can tweak them. OK, it's very, very efficient way to do things like color, correction filling with colors and patterns and things like that. We're gonna use them quite a bit the rest of the afternoon. This kind of layer right here is a plain old image layer. And that's what you will use the most with an image layer. The little thumbnail preview here shows you a miniature of the full sized thing or the document, you know? So what is on that layer? That's just the lights. Okay, you can see them in the background here. Why are they so, uh, where they so opaque? Well, once I click to activate the layer that they're on, I can take a peek up here at the top of the layers panel. I can see that. Will there? Opacity has been dropped quite a bit, and this menu over here has been changed. We'll talk about that a little bit later today. Another kind of layer kind is called a smart object. Okay, we're not going to go very far into those today about a full day deep dive on smart objects that's available in my course catalog, and I highly recommend that a smart object is basically a container into which you can plop all kinds of things. And in doing so, Photoshopped memorizes everything about that file so that you can get back to its original state. You can swap out content for something else, so they're really neat. You can think of them as a putting content into a protected container, so they're great for using when you're experimenting with image size, you know, in my design, does it need to be bigger, smaller, bigger, smaller. You know, every time you change the size of an image, you go down a little bit and pixel quality. Not a whole lot, but if you do enough of it, you'll completely trashed the image. But putting something in a smart object container is putting a protective coating around it. It's also great for bringing in illustrations, okay, and the illustration here is the frame in which the photo of the ladies is peeking out. That's it, and I stock photo illustration there. This next layer that's just another image layer, right? How did I know? That's a smart object? Well, it's got that little special hoo haw at the bottom, right? Okay, lets you know it's a smart object. The next layers we see up here, this is another adjustment layer, even though it doesn't have a slider underneath it. OK, but if we were to double click that, we would open up settings for that particular type of layer, and this is probably the easiest layer spot. We think that one is as a text layer. Exactly. Right. So there are several different kinds of layers in Photoshopped. What? The layers give you several things they allow you to edit non destructively. So, for example, I've got my background color on a layer in this ad independent of anything else. If I want to experiment with that background color, Aiken do so without affecting anything on any other layer. They also give you the bill the ability to create collages. So this is a collage of sorts, you know, it has several different pieces and parts to it. You can also, as you've seen here with this background lights image. I can change the opacity of one layer independently of anything else so I could make that slightly see through if I had it at full capacity, it would be a little too much, in my opinion, but back off of it a little bit. Think about that in terms of color, correction or wrinkle reducing or adding makeup. You know, in photo shop you when you first created or do the color correction, what have you may be too strong? How do you back off of that? Just a little bit. You lower that layer opacity. So that's another great great benefit. Using layers, you can also resize layer content independently of anything else. OK, so if I want to make this frame bigger or smaller, all I have to do is trot up to the edit menu, choose free transform and I could make the frame bigger or smaller and not mess with anything else. In my layout, you can also move things around independently of everything else. For example, if I wanted to move the illustrative frame and the photo that I have shoved through it, I could simply activate both players in my layers panel. Okay, so how do you know a layer is active? Well, it's highlighted in blue. OK? Or like gray, I can activate more than one layer and then move them around together if I want. So how do you do that? Press and hold the shift key. Click the other layer, See how now they're both highlighted. That means you're both active. So if I go grab the move tool, which is good for moving things around now I'm moving on lee the active layers independently of everything else. So layers really give you immense editing flexibility. You can get out of something that you did if the client changes her mind and says, Hey, I want that mold back. That was my beauty mark. Not a problem. If you exact that mole on another layer, you can get it back without having to start over, so it gives you a lot of editing flexibility. And when you save the file as a native Photoshopped document, all those layers stay in tax that you can go back and find tune things later on. Let's say after you've shown it to the client or after you've printed it etcetera. So how do you do that? Choose file save as and from the format menu on a Mac. Now, I think on the PC, that is a different word, Maybe use or something like that. But if you wait, you're gonna have a pop up menu that let you choose which file format. Just make sure that 1st 1 is chosen. They're Photoshopped, That's it. And that's your master file. You always go back to that. If you need to change something or create another J peg from that so on. So layers are immensely, immensely useful, and I would encourage you guys t use them. They really let you be a lot more efficient with your editing. Okay, One more thing about layers and this was new and see a six. And this is a fake ad that I made. How do you know it's fake? Because you get a pony with the phone booth. So let's say there's this grow of tools up here at the top of the layers panel. Okay, that lets you filter what you're seeing in the layers panel according to a whole bunch of criteria. Okay, We won't go through all of it. But let's say that I wanted to restrict my view the layers panel, because it's pretty long. I wanted to see on Lee the type players so that maybe I could experiment with Bonds. Okay, press the tea. Okay, so I'll show you what the Layers panel it's like now see how it's got a bunch of stuff going on. I've got a scroll bar here. Well, if I want to isolate my viewed on Lee, the text layers just press the tea now, the other layers air hidden there still viewable. But I'm just not seeing them in my layers panel. Now. I could activate both of those layers by trotting up to the select menu, saying all layers or by shift, clicking like we did a minute ago. Once they're highlighted, I can come over here to the type tool, the big old T in the tools Cannell. Once I click that tool, the options bar settings change according to things you would want to do with the text tools such as change fund change, font size, change alignment, change font color so very quickly, I could come up here to the font in you and change all of the text in Mass. So that's very, very handy, okay, and ugly in this situation. But Andy, never the list. So how do you see all of your other layers again? Just turn that isolation switch off. So if I wanted to see on Lee the image layers, I could click this little image icon and I really are self explanatory. But if you forget what they are, just point your cursor at them, let it be still a second, and then it shows you what you can get. So if I wanted to see on Lee the image layers that I click the image button, only the adjustment layers only the type players and so on. Okay, so that is definitely handy. Now, let's take a look at another way to explain layers as the great Texas flag. Yes, you can also think of layers as a stack of construction paper. Okay, As you cut out pieces and parts of construction paper and lay them atop each other, you can see how what's on top has the power to cover up or hide what's on the bottom. So while we're looking at this stack of construction paper with a bird's eye view. That's what you're seeing in your preview area on your screen, in your photo shot workspace over in the layers panel. However, your view is like this. So we're back to that exploded pizza view. Right? So this is what you're saying by seeing it this way, if I can get my fingers in between all these pieces and parts to explode it by looking at it this way, you can tell how many different pieces that image is made up of. Okay. Images that are comprised of several different parts or call composites. Okay, so is one image made from many. Right. So if I take my flag apart here, I can see that I've got a solid red piece. Okay? But as I begin laying other pieces on top of it, I'm covering up. What's underneath? What's underneath is still there. You just can't see it. That's very, very important to remember when you're working with layers and Photoshopped. Okay? Just because you don't see something and look at your stacking order in the layers panel. Okay, so right now that white bars covering up a big swath of red Well, if I change the layer stacking order. I move this white layer to the bottom. Is it still there? Absolutely. But the layer on top of its completely covering it up. So just be aware of that. So anything that's on bottom can be covered up by layer content that you add to the top of it. All right, so let's take a look at how we could build the Texas flag here. What this is is mostly Phil layers, which kind of falls into the adjustment layer category. Okay, adjustment layer meaning up. The adjustment that you're making is gonna happen on its very own layer, and there's several different kinds of adjustment layers. Some adjustment layers will fill the whole document with color. Some that will use later on, such as levels could be used to color correct. Correct the lighting oven image. So there's several different kinds of adjustment layers. So all this turned the visibility off on these layers, and I went temporarily hide. How do I do that by clicking these little eyeballs. So if you glance in your layers panel and you see an eyeball next to a layer, that means that it's currently turned on okay, so that content is visible. Well, if I want to hide it, all I do is click that little eyeball to turn it off. So as I click the star, now it's hidden. Anything that's hidden won't print. So if you're creating some kind of collage or design and you want to print it at different stages, you don't have to delete those layers. Just turn him off, turn the visibility. Often they won't print. Okay. As I turn off each one of these, I can also drag, click and hold on my mouse button and dragged through the row of visibility eyeballs to turn them off. And then I can click and drag to turn it back on. Okay, so let's go ahead and turn these guys off. One other quick keyboard shortcut for you is a quick, often on of all layers, except for the one that you click. Let's say I only want to be left with my very bottom most layer here, which is white. Then, on a Mac, you'd hold down the option key on a PC. You'd hold down the altar key, and you would click the visibility eyeball of the Onley layer that you want to remain visible. So when I do that, see how Photoshopped automatically toggled everything else off exact same thing. If you want to turn everything back on option on the Mac or Ault on a PC, turn them all back on. That's really handy when you start creating multiple layers, especially in retouching, gives you a quick before and after. You know. Have you gone too far on your wrinkle reduction? You know, in your mole zapping there. Is it just right? Okay, so we'll do that again. Options are all. Click the layer that you want to remain visible. And now let's just start building this file. Okay, so there are several ways that you can create new layers. One way is to use the buttons that are at the very bottom of the layers panel. This little dog eared piece of paper creates a new empty layer. This one right here creates a new folder that you can group layers into just like folders on your hard drive. This one right here is a menu. You know it's a mini because it has that little microscopic triangle to the bottom right of it. That's how you can create adjustment layers. Okay, You can also simply use the layer mini, which might be easier when you're start now, because they're all there. Layer new creates a new empty layer new Phil layer. And as you mouse over a point your cursor to these items, you can sometimes get these little fly out menus that give your real good clue as to what the heck they do. So new feel layer. Oh, your options are solid color grading or pattern. Oh, that kind of gives you an idea as toe. What would happen should you choose that new adjustment layer those air all the different, just mint layers. These same items air in that half like half white circle menu at the bottom of the layers panel. Okay, so you can get toe all of these all the field layers and all the adjustments through this menu right here. It doesn't matter where you create them from, but we'll go ahead and use the menu at the top of the screen. So we'll choose Layer New Phil Layer because we want to fill the document with rid, so we'll choose solid color first. I asked you what you would like to name the layer, we'll go ahead and click. OK, And then we get our color picker in which we can use to tell it what color we want to feel. The document with the way use the color picker is a two step process. You first tell photo shot What range of colors you want to use. Okay, so I want to be in the pinks or the blues or the light blues of the greens, etcetera. Well, I'm gonna be in the ribs. Okay? So you can just click or you can click and drag This slider doesn't matter which one you do. Once you choose a range of colors, then you mouse over here and you click again to tell Photoshopped how lighter How dark you want that color to be. Okay, so I want a pretty deep red, So I'm gonna click somewhere down here once you give it a click, You see a preview here shows you what you had is your current foreground color chip and what you've got now and then you just click, Ok? And now we've got a document filled with red. Now let's create our blue rectangle Okay, Well, since I only want the blue to be in a certain spot, I'm gonna tell Photoshopped what spot I want that blue to be filled in with by creating a selection. First. The selection really just lets you tell Photoshopped what part of the image you want to mess with. What shape, What section of the photo, etcetera. So your selection marquee, which is very handy, is the second item in a one column tools panel. So we're going to give that a click. And if I hold down my mouse button, I can see that there are several different marquees I can use. Okay, Since I want to make a rectangle, I'm gonna go for the right angular Marquis. So we're going to give that a click. Okay, so again, we just clicked on the tool, held down her mouse button and then chose the one that we want to use. The tool that you used previously is gonna be the icon that you see here. So, for example, if I had last used the elliptical marquee, that's the one I would see right here. But any of the tool buttons that have that tiny little microscopic triangle that lets you know that there are more tools inside that tool set. So you just have to click and hold on your mouse button and then come over to that menu. And she was the one that you want to work with again. You get the keyboard shortcuts here. OK, but they're the same keyboard shortcut. What's the trick toe cycling through these? If they have the same keyboard shortcut, hold down the shift key. So if you pressed and held shift and tapped em repeatedly, it will cycle through those tools. Okay, so now I've got my rectangular marquis active, So I'm gonna come over here to the document and I'm just gonna guess to mate how big I want that right tangle of blue to be. So I'm gonna click and drag diagonally downward until looks good to me. Release my mouse button, and I get what looks like marching ants. And that's just a way to tell Photo shot what area you want to mess with? That's it. A selection won't print. So now let's add our solid color film layer. So let's go back up to the layer menu. Choose new feel layer solid color asked you what you would like to name it. Let's let it roll with a default name. Click OK, now we've got our color picker. So now what's our first step? Telephoto shot. What range of colors we want to mess with. So let's click somewhere in the blues. Now that we've told it, What range of colors we have to tell it, How darker, how light that color should be. So we click. I'm just arbitrarily picking colors here he clicks somewhere about where that color is and you click. OK, since we had an active selection before creating that Phil Layer photo shop automatically filled on Lee, the area that was selected very handy and the beauty of using Phil layers to add blocks of solid color is that they're changeable. All you have to do is double click the thumbnail, and every if I decide Oh, that blue is not quite right. I can change it to another blue. Hey, the other way to do that is to create a new empty layer and use the edit Fill command this guy right here to fill it with color. When you do that, you cannot experiment with color in the ways that I'm showing you right here. This is far more efficient. Okay, so use Phil layers when you need to create blocks of color. Okay, so let's keep going with our flag here. Now, the next thing I need to do is create a rectangle of white. So we've already got our rectangular marquis active. So now we can come over here to the document, and I'm gonna click and drag where I think that why it should be now. I didn't get my first click just perfectly placed. So if I were to create the fill layer now some of that white it wouldn't be even with the red. Okay, notice that I still have my mouse button depressed. So I'm still in the at of drawing this selection rectangle while you're in the act of drawing a selection. If you press and hold the space bar, you can move the selection around on your document while you're in the act of drawing it. Which is handy if you're like me and you don't get it in the exact right spot right out of the gate. OK? Release the space bar when you get a positioned. Continue drawing the selection if necessary. And it doesn't matter. You can't really go outside the bounds of the document. You know, my mouth is way over here, but my selection is still write a line. Okay, so release your mouse button when you're finished. Now we're gonna trot back up to the layer menu. She's Newfield Layer saw the color in this time, we'll click OK for the naming. Now we need white. Okay, so why it is always going to be at the top Lift corner. Okay. So I can position my anchors our way up there and get white. Okay, so now I can click. OK, and now I've got my and I still didn't have in the right spot. But you guys get the idea here. Now it's create the star and see how, as I toggle the visibility often on you can see how these layers air stacking up to complete the Texas flag. Now, let's make our star. So we're gonna come down here toward the bottom quadrant of the tools panel, and you're gonna look for the type tool, and they're gonna go to tools down in a single column tools panel it'll look like some kind of shape. Okay, probably a rectangle, unless you've changed it. So we need to create a star. So foot shop has a slew of built in shapes that we can use to create. Commonly, you shapes like that. No need to draw it. So it's click and hold on our mouse button on the shape tool set and when when it come down to a polygon, because that's basically what a star is, right? So let's go ahead and choose polygon again. You can if you want to use keyboard shortcuts. They're listed right there. It's a you and you would press and hold the shift key and then just tap the U key to cycle through all those tools. So let's choose Polygon. Now it's come up to the options bar, and you're gonna look for a little gear sprocket. Okay, anytime you see a gear sprocket that gives you access to, um, additional settings okay for that particular tool. So if we click that little gear sprocket we see Oh, there's a star option, so let's give it a click. Leave the rest of those settings at their factory settings, and then we need to come over here. And 12345 five sides for a star. Once you've got those settings, all correct. And you can come over here to your document. One more thing you do you want to check is to make sure that the pop up menu near the far left of the options bar is set to shape. Photoshopped can draw things and three different ways it can create pixels. It can create an outline called a path, or it can create a new shape layer, Which means the thing that you're going to draw is gonna end up on its own layer. That's what you want for this. And it's most likely set to shape unless you've changed it. Okay, so go and make sure it's on shape. And now we can come over here and just click and drag to draw our star. Okay. As I rotate my mouse, I can rotate my star If I didn't get my star in the right spot. I can press and hold the space bar, move my star around while I'm in the act of drawing it when I get it just right. Release my mouse button. if I want to change its color, all I have to do is trot up to the options bar this parts of new in CS six, this little fill icon right here. Just give it a click and you've got access to all kinds of things so I can set the field to none. I can set it to any of these automatically generated little swatches. So I want white click. Or if I want to open the color picker, you just click that little button and I don't expect you guys to memorize what each one of these things do. But just notice how when I point my cursor at a thing and let it let my mouth be still for a moment, then I get a tool tip that tells me what the heck that button does. So now, since I have all that on independent layers, if I want to make that star bigger or smaller without affecting my whole document, what I reach for anybody free transform you can think of it is the re sizing superhero and it free transform. Got a little sizing handles if you want Oh, resize an object and retain its aspect ratio, which means you don't want the start to get all mopey job like that, which would be bad. Okay, The new press and hold the shift key. And that locks the aspect ratio to the original. Okay, so that's how you keep somebody from getting squished in stretched so I can make that star bigger, Smaller till Photoshopped. I'm finished all day long, and I'm not affecting any of the other layers. Okay, so that's kind of the power of layers. If I want to rotate the star, all you have to do is point your cursor outside one of the corner handles and see how it's turning into a curved arrow. Soon as it does, you can click and drag to spend it around. Now we've created a whole new country, so that's just a little bit about layers we've created, um, who created shape layer with the with the shape tool down here. And we adjusted its options so that it made a star. Hey, let's just do that part warmer. Time real quick. So we went down here to the bottom of the tools panel. Grab the shape tools, click and hold. Activate the polygon tool. Come up to the options bar way up here. You could set the field color right now before you draw it. Okay, so let's just do that. Click Phil recently used colors. There's why. Just click again to close that little pain. Let Okay. Now we can come over here to our gear. Sprocket. Remember, the gear lets you customize the tool. Further. Turn on the star check box. Inter five for sides. Come down to your document. Click and drag diagonally downward to draw the shape. While you still have the mouse button depressed. You can hold the space bar to move the shape around on your document. Okay. Now, if I want to change the color of that star, I can trot back up here and click the little feel icon and change it. If I want to add a stroke or an outline to it, I can do that here. We had a very ugly science stroke to their How how? Why do you want that stroke to be? Type it in right here. Very flexible. Very easy, very easy. If I want to resize it. Trying appear to edit, choose free transformer press, community or control T and then shift drag a corner handle inward to make it smaller shift drag corner handle outward to make it bigger. Okay. And if you've summoned this little bounding box free transform and you want to bail out of it does press the escape key. Okay, so that gets you out of it. Now, what we're gonna do is do a little bit of layer duplication, a little bit of scooting around that kind of thing. And then we're going to dive into creating new layers onto which we're going to do some some very practical portrait retouching. OK, Do we have any questions on that part that we covered with layers? Yes. OK, so I want to pick out the best, the best one here. But, you know, lily sand from Mexico, kind of still not quite clear on the difference between the adjustment layer and just a regular type of layer. Is this a different type of layer? Okay, so you can have several different kinds of layers type players in his layers, adjustment layers feel layers, which are kind of an adjustment layer. So it's just a different kind of layer. Okay. And that d this might be a more advanced question. Wanted to know if you feel the advantage would be to create groups of layers with the different flavors, like we give a creek, that all the text layers in a group are that type of. That's a great question you actually looking. And if you're an organizational freak like I am, that's a fun thing to do. Lots of 49 Organizer Layers Panel won't GET times, but since you now have the ability to filter layers using this new row of buttons that we got in CS six, that's less important. But certainly if you're sharing your foe shot files with other people in your team, then it is nice to give them a well organized layers panel. But you don't have to do that. But it is handy for managing a document that has a slew of layers. There are some Excuse me. There are some layer questions coming up. Elena from Spain, had asked us earlier, and she just asked it again if you could talk about the difference between Fillon opacity and there were so many people that had asked about that. You know, if you want to go back to that right now. Okay, let me see. Yes. So I'm gonna add another layer to this document cause we're gonna do our demo here. I'm gonna add a solid color layer onto which we can see okay, come up in size a bit. So if I were the best way to explain the difference between Fillon opacity because you can see for any layer you can change either the opacity which changes the capacity of the whole layer, okay? Or the Phil, they are very different. The easiest way to explain that is to create some text. Okay. Okay. So now I'm gonna just clicked on my document. Grant the text tool. Click on your document type text. Okay. If you want to edit the fun, all you have to do is just like in a word processor. You got a highlight at first, right to make changes. So all of your text formatting options are found in two places appear in the text options bar. Or if you choose a window character. Okay. We're not going too far into text. If you want to learn a lot more about photo shops. Tex, check out my graphic design for everyone. Class on my course paid. It's really fabulous. Three days of text. Goodness. So what I'm gonna do here is find a font that's really big and thick, like ultra black. OK, so now I've got text. That's great. Maybe over a little bit now I'm gonna add a layer style too, and I'm gonna give it a stroke. And all this is to illustrate the difference between Fillon opacity. Okay, your layer styles, which is where the the granddaddy of all layer styles, the drop shadow lives is down here the bottom of the layers panel and the little FX button. Okay, so click that and you get a list of all the different styles you can add. Think of these is finishing touches a little bit of fluff to your image. Okay, so we're gonna add an outline which Photoshopped calls a stroke. When we do that for the shop asks us what color we would like that stroke to be and what size we want it to be. Okay, so I'm gonna say I'm to make it fairly fixed. I'll say four. And then for color, I'm gonna click this little color swatch. It's gonna open the color picker. I'm gonna choose White. Okay, so now what do we have? We have a document that's got the word Phil to make a little bit bigger, but it's got a gray on the inside and it's got a white outline around it. If I drop the opacity of that layer, it all goes away. Right. As I bring up the opacity, it all comes back. If I drop just the Phil, then it's on Lee. The gray part that disappears, the outline stays fully visible. Okay, that's the difference between a passing feel. So if whatever is on that layer has a feel like texts or a shape that you've created, like the star that we created had we added a stroke around the star or an outline around the star and then drop the feel of the star than all you would see would be the outline. Okay. So if whatever is on that layer has two components to it, an outline in an inner color, then dropping the fill Onley effects the color on the inside. Okay, so, on a photo, unless you add a stroke to a photo, it's not gonna have two components. It just has one component. So filling opacity are going to do the same thing. But if the item on the layer the layer content has those two components to it an inner color and an outline around it, then dropping the Phil will only drop What's inside? The next thing I want to show you and we are in folder number four is how to duplicate and move layers around. Okay, so be real quick. But it is handy to dio. First thing I want to do is give myself a lot more room to work with, because we're gonna duplicate these hippie chicks and move them around and resize and But I need more room to work with. Well, I don't know exactly how much room I want, so I'm gonna use the crop tool to just visually give me more campus space. Okay, so it's come over here and press, see to activate the crop tool, we get that automatic crop box. Now, what I'm gonna do is click and drag one of the corner handles diagonally outward while holding down a modifier key option key or Ault on the PC that's going to make the crop box resize itself from the center out, and I was gonna arbitrarily make it. Fill the screen, release the mouse button press return, and you've gotten more canvas space. So that's an easy way to make your document bigger. Okay, now that I've got more room to work with, let me do that one more time we press, see to activate the crop tool option on a Mac or Ault on the PC. Drag the corner, handle outward. Press return. Now you've got more campus space. Now. What we can do is duplicate are layers. Okay? If we duplicate this layer, we're gonna create an exact copy of it. Okay, You can try it up to the layer menu and say duplicate layer for the shop. Asks what you'd like to name it. Click. OK, now I've got two layers. I can see them in my layers panel, but I can't see that other layer because it's being covered up by the one that's on top. So now I can go grab my move tool, And whatever layer is active is the layer that you're gonna affect with the next thing that you do. So if I click and drag on my screen. May I can see those other hippie chicks that are hiding underneath the first layer? Right? So that's how you can move layer content around. Now let's say that I didn't want to duplicate the whole layer. I only wanted to duplicate. Let's say this little hippie chick right here, okay, To do that, you need to tell photo shot what part you want to duplicate, So you could do that with a selection. So let's come down to the layer on which that hippy chick lives, Which is this one? The bottom one, and you can see in your layers panel. See, this is a miniature of your document. So I I know that she's on that layer because she's positioned in the center of the document. These hippie chicks are way over to the lift. Okay, so I'm gonna click to activate the layer that I want to effect now with any of photo shop selection tools will describe the rectangular marquis again. I can click and drag to draw a box around the part of the layer content that I want to duplicate. Okay, so now when I come up to layer duplicate layer. How it gave me the same one. We'll use the keyboard shortcut instead. So once you've created a selection and you want to duplicate Onley that bit press command J on a Mac or control J on a PC. And however long you hold that button down, that's how many layers you're gonna get, which is a fabulous Segway into how do you get rid of layers? You can delete them one at a time. Or, if you want to delete all these copies that I made, activate the 1st 1 scroll down the layers panel shift, click The last one so that they're all highlighted. Impressive, Leaky. Okay, so we'll try that again. So we have that layer active that we want to do the copying from click and drag with our right titular Marquis Press Command J on a Mac or Control J on the PC. And think of that as a jump command. Okay, now, if we pick in our layers panel, we see that we've only duplicated the part of the layer content that was selected. So by doing that, I could now bring it free transform, which lets its resize and I can hold on my shift key so that my hippie chick doesn't get all mopey job, and I can click within that bounding box and move around. So we're just re sizing and moving layer content like we did earlier. Okay, so that's how you can increase canvas size, duplicate whole layers as well as duplicate only part of a layer. Okay, so let me delete these guys again. If we want to duplicate the whole thing, you could Desprez command J or controlled J and then grab the move tool by pressing ve again. I know it's keyboard shortcut cause it's here in the tool tip. Move it around. If you have an active selection on your screen and then use that keyboard shortcut, then Photoshopped will only duplicate the selected part. So now when I press commander Control J, you can see in my layers panel that it only duplicated what was selected. Okay, piecemeal. How do you fill the rest of the canvas with that same yellow background? How could I fill the rest of the campus for the same yellow background? Fabulous question. I'd create a solid color film layer so we'll trot back up here to the layer menu. New Phil layer Solid color asked you what you want to name it. Um, I can't see that other yellow with the moment, so it's hard to grab, So just go ahead and click. OK, temporarily. Now it's covering up at New Phil layers, covering up everything else. Why? Because it's higher in the layer stacking order, So let's drag it to the bottom. So click the thumbnail itself and pull it down to the bottom. Now I can see my hippie chicks since we used a fill layer. It's kind of like an adjustment layer and adjustment layers let you change their settings by double clicking their thumbnails. Double click the thumbnail. Open the color picker. And instead of using the little target range of color bars in this bar, just mass away from your color picker. See how your cursor turns into an eyedropper. So then you could clipped to sample that color click. OK, and now we've got the solid color background. I'm glad you asked that questions. That's great stuff. Toe to show off to. And can I throw in another one? Yes, please. Great. Thank you. Patty wants to know if you can resize a fill layer. For instance, if you have that black area cannot be resized native. OK, that's another benefit, honestly, of a fair layer. So if we change the size of our document, let me zoom out and let's grab our crop tool and add more canvas space, right? If you had used just a regular old layer filled with color than it's not gonna expand like this will, so soon as I press return, see how now my newer, larger document is still filled with color, So that's the benefit of the fill layer. Now, if you don't want that, you have a couple of different choices. You could discreet A. Ate a regular old image layer by choosing layer new layer and then choosing edit Phil and filling it with color than if you change your canvas size. It's always gonna be you know that one size is not gonna expand. But if you want to, let's say we only wanted the yellow to be to go out a little ways from around our hippie chicks here. What we could do is hide the outer edges of that Phil layer with a layer mask, so just like masking tape in the real world. Let she protect baseboards before you paint your living room malls, Right? A layer mask and photo shop is digital masking tape, and it dislikes you hide parts of the layer that you don't want to show in a nondestructive way because you can't delete. I couldn't make a selection and delete part of this feel layer because of the type of layer that it iss. But what I could do is used the layer mass that tagged along with it to hide parts of that layer where I didn't want it to show. Later on this afternoon, we're gonna be using that in color correction. Say we're one part of the photo needs the correction. But the other part doesn't. What the heck do you do? Well, you hide it from the parts of the photo that don't need it. So the only difference between real masking tape and digital masking tape is the color. So in the real world, it's cream colored or blue info shop is black, and there's a rhyme that creatives have memorized to help us remember that. And that is black conceals white reveals. Okay, so this whole Phil Layer right here. Solid color fill layer is visible, right, because it's mask, which is this little thing now right here is completely white. It black conceals and white reveals what's all being revealed. Well, if I use any tool, it's a rectangular marquis and I draw a box around the area that I want the color to be viewable in. Okay, then I could come over here to the mask and I've clicked on the mass. So its active. So you see that extra little quite bracket around it. Then I could choose Edit Phil and from the EU's Poppet Mini. So you're just saying, Hey, what color do you want to use to fill this selection? She's black because black conceals White reveals. So now the area in which I drew the selection around that content is being hidden. If I want to reverse that, all I have to do is double click the mask itself, and we're going to go over all this again. If I double click the mask itself, there's an invert button down here that won't work as long as I have a selection. Here we go. So now I inverted it So sometimes when you're hiding layer content with a mask, it's easier. Teoh do the reverse of what you want in the flip flop it. So such was the case on this. But, um, that's another way that you can use Phil layers still use Phil layers and control the area which they're visible is by using the included layer mask. And if you look over here in the layers panel everywhere, if black conceals and fight reveals everywhere you see black. If this is a miniature of your document, that's where that layer content is being hidden. So you can just look at the shape of the mask and the black area corresponds with the area over here. That's transparent because that yellows being hidden in that area wherever the layer mask. It's why that particular layer content is being revealed. So it's visible. Okay, so we're gonna go over all that again. But that's a work around for that. Any more questions? Sure, I just love all your analogies because for me it's not as intuitive. But when you add all your analogies, it makes it really intuitive. Thank you. There was a request from Leslie Be who's from Manitoba, Canada. Who said What is the easiest way to create a rounded, white, translucent rectangle layer over part of an image where I can add text inside for an ad poster, etcetera. Does that make sense to you? It does. You would use one of the shape tools. Okay, so I'm gonna That's a much more advanced concept that what we're going to cover. But I'm gonna tell him how to do it. You would use one of your user rounded rectangle tool. Okay. Set to path mode up here in the options bar. Okay. Once you draw that shape, then you grab the text tool, and any time you got an outline, a path outline of a shape and you grab the text tool and you click near it. Photo shop assumes you want that text to go inside the shape. So that's how you would create text that fills a shape. Yeah, I've got a question. How many different ways are there to do the same thing in photo shop? Exactly. Six. She knows all of them. I know, right? Cause we did have Jamie asked why use the marquee tool instead of the other tools to create a shape, and I've same sort of a thing. Well, the marquee tool is a selection tool. Okay, so in the tools panel here, and we'll talk more about selections when we get back from lunch. The tools in the top quadrant And when I say quadrant, I'm talking about where the little dividing lines are in the tools panel. You can see them. So these tools thes three right here let you create a selection. So it's not. That's not creating a new layer. It's not really drawing a shape that's gonna hang around. It's drawing A. It's a way for you to temporarily mark often area, which lets you tell photo shop a phoner shop. I only want to mess with this spot. Okay, so that's what a selection is. A selection doesn't hang around. It doesn't print okay to create a shape that does hang around that you can tweak and do all kinds of things with and use in your composites. You would use thes shaped tools down here. Okay, so they're two different things. These create can create shape layers that you can fill with color and stroke with color and all that all that happens on on a special shape layer the tools up here create selections which are temporary. Okay, but you could create a new anti layer, draw a shape with one of selection tools and then used the edit fill command to fill it with color so you could do that. But any time I'm tempted to do that, I reach for the shape tools because you can tweak them. When once you fill a layer with pixels, you really can't change them. They're not flexible. You can't double click a regular old image layer that's filled with color to bring up the color picker. You don't get a Phil and stroke setting in the options bar. Okay, That stuff is on Lee inherent to shape players. Okay, so you've seen me thus far use the rectangular marquis Onley to mark off an area that I've been wanted to do something else with. Okay, Like creative Phil Layer that is very flexible and that you can double click to open the color picker. Okay. Coming since Yes. OK, Lisa, um inspired. A TL asks why is there certain functions that you can't do on a new layer? It mentions no pixel selected. Oh, well, you can't use any of the painting toe. Not the clone tools, the healing tools, any kind of tool that requires pixels to operate. Say the healing brush takes pixels that you paint over and takes pixels around the cursor size and copies and pastes them to, like, delete moles and things like that. Well, if you don't have any pixels on the layer, it can't. The tool can't do what it's trying to do because there's no information there. So there are very few things you can do to a new empty layer involving any of the healing tools you can't use them at all. There is a little trick to that that we're going to talk about later on when we come back. But, um, yeah, the only thing you can do to a new empty layer is type on it, you know, but that creates a new layer or draw selection and fill it with color, that kind of thing. So any tool that requires pixels to operate, you'll get an error if you try to use it on an empty layer. And we were just talking about that marquee tool and here's, I think, a perfect example of how you might use this M Surrey from California ass. Will you cover how to adjust just a single layer instead of a whole document when using adjustment using adjustments, Well adjustment layers by their nature, are everything that you've done with that adjustment happens in a single layer. So if that layer is active and you change any, let's say, the opacity setting in the layers panel it's only affecting that one layer and everything below it. Adjustment layers, by their nature, affect the layer underneath or anything else that's below it. And there is a setting when we get into color, correcting with levels that I'll show you that can restrict that adjustment layer to Onley one layer underneath rather than all of them. And that was the question. Thank you. Great. So we take another question before we got here. Okay, let's take one more. And Marie had asked from New Jersey, What is the benefit of using a mask layer rather than manually adjusting, hiding? Yeah, I'm not real sure. I understand her question, but I'll have a go at it anyway. So manually ingesting and hiding to me would mean deleting pixels. Right. When you delete pixels, you can't get them back. That's not a re flexible way to edit. So by using layer masks you're hiding pixels instead of deleting them so that you can get them back if you change your mind or if you make a mistake. But when you delete pixels, they're gone for good. So that's the reason that layer masks or so very handy.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Keynote

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

This is the first video of Lesa's I've used. My only complaint is that I didn't find her earlier. Absolutely love this video. Lesa's teaching style is clear, concise, consistent and entertaining. Currently I am using CS4 but have still learned so much. I plan to purchase other videos when this one has been committed to memory. Again it is amazing! Well worth the price.

a Creativelive Student
 

Definitely worth the price. Lesa's teaching style is very consistent and clear. She doesn't waste time chit-chatting and that keep my attention. Its great to have the exercise material. I'm on my second round through the videos and exercises. Practice is really key. Photoshop does more for me now than just beep at me. Based upon Lesa's topics I can now see examples and have a much better idea of how to achieve the same results.

a Creativelive Student
 

Definitely worth the price. Lesa's teaching style is very consistent and clear. She doesn't waste time chit-chatting and that keep my attention. Its great to have the exercise material. I'm on my second round through the videos and exercises. Practice is really key. Photoshop does more for me now than just beep at me. Based upon Lesa's topics I can now see examples and have a much better idea of how to achieve the same results.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES