Lessons

Lesson Info

Building a Portrait in Photoshop

and I want to start us off by thinking about similar concepts that are perhaps easier to do, so we'll get to that eventually to see. But even that's not that difficult. If you shoot it properly is we talked about setting your camera on tripod. But even if you don't have a tripod, so here's a shoot I did the other day, and it occurred to me that I wanted to be able to put something together in photo shop. So I happen to have a tripod in this particular case. But if I didn't, it wouldn't have mattered, because I just took two separate photographs. One. This is a a young man, Jeff Seed, who worked with me. He was awesome guys from local here in Seattle, his whole personal training thing. He's very muscular and might be myself never and back when I was now not at all. So, yes, I imagine myself looking this way, but but not exactly so I wanted to use this as, and we'll look at two different examples in the simplest one of all is that exact quote. So much is said think like photo shop. So I'...

m thinking this is my background layer. When I take this photo where I took this photo, I deliberately left space over to the side for something. Another photograph. Ah, graphic. If he had a poster already made of his company or whatever it might be, I just giving myself that opportunity now at the same time. By itself, it's not a bad photograph because it's kind of interesting with the textures. But I've specifically took this photo thinking something else will go there. Sometimes I know exactly what that's gonna be. Other times I don't. So I took that shot and then a little bit guest, probably actually earlier, because I knew eventually I do that. I took this shot kind of in a profile. And here's an example where, even though this is an ideal and not in a studio, so I don't have a perfect background behind him, there's enough of a contrast. Think like edges that I think I should be able to find all the edges in this photograph to try and put these two together as an image. So, as always, starting camera raw. I think I want to adjust color temperature a little bit, and we'll just open that as an object. I don't need all these other ones hoping from earlier, so we'll just close some of them down. Alrighty. Now, at this point, I want to get the other photograph of Jeff in your that kind of profile shot. And as we've seen various times before, I tend to do it by going back to bridge and saying, This is the one I want place in photo shop, and that's gonna do two things going to preserve the camera raw, smart, object, nature, but also automatically imported in. One thing I probably would do in this case is I want to make sure that his is going to sound really weird. His head is large enough in contrast to the other photo, so I might make this file just slightly bigger to begin with, because I want to make sure that I don't have to scale him up because it considering there's a lot of area around him, I wanted him to take up a good portion of the photograph. See, now I'm glad I did that because probably even that's a little smaller than I would have liked. So because of that, here's what you do. If you're in that case, it's still not quite big enough. So I'm gonna take this photograph and make it a little smaller so that when I bring in the other one, I've got more room to play with. So now we can try that again, place in the photo shop and again not to say you have to do it this way. I could also have done it by saying open as a camera smart object and then copy and paste. This just allows me to now know when I bring it in that it's gonna be more relative to the size that I want, because I kind of want him off to the side here in this profile view mixed in with this other photograph police into photo shops that just go into the current doctor documents. So if you have multiple things, open a good point. You have to make sure the one you want to go into is the currently active one, because it's gonna place in. If I did it through Mini Bridge, I could drag into whichever image I saw open. So this point, this kind of a quick little review of our whole compositing thing we did earlier. This is just a different type of compositing. It's compositing onto another photograph of himself basically and using the quick selection tool because it's gonna find a lot of edges in here. There are probably areas like his hair here. That's gonna be a bit more of a challenge. This will give us a chance to kind of review that. Cute for quick mask that's OK. And the loss a bit of his nose there. It's getting closer. I'm just trying to get really as close as I can. I'm not going to be surprised if it doesn't get all of this hair. In fact, in some cases you're working with hair. It's almost better to take away a little bit of when his hair like this, because it might end up getting too much. So in this case, that looks to me like it's gonna be good for what I want. Refine edge. I usually because I'm almost always on this view, called on layers that usually starts with that. If it doesn't, I would just switch to that because I want to see him in the context of this new layer now here's a good example of where I thought I'd done a pretty good job of making a selection. But there's a little concede that little that little David in his nose there. Refine Edge will not fix that. So I'd be better off to go. Okay, now that I noticed that cancel and try and go in and make that a little better to begin with. So just a little quick selection tool thing that that's a lot better. Okay, so now overall, it's looking not bad at all. Considering what I started with, I would make my brush a little smaller and paint around this hair to try and get a few more little bits of it here and one of things that throw some people office as they're painting. They're like, Oh, look, it's finding all that hair than they let go, And it doesn't always state now. As I said before, don't worry. If that's the case, what I would do is go to that black and white mask view, and if I see something looks like that, I'd be quite happy with that because it's got a lot of little hairs that might not even show up when you're looking at that view, so don't be surprised. If you're using this refine edge tool and you paint over something into your eyes, you can't see any difference at all. It may be because it's picked up just subtle hairs that only show up when you actually look at the mask view. So I'm going to say That's pretty good for what I want to do. Add a layer mask. Click OK, now I can look at the mask. It should look just like we saw. So there's a little bit in here where there's that little bit of gray that I don't want. And this hair's a little bit light. So I mentioned in the composite class about that whole overlay mode thing. I love it when you used photo shop for a long time, and then you discover a way to make it even better. I've been using overlay mode forever, and then one day I was thinking I was changing. The keyboard is a keyboard shortcut to change the blend mode of your layers, and one of them is overlay mode. So I press that keyboard shortcut thinking I was changing the blend mode of the layer, but I forgot that I was still on the brush tool and realized that shortcut changes the blend mode with the court. People are shortcut like instead of me having to go up to that menu and change with normal and overlay mode. I do it through the keyboard and it's option shift or all shift Oh, for overlay and end for normal. So this way I can get my paintbrush look right here. Not even be looking up at the at the Options bar and just press option shift or all shift. Oh, for overly So now I know I'm in overlay mode. I could start to paint. I'm also concerned painting it 100% sometimes. See how that that kind of did too much. It took away too much information. So I pressed like five for 50% and now it's a little more gradual. Something a little bit of the time, and I press X to swap the colors and bring a little more of his hair back in and let me also again quickly add. I'm doing this in this mass view so you can see it. I generally wouldn't work that way because I'm worried that I'm going too far not thinking at in the context of the background. So I would optional click again. And now I'm still on the mask. I'm still painting an overlay mode, but the difference is everything I do. I'm seeing it in the context of the new background and also another I thought that you may have already hopefully thought about. And that is that I'm zoomed in kind of far to try and see what I'm doing a little bit, but I don't. I'm not gonna obsess over everything at this particular magnification. I'm gonna be either going back and changing my view, Teoh more zoomed out kind of you or that method we talked about the other day, which is to create a second window for this document and then tile them. So this is kind of reviewing, in case you didn't see this part. So now I can say All right, on this window over here, I'm going to zoom in a little closer, but in this one, I'm looking at ITM or in the size is gonna be on my website, for example. So that way I'm not being distracted by all this little detail that over here doesn't really look at anywhere near is big. So this is an example one where there's a simplest example of shooting with photo shop in mind because it does, in this case, even need to have a tripod or anything cause there to complete different shots. But as good as things like content aware fill or the content of where transformer things to say, let me give give myself more background. Excuse me. It would be, frankly, a lot easier to just give yourself more background by the way, you take the shot and then you've got this room that puts upping, and I would probably finalizes by cropping this a little tighter to make it more interesting. So just another idea to say, How can you make a portrait a little bit different and this goes back. The reason I show this kind of thing first is I don't want anyone to think you have to be in a studio with lights and take 15 or 20 or 100 shots. It could just be a couple one where you say stand over there and look this way and now stand over there and look that way and suddenly you can put them together or something like that. And I do a world, you have a tripod. But if you don't, you just make sure you're holding your camera at least as still as possible. So between shots, you're not spending forever trying toe a line things with each other. So any time you can pre visualized photo shop, I guess, is what I'm trying to suggest is, I'm looking at This is my background layer. This is my second layer that I'm gonna create a layer mask to create this effect. I have, ah, something kind of similar this hanging in my studio probably the first time I did this years ago, and I took it a step further and on the wall, if you remember. I think that was just yesterday we talked about making look like the word dance was behind the dancer. I did something like that with the guy's name and I printed. It is a big canvas, and without exception, everyone comes in my also. That's cool because it's not just another portrait of a guy standing there. It's something a little different that's kind of what I'm trying toe suggest that we think about is how can we do something a little different thing. But the other thought that I had always wanted to try this, and I figured this would be worth the shot. Has always thought it. We need to do kind of a superhero secret identity thing going on. So we went in the alleyway right behind here. It took a couple of run throughs to kind of figure it out. And he When I put them together in Photoshop, I thought, note to self next time. And sometimes that will happen. The first time you try something like, Oh, boy, if I did this next time, it would be much easier. What was interesting, though, is I was doing this and was just the two of us in this alleyway right behind this building, which I thought would be a great spot until I realized apparently a lot of people park back there because every two seconds someone was we were the end of the day. They were like driving by going, Hey, so but a lot of people would have like, this big production with an off camera flash and tethered to their computers so they could see it live. And that would be great. But this wasn't it was me and my dry bought in my camera and a model, and explaining the biggest challenge for me was to help him understand what it was gonna end up looking like so he could better position himself. And so that's why we did the whole progression several times. And this is what the individual photograph looked like. So here he is is the, you know, the clever superhero that disguise himself with a pair of glasses because you know how that works. So I locked down my tripod and said, OK, so in the first shot you're suddenly hearing the person in distress, so he's looking off. Like what? And then the second photo, he moved a bit and started to remove his glasses. And the 3rd 1 he's starting Teoh get into his superhero outfit that is underneath. And apparently he's the no logo nameless superhero because when he opened his shirt, there's just nothing there. But that's because I figured I could always add something and later on, and I didn't want to break any copyright notices about, you know, any kind of. That's why I'm very careful saying superhero as opposed to, you know, other thing. So we did that progression probably five times, and each time I said, Okay, this time, start a little further over, and I was having to look through the viewfinder and looking at the little Ellie LCD on the back of my camera going. I think you need to move a little bit next time, move a little bit further this way. But I didn't couldn't really tell until I put them together in photo shop. And I was happy to say, considering it was the first shot at it worked pretty well, and next time we'll have more thoughts as to how we do it. So this is how I would now work with them. Now I've picked the four that I want. If I wanted to have multiple options than I probably wouldn't do it this way, because all I have with me right now is those four when I only have four raw files. I have no problem with opening them all in camera at the same time. I wouldn't do that with or 20 year 50. So if I had multiples, what I would do is I would adjust one. Pick whatever color, balance and exposure hit done and then back in bridge, select the rest and say, previous conversion. That's a better way if you have more than a handful, but this A. Since I only have four. I don't have a problem with opening all at the same time, so they open in camera and you'll see all four on the side. I want to adjust them all at the same time, so they're all the same. So I do select all synchronise. And by the way, I should have mentioned that when I shot these at least one out of the several times I thought to put my camera on manual so that the exposure wouldn't change on the fly. So when you're outside, I think mentioned the studio segment. That's kind of important. Otherwise, you're seeing slight differences even in here with everything manual. There's still a slight variations because clouds going over so ideally want to take them fairly close together. So select all synchronized means. Whatever I do to the 1st will do the other four so this way. I couldn't say, All right. I think I want to change the white balance already, shade. But I want to push the exposure just a little bit and maybe making more more contrast e and make the blacks not quite so darks weaken See part of his suit a little bit now. Normally, if I was continue working, I might consider just saying open objects. But what that would do is open four separate files, which is okay, But then I have to put them together. So my thought process would be well, I want to end up with them in one document, but easier to open all foreign camera, make adjustments and then click done. So now, back in bridge, they all updated slightly. So now they've been adjusted All the same, they're still selected in bridge. So that makes it easy for me to use on our built in automated commands, load files into photo shop players. The reason I did the camera raw thing first is because otherwise it would have opened them. It doesn't open them in raw first, that just opens them as layers and not camera smart objects. So in this case, I want to make sure I've done all that work up front because when that automatically loads the men, they're not smart. They're just regular layers, which in this case is fine because I know I've got, um developed the way that I want. But if you were worried about doing things on the fly, then you'd be better off opening all four separately and manually combined, because then each one would still be a smart object. So write this down in your history books, Dave said, It's OK not to be smart in this case, but that doesn't happen very often. So now I've got my little progression all together, and the first thing I would do is look at them and say, Are they nicely lined up? And the 1st 3 are. But I remember when I was doing this that in a moment of losing my brain, I didn't quite like the way the last ones framed. I moved the camera hair, and as soon as I did that later, I thought I I did that deliberately so I could show you how easy it is to fix that in photo shots. Not really. I was like Yeah, but if it happens, here's what you would do. Select all four and use the command. We talked about our productivity class auto align layers, Okay. And then it'll look at them and it does a slight little ship. So now they should all line up. What better way area. Now there's a gap over there, but that's OK, because I have that over here, So I'm not going to show that whole part of the photograph. So the whole idea of this is this is like my base photograph, because it's got everything. So, in fact, it would be easier if it was on the it was on the bottom. Actually change the order of these. So they kind of go. The bottom up order will probably a little easier. So this one, I don't have do any masking on the bottom layer because I want that whole thing on the next layer up. All they want to see is him. I want to see through the behind. So where it gets challenging. So let me take a step back and say I could have might made my life so much simpler if I had done this during the shoot. Okay, shot one stand here shot to make sure you stand a foot away from where you were before. So there's no overlap. That would be way easier, but frankly, really boring, because then I hate to say this, but anyone could do that, cause, like, now move over there. Now move over there. If there's no overlap, yes, it's easier and Photoshopped to put them together. But it's not anywhere. Near as interesting is is if you see some kind of overlap. So in this case, I deliberately said, Okay, Don't know a little back this way cause I'm visualizing I wanted there to be some overlap, and I can see that if I lower the opacity of this, you can see there is certainly a little bit of overlap between them, and that's what I'm hoping to get. So now I would use my good old friend, the quick selection tool and all I'm really worried about is this edge right here. All this other stuff doesn't matter, because that's there's no overlap over there, so I'm really just worried about anywhere where there would be the potential for overlap. It's getting a little closer. I'm using still the quick selection tool. But now holding down option all to try and take away parts that I don't want. At a certain point, you will probably find like by the time you zoom in and out trying, use a quick selection to along things like fingers. It's just too hard. So I would switch to my lasso tool, expressed L for lasso and holding down the shift key. So I'm adding on to my selection. Any time I'm doing this, I want to be as accurate as possible. But I'm not going to at the same time obsess over it because I'm going to turn this election into a mask. So if I did end up missing the tips of his fingers, I know I can get them back. And that's why when someone asked before, why is he masking and not just deleting the background? This is why I don't have to be quite so obsessive over getting it exactly perfectly right the first time with the mask, because it's just me saying I want to get closest possible and then all, you know, adjusted, if necessary now, just before just in case anyone asked from the audience and say, You know, why didn't you show his feet? There is a reason for that and that's because he showed up and he said, Dave, I hate to say this, but I forgot my dress shoes. So we had white running shoes on with his suit, so it kind of had an impact on the effect. So I made the artistic decision to only shoot from the ankles up words just because it just looked a little odd to have the running shoe thing going on. Okay, so that was pretty good there. One of the things. And this is a neat little tip when you're trying to do things with multiple layers. If I lowered the opacity of this, I could kind of see where the overlap was. But the other option is when you've made a selection, just hide the layer. And now see how the outline of the selections kind of showing me where the overlap is, and I can make sure that part looks fine. So this is just a quick little test to say. Did I do enough? Because frankly, from here on all this part, this is doesn't matter at all because the only overlap is really this part right here. That's the only part that I really need to be concerned. Does that part look good when I come back here and I click the mass button just like that? I'm on already got the second part of him, and then I just repeat that operation. So do it relatively quickly, because once you've seen it once, it's there's nothing different I'm doing. I'm just repeating the same operation with different layers, but will still walk through it so you can see the idea. Fine, Fine. Tune this a little bit. You can see already that I've got some things happen down here like it's decided that I think I wanted part of this garbage can, which is great. But look at how how good, this quick selection. Even there there was something I go that's the wheel of the garbage can or something that looks to me like it's almost the same color. But it from an edge standpoint there was still enough, and that's what I won the reasons I always at least start with the quick selection tool because it continues to impress me whereas like wow, I didn't expect it to get that and it did. Here it might be a little more challenging again. I switched to the lasso tool and just take away the part that I don't want here. Did I tell you my story about single letter shortcuts for tools that I say that in this class? I don't remember if I did or not. Okay, so I have this. I tell the story every time I teach photo shop because it's the all time, funniest thing that ever happened Me. But it also teaches a little lesson about remembering things. So one of things like I often forget when I'm in, especially somebody. So I'm on The role of teaching is I'm just pressing letters impressing L for the lasso and the for move. And I'm not thinking about the fact that saying out loud I'm pressing this letter for this tool, but it's worth noting that that is a great shortcut. Is every letter Every tool has a single letter you can press to activate the tool like C for crop Tiefer type M for Mark E. L. For last. So many of them are very logical. Others are a bit more of a stretch like V for move or W for magic wand or W for quick selection tool. That's kind of weird, because it shares the same slot anyway. Many years ago I was talking about It still makes me laugh to think about it. I was in Atlanta, Georgia I'll never forget was a big room of people and I was talking about trying to remember single letters. And some of them are just weird, like I for the eyedropper. OK, kind of. And at one point I said, But then, like this new healing brush, it's J for the healing brush. How we remember J and I swear someone the audience that just think Jesus, I'm healed And I was like, Oh, I like that. So now we'll never forget that is J for the healing brush because it's like stuck in my head because I just thought that is actually perfect. So some of them are are still have a stretch. But I I told that story a zillion times, and people still think I actually think of it now is the Jesus dual? I'm like, Well, whatever works for you, but the more you can cut to the chase and select tools instead of going. Let me go click on that tool and come back when you click on that tool, the keyboard shortcut letters air. Just such a useful thing to do. So, like you for quick mask. I still need to tweak this a little bit more. But again, I could fix that in the mass part if I needed to. And I have one other little thing I'm gonna do to this Where probably isn't quite as important. But I do want to make sure I get the rest of this. But here, where I see it doesn't matter, because there is nothing over on this side is the one that I'm worried about because that's where the overlap is. Okay, so although it looks to me like I should have been a little more careful right about there. Okay, Let's see. So I had a mask. Looks pretty good. Now, there's probably gonna few be a few little edges, but I can address those each one of these. I'm creating a mask so that I could do that mask edge thing and then the final one. Just get this finished same kind of idea. Now, in this case, I would say Make sure we do the lasso tool on get all this part because remember when I did that auto align layers that was missing off this side completely. So I always go through the same kind of quick little check just to make sure it looks like I've got years that I want. Okay, at a mask. So right out of the gate. To me, that's very close to looking the way I want. That's how I was kind of envisioning it in my head, but I wanted to add some more dynamic nature to it. Make it more interesting. I thought maybe I could add some kind of motion like I always like. What was that? That $6 million man with a He moved fast. So that was in slow motion. Always weird. Yeah, exactly. So there was that kind of blurry motion thing happening, so that's what I was thinking of. So to make my life easier, I thought, Let me let me do this. Now let me pause for a second. Say All right, look. Look at this last one here. There's definitely a little fringy thing going on here, But I'm gonna try another step first and see if I need to worry about that or not. So I may worry about that I may not, to the way we do it is I'm gonna duplicate this layer, take the bottom one and converted to a smart object. When I do that, of course, that's going to, in effect blend in the layer mask. So it's just viewed as a separated layer Because my thought was What if I took that layer and did a motion blur on the edge like a whole lot and then took that layer and use my move? Tool just kind of nudged it over like this. So now we're getting that kind of Ah, a blur thing happening on the edge of him. Like up here. I think I want to blurt even more. Yeah, and when I do that, it may help with that little fringe thing, or in this case, it looks to me like it's made it look even more obvious. But that's why I tried it. First, I want to see before I jump in and spend five minutes fixing a little fringe thing do I really need to or not? So in this case, the answer is probably Yeah, I probably should. So I go to this top layer mask and then go school down, find our mask edge and see if I can't one way or another, change this or do a smart thing or even paint right along here and see if I can kind of get rid of some of that. So between all these various things, one way or another, and at worst, I'd have to just go on to the layer mask and paint myself. I picked myself, but, you know, I mean, paint manually. Painting myself would be really odd. Why would I do that? So this idea that they see that I don't know about you guys, I think that really adds to the effect because it really is given. So I would repeat that for each layers, they now go down to the next layer and do the same thing. Find this one duplicated. Take this one below. And I'm just right clicking to convert to smart object. And I can do command option, effort, control all f When you do that, it opens the filter with the same settings you last used to try to remember. How much did I blur? Commander control efforts? A shortcut for used the same filter with the same settings. Command option F actually opens the dollars bucks in case I want to tweak it in this way can actually see what the settings are. So I think I said that the wrong way, Commander Control F just re applies aesthetics, period command option after control that lets you have the option of opening up that dialogue box if you want it. So now, in this one, I would drag my little blurry version to where I want. And what you may need to do is readjust the math. Like in this case, something odd happened up here because when I made the smart of the mass, that looks like something's got cut off, so I might have to go back to this one and go. Maybe I need to show Maura less of his head or something, so there's gonna be some of that tweaking, and you may have to go back and re adjust your thinking in terms of how much to blur it. But that's kind of the process of the thought process into the whole thing because it's just a repetition of the same thing. But this entire thing, I mean, obviously again, I'm kind of working through talking about how I do. You see, it is not taking that long like it hasn't taken us forever to do it. And as with almost everything we talked about, the first time will take you a little longer because you're having to work through it to go. Okay, let me think about on. That's in the wrong order. I showed on that first. So there may be a few times were kind of go hold on a second. That's not working for me. So I do want to show you one other little thing that's got nothing to do with what I don't other than to me. It would look better if he had something there, and I couldn't use the you know what logo? Because that can't do that. But I still wanted to have him displaying something my first thought was actually just having to have his bare chest. I thought that probably no one would enjoy looking at that. So I'm gonna find that layer. And a really nice guy, By the way. So everyone ever needs a Seattle based model that's good looking and young and very fit. Jeff Sluman Bob saying I'm the man now. Sorry, Booth. Okay, so I want to put a logo on here and make it look like it's kind of following the shape of his shirt. So the way I would do that, I'm in the first of all, press commander control J just to duplicate the little piece of his shirt. And you're like, OK, interesting. But this is one of those things where you could probably do this several different ways. But my thinking is I want to do it. In a way, it's gonna be realistic, but still smart and creditable. So we talked about smart object today. This is why I'm doing it this way. So I'm going to duplicate this layer into a new document. And all that will give me is this weird looking thing I saved This has some file, so I find it. Thank you. Okay. So the reason for doing that is now I can decide what I want my logo toe look like So just to make life simple will use the custom shape tool because there's all kind of shapes in there and see, what should we use? We'll use that Leaf back actually, wasn't going t o say it's believe I'm like, actually hold on. So I did do Why shouldn't have deleted that layer now the thing about so ignore that part about keep the layer there because I will help in a second. All right, so now I'm going on the ship key to draw that made believe it. I'm delivery making little bigger because he's not quite revealing it yet. So I want the Maple Leafs Onley show in side where his shirt is open. So I'm gonna clip that to that layer below. So now it's hidden behind his hands, then convert to smart object. Looks perfect, doesn't it? No things. The blend mode to multiplied, so that will help with some of the creases in his shirt. But then the other thing is this wonderful filter called Why is it not letting you do that? That's hard. Should be able to do that. All those fails Make the smart up into a smart Agassi. If that wild. Yeah, interesting I'm not sure why I was gonna do the distort filter, and it's not showing up for some reason. So we always have a plan B. Least you should lower the opacity little bit and then do our favorite little blend if slider and see if we can push some of the shadows through a little bit. So it looks a little more like it's falling the contours of the shirt a little bit like that. Perhaps it's the idea anyway. But in here, even though I mean, it's, you know, I've already done things like clipping I can still go. I still want a nudge a little bit, maybe look better was further down. So by doing it in ways, this is their recurring theme that I'm hitting your they had so many times. Hopefully, that's becoming second nature now is that I? There's always ways to do things, what I'm always thinking, try it away, that I could then tweak it if necessary, because at the time were you created you like me. That's perfect going around. Maybe not so doing in such a way you can change your mind, so that's kind of the idea. Here I think I have. This is one that I worked on a little more with. The blurriness give you an idea of what it looks like, and I like that idea so much. I did another test the other day. So Canada, Man, there actually was a short lived comic book years ago called Captain Canuck. But since most Canadians hate being called Canucks, unless you're from Vancouver, it's just not didn't go very well. So this concept, I mean, we'll see in a second, will switch gears and will say, Okay, let's now work on the ones we did in the studio moment ago. But you can see even something as simple is this. Let's go outside. Find a nice, diffused, light shaded area where the lights not gonna be changing all the time. Set up my tripod and take a few shots means you can do anything. So think about athletes like soccer players, and they want something different. So why not take a few shots where you have them stand here, then sprint and then run and kick the ball and you do a progression? It looks like they're going from standstill toe kicking or shoot them in the studio with a mattress underneath so they can fly themselves sideways. And then you composite in a soccer soccer ball afterwards. Make a look like they're doing this amazing sideways soccer kick. I mean, that's kind of what we're looking at here is, how can we build on? We'll begin with a camera by making Photoshopped part of the process, as opposed to Well, I want to take out that little piece of whatever that's what this is to me, what this is really for. So let's take a look at our little project here. So this is our first test shot. I love when someone takes a behind the scenes photo of me. That's OK, John. I appreciate it. I'll keep that one for posterity. Havel Siris of be demonstrating to models what I had in mind. So the progression you can see there's a whole bunch of them. At first I had the book here, but then that's more work to composite of some graphic and around there. So if I can move it over upsetting one way, I can move it over here. That's a little better. So as I going through, I'm gonna press the letter five for five star rating to pick the ones that I think are the ones that I'm gonna want to use for this. So this would be the part where you go through, you can zoom in closer if you want, but I'm just doing a sort of a global quick look and say, these are the ones that I think I want to use as I go through. So once I've got to that point, I took out the stand, so make sure I have one of those and then there's one without the table and without the globe and stuff. So this is going to the hard part because these air also good left thumb earlier, although tell you right away, I know already which one of my favorites, These are all really good. But there it is just so funny. That's the one where she was, like I'm acting, but I'm actually a little frightened at the same time that I'm gonna fly over backwards. So that's definitely a potential one there. And then we have the shoe fly off. That's a good one, too. It's always fun to look through and kind of see them because then you've got, like, a little movie. You can watch me go really quickly. Just like Sorry, Dave. That's the next segment. Yeah, that's not this one. That we're doing that next. And then I wanna have something like this. Okay, So now Enbridge, I can go and use a command called Filter That says, Just show me the ones I picked. So I have 1234 a bunch, but not 30. I mean, I could, but I don't need that because from these ones that I've chosen, I think they'll look pretty good now what I might do in this case, just in case. Because I may decide after I start playing with one of those that I might want to look back another one I'd actually now, I think about probably take a step back and make it overall adjustment. So pick anyone and look at and say Alright, Overall, I think I like it, but I might want to change the temperature white balance a little bit, maybe put the conch rest up, so I'm just making a few little adjustments. Looking at kind of the main thing, parts of the image, but I'm just doing this toe one, and I'm gonna click. I'm also I don't need these to be enormously large files like this. I'm gonna click done, because what I really want to do is make sure that all the photos in here looked like that one son. I do select all right, click on anyone and choose develop settings previous conversion. And then it takes a couple of moments and goes through and says, Let me adjust each of these raw files with those same settings. Now, even though I only picked whatever was eight or nine The reason for doing that again is in case as I'm looking at them later on it. Maybe I should have used that other one. So I want to make sure they all at least look as close as possible to the same. There's always gonna be a very slight variation, but for the most part, ID, it usually will work pretty well. Okay, so now back to on Lee, showing the ones that I want. And I'm gonna use this one as kind of my base image. Make sure that's good. All right, so let's take all of these and I'm sorry load them into Photoshopped player. So this could take a moment or two because they've got a bunch of them. But this is one of those things where I could also just manually open them all and drag them in the Remember. The one disadvantage of this command is they will no longer be camera smart objects. So that why was kind of important for me to make sure that the settings and exposure and all those other developmental kind of things were the way I want cause now it would be harder for me to go back, but I weighing the balance. I'm OK with that because I'm very sure I like the way they look. And I'd rather have Photoshopped load this many layers that me do it myself. So it's a matter of choice. You may decide that you want to preserve the raw ability, so therefore, you know, you might just choose. I'm gonna keep it that way. All right, So let's go right down to the bottom one. Somewhere else in here, I think. Pretty sure there it is. This is the graphic. Uh huh. No, Look, once again, this is the graphic that I created. I want to be in that frame in the background. So I'm gonna take this whole all of these layers and oops, Convert to a smart object so that I can then bring this in trying to this first before I do a whole bunch of other stuff, because it's gonna be in the very back of everything. So let's put this down right above our background names. I make sure it's gonna be second from the bottom. I want to make this fit inside, So probably the easiest way would be to click on the back layer. Use a tool like the quick selection tool, and hopefully it will find the edges. Now it looks to me like it's gone a little too far in a couple of places. Yep, so good tool for this is the Where are we? I'm so used to pressing keyboard shortcuts have to think about. So the polygonal lasso tool. That's what I was looking for, and I want to take away that part right there. How's that look? It's close, but a little bit too much here. Once again, I'm trying toe end up with a selection that looks the way I want remember. And this is a recurring theme I always like to say Is that when you're doing this, don't get to the point where you're like this because I didn't bother zooming into a 1,000,000% because I know I'm gonna create a mask that I can therefore tweak. So I didn't position this in the right place first, but that's OK, because it'll just temporarily disappear, was gonna mask it. And I want to keep the mask in the same place and move the little graphics on unlinked the two of them. That way I could now move it over, and eventually it reveals and looks perfect. Well, no, because it's not the same angle or anything. So now, like the reason this is working is because I have the mask unlinked from the layer. If they were linked together, I couldn't do this because I'd be transferring both at the same time. So this is an example when someone says, Should I keep my mask linked or not? The answer is my famous. It depends because sometimes you need to link amount times you don't. So there's all kidding aside. There's a ton of time and photo shop, where that's what you have to answer your own question with. Should I do X or not? Well, the answer is that depends. What do I want to do next? Do I want to be able to move just a graphic and keep everything else the same place? Then I would unlinked, um, if I want to move them as one unit, then that's different. So you always have to be kind of thinking of that process. So now let's try it. Blend motor, so multiplies a little bit much. I'm just thinking I might wanna change a blend mode. So you've seen how there's a little bit of a shadow from the frame that looks a little more natural like that. It doesn't look bad, right? It's kind of like it might have actually been hanging on the wall again. Saves money, having to buy, um, you know, paper and ink and all that stuff from my printer. So I'm going to do gen last, because that's gonna be harder. So now that I've done that, I'll sort of go back up to the top and say, Okay, what else do we have in this one? Really The main thing I wanna have is the book is really the only thing that's independent on this one. So get in a little closer. Sure, you click on the layer Quick selection tool. Try and get the edges as best I can. I'm not going to be at all shocked if I need to do a bit more polygonal lasso dual type work because I want to make the edges look pretty good. So let's first of all, see what we need to do with quick mask. Okay, so polygon elastic playing I wanna First of all, there's a little bit I missed, sold on the shift key and kind of go up the straight lines and trying to add them and tell me using a tool like this, make sure you go far enough around to kind of added the selection. And there's a little part, the bottom that I feel like I want to take away a little bit. But here's another thought that, as I'm doing this is the kind of thing you have to think about. I was just about to zoom in and try and make sure that edge looked really good on that side until I remembered on every other photographs gonna have the same wall behind it. So it's really not that important to make sure I'm incredibly accurate. It's Mawr where there's things like overlap. So make sure in this case I want to make sure I get all of the book added in. But it doesn't matter if I'm incredibly accurate, because underneath it it's all gonna be the same. So that so now we're it will remain so that whole layer was really just have that book sitting there. But that's kind of the approach that we need to take is to go through and look through each one. Now, one thing that I did not do, which I probably should have. But I'm not gonna bother going back at this point. To do it is even though these were shot on a tripod and they should be exactly the same after loading them a separate layers, I could have used that Commander Otto a line layers just to make absolutely sure that they were bang on because I remember one point I did nudge the try, but I think that was later on, so it probably won't be an issue, But that would be something that I could do just to be 100% sure that I have what I want okay from this layer and all I'm doing is kind of working through the layers saying, What's on here that I want? I want this lamp and I could let's just choose to use this these couple of parts here now there you can see that the even there the shading is a little off. So this is where I might have to be a little more accurate. But part of it's because, like right now, the chairs, not in this photo. So it's not casting the shadow. Once the chairs back in, it will look a little more natural. So don't be surprised if what you're doing anything. Oh, no, that looks way off. But it will be initially until we start kind of blending things together a little bit. If it bothers you to the point where it's distracting, You can always take that mask and feather the edge, so it's least softens them a bit, so they start to blend in a little better start to see where the other elements are gonna match up. It's not a requirement, but you could certainly do that. Okay, so it's good there, this one. See? Where else? Okay, so I need this one. I need these elements up here. She's the regular old lasso tool in this case to get a little closer, and there will be things like, Okay, I'm seeing, like, fishing wire here and there. And that's Yeah, Okay, that's gonna happen. But that's where this is. I'm not gonna probably go through and do every single step, because, honestly, they would take a while. But I want you sort of see the progression of how I'm at least looking at these things and trying to figure out where to put things and what to use from what players and things of that nature. Okay, so I think you can already start to see the idea here that if I do this properly where it's lining up, you can see there's one photo where there's just the shelf and one without, and by going to the mask, take my brush tool. Let's get a hard as brush hand. Make sure we're in normal mode in this case 100% capacity. So I did it all through the keyboard pick with Black, and I was I paint. I'm finding the right kind of place where, when I do it, it now looks like the globe is starting to tip over cause there's no pieces of wood holding it up anymore in the same over here. Right now. It's a good start with the camera floating, but I cut off the straps of the cameras. Looks little odd, so trying kind of paint those back in again along the way. And you can do this either. This this part, it's more personal preference as to the order in which you do things. But the things you have to consider are at a certain point, I need to consider the fact that some places there are shadows, some there aren't and things like this camera. If it was really had popped off the shelf was floating in the air. There were probably a little shadowing that of some kind, so I might need add. Some of those aren't officially because some of the shadows are already there because of the nature of how we did this. But others are ones where I'd want to recreate it myself. So, like in this case here, I might just put a player right underneath this and just simply take a paintbrush with a bit of black in here. It's a big, lower the capacity and then, as always, because I want to least be able to experiment, I might convert to a smart object so that I can blur it. Just have a little shadow hanging underneath now. The only downside is if you blur something using a smart object. I don't really like the way it spilled over the top. And if this was just a regular picture layer, I could just take the eraser and get rid of that part. But I can't do that since a smart object. So I don't think we talked about this specific thing. So here's kind of the approach you have to take. I still wanted to be a smart filter, so I can continue to edit the blur. But this mask is to say, Is it blurry or not? It doesn't affect whether the overall layer shows or not. So even though a smart object by nature has its own smart filter, the layer, the smart object itself could also have a layer mask so you can say Well, OK, now I can take this part down here. I don't want that to show as much. And I've got for this same layer. I've got two masked. One is the filter mass that lets me adjust the visibility of how the filter is applied. And the other is a mass to determine how much of the smart object itself is visible, which, in a case like this, even though it it looks like it's making it more complex, it is a little bit, but it's doing that because it's giving me more options. So as we go through, this is kind of the the repetition that I want to do. So in this case, just that. All right, so then here, think why you need this layer. I may not, because I've got everything I need to think there. Okay, so now we started trying. Decide which one we like, and as you start putting them in, that's when you start to see, have to go backwards and okay, whatever layers I have up there when it the mask, I'm cutting off other parts, so you have to kind of go through and progress backwards a little bit and go, OK, since I've done that, if her hands out there, what else when you do? So I'm gonna look through them and also decide based on that. So I think I still like the idea of the shoe flying off one. So I probably have to go back a little bit and say, Well, there's when I do that There are some areas that are clearly in the way which must be appear somewhere like that. So that means this layer. I've got to go back into this the mass that I've created and get rid of some areas so they're invisible so I can see through underneath. So let's do that. Just a matter of painting with Black on the mask to try and get that here a little bit. And the original one that I did that was the course graphic. We did a series of shots and then I had the idea of her shoe flying off, but I loved her expression in one, but I like the position of her leg and the shoe flying off another's on that is actually combined. Using the same theory. Two of them was, luckily enough of her body lined up, that the leg was kind of a logical extension in this case, that one pose looks to be like it's it's gonna work. So now I have to go and say So this is the layer I'm currently working on. This is my silly way of every so often, making sure on our layers by hiding it. Go yet. That's the one I want. On this layer, I would add a layer mask and start to mask out the parts that I don't want like the C stand in here. The nice thing about doing it this way is that if they were all coming out exactly the same kind of explosion, there is a slight variation here and there. But overall, like the floor is pretty much the same that I'm not having to be incredibly accurate to start off with, of making sure I'm asking like I'm not zooming, weigh in and taking a lasso too long to store taking my brush and going just paint that out, paid that out to get started. Now this is this whole process would overall probably take a while to kind of get it all finished off. But this is kind of going through fairly quickly to give you the idea. Now, hopefully you could still do this in not six hours, but a couple hours of getting into detail. So we're not gonna do every single step, But I want to kind of work through this the procedure as we go. So then I started looking around the image of a So I still got blocks of what? Under there. So somehow I have to deal with that. And I have one photo that doesn't have any wood in it whatsoever underneath. So this one, I'm still on the layer mask for that layer. So let's just see what where we act here, that other layers above that air in the way. So let's take these off for a second. I make sure I'm looking at the the correct layers that I want. So this one, this is one that I want to go on. Start I'm asking, and you may have to do it in a couple of steps because it may be the same thing appears on more than one layer. So as I start to go through and see where we're at, all right. The other thing that I would consider doing is I really want this table to really look like it's tipping over and there it's getting there and there's a little bit of a shadow. So I would always consider going in and replicating this shadow a little bit to extend it a little further to make it look even Mawr like That's the case. Now, as I'm working here, part of the challenge is managing all these layers. So at a certain point, if this was a real project I was working on and wasn't gonna throw it away later and start again in the comfort of my own office with no one watching me, I would probably very quickly, okay, I don't really need those three layers because they're just causing confusion at this point. I'm not 100% sure yet whether I want layers or not, but I would certainly at a certain point, okay, this layer I definitely don't need because I found another one that's gonna work Justus well for that. So cutting down the number of layers some people might consider renaming the layers to remind them. This is the layer that I'm working on that has the table on. This is the one that has the chair, all that kind of stuff. But that's kind of the way that I do it. So in this case, let's see where are table that we're working on? Is this one oops, wrong place? So that's really where I want to be working. So I would if I want to do that kind of shadow thing Adul air below and sample that kind of color cause it's not. I would have my first in most people's intentions. Well, it's a shadow paint with black, but if I I drop it is actually a really dark brown, so I want to try to be simulating that with my pink brush. Let's not use that brush, though. Go back to soft as a brush and let's look at our brush settings. I think I still have tensions work and not to repeat the same thing over again. But same deal smart objects. So Aiken blur it and go back and look at it later on. One of the things that that I think we've talked about this through various sessions. Is that that whole concept of looking at something through fresh eyes? So my approach on a project, this is to go through one kind of passive everything and say, Let me at least get to the point where I know on this layer I'm asking this much on this layer. I'm asking that part in here. I'm gonna add a shadow. It's not great yet, but it's a good start and then making sure that you're saving things or making them smart object or smart filters so that once you've saved everything, then you can come back and later and start toe, look at and say, Okay, what else do I need to do? What other parts do I need? Toe fix in this, Okay. For example, down here obviously got blocks of wood in there, so I don't want them is the whole idea is I want this chair to really be looking like it's tipping backwards. So on the mask, start painting. Now, this is a little trickier, because again, there's no shadow at all from the Cherokees. I took it out completely so that we're seeing the original floor, but I probably due in a couple steps, right? First mask out the floor or the little blocks. Excuse me completely and then start looking at the existing shadows there on putting those back in again. So if you are lucky enoughto have someone helping you, which I try to do, the whole shoot is if I didn't the first time I did this, I only thought afterwards. Ideally, what I should have done is taking a few shots, even if I did on a self timer by myself, where I held the chair in the same position and took out the blocks of wood. So that way the shadow would be cast exactly the same way. So there's quite often ways where you can kind of make your life a little simpler. So, um, I don't think we're gonna be able to go through every single step. That I would say, Well, these are all the things I would do because it would take some time. But you're kind of getting the idea, and it's really just some repetition of the same thing of saying. Get the layer in the orders that you want. You may have to do things like change the oh pass a little bit to see between these two layers, which is the one that I want, You know, that kind of thing. But it's just a matter of looking through and going. Okay, I still get on this layer of got a little bit of tape from we put on the shoe to make sure it wouldn't fly around. So looking at which layers the correct one. One thing that can help a little bit, especially when you have ah, bunch of layers. When you look in the layers panel at a first lance, there's a bunch that almost look the same because they were taken all from the same angle. So trying to make sure I am on the correct layer one way is to take a guess and then turn layers on and off ago. Is that the right one? And that certainly works. But if you have many of them and you're not sure if you have the move tool selected and you press command or control and click, it will automatically select whatever layer you're clicking on. So whenever I click somewhere, these are all the same layers because they're all in the same Cindy But if I click somewhere else, he announced it selected that layer that has the globe on it. So instead of me spending all my time kind of going Wait a minute. That a mind right layer. Before I start doing all this painting, there is a function in voter shops called Auto Select. And you can turn that on. I don't really like that because it means from now on it'll always be auto selecting things. And sometimes it ends up selecting the wrong layer or you miss by a pixel, and suddenly the wrong layer is selected. So personally, I prefer to do it selectively by just turning it on by only command control going. This is the layer I want to work on. If you have the move tool and you right click, it will pop up a list of all the layers that are available in that area. Now, having layers that are all have names like this. This might be a good reason to name your layers because seeing a pop up list like that really doesn't tell me much of anything at all. In this case, I want to work with this a little bit. So, um, so we're gonna be always having to think about a bunch of different factors. They're gonna make our life simpler. So in a case like this, and I'm not necessarily verbalizing this out loud all the time. But I'll tell you what's going on in my head the whole time I'm doing this is am I on the right layer? What? I'm about to do something. Should I be clicking on the layer or the mask, or should I add a mass because there isn't one. Then I go to use the tool. And when I click on the tool, I do a quick glance at the settings for that tool and say, Oh, wait, that's in overlay mode. That's not gonna work. So I used the phrase checklist all the time, which means before you do something, go through a quick checklist and think to yourself, I'm on the right layer. Are my tool settings correct? Do have the right size of brush. Maybe should be softer or harder, because what I realize is I was spending a lot of time jumping in and doing things and then spending half my time undoing because I had the wrong settings, so I have to do it over again. So when I first started teaching photo shop, I develop this habit for my own use of as I was saying, and now I'm going to do this. I'm kind of going okay, that's good. Wrong setting. And I want to make sure that when I show it, it works properly. And then one day I realized I should do that all the time, because all the time when using follows up, there's so many factors that influence what you're doing. That checklist is a good thing to keep in their mind, to say, How can I make my life simpler by instead of undoing all the time? Then you're really doing because you're just saying those air that those settings are set correctly now use that tool, and of course, they will always be times where you'll forget to turn something on or offer. You have to undo it or whatever, but that's kind of the A key phrase for me is checklist to say, remind you, Do I have my tools set properly so that I can move on into the next step of doing something else? and again needles to say, As you can clearly see, I've been saving this on a regular basis I normally would worry more about. But since this is for demonstration purposes on Lee, I'm not as concerned as I normally would be. But I normally would mostly because if a certain point, you let's say I've got to this point I used used to use this term a whole lot more. But it's probably worth revisiting is when people would ask me questions like, Well, when you're working, how often do you save? And of course, my first answer is not enough and secondly is it will depends. And I'm doing something really basic I might not need to say, but something like this I probably want to save more regularly. However, this is gonna sound weird to say this at first. Don't save too quickly. What I mean by that is, if you're saying I'm gonna try something, you do six steps and you save it. And then two minutes later go. I should have done that. Hopefully have done it a nondestructive way. But if you even if you did, you may self to feel like you have to go backwards. So there's this wonderful command Photoshopped called Revert and it used to be many years ago. It was actually called Revert to saved because that's what revert means revert to the last time you saved the document. So if you've done steps ago, this is what I would call a milestone where I'm like, I really like this. I'm going to save it. Then I'll do another 10 minutes of experimenting knowing I could either save it or go okay, that didn't work at all revert to the last time I saved it. And that used to be, ah, kind of a daily approach. Me was always thinking, OK, if I'm gonna experiment And part of that, frankly was because that was before the days of all this smartness and flexible this that we now have, so you'd have to worry more about it. But it's still not a bad theory to say before you just jump in and be constantly saving. Think about the fact that sometimes when you say especially you save and close, that's pretty much your document. Photo shop does have the aud ability, which is very nice. Most of the time that if you save and do three more things in your step backwards, you can step backwards before you saved so you can actually go back. But if you save and close it, then you're kind of out of luck now. The other day we talked a little bit about the role of the history panel. And my feeling is I don't use it as much as I used to, because the structure of my layers on the way that we work is going to give me that built in kind of ability to change my mind. Okay, that's going then. We also saw that feature you should with CS six and believe for the recovery time. Yes, CS six and the has that save a recovery file. So if you do forget, you do have an option Teoh to have that happen automatically, which I highly recommend that stood in the background of that corrective. I'm sorry that's done in the past on the background, so you don't hit after where you set that as a preference, and then it keeps working. And when you do hit save on a big file like this, it will Actually, there's actually a separate preference called saving background, which means it'll allow you to keep working on a different file while you're saving this one. Which could be a big help if you're tryingto juggle a couple of projects at the same time. Um, you want it there? Any questions, that air coming up, all we pause for a moment? Or of course, we always got the question. All right, so let's see. Um, Sam Cox asks, Even when you use a tripod, like with the book, Do you Do you always do auto align layers just to make sure your square on I usually do just because I mean, in theory, the whole point of a tripod is there should be any reason for that. But what will likely happen? Probably most the time. He should do auto long line layers and go OK, looks the same. I mean, that's what should happen ideally, but just in case it be not a bad idea to do that just to make sure and again that's presupposing. I made sure that in all the photographs I took, I still end up with one where that little bookshelf was there, so it had something consistent. Throat everything because that's part of what it looks for is consistent elements that can align. That makes it life a lot, a lot simpler. Okay, we have a question from Elaine in Oregon State's I am not a professional photographer, but I'm curious as to how cost effects of cost effective it would be to provide a composite of this type to a customer. Well, I think one way to look at it is from from the client's perspective, if you do a portrait session with someone outdoors in a nice you know, park, they're gonna have a nice photo of them with a tree and nice, you know, shrubbery or whatever it is around. Okay, And most people's expectations be I would pay X dollars for that. And X is usually somewhat low because they're thinking in their mind. Well, my Uncle Joe could do that because he has a nice camera. So charging could be be difficult to say. Why you charging $100 for this when someone else is saying 12 or whatever the numbers are, whereas ah composite, especially one that the person the subject knows took more time and effort to me. It's that's where the effectiveness comes in. As you can say, here's this art piece I'm gonna create for you when you word it as a specialty project or something that generates the thought right in their head is this is not standard, you know, and and some for times I know even go in right up front, saying, Would you like just a standard portrait? Or and then they have some phrase for something that describes something more. They don't necessarily call it compositing because the client doesn't know what that means, what they use. Terms like art or artistic or, you know, something that implies I'm going to create something for you, that s'more than just a portrait. I know people who are charging quite a bit more for that, and then they're saying, Oh, and would you like it? Is this giant canvas size print for another X Dollars? And people are doing that because it's not every day portrait that again, person with camera and a little bit like I photo or something going and I can do that cool. And Bonnie, Pfizer asks, Would you use layer calms to help you get from save to save you Could I think what you'd have to do is kind of think about the logistics of it. I think in this case, honestly, the best thing I would do is go in and rename all the layers. So it's easy. From an organizational standpoint, Layer comes to me. Is mawr useful when you're trying to look at different variations, like maybe you get to the point where you've narrowed it down to like, I really like these three shots of her on the chair reading the book, and I'm gonna want to compare them. Maybe that's where Layer calms could help you, but at the same time, that could just be a simple is just for the in that case, showing and hiding those layers or choosing between them. So a couple of other things that weaken consider along the way. So here's the layer that I have that has the camera in it, and I started to work on this, and I kind of got distracted, went off on another path. So let's talk about a little bit because I kind of like the way that the camera is starting to float in space a little bit, but the the I lost track of the the What's that thing called straps? I just lost my train so that so I want to be able to play with it. So one of the things we can do is if you press the backslash key, it shows the layer mask and kind of this quick mask type of you. Now, in this case, it's much brighter than I'm used to, a much otherwise doing. That must be a setting that I don't have normally turned on minds. I'll see if, like, this will just will think that's adjusted, but probably not. Okay, so never mind. Normally on when I do, it's on my machine. I can. When I do that, I see the color overlay. But now I can more easily see the rest of the strap. In this case, this overlay. It's so dark that it's kind of hard to see, so Plan B would be to temporarily hide the layer mask and then go in and make at least a rough selection. I'm not going to be trying be 100%. Police like this will give me an idea of where it ISS so not trying to be perfectly accurate. All I'm trying to do is now when I go back to this mask, I can fill that with white. That's right. I feel that with white, he said. But make sure you click on the mask first. Hello, It's weird. Some reason suddenly it's not cooperating with me. Why won't let me click on the mask? Alrighty, then. That's odd. I'm not sure what's causing me grief here. Normally, I should be able to now that it made that little selection click on the mask and then fill it. But for some reason, it's just do it. Okay, so here gives me an opportunity to show. Explain the weirdest keyboard shortcut in the history of keyboard shortcuts. But in this case, it's saved me because for some reason I was not letting me click on the mask. So normally, when you're working on a layer and a mask, you have to either click on the layer or click on the Mass to select it. Still don't know why it's not letting me do it, but there is a keyboard shortcut, thankfully, so it is about the witness combination. So the keyboard shortcut to activate the layer mask that's associated with the later I'm working on is commander control. Forward slash help sorry and wrong one again. These times I'll get it right. You're being so helpful. So here's the weirdest keyboard shortcut in the world. The keyboard shortcut to activate the mask is command or control backslash, and now the layer is a layer masses selected. Now what's weird is, as you would probably expect because the keyboard shortcut to select the mask is Commander control. Backslash, as you probably expect to select the layers, command control, too, because, you know, too and back slash they go together like salt and mustard. Now it's like so I'm not sure where that came from, but that's about the hardest shortcut to remember, because I can't have yet to see any relationship between two and backslash. But anyway, at least that allows me in this case, to get what I really wanted was to Phil enough on this layer that it gave me something to start with. So now I can kind of see where that strap is and keep working. Okay, so there's always more in one way toe solve something. Um, all right, so this layer, which is See where we're out on that one. Hope Tool. Okay, so that's this layer down here, this one. I can definitely see the little wire there, So that would be another case of, you know, look at it and say and you can see here. So here's a good example going back that question of auto align layers look at the difference. You can see things are shifting ever so slightly. So if we could rewind the tape that I would have done auto align layers because they're still just enough movement that it's not gonna be perfectly aligned as much as I would like. But as we said before, this is just to kind of give you the idea of what we're aiming for here. Now I can just go in and find the little errors ready to get rid of that wire on that layer so that it looks like that thing is hanging, not hanging. Sorry, but just kind of floating. And then look for any other elements like that. Now, as you're going through, this is starting toe. Get the idea of what, as we were clearly, there's lots still to be done in terms of where I'm putting things. I also realize now that the hard work I did of putting the book in there I've covered up with this layer. So I want to make sure just let's just fix that here, okay? At least we got our little sign on the wall back the way it was. The biggest issue I'm finding in this case is that that the whole shadow part is not matching up. And this is where, even though it would take longer to set up the document, it might have been wise for me to not do that load files in the photo shop layers, but keep each one of these smart because right now, for example, around that globe where it's darker, that's I'm gonna have to try to blend that in better, because the globe is casting a bit of a shadow. So if the globe's not there, there's no shadow. But since it is there and supposed to be tilted, I need toe play with that little more. So I would be looking at that area and say, Can I mask that better and or could I just duplicate that same color like I dropped the color and paint a little bit. So that's probably the best way to do. To think about it and you have to make decision. Which method are you going to use Mawr to be working? So what a certain point. Now, let's actually say this so we can talk about this a bit, and I talked about this repeatedly, but I want to make sure this is also ingrained in people's minds. Is this is my working copy? This is my master copy. That's the one that I want to be able to keep editing because it's time for me to stop working on this for a while and work on some other project. Perhaps so I'm gonna call it something. PSD include layers if I have any channels, which would be, for example, if I've created masks or saved a selection as a channel, I want to include everything. And as we talked about the other day to answer the question that someone's bound to ask, could I save it? Is tiff. Yes, you could preserve all these things but began to reiterate my kind of thought process on that I prefer to use dot PSD Because when I see the extension dot psd, that tells me a quick lance. This is my layered file, and anything else is my non layered file, my flattened version of it. So that's just a personal preference. But my worry is when people say I prefer to use tiff, that's fine. But then how do you know what a quick glance does this top tiff file have layers or not? And that could lead you into some potential challenges. From a technical standpoint, there are some advantages to working with tiff files. Um, file size is one of them, but that's my biggest concern is someone would look at and go. I really don't know by looking at this. Is this a tiff file? I mean, does it have layers or not? Because you can't really tell from the name. So for me, work habits became PSD is my layered file. Um, the anything else is a copy that I've created. We've got a handful of questions, actually, over the last four days. If there is a Dave Cross naming convention that you would suggest to the students out there, you know, for templates, for me, STS for that kind of my final work well and kind of, but it mean it's about as rudimentary as it possibly could be. When I look in a folder, I'm working on all my original raw files of In either, Say whatever the raw extension or DMG. If you like to convert your files a DMG and then in that folder all have X number of files. That's are just some name dot psd, whatever that name is that again, As we just said, that's my master file and what I typically do because quite often, if I'm doing, say, have done a portrait shoot for someone and I want to give them 12 photos. I'll have 12 files called something like Jen one dot psd and a progression of those. And then I use that image processor command at the end to create Jay Peak versions. So if we were to look inside one of my folders, you would see a bunch of raw files, a handful of PSD files on a folder that says J Peg because image processor automatically creates the J Peg folder and then inside. That would be the quote final because it's never really final But at least it's the flattened copy. That's same name dot j pic. So when I search for a file, if I remember, I called it Jen. When I search for that, it will show me. Well, there's a couple. There's one that says Gen one dot psd and jen one dot jp g. And I know at a glance without question, this is the one That's my master copy. That's where I have my smart object adjustment layer mask, whatever it might be. And frankly, it could be hardly anything it could be. I added the layer and did too little bits of spot healing. But I still wanna have that just in case. So then that's That's what my PSD might contain. My PC could also be one that has layers, not that common, but it could. But that's that's my approach to doing it. Um, I don't bother ever putting a name on something to put the word template, because, to me, that should in a sense, go without saying, because if you save a multi layered PSD file with smart objects, smart filters, it's a template. Whether you call it that or not. Now, some people might decide to. That's what reminds them when they go looking for it. Oh, there's that file I save specifically to act as a template, but that's more of a personal choice. The key thing to remember is some other adobe programs, like Illustrator and in design. There actually is a command called Savers template and the extension changes. So it actually says, like, a I t. Is adobe OCR template. So quick plans. You know, this is a specific thing called a template and the case of in design, and automatically opens an untitled copy of your template. That's not what Photoshopped does not want anyone to think. Oh, now I can work just the same way. No, it's just thinking of it as a template and using it like a reusable template. But you have to take a much greater sense of responsibility of saying, if I this fire is gonna be my template than when I bring in new content, I need to save under a different name. So I remember that I'm keeping my ongoing template and then saving in some other file formats. Thank you. Okay. All right. So let's leave this for a second or two. Um, just because I want to show you the original that I was working on somewhere in here take me a second to find I should have done a better job of marking which one this is. So let's explore. How do you find a file when you have many files in your folder and you're trying to find the right one? All kidding aside, this is one of my favorite features of of Bridge is I've got a whole bunch of files in here that we're all the shots that I took. And I know somewhere in between all of these is one or more PSD files that air my layered versions of it. And because I had these air sorted in a different order, I can't find them. But I love this feature over here. Enbridge. It says filter. And I can say on Lee, show me the photo shop files. So that way, just by clicking that little filter check box, it says, Don't show me every type of file on Lee. Show me the PSD files Now the side. This is actually really cool because it only it also looks through and it's gonna find what have ratings or what don't. You can also look for key words. You can also look for landscape orientation versus portrait orientation. So if you don't a whole photo shoot, you say I only need to choose between the photos that are portrait orientation. That's one of the filter options in here. So I think this is the one I was actually looking for. Okay, good. So let's close this per second. So this was the version. I creating this as one of a kind of show you It's exactly the same structure. I didn't really do anything that differently Then we're talking about right now. It's the same concept of going through and saying, All right, I've got you know, the various layers. I'm building him up. There are parts where I've just clone different areas. Things like that poster in the back again is a smart object. So that Aiken, I want in this case, when I first did it, I felt like it was too obvious. It was kind of drawing your eye, so I had a very slight blur to it, so that it wasn't quite so evident. But as we looked through everything else you can see is adjustment layers, layers with masks, more layers with mass smart objects. So even though I created this some time ago, if I now look at and say the one thing about this I don't like is at least I know I can still go back in and continue to edit things and try all kinds of things because I can. That's that's the way its structure. So any time you have choices to make, could I just erase something off a layer? I could. But unless you're and see, here's the thing. I had a conversation with someone a while back and they said, and I started to say, I suppose if you're really sure you could hit delete, probably see for me I'm just happen. You really be sure, right at this moment, I'm sure, I think, But maybe two weeks from now, how do I know that I won't look back and go deleted that part? And I shouldn't and I don't have Where is that original photo? So for the slight amount of effort it takes to say, you know what, I'll just add a mast like your question. Second but look at this one layer like this whole layer. All there is is one little spot, and this one is even smaller. So I have this whole layer taken up pixel information just so I can mask and show this one little thing. But I'd rather do that. Then just erase everything else and then be kind of stuck where, as I'm looking at further, I want to tweak it and I can't because I've thrown away information. So sometimes it is kind of painful because that's taking up a lot of space to do that. But I'd rather do that than be that whole painted in a corner thing. I'm like, Oh gosh, I wish I I just wanted change that one thing. And now I can't because of the way that I created. That will invariably be the one piece that your client wants back. Exactly. It's guaranteed. So when you think there's no way that so let me tell you share with you everyone a little story that this is why I changed my approach, and that goes back a little bit in the history of photo shop, where, frankly, we were more concerned over file size because storage was not as big and everything else. So I did this magazine cover for an organization and they had sent me. I want to say 25 photographs and they said, Can you make, like, a collage of just all these different photographs? It doesn't matter which one to use. Just pick some of them. Probably like 10 or 12. So I went through and I chose on my scan them all because that was in the days of when people said send you photos. It was like they sent you photos. And of course, some were like and Oh, and you can if you can use this particular one, that and make that the biggest. And of course, the photo was this big was like, That's great. Thank you. So anyway, long story is getting shorter. I scanned them all in. I started putting in. This is the probably Photoshopped four or five ish days where file storage was a concern and I did all this work with no layering and masking. And it was the early days of masking all this stuff, and I finally got a final version and I sent them the J peg flattened version. I kept my own copy and with layers and send it to them and they said, Oh, gosh, that's great We're so happy, blah, blah, blah So then, a few days later, I was like, Kash, that file is so huge. I mean, it's probably like, you know, 40 megs, which today we'd laugh and go. That's one raw file what you're talking about. But back then, when my entire hard drive was 80 megabytes, that was huge. So I was like, Lord and my my psych West cartridge remember those things? 44 megabytes was just a little too small, and I was like So I thought, I guess I could I want to keep this. I suppose I could flatten it because that would save room something. So I picked up the phone. I said, So remember that cover? It's ready. It's done 100%. Yes, 100%. I was like, Are you sure? And they said, absolutely, and I said, Now is there any chance of you wanting me to change it later or reuse it? They said, No, because once you do one cover, we never want one the same again and I must have asked 10 different ways. Variations are Are you certain? Are you sure? And against my own better judgement Because I was just so worried about file size. And this is after several back and forth conversations. I flattened it and saved it. Fair enough. No problem. They didn't come back to me until six months later, and they said this has never happened before. But that magazine, that issue was so popular, we're going to reprint it. And since we are, can you just change these couple of things? And I was like, No, they were like, No, just just you know, we just need you recreate the entire thing, looking at a flattened version, trying to go. Okay, that layer is over here now. It must be down. It was the absolute most nightmarish thing ever and that from that day forward, I never flattened again. Even if no matter how certain I was, I was like, How would can you ever be sure? And then, of course, the good news was storage became bigger and cheaper, So then it became less of an issue. But it still worries me when I hear people say you have it, the file size getting so big. I mean, the only time I worry about that is if you're getting all these error messages or it's so big is saying I can't save it because it is possible to get a file it so big that even photo cycles now I'm sorry. So okay, that's different. That if your name's Bert Monroy and you create things that are ridiculously enormous that have 4000 layers in it that he weren't lives in a different world. He actually he was that photo shop role last week. Last week, and he's so funny is a great Have you ever have. You haven't seen his work. You're checking out. He's This guy's unbelievable. He builds things from scratch, like using a reference photograph, but he basically creates things. There's Burt Monroy. He's been at it for every wrote one of the first photo shop books ever, and he just illustrates something from scratch. He did an illustration of Times Square that took him. I would say four years, and it's like 30 feet long by four feet high, printed on this thing, and it's like just like, mind boggling amount of layers. So he's under starting a new project that he was showing me some of the initial work and he said, Well, so far, you know, it's pretty small. It's only like eight gig so far. I'm like So far it's on Lee Eight gigs. And I think I remember when my whole machine, like my whole computer, had an 80 Meg hard drive. And he's saying eight gigs like That's not like Wow. And then at the same time, I remember having a conversation with someone years ago talking about Web graphics and his complaint. Waas. I'm trying to make a small graphic for my website. It's huge. It's like 40 K I'm like, Wait, how can we both be having this conversation where one person thinks Huges 40 k cause they're worried about, you know, modem speed or something like that. So times have changed. But still, the bottom line of the whole point of that story is don't let file size be the reason you're flattening unless it's something to do with. I just can't get it toe work or it's slowing down so much on getting error messages. That's different. But if you're just talking day to day. I would hate toe throwaway flexibility if the only reason was, well, I'm worried. It's getting kind of big because flexibility the way I always say it is. Storage is cheap. Your time isn't so, if it's gonna take me, like in that case, that was I still remember, even though was many years ago, the heartache of recreating that same cover. It was painful the whole time. I was like, Oh, because I know what already done this and I wasn't getting They were saying, We'll give you an extra, like 50 bucks for you Just making these couple of changes because in their mind, it was a couple of changes and I couldn't justify No, I'm sorry. I have to build from scratch. So let me bill you the same out I did previously. That wouldn't fly. So why would you want to take that chance? I mean, monetarily aside, it was just the whole time I was doing it. I was. I don't tend to use a lot of expletives, but in that case there are a lot of them flying around like it was so annoying and frustrating so that if I have to go and buy a stack of storage devices toe. Let me store everything that I will. And now I would take it a step further and say not just layers, but layers with mask with smart objects with everything else. It just it's gonna make the file size bigger. It will. But the payoff is enormous because now you can change anything and reuse it for other photographs or other projects, whatever it is. And if you do that, no one will ever ask you to. Exactly. That's a nice thing. It's like the umbrella it is. It's true. It's That's the backup plan is if you, you know, if you lose something the way to find us, go buy another one. So in this case of you, if you do keep all the layers and the chances are, they never will ask. But I'd rather have that just in case. So just to make sure because the question was asked, I probably should clarify the difference of how I would do this. Let me just cut down these choices a little bit between them. Say that's the one I want. So here's a little just as I do it always mentioned I've got I'm Enbridge. I've got that five star show five star filtering thing going on. So as soon as I look between, for example, these two and say which one do I want? I think it's this one that on the other one, if I change to any other rating other than five star by President, command or control on the number than it disappears because I'm on Lee showing files that have the five stars. So that's way I concert toe narrow down my choice a little bit about how many of these do I really need to be showing? Do the photos Enbridge carry this rating that you give them in light room? Do they see that? I That's a good question. I want to say yes, but I'm not. Could be a matter data thing. I think it is, but yeah, yeah, I don't think labels air more unique. I think five star ratings are should So um OK, so here's all these raw files again now, two things to keep in mind. Let's first of all, do the load files into Photoshopped layers so we can kind of revisit what I should have done the first time because I want people to see this step. Just so we're not just talking about it brings them all in there and I want to select all my layers. I just have the top layer clicked a ship, click on the bottom and then auto align layers have the Onley downside auto line layers, unfortunately, and I wish this was not The case is you cannot auto line layers if they're smart objects that doesn't see them. Remember, though, the way this function work is it's comparing pixels, and in smart objects, you're not really looking at the pixels. They're just thes containers. So that's the one downside of If I did try to keep everything smart than I would lose this ability to do it. That auto align layers. Now you can see I could see already something must have moved cause I'm seeing a little tiny hair of transparency. So that does answer the question that even though I was on the tripod, I was trying to be fairly careful. There clearly was some movement happening because there needed to be a slight movement between all. So now if I started doing the same kind of masking everything should line up better. The other option, which I haven't shown before. So that's how can I do this easily? This is gonna be more challenging. Well, we'll try. Okay, so there is also a command and photo shop. It's actually a script that says Load files into Stack, which is similar. The problem that I find with it is that unfortunately, it's doing things by file name, so it's gonna be a little trickier to try and find them. Of course, it won't show me star rating. And I did them by date, modifying maybe. Yeah, not so much. Okay, so assuming for a moment that I had actually written down the numbers of the ones that I want, which I haven't done, but I'll show you the idea behind it is let's pretend that I know exactly which files that I want to say. These are the ones I would like you to load into a stack. So when I hit open, it goes into this little list. So this point, if I did nothing else this is the same as load files into Photoshopped. Layers from Bridge other than bridge has the advantage of being visual so But the reason why I could do this is it's got to interesting options. The bottom that you might choose to do in the 1st 1 is attempt to automatically align them. So that means instead of doing it in two steps of saying, importers layers, then select along the auto line layers. This attempts to do it in one shot. And I particularly like the fact that it says attempt to doesn't say automatically, Alliance says. Attempt to which is giving it a bit of a fall back position in case it doesn't work and say, Well, I said I would try. And the other thing you could do is if you were bringing these in with the intention of some of those stack modes that are in the extended version, then you could also create a smart object of the mall after loading. But what this does, it just means it does two things at once. It will load them is layers, but then afterwards it will attempt to line them all up for you personally. Even though it takes an extra step. I still do the bridge method because I'm more visual going These are the ones that I want, as opposed to looking at file names and trying to figure it out from that. So it just it's two ways to get to the same end result. And of course, that's the perfect one to include, because that's exactly the one I want me on the chair, not jam. He has like his lane. I'm like, I'm sorry. There is potential. We take out those light stands, it could turn that, and this could be a caption contest photo or something like that. So the other thing to consider is how important in a case like this would it be to keep everything smart? And this is where we have to away a bit of a balancing act that I sort of mentioned in passing a second ago if I wanted to combine all these in in tow one stack of layers, but keep them a smart my only real choice would be toe open them all and then go drag, drag, drag, drag, drag and move them in myself. So the good news is, then each layer would still be a camera smart object. So that's the good news, and that could be very helpful. But as I mentioned in passing, and I want to make sure people wait a balance between the pros and cons, the downside is if you have all these cameras, smart objects, auto align, layers is not available. So then there could be that chance of things being slightly off because you can't just do that auto align thing so that that's not an easy one to answer. That's more of a personal preferences, which is more important to you, I would say, because I'm going to be using layer master high portions of layers. I'd rather in this rare, rare case, give up the smart object ability so that I can auto align them and know when I go to clone or excuse me, mask one part out that the underlying layer is perfectly. They're not slightly off because when I first started building, the first example is I didn't do that. I saw several places where the shelf wasn't exactly lined up in that kind of somewhat defeats the purpose of setting up this whole kind of shooters to do that kind of thing,