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Lesson Info

Flexibility & Creativity

the idea behind this class came up. I mean, I've been teaching this kind of stuff bits and pieces for quite a while. But I had a conversation with a couple of photographers about a year ago and it was interesting conversations. I think it's This is a situation that a lot of photographers face and I talked a little bit yesterday, but I want to reiterate where this all came from. And their comment was today. Anyone with a bit of money could go on by a good camera and light room for whatever like themselves for $99 say, OK, I'm a professional. So how as a professional that invest all this time and effort, do I compete with that guy that then says, Oh, I'll, I'll do your wedding for $200 or all do your portrait for $99 give you all the images on desk. So my immediate reaction I said photo shop and they kind of went huh? And I was like, Well, think about this way. Photoshopped costs a lot more than light room, so it's an investment to get, and it's certainly investment toe learn. But if you...

get better at it and see what it's possible to do creatively with it. Then all of a sudden you can distinguish yourself because instead of just taking portrait's and making them look nice and light room, you can do this kind of thing where saying I'm gonna build a portrait from nothing. I'm gonna take multiple photos with the intent of using Photoshopped So it's viewing Photoshopped differently. Instead of saying it's the tool, I'm going to apply levels and do the little tweaks. Its How can I do things and Photoshopped that I couldn't do in camera alone? And I always quickly add the fact that I'm not in any way saying so. Therefore, don't care about getting it right in the camera because that's still valid. There's no question you want to spend as little time in Photoshopped from that respect, but what I'm saying is this is viewing Photoshopped differently. It's using it in concert with your camera to say I'm gonna take photos with the express intent of taking a photo shop to make images that wouldn't otherwise exist compositing as a huge thing these days. High school students, seniors love taking a photo means one thing to go to the junk yard and pose in front of that old truck. But if you could put them somewhere that's related to their passion or something, that's a very different thing. So shoot a bunch of backgrounds when you're traveling around and you can say to your local students, Oh, you're you want to be a dancer? How about you stand in front of Broadway or whatever it might be? And that's kind of the thought processes. Looking at Photo Shop is something to offer products and artwork and things that average Joe with light room couldn't do. So that's that's kind of what motivated this class. And I when I realized that I thought I've been sort of independently teaching these things for quite a few years, would never really thought of it in that way of saying I could make money with photo shop because I'm gonna add more products that for my offerings and also again ones, that average person that has a Cameron light room wouldn't be able to do so. That's kind of the thought process. Um, I fully support the concept of get it right in the camera, although As I said yesterday, I have my own slight variation that where I say, get it the way you like in the camera because technically, I want to get it perfectly correct. But in some cases when were no, we're going to photo shop. I wanna get the photos right in the sense of prepared to make it easier and Photoshopped. So when we do a couple of photo shoots one today and one tomorrow we'll talk more about how I would set up the photo shoot to make my life easier. And Photoshopped show a couple of examples on how to do that. The first thing I want to do in this opening class was to kind of review some of the key aspects of yesterday, which is working with flexibility, and we're gonna kind of build that into one of the reasons toe work with flexibilities that helped you be more creative. But just in general, how do we do things in Photoshopped to make our life simpler? And a lot of that is working with flexible methods. So I'm not going to cover, of course, everything we talked about in the last two days, but kind of the key points that just to say, If you were jumping in right now, didn't watch the last two days, then here's a few key points, and the 1st 1 I always start off with is when I have a photograph that I want to adjust. I have this whole menu called adjustments, and I would suggest you not use it at all because this to me, I would be happy if this said destructive adjustments. And right away people like what destructive? That doesn't sound good because it isn't. If you go in here and say I'm going toe, adjust the levels of this image and I'm gonna overdo it so you can see the point So I make a horribly bad adjustment because my eyes aren't quite awake this morning and I click, OK, and if I saved it, I'm not going to. But if I did, that would be my new permanent image because I didn't do anything to give myself a backup plan. And some people think, Well, it's OK. I can just go back toe levels and readjusted Well, here's the thing. You ever see this Chart Minmetals called a history? Graham and I always say if you see a history, it looks like that. Imagine says good luck right there in big letters because the chances of you adjusting that back again there's nothing to work with, so that would just be bad on various levels. So in comparison, I would instantly go to this menu, which are the adjustment layers. Now there is a panel in CSX called adjustments that has a little icons, so you can also get to adjustment layers. That way, I find out it takes me longer. Have to go with with What's that? Oh, that shall mentor. So the little icon still don't resonate with me yet. So I end up just as a habit going to this pop up menus and I can just read their names. It's a lot easier. So when I goto levels, you'll notice right away. Two very important things happen. First of all, the traditional old Levels dialog box, it actually pops up in this floating dialog box, which generally overlaps your photograph. So half the time you spend moving it out of the way to gonna go has that look and you're trying to see where things are. But the other really important thing to note about the levels adjustment layer and any adjustment or for that matter is there's one really important thing that's not in this dialog box. And that's an O. K. Button. So you don't move a slider and click. OK, you just move a slider and stop. So the way I look at it is Adjustment Layer is constantly in preview or is another way to look at it. Some people say it's unlimited undo because you're never like Oh well, I've finalized that. Now that only is true if I save this is a PSD file. If I then go save as JPEG and throw everything away, then I'm right back at square, one of not having a creditable, flexible version. So the nature of adjustment layers is the fact that you don't have to click OK, you can just leave them with whatever current settings ago. OK, I like that now I can move on and do something else, and that gives us a lot of opportunities, not the least of which is to temporarily adjust something so you can see better what you're doing. For example, to make a selection or at a mask, and then you can always put it back later. If you have done it through, the adjustment menu would be much harder to work backwards that way. So that's the first part of it. The second part of adjustment there is it has this wonderful built in ability to mask your adjustment, to say, I don't really want to adjust this area. So not that I would want to make an adjustment this dramatic anyway. But just for the purpose of demonstration, I say I don't really like what it's done to the sky. So I clicked on the mask that's associated with this adjustment layer I take. My paintbrush is in the bracket key to make a little bigger and wherever I paint will say. But don't apply the adjustment in this area. Obviously, this is still doesn't look great because we over adjusted everything. But this is kind of the idea where it lets you do that kind of adjustment and then pull it back in certain areas. Now you can do that in light room. You can do that in camera raw with adjustment brushes, but frankly, I think this is still a little better and more accurate. The adjustment capabilities of light room and camera are good, but photo shop is better. In my opinion, just give me mawr control, not the least of which is in photo shop. I could use a selection tool to, say select this area and painted black, which is not something you can do in any other software as easily. So here's an example of how I might use this in a practical way. So I look at this photograph and I'm thinking, I want to change the color of this covered bridge just a little bit. Not a huge dramatic change, but the little one. So if I went in here at an adjustment layer like hue, saturation and made a very slight, huge change, but then think, But I only want toe affect this one area, it's hard to see where I'm asking, because the differences so subtle that I'd be zooming in going, I can't really tell. So one of my approaches in this whole working with flexibility idea is to always have the words end up with in your head. So I want to end up with the bridge looking slightly different. But what I would do to make my life easier is something like this where I'd make ridiculously over the top adjustment and then I'll take the layer mask and all they want to do is paint the these areas. So whenever you look at the layer mask, White reveals the adjustment layer, and black hides it well. In this case, I want most of it to be hidden, so it would take me much longer to paint 3/4 of it with black. So instead, it makes better sense to invert the mask. Commander control, I say hide the whole thing and then paint with white on the areas I want to reveal. So any time you're looking at how much you want to mask its sometimes easier to say, make it all black and then paint back in with white. But imagine for a moment I'd still made that subtle little change. I'd be painting going. I can't even tell of him in the right area where here it's pretty darn obvious, because the color is so dramatically over the top and ridiculously ugly. So this way and I'm doing this obviously really quickly, you do it much more accurately and carefully. And once you say okay, that looks pretty good. Then you go back to just say OK, now let's pull it back to a more reasonable amount So the difference is really subtle, but I took advantage of the adjustment layer to make my life easier. And I've watched people that tweak at a color a little bit and then zoom into 4000% with going pixel by pixel trying to get it, because that's the way they can see what they're doing and my response to see You could do it that way. But that's the long way. This is much easier is overdue. It change the color dramatically, make it black and white, do something that's over the top different. So it's easier to see what you're doing while you're masking. Then once you're happy, pull the numbers back to a more reasonable place, and I started doing that years ago, and I wish there was a way where you could have a timer that says just saved another eight minutes because over the years, every time I've done this, I know it saved me time because in the past I would have been the guy zooming and really close going. Let me get all that little detail, but I can barely see. So any time you can make your life easier by taking advantage of the flexible nature If I once we start getting mawr into the being creative side, this is the same ideas that I'm doing things in a flexible way. So I can try two or three things and then go, Yeah, I'm not sure I want I want to pull some of those back a little bit, whereas if you just jump in and go levels que saturation and do it directly. Everything you do is very permanent now, just for a point of comparison, because there is another method some people use and this is this is OK. This is better than working directly on the background layer. But to my mind is still has one disadvantage. When I first started using photo shop with layers very quickly, I realized Rule Number one was duplicate the background layer. Don't ever work on the background layer, duplicate the background. So what I used to do was duplicate the background layer and then I would do, for example, let's just do the same thing hue saturation to this copy. But again, the problem is I'm having to do it directly. And when I click OK, it's gonna adjust this layer if I come back tomorrow. I wish I hadn't done that. There's nowhere to click to say, redo the adjustment. My only option would be delete that layer and try again, which is OK, But why wouldn't you just take it a step further and say Don't duplicate the layer, Just use an adjustment layer. It has the equivalent, but is better because then you can click on and right up there in the adjustment panel. It says, Here are the settings The last time you left this document, so now I can adjust it. Okay. And the other example that is will see is that when you have adjustment layers, you can. Then they're vory dragon. Drop a ball so you can say I have three other photos. I want to use that same look. Let me just drag that from one to the other instead of trying toe what I used to do. And I'm sure none of you ever have done. This is where you're adding an adjustment. OK, 47. Like you write down whatever value so you can use it again later on. I was like, Yeah, you could do that or you just go drag and drop And then it's like, Look, it's already there. So there's mold, always multiple ways to things and Photoshopped. But the whole purpose of our discussion here is to say, How can I make my life easier? How can I make things that are reusable? And one of the discussions we often have about people say, You know, I I hear all the time. People say Make sure you work non destructively, and I realized a couple years ago no one was saying why they were just saying Use. It worked on the side of your like, okay, they did. But then we're not exactly sure why. And the main reason was in case you change your mind. And that's certainly one reason, but my other important reasons so I can use it elsewhere, because if I've already done a certain effect that took me 10 minutes to create, I'd much rather dragon drop another photograph and tweak it, then start scratch every time and some people's concern. I think is, if you reuse the same elements all the time, your photographs will look exactly the same. And they don't have to, because when you dragon adjustment layer from one photo to another, it just starts out at those settings, you can still tweak it. It's kind of like presets in light room and other places where there are presets is you don't have to just click the preset it apply settings. You can still adjust them, but it's saving you time. So it's the same kind of concept. I want anyone to think that a well, I'm kind of stuck with. You know, this is the way it looks. If you if you use these flexible methods, you can still adjust them. So here's one the examples that we showed in the first class. I won't do it again here. I think it's a good example of the idea of doing things in a flexible way. One of things that a lot of people like to do to their photos. To accentuate it is to add a vignette so that the outer edges air darker or perhaps later, and the way we used to do it, so don't write this part down because this is the old long way that you don't want to do unless again you charge by the hour, then do it this way, but don't actually that would be bad. So I add a new layer and I fill that layer with black. And then I go to take my marquee selection tools. I want a vignette roughly this big, but I don't want a hard edged vignette. I want to be soft edge. So we go to a command that hasn't changed in the entire history of Photo Shop, which is thief feather dialogue box, and it comes up with the numbers, says How much would you like to feather on the answers? I have no idea. There's no preview, so it's just kind of like and it's funny. I always say this. I watch people and they kind of do this, That kind of go, Um, I think 78 I'm like, How did you know that? Just like this number jumped into your head like I'm gonna try this cause in the past I tried it and it seemed to work pretty well and the click OK, and it's going alright. It's apparently done something, and then you hit, delete or backspace and you get this Nisman yet effect. It's OK, but the problem with it is there's a whole number of things that I can't change. If I decide I feathered too much, I have to go undo, undo, undo, undo or step backward. Step backwards to get to the point of doing that. And once I say them, close it, then there's definitely no ability to step backwards because it goes away so that method while it works, I'm not a big fan of it because A it's hard to change my mind and be It's very hard to reuse it in other photographs. So instead, this is my favorite method for one of my favorite methods for making that same vignette. Effect is using a curves adjustment layer, and even a lot of people are a little overwhelmed by curves, by the way, just as an important note, if anyone out there is is feeling overwhelmed by curves. Goto the videos for Photo Shop week, and we did a group discussion, a panel discussion. At one point, I asked Ben, Wilmore explained curves. He is like the master of explaining curves. So they're one of occurs. Watch that video. Go buy it just of that one thing. We've been talking about curves because it's like, Oh, everything suddenly makes sense. But if you don't understand curves, here's the beauty of how this works. All you have to do is click on this top part of this line, and as you drag it down, you'll see your photograph is getting darker. If you drag it down far enough, eventually it will look. Either it will look black or look very close to black. Either way. Then on my layer mask, it's automatically there with the adjustment layer. I make that marquee selection, but here's the difference. I'm not gonna feather it because we saw a moment ago when you choose Feather, you can't change your mind. I want to end up with it feathered. But I'm gonna take a different approach, and this is the one part that throws people off about this. You have to kind of think this through a little bit. I've made a curves adjustment to make my photograph look black, but this middle area, I don't want it to look black, so the way you make an area look not look black is you feel the layer mask with black. It's a great way to start the morning want, so painting with black on the layer mask hides the effect. In this case, it's just kind of an odd thing, because I'm saying fill with black so it doesn't look black. But if you look closely at the layer mask, you see this big black rectangle is what's causing that adjustment layer not to be visible. So now I'm almost there, but I still want that nice soft edge. So as of the last couple of versions of photo shop used to be called the Masks panel, now it's part of the properties panel, but it's still called Mask. But here's feather and this feather is awesome. The other feather is like, Yeah, this one's great because this is feather on a slider that you can change your mind about it any time. I'm not even looking at the numbers. Instead of typing in 78 I'm just moving the slider, looking at my photograph, going through there, and then I go. I was going to say 71.8, but what's up? So That's kind of the point is you condone. Move it around. Once again, any panels over here share a very important thing in common that there's no OK button. So if I save, this is a PSD, the next time I come back, it will stay at that feather amount. But if I, for example, do a test printing go, I don't like that I can still adjust it. So everything about this function is completely adjustable. I could hide it. Se never mind, didn't work at all. I could to say, Well, I think I want that to be not quite as dark or I could even go the other way and say, Or maybe I wanted to be white. So when I started thinking black, maybe later on I decide I want a white vignette, and that's just moving curves up or down to decide what it does, so that's kind of interesting. The amount of feather is remains edible and even the size of the vignette. That's just a shape on the layer mass. If I hit commander control tea for free transform, I can even make the vignette shape bigger or smaller, and when you do that the feather goes away temporarily until you decide to size them and hit, Enter the feathers reapplied. So that's what makes all of those things mawr Creditable is the fact that everything's done in this flexible way. But as an added bonus to that, now I have another photograph that's completely different, a different size, everything else. And I think I want that vignette effect on there, too. Instead of starting over again. Now, let me interrupt myself and say, And for those people are thinking this, yes, you could record an action to do some of these steps, but to me it's just a easy to say. Well, that's already they're going to do is make sure I'm clicking on this layer, take my move tool and drag and drop from one to the other. In this case, it doesn't look like anything's happened, because the mask is so much bigger that you can't see it. So I'd have to go free, transform and then fit in window to go. Yeah, that's a really big mass, but then I can just pull it down the size I want. Position it where I want hit enter in this case, probably want to change the feather. So you think about the alternative building it from scratch every time. That, to me, is one of the benefits of working non destructively or with flexibility. Is the repurpose ing part of it not just the I can change my mind on this one photograph, but I can do it on multiple photographs. So one of things that I started doing and we'll talk about more throughout the day is I realized I use that quite a bit. So I end up making a dummy. Photoshopped document has no photograph in it, and it has a vignette adjustment layer that's black. It has one that's white. It has a overlay mode thing I do with lens flare, and I just say that as effects. And then when I'm working on something, I just open that document and drag it in, because unfortunately, you can't say this as a preset that combination. But you in effect could by saying, sticking in a duck, multi layered document that I could just drag things in like I just did here. And you don't have to worry about scaling the mask up or down because its a mask and its feathery normally don't want to scale things bigger and photo shopped here. It doesn't matter, because if it comes in way too small, you just scale it larger Cut all is a rectangle that I blurred the edges anyway. So have any worry about what if the size don't match? So this is an example, something where it's served two purposes. For me, it's give me the ability to edit the original one, drag it over here. But then, if there's anything about, I don't like all of these settings again, I could go back to say, You know this one. Let's maybe I do want to make this one white instead of black or whatever. So you are apparently blue whatever you want. So the sky's the limit. By the way, if you ever want to really go crazy with Curves is my favorite fight. Like to call this the nuclear Holocaust? Look where it's just like everything goes wonky color, especially to turn the mask office just like so. That would be weird, but don't do that. But you could. That's the point. If you really want to experiment, say what happens if I do this you can because you're not stuck in any way. You can just say, Well, I'm gonna apply this and then see what happens. That's kind of one of our recurring themes. Today is as from a creativity standpoint, all bets are off today. You need to give yourself permission to experiment. Just try things. Because, as I said, yes, I remember what day it was. One of those last two days, I said, is not the best thing when you're experimenting is nothing. The worst thing that happens, you'll end up undoing. Or, as I said the other day, or flames will start pouring out of your laptop. But that's relatively where, So that's the whole point. Anytime you're working on something and you say I want to try something So, for example, let's just a that I make a new layer and I'm gonna try to kind of do some border thing that I remember seeing so I can't exactly remember how to do it. So I'm kind of thinking, Well, I got an experiment here is I'm gonna fill this with black and then add a stroke and let's make this some other colors so we can see it. I want to make it fairly large and let's put this inside. But a certain point I'm like, I don't really want the black there. I cash. There's some way I could do that But I remember what it is I actually do. But I'm just saying, if if you were experimenting, I don't remember how to do this When you're in a dialogue box like this, if you see, cancel and preview actually refer to those as permission to experiment because that's what it lets you do is try things. Well, what does this do? I don't know. So somewhere you're thinking there's some command that lets me get rid of the fill color of layer, but leave the layer style. What is that? So you start poking around and you try opacity and you know that's on it, cause it's making the stroke see through to I don't want that. So when you go, what's this other thing called Fill? Opacity? Oh, look at that. That's what I want, because what fill opacity does it says. Take away the fill, but leave the layer style so a very cool way to create effects where you want some effect like a frame or we've ever seen type where the type looks see through. But it has like a bevel in boss or drop shadow. That's how you do it at any color of text. Add the layer style and then put the fill opacity zero. But if you didn't weren't willing to go, what does this do? You wouldn't have discovered that. So any time you're in a dialog box, that, to me, is a big important part of it is to go Well, let's try this bed linen, boss, maybe chisel hard, change the size. And like that so much. What if I went into some one of these gloss contour things and I'm suggesting to you, this is quite literally, what you would do is just try it. You may end up going. I don't like any of that and cancelling it. But the more you experiment, I found that this has always worked for me, and a lot of other people told me the same thing is that as you're experimenting, you might have what some people call a happy accident where you go. Oh, I wasn't intending for that, but that's kind of neat. Let me make a note to myself for future use. I might use that it doesn't work for this project, but that's kind of opening up some thoughts in my head of for other I be ideas. So this point, we're just kind of talking more about the global sense of how do you set yourself up to get in the mindset of what happens if, and the advantage of all these things you can any time go either cancel or put things back and say, OK, that didn't work at all. Let me try something else. Same with blend mode. Same with everything else. If there is a long menu of choices and you don't know what they do, try it over time. The more you try things, the more you'll start to go. Oh, that's interesting concept. I can use that in different ways. The other important thing to do we need to talk about a little bit is the whole idea of setting yourself up to beam or non destructive and flexible when we're working of camera raw. So if I open a raw file, of course, it opens in camera. Since I'm starting in bridge And one of the things that I always talk about little bit is at first when you have a camera raw file, it allows you to make adjustments and then you hit open image. It comes in a photo shop. End of story. At that point, it's now in photo shop, and there's no connection whatsoever to camera raw. So if I decided I wanted to use the raw editing abilities of this, I'd have to pretty much close the file and start again, which is OK, but if I have already done several steps like, I've unlock this and used free transform and decided Teoh, make this smaller and start to do some effect and maybe add, I don't know. I'm just making this up on the fly here, but add some kind of a mass to it just cause I'm trying something crazy to see what happens. I do all of that, those steps and then I suddenly go. Oh, I wish I'd adjust that differently. That's a lot of steps to throw away, which, enforcing this case, I have to, because that's the way it's set up. So my suggestion is, if you're working with raw the very first time you open a camera raw file, you click on this little information looking thing down here, which should be a button adobe. I told them this many times since did me Unfortunately, workflow option. That's what should say or click here. I'm very important. One of the other should be the name of this. But when you click here, it opens this really important dialogue box which allows you to pick the color space and all those other important things. But for me, in our discussion today, most importantly of all open and Photoshopped smart objects, that means from now on, every time I open a raw file, it will go into Photoshopped as this smart object. What does that mean? Well, what it means is I can make an adjustment, open it and then do the same kind of things we were doing before. So we just it and then I decided to make some weird mask thing happening. Whatever it might be that so same kind of idea. But then at this stage ago, I don't think she's a little over exposed. All I have to do is double click on that camera. Raw, smart object comes right back to camera and now I can make further adjustments so I can change whatever I want when I click. OK, it updates back in photo shop, but still preserves everything else I've done so from on ed ability, flexibility standpoint, camera raw, smart objects to me are the best way to go because it gives me that back and forth between camera on photo shop so I can do my work in photo shop, but then take advantage of camera now. One thing I didn't mention the last couple of days that I think is worth mentioning. Someone sent me a note on my friends who is starting out in this world, he said. So I have a question for you that maybe you can address on creative life. Why, certainly? And he said, I get the whole so the flexibility of camera raw. But since you have like levels and curves adjustment layer, why not just adjust it there? I said, OK, good question. The answer is because Cameron's easier now imagine like when you open that curse dialog box. One of my good friends, Scott Kelby, has an interesting expression when you hope first open curves is like it's saying, I dare you adjust me because curves of this overwhelming, confusing thing we have no idea what to do. It's just like here. Imagine you've never seen this before. You think I want to change the exposure? Oh, look, there's an exposure slider. It's dark at one and its light on the other. I think I can figure that out. So that's why one of the main reasons why I like to do my global adjusting in camera raw or light room because it's easier. It's just looking sliders ago. Look, contrast white black. Whatever it is, it's just easier. So, yes, I still use levels. Justin Layers encouraged us, was occasionally for certain things, but as much as possible. I'm doing it in camera because it's just easier. And all you have to remember is to first check that little box once to go back and forth. And then, from then on, life becomes easier. Okay, so that's the camera raw side. One of the ways that we try to do things from a flexibility standpoint and photo shop is trying different filters and once again in the past, what I would have done is duplicate the background layer and apply the filter to that layer to give myself some options Instead. Now I use either this command convert for smart filters or right click over here and choose Convert to Smart Object is exactly the same thing, and what that does is it changes the rules a little bit now. This is not a standard pixel based layer, but as we talked great length yesterday about smart objects, I like to think of this as a container that's preserving the contents inside. It's a special magical container that has all these magical powers, and one of them is You will never actually adjust permanently the pixels inside. And one of the reasons for doing that is using filters. So let's do this as an example. I'm gonna go back so I have the top players, just a regular old layer for a second, and I decide I want to do some filter, whatever it might be like. I don't know, pixel ate crystallize that goes OK, this is awesome. That's what a great effect to do on someone's face just obliterated completely. This is the witness protection filter where you don't want to see someone's face so clearly you wouldn't actually do this. But to make the point, I have to make a decision and a certain point. I have to click. OK, and once I click OK, this new layer that's it's permanent way of looking because I did it directly to the pixels. I do exactly the same thing to this layer that I made smart. The difference is very obvious when I used the same settings and click OK, The differences. The filter shows up over here. So unlike regular filter, where your only real choices to throw away the layer and try something different here. This is an edit herbal filter, which means I can edit a whole bunch of different parts of it by nature of to do anything. This is just the way smart filters work. I think smart fellas, when the best things ever invented because I can experiment, I can reuse and repurpose and recycle them on other photographs and not have to remember, How did I do all that? But also from a creativity standpoint, as we'll see some examples, I think it's amazing. So here's examples of what I can do with a smart filter. I could hide it completely. It's OK that didn't work just a bad idea or kind of like it. But it's perhaps a little much. So I double click on it to say, Bring me back to the original settings so I can try something different, keeping in mind that is still overall, not a filter you'd want actually use. But I'm tryingto make obvious difference so you can see what's happening. Or and I always forget, I should say, and or cause you can do all these things together. If I come over to this side and double click on this little symbol, it has blending options for the filter, just like is if you took the filter duplicate ER took the background there. Excuse me. Duplicated applied the filter and then lowered the opacity and blend mode of the layer to see the background. This is the same thing, but easier and more creditable, so I can go in and say, What if I lower the opacity so this effect isn't quite so obvious? Or and or try? What if I only do this filter in some blend mode and see if I like that now still weird, but it's starting toe actually has some possibilities here, and I would never have discovered that I, frankly would never have even tried using the crystallize filter on a photograph. But now I might, because who knows? You may say I'm trying to make this look like a painting, and that's actually kind of a start. There is actually a paint painting filter that does a better job, but why not try it? And one of things that people discover is once you are willing to say OK, then apply a filter that I know out of the box is gonna look really bad. But I'm not stopping there. I'm going to say Apply the filter and then let's try some blend Moten opacity. Let's put it back for a second just so I can show you the other part. That's awesome of smart filters is this Which is the layer mask? The mask, I should say for the filter because, well, this allows me to do is say, overall, this crystallize filter looks really fantastic. We're gonna pretend it us. But then I decided I don't really want her face to be quite so obviously crystallized so wherever I paint with black that those areas will not be affected by the filter. So now we have the option of going in and saying, I like it in some areas, but not in others. The alternative, the way we used to do this would have been to make a selection first and only apply the filter to those areas which works. But again, it's very restrictive because then you can't change it easily after the fact or again, the whole duplicate the layer, apply the filler to the layer thing. But then, once again, you can't access the settings. That, to me, is the key point of smart filters is all these other methods we used to use would give us some form of flexibility, but the one thing it wouldn't do was allowed to go in two weeks later and go. I need to change the setting on that filter because it wasn't there. It was just a layer that two weeks ago you apply to filter to, and that's the way it looks now. So if I say this is a PSD and open this two weeks later, it looks just like that has smart filter. It has a mask. It has whatever settings I left on it in terms of opacity, everything else. And that's one of the ways that we start experimenting. Go well, what happens if Okay, the only thing you have to be aware of is there is only one mask for all the smart filter. So if you want to apply several smart filters on top each other, which is certainly very common, there's only to be one mask available to all of them. And sometimes you have toe work around that in some way just because of the nature of that's just the way it works. I don't think that's going to change anytime soon, just because of the complexity of having multiple masks and multiple smart filters. Okay, so that's kind of the main. Some of the main functions we're gonna use, because in every single case, the recurring theme is I'm never finished, and I could edit everything. So from a creativity stamp one, well, let me take a step back. From a productivity standpoint, it means I can do things more quickly because I can reuse things. But when we start moving, Maurin toe looking at from a creative standpoint. To me, this means I'm giving myself permission to try anything because at no point do I feel painted to acquire. I'm like, Okay, now in trouble. I think some other phrase will just say now I'm in trouble because I can't work back out of it. So any time you can not pink yourself into that corner, that's a better idea. And it may be that it's six months later. You think I did that affect once something to do with crystallize? Where was that? And you go looking back and kind of look at and go. Maybe I could build on that a little bit. So I know very few people that could actually legitimately say they've gone through every single filter and tried them. Or if they did, it was a year ago, so you can't remember. So unless you have some internal database in your brain to remember what all these filters do, I'd much rather be able to look at and go. How'd I do that? Oh, I use crystallized because one of the things I hear from people all the time in photo shop for years and years and years is I created something really cool. I went back and looked at it and when. I have no idea how I did that. And that's the worst feeling in the world because you want to recreate or make it look the same way. You have no idea how you did it. Now you do, because history goes away. When you save a file encloses, you can't look at the history panel. But as I said one of the last two days to me, the Layers panel with ease have methods is like your history. You can go back in many months later in reverse, engineer and go OK, so it's a camera smart object. I did crystallize and I painted on the filter and I change the blend mode to this, lowered the opacity that that's how he got that effect. So you can either reproduce the same effect or build on something a little bit different. But starting off from that standpoint, So my goal in this first session is not to give you. Here's a series of step by step instructions, say Here's a cool way to be creative because then that just means you're following instructions and I don't want you to fall instructions. I want you to embrace the concept of saying, How can I let my creative juices flow? By the way, I structure a document. So by saying smart objects, smart filters, adjustment layers, layer masks, all those flexible methods by nature also to me, open up creative possibilities because you have should have no worries of one. I want to go down this path 15 steps, and if I don't like it, I don't have to feel like have to start all over again. I can go back to this point and delete that layer or readjust this setting because every single aspect of it is adjustable. Does that make sense? So that's That's kind of with any questions that the FBI was riding right on top of it. Thank you. Hey, hey, Dave, Let's let's start. If you don't mind with talking a little bit about a few peel, people have asked Marty from Albuquerque and Canadian in Chicago. Asked about talked a little bit about light room, please and a C R and mostly light room. Can these conversions go back and forth? Okay, well, the bottom line is wherever your source image comes from in this discussion of creativity. I want to end up in photo shop because light room is a great program. It's got all these global adjustments, has got presets to do some pretty cool things. But to my mind, and this is my opinion that as soon as I start thinking in my head, I want to do things more selectively than light. Room is not the best tool. It has options to do things like adjustment brushes and so on. But right away I think I have filters. I have mass. I have things info shop that do the job better. So if you're a light, um, user, that's wonderful. You start in light room. If you go edit and Photoshopped as a smart object, it comes in with that. A similar kind of adjustment ability. The only difference is it doesn't go back to a light room. It goes to camera raw. Otherwise you would start in photo shop, Say edit in Photo shop is a smart object. It shows up in photo shop with that will smart object icon. You double click on it. It goes to camera raw, so then you're using the camera raw sliders, which are effectively the same thing as the developed sliders and light. Once you're finished and save it, then it saves back to wherever it came from in your light room catalogue. So it's it's kind of a similar round trip, not exactly the same, but similar enough that it shouldn't stop you from going. Why can't do this? Because I'm starting in late with. The only difference will be here when I'm double clicking is jumping right back to camera raw. But once you get the image into Photoshopped, then it's just a Nimitz where it came from originally. Now I'm doing things with these flexible methods, regardless of where the source, whether you use light room or camera raw or any of those other programs that people use doesn't matter because it's just that point. It's an image, or you take it right off your camera and say, I just took this photo is a J peg and I just bring it right in regardless of all that, get the image in and then start building on. If you have an image that's not a camera raw file, you can still bring into photo shop and immediately convert to a smart object. So then you can start off right away with that built in flexibility thing up in this example that you just showed here. Could you now turn this into another smart object and then apply filter and get another mask That way, that that is actually the most typical work around where you say I want to do something and I don't want to use this same mask. So, for example, if I went to sharpen this photograph, it would only sharpen certain areas because of that mask. So one of the things we talked about with our smart object section was You can take a smart object and make it into a smart object. So now we're putting a container inside a container, and now I could do whatever filter I want. Let's just do short mask, make it obvious what do? And now I've got a brand new mask and go. Okay, Now I need to start, you know, doing something different on this one. So, yes, that is the most common way. It's a little tricky the first time you do it, because now you're likely. Now I've got a container inside a container. We talked a little bit about the movie inception the other day, and that's kind of what this starts to get into. Dreams within dreams and trying to figure it out. So in this particular case, if I want to get back to that crystallize filter, I no longer see it. So the way we have to do that is double click to go back to edit the camera raw. Excuse me, the original smart object, and that's where I find the filter. So in this case, for example, say at this isn't working for me. Let's turn that off, close it and save it, and then this one will update. Now it's just doing on sharp ask. So any time you want to make any adjustments still there, I could bring it in and say, Well, maybe I should do that fade thing again. That would be better. Close it and save it. It's gonna update my other one. So we talked at great length about putting smart object inside of smart objects in the class yesterday, so if you didn't see that, that would perhaps be one of the reasons for getting yourself that class because it was probably 2/3 of the day. I think we talked about smart objects and how amazing they are and how they change everything. So we're talking. We're compressing, you know, 3/4 of a day into, like, 10 minutes of discussion on smart objects. So it's It's definitely the way to go for two reasons from productivity standpoint and speed, but also the whole Let me try things to see what happens. Yeah, with regards to a student starting out in photo shop with photo shop elements. How much is that stripped down from the full version? And are some of these available to well in elements? Some of them are the The way would say elements is a great starting out program. That probably does. I don't know, 65 75% of the main things. However, some of the key things, like in the latest version, I want to say and I don't John, if you know the answer, this I think photos up 11. They might have start to make the filters kind of smart, so they're not smart filters. They're kind of like intelligent filters. Maybe I don't know. So it's getting there. But like, for example, up until elements I want to say 10 you didn't have a layer mask, and to me, that's a key function. So that was the main reason I'd say sorry elements. I love most of what you do, but there was always a work around to do the equivalent of a mask, but it wasn't the same as having a layer mask. So each version, they sort of expand a little more. So for someone just starting out honestly to get started, light room and Photoshopped elements is a really nice combination because you do your global work in light room and then Photoshopped elements. You could do some of these things. But to my mind, the problems a certain point you go and I want to Oh, I can't do that at a certain point gonna run into. That's where you say that whatever elements sells for these $800 software is good, but I need to graduate to either the full version or the creative cloud to get access to the full version. But like you said, it's it's actually a very nice way when you're first starting out and you're not sure you want to commit to the cost of the full version. I would just warn people advance you'll very quickly go. Oh, roadblock. I just want to get to that point. I can't quite do it the way I want. Perfect. Well, we have one last question. I'm from a J. Is there a downside to making every photo a smart object before working on it? Glad you asked. Normally, when I talk about smart objects, I try and get that out of the way. First of all to say, Are there any downsides? And yes, one of them is Your file size gets larger and my response is I don't care. I stopped worrying about file size the number of years ago. I mean, I shouldn't say that I don't worry anywhere near as much as I used to. When my entire hard drive was megabytes, I had to think about. It was even. Gigabytes was like an 80 make hard drive, and I was like, I saved this file. That's half my hard drive. You know, it's funny how things changed my very first hard drive. My very first Macintosh didn't have a hard drive and I bought this 20 make external hardware that will last forever. Now one file wouldn't fit on there and photo shot. So it's all. Yeah, it was probably about this big. So that's that's the reality that so when I sort of facetiously say, I don't care about file size Realistically, I don't because everything I have my computers faster. The storage room is larger. You can buy external stores devices for very little cost today, So I would Let's put it this way, I would hate for hear someone say I tried smart on, so I couldn't use them because the files were so big. Well, that tells me then you need more ram or more storage. It's not smart objects fault, because smart objects are great, but you have to pay some admission fee to really take advantage of them. And I use a laptop, which is a generic. It's not a high fancy one. All I do is I put as much Ramez I could, and that helped, and I have a big, huge storage hard drive that I put big files on. But that way I know without exception, everything is accessible. So that's the one. The first downside to smart objects, the other one that usually throws people off is they convert a photo, a smart object. Then they go to use any tool it all like a painting tool or like the spot healing brush. And they get this symbol, which I always jokingly call it the I'm sorry, Dave, I can't let you do that simple. Which only makes sense I've ever watched 2001. But that symbol means you can't edit directly on top of the smart object of you. Try and edit it. It's going to say it must be Rast arised before proceeding, and it's saying you won't be able to read the contents you want to rast arise. A smart object. No, no, no, no, no. It's even like this, but it won't want Click here. Click here. No, don't do it. So the question becomes will. So what do I do then? How do I do it? Well, you've got two choices. If it's not a camera raw, smart object. This was a photograph I just opened is a J pay In this case, I can double click and open the contents in this case have to dig down to find our level. And now I could do my spot healing brush right on here, which would be be bad. I'm sorry. Shouldn't do things like that. So we'll just do something bad so you can see. So I've made some adjustment. Then I close and say that, and I am able to change now. Honestly, I wouldn't like to do that, because then I'm still working directly on the background layer. So either in the contents of the smart object or on the smart object itself, I would do this out at a blank layer and then with whatever tool I'm using, make sure it says sample all layers. And that way the results of whatever I do is on the blank layer. So you can either do that in the contents of the smart object or on the smart object itself. So when I eventually get back to my where I was it still saying, you can't do that, so at a blank layer, make sure it's a sample, all layers, and now you can do that, which, frankly, even before smart object was the way I would do all my retouching anyway. because I was always concerned about getting a result I didn't like. So using a blank layer infusing sample all layers is a better way to go anyway. So for most people, those were the two biggest drawbacks, too. Smart objects. So if we were able to rewind to, I don't know eight years ago, whenever I can remember when smart object came out now. But it's probably five or 67 years ago, I would have always said, without exception, open a document, duplicate the background layer. That was just my fact. I had a A script set up that as soon as I open a document, it would automatically duplicate the background layer for me. Now, I would say Open a document that's not already smart. Make it smart because that's the equivalent of do claim the background layer. But even better, because we have more options than if you duplicate. At some point you guys throw it away and start again. Making a smart object automatically gives us more choices, and people ask me this question all time. Do I always make my photographs into a smart object? And my answer is, I always consider it and most the time I do, but I hardly ever just go. Yeah, I'll just work on this. And because my philosophy is, you never know in your head you might be thinking, all I need to do is make this a little darker. Well, that's right at this moment in time. But what if two weeks or now you realize who I should have? I don't want it, so I just don't want to take that risk. I'd much rather say Why? Why not? There's to me. If that's the only downside toe, the whole smart object thing is a little bit bigger. File size. I'd much rather have that than find myself going out. Well, I can't do anything with that. I have to start over. I hate starting over. I never want to start over. Three. The the image. As a smart object, it automatically unlocks that it's not right long exact around because it's not conservative background, it's the background is inside as the contents. Okay, so when you look inside of it, then you're you'll see the traditional looking image. But yeah, that's the other thing. Is it automatically Seacon right away, jump right into things you normally have to unlock the layer or first. Sorry. Um, so what I found is, and I believe you said this in Photoshopped Week, but I just don't address it again. Um, making a smart object when I'm running an action, it doesn't see a background layer. Can you remind me how to do that? Right? The the problem with the thing with actions you have to always remember. His actions are very literal. So if you record in action where you clicked on the background layer from then on, it will say Select a layer called background. Well, if you have a smart object, is not called background anymore, so you have to figure out a way to work around it than most typical way is to. It's hard. If you only have one layer, that's a smart object is. Normally you have the background layer, and there's a keyboard shortcut using action to say, select the next layer above. But if there's only one layer, that's gonna be a bit of a challenge, because the smart object is always called either layer zero. If it's you started with the J peg or something, or if it's a camera raw, smart object will be the name of the file. So then it's gonna be more challenging. So that's perhaps one of the other slight downsides with actions and and smart objects is you have the potential of them not cooperating as nicely as you might want. So you may have toe they go, OK, I'll do this couple steps manually and then run my action. So you may find that actions you previously run might not work quite is effectively if you start off because many actions are built on the principle or the premise, the assumption that you have a layer called background. So that's that's 11 thing you'd have to try to try it out and see if if I was gonna work for you. Okay? Okay. Coming. Any other questions or keep going. All right. So now let's explore a little bit. How, um I can just I just want start trying things. I have an idea for a design, maybe for a background or something. And I just want to kind of see what I can do. So it's gonna make a a file here. All right, So I'm thinking I want to do something graphically. That's kind of interesting. So I want to just kind of play with a little bit and see how can I come up with something that I'm not going to be stuck with trying to create a sort of a geometric, random background, but the same time I don't want to get to a point. I'm like, Well, I guess that's it. So here is I'm gonna do that. I'm really happy how it keeps defaulting to this really unusual crazy size. That's, like, really helpful. Yes, I'm gonna clipboard. Unlike what? I don't what that is and why it's there. But any who? All right, so in the previous two days, like a little bit about patterns, one of the interesting things you could do with a pattern has come up with a design that you can apply in different ways. So I want to do here is I'm going to make a little pattern and I want to be very specific about this. I'm gonna add a new guide. Here's a little side trip, by the way, when you open the new guide, it wants to measure in whatever unit of measurement might happen to be in, but I want a vertical guide that said 50% So I just type that in so you don't have to do the math and go away. That has to be something you can override the unit of measurement to say, I want a new guy that's a 50% of way across. So that's just a nice wayto make my life a lot simpler on here. I'm gonna make a selection that snaps to that half. And this is really the only key decision I have to make is what color do I want this to be now? I could even here potentially have a bit of ability to change my line some other ways. But since I'm defining a pattern, I'm gonna go with a color and say, This is it. So we'll fill that this de select and then hide the background. Now, this is not the flexible, creative part. This is creating a pattern that I can then apply inflexible ways. So once you've done this a couple times, you may alter this little bit and say, if I defined my pattern this way, but I deliberately tried to make it nice and even for a specific reason. You'll see a moment. So now and I also hid the background because I want my pattern to be red stripes with this part See through. If you didn't want that, you would keep the background layer showing. Then we choose defined pattern. Now, I'm not a big fan of just leaving it name like pattern one. So I'm gonna call a pattern to cause that's so now I've done that. I can close and not save, because now my pattern is saved away. So now I want to start experimenting. So what color do I want? My background. I'm not 100% sure. Instead of picking a color and being stuck with it, I'm gonna add a solid color adjustment layer. This is a great way toe Add color to a background where you don't know what you want because on the fly, from now on, you just double click on it and say, let me try something else And it's life. So instead of if you know or if you think you know, then pick a color and go, Phil. But if you don't know, not sure do it this way. Then on top of that, I'm gonna add another layer. And this is one of the few tricky parts of this kind of thing is we have to think use that philosophy of end up with something again because I want to end up with Red Stripes, see through to the background if I just on this new layer, said Phil, and found that pattern that I have just created, which will always be at the end and off the scripted pattern and click. OK, I've got four stripes because that's how big I made my pattern. My problem is, I don't want four. I want many more, and I'm not sure how many. So the fill command with patterns. That's the downside to it is it just says I will apply your pattern on whatever size you made it. So I'm gonna undo that because that didn't work. So I have to use a layer style called pattern overlay. But there's always some little tricky part of thes things. If I go to pattern overlay at first, the chances are nothing's happening. Why is that? I'm on preview. Why don't I see it? It's a blank layer. If you had a layer style to a blank layer. Nothing happens because you have to have content on the layer in or for a layer style to appear. So any time you make a pattern, it's a little bit kind of throws you off because I'm like I'm applying the pattern. Why are seeing it? Because the layer is blank. So here's the one little kind of funky part of this whole thing. But that's just the reality is you have to fill the layer with something, and I'm going to use 50% gray not because you have to, but just so you can see it, because then I can use a pattern. Overlay always defaults to the lovely fills with belled pattern again because that's awesome. Down the very bottom, here's my pattern. So now the see through this is to Gray, which will deal with in a second. But the reason I do it this way is because of this. How many stripes do I want? So now I'm scaling the pattern as opposed to living with the way it's coming out of the box now, sometimes find the pattern you can click the button says Snap to original in a kind of resets little bit, so everything kind of lines up. I'm just doing this visually. I didn't do any math here because I'm not good at that kind of thing. But I wanted to have ah, lot of stripes that looked fairly even. But now let's address the fact that I don't want grey there. I want that color in behind. Remember when we were experimenting earlier? We said, What does this fill opacity does? Well, that takes away the gray and lets me see the stripes below. So I had to add some color for the pattern overlay toe work. But then I don't really want that color there. So fill opacity. Zero means just give me the layer style. So that way I have the underlying color. Some people are going. Why would you go to all that trouble? Because now I can still go back here and say, What if I use this color or this color I couldn't have done if I left that made a solid color This way. I'm seeing through to this solid color adjustment layer and I can keep tweaking it. Okay. All right. So done all of that and I think. OK, at this point now I want to really start experimenting with making these more than just I mean, if you want vertical stripes. Hey, the end, you're done. But I want to take it a step further and go. What else can I do with this? So as soon as I think, what else can I do? It's time to experiment. My first thought would be Take these two layers and convert them to a smart object. Because that way, whatever I do next means I'm not making it a perm decision. So there's a bunch of filters in here, but one of the ones that we rarely use cause it's kind of odd, but works like a charm. And this one is called polar coordinates. And I love filters like that. Where you looking? You know exactly what it's going to do. Just by the name. Everyone here knows what pole record is gonna do, right? Yeah, of course we know. Oh, look at that. I wouldn't use this one. I could, but this is kind of cool, because it does. That whole retro owes, you know, Batman kind of thing going on where it's just like done automatically. Now, if I've tried to create that myself by drawing triangles and rotating it have taken forever. But what I This is where the whole lead up to this or the whole point of this is I might be perfectly happy with that. But if I not, then I can start experimenting. Okay, Let's go back to the pattern overlay and say What happens if I have less stripes and I click? Ok, this is where the yesterday we talked a little bit, I would tile my two windows so I can see on the left hand side. I'm going to see the results on the right hand side, looking at the contents. So I just alter the number of stripes I had saved and on this side of updates, and I think and I think I like that, I think I like it back the way it was. Okay, that's a little too many or too little. Okay, save it. Yes, I like that a lot. So now I'm like, Okay, what else could I do? What if What if If I was really smart and I had kept that vignette effect I'd done earlier, but since I didn't I'll just do it really quickly as a former review curves adjustment layer. And once again, Photoshopped is not voice activated. When you say curves adjustment, you have to actually click on it not just say it out loud curves just layer. And then I need to see this whole thing for a second. Make my little my lips and I was nice marquee thing. Fill it with black feather it a whole bunch. Okay, save that. Who wants that? Do it. It's cool. It's almost like dimensional, isn't it? Someone say yes. Yes. Okay, thank you. That's what I was going for. Not at all. That's the point. I had no idea, seriously wasn't exactly sure was gonna happen there. In my mind, I was like, Maybe we'll put in and around the whole thing, but it won't because of the way that filter works. But you never know because you might look at that and go, That's actually gonna need happy accident. Didn't expect that. Didn't want that. But now I can say, right, let's go back and just get rid of this whole thing because I don't like it and let's try some completely different variation again. I'm taking my life in my hands here. I'm not 100% sure what's gonna happen when I do this, but that's the whole point of this is experimentation mode. Will it? Will it explode? It probably won't explode. There might be some flames boring out, but we're not sure here. So what if we add a layer mask and inverted and then say that interesting can not. Perhaps the best looking thing ever, but who knows? You might like that, but because I did that as a mask, I can go to this one and say, kind of like the idea. But let's make this a lot skinnier, hit, enter and save. So everything you do is just Well, what happens if I try this? What if I decide? I want this up here and then to do another one like here? Still that with black say that? All right. And that's kind of the point that say, let me compare between the two, So shift click to turn off the mask, save it, it's gonna update. So whether you ever have to do this or not, that is not the point. I mean, if you always wanting how to do this, you're welcome. But the chances are it's more. It's not that I'm trying to show you. It's like, this is the thought process I go through is I kinda have a rough idea, but I want to set myself up in a way that I can try all kinds of variations. So I do all these things, and on this document I'm looking and kind of going okay. Overall, I'm starting to like the look of it, but I'm not sure about that background color. So let's just change that to a more vibrant color. Say that that's little more what I had in mind. And so, you know, and then on this one, of course, it's still a smart object with a smart filter. So I could say I like that polar coordinates. But on top of that, I'd also like to fill in the blank, sharpen ITM or add noise something because you can. So there you got both windows. The I always put air quotes around final because to me it's never really final cause you're still playing. And on the right hand side, the contents were going, Let me do all this now, at a certain point, like the one thing that at first, like, Well, unfortunately, you know I did. Pattern was red, So it's That's the one thing that has a downside to it. But even that, let's just see here because there's always possibilities here. Let's if we go to that one. Creative loves thinks you're trying to hypnotize her. Don't stare at that for too long. So if I went and did a colored overlay work because of the way my pattern so something you're gonna run it. But I would still try it because you might have a thought. Who? I wonder if I can try this. Sometimes the answer will be no, but I'd rather try it than just assume it's not gonna work. One of things with Layer styles is that they appear in the order that they're shown here and sometimes like because color overlay is above the pattern. It's gonna take precedence. But even that let's just see something. Have an idea. So I went to hear and I said, Make that color blue. But what if I changed it to color? Look, it changed this pattern, too. It's kind of what I had in mind? Not exactly, but at least we're getting closer. So now I could say that and have it update that's a little less hypnotic. It's not quite as intense. So this is me just doing stream of consciousness as I did not write all these steps down ahead of time and say, Well, I know exactly what I'm gonna do here. I was quite literally I've done something kind of similar with the whole polar coordinates. So that was the one part I knew was going to do that because I thought it was kind of need. But everything else is just saying what happens if And that's a big part of this whole working creatively is set yourself up to be able to say What happens if I do this? Because I'm just gonna try it and see, but do it in a way that you don't have to then go undo 17 times or start all over again as it's all a matter off adjustments and things that you can say. OK, that didn't work. Let's update that. And now that I look at it back in this one, I want to add something else, you know, whatever it is, some other filter, like at noise, whatever it is I do just just so that I'm continuing to experiment, and it any time I can say right. Well, let's just see now closer what that looks like. Okay, so you will by my class. You will by my just kidding, sort of. Actually, this will probably better. I won't work when I go to rotate. It won't. Never mind. I was gonna rotate around to make more anything that won't work. So, yeah, take this and make it a sphere. Eyes that. I mean, that's That's where the fun starts. When you start doing sort some filters, you look at it. Go. Who if I took these things and can made this into a new smart object. Thank you, Bob. Then I could go sphere eyes. I actually use your eyes, like, two days in a row and awesome. Okay, we're quite as well in this case, but it just makes kind of a weird that's going on. But you never know. Maybe we'll do pinch instead or something. But that's we'll get You'll get to a certain point of history ago a k abort its This is not working, but that's why not, like, try it and see what happens now. I did this in the context of a graphic, but the same theory applies to I have a photograph and I'm trying to create some effect. I'm not exactly sure what path to go, so we'll go. Smart object Smart filter. Adjust this. Make that a smart object. Try this. You know, there is a ah filter in a photo shop that was introduced a while ago. That was kind of interesting. And it's got a little better, actually, quite a bit better. So much so it's now has his own place used to be under these will add on filters called What were they called? No. Was the pixel Uh oh, shoot Pixel bender collection of Yeah, those things exactly. Eso Now I would do this convert to smart object. And then there's a filter called oil paint. Now with the old oil paint filter that was kind of hidden away. It was very easy to make your photograph look horrible very quickly, so they changed the settings where, no matter how far you go, you can't really get into bizarro land quite as easily. But I still don't know exactly what I want to do here. So as I'm trying things, I might experiment and, you know, try these different settings. Maybe not that click, OK, and then say, Uh, yeah, get a little closer. It's OK, but not a big fan of what it's done to her face. So I might try doing this idea of lowering the pass a little bit war and or changing a blend mode to something. Now I don't have a formula. It says every time you use the oil paid filter, make sure you change the blend mode because it depends. It's entirely depend on the photograph. But the more you try this now, Frank, there some that just will not look good at all. But you only know that by trying it and say, What does this one do now? There are some people out there that can actually explain what all these do. I'm not one of them. I just go. Let's try this. And over time I've got to the point where I kind of have a sense that while these ones here gonna make a darker so in this case, it wouldn't make sense. However, here's another recurring theme here. Multiply mode by itself. Wouldn't make sense in this particular filter, but maybe multiply mode at 40%. Mike. So don't discount a blend mode right off the bat because you go okay, that's too much. You can always do both. Do a blend more than say, but let me pull it back a bit and see, you know, if I lower the opacity all of a sudden, that blend mode looks more interesting. So they're blend modes that I hardly ever used to use, like luminosity and hue and saturation, because they were sometimes a little too intense. But now, by doing them in combination with pulling down the opacity, sometimes it actually make takes a filter that in the past, frankly, was kind of if fiesta, whether it was even useful or not, and makes it more useful because you have more options, I think. Yesterday I showed briefly, um, the, uh, find edges filter, which is a filter that most people have always thought of, as I can't think of too many times to use that filter. But if you do that filter and then change the blend mode or opacity using this dialog box Suddenly you can start to see things that give you more options. In this particular case, I'm thinking, OK, overall, it's okay, but I want to lessen the effect. So again I click on the mask, I take my paintbrush and I'm gonna look at a little bit to say Where am I headed with this? And if I paint 100% black, it will be taking the effect away completely, which frankly, will probably look a little weird because I going from very heavy duty painting to nothing at all. So instead I might go in and lower the opacity. Let me undo that painting first, lower the opacity because that way now I'm doing very a slight amount. I'm also with my Wacom tablet. I'm pressure pressing very lightly to say Just do a little bit of a small little brush to paint in these areas. So any time you paint with ah, lower opacity for the brush is gonna be less obvious because you're painting with gray instead of black. And the other advice that I found works well for me. And I've talked to a lot of artists who do traditional painting and things like that in, and I think this philosophy lends itself very well to experiment again. Photoshopped is many artists say the best thing they ever started doing when they're working on a project is walk away and leave it for a while because if you're staring at a painting or a photo for too long, you start to get so self critical and going on this part still here. But if you save it, go away from at work on something else and come back tomorrow, you're looking at it with fresher eyes because if you spend too much time playing with all these different things your mind gets overwhelmed with. I've just looked at 18 different possibilities here, and I can't remember them all. So instead, to leave it for a while and try different things is not a bad theory, either. One of the things we touched on in the last couple of days I want to just mention is a new, interesting option, which I use it mostly from a productivity standpoint, but I think it's interesting to consider when you're for that last point of you want to try different things, and you want to kind of walk away and come back later and look at different things. You've been trying, particularly with adjustments I would love if this happened with smart filters, but unfortunately it does not work quite the same way. But let's just take this example. I'm going to add a couple of things. Let's first of all, add a curves adjustment layer and I just want to make a slight curves adjustment. And then I also want to add, ah, black and white adjustment because I think I might like this photograph. It was tempted in some way. So I'm gonna hide that for a second, because that was just another thing I want to try and then also want to try using vibrance, where I just lower the saturation to make it less saturated. So now my document, I have these three adjustment layers, and at any time I could combine them and say, What if I put the vibrance and curves or had curves? Offer had no black and white and no curves. So I have all these combinations, but instead of me standing there for 10 minutes every time I want to do this going. Turn this on. Turn this off. Some of you were here. Remember, we talked briefly about this thing called layer cups layer constant normally show in the context of If you've got many, many layers, you wanna turn layers on and off and move them around. That's the main reason I use layer compass from kind of a layout standpoint, but this is another way you could use it, especially in that context of I wanna walk away. Come back tomorrow and look at my options with fresh eyes instead of me taking all that time to go hide this, show this and imagine I could have, like, five adjustment layers underst doing three for the sake of argument. So Layer Calms has been around for a shop for a long time, but it's probably under utilised by many people because they think of it in a certain way, like doing a layout. So what I'm gonna do is start off and hide everything. So all looking at my background and I'm gonna click on this new layer or a new layer comp and say normal, I would like to have one layer comp that's just kind of regular everything. And even though I don't really need to, in this case is only doing his visibility. I could still do this. That's a remember visibility position appearance of all my laters. Actually, I will probably take advantage. So then I say, All right, so let's start off and just go, uh, curbs and then go curves and attempt. Of course, you can take this toe whatever level you want. That I could go like this. And it's like on Lee Tint. So I'm just making different combinations off. If I do the vibrance on Lee. So I've This one is lower saturation, whatever you want, so I won't belabor the point. Make 14. But I could and actually let me do one know that just so you can see this is kind of interesting, this vibrancy, I just lower the saturation. But I could all say, What if I take this black and white tent one, but then change the blend mode to overlay for the sake of argument? I'm trying to do something really dramatic. Well, this time, when I make a layer comp where it says appearance layer style that includes blend modes and opacity even almost well, don't think of that as a layer style. Technically it is. So I could put black and white in overlay. Okay, so now I close this file and I save it, and the layer calms air built into this document. So now, a day or two later where I want to kind of revisit it and say, Well, I remind myself what my options were. You can either click beside the name of the one you want toe, look at specific ones and switch between them. Or you can use a little arrow keys and go. Let me just kind of scroll through them visually and sort of stop, Go Kind of like that one like that one to go into that. The whole point is, now it's instead of you having a go to layers. Palin, go hide, hide, show, show, change, opacity. Put it back. This is You've done that once. So the layer compass recording which adjustment layers air showing and what settings, if any, like blend modes and opacity do they have so that then you're like, OK, now it's easier for me to either looking at myself or if you're working with a client. Say, you know, here's some examples for you. I'm not quite convinced about the latter part because it just opens up a whole can of worms. Okay, do this and that, but it is a possibility. So Layer comes. Don't want anyone to think is I realizes, when I talked about, um, the last couple of days that I was showing this multi layer document rise, moving things around and hiding and showing layers. And that's one use of layer comp it. This is probably even a simpler one. It just say at a bunch of adjustment layers and then record impossible for posterity with layer calms different combinations. And again, that's not just visibility. It's also well, let me make a layer comp where I've taken this adjustment layer and lower the opacity and changed it to multiply mode or whatever. So then, and the more you do that, I think most people find the next time work on a project like Oh, yeah, The other time I did black and white in overlay mode and about 50% opacity. That was kind of cool because then you can see how you did it as soon as you click on any of these layer comes. Look at the layers panel this time. Don't watch over here or the image. Look at the layers panel eyes I'm going through. See how it's turning various layers on and off. But in this last example, it also just changed the blend mode to overly. But it's not stuck that way, because if I look at and say it's a little much, maybe I should lower the opacity of it. I still can, but look what happens when I do that. This is kind of important in the world of layer camps, the bottom layer compass highlighted. But because I made a change, it saying, Well, that's not really that layer cough anymore. That's kind of the last thing you just did. So this point, I have two choices. If I want to make this the new look of my layer comp, I click this little update button. I want to make a new layer comp. Based on this change, I click the new layer complex, and the choice you make is yours. You may decide I like this better. I want to make that my layer comp or you could decide. I want to make this another variation on top of what I already have. The beauty of layer comes. Is there built into the document and they add this much file size tiny little bit because it's just some little text instructions that say, Don't forget this. The only thing that I just kind of want to mention here probably well, it's still important. Here is the layer comes are based on what your layers panel looked like. So if you open this later on when Yeah, I don't think I want the vibrance layer after all and you just throw it away and what's gonna happen is all your layer comfortable Go hold on a second Now he just threw away something that I was using and if that ever Okay with that, you just update them. But at least this is reminding you why. The whole point of this was this layer comp included that adjustment layer. So now you have thrown away one of things that I'm supposed to show so about. That's just a factor you have to be aware of and decide on a case by case basis. Does that matter? Or not, You may decide. Yeah, that was a layer. It it needed all What confuses people is I've had this happen where I had a blank layer record. All these layer Kansai threw away the blank layer. You'll still get those warning symbols because, you know, was blanket was still considered part of the layer company. So in that case, I'd say, that's okay, but in this case, I'd have to decide. Oh, I just threw away on adjustment that I used within my layer comes. But for me, it's a really nice way to just do that whole thing of Makesem possibilities. Save it, walk away from it, come back later on and look at it with fresher eyes and very easily look through different combinations. Yeah, um, using this layer cops. If you had opened the original photo as a smart object, which I don't know why you didn't bad me, could you Could you create these layer calms to be like your style and then just drag and drop or place new pictures in their news? New portrait's of different people you're taking saying if the one thing that layer comes to remember a lot of things but they don't remember, unfortunately, smart filters. But if you, if this bottom layer was I had made it a smart object or started his camera raw became a smart object that all the adjustments be on top of that. So the layer comes with work. And once you came up with your look, then you could click on that bottom. Smart obviously replaced contents your next photograph in and you already have your look supply. So that's kind of an equivalent. It's not really a preset per se, but it kind of is because you're doing the work ahead of time. So that's really a great idea about how to build on this, because then you've got a bunch of different looks you could call these, you know, some look that's really descriptive, like lollypop and all those other things that people do when they make presets is like really lollipop. But call him something, and then you just put your new photographing to go save us. So one of things I'll refer to ah a number of times is the idea of creating layer documents that you can then drag into other ones. That's the other way to do it is to keep the layers constant and then change the under lying layer as a smart object. Very good. All right, we have more questions from always, always, absolutely so Laura Ballast Eros from the Canary Islands asked. So, using the spot healing on spot healing brush in a new layer on top of a smart object work fine. What about the clone? Stand the same thing? Well, let's put it this way. If you click on a tool and in the options bar, there is a choice that says sample all layers or any wording like that, then it will work. Probably the only one that doesn't inherently is dodge and burn. Those ones don't have a sample, all layers. So most people, the way they do the Dodge and Burn tool has put a layer filled with 50% gray. Change the blend mode to ever overlay or hard light and then paint with either black or white to do the equivalent of dodging and burning. The one thing I will say, though, about that I should have said this before is I want to make sure I mention it. Now let's go back to raw file here. There is one little kind of thing we have to be aware of when you do this. So I'm gonna overdo it so I could make the point. So I opened my camera Smart object. And I said, opening to do a little bit of spot healing. So add a new layer. Zoom on on this. This is actually the corner of the wall, but it looks like a big white line coming overhead. So I take my spot healing brush. I've got it set to sample all layers, and I just get rid of that. I go, Hey, here's the one problem, though. If now I look at it and say I think I went a little overboard with the exposure and I double click and go back here and put it back where it should have been gonna have a slight problem because this von healing brush doesn't update spot healing brush painting to let that moment. So at worst, you'd have to just delete that and do it again. But that's one thing to be aware of is if you are sampling the layer below at that moment. So if you decide later on to tweak the settings, whatever you've done. And I've had people that without thinking, had the exposure or something set wrong, did a whole bunch of spot healing. We touching someone's face and then move the slider. And I will certainly a little speckles all over their face, because now the skin tone wasn't the same. So in an ideal world, we would do this kind of spot healing and cloning to new layer at the end when you already had made all your adjustments. But again, at worst, I would have to say, OK, that was bad. Let me erase that. Do it again. It's one thing to be aware of the camera raw, smart office update. But any painting you do or any cloning does not. Do you want to jump into our Q and A now? Great, Fantastic. Okay. Question from NYC Photo. How do you How can you delete a layer mask without deleting the hole there? Okay, um, like a lot of things. That photo shop, it's a matter of from where you drag that sound right, dramatically clicking on the right area. So if I have the whole thing and I click over here, then it's gonna drag both the layer and the mass. So I just have to make sure I'm clicking on the mask and dragging that to the trash. And then it's going to say, Do you want to apply the layer mask, which I would normally say no, because the whole point in bleeding it is to make have it go away. So then it just you're pleading just the mask, not the layer him Bugle from Pennsylvania ass. What tools are tasks would you use with the new sample, all layers, feature and rights? Can I come and sit behind you while you work for, like, a month? Well, part. Be sure for a reasonable price. I'm sure we can arrange anything you want, but so here is the thing, and I always almost hate to answer the question like this. But sample all layers is not new. It's actually been around for a long time, but it's sort of a new approach was a lot of people don't if you read the word sample all layers, too many people that doesn't necessarily suggest put the results on to a blank layer, but that's what it really means. So the bottom line is, if you look at any tool that has brushing capabilities like a painting tool in the healing brush in a clone stamp that uses that generally they have some variation on sample all layers. There are a couple of exceptions, which are kind of interesting and that exceptions in a good way, cause they build even mawr. As you can see, the clone stamp tool lets you be even more specific. I can say use all layers or just this layer and the one below, and the reason they do that is, for example, people want to say, I want to do this with an adjustment layer in effect or not, so you can sort of decide how many layers deep do you want to go? You say Sample all layers. It'll clone from every single layer that's visible. If you only want to say, like when I'm retouching someone's face, I'll put current and below because I only don't want a sample. Everything. I want to be more restrictive. So the bottom line is click on a tool, and if you see a check box that says sample all layers now, tools like the paintbrush doesn't because by nature you are painting on the blank layer and some other ones. For example, the This is new. The patch tool normally looks like this normal destination. But if I change it to this new CS six thing called content aware, then I get sample all layers. So by nature of the patch tool doesn't sample all layers unless you change it to content aware. Then sample all heirs becomes available for you. Fantastic. Okay, this is a question from Amar Madani. Is there a way to overcome the rast arise problem Non destructively personal high Don't be certified folks for a long, long time. So the problem with Rasa rising is exactly that it throws away the flexibility. So my response will be That's when I kind of revert to the good old days of saying if I am find the only solution I have is to rast arise A smart object that I'm gonna duplicated Rast arise A copy If I find there is no other alternative except for what I want to do might feel like the only option available to me is to Rast arise that I would say, Well, at least keep my smart object duplicated, and then rast arise that one. I would say, though, for many situations. If you are tempted to rast, arise instead, make a new, smart object out of it because often that will be the little solution you need toe move to the next step. Having said that, there will be times where you'll go down a path and go, I have for what I want to do next. I can't find any other way other than raft arised that I would say duplicated First and Rasa rise the copy that still giving at least a bit of a backup plan. Cool, Lakeview asks. I noticed Dave is using PS extended. How many of these features Aaron extended for those those who don't have extended will not be able to do them, and I'll expand that question extended and then Photoshopped six and Cloud and just give me a ballpark numbers. Well, first of all, I would say everything I've been doing so far is any version of photo shop. So the standard version of Photo Shop has a few things, none of which I'm really taking advantage of, like a three D menu in the productivity class. I showed one thing, which is a stack mode function for smart objects that so called tourists removal tool that is Onley in extended. Um, so all these other things that the nice thing about the comparing between extended and non extended as all the basic tools and functions are the same an extended. You also have three D tools and functions, which again 14 people know how to use in the world. I'm just kidding. There's 70 but that's a whole different thing. Day to day functionality is the same. The creative cloud version has a slight difference because Adobe updates that creative cloud version with a few little features now and then. So Photoshopped, my version of photos up on my laptop that come from Creative Cloud, has a few things that this version doesn't. I mean, I didn't check that, but I'm gonna assume that's the case just based on what I know. So if you have a creative cloud, membership than one of its advantages is, instead of waiting for the next 18 months, full new version of photo shop, Adobe says, Well, in the meantime, here's three new things, and I think I want to say you've done it to Photoshop and Illustrator and Dreamweaver, like the some of the main products have all had these little, many updates, which are a handful of small but really quite useful things that, frankly, is a cloud member. It's it's almost I'm saddened by the fact that I can't say, Hey, let me show you all this things. I realize not everyone has it because they have to wait for the next version of photo shop to get some of these. But from a functional standpoint, everything we're talking about is Photoshopped regular version. So we're not doing any kind of extended only kind of things today. Okay, question from DJ Art. If you make adjustments with content aware on a raw file and photo shop, then will they update if you make raw adjustments afterwards? Uh, no. Anything that you do to a blank layer is at that moment in time, whether it's spot healing or patch with content, aware content, or just makes it does a better job of patching. But it's still at that moment in time. So as a recurring theme, one of the great benefits of camera raw smartwatches, billable back and forth, but a certain point you have. I'm satisfied with that. Look now. So now I could move on and do healing, painting, content, aware patching because it's gonna be based on the way it looks right now and again it worst. If you decide later on, you just have to redo that one part. However, if you did 30 minutes of content aware patching, I definitely wouldn't want to do that over again. It's one thing to do one little spot like this, but so that's a recurring theme. Anything you're doing to that blank layer is almost like a snapshot of that moment in time. Cool. One last question. Elaine in Oregon asked, What's the difference between reducing the opacity of the brush you are using to paint on a mask and reducing the A pass ity in the masked panel? Um, well, there's There's two ways to look at that when I'm painting on a mask. If I am 100% black than its there, it happens right away very quickly, and I might want to be more interactive, so I might paint at a lower opacity on the fly. Having said that, the Net result is probably the same cause you paint with 100% and then lower in the layer mass to say make it less obvious than the end result is the same. What I find myself doing is I want to make a subtle change on the fly. That's when I decided to paint a lower opacity. So I'm seeing the result gradually, as opposed to awaiting the an ongoing What happens if I move this slider? So there's pros and constant both. To some degree, the final result is the same. It's just a different way of getting there.