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Gorgeous Grayscales

you know what I would really love to show you guys before we go, because it's a perfect way to end the day. And so many people have asked the question. Let's do our partial black and white effects. It's gorgeous. And like I said, it's one of my favorite things to do in both photo shop in elements and the image I'm gonna use if you want to follow along is we're down on number 14. Okay, here again, Depopulate BW converter. Erase. Grady, A map that will make sense very soon. So we're gonna go ahead, say OK, so as you can see here, this is my original image. And this is what we created using a Grady a map adjustment layer. And we spoke briefly briefly about this when we were talking about the different adjustment layers and a Grady int. Let me start by explaining it is simply a soft fade from one color to the other. If you look at the Grady and tool over in the tools Palin, you can see that it's a soft shade from yellow to blue. Okay, a greedy in map adjustment layer is gonna let you re ma...

p. Hence the name, the shadows in your image toe one side of ingredient and the highlights to the other side of your green It If you use a black white Grady in, you will create the most beautiful high contrast black of my image this side of the Red River. I'm not kidding you. It's absolutely amazing the way it works. But you're not limited to creating just black and wise with the adjustment layer. And as you know, by using an adjustment layer, the change happens on its own layer comes with a layer mask. So if black conceals and white reveals, what do you think's gonna happen if you paint with black inside the layer mask on the layer that you used to create the black and white? You're gonna hide the black and white, thereby revealing the color that's on the layer underneath. Okay, so that's what we're going to do. And it may be the most useful technique you're gonna learn. Okay, so here's our original, okay? And we can use this just for artistic value or to save the subject matter of an image if we can't get the color to look right using guided edit mode or quick fix mood. We haven't gotten into the pro level color correction stuff yet, but we will tomorrow, so we're gonna create our adjustment layer two ways. You can go to the layer menu. She's new adjustment Layer Grady map. Or you can use the half black, half white circle at the bottom of your layers panel. Either way, now I'm gonna show you two different ways to do this. If you're smart and you've got a good memory, you will remember to set your color chips to the default of black and white before you create the adjustment layer. To date. I've never once remembered to do that, but today's a new day, so let's go ahead and see what happens if I do that. So if I click the little icon beneath the color chips to set them back to the default black and white or you compress D. Either way now, my color chips or black and white. I say this because when we create our adjustment layer, it's gonna look at our color chips, and it's gonna immediately grab those colors. Okay, so we've got our color set. Choose the half black, half white circle the bottom of the layers. Pain will choose Grady it map and you're finished. Okay, So what's happened here is you can see down here in the layers. Panel elements created the new adjustment layer great. And it opened the adjustments panel, which shows you the settings that are inherent to that particular adjustment. Well, with the great Matt, you get a preview of the Grady int that elements is currently using that comes straight from your foreground, a background color chips. If you want to change that, anything else? Single click. The preview moves a honkin dialog box out of the way, and you've got a slew of preset or built in Grady. It's that you can use so you can do all kinds of experimenting with the different colors. In course, you're not limited to these color sets. You know you could set your own color chips to whatever you want, and you can load more presets by clicking the clearly named more button in no showing all of these other presets they're built in. But the 3rd 1 in this preset list will always, always, always be a black toe. What, Grady in now you may be tricked into thinking that this one is a black toe. What? Grady in it's not that's picking up your foreground background color chips. Okay, this one will do a foreground color ship too transparent, which doesn't help us create great skeletal. So this third preset right here will always be black and white. So if you forget to change your color chips, I go ahead and delete this and I'll change it to something that might be more useful. Let's change one of them. Teoh a nice blue. We'll have it go from blue to white. I'll give us almost the look of a duo tune, which is black, plus another color. So now if I choose my Grady, a map adjustment layer Elements is going to use those colors. So it's not limited to just creating a beautiful black and why you can create beautiful color tents as well, like this one. But so if you didn't change your color chips first and you end up with something other than black and white here, don't panic. Just click this once and click that third preset because that will always be black to white. Okay, so now I'll go ahead and collapse the adjustments panel. Our layer mask is active. And if black conceals, why reveals if I want to reveal or rather bring back the color in the violin? I would be concealing what's happening on that layer, which is where the black and white came from. So I'm gonna grab my regular brush tool Black conceals White reveals I need black is my foreground color chips. So I'm gonna press X to flip flop. My color chips come over to the image and anywhere I paint, we're effectively punching a hole through the Grady map adjustment layer. So you're seeing the full color image on the layer underneath. Now, I've colorized this picture a couple of times. If it was a picture I haven't done before, you know, I might not be so smooth, and I might, you know, mess up and bring back too much of the color. You don't have to start over. You don't have to do anything other than impressed the X key to flip flop your color chips. So now you're painting with why black conceals white reveals to bring back the gray scale paint back over that area with white. So It's a very forgiving technique. It's loads of fun to do, and I'm gonna go back to revealing color nail. So I'm gonna or concealing the gray skills how I should put it. Okay, so you can come in here. And of course, if you were doing this for real, you would take a whole lot of time with this and you'd be really far zoomed in and you would make sure it was perfect. So it's a beautiful, beautiful technique, and it's one of the fastest ways to turn a regular snapshot into a piece of art. Or, like I said, a great way to save an otherwise unusable picture cause you can't get the color right now. Another thing you can do is you can lower the opacity of this layer, which is sort of a partial color within a partial color effect. So you've got some of the original color coming from the background, which kind of takes the attention away from it. But you've got full color right here, where you painted on the layer mask that automatically came with the adjustment layer so infinitely flexible when more little variation on this technique that I want to show you is how to use the Grady int tool inside the layer mass to do a fade from black and white to color. Okay, so I'm I've got my mask activated again. I know it's active because it's got that extra little bracket around the corners. I'm gonna fill it with white, which is gonna reveal all of the great skill. So the whole photos going to go back to you black and white. So I'm gonna choose White from my use pop up menu. Okay, so we're back to where we were, and now I'm gonna pump up the opacity again, back 200%. If we go over here to our tools panel and we click the Grady int tool, we get it kind of the same options appear in the options bar, as we saw in the adjust panel. Okay, a couple of changes I need to make up here. I'll zoom in so you can see it from my little Grady and preview picker here. I want to make sure that I've got black twat Grady and chosen. Okay, so I'm gonna give that a click. I also want to make sure that I've got this first Grady int style activated, which is a linear Grady in which space clue that's gonna, you know, one color to the next in a linear fashion. So the way the greedy INTs will works is that you mouse over to your document and you get across hair and you simply click and drag and the wits of the line that's creative while you're dragging plushy controls the width of the fate or the transition point. So when I release my mouse button, you'll see that now my mask is filled with Grady in. I'll do it over your sequence. See? So now we've got a soft transition from color to black and white. So that's another way that you can use this technique and then the fun. One about where the fun part about this one in particular is that you can keep clicking and dragging with the Grady in tool, and the mask will keep automatically updating itself so you don't ever get into it. I've got to start over situation. You can just keep clicking and dragging until you get it toe look the way you want, so that's a couple of different variations on a partial color technique. It's one of my favorite things in the world to do, and it's just really makes a snapshot into a piece of art. So with that, let's stop for the day and open it up for questions. If anybody's got any, we have a time as always. So first of all, thank you so much. That was an awesome day. Day one day. So first question from Johnny E. Is there a way to change the effect you use on the layer, or do you have to create a new layer and delete the old one? Is there a way to change the effect on a layer I think you're talking about? Let's say that we created this Grady It map adjustment layer. If we wanted it to be some other kind of adjustment layer. I think that's what the question is. You have to recreate it. Yeah, there's no way to change one to something else. Question from another regular in the chat room as factor. Who would like to know? Is there a way to use the Grady Int map adjustment layer to fake a Trier quad tone to fade each with a Trier quad tone fake to fake it? Well, yeah, actually, that's what we That's what we did. So, in knowing that ingredient map adjustment layer is gonna remap your shadows and your highlights to another color you can you can use it to kind of create a duo tone, try tone kind of situation. So if we delete this layer and we've we're back to our color chips being set at blue and white, which is gonna Matt my shadows to blue and my highlights toe white, which is going to kind of give you the duo tone effect. Go ahead and create my layer. Now, Grady, a map adjustment layer That's essentially what you're getting when you use colors other than black. My only problem is that you'd have to go into the Grady in itself to edit it, to introduce more colors. So the duo tone is typically black, plus another color, two colors. A tri tone is typically black puss, two other colors and on and on for cartoon. So to introduce more color. Since you've only got to color chips, you can click the Grady in preview and you can come in here and you can add mawr of these little guys, which are called color stops. Okay, and that's basically what you're telling elements. Hey, I want this color to stop here, and then I want another color to start here so we could come in and add additional color stops and you'll notice down here that I've got a little color will, you know, says color. And it's got a little rectangle there. If I click the white color stop, you see that it's color is fight. If I click the blue and it's blue, so that's how you change. The color stops, you click it and then click the little well down here. And then you can change that to any color. You want to essentially get your tri tone or quad tune or whatever it is that you our after. So that would be one way to do it. There are some presets and elements appear in the effects panel. Uh, I just double click my, uh, affects panel to expand it, cause it was collapsed, and I believe they live in the photo effects category. Here again, Elements is hiding a bazillion options from you. You know that these three little thumbnails right here. Not the only things you can do. Two photos with the effects panel because if you give this a click, you'll see that holy moly show all. There's a bazillion different effects and at the very bottom, our color tents as well. So that's another way to introduce kind of a dio tone situation into your image. If you want to do that, which is another great way to salvage and image that you can't color correct. Cool. Thank you a question from my name. Does elements have a lens correction filter? Yes, it does. It's not called lens correction. So you might miss it if you go up to the And actually, I'm gonna back up a few steps cause I'm gonna show you a really cool thing to do with that filter. OK, so here we are in the filter menu and the lens correction filters actually called correct camera distortion in elements. Okay, so give it a click, and it's designed to fix a lot of the problems that you can get in photography in camera. So, you know, if you're shooting with lower quality lenses, you make it a little bit of warping at the edges. You may get like an edge vigna a darkened engine yet, so you can fix a lot of that kind of stuff. In here, you've got perspective, control and all that kind of stuff. But designers were darn quick to realize that soon darkening around the edges is a great way to draw attention to the center of the photo. So in using the same filter that you can get rid of it, designers figured out how to add it if you didn't have it to begin with. So first thing I'm gonna do is turn off that Dad gum grid because I can't see anything. And then we're going to go to the vignette cider right here and you're gonna drag it all the way. The lift in that beautiful it's all turn off the preview that's before, and that's after. And that a gorgeous little effect I do, then, on every single portrait that I print pretty much as a rule. And then if you want a wide and that vignette just a little bit, you can grab the midpoint cider and drag it slightly to the left. So now there's are before and our after but it's a beautiful little final touch to put on your portrait's. But, you know, using a tool that's really meant to delete that when you get when you get it in camera. So we have, Ah, quite a few questions, kind of spreading the whole course. Is that okay? Just jump around a little bit. We have a question from Celta from the UK, and he would like to know if elements has smart objects. No elements does not have. Some are objects. That said, if you open a photo shop, CS file in elements you will. Still it had a smart object in it. Then you will see the smart object in elements. But you can't create one and elements, and all smart object really is, is it's like a container. You know, layers are pretty much like containers anyway, But the smart object containers special because when you create a smart object, Photoshopped memorizes everything about that layer or that file. At the moment, you're creating a smart object. So if it was a smart object out of ah J pic photo, it would remember the original pixel dimensions of that photo. So if you made that photo smaller. Say to experiment in your flyer design for your next yard sale, whatever your next photography show. And then you decided, Ted, give it. I need to make it bigger again because Photoshopped remembers its original dimensions. You don't lose quality when you go back up to that size, so it memorizes everything. If you were to bring in an illustration as a smart object, Photoshopped remember. Oh, that's an illustration. And it's got superpowers, which let illustrations vector illustrations be resized infinitely, without losing any kind of edge quality because they're not made out of pixels at all. So photo shop would remember. Oh, that's a different kind of file, and it would remember all the superpowers of that kind of file. So smart objects are just an amazing thing. So if you've created smart object in the Open and elements, it will still be a smart object. But you can't make one and elements great. Thank you. A question from Griffis. Can you mask too soft in the background to create a wide aperture effect? Absolutely, absolutely. It's actually one of the techniques were going to be going over tomorrow. Elements nine has a real layer masking in previous versions, we've had to trick elements into thinking it's got layer masking. What you do is you use empty adjustment layers to get at the mask that comes with them. And there's a command that will look at tomorrow when we get into pushing photos through shapes like pushing photos through letters and things where you can clip layers together so that the photo on the top gets pushed through whatever the shape is on bottom. So that was the kind of work around we had Teoh to use an elements. But now, on elements none, we have real layer masking. So tomorrow we're gonna show off, um, selective blur, which is what this gentleman's talking about, how to get a blurry background after the shot, you know, So it looks like the one parts and focus and everything else is nicely blurred and the same technique we're gonna use to do selective sharpening. So if you only want a sharp in certain areas of the image, but not all of them do the same kind of thing. Basically, you run a blur or sharpen filter in the new, add a layer mask and you hide the blurring or the sharpening from the areas that don't need it. So we'll look at that tomorrow. Reason to come back, among other reasons to come back. There's been quite a few people that have asked about Raw and Len had asked if elements read and works with raw files. It absolutely does nearly the same a piece of software that comes with the more expensive version of photo shops called Adobe Camera. Raw around the water cooler, you'll hear it called a CR. That's what it means. Adobe camera Raw and camera is a very high quality. Most information possible capture format on your camera. So when you open up a raw photo in elements, if you double click it, the Adobe camera raw software is gonna open, and it's a slightly toned down version of the one you get with the big version of photo shop. You're missing the selective adjustments brush and one other tool you're missing but absolutely can edit the raw, uh, format files. It comes up in a slider interface that looks a lot like a quick fix mode that we use earlier, but that software is installed right with elements, so but you won't ever encounter it unless you double click a raw image or use the file Open command open a raw image and the raw editors going to come up with the slider interface and you do your color correction there. And then when you click open at the bottom of that window, then the image actually opens up in elements by the time it gets in. The elements is no longer a raw image. It's a J peg, but your eyes won't be able to discern the difference. Have a couple questions comparing elements. Eight elements nine to specifically from photo ladies does elements. Eight have the healing brush, and also then somebody else wanted to know if eight had the smart brushes. Yes, eight has a smart brushes and ate. The healing brush is have been around for the inception of elements, so both of those things aren't elements eight. And we always have people ask this, but in your opinion, and people have asked us earlier today what are some of the best new features of nine versus versus 80 gosh, it's so simple. Great question. I'm content aware. Fill that add on to the spot healing brush is not innate. So the content and where feel part of it. That option in the options bar is new. And as you all saw, that was pretty amazing for zapping those people off the beach in the power lines. So that's new riel. Layer masking is the other big one. Okay, so I was mentioning earlier how we had to trick elements into thinking it had real layer masking capabilities and involved creating extra layers to get their layer mass. And it was a convoluted process. It would work. But it was, you know, five steps versus two. Okay, so now we have a really layer mask button in elements. So if I expand my layers panel, you're actually going to see it down here at the very bottom. It's this guy right here. It's like a circle within a square icon. So if we click that, you can actually add a layer mask to your image layer and we've never had that ability before. So those were the two big ones. A couple of the other neat things about elements nine versus eight are the new tasks in guided edit mode. And I promised I would show that to you guys, and I think I forgot earlier. All of these new guided in its right here are new and always popping open real quick. So you kind of get a an idea of the things that you can create using that mode, probably the most popular one is this one the out of bounds effect. So if you can believe it, you have to scroll this far cause the instructions are so detailed. It's like 10 or 15 steps. You select a part of the picture and I'll show you the original. It lives way down here. Best the original picture. So you go through a procedure of selecting part of it, too. Push out of the photo. Then you go through procedure for making the rest of the photo like it's slightly tilted back in perspective. And then you can, um, determine the Grady in background and how why the white frame is and all that kind of stuff. So when we opened that one again, actually, turn all those layers back on, it creates so many layers. It's just unbelievable. Yeah, so you can pick the color of the new background because you know your picture is kind of being chopped off, so you gotta have something else back there. So it walks you through, creating the width of this Polaroid border and the drop, shadow and everything. So that's one of the new guided. It's probably the most popular. One reflection is another one. So this one was a very. This was a fairly short technique where it walks you through, duplicating the image, rotating it 100 degrees and then fading it out to a solid color to create the look of a reflection. That's a new guided edit. Sarah graph is also another new guided edit. This one was really fast. You literally tell it what picture you want to do the technique with and tell it how many copies of the picture you want to make in this case three from the original, and it adds all the neon colors and and duplicates and positions. It's really it's really kind of neat to see if there was another one that I wanted to say, but that was the original from the paragraph, So those are some of the new guided it, so that's noon there, always adding more to the guided its. And again, you know, with something like the out of bounds effect that is just crazy, complicated. Over here in your layers panel, you can kind of figure out how it was made. So it's a great way to dissect techniques that maybe you don't quite have a skill level yet for to figure out how to do them. Next question is from Cheryl and she asked, What about text blocks or logos? Is there a way to save for reuse on multiple photos text box for photos or logos? You know that you can reuse on multiple photos. There is a way to do that. So I'm seeming. We're talking about water marking our photos in a certain way, probably with logo something like that, so you can create custom brushes. So let's say you created a piece of art that was your logo. Maybe your logo's text based. Then you could say that piece of our as a brush. Think of it like a brush tip, and then you can paint with that brush tip and basically stand on that logo or whatever it is. It could be a copyright symbol for water marking your images to keep people from still in them off the Internet. A simpler solution would, if that's the situation in which he would want to use it, would be to use a site that watermarks your images automatically or just post your image no bigger than 800 by 600. And then you don't really have to worry about people stealing it cause they're gonna be too small to do much of anything with, which would negate the need to watermark anyway. If you're doing it for a branding thing, that's totally different. But, yeah, you can create your art and create a custom brush out of it. In that way, it's available to use every single time you want to do that. I actually did a feature column for that exact thing in elements techniques. Yeah, and you can actually order back issues of that magazine from the website. Good to know. Question from Plum gecko. Are there channels for making channel masks in elements? Nine. Negative. Good Betty. So what we're talking about here are getting at the actual separate color information that makes up your image. Because if we're looking at a RGB image, it's made from red green and blue well over and Photoshopped. You have a panel called the Channels panel, and you can see the information split up by channels. And oftentimes that's Ah a a way to create a very complex selection because if you can't draw the selection using when a selection tools I showed you earlier or select by color, sometimes the channel information will have enough contrast where it lets you select things like hair for that are difficult to get in other ways. But elements being the consumer friendly program that it ISS does not give you access to channels at all, and in fact it only works with RGB images. You cannot use what's called a C M like a color mode, which stands for Scion magenta Yellow on black, which professional printing press interviews so elements work strictly an RGB move. I mean, Gene had e n g. Had asked. Is there any way to replicate curves? Photoshopped elements there is. There is a limited version of curves, lives in the gosh e can't remember where it lives. There is a limited version of curves and elements, but it doesn't work very well at all. In my humble opinion. It doesn't. What we're gonna talk about tomorrow is we're gonna really get heavily into using levels for color correction which basically curves and levels kind of do the same thing. They just have different interfaces. So you're not gonna have the pro level kind of controls incurs that you do in Photoshopped Limited version. But I can show you how to use levels so well that you might forget about using curves altogether. We look forward to that tomorrow Question from Art house. What does it mean to flatten an image? Oh, that's easy. We can take this image right here. See, that's comprised of several layers. If we use several different things would flatten if we saved this out as a J pig. All those layers to go squash and you'd never see them individually again. You can flatten an image file using the fly out menu. That tiny little microscopic menu, the top of the layers panel. If you click that, you'll reveal a menu that has layer specific things, and down here at the very bottom is flattened image. So we're going to go from many layers toe one where in the photo becomes pretty unbeatable. I mean, you could do different things to, but you're never going to get back to you know, those specific layers I never, ever, ever flatten an image. I really don't understand why anybody flattens an image ever. You know, because if you always keep your native Photoshopped document around, the only reason you'd really flatten is if you're going to send the file to somebody that doesn't have a program that understands layers, or if you don't want it to be messed with, that might be a good reason. So if I'm gonna post it on the web while I'm obviously not gonna post a native Photoshopped file on the Web, you know I would save it is a J pig. And the sheer act of saving it is a J pig flattens it. So I think flattening was a habit that, um has carried over from, you know, much older versions of elements and photo shop. And it's a habitual kind of thing. People think they need to flatten files. Maybe they're sending them to somebody that doesn't have elements or Photoshopped. But again, they would merely save It is a J pig. And that would do your flattening in your file format conversion. You know, at one time Lisa Foghorn Leghorn wanted to know a photo shop could do everything that elements condo's can photo shop, do everything that elements can do. No, Remember that before and after thing? Remember how we said that Photoshopped has never been able to do that and still cannot do it so that you don't get any before and after previews? I've always thought the panorama stitcher in elements was superior to the one that's in photo shop. Um, elements. Has a fame called the Magic extractor lives under the image many we're going to get into using this tomorrow we get into collages. The magic extractor is amazing and unity Photoshopped veterans out there. We used to have something in photo shop called the Extract filter, and it was for you could mark off the thing that you wanted to keep, and Photoshopped would try to throw everything else away. Well, we don't have that filter in the big version of photo shop anymore. It went away and photo shop CS four, but while it was around, it was kind of the same thing. The magic extractor did magic extractor always worked better than the extract filter. Always, always, always so Photoshopped will not do everything that elements will dio. I can make elements, do almost everything that Photoshopped candy. But there's a few things like this. You imagine extractor before and after previews, the panoramic stitcher that I just always thought elements that a much better job. And I swear to this day that the recomposed where we squash the picture, we took out some of the background. I think the recompose and elements works better than the content aware scale in photo shop, but I could be thinking that just because maybe the version was back, maybe the new version of Photoshopped hadn't come out yet and recomposed got revved and elements before it showed up in photo shop. That could be what that was. But long way of saying no. All right, uh, last question of the day, um, and could be leading into what we're going to be doing tomorrow. The question was, does elements have actions? And if so, will you be covering installing actions tomorrow? No, we're not going to cover actions. There's a convoluted way to get them to work in elements but you don't have an actions panel like you didn't photo shop and basically actions were recorded keystrokes. So you turn on the TV, hit the recording button and you say, Okay, I want you to record every keystroke I'm about to press now. And then you click. Stop. And then you can replay that syriza keystrokes anytime you want. You can either do it by finding that action clicking play, or you can trigger it with a keyboard shortcut. So illnesses have anything like that. But there are companies who have made plug ins that will behave as actions. Basically, somebody has created the action in photo shop, and you just runs in elements s. So that's how you can get around that fact. But no, we won't be covering them, right. Well, I just want to say, on behalf of the Internet, thank you for an amazing day of shop elements. And we are going to give you a big round of applause and then talk a little bit about what we're gonna do tomorrow. So big. Thank you so much. Thank you. So we just want to cover a few things. Um, before we break here, so do we want to talk about what we're gonna cover tomorrow? Yeah. Tomorrow we're gonna keep continuing on with I'm gonna show you another way to create a black and white image elements has what's called a black and white converter in it. I do believe after me showing it to you that you will prefer to stick with the Grady a map adjustment layer. But you should know all of your options that are available to you. So we're gonna do a little bit more on grey scales. We're gonna go into creating some color tents using effects panel. Um, we're gonna dive heavily into using levels for color correction. And by the time this class is over, you're gonna Okay, you're gonna be a pro at using levels, and we're gonna talk about fixing stubborn color cast. We're gonna get into some really high end wrinkle lightning techniques that are used by the pros. And they were going to jump straight into collages and special effects that we're gonna look at pushing a photo through text, pushing it through another shape. We're going to create a soft oval vignette to blend one image into another. We're gonna use layer blend most to combine several different layers into collage. Remember this ski bunny collage we started out with early? We're gonna look at exactly how that is created. And then we're gonna finish up by taking a little stroll along with the magic extractor to delete the background in order to combine it with another image and make that first image like it was really part of the original one. So we have lots of fun things to go over tomorrow.