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Gorgeous Grayscales Continued

Lesson 12 from: Photoshop Elements® 9

Lesa Snider

Gorgeous Grayscales Continued

Lesson 12 from: Photoshop Elements® 9

Lesa Snider

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Lesson Info

12. Gorgeous Grayscales Continued

Next Lesson: Quick Color Tints

Lesson Info

Gorgeous Grayscales Continued

howdy. Oh, so I thought today we would start out with when my favorite techniques. And that is creating a gorgeous gray scale from a black and white using and Grady, a map adjustment layer. Now there is a Grady Int tool in Elements Tools panel, and it's actually a great way to explain what the heck ingredient ISS. So I'll go over here to the Tools panel. We are in full edit mode for those of you following along, and if I zoom in over here, you can see that this little yellow to blue faded rectangle is the radiant tool. And that's exactly what ingredient is. A soft fade from one color to another. Well, fabulous way to create a grayscale image from a color image and elements is to use what's called a Grady it map adjustment layer. And an adjustment layer is simply you telling elements. Hey, this next change or adjustment, I'm gonna make my image making on its own layer, so it's self contained that gives you enormous editing flexibility. You can throw the layer away if you decide you don'...

t like it. You can lower its layer opacity for uneven, different effect and all of these things were great tricks toe have in your up your sleeve in case you can't correct the color and lighting any other way. And it will be a great way to save your photo if the subject matter is good enough. So let's go ahead and take a look at that. As you can see here, I've created a nice fade from the color of the original image to black and white. And if I toggle my visibility eye to the left of the layer, I can show you before and after. So these little eyeballs right here to the left of the layers let you show and hide them. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and click the eyeball of the layer that I created for this effect so you can see the original image. That's what we're starting out with now through this layer away by clicking and dragging its layer thumbnail to the trash can at the very bottom of the layers panel. So we're starting from square one. So let's say you just open this from your digital camera. Yes. What? It is a J pic. Great question. All images. Once they hit this workspace of elements. RJ pigs, if you open a raw image, you're going to encounter the adobe camera, raw software and at the bottom of that window, which has, ah, a lot of fabulous sliders that you can use to adjust exposure and fill light and all that kind of good stuff. At the bottom of that window is an open button in that ports the image right into elements. But as soon as it gets in elements, they're all J pigs. Yeah, okay. So you can create an adjustment layer in a couple of different ways. Of course, depending upon which quadrant of your screen that you're closest to since I'm down here towards the bottom, you can't open an adjustment layer by clicking this little half black, half white circle the bottom of the layers panel. And once you give it a single click, you're going to find a listing of all the different adjustment layers that you can create an elements. Okay, and we talked about this a little bit yesterday. These guys at the top, solid color, radiant and pattern. They will create a layer that's filled with color, so that's great. If you've applied to creative edge to a photo, and you need to make a new background for it to sit on. That's a handy thing to have levels and brightness contrast. We're gonna talk about levels a little bit later. That's gonna be our powerful color correction tool. Hue. Saturation is great for if you've created a selection of an object and you might want to change its color we did that a couple times yesterday. That was a lot of fun. And this is the one we're after today, Grady in map and again, what happens with the Grady it map is that you picked two colors, ingredient and elements is gonna map the shadows toe one of those colors and the highlights to the other color. So if we choose black toe white as Argh radiant, we're going to get a gorgeous grayscale image Now. What happened here was that elements popped open the adjustments panel. So I'm seeing the preview of the current Grady int right here on the right hand side of the screen. What happens is when you create this adjustment layer elements takes a peek at your foreground and background color chips at the bottom of your tools panel, so I'm gonna undo this. Okay, so I'm gonna click the undo button at the top right of the screen to show you that, Indeed. My foreground, a background color. Chips were blue and white. Okay, so the great Matt looks at your color chips, and it picks up those two colors as the Grady in. Now, if you remember to set your color tunes to black and white before creating the grating map adjustment layer, you'll be finished. But to date, I have never remember to do that. So, uh, let's say that I have remembered it's a new day. So I'm gonna click the little tiny black and white icon beneath the color chips, and that's going to reset them to the default black and white. Or if you're a fan of keyboard shortcuts, you could simply press the letter D D for default. That's a handy one to remember. Yes, so the there there is a difference between ingredient map ingredient. Yes, the difference between Grady Ingredient map is that the Grady at Math Adjustment layer takes the two colors in the Grady in, and it re maps the shadows in your image toe one of those colors and the highlights to the other color. But ingredient is a Grady in is a Grady. It no matter where you encounter, it's a fade from one color to another. A great question. Okay, so I'm gonna press d to set my color chips to the default of black and white. And now, when we go in and create our adjustment layer, it's gonna look like a black and white instead of something else. Okay, so this time we'll use the layer menu because you can also create adjustment layers through that. So I'll click layer at the top of the screen and then trot on down to new adjustment layer. Scoot on over to Grady it, man, and click it. It gives you a naming opportunity. So I'm gonna go ahead and let it keep the name Grady at math. One press, OK? And now we actually get a black and white because we had the wherewithal to remember to set our color chips before we created it. So let me pop open the layers panel here. Actually, I'm gonna move my adjustments up there and the layers panel down here, I'm rearranging my panels just a hair. There we go collapse. This panel is well, so we've got a little bit more real estate. There we go. So over here on the right hand side, in our layers panel, we can see the elements gave us a brand new layer here, this layers where the black and white is coming from. And again, if I toggle the visibility off on that layer, you can see through to the original image below. And I'm actually gonna make one more adjustment here. I'm gonna make my icons in my layers paying a little bit larger so everybody can see them. This is a great tip for you all watching from home. If you don't want to squint to see these suckers, then you can change this on your own system as well. So I'm gonna open the layers panel menu options. Okay. And it's this microscopic icon at the top, right? Its top right of the layers panel. This little guy right here looks like a downward pointing triangle with a few lines given a click, and you're gonna open a menu that specific to the layers panel and one of these options down here towards the bottom is gonna let us make those panel icons a lot bigger. Okay, so I'm gonna click panel options, Zoom back out so you can see. And in the section called Thumbnail Size, I'm gonna pick the largest one down here. And as soon as I click OK, you're going to see the icons in the layers panel get a whole lot bigger, which is gonna help me, Sam. Better to There we go. Waken see? Okay. So one of the great things one of the many great things about using adjustment layers is not only are you not harming your original image, So the whole grayscale thing that we did is taking place in a self contained location, not touching anything else. But they also come with what's called a layer mask in the layer mask. Is this guy right here? Every single adjustment layer comes with one, and we talked about layer masks yesterday, and they simply are your digital equivalent of masking tape that all it iss So just like you would mask off the baseboards on your in your living room for you pain because you don't want to get paint on them. Nor do you want to take him off because that would be a drag and wait for the paint to dry. Put it back on. If you put masking tape down, you're hiding them. They're still there, there, underneath the tape, but they can't. They're protected from the paint. So that's what layer masks are. In the digital realm is your digital masking tape. And if you paint with a certain color inside of this thumbnail, this thumbnail is a miniature representation of what you're seeing in the document area. Okay, it's a miniature of this whole thing right here. If we paint with certain colors within a layer mask, we can hide what is happening on that layer from specific parts of the image. Okay, and the next question will be, Well, what the heck color do you paint with? Well, we learned yesterday that there's a rhyme that lets us know what color to paint with win according to what we want to do. So the rhyme is black, conceals, white reveals. I want to try to put music to this sometimes black and seals white reveals. So and I was telling everybody yesterday that I've been teaching this stuff for 10 or 11 years now. And I still have to run that rhyme through my head when I'm dealing with a layer mask because you got to think okay in my concealing or revealing You know what? What am I doing at this moment? So for this technique, not only is this a beautiful gray scale image from color, but what if we painted within this layer mask and hid the black and white from certain areas? It would be the equivalent of punching a hole through the Grady at map adjustment layer so that you can see parts of the original full color image below. So I'm gonna show you a couple of variations on this technique. First and foremost, you need to make sure of where you are in your layers panel. That's probably one of the biggest, uh, hiccups for folks when they start using elements and layers is not being cognisant of what layer is active at the moment. Because the currently active layer, which is the one that highlighted, is the most important layer in your life at that moment. Because whatever you do is only gonna happen to that one layer. Okay, so if you ever I feel like a tools not working or something unexpected is happening or your painting and nothing's happening. Make sure you know what layer your on nine times out. 10. You might not be on the one that you want to be on. Okay, so my mask is activated and I know it's activated because it's got this extra little bracket around the corners of it. See what happens when I click on the image layer. Now the image layers highlighted and it has the little brackets. Whatever has the little brackets is what you're going to affect next. Okay, and let me get anti, adding our own layer masks manually. That will become more important to you because right now, this layer mask tagged along with this adjustment layer. So if we click that layer than that mask is gonna activate. But just remember, those brackets let you know that your whatever their around is what you're about to edit. So we've got the mask activated. That's good. Now let's take a peek over in our tools panel, and when I'm working in masks, I use the regular brush tool because the painting metaphor is very comfortable to me. You could also create a selection of the area that you wanted to remain in color and fill it with black. Doesn't matter how you get the black paint on the mask. I find the brush tool to be the most intuitive to me. So I'm gonna go over here to the tools panel and I'm gonna grab the regular old brush tool. And I'm saying regular old brush tool because they're just flew of him in this tool set. Anytime you see these little black triangles, that means there's more tools in there or else the tools panel will be two miles long way they have to do way too much scrolling for that. So I'm gonna click the brush icon, and I can see that there are indeed a slew of brushes in there, so we're gonna pick the topline regular brush tool. You can also use a keyboard shortcut to activate tools. The letter beside each one of these tools is its keyboard shortcut. Okay, so if there's a slew of brushes in there and they all have the keyboard shortcut B, you can add the shift key to cycle through all of them. So watch the breast cursor icon is I press shift. Be see how it's changing and it's going through all of those brushes. Yeah, so add the shift key to the tool's keyboard shortcut. If you want to cycle through all of them, and then you just watch until the right one hops on top. But then that would require you to know what the heck these icons means. So where, after the regular abreast tool now, the next thing we need to do over here in our tools panel is we need to make sure that we have set the right paint color for that brush. And this is where we play a rhyme through our heads. Black conceals, white reveals. If I want to hide some of the grayscale, let's say, just from the irises of her eyes. But the plural of that be Iwry, I read. Let's say we want to hide the black you want just from that area so that we've got a black and white image with these beautiful green. Iris is looking at us. We want to paint with black, black conceals, white reveals, so we want black to be our foreground color chip, which is the foreground color is what any of the painting tools is gonna pick up and paint with. So black is already on top, so we're good cells in back out. Now, we're gonna come over to the image, and I want to zoom in quite a bit because I'm gonna paint the irises. So I'm gonna press command plus or control plus on a pc to zoom into the image. Now, I'd like to move to a different area of the image while I'm zoomed in. So I'm gonna press and hold the space bar, and my cursor turns into a little grabby hand. So now, while holding the space bar, I can click in drag on my image to move to a different area without having a zoom back out, which is nice when you're doing detail work like this. It's good toe. Zoom in. Also, I want to make one. I'm gonna make sure that I'm using a soft edged brush, Not a hard edge brush, because any time you're doing any painting like this, if you use a soft edged brush the edge of the paint your applying will be slightly softened. So it looks more realistic. He won't have a hard edge from one color to another color lit looks, obviously Photoshopped. So you can check to see what kind of brush you've got activated. By opening the brush preset picker, which is at the top left of the options bar, just click this little downward pointing triangle. And all you need to do is make sure that you've got one of these fuzzy guys activated. Now, the number underneath the little ball foes is the size of that brush and pixels. But you don't need to worry about that because you can change the size to whatever you want. So just make sure you've got one of these fuzzy guys activated as a matter which one. And I'm going to close this little panel by clicking the X the top right soon back out. Now we're ready to start hiding or concealing that gray scale. So I'm gonna use the keyboard shortcut to make my brush a little bit smaller. The left bracket key goes down and brush size the right bracket key goes up brush. I That's a really good keyboard shortcut. Remember, in a lot of times, while I'm working in masks. I will keep two fingers on those racket keys. Just be able to resize quickly. Okay? So as I start painting and I release my mouse button, you'll see my brush strokes updating on the mask over here in the layers panel. Okay, so now I'm gonna hold down the space bar and skewed over to the other. I and I'm going to reveal the color just in that area. And now if I zoom into my layer mask here, my layers panel rather, you can see where I'm hiding that color or the grayscale rather to reveal the color underneath in a good way to think of it really is like you're punching a hole. Your cutting out a whole in this layer to see through to what's on the layer below were not Rick Ulla rising the image because the colors already there, it's just being hidden by whatever is in the top of this layer step. Because, remember, layers have the ability to hide whatever is underneath them, just like a stack of construction paper or a stack of transparencies. Okay, so they stack up that way. Saul's in back out by pressing command. Miners or control minus on the PCC. I can see what you think about this image. So that's a whole different kind of feel, isn't it? It's a whole different thing, so let's have a little bit more fun with it. And let's reveal the color of her lips. Now I'm not painting this red on. I'm simply hiding the gray scale that we added with the black and white adjustment layer. So now we've got a piece of art from a snapshot. Now let's say that you might have been enjoying your favorite beverage. Why you're doing this technique and maybe you'd had a little too much of that favorite beverage and you revealed too much color. It's very easy to go back to the gray scale because of black conceals, a white reveals. Then all we have to do is start painting with white over this area, and that will be revealing the black and white again. So let's do that. So if we take a peek at our color chips over here at the bottom of the Tools panel, we can easily flip flop them by clicking the little curved arrow to the top right that will switch them back and forth. Or you can simply press the X key and that will flip flop them. So with wide on top, we can come over to the area that we did not mean to pain across to begin with. And we can bring back the black and white or the grayscale just in that area. So it's a very forgiving technique. You don't have to worry about messing anything up and you're not. You're not even touching your original image because you're on a whole different layer. OK, so it's a really great technique to have in your bag of tricks. I also mentioned lowering the layer opacity. So that's another great thing about using layers is you've got individual opacity control for every single layer, so you could make each layer partially see through independently of others. Yes, so exactly where does it tell you that that's a Grady in layer? Great question. Where do we see that this is a grating map adjustment layer. It's actually the name of it right over here, And elements usually lets you resize that layers panel. Usually when you hover over this dividing line right here, you can actually make the layers panel a little bit wider. For some reason, elements is being a little bit contrary with me on that point. So if I actually could make the layers panel wider than you'd see Grady and Matt next to the layer name, Okay, so let's try lower in the opacity a little bit to see what kind of effect would get when a zoom in here so you can see. So here's our opacity control. And again, it's only gonna affect the currently active later. So make sure that we're on the right layer, and indeed we are. And you can lower opacity in several different ways. You can double click in the numbered field and type in any number you want. You know you want 50% opacity. You could do it that way. If you wanted to click this little downward pointing triangle, you can use the slider bar to change opacity. But my favorite way is to use the supersecret, scrubby slider that you get If you hover over any text label next to field. Okay, see how are cursor changed from an arrow to a hand with two arrows. Now I can click and hold down my mouse button in drag to the left. Decrease opacity or drag to the right to increase opacity. And it doesn't matter. You can drag all the way off, you know, onto your document if you want, a long as you're holding down that mouse button. So I'm gonna reduce the opacity of this layer a little bit to show you another look that you can easily get with this kind of technique. It's so easy. It's so, so easy. And again. What a great way to salvage and image that, perhaps, can't be color corrected or that you can't get to look and just right. Any questions on that part? Yeah, we do have some questions from the chat room. First question came from Sam Cox, who said, regarding painting on layer mask with black to conceal white to reveal. Can I paint on the layer mask with other colors, such as maybe gray? Great question. Answer is absolutely yes, so you can Onley paint with layer masks only understand black and white so, or any shade of gray in between. You can't paint with red on a layer mask for green on layer mask, because elements doesn't understand that it only understands black or white, but absolutely like that gentleman pointed out. You can paint with shades of grey, so if black conceals and why it reveals, what do you think Gray's gonna do? It's gonna do a little bit of both, depending upon how dark degree is. So the darker the gray, the more you're going to conceal, but not completely. And then the lighter the gray, the more you're revealing, but not completely. That kind of thing comes in real handy for collages. When you're for fading a bunch of images in together and blending you can control exactly how much each piece is being revealed or concealed by the shade agree that you paint with. But for the most part, you'll stick with black conceals, and White reveals that there won't be too terribly. Many instances were painting with grain. A layer mask will come in that handy, especially with the tenant techniques that were going over for photographers. Thank you. A question from Redhead 17. Can you choose which color maps to the highlights on which to the shadows? Actually, I think it's a left to right kind of situation on the shadows get map to the one on the left and the highlights Get map to the one on the right. But I do want to show you all. Remember how we when I first went into the great map adjustment layer, it picked up my color chips of blue and white? That's useful, actually, because not only is a Grady a map adjustment layer great for making beautiful grey scales, but she can you can fake what's called a duo tone or a tri tone. So that's an interesting thing to you. We covered it yesterday, quickly, right before we left. But let me do it again here. I'm gonna go ahead and throw this layer away, and I'm gonna come over to my color chips in my tools panel, these guys right here and I'm gonna set them to something else. So I'm gonna click the top one, and Elements is gonna open the color picker, which allows me, Teoh change colors. So let's say I wanted my shadows to map toe a nice blue and my highlights demand to a nice white. So I'm gonna use the rainbow bar over here kind of the middle of the dialogue to choose my range of colors. So I'm just gonna arbitrarily quick somewhere in the blue range and then using this box right here I can tell elements how lighter, how dark I want that color to be. So I'm gonna choose that blue Let's say that look really pretty. So I'm going to click, OK, actually think I want a bit of a darker one there and I'm gonna leave my background color chips, that two white. So now when we go in and create our great map adjustment layer this time we'll use that half black, half white circle the bottom of the layers panel choose Grady a map. Now we've got a whole nother look. So you're not stuck with just black and white. You can use any colors. Okay. Typically, you want to leave the background color chip set toe white unless you want to get a really odd kind of film. Negative look, which might be useful for Halloween. Not much sales, but so you're not limited to just black and white. Yes. Wanted to apply the blue just her face and put the black of her hair and it's normal color. Great. You could use the lame Ask. Yeah, so let's do just that. So I'm in my layer mask over here on the right hand side here, and I've already got my brush tool activated. If I want to hide the blue from other areas, I'm painting with black. Black conceals white reveals. So I need to flip flop my color chips so that black is on top. So I pressed X to do that or again, you can use that little curved arrow above the color chips, and now you can come over to your image. And if I was gonna hide quite a bit of this, I might even consider filling that layer mask with black instead of spending 30 minutes painting. Unless you don't unless you're billing by the hour in the bio Mommy's hand pain it, so I'll go ahead and fill it with black to show you all how you do that. So with a layer mask active and again, I know it's active cause it's got that extra little bracket around its corners. I'm gonna trot up to the edit menu, and she used Phil Layer, and then elements is going to say, What color would you like? to feel it with. And if you click the pop up menu next to the word use because it's asking me what color do you want to use? You'll find that black and white and gray are always options down there. So you don't even have to worry about making sure that you've got the right field color as a background or foreground chip, rather because those options are always here. So I'm gonna choose Black because we want to hide all of that blue and click OK, And as soon as I do this, we're gonna go back to the original image because everything on that layer is now being completely hidden because our layer mask is filled with black. So now you can go back and with a brush set to paint with white because black conceals, White reveals. Now we can go in and let the blue shine through wherever we want. So if I take a peek and my tools panel, I've still got my brush activated. But if I want to paint with why I need to flip flop my color chips and again, if you're color chips were any other color? Maybe one of them was great or something like that. You would need to press d to set them back to the default black in line. So I'm gonna press X to flip flop my color chips. Now, I can come over here to the image, and if I only wanted to reveal the blue on her face, I could certainly do that. And if we were doing this for real, probably zoom in really far and take a little bit more time with it. But you'll get the idea of this so you can create all kinds of interesting tips. Interesting effects. I changed brush tools there. Here we go. And now if I decide that I don't want her eyes to be covered with the blue is simply a matter of pressing X to flip flop. My color chips and I can come back up here and reveal the original color on her eyes. I mean, there's no end to what you can do with this technique. So that's something in entirely different. Is this what the blooming and create uses? They actually paint their faces, don't they? Yes. And now we've got a whole nother look, you know, because I'm thinking I should see ingredient map as a layer. I just see you painting in the white, and I see the original. Okay, so this is our Grady and map layer right here. So elements creative Addison as we chose Grady, a map adjustment layer. Yes. So that's your layer right here. And you can see our brushstrokes here in the layer mask showing you where Where exactly? On the image that whatever is happening on that layer is being revealed or hidden. Yeah. So, anywhere you see, black, uh, whatever is happening on this layer is being hidden. Wherever you see white, whatever is happening on that layer is being shown or revealed. I've got another tightening to show you with the same image. So let me throw this one away, and we'll go back to our black to white radiant. So I'm going to remember to set my color chips this time first, every time this has happened, you saw it here on creative life. So my color chips air balloon. Why? So I'm gonna press d to change them to the default black in line. Gonna create another Grady a map adjustment layer by clicking the half black, half white circle the bottom of the layers, Pale Jews, Radiant map. So we're back to our beautiful gray scale. So you see, here's our layer the elements just created for us. Now we're gonna use the Grady in tool inside the mask because we're going to create that nice fade from color to black and white, which is another interesting little little thing to do. So, once again, I want to make sure that I've got the mask activated and I dx it's got that little extra bracket around it. Now I'm gonna come over to the tools panel and grab the great and tool. So we're just gonna give it a click to activate it. And once it's active, you can see it darkens. It looks like it's pressed in. Now with this tool, I need to make a couple of adjustments in the options bar. So the options bar is This bar right here runs across the top of your screen, and it lets you customize the way be currently active tool in the tools panel actually works so that you can customize it. So while the grading tool is active, I can come up here to the options bar. And when the tool tip gets out of my way, I'm gonna click the little downward pointing triangle next to the Grady and preview. This is the same kind of radiant preview that we saw in the right hand side of the screen in the adjustments panel. Okay, so lets you pick what kind of radiant you want. Now, I'm gonna pick the 3rd 1 in this list, and this is just a list of built ingredients called presets. These 1st 3 will always be the same. The 1st 1 is picking up your foreground and background colors. That's fine in this instance, because we'd set them correctly. The 2nd 1 is a foreground color chip. Too transparent, radiant. That's not gonna work for us on this tightening. What we want is the black to white Grady in. Okay, so in this case, we could click on this one because our color chips are set correctly. But if they weren't, we could always click on the 3rd 1 in the list. So give it a click and close this little panel by clicking the X. Now, I want to make sure that my Grady in style is linear. Okay, that's gonna give us that nice fade. So that's already activated, so I don't have to click it again, and that will probably be activated unless you've changed it. If you've played around with radiant settings before, that's the thing to remember about the options bar Is the setting stay changed until you change them back. So if anything ever misbehaves, this is another instance of do as I say, not as I do. I want a little embarrassed to admit this, but I feel safer. Feel I want to reinstall the dagger in program because I thought the brushes had gone haywire and all that had happened was I had made a change to a setting in the options bar and for gotten to change it bags. I reinstalled it. Yeah, was how to reset the options. Where's the dialogue to do that? Sure, depending upon you know which tool you've got active. Uh, you've got a little menu. I mean, open it against you can see it. It's the tiny little triangle to the far left, and if you just give it a click, you can say reset, tool or reset all tools and that takes all the options. Bar settings back, Teoh factory fresh. And how would you change them in the first place? I don't I don't follow. Hello? Got them out. Got them out of the default. For example, if I changed my Grady in style, Okay. You know, made any kind of changes to anything up here. Uh, so it's as easy as that. If you If you've made any of those changes of right in the mode, for example, right then you can click this little triangle and say, Reset toll and everything goes back. Teoh factory Fresh setting. Yeah, so that's a giggle. Troubleshooting tips to keep in your back pocket. Okay, so you got a black toe like radiant. We've got linear turned on. Now we're gonna come over to the image, and we need to tell elements how where to start, the radiant and how wide we want it to be. And the with being the width of the transition from one color to another. Okay, so the best way to do it is just a experiment. Start clicking and dragging in any direction and see what happens. But the great thing about this technique is that you don't have to start over. The mass just automatically updates with your clicks. Okay, so if you can see it, But my cursor is a tiny little cross hair, and the way it works is you click and hold down your mouse button and you drag and elements is going to give you a line that represents the width of the faith. The longer the line, the wider the transition point. Okay, the shorter toe the line, the more sharp the transition point. But because it's a great and it will never be a hard edge, it'll be close. But it won't be hard edge, and it also tells you where you're starting it from. And so this is a starting point. So I'm gonna go ahead and release my mouse button and zoom back out so you can see the nice fates and now see in our layer mask. Now we have that black to white radiance, but I can keep clicking and dragging in any direction and see how my mask keeps updating. So don't worry too much about trying to figure out the best place to click, or how long to make that transition point turn out to worry about that at all. Just do it visually. Just keep clicking and dragging in every different possible combination to see what you can come up with and you'll come up with really interesting effects. Any questions on that part? Question from me? Burn. The chat room is using the black migrating the best way to make a color photo to black and white? Or is there a better way to get Chris Black and white images? Heck, yes. In my in my own personal opinion, I think the grading math adjustment layer is hands down the best way in. Seriously, I teach it Photoshopped world, despite every year, and it's riddled with pro photographers and those that have not purchased 1/3 party plug in a higher in plug in to do their black and white conversions use this exact method. Scott Kelby, which is a good friend of mine, founder of national association Photoshopped professionals. He's a limit, taught me how to do this. In his opinion and a lot of other pro photographers, this creates the most beautiful ah, high contrast, but not not overly done. You know, not not such high contrast that it looks like you fiddled with it, but yeah, every photo that I've tried this out on this is a does the best job. Now that's a great send way into the other way. You can do this. So let me show you what that involves. I'm gonna go ahead and throw away this adjustment layer just by clicking its thumbnail. And when you're moving layers around, do get into the habit of grabbing them by their thumbnail. Okay, You can think of it as you know, grabbing the hair on their head and put them in the trash can, because if you collect in other areas, you can trigger other menus or other things toe happen. Elements will think you're trying to select multiple layers to the throw one away. There's unexpected things that could happen. So do you get into the habit of when you're moving layers around restocking order or throwing them away to grab them by their thumbnail? So click and then dragged down into the trash. OK, so now let's take a look at the black and white converter that came along a couple of reasons ago. Unfortunately, there's no way to you use this converter non destructively, It's not available as an adjustment layer anything like that. So to protect your original image, you've got no choice other than to duplicate the image layer. Okay, so that's what we're going to do first. So I'm activated the layer that I want to duplicate, and I'm gonna trot it to the layer menu and shoes duplicate layer. So elements asks, what would you like to name Duplicate layer and, well, cleverly call this one black in line. So now we're working on a copy. The black and white image converter lives in the enhancement. You Okay, so choose enhance, and then trot on down to convert to black and white. And you get a hunk and big dialog box that gives you a really nice sized preview of your performed after. That's a nice little bonus. I like that a lot. So what's happening in this dialogue is you're getting instructions on what to do. Yeah, because if you don't use this stuff, I said this a couple times yesterday. If you don't use these commands, were these tools or these techniques? Every day you will forget them. That's just natural. So down here, we've got instructions, and we've got a slew of styles that we can start out with all of these or pre says with varying levels of contrast. That's all they are. And once you choose a preset over here on the left, you can find tune it with the's sliders right here. Okay, so let museum in so you can see those a little bit better. Here's the presets on lift. So you've got several of my can't remember how Muneer in here there's, like seven or eight of each with very levels of contrast. And so let's click on the 1st 1 let's 2nd 1 newspaper, and then we could come over here and using these sliders on the right. You can lighten or darken that color information. So if on a drag amusing back out here, if I drag the red slider to the right, I'm lightning the reds where they're found in the image. If I drag it to the left, I'm she looks like a an animal now from cats if I drive the cider to left and I'm darkening that color wherever it's found in the image. So if you like to tweak things or customize things. This might be an interesting way to go for you, because with the Grady a map, it just does one thing. There's really no way to fine tune the contrast in their without adding additional layers for that purpose. But with the black and white conversion filter, you do get these sliders, which lets you fine tune the way it looks to your taste. And again, this is all subjective. There is no right or wrong way to do any of this. You want to make it look good to you or your client. Did you have a question? No, I do. So this'll performed after is not available in photo shop on Lian elements. Right? Okay for this particular tool. Okay. All right. Yeah. There's several places in elements where you get a before and after view, and that's something that photo shop has never been able to do. So this is one place. You get it in the black and white conversion a dialogue. You also get it in guided edit mode, which is very handy as well as quick edit. Mood used to be called quick fix. So let's just go ahead and take a look at a few more of these Pre says infrared is kind of interesting, but again, you can tweak all of these things. You can also tweet the contrast alone slider for that down here at the bottom. So that's a completely different kind of feel, then what we created a few moments ago, so whatever you're going for maximum impact. So these air some wonderful places to start, and there is a scroll bar over here. But I guess that's all the presets, so there's no use in scrolling, so that's the black and white conversion. So after you get this just right, we'll call that just right. You can click, OK, and as you can see, the black and white conversion happened on the duplicate layer that you made so you can still do everything that we did with the radiant map. But it takes an extra step. You'll notice that we don't have any layer mask out here now. This is probably the best new feature in elements. Nine is the ability to add riel layer masks. There was a work around in previous versions, but involved creating another actually involved, creating an empty adjustment layer just to get at the mask that comes with every adjustment layer. But as of elements nine, we don't have to do that. We can add a mask manually. So if you did decide that you like this method of converting colored a grayscale better Or, you know, maybe sometimes you want to use this, and sometimes you use grating dependent on the photo. It's gonna the look is gonna change. So let me show you how to add a real live layer mask to do the exact same partial color technique in this method. So the layer mask button lives at the very bottom of the layers pale and again, you are only going to see this and elements nine. It does not live in elements eight or any other version, and arguably it is worth the price of buying program again to get at it. So to add a layer mask, we're going to give that button right there. Single click. Now zoom back out. Now we've got our layer mask on that image layer, which is where the grayscale or black and white is coming from. So it's exactly the same kind of thing. Black conceals why it reveals So, um, we've still got our Grady in tool activated over here in the tools panel so we could do that. Saying faded color to black and white effect that we did a moment ago using the great map adjustment layer. But again, you do have to add the layer mask manually. Okay, So if I click, the undo button appears the top to undo that, I could switch to my paintbrush and we could do the same kind of partial color that we did a moment ago using the exact same kind of technique. But we just manually added the layer mask. So what do you think? Which one do you like better? It's kind of a totally different thing, isn't it? The Grady. A map adjustment layer in comparison to the black and white converter? Yeah, it's a teller. Everything. Any questions from from the Great Interwebs ladies, A question from Warren Verity and I saw a Z factor also as the same thing. Can you have more than one ingredient? And can you have more than one Grady in? Not at the same time. No. Where can you layer? You could create additional radiant map layers in order to use different Grady INTs, I guess, in the layer mass to create different effects. Sure, you could do that, but you can only set set up and use one Grady in at a time. So if you were to print this off if you wanted as the black and white, you would just make the original invisible layer invisible. Absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up. That's brilliant that you mentioned that. So let's say you've created this technique and you printed it, and you think that's nice. But maybe I just want the black and white so you could fill your layer mask with white. Or you could delete the layer mask altogether. If you've gone this far, Um, yeah, that was printed that way. I can't hide this layer because that's where my black and whites coming from. So if I wanted to print just the black and white, I would need to disable this layer mask. Okay, so you can disable it by either right clicking or control clicking on the mask itself. And then I get a little menu and I can choose to disable the mask so it temporarily turns it off so that now, if I print that image is gonna print as a black and white, I don't have to worry about hiding this one, though you are right. Hidden layers will not print. But since our black and white is on top of the layers stack, this one is hidden underneath it. So it's not gonna print anyway. Does that make sense? So we don't even have to worry about turning off the original though you could. You won't see any any difference or change because layers if you're thinking of them like pieces of construction paper. You know, if you place one piece of construction paper on top of another one, it's gonna hide it. So that's why you don't even have to worry about turning it off. But I'm so glad you mentioned that because I wanted to bring up the disabling the layer mask. So let's say that you printed again anything. Well, you know, maybe, in hindsight, I did like the partial color version better. We don't have to start over, do anything. All you have to do is right, click or control click on the mask again and say enable, and that turns it back on. It's kind of like a, you know, a toggle switch to turn it off. But that is a handy thing, especially to do for experimentation. Because, you know, when you're doing this stuff, maybe you take a step back from your screen and consider you know which version of the image you like better. Any other question from Kristen Lay, who would like to know? Is there a difference in the final whistle of the Grady in If you choose white as the foreground color and black as the background color instead of the other way around? You know I'm not real sure. Let's, um, let's give that one a shot. Let me throw this one away so I'll flip flop my color chips I'm starting out with Why does the foreground color chip in black is the background color chip. So now we'll go create our Grady and math adjustment layer. Well, yes, indeed. Yeah, You get the freakishly ghostly photo negative look, because what's happening is and that was what I suspected that the foreground color chip is what your shadows we're gonna be mapped to. So by changing the foreground color Cipto White. Now my shadows are white and my highlights or black. So we effectively in versed the colors in the image, which again might be useful for Halloween or really scary movie posters. It looks like a really scary movie poster to me. This is kind of a random question, but Steve Currie wants to know if you could change the color of the pointer. It's hard to see against the black and white image O negative. You could not change the color of the pointer, but allegedly reportedly, Or maybe it's only in Photoshopped in Photoshop CS five. When you mouse over a dark area, the if you're using a brush cursor like I am here, the ring becomes light. Your mousing over a dark area for massing over a light area becomes black. But I don't think that change doesn't seem to be happening in elements. So maybe next version. And what happens if you just change the direction of the radiant in something like this? If I just change the direction of the Grady in here? Yeah, so goes black to white. Okay, so if we wanted to, let's say, for example, that you you had your color chips flip flopped and he didn't mean to. So you don't want this kind of negative weird effect. You could click the reverse check box in the adjustments panel, which opens automatically when you create that Grady it map adjustment layer. So if we click reverse, then it will look normal again. And that's exactly what it did. Just flip flops, the radiant colors. Yeah, So this is all really great to look at an experiment with, because what you don't want to have happen is to get frustrated or get a little panicky when unexpected things like this happen. So just knowing how to, you know, turn on the reverse check box or use the undo button and or disable the mass, you know that kind of thing. It helps you, um, feel secure and confident that, you know, nothing bad has happened. Is just you need to make a couple changes. We're forgot to this. Turn on one sighting or another. Okay, we have a question from, um, Sam Cox does holding the keyboard shift button while drawing your radiant constrained. The grainy direction toe, either horizontal or vertical, is that it absolutely does. It does. That's a great point when you show you that. So let's use the Grady int tool inside our mask again here to do our faded color to black and white. So I'll go over here to the tools panel Grab radiant tool. Take a peek up in my options bar because when you're using a tool like this, um, you can click up here in the grading and preset picker and see all the different radiance. You know, my color chips were were set correctly to begin with, but if they weren't, I could click this third preset right here to get my black white radiant. So now if I come over to the image, notice how and I'll zoom in a little bit. Notice how I can click and drag this radiant at any angle that I want. If I do want to constrain it to be perfectly vertical or horizontal, I'll go ahead and let it be angled. Watch what happens when I press and hold the shift key. I'm not moving my mouse at all, but it locks it into you perfectly horizontal or vertical. So if you do want to constrict your Grady in that way, you absolutely can so that was a good one. I'm glad you mentioned it. I have another question from Annie. Oh, who would like to know? Why could you not use Cropper race tool to get rid of some of the great Aunt Layer showing the original layer? What was the question? The question is, why could you not use Cropper race tool to get rid of some of the Grady int layer showing the original layer you could use? Well, the erased tool isn't gonna do anything inside of this adjustment layer because there's really no pixels there to erase adjustment layers. Air really filled with instructions until you start adding paint into a layer mask. But they're they're really not filled with pixels at all. They're a different kind of layer. You know, you've told elements what adjustment you want to make, and it says, Okay, I'll do that in this layer. So there's nothing to erase an adjustment layer, However, with the second technique we did where we duplicated our layer with the black and white conversion filter that's really filter. It's not in the filter menu, but it's really filter. You could have erased parts of that image, but let me show you what happens. This is a really great discussion. So we're going to do that one again. Let's duplicate our image layer choosing layer duplicate layer and we'll name it black and white. Now we'll go back up to the enhanced menu to run that black and work black and white conversion filter. So convert to black and white. And incidentally, these are the fans keyboard shortcuts over here. So if you like keyboard shortcuts, you might want to memorize some of those. So here we are, back in our conversion filter, so we'll go ahead and press OK, And I'm gonna collapse my adjustments panel just so my layers panel scoops up a little bit higher on the screen. If I haven't said that today, the way he collapse or expand these panels is by clicking anywhere in this dark gray area to the right of that panels tab. Hey, So when I double click it, it rolls up like window shades. And if I wanted to expand it, I could double click it again. Okay, so here we are Now, what we did the first time was we added a layer mask in order to hide part of this layer. You could use the eraser tool, but let me show you what happens. I go over here to the Tools panel. She used the eraser tool and I come over here and let's say I want to reveal the color on her lips. So I'm erasing the pixels of this layer. And as I keep doing that, you're going to see them disappear from that layer over in my layers panel. Okay, so let me use a man. See the little transparent checkerboard pattern through her mouth. I'm erasing that image. So what happens if I screw up? What can I do? Absolutely nothing. It's It's not as forgiving as using layer mask. So while Yes, you have an undo button so I could try to go back as many steps where the mistake was made. But it's a much less forgiving, much less efficient manner of showing and hiding something on a layer. You really do you want to use layer masks instead? You don't ever want to use the erase tool because it's so hard to fix a mistake, and you really are erasing. You're destroying pixels

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Adobe Photoshop Elements for Photographers
Keynote Slides

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Amazing class, Lisa is fun to listen to and she knows her stuff. She made the confusion over so many parts of PSE march in straight lines so I could understand.

John Carter
 

Because Lesa did such a good job showing off the new features in Elements 9, I just had to buy it. And here I thought I would be happy with Elements 8 forever. Thanks, Lesa.

a Creativelive Student
 

A very useful course. I enjoyed it and hope I get time to go through all of it again to cement everything in memory. Hopefully, it will stay available long enough for me to do it slowly. I've already been able to use some of what I learned in the first session, but there was so much! It will take awhile!

Student Work

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