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Lesson Info

Recompose Tool

Now I want to show you another piece of technology that is, um, lead the way or pave the way rather for our content aware Fill option. And it came along and photo shop see us for And it was called content aware scale. Okay, so that's where this technology came from in again without making you all weep. Often there's back balcony from this Being too technical is that photo shop or elements is really looking at the pictures analyzing the picture, and it's assigning a level of priority to the different things it finds in the image. So if it finds a big old swath of blue, it assigns a low priority because it thinks that's a background. If it finds a big swath of green assigns a low priority because, oh, that's a big swath of grass. When it encounters skin tones, it assigns them a very high priority. So when you use this content aware scale, you can actually make the background of the image bigger or smaller without messing with the people. Now, why in the heck would this be useful thing to...

do? Consider this image right here. Let's say that I have the perfect frame for this photo. But Dad Gammon, I need the two golfers to be closer together for them to fit, because maybe your subjects are too far apart. That you can't cropping is not going to fix your problem because it's the people in the image. You need to move them culture together. Or let's say you've got an image that's just a few pixel shy have been able to print, say, Ah, high Resolution five by seven. If you only had another inch of sky and another inch of grass, then you get the exact size you want. That's where content where scale comes in really handy also, if you're a graphic designer, let's say I only had a certain amount of space to fit this image in, and the people are simply too far apart. I could fix that and still use this image, you know, moving the people. So that's what we're gonna do. I am gonna go ahead and duplicate my image layer first, because there's no way to use this tool non destructively, and I wanna have a before and after to show you. So I'm gonna go ahead and duplicate it. That's using layer duplicate layer, and I'll just leave it set toe be named background copy. And now I'm gonna come up to the edit menu not to be confused with the image menu. You know what? It's in the toolbar. Here it is. It's hiding in the crop tool. See what I mean? If you don't use these tools every day, you forget where they are. Okay, so here we are, the crop tool. I'm gonna go ahead and give it a click, and you're going to see a different tool, Papa Underneath. It's called recompose. Okay. In the big photo shop, it's called Content Aware Scale. Over here, it's called Recomposed. So we're going to go ahead and give it a click. That's it. Back out. Elements ever trying to be helpful is telling you how to use the tool. Well, that's all well and fine elements. I'm gonna show them how to use the tool. Okay, so now we have a bounding box around our image, and it's a simple as when we turn off this other visibility eye so you can see it's a simple as clicking and dragging with any of that handles all the way around the image isn't that amazing? So it's scooting the people together without actually messing with them. Now what will begin to happen as I drag this box down, see how the torso of this lady is being squished? That is not necessarily a really great thing. You don't want to change the shape of your people in your image. So there's a few things that we can do that will help elements know which areas it's not supposed to mess with. OK, and you can do that by coloring, which is very, very nice. So I'm gonna go ahead and press escape to get out of that size. Change that I did. So when you first activate the recomposed tool, you'll notice up here in the options bar that you've got options. Well, this first brush right here it's labelled green. It lets you cul arise or brush across areas that you really don't want elements to mess with. Okay, and you know it will do its own priority, assigning as it looks at the image. But any areas that you mark as don't touch, it really won't touch them, it will try its best. Okay, some using back out Oh, also, another handy button up here is this one right here. If you turn it on, elements will look at the image again, and it will try to mark off skin tones. Okay, so you can either hand paint them or you click that little button, and elements will try to mark off the skin tones. Well, it thought the flag was a skin tone as well as this guy. So I'll just either press undo or command or control Z on that. So now let's take our little protect, uh, brush and come over and lets his paint on our lady. So wherever you paint elements, theoretically won't mess with that spot. So to keep the lady from being squashed. If we really did need Teoh, you know, reduced the height of this image, then we could simply protect her by painting over her with the green protection brush. And if you mess up and you paint too much green, you can come up here and switch to the erase highlights marked for protection brush and come back down and get rid of that. So now let's take a peek at what happens when we drag our top handle down, see how elements is not squashing her. She's staying the same size. So if you needed this picture to be more of a landscape aspect ratio than portrait, you know this would be a way, a way to do it. But it's a fabulous way to scoop people together. If you need Teoh, um, end up with a little bit more background or a little less background than you needed it. And this is version two of this tool and elements nine. And it's only going to keep getting better and better and better cause one and photo shops getting better and better. Better. And that technology will come across over here two elements as well. So hiding within the crop tool sit. That's the recomposed tool. And so it's asking me, just like when you crop that damage like we did at the top of the class. Or if you do any kind of re sizing, you have to tell elements that you're finished because it has a bit of a one track mind. It won't do anything else while you've got this active cropper re sizing or recomposed box up. So when I clicked to show you the tool set over here. It's saying, Hey, do you want to apply your transformation or not? So you could click apply. So that's the recomposed tool. Pretty amazing stuff. Any questions on that part? Can I just say how much I like it that you always ask if there's any questions on that part? That's what help there always are. Kind of the questions go back a little bit, just a little bit, if that's okay with you. Question from amazing gals in the chat room. She's a regular. Her name's carry, so she watches a lot of creative life. She asked when taking the shots for the panorama. How lined up do you have to be? How would taking the shots for the panorama how lined up do you have to be? You really need to have some kind of overlapping element in the shots else elements. Is this gonna guess it had a line him up, so that's really the key to that's when you're actually taking them. Let's say you know, you take the first shot on the right hand side. You've got a big old palm tree. Well, when you move the camera to take the next shot. Try to include that palm tree on the left side, you know. So it was on the right side in the first picture than it was on the left side. So you try to add a repeating element, and that helps elements fear out how to line them up. If you don't do that, then it's going to guess, and it doesn't, you know, OK, job. Lots of folks in the chat room are saying that the content aware feature is going to force them to upgrade. A quick question from Amy Do is Is there a liquefied tool in Photoshopped Element? Is there a little if I told you? Yes, absolutely. That's funny. She mentions it. If we went back to the photo of the little girl that had all the blemishes, you know, after you get finished, a zapping all of her blemishes, you could give her a smile. Okay, and that's a great reason to use. The liquefy told the liquefy tool does just what it sounds like it might. It really makes your pixels like their liquids so you can push and pull them around. So, you know, for Halloween it's ah great a fun thing to do. I'll go ahead and duplicate this layer, and actually, I'm gonna merge my my spots so I don't move the pixels around where the spots are visible. So the liquefy filter is hiding up in the filter menu in the distort category. Yeah, in photo shop, it's root level in the menu, so you want to come over to filter distort liquefy, and a very petite dialog box that takes over your entire screen is gonna open. And the liquefy filter is actually an apple. It so it's another application running inside of elements. So that's why has its own toolbar with completely different tools, and they are so cryptic. But if you really look at the icon, it gives you an idea of what it would do. OK, so this one, it's a finger pushing into pixel, so it's called the Warp Tool. You can use that to physically move pixels around, so that's exactly what we'll do so I can come over here to the image. And if you think about, if we want to give this girl smile when you physically smile, it's not just your lips that move your whole cheek moves up, right? So I'm gonna make my brush really big so that I catch part of her cheek. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna tug at the corner of her lips and just pull it up. Just a hair. Now, this is only good for subtle changes. Why, you could certainly reshape somebody if you had the time and the patients to do that. If you want to give somebody a smile, subtlety is best. So all I'm doing is I place the cross here on the corner of her lips, and I'm pulling her lips up a little bit and my brushes large enough it as I do that the cheeks air coming up just a little bit. But if they don't come up enough, you can also move the cheeks around. Another thing that happens when you smile. Is your eyes shut just a little bit because you know, your Christian skin appear so your eyes are open as wide Well, you can do that to you can come over here and look in the toolbar and say, you know, if I want to make the eyes smaller, let's look for the icon that looks like it might do that job. And that would be the Pecker tool right here, cause the little arrows or trying to show you that is pushing pixels in again. If you want open eyes up, if somebody you take a picture and they're smiling really big and their eyes or little slits Well, then you could use this tool right here to open them up. Just a hair. So if we want to close her eyes, this a little bit will come over here with the pucker tool. And I'm gonna make my brush quite a bit smaller. And I was going to click a few times to make her eyes not quiet. As, um You goodness. Yes, one must be careful. Okay, so now I come over here and say, OK, then here's our before and our after, and that's a lot of fun to do on a Friday night, you know, with just play around with liquefy told to your before and after. I'm completely kidding. So that was a long way to say yes. Elements does have a liquefy tool