Lessons

Lesson Info

Smart Brushes pt 1

Okay, so I mentioned that smart brushes are also available in full edit mode. So let's let's do a little rooting around and find out where those suckers live. They live over here in your tools panel right next to your brush. Okay, so here's your regular brush tool set. Okay, Bunch of tools buried in there. These are your smart brushes. Your smart brushes look like a regular old brush, but with a gear sprocket above them tells you they've got a little bit extra functionality going on there and all. All they do is they allow you to paint on a change with a brush. And in the painting of that change elements itself creates an adjustment layer in the background and feels in the mask to hide the change from the areas you did not brush across. Okay, sounds a little convoluted, but the more we do it, and we will keep doing this for a while, it will make sense. Now you'll notice that they're to smart brushes. One of them is merely called a smart brush tool. The other one is called the Detail Sm...

art Brush Tool. It's easy enough to figure out which one to use win, but I'm gonna give you a little extra tip. Typically, you want to use the smart brush tool for large areas, like if you want to blew up a sky or green up a big old swath of grass, then you want to use the top when the smart brush tool, when you paint with that tool elements, is going to create a selection just like it did with the McDole skies. Blue brush, the middle skies blue brush is in this set right here. That's the big smart brush. It creates a selection as you're painting Well, he also how finicky that selection could be right if you don't have contrast because you may not get the edges just right. If you do not want to be bothered with elements turning to guess what you're selecting or what you're painting across to make the selection itself, you can use the detailed smart brush. This one does not create a selection of any kind. It doesn't create marching ants. Use simply paint on the change wherever you touch with your brush. You don't have to deal with the marching ants. Technically, elements want you to use this one for large areas in this one for small areas. For example, if you all took a picture of me and you wanted toe touch me up, please give me a little bit more lipstick than you would use the detail. Smart brush for areas of fine detail like portrait retouching, things like that small areas. But we're gonna look at both of them here. Pestle, if you zoom out of this and I'll go ahead, delete this layer and we'll see how we could have done this in full edit mode. OK, so what I'm gonna do is come over here to the tools panel and I'm gonna choose smart Brush. And seven times out of 10 the smart brush panel will open those other three times it will refuse to open, just like it just did. Okay, so if your panel doesn't open automatically and I'm gonna show you the pain will here in the second, you can open it by clicking its little icon in the top of your options bar mill of your opposite bar There. This is the panel that normally opens when you choose either smart brush or the detailed smart brush. OK, but If it doesn't open, don't panic. Just click. It will be a picture representing the last smart brush that was used, so just look for some kind of photographic icon in the options bar and click it, and it'll open now again, elements you never hear in full edit mode. It tries to keep you from being overwhelmed with choices. So it do these things up into categories upon categories, pon categories and hired a lot of functionality from you. This is important to know, because when you first opened this box, you're only going to get a few options. I think when you first open it, I think it's set on nature or something like that. Well, if you were to look at that, you'd say, Well, that's okay, but it's kind of lame. There's not that many choices in their Well, if you don't realize that you can use this poppet menu, you've got oodles and gobs of categories, and inside each one of those categories are turtles and gobs of smart rushes. So there, there, there, just hidden. Okay, so do be aware of that. So, for example, if we wanted to do that, make those guys blue brush. After a little bit of clicking, you would finally come across the ones that say Sky on only know from experimentation that they live in the nature category. Okay, so elements said OK, job of divvying these things up by category according to what they can do. So if we were retouching a portrait which will do here in a minute, then we would use all of these guys right here because they're more specific to the things you actually want to do to poor tress, but back to nature. So if we come over here, we see Oh, there's a blue sky brush That's the same brush that's in the quick fix move. Okay, so if we wanted to apply that, we could simply click it to make this active. And it's already active because it's highlighted, just like the layers highlighted back here and now we do the exact same thing that we did over there Quick fix mode. We can drag across the area that we want to apply that change, too. Now you'll notice over here that there's a whole slew of other ones. You know, we could even give our sky fake sense it a cheesy fake. Sense it by clicking these other buttons. So I'm telling you all this so that you know, once you have clicked and dragged with a smart brush while elements creates that layer in the back room, see how it made that that wasn't there before. While that layer is activated or highlighted, if you click any other smart brush icon elements assumes you're telling it to change that layer that it just made for you to that other thing. Okay, so if we started out with blue skies and then we click Sunset Elements, assuming we want to change that smart brush the layer the smart brush made to the other one that we clicked on that may not always be the case. Okay, so let's say I wanted to keep my my blue skies around. I like that, but I wanted to experiment with maybe adding some cloud contrast, or I want to see what this dark sky does to add another adjustment layer made by smart brush. You have to click off of that first layer. It made okay. So, for example, if I click on any other layer first, I'll click the image layer because it's the only other one we've got going on in this document. Now, when I changed a cloud contrast and I come over here and paint I elements added a whole new layer for me. Okay, Now you may like that sky better than the 1st 1 and actually I do. I like the way it looks with the blue skies and then another layer of the cloud contrast. But again, while you're on a layer that was created by smart brush, if you click any other icon, it's gonna change that layer to the other thing. Okay, so if you want to create another new layer, you always have to click on the image layer first. Before you choose something else from this panel else, you get a change. But don't panic if you get a change. Because if I mess up and get in here and click sunset, all I have to do to fix it was go click, the one that I had originally clicked to begin with, so you can change the bag, but just know that they will change. So that's the way that you can use several of them. You know, different ones to create the look that you want Now a lot of people will ask. Well, if you're just adding blue to this area, why aren't the clouds turning blue? That's because something called layer blend mode, So I'm gonna go ahead and close this for a moment and throw away that second layer that I made. Okay, so here we are, back to our original make dull skies blue layer. The elements made, you'll notice, appear at the top of the layers panel. Not only do we have our opacity, but we've got another pop up menu, and it's set to color burn. And again, if you hold the your mouse cursor over this minute, I'll tell you what the heck it does. It's not real explanatory, though. It's a little cryptic. Okay, so we have these several different things that we can choose here, and I always advocate learning this kind of stuff. This is a great opportunity for your favorite beverage on a Friday or Saturday night. Pop up of photos and go down these blend modes and see how they change. But basically you're using these to change the way color on one layer, interacts or blends with cancels out color on any other layers that you've got going on in your document. Okay, because as layers have the ability to cover each other up, whatever's on the layers on top of the layers, stack the colors between the layers can blend or not, as you choose. This menu is called the layer blending mode menu. No back out to slow bits. You can see it, all of it. That's all it's doing is it's letting you change how color on one layer interacts or cancels out or blends with color on the other layers. Because color burn, which is the one that elements automatically set this layer to, is in the darkened category. Okay, it's ignoring white, so this color changes not applying itself toe white at all, because what's happening in the dark and category is elements looks at the colors on this layer, and it looks like the colors on this layer and the darkest colors hang around. Okay, so white on this layer is not having any kind of effect at all, which is why the clouds aren't turning blue. Okay, rather than make you leap off the nearest balcony by explaining all of these suckers. Let's just talk about a few of them that are really useful in photography. Okay, this first that there's a tiny little line on. If you can see it on screen, that kind of disease them up. That's what I'm saying categories. There's really no categories in here other than that dividing line. But if you look at the first blend mode in this section, it gives you a clue as to what those blend modes dok. Anything in this category is gonna dark in your overall image. Okay, In the war between colors on Lee, the darkest colors remain in that. So darken is your clue as to what those modes can do to your image. Okay, lighten is exactly the opposite. Anything in this category will lighten your overall image. Okay, anything in the overlay category does a little bit of both. Does a little bit of lightning a little bit of darkening those air great for adding contrast. Okay. And when we get into combining images and doing lots of adjustments, will start playing around with these blend mode so you can see what a difference a making your images. Another really use one useful went down here is called color. We're gonna use that one to cull, arise a grayscale image, which is next thing that we're going to do. Okay, so we're gonna apply paint on a layer, and we're gonna change the blend mode to color said that you see through the color to the details of the image layer. But we're gonna put our paint on a separate layer because we don't want to paint on our original image because what if we mess up? There would be no way to back out of it. So that's just a little bit about layer blend modes. And that's why this blue is not changing. The cloud color is because when elements created the layer automatically, it set the blend mode to something that paid no attention that you know why it doesn't matter. OK, Any questions on that part? There was a question from Irish in the chat room that said, If you don't have the contrast between the sky and building and photo shop selects an area you don't want blue, how do you fix that? You can use the mask just to fine tune the mass like we did a minute ago. Get inside, click the mask and then go grab the regular brush tool and edit the mask itself. Okay, Another way to do that would be Teoh used the detail Smart brush and let me show you that real quick. So let's say that this image didn't have a lot of contrast in it. OK? And we just wanted to hand paints and blue on there. We could go over here and grab the detail. Smart brush. See how the pain will popped open that time. Sometimes it doesn't, so we'll click on our blue skies here. Now when we come over to the image, I'm gonna make my brush a lot bigger. See how there's no selection being made so you could use the detail. Smart brush. If your photo doesn't have a lot of contrast, and then you would need to zoom in and just painstakingly paint that blue on. Say, I messed up a little bit there, but after I get finished painting it all on, I can go in to the layer mask and fine tune it. So if your image doesn't have a whole lot of contrast, you may have better luck using the detailed smart brush, which does not give you a selection. Okay, it's it's an all or nothing thing. So if I'm painting with the detail brush here and I do come into my mosque, then I can put the brush in, subtract move, just like we did in quick fix mode. OK, so if anybody remembers that, but you can press down a modifier key option on a Mac or Altana PC. So now I could come in here and I could fix that area. Or I could go back in with a regular paintbrush and fine tune the mask. It's six in one hand, half dozen in the other. But yeah, if you're image doesn't have a lot of contrast, you may have better results by using that detailed smart brush, and that is just a straight your hand painting on that change. And then you would use the brushes, add or subtract mode to take that away and over here while you're in full edit mode, look how we got a little pop at many of brushes. That little floating brush panel kind of moves with your brushes, your painting. So even if you don't remember the option or all modifier key to switch modes of the brush than you can just click in that little floating menu. You know it's a little closer than going all the way up to the options bar. Okay, I have a question from Kristin Lee. Can you copy and paste a mask from one layer to another so that you don't have to keep making fine tune adjustments each time you paint? Have a smartwatch? Absolutely. That's a great question. The question is, can you copy and paste a layer mask? You can do one better, so I'm going. Teoh, create another layer here and I'm gonna drag it on top. You can copy the mask by holding a modifier key down. So if you hold an option on a manicure, Altana PC and then you click and drag the mask. Let's not let me do it on this one. You can click and drag masks in between layers, and if you hold down the option key, it will copy it to that other one. You can copy and paste this a little bit more difficult because you have to get inside the mass to copy. Okay, so right now. I'll turn this one off right now. This mass is black and white. What are we seeing in our document? Over here. We're seeing the photo. So that's your clue that you're not really inside the mask. The mask is activated. Sure. So whatever you do next will affect the mask. But you're not inside the mask in order to copy and paste it. Okay. So to get inside the mass for a copy and paste, you have to option click or Alz. Click the mask itself. Now you're seeing the mask. Okay, Not the picture. At this point, you absolutely could choose. Select all to get your selection around the whole mess. And then you could choose edit, copy and then paste. But so to copy, paste a mask, you have to get in the mask first. And to get in the Manus, you have two options, or Ault click the mask from Lille. Otherwise, you can use that option or all drag the mask to another layer to copy it. I have a question from another question from libera NASA. If part of your image is very hazy, how would you correct that part of your image is very hazy. That would be a great reason to use a levels adjustment for color correction, which we're going to get into later today when your picture is hazy. To me, that means it's flat, doesn't have much contrast on levels, is a great way toe increase the contrast in your image.