Lessons

Lesson Info

Puzzle Effect

Yeah, I'll get ready cause this is super super duper cute. Yeah, We can't just create a puzzle out of a dog. I mean, have a cat. We have to. Do you have a dog? Todo que So we're going to create these effects right here and elements using the guided edit effect. So what I'm gonna do is back out of everything that has occurred so we can start from zero. So I'm going to click to activate the top most layer in my layers panel, and we're going to scroll down and you can see what elements has done. It's created these puzzle pieces and then the puzzle pieces that are extracted here or that I've been lifted out the puzzle each live on their own layer. You see all of them right there. So I'm just gonna scroll down until I confined the bottom most layer and I'm gonna shift click the one above it, which is gonna activate everything in between. And then we'll press the delete key. So now we're back to square one. So now let's come over here and go into guided edit mode. If you are already there, c...

losed my little photo drawer for Tobin and let's scroll through all the different effects. Now these really wild, complicated effects live at the bottom of the guided edit panel, so we're gonna click Puzzle effect. This is so easy you won't believe it. So their first task is to choose what size puzzle pieces we want. I usually go for large. Small is just really teeny tiny, but by Omi is click each one and see what it looks like. All zoom in a little bit and that amazing. So if I decided we don't want media puzzle pieces that I can see what that looks like and here's large we'll go with large makes him a little bit easier to see to extract. Now let's scroll down that guided edit, and our next piece of instruction is offering to extract individual puzzle pieces for us. If we would like we get to pick which ones. So what we're gonna do here is click. This button will look at the tool that's next to the button. If you're familiar with photo shop at all, you know that that's a magic wand, so that if we were an expert mode is the tool that elements went and fetched, plopped right down here for us to use. That's the tool that is using to select individual pieces of the puzzle. So let's click Select Puzzle Piece. Now we get another piece of instruction, click on the puzzle piece you want to extract. So now we mouse over to our image. And let's say we want to extract this one right here. We give it a click. Elements has created a selection. See, those marching ants? Looks like marching ants on your screen. That's called a selection. That's how you tell photo shop or elements. Haledon. This next thing I'm gonna do on Lee do it to the pixels that air inside the selection. It's how you mark often area to do something special with or delete it or mask it and hide it. So now that we've got those marching ants, as soon as we clicked with that magic wand or that tool that we got from clicking this button, then this button becomes active. See how the subsequent buttons air great out. I can't skip steps and click them. I can Onley click this one right here. So now I'm gonna click that button and Elements is gonna lift that selection and plop it onto its own layer. We're not seeing any of that happen, but when we go back to the layers panel expert mood, we will see it. So now look what happens now. My select puzzle piece button is active once again. That allows me to continue selecting puzzle pieces and popping them up up onto their own layers, which is what elements is doing in the background. But you don't care, right cause you're in guided edit mode and you're like we were having a puzzle extraction party here so you can click select puzzle piece, come back over to the image, and now let's click that next piece, and then we mouse back over to the guided edit and we click extract. You can keep doing that all day long till the cows come home. We'll do just another one here. Extract. Let's say that's good enough. Now we can come down here and we see that the move tool is actives. What says use the move tool to arrange the extracted piece? Well, what happens when you extract those puzzle pieces is they get stacked up right here So all we have to do is just click and drag, and we see those puzzle pieces. I think I turned off the auto select option earlier when the move tool was active. So I may have to go turn that back on for this to actually work. But anyway, you guys get the get the idea. So now when we mouse down and we find at the very end of the edit, actually use that one executed out of the way because what the eraser tool is gonna allow us to do is in a press and hold my space bar to scoot around within the image. The eraser tool is gonna let us a click and drag to erase the dividing lines because we wouldn't have those dividing lines if we really didn't have those puzzle pieces there. So when that amazing the elements really just walks you through all that, impressing the space bar to switch to the little grabby hand and then we can click done. Now let's pop over into expert mood and see what elements did. Now here we see a duplicate image layer. We've still got our background layer, right. There's our original image is still intact. And then we've got another layer here named Jigsaw Puzzle Grid. That's the little overlay of the shapes, just lines. In fact, if we just option click, you can see the outline the elements drew. And then if we start clicking to activate these other layers, we find that Oh, if we click our visibility, I those are our puzzle pieces. So from here, even an expert mode when we started out and guided edit mode, we can switch to expert mode in fine tune this puzzle effect because what you can do here that you can't do in guided edit mode is to spend those puzzle pieces around, which makes it look more realistic. So we're gonna click to activate the layer that we want to effect. And you can just talk of the visibility eyes often on to find that layer. Actually, let's start out with this one up here. That's that guy. And then we're gonna activate the move tool. Now, the option that I turned off that prevented the guided edit from letting me to select those puzzle pieces is this guy right here, Auto select layer. So now if I have that turned on, and I've got this layer active. She talking to scoot that piece around, and I believe if I just mouse over to the other piece and click it, elements will automatically activate the layer that that pieces on so I can move that guy around wherever I want. And then if I mouse over to the other piece and click it, elements automatically activates the layer that it's on. So let's call that good. And now let's begin to rotate them around. Well, we looked at the tool that would do that earlier. That's the free transform tool. So while the move tool is active, you could make sure that that show bounding box option is turned on. And if it is, then you don't have Teoh either. Use a keyboard shortcut to summon free transform or go up to the image menu. Choose transformed free treats free transform. I wish this was called resize or resize object, because transform is a little bit cryptic, but really, you can transform different aspects of whatever is on that layer so you could change size. You can change perspective. You can skew it. You can distort it. You can rotate it. So that's kind of why it's called Transform, cause you can apply several different transformations to layer content. But if you've got the move till active right here in the tools panel in expert mode and you have the check box turned on to show a bounding box any time that layers active, then you're going to see those little re sizing handles appear around that layer content. So you'll notice that as I'm mouse when we do it up here, because I think you can see it better. As I'm mouse just a little bit away from any one of those corner handles, my cursor turns into a curve double sided Arab. That's your cue that you can rotate now. So if I just click and drag, I can spin that puzzle piece around and then, uh, press return or click the little check mark to say OK, and then either with auto select layer turned on and the move tool active, you can just click toe, activate another layer, or, if you've turned auto, select off. You can just go find the layer in your layers panel and click to activate it and then with show bounding box turned on with the move till active. That's how we can just rotate all of those little pieces and scoot him around so that it looks realistic. Like we've really got pieces of the puzzle that haven't yet been placed that are just hanging out on top of our puzzle. Turn that show bounding box off collapse. Our little been here and there's our final piece all non destructive, then that outrageous. So it's come over here to the dog. So I'm gonna click to activate the top most layer scroll down and then shift click so that I activate all the layers in between and press the delete key just to get back to the original photo. And then we're going to do all that again. So we'll be in guided edit mood. We're gonna scroll down until we find puzzle effect, and then we're just gonna trot through the instructions so we can click large for the puzzle pieces if we want. Now the select puzzle piece button has activated so I can click it mouse over to the image, select which puzzle piece I want to extract, and again, this is just creating a selection with the Magic Wand Tool. Now I conclude the extract piece button. Now, if I want to extract more pieces, I click the select puzzle piece button, and then you can either move him around before you start. See how that auto select working Now elements punished me for turning off an option that it turns on by default. Naughty Letha. So now we can keep extracting pieces if we want and scooting them around wherever we want. Now we can come down in the guided edit mode and click to activate the eraser tool in either zoom in using the keyboard shortcut of Commander Control Plus or use this zoom slider at the top of the screen and then mouse over to your image. And I'm using the keyboard shortcut to change the brush size of the eraser so I could click and drag with the tool without making any changes to the size. But if I want to reduce my brush size or make it bigger, I'm gonna use keyboard shortcuts. So if you look at your keyboard and find the peaky for Paul McCartney, we listen to his new album. Last night just came out and you can use the left bracket key to go down and brushed signs right bracket key to go up and brush size So you want to get really close to the puzzle pieces, so make sure you zoom in and be careful about how far over you know, because you don't want to erase into the pieces that you didn't extract and then present. Hold your space bar to scoot over within the image while you're zoomed in and then click the done button. If you want to rotate those puzzle pieces, that's when you would come into expert mood. Zoom in a little bit by pressing Commander Control. Plus, our move tool is already active in the tools panel and give it a click and its options will pop open. You can turn on show bounding box and then with auto select layer also turned on, you can just point and click to those individual pieces and then position your mouse pointer just a little ways away from the corner to rotate them individually. Now you do have to you either accept or reject the rotation before elements will let you move on and do anything else. It's got a one track mind while it's got an active bounding box up there like that. And you, you've done something to you've changed in some way. It won't let you do anything else until you say yes or no. And then click. OK, now we can collapse our options bar. You're actually I want to expand it again. Turn off that bounding box so you can see the finished puzzle. Cute, huh? That's the power of guided edits. You can see how with this particular one we're using, we're making elements. Do all the heavy lifting and guided edit mode. But yet we're coming over here in expert mode, not on Lee to dissect what it did reverse engineer it, but also to find tune into our liking. Lots of kudos. Yeah. Before you close a couple questions if you're up for it. Sure. Uh, So Becky Ray asks, Can we change the color under the puzzle toe black, for example, rather than leaving it white or make it any color we want. That's a great question. Yes, you have to do that an expert mode. So what you would do is you would have to figure out where that color is coming from. So right here, I can see. Ooh, there's a solid white layer, huh? Where's why coming from? So what you could do at that point, really? An easy fix would be to create one of those solid color fill layers that we looked at earlier. How do you do that? Two ways. Must show you the easiest way. Click the half black, half white circle at the top of your layers Panel Chew solid color from the resulting color picker. Pick any color you want. You can either use this rainbow bar here to change the range of colors. Let's say we wanted something. Oh, I don't know. In the light yellow round. Then we would click within the Yellow Range on this rainbow bar, and then we would use this larger square to tell elements how light or how dark we want that particular color to be. So, if I wanted something in the light yellow around my head, click up here and now that changes to a lot yellow behind it. Fabulous question. Thank you. Internet person. And then, um uh Max asked if you wanted to Could you put text into the open areas sure, Absolutely. That's something that you would do in expert mode as well. So to add text pretty easy in expert mode. Come over here and find the big honkin tool with a T on it. Give it a click. You get all your options that you would have in a word processor right here at the bottom of the screen in the options bar, and then you would just click atop your image and elements is gonna add another text layer. So if we wantedto type the kitty's name in there right now, you're not seeing my text, because where is it in the layer? Stacking order is down towards the bottom. So it's underneath this layer right here. That's why I can't see it. That's what we tried to. That whole analogy with the pizza and the layers in the Texas flag is for you to understand that when this kind of stuff happens, be cognisant of your layer stacking order in. You know, I can type all day long, and I'm never gonna see that text appear because it's being covered up by a layer higher up in the layer stack. So absolutely you could add text so to make it visible. What I need to do is click and drag that text layer higher up in the layer stack so it's not being covered up. So yeah, and then once you've added text, you can use the move tool to scoot around wherever you want. And, of course, use the options to activate the text, you know, and we're processors to change the formatting. You've got a double click to highlight the text, right? You do that here to you, so you can either easy. It's just a double click the layer thumbnail of that text, and it highlights just like it wouldn't wear a processor. And then you can come down here and use the optional guarded to change the following change the color change the size, etcetera, etcetera.