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Adjustment Layers

Let's talk about adjustment layers versus other types of adjustments. Business is another key concepts gonna help us when we're doing quite a few techniques throughout the rest of the course, and this is a prime example of this whole. There's multiple ways to do things in photo shop, and unfortunately, we're having this discussion. Before the class started a number of years ago, Adobe made a decision that they would just keep adding more features to the program but never take anything away because on the one occasion they did, there was outcry from those few people that still use that thing that they took away. But what it means is it does add confusion when someone, especially a beginner, says I need to adjust this photograph somehow that the most obvious thing that you see is a set of menus called adjustments because it's right there. So the problem with this is, Well, there's a couple of issues. First of all, using the items under that adjustment menu pops up a floating dialog box t...

hat takes up some room so that you end up having toe try and move it out of the way to see what you're doing, which is just a minor issue but is an issue but more importantly, and I'm gonna over do this to make a point. If I'm experimented, I want to try some wacky look. Why make Macon over adjustment and then I click. OK, no matter what I do next, if I if any of the steps, involves save and or close, that's my new photograph, because I made the adjustment directly to the pixel information. If you look at the background layer, you can see the background layer. Looks like it's changed now, of course, in this case, I can undo. But we'll have to use our imaginations that I closed and save this this way. And then I opened it two days from on Wen Ho. That was an interesting decision for me. So if I try to go back to levels and make further adjustment anytime you see a history Graham that's really spread out like that or has white gaps in it, it's telling you, you know, good luck with that because there's really nothing there. I can't get it back to the way it was before. I mean, obviously in this case, clearly I can because I could just cancel on undo. But again, we're using our imaginations that I had already saved this. So that's one of the drawbacks to using any kind of adjustment. Under that menu is, it's instantly permanent now. Some people solution, which is a decent one, is to duplicate the background layer and then apply the adjustment to that copy. So let's talk about that for a second cause. On the surface level, it's certainly better than the first approach, but there's still a bit of an issue with it. So if I compressed Commander Control J to duplicate and then do levels and I'm going again, make a crazy over adjustment and click OK, now, all it really means is, well, at least I have the original background layer. I still can't go in and readjust the top one. I can't remind myself how I did it because it's levels are done, and that's one of the challenges. The biggest problem when you're using levels, frankly, is the fact that there's an O. K. Button that means okay, apply that. So in this case, okay is an evil thing because it means I'm implying it. And now, unless I really planned carefully. I'm gonna have a bit of an issue so that duplicated make apply it. The change to the copy is a okay idea. And frankly, before adjustment layers, that's the way that I suggested doing it. But adjustment layers are better on a number of levels. Better, I think, because of the opportunity it gives you the end result be no different. In other words, if you adjusted in two different places will still look exactly the same. But what this is going to give me is the opportunity to experiment and go back and try things. The challenge for most people is that these air really obvious because they're right there. Adjustment layers. You have to know where they exist because they're not staring in the face saying, Use me. I would be much happier if you came here and it said adjustment layers and these were all right there. But right now that's just not the way it is. So you have to know it's either go to the layer menu to new adjustment layer and find them. They're or there's an adjustment panel. I still out of old habit, used this pop up menu, which says, Here's all your adjustment layers. So if I use levels, a couple things happen. First of all, the adjustment is on the side in a little panel. It's not floating on top, so if you're short of monitor space, you don't have to worry about it taking over half of your screen. I'm gonna just readjust this to be a little narrower, but you'll also notice that right away it's a separate layer. The background layer throughout this whole process is not being affected. It's it's looking like it's changing, but I'm not actually changing the pixels. So if I make that same really bad adjustment, the big difference if you look in that levels panel on the side is that evil. OK, Button is not there, and that is the number one advantage of an adjustment layer. You never actually have to apply it. You just leave it that way. So this means as we'll see in a lot of techniques, Aiken deliberately over a just something in order to get some results and then put it back again. And that's a huge advantage to me of Adjustment layers is that that's the built in way that it works. So if I just leave it this way, you'll see it. I save it. The only catch is I have to say that as, ah layer document. Generally, I use PSD files for that because that's the Photoshopped format. And that means if I open this two months from now, here's the difference between using the adjustment using adjustment layer. First of all, the background layer is not affected. Secondly, Aiken decide I want to turn off completely or paint on the mask. And also importantly, if I want to just remind myself, how did I get that lovely, lovely effect right there that I love so much? We're just gonna pretend I double click. It says, Well, that's where you left it. So it reminds you. Here's how you did it. So you never have to worry one of the challenges people tell me all the time and you may have had this situation yourselves is they say, you know, I was playing around Photoshopped of trying all these different things, and I got a result I really liked, and I came back a month later and looked at and went. How on earth did I do that because of that moment in time. You're kind of in the zone and doing things and experimenting. I'd like Teoh open documents where I can see adjustment layer mask adjustment, layer all these things that I can look at and both tweak them, but also remind myself, How did I do that? Because it will tell me. Well, this is how you did it. That's the adjustment you made. So for our purposes, in this course, it's also beneficial for when we're gonna create some interesting textures and brush is and things like that toe have that temporary nature. We were having discussion before about when people say, What's the best way to do this? And I'm always reluctant, usually to say there's one best way. This is one exception to me. Justin Layers are the best way because heavy, other adjustment, you have to realize you're walking a tight rope without much of a safety net, because if you just go out, levels curves, hue, saturation. Those are all just piling right on top of the background layer, or even the copy you've made. But you can't really adjusted in any way you want, so you can have multiple adjustment layers. The other nice thing about an adjustment layer is it does automatically come with a layer mask. So if you decide, you really only want this lovely adjustment made to the flowers and not the sky. As long as my foreground color is black, I can come in here. So now I'm painting with black and that's revealing the original sky. So this is one of the ways that I actually take advantage of an adjustment layers to temporarily over a just something so I can see what I'm doing. Once I've made the adjustment, then I come back and say, I don't really need it to be that over the top. And you couldn't do that with a normal levels adjustment if you mast it when you could certainly do that. But then you couldn't go back and re adjust it. So simply said, adjustment layers really are the best way for making adjusting because they give us the freedom to go down that path. And I'm gonna try 10 things knowing that way back here at step number two, I can still read, adjust that adjustment and have a kind of trickle through everything else I've done. Are we good with the questions? So far? We are good with questions. So far, we have some people joining in from around the world, our global audience that we always have, Ah, couple of just basic questions here, and I know that these always come up in these courses. But talking about about the software versions a little bit about your set up the tablet that you're using, I know that some of this will be getting to throughout the course. But maybe you just do a quick recap of how much of this will be covered and what type of software we have. Some questions about Photoshopped elements 13. Just a quick overview of that well on. As I mentioned before, I'm using the latest version of photo shop CC 2014 but Onley because that's the version I have on my computer. It's not required for this. You could use just about any version of photo shop and probably the most recent versions of elements because elements has adjustment layers and Maso so far, at least the things we've talked about will be the same. There will be a few things where elements is a little different, but I think a lot of the concepts could be applied to it I'm using. I always mention this because I don't have any special lunges using off the shelf piece of hardware, so I don't have any special kind of acceleration. In fact, there are times where you'll notice I definitely don't have any acceleration on my computer. I'm using the walk him into its pro, which is this is the medium size. I always take a moment. I'm glad that came up that I would take a moment to say. If you're not using a tablet, then I highly recommend it. You can get entry level ones that aren't terribly expensive, But honestly, if you're still trying to, especially for what we're talking about today for the next three days, using a mouse or a track pad or something other than a pen and tablet, you're you're gonna limit yourself a little bit. For me, it comes down to accuracy, and if nothing else, the fact that this pen is pressure sensitive and I can alter that the behavior of my brush simply by how hard I press where I would have to use like three keyboard shortcuts to do the same thing, and I can do it on the fly without even thinking about it. So, yes, it's an investment. But most people I've rarely met anyone that was like, Gosh, darn it, I wish I never bought that tablet. You know, most people say it took me a while to get used to it, but once they did, they're like, Take away a lot of others up. But don't take away my tablet. I travel with it everywhere. I kind of annoyed when I'm on a plane by myself, and I asked the person next, making sure tray table so I can put out my tablet. I don't do that, but I'm tempted to, because it's just so much easier. So, yeah, as we go along, they'll probably be, Ah, one area where I talk a little bit about a couple things that are specific and unique to the this latest version of Photoshopped 2014. But almost everything goes back to you could probably use CS four or maybe even earlier if you still have that hanging around for a lot of this stuff. So the other thing that we need to address a little bit is when we start talking about using adjustment layers and layer mask is the importance of this thing called the Properties panel. In earlier versions of Photoshopped, it was called the Masks panel, and then they changed it to properties because it really changes on the fly, depending on what element you're working with. So, for example, let me close this up for a second. Right now I have this weirdo adjustment layer thing that I was playing with and a mask. So depending on which one of these two thumbnails I click on, you'll see there's two of them. Here's the adjustment layer. Here's the mask Right now the fact that this border is around the adjustment layer means I'm working on the adjustment side of it if I want to work on the mass side of after click on this icon. And that's the one area of adjustment is that trips people up first because I'm not used to having two different things on one layer, but doesn't take very long to get used to that. What that means is the properties panel changes on the fly, depending on which one of these that you have clicked on. So, for example, right now I've clicked on the adjustment itself, highlighted that if I double click on it, then it brings back whatever adjustment I did where I left it in levels. Okay? And I could, of course, make further adjustments. If I decide there's something about the mass that I want to work on, if I double click on that, it goes back to the same properties panel. But now it's saying Mass. So it's showing me this is the layer mask I'm working on. I can play around with a couple of different settings in here. For example. We talked before about feathering, and I said, I'm not a big fan anymore of using feathering in a selection. So let me go back a step. You're gonna delete this whole thing and show you the difference here. So let's do this if I just make a selection and I go to select menu after even think about where it is anymore, I don't use it anymore, uh, and choose Feather. This, by the way, is a dialog box that has not changed pretty very much in the entire history of Photoshopped, except for one little check box. So, as we said before, the problem is, if I pick 50 nothing happens yet. There's no preview if I click OK, all that happens is I kind of have rounded corners. But I still don't really know what exactly does that look like? So I have to always do some other step to see the effect. So, for example, if I duplicate that and then hide the background layer, you can see okay, it has a soft edge on it. But there's something I don't like about that soft edge that my only option is to step backwards to the point where I started and pick a different number. And I don't like the fact that I have to be so specific and say, Well, I'm gonna pick 78 as my feather and then I'm stuck with that for the next. While I don't wanna have to do that, I'm going to step backwards and instead say this is where a mask and the feather option in the Properties panel is a better choice. So let's one thing I did not mention before it's which was worth mentioning, is initially with the layer mask I just out of the layer Master started painting on it. In this case, since I have a selection, if I click on the add a mass button, it makes a mask from my selection. So that's another way to make a master very easily. And you'll see it has a very hard edge. So there's no feathering. So some people's reaction be well, I should have used the Feather Command before I added the mask. Well, I could have. But once again that would have set me to say This is how softer edges, period. I never want that period at the end of that sentence, I want a dot, dot, dot or lips. They call it the technical world of typography. So if I go to the properties panel, you'll see right here it says feather. But the difference is it's feather on a slider, which is good so I can put it up to whatever kind of number I want. But once again notice in the properties panel, there's also still no OK button. So unlike the feather command, right type in 60. Okay, here I'm putting 66. Leave it that way for now. So that way. If I come back and look at this later and go, that's too much or not enough. I could just move the slider and doom or feathering or less feathering. So I never committed to the point of saying, Oh, well, I guess we have to live with that now. This only works, however, if you make a mask first so you can't feather a selection this way. This election has to be made into a mass, which, frankly, one of the main reasons for making selections is very often to turn into a mask anyway, So you're already going down that path. So I would suggest that putting a feather amount in that dialog box means you're committing to something you can easily change. It's almost like you've set that number, and now everything else you just have to live with it. As I mentioned before, I never want to have that feeling of how I wish I hadn't done that 20 minutes ago. I don't want to do that. 20 minutes of work over again, and some people reactions. Will they make multiple copies of documents? And I guess you could do that too. Personally, I find it so much easier to have. One document has everything structured the way that I want its funding to talk about structure to be more creative. But it's the structure of the document that lets me be more creative because of all these options that I can do OK now that concept of finding a way to do things Inter actively, as opposed to permit Lee is another important concept across the board in photo shop. So let's remove this layer mask for a second. Just get back to where we were. So let's say that I was going to paint something on here, so I'm gonna add a new layer cause I never want to paint directly on the background layer and I'll take my paintbrush and maybe in my head, I'm thinking. But I don't want that paintbrush to be 100% opaque. I want to be semi see through. So if I go up here to the Options bar and I put in, let's say, 70% or so and paint like that, I got okay. That's a kind of a cool effect, but the problem is, I've just set my ceiling at 70%. If I come back later and say, I wish I had made it quite that see through There's no command and Photoshopped that says Add back in opacity. Once you've set that ceiling, that's your number. And let's make it even more obvious. What if I put a number like 30% kind of a cool effect? But now, if you printed and go, I wish it was darker. Well, at this moment in time, I could undo it and try a different number. But again, recurring broken record here. I never want to have that feeling of. I wish I hadn't done that a while ago. So my suggestion is that you always leave everything at 100% opacity for the tool settings. So you picked a brushstroke that looks like that, then used the layer opacity to knock it down to number you want, because that way the ceiling hasn't been set At some number. The ceiling is all the way back to 100 because one of things that I find is a reality for most people is there's a difference between what you think at that moment in time and what you realize sometime later at that moment in time, you might think Yep, 30% perfect. But then, in the context of a lot of other things later on you go. Maybe it should have been 50%. Well, now you're kind of stuck, so I'd much rather do everything. And this applies to anything Cloning, painting, anything where you have the option of opacity. I say, Let the layer opacity rule the day. Don't do it with the tool itself. And there's always gonna be exceptions to every rule, of course. And that's worth mentioning. I'm I tend to use global terms like never do this and always do that Just toe plant the seed in your head. There may be occasions where you think that makes perfect sense to do that, but I don't know, there's still this little voice in my head that says, Yeah, but, you know, maybe a year from now you might want to come back this image and someone says, Oh, just tweak this one little thing and you can't Because of the time you did it, you happen to type in 35% opacity, and you're kind of stuck that way. Okay, so, um, I mentioned before about keyboard shortcuts. Here's another one that I use all the time due to laziness is I want to paint some stuff on here and it's or it's still said, a 37% opacity. Remember I originally did it 100. I want to experiment with a different level of opacity now, But I want to keep my mouse over here and not come all the way over to this opacity thing. So as long as I have a non painting tool selectors, that means I would temporarily have to switch away from my brush tool. So if I press for example, M for marquee doesn't really matter as long as is a non painting tool. Now watch over all X. Zoom in a bit. Watch this opacity here, But I'm gonna have My mouse is over here. So it's off to the left in the opacity is up in the right. If I want 60% I just type six. So you just type in the first number of whatever opacity you want, and it jumps to that. So this way on the fly, you can experiment, Go. But would 60% 80% look like after you've already painted. So you just press the first number two for 24 for and so on. If you decided you wanted 48 for some reason, I just have to type really fast for a Because if you go 48 it'll go 40 80. You have to go 48. But you know what? I didn't go click on that field first, and that's one of the benefits of this shortcut is I can still be positioning where I want to adjust or say, What would it look like in 90%? What? About 40%? And the only kind of weird shortcuts in this little realm of of opacity is to get back to 100. It zero. So they actually want 100% capacity. You type zero, and it goes 100% now. A couple of versions ago, a photo shop because Adobe keeps adding in a little tiny things, along with all their main features. They had a really cool little feature, which is just really challenging to say, because it sounds like a tongue twister. But if you want 0% opacity to hide a layer, you press 00 so it's 00 for 00 for 100. Once you do it a few five or six or eight times, it starts to make better sense. But as a perfect example in the past, if I want to see what a document looked like with or without a layer, I would have moved over, clicked on that eyeball to turn it off and clicked on it again. Turned on. Now I just go. 000000 Sounds like a lot of zeros, but it's one of those things where once you do it a few times, I love that shortcut, because here I'm working on my little laptop. I have a much bigger monitor. That's a lot of moving over just to move the opacity if you point to see if I like it better or not. But again, none of this works unless I start out by saying paint at 100% with the tool. And here's the big warning label that comes with that shortcut. I just did. You may remember it. I'll remind you, if you didn't that I said, make sure you have a non painting tool, active first because if I had the brush tool selected and I pressed five. Now it's 50% brush opacity, so the same shortcut works with all other tools. So if I had the clone stamp tool selected my press seven, it would be the clone stamp tool. It's 70% which again you might want. But personally, I like toe more off the not keep things that 100% for the tools and used the layer opacity to change it. Because remember, by nature layer means you can not only change it right now, you can change it ages from now. So if you come back a year later and think, I want to revisit this image and you look at your layers panel and see 40% opacity on adjustment layer, that means I can adjust the adjustment layer. I can change the opacity, gives me lots of room to play, and I don't want I always talk about this because I worry a little bit that when when I talk about working non destructively, many people interpret that as the ability to change your mind, which is certainly a big part of it. But for me, it also comes down to things like repurpose ing. I opened documents I did two years ago because I remember there was a texture righted in there, and I can drag that over into a different document, and it's already got the right kind of opacity and blending and things already in there. And we'll talk about that later on. We talked about creating reusable effects, but that's to me. A huge part of working non destructively is the repurpose and recycle your work and also the creative ability to say I'm going to go down that path and see what happens. And if I don't like it, I know that I've got various levels of ability to change that experimentation. So, yes, it is changing your mind. But not just like I made a mistake. I'm gonna change my lines. I want to try something different. So as a general rule, I recommend that with almost every tool, very few exceptions, especially here working on layers which hopefully you are, start off with the tool setting at 100% and then pull it back to more reasonable numbers or experiment lovers using the layer opacity. Okay,