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Lesson Info

Building Basic Templates

when we were talking about Borders and the facts, I sort of think I'm mansion maybe in very slight passing that, of course, you always have the option of doing something with stock photos. So here's a stock photo. Why I got somewhere along the way of old Polaroids and I want to use this as part of a layout. But I want to do it in such a way where my life is a little easier, so I'll show you. First of all, how if I was doing on kind of a one off basis, I could use it. So let's make sure this is a good size for us. So if I was just saying just for guys want to get a photograph in here, I take my quick selection tool and I, um, make a selection, and then I'll just use this one my copy and come over here. But I do not choose. Paced by chose pays to ignore my selection, and it would put the pace information on a separate layer. So instead I use a command which is built for this. It's actually called under pay special paste into, and that does two important things. It puts the selection or p...

uts what I pasted into that selection and made a mask. And the mask is unlinked. That's very important. We talked about layer Mass before by default. When you add a layer mask, normally the mask in the photograph are linked together, which usually makes sense because if you say, extracted the little boy with a suitcase, I want the mass to be the same as him. But in this case, if you look at it, the mask is the shape of that photograph. So if I scaled down her and the mass scale with it, it wouldn't work properly. So whenever you choose paste into one, things that happens is automatically. That little chain symbol is gone. So now I can click on this layer and choose free transform. And of course, I happened to pace an extremely large photograph. So let's get closer, and then I can just rotated toe match and scale accordingly. Let's just do something like this, all right, and I could, of course, do the same thing with the other ones with a portion of photographs that look like there are other photographs and behind. So that's great If you just saying I just want do this once and be done with it, then that's the simplest way to do. It is just, say, paste into done. If I felt like I was doing this for some project where every single player on the high school basketball team was gonna have this effect on the bottom of their portrait, I would want to be every time going copy, pasted to copy, paste into So there might be on alternate approach, which might be better. And that would be this. Make a new layer and make a selection. Fill it with anything. I'm gonna use a color other than Black just so it's easier to see. But that's got nothing to do with it. And then before I do anything else, I'm going to convert to a smart object. Now we'll take this and use free transform and make it fit. So try toe, make the corners fit. Sometimes it's hard to see what you're doing is you can temporarily lower the opacity to make sure, and I say that was a totally accidental guessed that it was that close. I fully expected it to not be that close So that was totally I want to say that I that was any skill involved whatsoever. I just arbitrarily went at it. Looks good, but it happened toe work. So I hit enter and then put the opacity backup. Then if I go duplicate, duplicate will take this one free transform and rotated. So it's in here, but you'll pass it back up. But what I really want to do is just on the background layer get just this part on her a mask. So this layer mass and this is typical of making a template is there's a bit of this upfront work to get it looking the way one obviously I would tweak it to make sure it looks perfect. Is right now it doesn't quite yet, but we'll take this one over here. Free transform Lord capacity doing this fairly quickly. Just so you're getting the idea what's happening here. And I would normally be taking my time making sure it looked really good in the background layer. Get this little collection here and then that one at a mask. Okay, so now I've got and I deliberately I chose and this is important. I chose to say I'm gonna put the same photograph in each Polaroid because you're only seeing a small portion of it. So I'm not gonna worry about saying we should be three separate photographs, cause I'm also trying to speed up my work. Whenever you take a smart object and duplicated, it's an exact clone of each other. So if I change the contents of one, all three will change. So at this point, if this was a template in progress that I was preparing for a project with 25 sporting athletes of some kind, I would say this is a PSD and call it so one so basketball template or something just like it is here. Three copies of the same smart object. Um, So then let's get this now I'm ready to actually put night. Shouldn't have said athletes. I don't have any pictures of athletes here, but we'll just pretend so all have to do is double click on any one of these toe. Look at the contents and right now the contents is a big red square. So if we take this good choice, drag him in there. Pretty transform make him fit pretty well in here. enter save. Now he's in every image Now. Clearly, I need to do a bit more work with the edges. But that would be the up front part that you would invest and make sure I didn't even zoom in. But you'll see. Now I have this template where I'm just replacing that Red Square contents with some other content, some other photograph. So if this was again this ongoing project, I would now hit Save as Jones Boy Number 12 and then go back to this one and delete that layer. Put the next one and save it, and it would update. So instead of each time going, drag a photograph in and mask it. I've already done that up front, and by doing it as a smart object and making copies, you will see that each time it's putting gonna put the three copies of that smart object into that place. So the keys of this working as I add the layer employed in anything else, and this is what throws usual catches people is they start transforming. You don't want to do that yet. Just put a layer that's the right orientation and ratio of size make it a smart object, then duplicated and then rotate and skew each one the way you want. And this could be. I've done examples like this where they were on coffee mugs, so used, like warp to make it slightly more curved. But the same thing when you replace the contents, it says, I will preserve whatever layout you've done in terms of positioning, opacity, blend modes, all those kind of things. And then I will just replace it with the next photograph. So the only thing you have to be wary of in this whole thing is to make sure when you're doing this that you're always saving the original file with, kind of like let's call your placeholder. So if I was finished this project, what I would probably do just to keep myself on the right track is go back to the contents file, delete that photograph. This is assuming I've already saved it and printed at whatever saved that. So now when I see that cause to me, if I see a photo, it looks like that That reminds me it's clearly a template because there'd be no reason for me to make a photograph that had big red squares in it. That wouldn't make a lot of sense. Now I throw around the word template all the time. In this discussion, you will notice if we look anywhere in Photoshop nowhere. That's a save this template. So don't go looking in the photo shop. Help files for the word template because there isn't one. It's the thought processes by creating a multi layered file full of smart objects. It's like I have made a template. So then I can very easily say, replace contents and it's all set to go, Okay, but if you want each individual one of those polarized behind to be a separate picture right then you would duplicate, you'd make around the one right. So if that was the case, here is the difference. When you duplicate a smart object, it's an exact clone. If I wanted another smart object, I could say new smart object by a copy. And when I move that one over and reoriented now, when I replaced the 1st 1 the 2nd 1 wouldn't replace. So if you're doing multiple photographs, this kind of smart object had blood doesn't really offer any huge advantage because you're still replacing several different ones. So another option will be to do it using clipping masks, which we'll see on Saturday. All right, so let's say that I was just going Teoh start creating some template. Let's start with a another photograph, some kind of texture background. Oh, it's for the swim team. Sure, let's use that. So I'm gonna create this project where I know I'm gonna. Some elements will stay the same, like name of the team or, you know, whatever it is, the wedding date, something element that's gonna be the same. So I would take my type tool and call it type in something. Whatever it might be. I still have 2.8 type size, which is awesome because, you know, that's perfect for this kind of thing. And then now I don't have photographs right here that I can use as a mock up. So there's a two approaches to take. You could either say, I'm gonna take, say, I've taken portrait of 15 people and I need to make a layout so I could start with the portrait of one person and use those is kind of a layout, or you could just say I haven't taken them yet, but I know that my plan is to have one photograph of them. That's a full body shot like this. That will be full length photo and then another one over here. That's a square and one mawr. That's like this. So now I just made three layers. If you wanted to, Just to save confusion, you could name them. Of course not a necessary step. But it would might help you remember, what was my intention of this? Whatever you want to call them. And of course, if there was some other, like a logo or something that was consistent, that would be on there as well. So you would set this up saying Now I have myself ready to accept things, but they're not smart objects. They're just boxes. So the difference would be instead of double clicking in saying, Let me put a different content there. You would just go to your file, drag it in there, and then it's the matter of figuring out OK, it needs to go above right above. That square needs to be probably a little smaller. And then I created clipping mask. This has the advantage. Where we don't have to worry about is the layer mass link with it or not. It's just the shape is what's causing the masking. So it's very easy for me to take the photograph and move around inside so that I would position on top of this photo, bring in the full length photo I have, clip it and then continue. So this is sort of amore, Just shape based way of saying I want to create a layout that looks like this. So this is part of the reason why, in my mind there's people often ask the question, which is better a layer mask or clipping mask? I can't answer that because in some in these circumstances, clipping mask is easier. Now. I've seen templates you can actually purchase from companies that are awesome, like for creating a Facebook page or something, Our Facebook header photograph and it's in exactly the right size and they have rectangles and actually says, Put your photo here and there. By that they mean position in the layers. Panel men clip it, but there have created all that for you and for some situations. Those air an awesome idea because they have you going through all the work and doing it, you can create one, take one that's already been created. I personally like building them from scratch because that's part of what I like doing is deciding, you know, where will things end up? Okay, so the template idea that's a couple of ideas to get you start. I'll show you a little bit of more adventurous one that's still really interesting because a kind of the investment of time up front can pay off so much down the road for ongoing projects. But let's take a look at this situation so I deliberately have these nine photos of this kid because I want to do like a layout of three by three by three photos, too. So, like the many faces of whatever his name is, he doesn't say like anything in photo shopped. There are multiple ways I could do this. I could make a new document and drag each one into it. Do it that way. Um, that certainly would be a possibility. I'm gonna take a different approach to say I would like to have Photoshopped help me to some of the work and then I'll build it from there. So I'm doing this from with Enbridge. You could also do it from within photo shop in a much less visual way. That's why you'll see me. Sorry. Continue to come back to bridge because I can say Oh, yes, there they are. There instead of are those the right photographs? So the command I use Enbridge is called load files into photo shop players. And this will take all nine of these files. It will create a new document in the size of the 1st 1 and then it puts all of them in there. I couldn't even talk fast enough. Toe. Have it. It's already finished. Okay, I think I'm gonna now they're all in there. Make them smaller. So now I have eight. Sorry. Nine photographs in there. I'm in this case going to probably change my display to slightly smaller. So hopefully I can see everything in here and there we go. So now they're all there, but they're all stacked on top each other. And unfortunately, there's no command that says put them in a three by three grid. That'd be really cool. If there was probably someone could could recording the world's most complicated action to do that, but I'll show you how you can do it in a way that's still manual. But some of the work is done by Photoshopped, so I'm gonna take this top layer since it's activated. I've holding down the shift key with my move tool, and I'm dragging the photograph right off the screen, right off the canvas. And you might think that's not a terribly effective method, Dave, because now you can't see that photograph. But the reason I did that is I know there is a command photo shop under the image menu called Reveal All, and it automatically makes the canvas big enough to show the part that I just moved over there. So then I can take this photograph and do the same thing. Let's go this way, drag it off there. Can you see that little thing that's just popping up there? See how it's saying, 0.1 to 0. This is a fairly recent dish in two Photoshopped Photo Shop is has smart guides for a while. Thes are extremely smart guides because it new. When I moved the 1st 1 over to the right, it was that far. Now I move this one the left because I pause it, saying, Well, that was the same distance away. So when I let go and go back and shoes reveal all nine off to the races, I've already got the 1st So then you would repeat that operation going down, etcetera, so it would have to find the next one and then dragged down and shoes reveal all. So you see how the smart guys there instead of meat guessing, are they all evenly spaced out? The previous smart guides were only relatively not dumb guides. They were not anywhere near smart. Is these ones with that kind of do the math for you? So this point, then it's just a matter of continuing that process. I'm not gonna do the whole thing, because again, there's no point in you watching me do that process just to say now I have all nine of them, So that's one option that you could do. The other one would be to take another approach and say, I know I specifically want a document that's this size, and then you start bringing them into this one. This would take longer because you have to. Unfortunately, the one thing you can't do in bridge, which I wish you could, is you can't say place all. So if I want to places into photo shop, I don't do them kind of one of the time and then resize accordingly. But if you don't have the version of photo shop with smart guides, you always have the option of making your own place that in the photo shop and say I want every one of these to be quite small, like this size. So I'll put the 1st 1 there just for the sake of ease, I'm gonna change the background so we can see it better and then show rulers and put some guides in here. So I know that these air kind of my guidelines for now the next photo shouldn't needs to be in that area. And so on. If you were doing a series of thes type of portrait's than this will be another case where it wouldn't be perhaps as useful to make smart object at least through the layout of those boxes ahead of time. And now you know that part's already done. Now you have to bring the photograph into each box and either clipped them is a clipping mask will replace him, whatever it ISS. So the kind of recurring theme you'll see here is a lot of these cases. It's a bit of upfront work. And then once you've done that up front work, you save it as a PSD file. And that's where that word template in quotation comes into play. Because that's meaning I've done all that work. Now I'm ready to continue from there. Okay, let's, uh, show you the same kind of thing here. Simpler one with three just to reiterate the same process, load files in the photo soft layers and then take my move tool. Drag it over there. Choose. Reveal all this one dragged that way. Reveal all now. Wouldn't you do that? It's going over. The reveal. All command literally says reveal all the pixels, nothing else. So I don't necessarily want an image that just stops like that. I want Mawr. So this is where the canvas size command will come into play because now I can say, Let's add some size all around the whole thing. Now I can look at these and say OK, well, spacing is a little off this time. I didn't use smart guides. So if the to end ones are the way that you want, then it's pretty easy to do because you can select all the layers with the move tool selected. We have these commands, which are like distribute by their centers. So then it just shifts that middle one just far enough to look the way that we want. If this was a real project, I would add layer at the bottom, fill it with the paper color I would use and then look at and say, Well, I don't really like the I think I need more of a border at the bottom and the top because of the border. The space win here. So go back to canvas size and add a bit more when I do that, each time I have to, because it's a unlocked background. Laughter. Fill it again. I think I showed this the other day, but it's to remind you you can also always do things visually. If you don't wanna try and figure out the math, use the crop tool and then if you hold down the altar or option key. You can drag both the top and the bottom and go to the side and drag it that way. When you enter, it adds the new canvas for you. So that way it's more meat is visually saying I think that looks better to me Personally. High would probably try and full circle this whole thing and do something like this once I've done all that and I'm looking the way that I want to take one of these nice illustrator frames that we have, place it in there, then drag it around and make it a little border around everything's. I just think that might look interesting. Maybe not that one but one like that. Just to show you the idea that this is how we can start pulling all these things together as they do the layout of multiple layers and then say, Oh, yeah, I have that border in there that Aiken create or add to it things of that nature not really like that one is quite so much. The way I look at things is any time that I do that I didn't look at my time to see how long it took me to do that. Let's say it what, five minutes? Maybe to make that layout, I would say, Okay, A. That project is complete. Yea, be save it. So now it's a template because the fact that I took the time to figure out the spacing and everything else means I don't want to do that again. So if I have three similar photos sometime down the road, so I might save this file twice, one as the copy that's J Peg that I will send to the lab to get printed in the 2nd 1 PSD and call it something like 33 tall photos or something. So if I ever I'm looking to do that same kind of thing. I know I've already done most of the legwork to set it up, and now I can just put other photographs in there instead.