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Using Illustrator Elements

now unintentionally here cause I was so busy chatting, I created something that I kind of like because I didn't do it on purpose. But it happened. And that is the position of the mask. It's slightly different than the position of this layer below. See, see if I get a little closer here, how even though it's mast, some of the black is kind of sneaking through a little bit. That actually was an unintentional effect that I kind of like. That's, um, interesting possibilities. So here's another idea. Something you can do because of the way these frames come in. I chose to make some black with a transparent background because they come from illustrator. However, you may choose to go down a different path of experimentation by throwing in some other factors. So let's see what happens. First of all, it doesn't need to be see him. OK, that's the other thing in my little beef about illustrator. It always wants to come in a c m y que, which is not necessary, and it's bigger than it needs to be. B...

ut I still want a color because ultimately I want to try. What happens if I change the color of this frame to some color and then use that as part of my experimentation. So let's pick a color like maybe this golden brown. Now what I have right now is a document only has one thing. It has a layer, but on that layer it's mostly transparent, and I want to keep that transparency and just change the black. So if I just used traditional Phil commands like the Phil Shortcut, it's going to fill the entire thing, and I don't want that to happen. So I need to tell. Photo Shop is on Lee change the color of the pixels that are already on this layer, and in Photoshopped terminology, that's called lock transparent pixels. So that means I took a paintbrush right now and let's go back to a more typical old pink brush. You can't really tell this, but I'm trying to paint right now, and nothing is happening because why locking the transparent pixels that tells photo saw? The only pickles you can change are the ones that are already there. I've got some funky weird brush happening. Hold on one second. Let's get back to, uh, regular old standard brush that doesn't have all that craziness. And if there were, you know, still got something weird. It's why, Okay, so let's do fill instead, and then you can see that's what. Transparent. So the lock transparent pixels is away. Where you can tell Photoshopped only affect the pixels that are already there. Leave the transparency alone. Now, if I do that little bit, sometimes there's an easier way. Like if I know that I just simply wanted to paint everything black to a different color. There's a couple of options that are easier than going over and turning that on. If you go to the fill command shoes, fill with foreground color. You'll see preserve transparency in here, which is not the same term, but it means the same thing. So in the Layers panel, it says, lock transparent pixels here, it's saying, preserved them, which means same thing. Onley fill the colors that are existing and the final way. If you love keyboard shortcuts like me is option. Delete is a shortcut for filled with that fills every things Have you throw in the shift key option shift, delete it on. Lee fills whatever is non transparent, so why would I do all that? Because I want to see what happens if I bring this frame and here now must have toe shuffle things around a bit. This oriented the the way we want scale it fit. In this case, I do want to put it on top of the photograph. This may not have been the ideal choice of color, but we'll find that out shortly. My intention is not to leave it this color. It's to see what happens if I have this color and I try different blend mode. Excuse me like color dodge, or maybe usually something like color burn or something where it just changes the ways you see a little bits of color, you know, just changing it, depending on what it's on top of. So you pick some color and say, What is that going to do to the whatever's underlying it? Though The main point I'm trying to get across here is just because thes shapes happen to come in as black doesn't mean you have to keep them black. If you bring them into photo shop and they become pickles on a layer, you can change to any color you want and then try different blend modes. And there's no prediction of saying, Oh, well, if you choose brown and change it to color burn, it depends on whatever colors underneath. Could you also use color overlay? Yeah, I mean any on this one, you could use color overlay to change the color of this on the flying. Sure, because that's a layer style, so that's going to change it on the the fly. So we pick some other color is gonna change it and incorporate that. You'd probably want to change this one as well to something like color to make sure it was still having the effect you want. But now it's gonna be a little more of, ah, live effect of seeing it interacting with it. All right, So part of the reason I want to show you that last thing was 10 Illustrator frames might not seem like a lot of frames, but it's 10 that have multiple possibilities within each one. And if you think about how I could use this in different ways, I want to keep the ball rolling a little bit with opening doors for you of possibilities. I'm gonna do this get rid of that one of this. Now, let's see all I have here need to change this, that get this back to normal. In this case, I'm going to actually go back to my default color and fill it with black again because I want to use it in a slightly different way just to try something to see what this might look like as an alternative method. So I select all of this and copy it, and then we hide it. Go back to this layer at a layer mask, optional. Click on that so we can paste onto the mask and take this now that I've got in the right place and make it smaller because I want to do something like this where I'm leaving a little bit of the edge of the photograph and then using the mask so it's gonna basically put little hole in the photograph, and right now it's on a white background. But for example, if I take the eyedropper and maybe sample of color from here and put it in behind, you know that changes the impact of the photograph quite dramatically. So now we're seeing the photo, but that is not a painted line. It's actually see through to whatever's below us. If I put a texture on here, let's do that quick. Just because we can go to the texture riser, try and get some kind of ah texture pattern. Gonna overdo it. So weaken. See, that was really extreme and ugly, so don't want to do that. So here's a tip that I've said it enough times. I should know myself. Let's convert to a smart object first. So then, when we do, our filter gallery will have the easy ability to change our mind. Ago. That was a bit much, a bit of a texture, and Riaz little better. So not 100% convinced on that color. But that's part of the thought process. So that that one frame I've now used in several different ways, including changing the color and using it as an actual border or as part of a on a mask, all possibilities. And of course, you can double up and include something else you already have there. That's why when I'm in this experimental phase, some things I want to throw away because I'm like, Okay, I don't need that layer mask in a new one, but I didn't think I was going to use this box layer. But instead of throwing away, I just kept it there. And then when I turned it back on him like that's actually kind of that might have some possibilities to. So who knows? All these things are just other options to try and start thinking about ways to do things in kind of that, you know, creative way of working. Okay, so ah, lot of things that we've been seeing. Hopefully you're saying that some of these things we can reuse in other ways. So this box shape since is already a layer by itself. That becomes an element that I can decide. I want to use it somewhere else. So as I showed you earlier, what I would do in a case like that is, say, let's duplicate this one, layer this box layer into a new document. So then all I have is that then I would find some other similar thing that I had created, like this element. I'm Michael. That's kind of that torrent paper thing. That's kind of fun. Let's do something with that, and it's looking more closely at and see what the edge looks like bad. But I want to refine that edge a little bit more. This. Get it look a little more like that Thorne paper that looks decent. Let's make it a layer mask like Okay, so now that's another piece that I might be able to use in some way. So let me get away from all my confusion of having multiple windows open here. So here's the one that I that first element I created. Now let's take this one and drag it into their to It's constructively larger. So we'll scale it down a bit so we can see what's happening. But basically what I'm doing here is in one document trying to build up a bunch of layers that have different effects that are ready to use. I would say this a PSD file important to note, however, that even though I'm bringing them in and say them as layers in each case, I'm still attempting to keep edit ability through camera. Smart objects, layer mass etcetera. So now once I've done that, I decide it's time to work on some different photograph, and I'm not sure which effect. I want to open my document of all these different things and go, This is the one I think I want to try. So, you know, imagine for a moment that I had a bunch of these layers. I just make sure I'm on the correct layer and then take my move tool and drag and drop that over there and it comes over with the layer mask already there. And this already in as a camera. Smart. Obviously, I can always go back and decide. I want to change some setting. And now we could do something with it. I don't know. Change the blend mode. Use it as a clipping mask something. You know, that part is subject to whatever you wanna do with it. So I might do something like this where I would do it twice, once as the clipping mask and then one over the top that I had very slight. Maybe, um, a soft light, maybe, Or capacity trying to get some of the texture of the paper and still have it sort of following the shape a little bit. Something like that. So? So by keeping putting something in a document with multiple layers. You can take these various shapes and have them ready to go. I would advise doing that, especially for cases when you have things like we had in here back to this folder for things that I had just scanned in when we talked earlier about how I would take this and make two different versions of it, one that's appropriate for a layer mask by inverting it, the other one where I've taken away the white. So it's a more of a clipping mask layer, and that could either save that way and or put into a document the one thing that if there's pros and cons to both and this is one of the other things on my Photoshopped wish list, which I know is not gonna ever happen. But it would be so nice. The downside to making one PSD file that says, like six different effects in it is you can't really look inside of it to remember what they are. So on some level, it might be easier in the long line tohave 20 separate documents in a folder extent lease. Enbridge, you go. Oh yeah, that one. And look at it so if you put them all on a PSD file, it's convenient. But you don't really have as your memories really good, an exact recollection of which elements that I put inside there. Now I want to build on this concept of reusable effects a little bit because it doesn't just mean things like we've been talking about so far. Where you know you're creating a particular shape or something like that could also be some other things. So let's get her photo open here. So let's go back to this idea and get back to our textures and let's use maybe this one. Place it into photo shop, enter and then I start my experimentation and I tried a blend mode, which is kind of interesting. But then let's also do the blend. If sliders a little bit like this split thumb a bit, something like that. I wanted to be obvious enough that you can see it and click OK, this layer is in overlay mode with blend if slider, and if you put that into its own document, it also remembers, I'm in overlay mode with the blend of sliders. So if I do that same idea of duplicate layer into a new document. You see, it still says overlay with that texture. So now what that means if I grab some other photograph US issues this once and have it there got a whole bunch of layers presently matter. As long as I go to the very top of this, now I can take this layer, drank it over there and automatically is an overlay. And so I didn't do anything to blend it in because it's already doing it. If I'm not 100% convinced that in this particular photo it looks as good, I might decide to still change the blend mode and play around the blended sliders. But the main point is, I'm not starting from scratch. So the reusable part is the fact that I've already arbitrarily said, I think this blend mode and this blend, if setting looks good a lot of the time. But it's almost like a different former preset when you drag it over onto a different photo like this photo that doesn't look good at all, let me tweak it. But it's still better than starting from fresh each time