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1:00 pm - Adjustment Layer Essentials

Lesson 3 from: Adobe Photoshop Mastery: Color & Tone

Ben Willmore

1:00 pm - Adjustment Layer Essentials

Lesson 3 from: Adobe Photoshop Mastery: Color & Tone

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

3. 1:00 pm - Adjustment Layer Essentials

Lesson Info

1:00 pm - Adjustment Layer Essentials

Were mastering tonal and color adjustments in one part of that was curves, but when we talked about curves, I was limited in that we hadn't talked about adjustment layers yet so was severely limited in what I could do because so often you apply a curve to an image and it helps the area you were thinking about, but it doesn't help another one and he did do something about isolating a particular area more fully so let's take a look at adjustment layers so I've already tried to get you used to going to the bottom of your layers panel in clicking on the half black and half white circle to apply your adjustment and I only went up here to get to curse so I could use a keyboard shortcut and do it where I could have the interface hidden to try to keep things simple. But I don't usually use the commands that are under this menu because they need to apply to the image directly in therefore they're more or less permanent once you save and close your image but with an adjustment layer I can come i...

n here, go to the bottom my layers panel and tell it I wanna curves adjustment layer and here's a picture of waterfall and that's my wife karen there and kind of silhouette in front of the waterfall I wanted to give it some scale esso I did that and there's just a little bit of shattered detail in here that I might want to improve so in curves, if I look at this and I simply look at the history graham, the history ram tells me in this particular image most of the story, if you look at it, you see the really tall parts of the history ram means this stuff down here which would be in the dark areas, takes up a tremendous amount of space, and they see this little hump over here that tells me this bright stuff takes up a little bit of space, so if you look at the image, what do you think those two places are? The whole background in the waterfall right now, history rams? Not always that straightforward when you look at it, but sometimes all I do is clancy the history graham and decide if I want more details somewhere I might make just part of it steeper. So if I want more shadow detail in this image, I don't even have to click within the image to see where things are. I see that obvious part of the history and the so tall that tells me this dark stuff takes up a lot of space, so what I might do is add a dot near the lower left in the on ly reason I add, that is, if I don't the image is going to be brightened somewhat as a whole, and what I want to do is just kind of lock in the brightness of the dark ish stuff with defense, you're only locking in black to begin with anything the little is bit brighter than black could brighten along with the rest of the curve, but just click clicking there is going to lock in the brightness of that part so we should maintain nice dark shadows then I'll just go to the other side of this tall hump you know about here goes straight down to where the curve is and click, and now I'm just going to use the arrow keys of my keyboard just arrow that straight up now if you hold shift it's like having turbo mode where you go further so I hold shift to begin with, I could bring it up, see how much shattered detail I can get now I know my screen looks considerably different than the screen that's behind me. I'm not sure the internet feed if there exactly what you're seeing, I'm going to justice for my screen might be a little bright for some uses like this one here, but I can bring that up now when I do that if I turn off the eyeball icon here's before here's after you see a lot more shattered detail, but look at our waterfall now I can try to fix the waterfall within curves because the waterfall is obviously different in brightness than the other stuff I was trying to adjust and that's how curves can isolate things is just based on brightness well I don't even have to click on my picture just look at the history ma'am you see the little hump towards the right that's got to be the waterfall and so if I go straight up from that it would be in this general area I could click there and just kind of pull that down a little bit pull it down further and as I do watch our waterfall you see it's starting to come back like that and I could possibly do see how this is starting to get a little flat here flat means no detail so I think that some of these middle brightness levels that's probably this kind of greenery out here I'm guessing it's starting to not look ideal if I turn off the adjustment before I could see it looking a little better and more of the green areas after it's starting to not look as good so sometimes when the adjustment is doing something in one area that I don't like instead of trying to fix it in curves I'll try to fix it with my adjustment layer so let's see how to do that if you look in my layers panel here's what we have let me see if I can make these thumbnails any larger to change the size of the thumbnails and your layers panel you could go to the empty area below the layers and if you press the right mouse button, you'll get a list little menu and you can choose how larger thumbnails are I just write clicked in the empty area below the layers if you're on a mac with only one mouse button, you hold on the control key and click that's always the equivalent to the right mouse button, but that might make it a little bit easier for you to see what's going on in my layers now if you look at your adjustment layer there you have your eyeball. The eyeball will hide this adjustment to reveal your original picture that's underneath, turn it back on and you'll see the result of your adjustment the icon next to that just tries to give you a clue as to what type of an adjustment you applied. So if he had a bunch of these in here that would be a curves adjustment layer looks like whoever designs icons does generic contrast boost instinet skirt and then next to that is a mask and the mask is active. I can tell that's happening because the corners are highlighted and if instead I click somewhere else on this layer, those corners might disappear and that means now if I paint it's not going to go on the mask, so I need to glance the mask and just double check that the corners are highlighted, and if they're not, click on it. Now, when that mask is active, I can grab my paintbrush tool and with my paintbrush tool, usually a paint with your four around color, which is found right here, and this little double arrow icon will switch those two colors. White allows thie adjustment to apply as it usually would, and if I click that double arrow, I get black to be in the front if I paint with black it's going to take away the adjustment from wherever it is I paint, so if I grab my mouse right now, I have a soft edge brush chosen. I'm just going to click right about here in drag over the waterfall to try to bring it back to the way it used to. Look, if I get too much over spray on the surrounding areas, I could hit that double arrow icon again to get white to be my foreground color and just come in here a little bit closer to the edge clean it up a little because I think I painted a little bit too far over like that, so now if you look at my layers panel, you can see the black paint in there. Black and a mask means hide whatever's in this layer. Well, what's in this layer is something that is adjusting my picture, so we're hiding the adjustment right there, preventing it from applying to our image. So now if I hide this adjustment layer here's before here's after you see the waterfall is not changing, but all the surroundings are and let's say I didn't like it as much in the green areas. I don't mind it, but maybe it's just a little bit too much. What I could do is paint with black, which would usually remove things, but instead of painting with the paintbrushes opacity at one hundred percent, I could lower it and this means how much of the adjustment so I want to take away with defaults two hundred but I might come down here and say I want to take away fifty percent of the adjustment and all I did was click right on the word opacity and drag there's no need to deal with the number just click right on the word drag left or right, but with that now I could come in here and say, well, I only want to take away half of the adjustment from this area and I could paint that in wherever I think it's just a little bit overdone, it doesn't matter if I overlap area too much because I can always either choose undo or I could just paint with white or black to control what's happening in other areas but the paint wherever I think it's a little too bright and if I look over here my layers panel now you can see shades of gray in the mask and pretty much the darker the shade of gray the less it allows the adjustment to apply once it goes to solid black it doesn't apply at all and all of that there are some problems though, and that is it's not always ideal toe lower the opacity of your brush like that to fifty percent let's see why if you look at my mask right now just shows it has a tiny image well this is the same as a full sized picture just like the thumbnail below represents a full size image we can look at the full size of the mask by holding down the option key alton windows in clicking within the mask in my layers panel so I have option held down right now I'm going to click within that little thumbnail image of my mask and when I d'oh I'll see it on my screen here's the problem if I paint with fifty percent opacity I'll just do it down here where I haven't painted yet and I say okay I covered this area and I released the mouse button and I click again well, sure it will apply a fifty percent capacity, but what if I go over here and overlap where I've already been? Well, it's like using a can of spray paint if you go over an area second time you get a second coat of paint and so it's building up more in that can sometimes cause problems do you see here where I overlapped my paint strokes and there as well? So sometimes you might do is one of a couple things the first is if you're going to leave your opacity where it is, you could change the menu that's to the left of it it's known as you're blending mode and you could tell this toe on lee darkened the image or only light in the image and sometimes that's going to end up limiting you in a way that's useful or instead of lowering your passage e bring it up and instead change the shade of grey you're painting with. So if I click on my foreground color, I'll get a color picker and instead of painting with black, just choose a shade of grey let's say fifty percent gray with my opacity at one hundred now it does not matter how many times I paint, I'm always going to get fifty percent gray doesn't matter if I overlapped my paint strokes at all it's not going to double up because male passengers are hundreds that means apply at full strength, but what I'm painting with is not black it's a shade of gray, so sometimes choosing a shade of gray is more useful than lowering the opacity. It's a few plan on painting over and over again um, in different areas and you're worried about getting over spray one thing is nice is if you've already painted in an area here's a trick when you're in the paintbrush tool, watch what happens to my mouse when I hold down the option key alton windows remember option is how you get to hidden features most of the time well, when you're in any paintbrush tool, if you hold on the option key, it will temporarily give you the turkey baster, the eyedropper tool that will allow you to clique within your picture to choose whatever color is in your image already to paint with and so therefore I could match the color that's already in here in paint so that way that fifty percent that I put in earlier that was a little bit too dark I could now replaced with what was already in there. This part here looks a little darker than what's here I can option click on the color I'd like to paint with and be sure that I'm precisely matching it when I'm done looking at my mask to hide the mask. You do the same thing he did to view it, you'll hold on the option, keep ultimo windows and you click within the mask. So now, if I hide this adjustment layer here's before here's after in my adjustment is not applying at full strength across the whole image. We got it off of the waterfall, and we got it partially off of the greenish areas surrounding the waterfall. If you want to see the difference between painting on the mask and having not done that, there's another little trick. If you hold on the shift key I haven't held on right now, you can click on the mask and you'll find a red x will appear in the mask. That means you've temporarily disabled it as if you've never painted on it ever now, so I can see the difference between having my adjustment apply to the entire picture and I'll shift. Click on the mask again to have it apply in how I toned it down in those areas. And so that's. What I really wish I could have done on all the other images that we adjusted with curves because I would adjust one thing trying to get it to look just right, and something else would screw up well, if you long as you use an adjustment layer, just grab your brush afterwards paint with black to remove the adjustment. And either paint with a shade of gray or lower the opacity of your brush to partially remove it so let's, try a few other things in this case, I'm going to apply a black and white adjustment I'll just go to the my adjustment layer pop up menu at the bottom of my layers panel I'll choose black and white and I'll come in here with a little hand tool and click and drag on things to see if I can brighten and darken yeah let's, get into those greens got black and white, I'll turn on the tent check box and I'll click on the little square next to it to choose something that's a little bit mellower and color and click okay, I'm just trying to play any kind of an adjustment right now, here's another thing about adjustment layers let's say I have two images that are very similar, so I have this image which was actually shot in iceland and I have a different picture. I don't know if my wife knows I'm going to use this one, but I always get heard of pose and silly poses next to sculptures and things there's one of them but that's similar to this one I would like the same treatment so they feel like they belong together so let's figure out how we could apply the exact same adjustment to the other image what I would like to do and what I wish would work it's just click on the adjustment layer of my layers panel drag up to that tab and I wish it would come to the front so I could just let go of it on top of there but doesn't work that way instead you need to use the move tool and instead of clicking in your layers panel you want to click on the image itself so I'm in the move tool I'm clicking within the image itself I click here and I'm going to drag up to that other tab the one that contains my other document that will cause it to come to the front but I don't want to let go yet because if my mouse is just sitting on top of that tab it's not going to go anywhere my mouse must be inside the picture so I just dragged down into the picture let go and now I have the exact same adjustment applied here and so I could do that to a bunch of different images clicking within the image with my move tool dragging to a different tab and then dragged down into the image of lecco if you happen to hate tabs, some people do adobe added tabs a few versions of federal shop go and it messes some people up if it messes you up just go to the photo shop menu, choose preferences it's either under general or interface, I'll find out just so you know, in windows would be under the edit menu that you find preferences and you're going to find to check boxes. You're gonna have to turn off looks like it's under interface here's what the two preferences are open documents as tabs turn that off, enable floating document window docking turn it off now photos off whenever you open documents, though, appears separate windows like they used to, you know, multiple versions of photo shop ago, so if you happen and not like tabs that they get in your way, those are the two preference is to turn off to get back to the old way of working. I don't mind tab, so I'm getting used to him, so I'll leave those on, so we've learned that you khun dragon adjustment layer between two documents to get the exact same adjustment there you can also dragged multiple adjustment layers so that if I had to adjustment layers in here, one of them with a black and white conversion and then the next one is a grady in't map. Remember with grady in't map could come in here and choose a preset, and if I changed it's blending mode at the top of my layers panel to a choice called color, it wouldn't mess with my brightness. Well I could have those two adjustment layers if I want to get them both to another document all I need to do is hold the shift key to get the second layer active and use the move tool and just click with us within this image dragged to the other one dragged back down into it let go it just moved both layers I have an extra one in here from when I dragged previously but you can move as many of those layers as you want just make sure they're active at the time you move them other ideas here I'm going to do another black and white adjustment just cause I like him for a heck let's do grady in't map fine I'm going to set it to color mode so it can only affect the colors and then I'll just experiment with what settings applied till I find something that I think looks interesting let's say I think that's semi interesting with any adjustment layer if the adjustment itself is too strong if it's doing too much dearest it's too radical you can go to the top of your layers panel where you will find the choice of opacity in this says what strength would you like that adjustment to we apply that defaults to do it on one hundred but if I click on the word opacity and I dragged towards the left it will lessen it as it lessons it let's a hint of the original colors show through, so what I usually do is like click on the word opacity. I keep my mouse button held down and I dragged the left till goes to zero. Therefore I can see the original picture and I'll slowly dragged to the right to decide exactly how much of that what I like. Maybe I like it when it's somewhere in here. Or maybe I want it at a pretty strong strength in the background and just a little bit less in the foreground so I could bring it up until I like the background. And then I grab my paintbrush tool and if I paint with black, I can say, delete all the adjustment or delete forty four percent of the adjustment and I can come in here now and paint to say let's, do it a little bit less here and if I want the flowers toa look completely normal, I just bring my opacity up to one hundred percent means remove one hundred percent of the adjustment and I can now come in and say let's, just let the flowers look normal imagine I'm being a little more precise than I am so there's all sorts of things we can do the main thing is the opacity setting that's found at the top of the layers panel will control all of the adjustment so it's a universal bring you no less than the adjustment I have minded eighty three percent right now then when you use your paintbrush tool, the capacity found near the top of my screen means in addition to that, like one hundred percent would actually be with my paintbrush tool it's thinking about this is the maximum I can possibly get it to apply. I can't get it to go above that, but now let's less than it even more should be less than one hundred percent of it or should we only take out twenty, thirty or forty percent? You painted it so if I turn this off there's the full color image, turn it back on here's the look that I've created and it's got a lot of possibilities question yeah, when you're copying adjustment layers from one image to another let's say you change the opacity of that adjustment layer. Does that change? Does that move along with the adjustment layer to the new image? Also, yes, it should. All of the settings that are found at the top of the layers panel for that particular layer should be transferred, which means if I have this one in color mode like I do here and have the opacity of eighty three, I could not drag that on top of another picture it'll still have in opacity of eighty three it'll still have the mod called color in the mask will go along with it, so if you don't want the mask to be specific to this image, once I'm done moving it over there, I might need to fill that mask with white to get it back to normal, but all of that moves along with it. Yeah, so we have a passing our brush no passing the layer itself, the layer controls all of the adjustment where's the a passage here brush means just where I paint, I want a lesson it even more now most of the time when I'm adjusting a picture, I end up applying more than one adjustment layer because one adjustment layer might try to affect the entire picture, but then some little area from the side won't look right, so I'll just make a new adjustment layer to affect that area. So let's, look at that these this is a picture of some sand dunes in colorado, and in case you don't have a sense of scale, these air people little things colorado, southern california, colorado there are some sand dunes it's kind of cool place to go anyway, I would like more contrast in this let's say, I want to make it a black and white, maybe and so let's look at how I work with multiple adjustment layers go to the bottom by layers panel, click on that adjustment layer icon, go to curves and what I would like in here is I would like more contrast, so I'm gonna grab the hand tool and I'm going to come in and click on the bright portion of the sand dunes. Do you see this little bright highlight on the edge of one of the dunes? And I could look at the history? And, by the way, yes, graham will tell me a lot of the story. You see two big humps, one hump a lot bigger than the other. Well, look at the image there's two main subject matters or masses within the picture right that vary in brightness there's the sand dunes, which is darker and there's a sky just brighter. This guy takes up less space in the sand dues, right? So look at your history ground there's two humps the sand dunes take up the most space, which means its tallest sky takes up less space so shorter, but they're distinctly different in brightness, so I should be able to work on him separately. So anyway, I'm going to move my mouth on top of my image. After clicking on the hand tools, I'll click on the brightest highlight within my sand dune here click and I'll drag straight up to brighten it. But not only does that one little part brighton but so does the rest of the curve so I want to do something to the rest I'm gonna click on a dark portion in the sand dune maybe in here where it's a bit darker and I'm gonna drag straight down and you remember anytime you make a curve steeper you get more contrast and it's easier to see the detail in that area so we're getting that now the sky might be getting too bright let me turn off the eyeball for this adjustment before after you see what's going on with sandy but look at my sky if I want my sky to not get quite so bright I could move my mouse over it just to see where is it on the curve you see where the circle is you see that that's much higher than where it used to be right? I might want to bring it down but here's a trick I don't always click on the exact area I want to change here's why watch what happens to the curve? Ignore the picture if I click here and I dragged down and I keep going do you notice that part of the curves getting flat flat means no detail somewhere probably not gonna look too good but as I bring it down against flatter and flatter we show you a different way if this is being pushed up the reason why it's going up it's because of some of the other dots that you've added previously they cost the curve to change shape I find that adding a dot really close to one of the others it is often helpful to avoid flat spots michelle what I mean, so I've already shown you that if I add the dot up here where I really want to make the change and pull it down curve can start getting flat, but if I click close to the dot that's nearby uh then I can bring it down and notice when I bring it down then we're not getting a flat spot in the curve so often times when my highlights get way too bright or my shadows get way too dark instead of clicking where I'm really thinking about mount wanting to make a change instead at a dot really close to the dot that might be causing the problem and it just seems like I can pull the curve down without getting flat spots and so could be nice but let me show you before I do that something about your mouse watch my cursor the little icon I get for my mouse sometimes it looks like a big cross hair in that cross there means we would add a dot or my mouse's, but if I get close to adopt that already exists do you see how it changed two across there with arrows on the end, that means instead of adding a new dot, we would move for the one that's closest to my mouse. So if I click right now, watch the dot that's closest to my mouse when I click, it just should let me move it. So instead of adding a dot it's thinking let's, move the one that's closest that way you don't have to get exactly on the dot when you're clicking it's very useful when you's a graphics tablet where you got a pen and you put your pen down and you might not tap exactly where you were hovering over that way, you can still grab the dot so here's, what I sometimes need to dio I just need to move far enough away from the dot until my mouse changes, then I can click to add a dot afterwards you're welcome too snug it up real close to that dot issues you need to get far enough away where it thinks he didn't want to move it. That makes any sense, but now I could bring that down if you want it. If that's not enough, then I could instead paint to the mask and you don't have to paint you can use anything that would usually add black or white to your picture so I could do things like grab the quick selection tool and you got to be careful with the quick selection tool that with default settings it only looks at one layer by layer you're working on it might actually be looking at what's active to see what's active and what does that contain? Just white so it's going to select all sorts of stuff you might need it click on where the picture is that you're thinking about and then paint across it like that once you have the selection you could click back up on the mask because that's where you actually wanted to work and either grab your paintbrush and paint with black the selection would limit so you could only paint word selected or do anything else that would fill with black like going to the edit menu and choosing phil told to fill with black as long as the mask is active that's where it would go and therefore I can prevent it from applying to the sky so here's my adjustment later to see how much we're doing so far now I noticed when I look at this picture the left side of the image seems to be a bit darker than the rest so I'm going to go back and create anew adjustment layer called curves and I'm gonna click over here once I have clicked on that hand tool that is click over here where it's darker and then I want to make it as bright is this area well, if I want to make it as bright as this area I've already clipped over there and it measured how bright that was added us little dot on curves and if I want to get a hint as to how high I might need to move it I'm just gonna move my mouse over here to the area that has the brightness I want do you see the circle and curves decio hiatus? Well that's where the dimmer switches for where my mouse is so if I want the other area to be just a zb right is this wouldn't it make sense to move though that height I'll just use the arrow keys on my keyboard now move it up that high. The problem is adjustment layers usually affect the entire picture and I don't want this one too, so I grabbed my brush tool and with a very soft edge brush painting with black I say don't apply over here don't apply and if it's a little bit too much, I couldn't back off on it at any time by lowering the opacity intel I get it just right so it looks like I went a little too far my sky is getting a little it's a little uneven because if you look at this mask black means don't apply and you see how it's still applying at the top of the sky so my sky is uneven well I could re select that sky that would work and then I could fill with black we already have that in a layer we already have it right here there's a fancy trick that when working with layer masks if you want to use the same content over again like over here when I have my sky selected here's a really cool trick I can convert any mask into a selection where the area that's white within the mask will become selected so that means if I used this one I would end up with the bottom portion of the image selected the top portion wouldn't be I can do that by holding down the command key control on windows and clicking on that mask you can tell it's going to do it because watch my mouse it changes from a hand to when I hold on the command key a hand with all dash rectangle which is what a selection looks like what that means is you forget what key is that does this just hold on each modifier key shift note didn't get the icon control wrong icon option didn't get the icon command oh that's it in that way if you forget you can hold down the different modifier keys until you see the right cursor I'm a command click on that watch what I get a selection that selection is the exact opposite of what I want I don't want the bottom select inverse to get the opposite. So now that I have my sky selected, I grab my paintbrushes, paints a I don't want the sky affected up there. All right? So let's. See what this adjustment layers doing before? After she has brightened the left, signe might still be a little too much could lower the opacity. And now maybe I want to turn it black and white. So I go down here to you my black and white adjustment and there's not much color in this image there is the sky color which might have a little listen to blue so I could go over here and try to adjust it. Say how bright I want my sky compared to the rest of the image and then maybe I want to have it toned so it's, you know, got some color to it. So before we did a grady in't map, remember that could apply that problem is they're gonna change the brightness of my image easily what we did before as we changed this menu up here to a choice called color. Then it could only affect the color, not the brightness. And now he's become much more useful to be that one it's a little bit too strong all you need do is lower the opacity of the entire layer less in it and you can continue adjusting now find a reason to dark go to do curves and just build it up until you no longer find any areas that you don't like and so that's just in general how we work with adjustment layer slowly building them up one after another until I don't find any problems with the image so let's see the difference between our original and what we've done with four adjustment layers you could go to your layers panel and just turn off the eyeballs on all layers except for the bottom one because the bottom's your original by clicking here and you don't have a clique individually you could just drag up like that or if you don't mind shortcuts here's a very quick way to do it move your mouse over the eyeball for the background layer hold on the option key is that how you get to hidden features and click on it watch what happens when I option click that eyeball it'll automatically haul it hide all the others option click it again it'll automatically turned them back on so that's what I usually use toe look at the original picture I move my mouth to the eyeball on the bottom layer option click there's what we started with and then I option click again to see what I've ended up with you see the difference here is a picture of one of the buses that I own might sound funny one of the buses in case you don't know I live full time on the road I don't have a fixed home some people call me a homeless wanderer and I've been living on a a bus for the last seven years then I found my wife and she started living on the bus she wasn't my wife when I found her but but she has been living on the bus for the last three and a half years and we got married just back in january and we've been cruise around but our bus is a more modern one what like a band would tauron musicians in general and we also own this vintage one that's being worked on right now and here's a picture of it on route sixty six if you want to seymour about this particular project on facebook search for creative cruiser that's what we've dubbed the bus but here's a picture I took on route sixty six of the boss and there's some things I don't like about it when I look at the image I find the bright parts of the bridge like this area right here and the area over here are too bright and I find the middle part of the bus just doesn't pop enough so let's look at how we can use curves and adjustment layers to improve that I'll go to the bottom of my layers panel of course and created curves adjustment layer ah, one thing is you know how I have been clicking on that hand tool every single time I get in here? Shouldn't it be clicked on automatically? When that be nice? Will he go to the side menu? Excuse me? There's a choice called auto select targeted adjustment tool. Like what the heck does that mean? It means turn the hand on by default, then so that was on the side menu. Auto select targeted adjustment tool means turn on a darn hand to begin with. That makes current a little faster when dealing with your images and then I'm gonna come in here and look over on this side of the picture. I'm just gonna click my mouse right here and drag down until this becomes his dark as I'd like it to be, I don't care about the rest of the picture now I can try to get the rest of the picture back by adding a dot really close to the one I've already put in there and then just trying to get the rest of the curve to not go so far down. So look semi normal in there, the main thing is with a curve, you don't want it to look kinky, you want to smooth shape if at all possible, because then you'll have a smooth transition between all the brightness levels in your image if it becomes really kinky and abrupt than the transition between the brightness levels and your image becomes abrupt and it doesn't look natural, so there's just a slight kink in this but it's pretty darn smooth, so I've applied that now if I hide this adjustment by train off the eyeball, look at the bus itself, it's getting to be too dark in certain portions of the bridge, you're becoming too dark, so I'm gonna hide this adjustment lyrics I no longer need to actually see thie adjustment itself. I have it so this little panel is stored in one of these little sidebars, and if I just click on its icon, this thing it would hide by click that icon again, it would show, and if yours isn't that way, if yours instead of floating freely like this on the screen, you can put it in one of those bars by just clicking in the name that's called properties and dragging it to one of these little bars letting go then if you click on the icon, you'd see it, click on the icon organic goes away so it's just kind of nice toe have it so it's not always in your face there, so I'm going trough the eyeball for this adjustment layer here's before here's after I don't mind what's happening to the sky so much police the blue part of the sky but I really don't like what's happening to the trees and other parts of the bill or the bridge so that's when I grabbed my paintbrush tool, get smaller brush possibly and just paint with black where I don't like what's happening or if you don't want to paint if you'd rather make selections, you're welcome to do so and just when you're done, go to the edit menu and you can choose phil to fill with with black to remove it from those areas of your image I'm going to be somewhat basic with this one not goingto get overly precise but let's do some more adjustments I'm going to do another curves adjustment and this time I'm gonna work on the bus I'm going to come in here and click on the bright part of the bus drag up to say brighton bright part then I'll click on the dark part of the bus and dragged down a little bit dark and dark part to get more contrast. If I turn off the eyeball in this layer you'll see before and after you see the bus popping a little bit more because it's getting more contrast, but I don't want that happening to the rest of the picture well, sometimes I end up doing this if it's a very small portion of the image that I want my adjustment to apply to I don't want to sit there and paint with black over ninety percent of the image to make it on ly apply this area instead, I'm going to choose this invert will turn whatever it is I'm working on into a negative of itself in this case, we're working on the mask. The opposite of white is black. I never go to this menu toe apply I just type command I control I am windows because whenever I think invert, command eyes pretty easy to remember, so watch my layers panel, I'm gonna type command I you see how it just filled it in with black black means don't apply anywhere, so right now, if I trough the eyeball for that layer, it doesn't do anything at all because the mask is completely full of black. So now when I paint, I need to paint with the opposite of black need to paint with white, I'll come in here and now I'm gonna paint my adjustment and just where I want it. So now, if I hide this adjustment layer, you could see before and after you see the bus popping a little bit more, I might have gotten some over, spread into the sky above the bus so I might paint with black and just try to get rid of some of that over spray and remember before I showed you you could see the contents of your masks usually when I'm done I try to view the contents of my mask because oftentimes their problems in it that I don't realize they're there that I can't see by just looking but I might notice it after making a huge print in a huge print takes time to print in his expensive and I'd rather see problems now instead of on lee after making that big print. So do you remember before I showed you that you could view the contents of a mask on your main screen the way you do it is you hold down that key that gives you special features option key ultima windows and you click right on the mask so I'm going to do that for my bottom layer here do you see it gap in my paint stroke that I have no is there you see it right over in here? I think there might also be a slight gap there is that either that or there's a fingerprint on my screen can't tell but I'll grab my paintbrush tool painting it black and I'll just fill in those gaps because they might show up on a big print when I can see the detail so it's really good when your done to click on your masks make sure there are no gaps in your paint strokes unless you meant them to be there once you option, click on one mask to make it visible, you can just click between all the masks without any keys held down on your keyboard so you could go through every single layer that has a mask and then look at it when you're done option. Click the mask again and you get back to the look of your image. The other thing that I find to be helpful about masks is sometimes I can't tell where I've already painted in the mask and where that paint ends. If I just look at my layers panel shuriken see the general shape of it here, but that's pretty darn tiny when I option, click on the mask. Yeah, I can see the whole mask, but I can't see how it relates to the picture. So option. Click the mask again to hide it. There is a trick to see how the mask relates to your picture, so you can see how much of the image is not being adjusted and here's what it is. If you have an adjustment layer active or any layer that has a mask attached to it on your keyboard, press the back slash key, not the ford slash key that you're used to using for like website addresses, and thinks the other one it's right above the returner enter key a most keyboards. Just press it all by itself no need to hold shift or command or anything else just backslash and watch what happens it shows me is a red overlay the red overlay indicates what I'm not adjusting and so now I can see hey how does that relate to my picture and I can paint on my picture while I'm in this view so I can come in here paint up here make sure it doesn't get in this arch I can come in and switch to paint with white and say, oh, I didn't mean to get any read over here in the area I was actually trying to adjust then you confined to that mask as much as you would like a switch between black and white all the time to switch between black and white when you're painting is long as you have one of those two colors as black and the other one is white down here you know yeah, that little arrow that you click on to switch between well there's a keyboard shortcut for the arrow was press the letter x to exchange the colors so that way if I'm painting with black and one moment and I need to switch over and paint with white you could just hit x depends if you like keyboard shortcuts or not if you don't then do it manually when you're done just pressed the backslash ke a second time to turn off that mode I go to the next layer if I want backslash kee I can see oh, I didn't get all the bumper, so but with my images, if I have a complex one, I will just keep adjusting the image until I see no problems whatsoever with the image in sometimes for a complex image that could be thirty layers. It all depends on what the end result is for that image. If it's a huge image, is going to be printed five feet wide on candace, which is what my fine art images are destined for, I want people to walk up is close as they want to that image in pick it apart, put on a magnifying glass if you want to look at it, I don't care, because I've adjusted it until there were no problems whatsoever with it, and sometimes that takes time. Other times I'm just working on a buddy's image, he's not paying me, I'm in a hurry, I want to go to dinner and I end up with two of these maybe, you know, it all depends on the image and how much care you care to put it so and here I could just one more adjustment, I'll go to curves, and maybe I want this part of the bridge right here to be the same brightness as this part. How do you do that? Well, with the hand tool active click on the thing you want to change right here boom and then move your mouse on top of what you want to match don't click on it just move your mouse on it let's say I want to make it same brightness is this we'll just looking curves I've already clicked on the area want to change so the dot that's in there is what I'm going to be moving do you see the circle that's what I want to match so I'm just going to use the down arrow key watch curves don't even look at the picture I'll move the dot down to wear the circle used to be, but like that the circle moved down because the entire picture changed. Now I want that too only apply to a small area so I could invert the mask meaning fill the entire mask with black command I and now if I paint with white, I can just put it in where I needed, uh paint with black to remove it from above there and now let's see if it more closely matches I'll turn off the adjustment does that bottom area of the bridge now look more like the area over here in brightness possibly not in color because we weren't trying to adjust color but brightness let's just do more this image to me looks boring I like the subject matter this is what's known as the race track in death valley where these stones like mysteriously move around the the surface. I think what happens most likely is it rains and it's perfectly flat there and the little bit of rain makes it slippery then the wind blows and it might blow this across the field because it's extremely slippery in here if it rains and you're walking around anyway you get the paths of these rocks I shot this with a fish eye lens, which is why the horizon is bent and I'm just going to adjust it I have no idea what I'm about to do to it just going to make it look better somehow so curves first thing I'm thinking is I'd like some contrast so I'm gonna click on the dark portion of the desert like the cracks in between the thing gonna pull down to darken him then I'm gonna click on the bright part of the desert where it's not the cracks and their pull up do you have a greater difference between the two let's? See what that's doing so far? I'll turn off the slayer before after I think that's a lot more interesting where the desert portion is I don't think it's helping the mountains, the top or the sky and I don't know if it's helping the rock so I grab my paintbrush tool painting with black and I'm going to choose a semi soft brush you can change your brush if you'd like by coming up here in choosing your size or your hardness or there are other methods for doing so, one of which is to use thes square bracket keys and your keyboard by holding down the bracket keys you're going to change the size of your brush larger or smaller and if you hold down the shift key when you do that you're going to end up um you're going to end up changing how soft the edges so shift in the bracket keys so anyway I'm gonna come in here and paint across my sky to say don't affect this stuff, okay? I can come down to the rock usually I'd be zoomed up a little bit, but I'm goingto in general say don't affect my rock they didn't necessarily like what was happening to the rock slightly softer brush and say don't affect the shadow underneath the rock quite as much. So you see my painting if I hit the back slash key there's where I've painted and I might touch it up after seeing it with backs backslash a little bit careful in there all right then I want to make other changes so let's make a new curves adjustment layer the rock I'm going to do something specific to it click on the dark portion of the rock to lock in the brightness then I'll click on a bright portion of the rock if I find one drive straight up to brighton I don't want that to apply to the whole picture just iraq so I'm actually going to go back to the layer where I've already isolated my rock you see the black and there were the rock is remember I painted on it before I'm gonna command click on it is not how we got a selection before now that selection always selects the white parts and so if you look in here the rock is black it's not selected so I want the opposite of that I'll select inverse under the select menu so that now program I paint brush and paint that's going to limit where I'm painting uh or aiken select inverse again and actually might want inverse again and just paint with black down here they bring that back to the way it used to be you to do and then I'll get rid of my selection d select and pain across the sky because they didn't want it affected so let's see what that adjustments doing see how it's doing the rock it might be a little too much so I lower the opacity I want to see what I'm doing I'm going to compare to the original option click on the eyeball the bottom one to hide all others I don't know where I'm going with this image, I'm just giving you an idea of how I might think about images in general I want to pull out, contrast in them and things I'm going to end up doing it with layer mass, and I'm gonna end up painting on the masks and that's when curves becomes so much more useful, let's say I want the track of the rock to be more prominent. Um, I can do another curves adjustment layer I can click on the track where the rock has passed, and maybe I brighten it a little like that, then I want that toe on ly apply to where the little track behind the rock is. So what I'm going to do is invert this mask meaning filled with black command. I can I just grab my paintbrush paint with white and say only apply right here good, smaller brushes I get into the further areas and that's a little bit too obvious, so I'll just click on the opacity of the top of my layers panel bring it all the way down first, then slowly bring it up say, when is it just enough I might look at it it's the red over lane bread overlay was back slash and say, do you see where it overlapped the rock? That's probably not right so grab my paintbrush pain with rockets with black to say don't do it they're so now that's a little more prominent right there if I wanted it to be more prominent still I might go back and re adjust one of my previous adjustments this adjustment down here at the bottom affected all the areas that currently are not covered with red so I could just come in here and say I wish that would be darker well there's two dots and here here's a trick click on one not you could hold shift to grab two pulled shifting grab as many dots is you want so now I'm going to move him as a group downward a little darker and that should make that stand out a little bit more because of surroundings or darker there's all sorts of things you can do sometimes though you don't just work on a single layered document sometimes you have multiple layers so here is a composite image it's a pretty cheaply thrown together composite mean did a quickie let's take a look at what we have? I'll turn off the eyeball so all you see is the bottom layer s oh that's a sky that I shot when I was near page arizona I think top of that is a building which I shot I think somewhere in california the background has been removed from the building with a mask if I hold shifting, click on it that's how you disable a mask so there's our original building image but I hid the sky next was little boring put that sky in then on top of that is our little trailer with the old car I shot that in colorado at a vintage trailer rally and its background is being hidden with the mask. If I shift, click the mask, you can see that it was just sitting there, then that if I show you just that layer remember you can option click on any eyeball to hide the others that's just the car I have another layer, which is not only a car but its shadow to lets the shadow um that way the shadow could be in there and I could lower the opacity of it so you could see through it that's our composite just see have some bearings as to what we have. So now I'd like to start adjusting the picture and let's see how adjustment layers think when you have a more complex image that might contain multiple layers, so of course I'm going to use curves and with curves I'm going to come in in brighton, the dark area, so I'm gonna click on a dark part within the car I'm gonna drag upward, brighten it up just to make it obvious I'll go quite far and then I'm gonna click on a really dark part of the car and bring it back closer to normal I'm making justin extreme adjustment so it's obvious that's happening now the way an adjustment layer works is it always affects all of the layers that are underneath remember it's a ziff you're standing the top the layers panel europe here you're looking down in order to see what's below this adjustment layer you have to look through it just like looking through a pair of sunglasses or anything else and this is either bright ning darkening or shifting colors whatever but you're looking through it to see everything that's under now if I change the stacking order of my layers if I click on this layer and move it down it's not gonna affect any other layers that appear above it so if I drag it down here the car goes back to normal because remember it's a ziff? You're standing at the top of the layers pout looking down and if you did that when you look down you'll see the car before you saw the adjustment, wouldn't you? And then you'd only have to look through the adjustment to see the three layers that are below if I continue to move it down now it's on ly gonna affect the two layers that are near the bottom continue to pull it down now it's only affecting the sky but it's on ly affects the layers that are underneath it it does not affect any of the layers that are above and that's a key concept of working with adjustment layers really quick question well you're on moving investment layers mary from costa rica asked I'm guessing the move adjustment layers also applies to groups can you move more than one adjustment layer teo another document yeah you can move more than one adjustment layer to another jacket we actually did that remember when I had the picture of some graffitied walls I ended up having one adjustment layer that was a black and white adjustment at another one that was a great ian map all I had to do a select both layers of my layers panel and then I used the move tool the key is I had to click within my picture not within the layers panel tried to the other tab and then dragged down into that image you can move as many of those layers as you want if you have groups which is what looks like a folder in photo shop if that's active it would move all the layers in the group so yes you can thank you sure so all right this looks to apply to all the layers that are underneath that is great but it can also be a limitation that you don't like what if I only wanted to ride in the car sure, I could paint in the mask to say that I would like to limit it, so it doesn't affect everything else, but then what if later on I want to move the car, then the mask wouldn't line up with it anymore? I want to do something to make it, so this adjustment will only affect one layer, and I can easily do that when you're looking at your adjustment, and if you don't see this panel open to get it toe, automatically, show up when you have an adjustment layer, just double click right here on this thing that represents the adjustment. Double clicking will cause that to pop open, even if it wasn't visible anywhere on your screen. And at the bottom of this panel is an icon that looks like a square, with a down pointing arrow on it. That thing in older versions of thunder shop, it looked different. It looked like two circles overlapping. They changed the look of the icon on one of the modern versions of federal shop, but if I click that watch what happens to my layers panel to the adjustment layer, you see the little down point barrow that appears in it in dense that adjustment layer that thing, that means that this adjustment layer will on ly applied to the layer that that's pointing to the first layer that's not indented like this adjustment layer was the way I didn't that is at the bottom of my adjustments my properties panel there's that little icon of the square with a down point barrow now that's not the on ly way to do that, but that will toggle that feature on and back off again just in case you've used that feature in different way in the past, I'll show you to other methods were doing it just in case it's something you've used you suddenly go oh yeah, I've done that so you could go to the layer menu and there's a choice called create clipping mask that does the exact same thing it's just going to talk all that icon so if you ever done that you've been using that feature the other way you could do it is if you go to your layers panel and you move your mouse to the line that separates two layers this line right here you could hold on the key that gives you special features option ultimo windows and click on that line that'll do the exact same thing three different ways of doing the exact same thing you could turn it on with one method and turned off with any of the others they do the exact same thing so it's up to you to decide what method you like just know it's right at the bottom of your properties panel when you were having an adjustment. So now if I hide and show that later, you'll see it's only affecting layer with the car, you can still paint on the mask to further isolate it. Maybe I think it helps the car, but it doesn't help the trailer fine. Grab your paintbrush paying with black and paint over the trailer, and if you had a paint with black, though, you can remove it from the trailer. I love how much you're creating your own world thiss might be getting a little bit ahead because you haven't talked about groups at all, but if you have an adjustment layer within a group, does the adjustment layer affect the group and and what's below as well? We will talk about that later today, but in general it always affects all the layers are underneath, regardless if it's in that group or not ah, group just saying now looks like a folder for those who haven't used it before, but we'll do that later on today and I'll show you how you could limit it, so it only affects those layers that are inside the group, so it is possible we just need to know about, uh, additional feature to use it, and I'll get to that all right let's see if there's anything else for our basics here uh when you create new adjustment layers if you're going to have five or six of them let's say in your document always put new adjustment layers at the top of the stack photoshopped thinks aboutthe lowest adjustment layer as if it's applied first and then whatever's above that has applied next and whatever's above that next so if you want a new adjustment layer to affect what you currently have you need to put it at the top of the layers stack if you don't you can get unpredictable results for instance on this image I will come in here and let's see what if I do a black and white adjustment layer we've done that before right and I do eh grady in't map is not how he added color back in and I'll do the grady it map as we did before in color mode I'm just going to make it so obvious so what we have here is a black and white adjustment layer and then a grady in't map always what's on top is done after if I reverse the order of these it's gonna look completely different because a black and white adjustment layer if it's on top would be applied last and what would a black and white adjustment layer do pull all the color out whereas if the black and white adjustment layer happened before radiant map then the color will be removed in radiant map would add color back in so the order of these air very important if you want to add a new one, be sure to click on the top most layer before you start adding those new adjustment layers otherwise the end result could become a little bit unpredictable um because it will change what the layers above our scene it's just giving them something different to see but I didn't actually want those adjustments self throw boy there are a few layers are a few types of adjustments that are not available is an adjustment layer so if I go to this list you'll notice that certain adjustments in here just they're not listed. The main one that you'll find isn't there is one that's called shadow highlight if I go up to the image adjustments menu it's there but it's not available is an adjustment layer so to tell you why it's not a deli being lazy in saying that let's just not spend the time to make that work it has to do with the concept of what an adjustment layer means what it's capable of doing in general and adjustment layer must be able to figure out what it should do regardless of what you feed it for an original picture, you should be able to figure out what to do even if you feed it a picture that contains one pixel and that's all that's in the image well the problem with shadow highlight his shadow highlight tries to physically isolate the brighter dark parts of the image from the rest of the picture and it needs to know what the rest of the picture looks like in order to create the transition between those areas. The fact that it needs to know what the rest of the picture looks like makes it so it just doesn't fit into the way adjustment layers were designed in so shadow highlight is one adjustment that is not available is an adjustment layer there is a workaround to it and I'll try to show you that work around closer to the end of the day today so no tin from dubai is asking how do I save the image without flattening meaning only the final result okay a couple things when you have multiple layers you're going to need a limit which file formats to use you can use photoshopped file format you can use tiff file format and I believe you could use pdf file format if you choose between those file formats then when you save your image and you open it up next month you'll have the exact same layers in it that you started with if on the other hand you choose a file format that does not support layers jpeg would be the most popular one of those when you go up here it to the file menu to save ass you'll find there's a checkbox in here called layers and that check box will on ly be active where you click on it if you choose a file format that supports layers, so if I choose photoshopped file format, I can choose to include the layers or not if I turn that off it's going to flatten my image mean, combine all the layers together if I leave it on, it'll keep the individual layers in there, so when I open it next time I'll see them. If I go and choose a file format that does not support layers like j peg, you'll see that that's great out saying this file formats simply does not support layers it's still wants to keep the look you currently have in your image, so it'll just flatten all those layers heir emerged all those layers together in order to produce that end result. So usually my master file is either in tiff file format or photoshopped file format, and I keep those layers in case you ever want to make a change, then I don't want to give it to somebody else I just choose? Saito asked. I say that I was a jpeg and that would be a separate file give that to them when I'm done giving into them I throw away the j peg and I have my original, which is either a tiff or photoshopped file format, so that's what I'd use you, uh you're in brazil ass what? The difference is between a pass ity and phil ah, good question. Capacity and phil at the top of your layers panel yet two of them there they seem to do the exact same thing if you lower a passing to fifty percent bring it back up to one hundred and lower filled a fifty percent it looks identical. It seems like there's really no difference the difference comes into play when you do one of two things one it won't have much to do with adjustments. So let me show you the type of text if I have some text and maybe change the color of that text, what would be appropriate color? Maybe a reddish orange a little more red. All right. Um for those of you that are needed, creative live bacon is kind of a long standing tradition, which is why it's been mentioned twice already. All right, so I just have this layer and now I'm gonna go to the bottom my layers panel and that's where I'm gonna find the letters f x down here I'll click there and I have all these effects I could apply well, if I apply something like let's say drop shadow, get a drop shuttle blow my text and I apply also a bevel in boss bring up the size a little bit if you have those effects applied to a layer, then you'll be able to see the difference between a pass to the infill. If I adjust opacity, the entire contents of the layer is lessened. If I get to zero, nothing shows up from that layer if I just fill on the other hand, the true contents of that layer the painter in this case text will be lessened, but any effects applied to it like drop shadow, bevel in boss will stay at full strength, so when I lower it, text starts going away, get it down to zero in the texts and show up at all, but the text defines where that effect is showing up is pretty cool. Yeah, so that's fill the other thing about phil when you'll notice the difference is when you certain blending modes in here, certain blending modes react differently to the phil command than it does the opacity. And so you'd have to experiment, since we're not talking about bloody modes that much here, I don't want to get into it too much, but just so you know, some of the bloody modes affect are affected differently by phil in opacity otherwise, if you're not using a bloody mode and you're not using those layer styles there, pretty much identical. So I'll do another one that pertain to this segment, and then I think we have more going back to church really talk about curves and whatever we talked about this morning, so elder b I's asking what is the difference between creating a layer mask by clicking on the black and white layer adjustment icon at the bottom and using the adjustment layer in the add an adjustment panel above? Jimmy, what is the difference between clicking here to get your adjustment layer and choosing from the list or clicking up here on one of these icons? And the answer is nothing it's just two different ways of doing the same thing. I actually don't really like this panel very much because I've used photo shopped for twenty years, and I still can't remember what some of these darn icon sweet like, what the heck is that thing you know that looks too similar? It's just shuriken understand levels, curves, brightness and contrast, and so some of the others color balance, sense of balance or kind of thing, but I feel like each time my brain needs to decipher hydro can't even say the word hi rogue lyrics you know where the icons just are not blatant enough for me that remember, now you can mouse over these, and if you hover without actually clicking, it will tell you what they do actually, I'll tell you right up here works. Is that an adjustment? So you could just fly over them until you see the name of the adjustment, but I just find it it's more friendly for me to go down to the bottom of the layers and do it here because I'm not guessing at all. I don't have to decipher what those mean, but there's no difference, you know, we had a few questions like that, like half a dozen, one way six it's just a personal preference, awesome on that d from palm beach ass working you just the size of the thumbnails on the layers panel if you have more layers than actually shown. Okay, so what I mentioned that you could go to the empty area below the layers like down here in right collect to change their size, but she's saying what if you have more layers where you don't have an empty lake area, then go to the side menu on your layers panel that means those little icon in the upper right click there and there's a choice within this called panel options in in panel options right here you choose the size, so I was actually using a shortcut to get to this if you want to annoy coworkers, choose none, do it every time they go to lunch until they figure out it's, you? Yeah. So anyway, that was going to the side menu it's called panel options and that's where you can choose, right? No, I actually had a class on april fool's day here at creative lines, and I did not take advantage of it. I could have spent like an hour showing you how to mess with your co workers. It would have been fun again with another the whole night workshop cal in los angeles says a pull down selection of curves is destructive. Is the layer adjustment curves? Nondestructive? Well, the a lot of people like using the word nondestructive, I don't like the terminology of that, so let me just explain what I'm talking about. I said it's permanent! I didn't say non destructive because if I do this here is an adjustment layer called levels and I do that, okay, I think that was destructive. Do you see the detail anymore? No it's gone right it's just not permanent, meaning I could turn off the eyeball on it and there's no longer applied so it's not I don't call it non destructive because it's a typical word though it's just misleading it's, just undoable or somehow reversible if I use an adjustment layer it's no less nondestructive, though I can screw up the image really bad by using adjustment layers just as much as I can normal ones. The difference is if I take this image and I choose save ass and I save it on my desktop and I used to for photoshopped file format and I click okay, now I can close that image and I'll close this other image and I have nothing open, right? If I go and open that image, which should be sitting right here on my desktop double click on it, I come in and it's exactly as I left it, so I still have the layers and I usually leave the bottom layer untouched so I could turn off all these layers get back to my original in anything I've done to the image is on the layers that are above as adjustment layers another thing, why would it look like I missed something? Wait miss that when it was happening eso. Anyway, I can always undo things by turning off their eyeballs, throwing away an adjustment layer, that kind of thing. Had I done the same thing not using adjustment layers instead going up to the image menu, choosing adjustments, then it would be the equivalent to me doing this let me just flatten this image image adjustments levels if I go, then I su save ass doesn't matter what file for mighty use it was applied directly to the image. Now I can always choose undo right now to undo the levels that I had applied to get it back, but the moment I close it no one you haven't opened this image. The story on my hard drive does not contain the original picture anywhere within it anymore. This is all it's got so now let's try to pull out some detail in it let's go over here two levels of curves and bow first look up my history and there's like next to nothing in there and let's try to pull out some detail well there's next to no detail in the picture so what it was was it's permanent and so I prefer to the main times that I use the adjustments that are found under this menu is when I'm working on a mask meaning I've option clicked on one of these things and that's what I want to adjust, then I'll go to this because it will only affect that mask and I can come in here and say I want to adjust what's left in that mask or something like that, but I'm not tryingto wholesale talk everyone out of going to this menu into adjustments do whatever you want in photo shop is that gets you the end result, I'm happy for you and if you're more comfortable doing that than doing adjustment layers go for it I'm just saying I find advantages to adjustment layers. So therefore, I'll show you those advantages, and I hope you like him. If you like him, I'd hoped you'd be talking to using them, but otherwise do whatever you want. But this stuff's permanent adjustment layers here are very easily undoable.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Practice Files
Reference Guide

Ratings and Reviews

Shannon
 

As always, Ben surpassed my expectations. His easy style of sharing his experience is fun and inspiring. He is completely prepared and that makes his workshops flow smoothly. I feel like he's thoroughly comfortable with Photoshop. Thank you, creativeLIVE and Ben for bringing yet another terrific workshop to the masses.

a Creativelive Student
 

Wow, just watched the bonus content, loved it all, particularly the color theory basics! Thanks Ben for the extra effort and thanks CL!

a Creativelive Student
 

this sounds like help from heaven. I dearly wish i will be able to catch up with everything Ben has to teach!

Student Work

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