Skip to main content

11:00 am - Blending Sliders

Lesson 13 from: Adobe Photoshop: Retouching and Collage

Ben Willmore

11:00 am - Blending Sliders

Lesson 13 from: Adobe Photoshop: Retouching and Collage

Ben Willmore

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

13. 11:00 am - Blending Sliders

Lesson Info

11:00 am - Blending Sliders

We're done talking about smart objects will use smart objects from time to time today if I ever don't use smart objects, it's not that I shouldn't or anything like that issues I might not want to add an extra step to my description, but know that for a lot of the things that I do, the vast majority I could use a smart object in doing so. So if you ever see me not use it, unless I specifically mention that you shouldn't for something in particular, you could most likely be using that smart, but we're moving on to a different topic and just have fewer steps. Sometimes I won't use smart objects sometimes. Well, we'll see s o this image, I just want to talk about some features and photo shop where we can limit where a particular layer shows up. Sometimes you do that just so that you have a picture of a tv sat you want to put an image on the tv, but you don't want to go beyond the tube of the tv, so you want to limit where it shows up. Other times you have other reasons, but we're going to ...

look at our possibilities eso were to start off talking about something known as the blending sliders, the blending sliders will allow your picture to show up. Or disappear based on strictly brightness so I can say hide the dark parts of this image on lee keep the bright parts or do the opposite so let's take a look at it first this image the sun is bugging me for some reason s o I'm just going to retouch it out using the spot healing rush just cause I don't feel like seeing it sitting there but by okay uh I'm going to create a layer on top of this in within that new empty layer I'm just going to apply the grady in't tool just so we have something simple to work with to begin with something simple look what look at then I'm going to go to the bottom of my layers panel now cooking the letters x that appear down there and they'll give me a list that's where usually find drop shadow in bevel in boss that kind of stuff and within their top choices called blending options now there's more than one way of getting to the dialog box I'm about to show you and if you've ever seen it and you got to it with a different method go ahead and use that method we just gotta pick one to start with here's blinding options this comes up lots of choices in here we're going to concentrate on the one area that is labeled blend if those down here what I call the blending sliders and they will show her hide the contents of a layer based on brightness so let's take a look so my layers panel take a look at what we have we have a layer that contains a grady int and below that we have a picture so in here you'll find that we have two sets of sliders one set of sliders is labeled this layer and that's referring to whatever layers active right now over here this layer the other is called underlying layer and it actually shouldn't be called underlined layer it should be called underline image meaning I don't care if what's under it is ten layers or not it thinks about whatever those layers underneath look like when they're all combined together just the underlying images what it means when it says underlying layer and that's what those air referring to so let's start off working with sliders called this layer and let's see what they'll do to that layer that contains the grady in because that's the active layer so first I'm going to move the upper left slider over and when I do just watch what happens to the grady in and see if you can figure out what it's doing all it's doing is hiding areas based on brightness what's happening is any thing that is in the brightness range that is to the left of the slider anything in this brightness range right here is hidden that's all desk so if I put it to here now it's, anything in this brightness range from the end of this bar right where this slider is pointed at all that stuff whatever was in that brightness range within this document is now hidden if I do the same thing in the opposite side, you'll find that we're hard in the bright stuff and if you look at the slider it's anything that is in the brightness range between whatever showing up right here and where that slider is anything that brightness range is currently hidden everything else is showing up that seem to make sense so far, but then if you look out one of these sliders, you'll notice that it's kind of vertical line in the middle of it and most sliders and photoshopped don't have that vertical line that's because this is actually two sliders they're stuck together and you're seeing the seam between the two but you can't just pull on it to separate it. You got to know of a special way to separate it in photo shop there's a keyhole down that usually changes the behavior of something if there's a button that has more than one option or there's a hidden feature somewhere, usually it will be the first key reach for to try to access the hidden feature or to change the future and a button or something else and that's the option key alton windows if I hold down that key which I have held down right now then when I grab either side of this slider aiken split it apart into two pieces so let us figure out what the heck would that mean? We'll all that does we show you on the image itself see if you can figure out what it does so right now if you look at our image you notice we have a crisp edge here where it's an abrupt one it's things are either completely hidden or completely showing up there's no fade out now if I split the slaughter though watch what happens to the image you see how we're getting more of a gradual fade out within the image so what's happening is if you look at the sliders now anything that is in this region over here between the end of where that bar shows up and where the beginning of the slider is all that stuff is completely hidden just like it was before when the slaughter was put together and if you go on the other side of the sliders in this area all this stuff is completely showing up it's on lee the shades that air in between the two halves they're partially showing up their fading out so you could think of it this way this stuff is completely hidden until you get to hear and then once he hit two here it barely shows up and as you go across this length, it shows up more and more and more and more and more until you bump into that were completely shows up from their own because all this stuff is hidden, all that stuff is visible, and this is just a ramp up to go between the two so hidden, hidden, hidden showing up a little bit, little more, a little more a little more a lot, a lot a lot completely and that completely all the way across that makes some sense the way it's it's working so I can therefore hide the bright parts and hide the dark parts, and each one of those sliders could be split. You just hold on the option key alton windows just say I want a softer transition with the grady in't it looks a little bit more unnatural in that kind of fade out with normal picture usually looks better as far as, uh what that is. So those are the this layer sliders and let's see what we could do with those let's say I want to take this image and use it in a composite. If you look at this since we're at sunset, we're getting really close to that time when everything turns into a silhouette not quite there and that we have the grass still having detail on things, but you notice the trees aren't they dramatically different in brightness from most everything else? So if I wanted everything to disappear except for the trees, wouldn't it make sense to keep the dark stuff and just make the bright stuff go away? So if I take this layer first off when you have a layer called background if you got the letters fx it's great out there's a lot of stuff you can't do to a background, so I'm gonna double click on that later and change its name that makes it a normal layer background has a lot of limitations on it, and if I go to the bond of my layers panel clicking the letters fx then get blending options that's where we were before that's going to bring me into that dialog box and now if I want to keep the trees and hide everything else, wouldn't it make sense to think about this layer because that's layer that's active right and hide the bright stuff? Now there might not be anything that is in this brightness range within this picture that shot at sunset and I already read touched out the sun the sun itself probably would have been that bright but looking at the contents of the picture there's nothing really close to white so I might need to bring this in a considerable distance before I start seeing things disappear there we start seeing it all that means is that part of the sky was about this bright right over here and I didn't get the slider over far enough where started affecting it yet side to pull it in quite a distance but let's, bring that over. Well, that's pretty cool uh, but I can still see the the sunset kind of stuck onto the tree a little bit and any time you just bring this over without splitting in half, you have an abrupt transition it's like used in exactly knife to cut something out and most of the time you need at least the little ist soft edge on it to make it look good. So I'm going to split the slaughter in half now, so hold on the option key and I'll pull the left edge away and I might not notice it right away pump it back together there so that connect and maybe I'll zoom up on the picture, see if we can notice it more when we're looking at the image itself so now split the slider, see what happened you see the edge of starting change, maybe I need to bring that out a considerable distance some like that you think I can always adjust the other side to to say how much of the solid stuff do I want? Where do I want it to start showing up so here's, what we have now we do have some areas down here that are partially see through as well and you can see the checkerboard just slightly showing up through that that's because it is within this brightness range right here it's in the fadeout zone it's not going to be perfect as far as what goes on because it can on ly show our hide things face completely on brightness it has no idea there's a sky it has no idea there's grass all it's doing is just blatantly hiding anything that is in this brightness range right here it's keeping anything it's in this brightness range here and anything that's in here it is partially showing up the closer it is to this end the lesson shows up the closer it is to this end, the more chose up and so it's a real simple thing. But it can be useful for some things because now I could take that and maybe go grab a different picture. I don't have a picture prepared for this, but let's see if we can just find somewhere somewhere I have some textures. I think it's in blending modes all right? I just want to create a different looking picture, so open this image, I'll rotated horizontally and then I'm just going to drag that over and put it behind and that way instead of having the sky that was there we'll have this texture I don't know if they were shot with the same cameras for a same size but put it underneath okay, so now it looks different I have hidden the parts of this that I have with the blending sliders and I just filled in the parts that are missing now with the image that's below that could be any picture uh so the way I got to the slaughters is I went to down two letters fx he and I chose blending options but just so you know there are other ways of doing it you could also go to the layer menu there you'll find the choice called later style, which is that little fx menu it's called layer styles or layer effects there they've done we can't seem tio make up their mind if should be called layer style or layer effect because they use the two terms interchangeably but there's just blending options that's another method of getting there or third method if it still works I rarely use it but doubleclick not in the name of the layer but in the empty space to the right of the name it'll get you there too, so whichever one of those three methods you like use it or switch between the three but all three of them get you to the same spot so what we've learned so far is that if I double click on the empty part out here to the right of the layer we get to the blending sliders this layer means the layer that's currently active and it's going to show her hide things based purely on brightness uh did give a quick questioner okay yeah question lee on the when you had started tio when there's the checkerboard was starting to show in the in the base can you add a mask to that and cover that part up or you not to bring it back a mass can on ly hide things so a mass could further hide it but a mass can't change the way this is hiding meaning bring things back I could always have a duplicate of the layer underneath the original it doesn't have the sliders applied in have a mask on that to say ok this layer is just the grass and now to get the tree we have a layer on top that has the blending sliders but a mask can't counter act the work of these sliders so if the sliders cause something to be checkerboard ish uh mass can't bring it back only the sliders could bring it back the mass could make more of this hidden because that's all mass can do is make more something that can't can't bring things back unless the thing that made them disappear in the first place was that mask so anyway, that allowed me to get this different background in here let's see what it looks like without the sliders you can always turn the sliders off just go back to the sliders and just moving back to where they originally were all it is is a setting attached to the later so they're not permanent at all uh let's see what else we might be able to do with him here. I, uh where was I was in thailand? I remember where I was I was in southeast asia somewhere not have these were cool with those stamps all over this wall and I want to use those, so I'm going to use the move to him he's going to drag this over to this document, get over there and the key just say no when you drag between documents with the move tool is if you start in one document, you need to have your mouse inside of that document when you click that way you're grabbing what's under your mouths and when you dragged to another document like to another tab don't let go and tell your mouse is inside that document if it's only on top of the tab, it doesn't know you actually wanted it in the document itself your mouse has to be in the in the document down there, but I didn't actually want to drag it up twice so anyway have this and I'm looking at it and you see the stamps on the wall don't they look in general darker than the wall itself? And I don't know if that's true for the whole wall because they're certain portions of the bottom but let's see if somehow I might be able to get rid of the wall itself and just get the stamps and I've never played with this image ever in my lifetime, so I don't know if it will work or not just crossing my fingers um blending options this layer let's hide the bright stuff cool cool now any time you do this though, you're going to get it with a very abrupt transition on the edge where it can often look pixelated because it's what's known as a one bit transition either something is completely gone or completely showing up there's no in between and usually when you use something like text or paint brush or something like that almost always it has the slightest soft edge on it it's what's known as anti alias in and we're not gonna have that if we just move this over so I almost always split that slider in half even if it's only a tiny amount just to give me the slightest bit of ah semi transparent pixel on the edge but I'll split it apart and just move it over to see if it helps and I moved the outside back see what looks best in then I'll click ok so now we got all these stamps in here um I'm not sure if this really perfectly moved the background or not because we have so much below it it's hard to tell we can always turn off the eyeballs and the layers that are below and see what we have and it looks like it did pretty good except for the bottom of the wall their little chunks of wall in there that aren't stamps but that's where you could use it either use the eraser tool right now to raise him or if you're familiar with layer masks you can click on the layer mask icon at the bottom of your layers panel grab your paintbrush tool and if I paint with black black hides things so I could come in here right now and just say hide this because the blending sliders were not capable of getting rid of it blending slaughters on ly hide things based on brightness in that part of the wall is probably the same brightness is the stamps so if I push the sliders far enough so that they get rid of those parts of the wall it would also get rid of the stamps and we just end up with an empty layer so you can always combine more than one technology and photoshopped but a layer mass can on ly further hide things it can't bring them back unless that was the mask itself that was causing them to be hidden if it's something else like blending slaughters, you'd have to go back to the blending sliders to say bring that stuff back so you can put these back on and now maybe I just don't want them to show for the tree is one of everything else, so I got the mask that's there, I've just paint on the mask and they don't let these show up where the tree is and then maybe a lower the capacity is there not a strong? Just click on the word opacity try get down trying to create oh a different look and image so let's see what else we can do? I don't know that I haven't straight shot of a person because here it creative live I need moderates who hey, wait there's a person I know a person cassandra and she's good, I didn't know I don't have too many pictures of people, mainly because for what I do, I don't often have model releases going plan on using the images for certain things, and so there are very few pictures of people that I can use on creative life, but sanders a friend can use her uh so here's a person I'm going to scale it down just a little bit so that we haven't cut off her shoulder and now I can come in here and of course do blending sliders and uh in this case the backgrounds black it was dark instead of light, so if you want to hide the background they could go over to this layer, pull it over, get the background to go away her hair though the back there is the same brightness and this has no idea there's a person or anything else all it's doing is a very simple thing which is hide the dark stuff I could let the slider to get a transition and get something like that click ok, maybe afterwards I also add a mask to say I want to further hide things using not the sliders with something else with that mask, I could grab my paintbrush tool with soft edge brush and say, well, I don't like the back of her hair maybe not hurt here, you know used to move tool put it over here somewhere so I could do that or I could hide the bright parts the bright parts would hide her teeth the whites of her eyes in the highlight on her shoulder would start making that part transparent it all depends what you're looking to do but is purely based on brightness so you have to decide is the thing you want to keep dramatically different than the rest of your image in brightness if it's not then you might not want to use the blending sliders so what else could we put in there? Let's see well, one thing that I think of that always has a good contrast between the subject in the background is clouds aren't clouds almost always brighter than the blue sky that they're around unless it's a well it depends here here it's often hates you know, overcast and everything looks the same but when you travel and maybe you're going to new mexico new mexico has great clouds then maybe this would be a little more true but let's see what we can do, I'm going to just grab a random image this one is a monument valley and I'll open it and just, you know, a lot of the images I worked with day I've never touched and I wanted to be that way because I want things to not look perfect when I do things because we need to know how to get around things and need to know the limitations of things. And so a huge number of the images like these images I have open right now I have I don't think I've ever opened any of them other than the tree image has been adjusted only in camera, so just so you know I'm just seeing what would come up with so here we have this the clouds in general look brighter than the background except for when you get to the horizon here, there we have just kind of hazy stuff that might be similar to the clouds, but let's see if we can do anything, I'm going to go to the letters f ax shoes, planning options and I'm just going to tell photo shopped to make the dark parts of this layer go away. I don't care about the bottom of the photo, I'll probably mask that out with a layer mask I'm just concerned about up where the sky is bring this over not even paying attention to the bottom of photo just looking at mike clouds see if we can get some sky to start going away, then we don't want our clouds to look like we're using a pair of scissors to cut them out we want him to have soft edges, right? So we need to split our slider we hold on it option key alta windows to do that let's see if I get nice puffy ones that may be click ok, but you see where we have the kind of hazy grayness at the horizon is still showing up, and so I might in addition to that, add a layer mask and with later mask active aiken grab my paintbrush tool and paint with black and now I don't have is big of a job as far as removing things because the leading sliders did most of the work it's just down here I need to be careful where I'm about to bump into clouds decide if I need to keep those little clouds of the bottom if so, use a smaller brush could be careful going around their edges or if you don't mind getting rid of some of them when I do that I personally don't like this caught over here hitting the edge of the photo so I might get rid of those whatever but I can do it with layer mask because blending sliders are limited they can on ly show her hide things based on brightness so let's go back into the blending sliders in this layer and let's do a little more because there's something I'm played with their two cents of sliders one isn abled this layer the under other is labeled underlying layer it should just say underlying image because it doesn't care how many layers it's made out of it's just going to act as if all the layers that are underneath this one have been merged into one and that's what is thinking about when it talks about underlying layer so now let's see if we can figure out what those sliders do I'm gonna pull in the left lower left slider you just watched the image knowing that it's thinking about what's underneath the clouds and see if you can figure out what it does I think what's showing up when I pull that through isn't it the dark parts of what's underneath that looked like it so what's happening now his photo shop is taking anything in this brightness range on the underlying image and letting it show up letting it break right through the layer I'm working on so the stuff that's in this brightness range on the underlying image is preventing the layer I'm working on from showing up question project yet couldn't you just move thie tree layer above sir cloud layer in the stack of the side I could move the tree later up here do that fine yeah yeah we just need to describe what the heck does that slider to so yeah in fact it might be easier there because you know it's more possible but you will move on to other images where you'll see that this will be not something as simple as you can always switch the layers what if what was underneath was not separate layer since that they were merged together for instance or like let's just imagine we were only working on two layers the tree layer that has no blending sliders applied meaning the original and then this layer then it might be a little more mentally appropriate as faras why would be doing this but I'll pull us in and that's going to have the dark parts of what's underneath prevent the layer I'm working on from showing up if I bring in the opposite side it's probably be a little bit more difficult to figure out what's going on simply because what's underneath especially in the portion up where the clouds are there is no bright stuff really you know it's medium brightness or even dark stuff back there but if I pull in the opposite side I have to pull it quite a distance but eventually they see that clouds disappearing hard to tell really what's making it disappear but what it is is the bright parts that are underneath and in fact the medium brightness more like fifty percent gray parts anything that's in this range here but we'll see how that's useful in a minute so let's say I wanted the tree that center needs to break through but just like with the other sliders this is going to give you what's there was a one bit edge which are where it's either completely showing up or completely gone with no softness on the edge whatsoever that'll give you j g's and thanks you can split the slider in half again by holding on option alta windows and that's just going to improve your edge quality a little bit give you more of a soft edge on it it you mainly going to notice that if you zoom up a little closer but now we got the clouds somewhat being behind the tree choose undo let's try another one this one has a boring sky. I mean it's not unexciting, especially for people live in seattle just noticed every time we start, if it's sunny out, you guys were like it's amazing it. So first thing I'm going to do to this image is just something that bugs me. It has nothing to do with using the sliders is that the upper right, different upper left corner's have gunk in them? I'm going to select that corner, hold shift, toe, ad and select that corner. And from yesterday, when we did retouching, there was one particular retouching tool that works great when something's bumping into the edge of your document. If use something like the spot healing brush, it often brought back the colors that were on the edge. But the one that really did good with that was filled with content. Aware, I don't know if you remember that or not, but it does really nice when things bump into the edge of your documents of clean that up, then let's, go back and grab a sky to use to move between two documents that could either copy and paste if you select all. You can copy and then switch to the other document paste or here with the move tool I'll just click within this document dragged to the tab for the other document and then I don't want to let go of my mouth is on the tab I want to let go once my mouse is on the picture what happens though is if I let go right now it might not put the picture in the right place it might just be randomly placed depending on where my house is if I move my mosque in the lower left corner it will be closer to their from of the upper right corner could be closer there the trick is if I hold shift before alecko shift means if these two pictures of the same size then just stack up where they're perfectly lined up and so if I didn't hold shift it might have come in like this or like this you know, but holding shifted the two documents of the same size maybe it's just stack him all right so now I'm going to hide the dark stuff try to keep the bride stuff and I'll do that by going to blending options I just want to know if I did it kind of fast and clicking the letters fx went to blending options and let's hide the dark stuff ah let's split the slaughter see if we can get what we want here I have no idea if he's gonna look right or not. I'm not trying to use a lot of images I've worked with before, because when you use it, they're not going to be images you worked with before, so I got that I could further hide this using a layer mask or isn't the building that's behind this a lot darker than the sky? So why not say, take the dark stuff it's underneath, let it break through the layer I'm showing I'm working on, you know, so I can take this underlying layers slider, bring it over and say, let the dark stuff it's underneath prevent this later from showing up at the very top, though the sky starts getting, you know, the very darkest part of the sky cards coming in, so I'm gonna not bringing in any further than that, so I wasn't able to quite get the entirety of the building to disappear, but it did help somewhat, then I'm gonna add a layer mask and I'll just paint with black is black hides things wherever I don't want the remainder of the clouds to appear, and I would usually be a little more careful when I get up close to the, um, the rooftop on the you know, the house and stuff. But what I could do is hide this layer and just work on what's underneath and you something like the quick selection told to select the building or anything else are used color range just left on the blue stuff when that's like my sky for me we talked about making selections though in a previous class we had advanced masking class is part of this serious and so I'm not gonna spend too much time talking about those kinds of things you can refer back to that class just kind of reminding you of it so that if you I have seen the other class you'll go oh yeah I'll go back to refer to it uh so let's see there we've gotten those in it looks like I have a little bit on the the windmill s o I might want to paint there but otherwise it could be helpful. What else can we do is close some documents were getting a lot of them open here. All right, here I have a wall and I wanted to look as if this wall had a merrill painted on it or an advertisement or something else you know, han old buildings you often see the fading away this old ad that used to be up there well, karen created for me a little graphic here this graphic is the creative cruiser is the name that we've dubbed my vintage bus that I'm having restored that I'll eventually live in if you're not familiar with that just on facebook look up creative cruiser and you'll see what it's talking about when it's done it'll be painted in this fashion and so she made this illustration. What I'm going to do is take these layers that air here, and I'm going to turn into a smart object because I want this to look like one layer, usually the blending sliders on ly applied a one layer remember it says this layer well, I want us to act as if this is one layer I could merge them together, but what if I wanted to change from creative cruiser toe great of life up there? I want to maintain the edit ability of this, so I select those layers and I'm going to turn this into a smart object that'll look a ziff, they've been merged together and then I'll use my move tool and I'll drag this over on top of the other tab and down into this document and closed the original so if I want this to look like an old dad being applied to this wall there's a bunch of different ways you can do that one of them is to change the blending mode the blending mode menu at the top of the layers panel determines how this layer interacts with what's underneath it and if you're going to apply something like this, I just like to experiment and try mall and see if one of them helps there's an interesting way to be able to cycle through them all what it is is you have to be in the move tool see the move to over here that's got to be active then just hold on the shift key and your keyboard and then press plus or minus on the keyboard plus we'll go one direction minus would go the opposite direction upper down that list so I won't even be looking at the menu I and I'll just hold on shift and hit plus and see what they look like and if I ever like the look ah glance over at the layers panel and just remember what it wass so if I like this look it's multiplying mode that gives me that that's kind of interesting overlay mode or soft light let's say I like that well let's say I like that but this feels too pristine. It doesn't look like an old one where it's fading away after decades and decades there hundreds of years of sitting there well what if I were to make parts of this disappear based on how bright the bricks are? I could say make the dark parts of the brick prevent this from showing up and then that'll make it look like it's kind of been wearing away so what I'm going to do is go to the bottom of my layers panel clicking the larrys fx goto blending options and if I'm thinking about the bricks the bricks or not contained on the layer that I'm working on right there what's underneath so that means I need to use the underlying layer sliders and so let's experiment and see if the dark parts of what's underneath would be useful if I bring this in eventually you see it's starting to disappear in the dark parts so it could look like it's been rubbing away, you know, wearing away where the grout lines are that kind of stuff where I could go to the opposite side and let the bright parts of the brick there's not nothing that's overly bright stuff to bring this in quite a distance, but I could let it start to make it wear away where I could do both so let's bring this in until I start seeing it disappear as usual there abrupt transitions instead of, you know slightly soft ones. So I'm going to split the slaughter by holding option and experiment with where it is positioned and maybe I'll bring in the opposite side as well until I start seeing things disappear split the slaughter and there's a preview checkbox within this dialog box in the upper right turn it off, you'll see what it looks like without the sliders and that little too pristine there turn it back on you see it's starting to look like it's a little bit whereto warn away and oftentimes that's what I'll end up using to get that look the only thing I really don't like about her end result here is I can still see a bit of the rectangle of where the edge of the graphic wass you see that all I'm going to do there is I'm going to double click on the smart object in the layers panel right on the thumb now and it's multiple layers just turn off that layer then I'll save and close this and now we don't have that edge but what's nice is because I used to smart object it's still remembers the original layers that this was made out of so at any time I can double click on this and I could come up here and grab my text tool and click on the text and just say creative live instead of creative cruiser saving close and unfortunate wasn't centered on the curve it was flushed left but um and if I choose on dok but it's nice if I use a smart object it acts as if those layers have been combined so therefore the blending sliders which usually only work with one layer are suddenly working with two or three s o we can get that versatility in there we can also do this with any picture you know, just any time you want apply texture to it, grab a layered like I take pictures of all sorts of weird textures I make my own and photo shop and I photographed them where I'm just going to shoot these grungy you know I take pictures of that people look at me going, what the hell is he taking a picture of? They don't know I'm going to put that in a photo and use the blending sliders to make the broader dark parts go away maybe make both go away and it's going to have some of this texture applied to my picture uh that's what took pictures of this that all sorts of things to just get some raw material to use for that type of stuff, all right? So the blending sliders hides things or shows things based on strictly brightness this layer sliders talk aboutthe later you're working on and they make things disappear the underlying layer makes things disappear but it's based on the contents of what's under it it's still making the layer on working on disappear but where the darker bright stuff is on the layers underneath is causing it to how so it does make sense blending sliders and they're overly useful we're doing compositing will use him for a bunch of different things I think I can come up with one quickie technique number before we made brushed metal let's see if we can make a a drill hole in brushed metal so first to remind you of brushed metal let's see hear noise that was in that ad noise and it was ad monochromatic noise so it's not doesn't have color to it and then what else they do wasn't it up motion blur all right, so there's our brushed metal too far but now I want to drill into that brush mel not all the way through though just half way and let's see what the heck would that look like? Well, I'm going to just make a round selection here and within that round selection in fact I'll create a new layer so habit separate I mean to do the same filter, which is add noise uh, no, his head noise layers empty, it can't work in an empty layers, so I just need to fill that with anything I'll fill with white my background color is currently white there's a keyboard shortcut for filling with her background color it's command delete that's ah control back space and windows if you don't if you hate keyboard shark let's, go to the edit menu choose phil, you can choose foreground background now I'm going to come up here into ab noise, but if this is supposed to look like it's drilled in we shouldn't do motion blur where it moves that one direction we need to do spinney blurred only so let's see if there's a spinning blur mmm radio blur radio blur can either zoom is if you're zooming your camera lands or spin so let's just been our stuff and let's do it best quality I don't know how much we need let's see how spinney we want it all right we got spinning stuff right but if this is metal wouldn't have like a reflection in the stuff that would do stuff let's do something else let's create another new layer and let's use the grady in't tool with the grady in't tool you have many different kinds of grady ints you can have up here this is when it goes in a straight line this is one that radiates out from middle this one goes around like a radar you know how sweeps around like a radar or like the hand on a clock and if I apply that by clicking on the middle here and I dragged up see what it gives me but there's a seam what I'm seeing is this is the beginning of my grady in which is my foreground color it's wrapping around like a hand on the clock and this is the end of my grady in't which is my background color at the moment so make sense wrapping around we can edit that by clicking right up here this thing would choose presets, whereas clicking here means make my own and all I'm going to do and here is add a color. What I'm going to do is on the ends down here I could choose the color going put black and both ends that way. There's no seem on the end because remember the two came together the the ends of the radiant met that we have black I'm also gonna put black in the middle so now I have a grady into goes from black to black toe black I'll have another color here on doing is clicking right below this horizontal bar that's there and that adds a color double clicking on it lets me change it and I'm just gonna put white there and white here. So what do we got, grady? It goes from black to white to black white to black let's see what it looks like if we apply it right here that look a little bit more like a little kind of shining reflection like stuff we'll all going to do, though is make part of that disappear or make part of it combined with what's underneath, I mention before you could use blending moz do some of that and that if you're in the move tool you could hold downshift and hit plus or minus two cycle through the blending modes that looks kind of cool. And then if I wanted to hide certain parts of that because the bright part a little too bright, I could go toe are blending sliders to say, take this layer and make the bright part see through but make it partially see through there's all sorts of stuff you khun dio I'm just trying to give you some ideas, you know, I got a little, uh, a little sometimes little side trips based on just what my brain comes up point that's one of the theater thing I can do to make this look more like it's recessed is just come in here and on the original layer, most likely I can add what is called an inner shadow. The inner shadow will give me that little a feeling of it being recessed the next and so you could just make a bunch of stuff it's photoshopped, you know you can do whatever you want. I just gotta learn the individual things. If you learn the individual stuff and you get good at that, then you're brankin combining together. If you're not used to using the individual pieces, then you can't do that. And that's, why it's good practice in play?

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Handbook
Practice Files

Ratings and Reviews

Kim Doucette
 

Always love Ben. So clear and deep at the same time. I like buying his courses and love the added notes file. Shout out to his lovely wife for the awesome job she does!

a Creativelive Student
 

This is the my first purchased Creative Live course. Enjoyed the live broadcast and now practice a bit of the segments at my own pace. Ben Willmore is an outstanding instructor. Went off and purchased his Mastering Curves which is just as useful.

a Creativelive Student
 

Absolutely loved the class! Found out so many things that could either help me out when in PS or just add to my arsenal of editing. :) Thanks so much!!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES