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Hidden and Hard to Find Features

Lesson 11 from: Photoshop Mastery: Ultimate Mastery

Ben Willmore

Hidden and Hard to Find Features

Lesson 11 from: Photoshop Mastery: Ultimate Mastery

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

11. Hidden and Hard to Find Features

Next Lesson: Classic Features

Lesson Info

Hidden and Hard to Find Features

In this segment we're looking for hidden and hard to find features things that are not overly discoverable you know, there's a lot of essential things built into federal shop were unless somebody shows you it's there we read about it you'd never know unless you encountered it by accident and so let's take a peek first I'm going to start in camera because that is where I usually start with my images and so I'm going to just see if I've got any raw files in here I mainly have mainly have j pegs here because I've been converting them to get them ready for, uh download from you guys unless we did something in came a raw I make them smaller for that anyway, I'm starting came around uh I find most people get used to the first one I'm going to show you, which is that if you move any the sliders and cameron and you would like to re set any slider to its default study, all you need to do to reset a slider to its default is double click on it when you double click in the slaughter it brings you ...

to zeroed out, setting whatever the setting would be if you had never changed it and so that's overly useful any slider in camera off we want to reset it just double click uh other things you could do though within camera is a lot of the sliders that you have available have alternative views we've already talked about two of them and that was when I went to the black slider I could hold on the option key to see what if anything is solid black in my picture and I could go to the white slider hold on option and see what, if anything is white in my picture and see if I would want to change that well, there are other things within came a raw that do that as well. For instance, the highlights and shadows sliders can also affect your highlight or shadow detail, so if I hold on the option ke with that I'll get the same view that I had a moment ago when I was on the blacks or the whites slider so in another way of getting back highlighter shadow detail is to go to the highlights or the shadows sliders and use those as an attempt to restore detail that's not all though if you hold down various sliders, even the the exposure slaughter could show you if the highlights are blown out were not s o attempt holding down the option key when you do that lots of other areas in photoshopped though we're going to find either alternative views or alternative settings eso let's take a look when we go into sharpening if I hold down the option key at the moment that I click on the amount slider, you're going to find that the picture will turn black and white it's simply easier to see what sharpening is doing often. If you view the image in black and whites, you're not confused by the color not distracted by it, and when I do sharpening, though, I'd usually be zoomed up on the image one hundred percent view so you can actually see what's going on. But if you hold out your option key, when you click on the amount slider you get a black and white view of the image, you might find it a little easier to judge the sharpening when you're doing that. Ah, when you go to radius, if you hold down the option key, you'll see alternative view of your image. Radius determines how large of an area within your picture khun photoshopped apply that sharpening across, and as they bring it up, you're going to see wider and right wider halos around the edges of things to show you that that's where it's going to be bright ning and darkening the picture, and it gives you a better sense for what you're getting there, therefore, I can tell, is it sharpening a bunch of noise that might be in the picture? I'm seeing these little halos or not? But I'm holding on the option key when I do that you get the same thing when you're in the details later, if you want to get a sense for what the diesel slider is doing, you'll be able to see some of the changes when you're moving. That my favorite, though, is the masking slider it's, the one that I used just about every time I sharpen your picture when I'm sharpen an image and camera wrong with default settings and sharpens everything in the image, the problem with that is a blue sky usually doesn't contain any usable detail, and if there's anything in that blue sky that has detail it's, the sensor dust specks from a camera where something else that I don't really want to make more pronounced also that's, where I might notice some of the noise that's in my image. And so if I try to sharpen my image aggressively, I might start seeing the noise show up in my sky. So the masking slider when it's turned all the way down to sharpen everything, but if you hold on the option key and you click on it, you'll get a preview of what's going to be sharpened. Any area that shows up is white when you're clicking on this slider with the option he held down ultimate does it's going to sharpen? So if I bring this up slowly I can make it, you can see my sensor needed to be cleaned here see those little circles in my sky I could bring it up to say, don't sharpen the sky where I might have censored suspects, or I might have noise showing up, but do sharpen it where we have useful detail, where I could actually see those little changes in the image so I might bring it up, asshole, I is this tio try to get it, too, prevent it from sharpening the sky, but I do that on a huge number of images that I sharpened. If I'm going to sharpen people's faces, I might bring that up until I don't see the individual pores on their skin, because I usually don't like to exaggerate them through sharpening. Now, when you do noise reduction, this is the luminous noise reduction slider, so it gets rid of variations and brightness when it comes to specs, and if you hold on the option key, you will see a black and white version, so you're not distracted by the color uh, that kind of stuff, but let's look at other things other than just holding down the option key and getting alternative views if I have an image I'd like to work with, and I want to open photo shop there's a couple different options, I have for opening things in photo in the lower right, there are three buttons open image cancel and done cancel I only use if I screw up so bad that I'd I don't want to have any of the settings that I've applied done means attached these settings to the image and then close it just so it remembers the settings for next time, an open image would open it all the way in the photo shop there's a couple things about the open image, but let's say I did something to this picture that made it look weird, but I needed it to look weird for some particular use like I was going to show you how to get rid of really extreme color casts. So I came in here and I adjusted this in unusual ways away, whether I really wouldn't want my picture actually look that way when it's shown most of the time, but I need it just to create a really terrible looking image, so I can show you how to fix an extreme color cast. But boy, I don't want the settings attached to the image for next time, so watch the open image button if I hold down the option key alton windows, it changes to open copy, which means opened the version I'm scene right now. But do not attach these settings to the picture so the next time I try to open the picture keep the settings that were on it before this editing session in here so I'm gonna hold down the option kie sei open copy see if it'll open it with that version and if I were to go and try to reopen it it is going to come back with the old version of the settings so I only use those settings this one time now I doubt this will work with this particular image because it doesn't have a lot of color fidelity to it it doesn't have a lot of variation in color, but if I wanted to fix thea mega color caste here's one weird way of doing it if I duplicate a layer about typing command j then I could apply a filter it's called average it blurs things so much that you end up with one color well if you have a massively extreme color cast look let's say it's a picture taken underwater where everything looks blue well this is going in general be the color of the color cast I could then type command I'd invert it that should be the opposite of the color of the color cast and then I could force that into my picture by changing the color mode the color or the blending mode of color and just lower the opacity intel I let that absorb the color caste that's not doing bad once I'm done letting it absorbed the color caste, I would probably just need to make it more colorful with you and saturation, so that was not necessarily a hidden and hard find feature, but it was hey, why would I want to possibly open a duplicate? You know of that picture where I don't use the normal settings? Well, I might want to do it for a demo purpose where or let's say a client comes up and they say all really I hate that and makes you move the sliders around and they say, that's, what I really need for this particular project and you have another use for the picture and you're like, that looks terrible all we'll find open a copy of it, you can always save out that copy that you've, uh you have in the original be untouched, so if I come back here is the original double click on it and you see, it doesn't have that weird color caste thing that we created just for that one, um, time use other things is that the open image button can also change if I hold down the shift key toe open object an open object means open this as a smart object, so if I do that with a shifty held down then I get a special layer and if you look at my layers panel it'll have this little icon on top of it to indicate it's a smart object and if I never like to change the camera settings that were used all I need to dio his double click on the thumbnail image for that particular layer and it's gonna open camera off for me so I could change the settings assed much as I'd like and when I click okay, it'll update so that that layer contains a copy of the original raw file the other thing that's pretty cool about that is it my open it as a smart object if I ever lose track of the original raw file but I can still find this image right here then there's a way to extract a copy of the original raw file and just have it spit out a raw file onto my hard drive the way you do it is with the slayer active go to your layer menu you're going to find a choice called smart objects and there's a choice called export contents and I mean spit out as a separate file whatever the contents of that original layer is and sense the contents of the original layer is a raw file this is actually going to create a brand new raw file on my hard drive so it's sitting right here so if I ever open my images as a smart object like that and then I build up whatever effect I want above that using adjustment layers and retouching and everything else and later on I decided hey there's a new raw processing piece of software out I'd like to try on this to see if I can do any better I don't have to go back and search for the original file I can just click in the layer that contains that smart object and tell it to go to the layer menu smart objects, export contents, spit out the original raw and try it through a different raw processing program, that kind of thing. The main thing, though, was that when I had it opening camerata the open image button changes to open object if I held shift now if you want to open things a smart objects the majority of the time instead clique in the line of tech xed that's found at the bottom of your screen this little dying down here at the bottom. If you click there, you'll get some settings, one of which is open in photo shop a smart objects that would cause the button that's down there to default toe open object then holding shift would instead change it toe open image I mean it would just make it a ziff you're holding now the shift key the whole time so now you can see it says open object if I old shift, it'll stay open image. So for those rare times when I don't want a smart object change that back, though, just in case it messes me up for other things, I usually work when I'm teaching using default settings just so it works the way you're used to when you get get home. All right, then there's a couple other things. If I tried to different an image d fringing has to do with getting rid of color halos around the object, eggs, edges of objects let me turn off the setting first to give you a sense for what we might have without it. If you look close at this particular image, the reason I was using it because I shot it with a fish eye lens in this particular fish eye lens is known for producing a lot of chromatic aberrations, which is, if you look on the edge of this object, you see kind of a green halo and then there's kind of a magenta one in here and another one in there. If I turn on this check box that's called remove chromatic aberration and that's found under this tab called lens town it's going to attempt to eliminate those, then you see that you could no longer see that green halo anymore, but there's a little bit more to know about sometimes you're going to find and I think on this image I might have it let me see if I do when I get to their side of the photograph sometimes you're gonna end up with some purple hey lowing left over sure that we're on default settings here tio make sure I haven't done anything to this image in a previous demo because sometimes that's the case yeah okay, I just applied default settings quick and then turn on that check box just to make sure I wasn't, uh do anything weird, but even with that check box on on occasion, you're going to get these purple halos can you see a little hint of kind of a magenta purple that's in there? Well, a couple ways you can do to to fix that you do have a special setting here under different that is called purple amount and if you were to bring it up it would attempt to get rid of those purple within your image but there's a hidden feature built in if you want to specifically target and exactly exact color of purple what you can do is hold down the command key that's controlling windows I haven't held down right now that should give you an eyedropper tool and if you go in to your image, if you can find a nice area of purple to click on that is going to have a camera calculate exactly how strong that purple is and the general color range of the purple and move these sliders appropriately to target it. So if I choose undo and you look at the settings for the purple over here, it started off with purple amount of zero and you can see this general range. You work on a wide range of purples, but when I hold on the command key control on windows and I click on an area that has that you'll find those sliders move to more target this exact issue on this particular image, but that's something that you just wouldn't know about unless you just hold on every key on your keyboard and see what they d'oh or you're told about it. Now sometimes when you do that, though, you're going to find that certain other objects within your picture. Mike, it messed up well, if you have purple clothing somewhere in the image on the edge, it might mess it up. So if you find that you have other purple objects within your image or the fringing that you have is a different color than purple and turning on that check boss, this doesn't get rid of it, you could instead go to the adjustment brush. In in the adjustment, brushy should be aware that there is it's not hidden, but it's there ah de fringe choice and that's designs you can paint over specific areas, so if there's ever one particular spot where doesn't work or if turning on d fringe messes up another party your image I would use this instead and just paint over the area with that turned up well still talking about cameron, I'm going to select three exposures here. This is a bracket of exposures that I shot when I was in southeast asia and in this exposure and attempting to capture highlight detail, but the shadows were completely plugged up. You can't see what's in them, so then I took another shot and yet another shot in an attempt to get the shattered detail, but when I do that, the highlights are all blown out, so I want to combine these three images together and I just want to show you a slightly hidden feature. They made it a little more prominent in the newest photo shop cc, though uh, but here is what we can do tools photo shop merge to hdr pro this is going to combine these three images into a single file and then present me with the dialogue box for processing it and in the absolute newest version of photoshopped, the newest version of photo shop cc they made it somewhat easy, tio, apply what I'd like to show you. I want to show you how to do it if you don't have photoshopped cc, because not everybody has that version. So after I did merge to hdr pro from the tools menu in bridge, this comes up and when it first comes up, it thinks I want to process the image in here. But I find that that doesn't give me the best looking and results I want to cross this process, this using camera raw and in order to do that, what I need to do is up here there's a little pop up menu, and I need to change it from sixteen bit to thirty two now in older versions of photo shop. When I say older, I really mean federal shop cia six you would not have this check box that's right here. That's the check box that makes it easy. If that wasn't there, I'll turn it off. Act like him in an old version. I would just set this the thirty two bit mode and I click. Okay, then I want to process this image not using the settings that were in this dialog box, but actually using camera. If I had photoshopped cc all I'd need to do is have that one check box turned on but I'm assuming we don't have photoshopped cc and we also want to be able to do it when this comes up I'm going to save it on my hard drive and I'm going to do it in tiff file format to save it with default settings and then I'll close it so what I did is I just used photoshopped to merge the image together and save it as a tiff file what's kind of odd is when you just finish saving it and you close the file it'll ask if you want to save the changes the very last thing I did was save the image it makes no sense for it to have that warning but I'll say don't save now I'm gonna go back to bridge enbridge I'm gonna point bridge at whatever folder it is I saved the end result in I play saved mine on my desk tops right there so with that on my desktop I can now go to the file menu and say opening camera and you could actually process this hdr image using camera that's a feature they added in photo shop c s six and I really really like it because I usually has max out the shadows and max out the highlights the opposite direction and then I can adjust the exposure overall it's a starting point, and I could just fine tune the image, but I find the controls that aaron camera to be much more intuitive than the controls and a lot of other software, and I finally to give a better result than a lot of the other software. So I confined to in the image now in photo shop, see, see, they made it easier in the absolute newest version as and that is when you're merging there's a check box. But if you just had photo shop cs six, that check box wouldn't be there, and there'd be no indication in general that, hey, I could process this using something else, like adobe camera. And so I just wanted to show you that as long as you tell it to go into thirty two bit mode you, khun, then take the end results, save it as a tiff and you can open the tiffin camera raw to process it, and I think it does a pretty darn good job for raw fast. All right, let's. See what else we got here? I think I thought a quick question. Certainly when you were working a bit of a go on the chromatic aberrations yep, there was a question from earlier wanting to know if you find that. Do you ever alter those in trying to fix those in l a, b and find that you get some good results? I don't usually need teo. I find camera rock and usually deal with him. Great. Um, so even if the image was a j picker tiff to begin with, I find that what's built into camera usually does the job, especially because I have the different brush that I could use a cz well, s o I don't usually need to goto lab. Great, thank you. That isn't to say that there is not a good technique to use lab motor, something that's, just not what I need. Thio two, usually d'oh.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Ultimate Mastery Day 1 Images.zip
Ultimate Mastery Day 2 Images.zip
Ultimate Mastery Booklet.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

RDM Photography
 

I have always enjoyed watching any of Mr Willmore's courses, engaging and entertaining with a gentle professionalism, with a good pace of delivery for the target audience. What I so enjoy is that the underlying theory is 'correct' with obvious care and understanding of the terms used and this speaks volumes as to the instructor's commitment. I have always learnt something from these courses and this was no exception.

Jose A De Leon
 

This is by far the best investment I've made. Ben is a qreat teacher. I watch repeatedly the videos over and over until the concepts become second nature. Since I bought the complete bundle, I can go back when ever I want and watch again. My Photoshop skills have improved exponentially. I'm extremely happy I made this purchase.

Lemmi Kann
 

I just started to get familiar with Photoshop and know the basic. After watching just first three lessons I am totaly blown away - I can see how much far I can go with editing my photos, what possibilities I have. I edited some of my photos and they look way better now! Ben Willmore is excellent lector and I encourage the beginners to buy this class too. It's easy to understand and follow if you already know what is layer and mask.

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