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Layers Continued

Lesson 10 from: Photoshop Mastery: Fundamentals

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

10. Layers Continued

Next Lesson: Masks and Filters

Lesson Info

Layers Continued

If you have auto select turned on, then as I mentioned, you could click on a layer and dragged to this reposition it because it will automatically target whatever the top most layer is that actually contains something under your mouse. Well, there a couple other things you can do to you mentally worked with selections with selections you could add to or take away from a selection and there was a key that you held down to add to it was a shifty well, that same key is used in many other parts of photoshopped to add to something so I can select actually more than one layer to move it usually it have to do that via the layers panel you click on one layer then to get another one you could either hold the shift key and click if you hold down shift, it will give you all the layers in between the last one you clicked on and the one you're clicking on now or you could hold on the command key controlling windows to target individual layers toggle on an office faras what is selected it's actually...

the same keyboards markets as working in like bridge to select files that might open or anything else but there are a couple other things weaken d'oh when it comes to that auto select layers feature right now I have the command key held down controlling windows so that I'm temporarily to turning on auto select layer you know how I could grab things and moving around like this like we did before lunch, but check this out. I want to move the top three layers, so I command click on the first which will make it active. I hold shift to say, I want to work on mohr of something, and now I have two keys held downshifting command I click on the second one now are moving both still have shift held down as well. I click of the third one and now I have three of them, so the main thing is whenever auto select layer is being turned on, either by turning on the check box itself or by holding down the command key control of windows. Either way, however, it is your train it on if you add shift to it when you click instead of just targeting a layer it's gonna add that layer to the ones that are already active, so you have more than one layer active it's kind of cool and then and you could even take it further if you want to get fancy. If you have auto select layer turned on in this case, I'm holding down the command key right now control and windows and I'm just going to click, but instead of clicking on a layer I'm going to click in the empty space between the layers like out here, where's, the checkerboard. If I click out here and there's, no layer underneath that contains anything, nothing there, or if the only thing there is the background remember the background isn't even a layer. Well, if that's what's underneath my mouse, then when I use auto select layer, I get a rectangle, and now the layers that touch this rectangle, we'll be selected so I can bring it up here and get these four just look at my layers panel here's to here's four there's five there's, all home it's whatever is touching, any part of that rectangle was suddenly be active, then I let go of the mouse, let go of any keys on my keyboard, and now I can just move those. So even if you're used to using funder shop, you can pick up a bunch of little tips as far as being more efficient when it comes to those layers. And if I command click command meaning turning on auto select layers, and I just click in the empty spot, no layers will be active, so it's a way to kind of de select the layers you could say, um, but notice when I move this around that it's not overly smooth and its movement you see it kind of jumping around a little bit that's because voter shop with default settings will automatically try to align the slayer with other things in the dock humint so when I get it over here where the right edge of this layer would line up with the right edge of the layer below it, it will kind of snap to that spot assuming that that you know, I wanted that you can do a few things with that if you go to the view menu there's a choice in here called snap to and you could tell it not to snap to the other layers so wouldn't suddenly jump over like that you can tell it not to snap to the bounds of the documents so when I get to the edge of the document it wouldn't snap to it or if you have any guides that you create um also up here that choice called show and it doesn't have a turn on right now but there is a choice called smart guides and that's actually what it's using that's the feature that it's using so if I turn on smart guides, then when I dragged this around and it's all jumpy and it doesn't seem to be smooth I'll know why because I'll see a temporary guide appear to shelly what it lines up with so what I click here and drag you see a little magenta colored line there this shows me the bottom edges of these two layers lineup now I might live it to the right until I see another guide that shows me that now the bottom edge is lining up with one layer and the right edge is lining up with another you see that those activities air happening even when you don't have these guides visible, it just feels weird because you see the image jumping around as you move it. It doesn't move smooth it's just if you go to the view menu, choose show and you show the smart guides I find it to more useful so I can see what the heck are things lining up with? But then sometimes they want to just fluidly move a layer around and I find that the smart guides can be annoying I like most of the time, but then sometimes they're annoying so here's a tip any time you're dragging something around in your mouse button is being held down not before you click, but while you have your mouse button held down, you can hold down the control key on mac or windows and it'll present prevent snapping so now this is a fluid movement with my mouth it's not trying to snap it to anything at all. If I let go of control, it will start being less fluid because it's starting to snap to the edges of everything so I can leave the setting, turn on where it snaps to things, and I can have it where I can see my smart guides, so I'm telling things line up. But if for some reason I didn't want them to line up after I click the mouse while I'm dragging, I hold on control couple other quick things before we move on to a more interesting image is let's, say select the top three layers. I'll do that with the little rectangle around those three auto select we'll get me those three the top edges don't line up right now, so when you're in the move tool at the top of your screen will be a bunch of icons right up here, these guys and that's telling you, how do you want to align these layers? So if you look at him, just imagine that these little shapes are layers and the little line is showing you what? How are aligning them? This one would align him on the top. This wouldn't be the center's vertically. This would be the bottom left edge centers horizontally, right edge and then these over here don't align things they evenly distribute things. But give me the same out of space between these objects, that kind of stuff so we could use those let's say I have these top three layers currently selected just to be sure all used to move to a move them so those are the layers that are selected and I'm gonna click on the icon that aligns the tops. So then we have the other icons over towards the right, which due distribution and if you're not sure what they do, just move your mouse over them without clicking and just hover for a second and it should give you a tool tip that shows up that says distribute the top ed's edges I'm going to go for horizontal distribute this would be the left edge is it would equally space this would be the center? Uh, yes centers this is the right edge is in this is otto align layers. If I click that it's a special feature, it sends you into something I wouldn't use that from here very much, but let's just distribute the centers of these so anyway that's a convenient feature I could come in here then and select the bottom three layers I could maybe align their bottoms and distribute the centers you know that kind of stuff it just could be more useful tio set things up if you don't like seeing the checkerboard you're welcome to create a new layer, fill the new layer with something and put it on, but at the bottom of your layer stack if I know all I wanted to solid color than what I'll usually dio because at the bottom of my layers, stack a click on the half black and half white circle that's usually where you go to create an adjustment layer and one of the choices in there is a solid color, or you could fill it with a grady inter pattern. This means create a brand new layer, but just full of a solid color, but she's, a color for my backdrop here will miss make it white, and I could drag it from the top of my layer stack, which is where it was created down down to the bottom. So now you wouldn't see the checkerboard anymore, it's just up to you to put something down there could be a picture could be anything in my layers if I want to change the name of my layers well to do that double click on the later, I'd like to change and I just type in a name hit tab and I go to the next one hit town it'll bring in the next one, said hanks, weisberg, um. But you could rename all your layers that way, but all you're doing is double clicking on a layer to change its name, and if you happen to want to change the rest of them, a tabloid cycle through the s o could be rather convenient just in case you want to get back to this image in the future, I'm now going to save it, put it on my desktop and just make sure this check box called layers has turned on, so they're saved in there. If you turn that off, it will flatten your image, that means it will merge all your layers together. It'll throw away any empty ones, and it'll fill in me empty parts of your layer was something, usually your background color to give you a background that's all you get, so you gotta have that turned on only certain file formats support layers, so you'll find that if you choose certain file formats like j peg, that check box will be turned on and you won't be able to turn it back on, and that just means that file for meant doesn't support layers, so if you want those layers to still be there, she's one of these file formats that allows the check box to stay on most of the time that's either photoshopped file format or tiff file format. Those were the two most common file formats to save layered files in there's no quality difference between tiff and fender shop, eh? So you get the exact same quality when you reopen the image it's exactly the same as what you started with quality wise, we'll close that so let's try some other projects with layers right here is an image you wish is a light painting, meaning that it's a long exposure and in this particular case mr my friend sean mahoney and he's spinning molten steel wool you can put steel wool into a whisk that kind of whiskey would use in your kitchen and you can light it on fire with a lighter and molten metal starts dripping from it and if you put that on a dog leash or something, you could spin it in the molten metal flies off it's not the safest thing to do, but it it's a pretty cool photograph, right? But I want to make this look a little different I just want a reflection of it down below and let's do that first thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to duplicate this layer there many different ways of duplicating the layer you could go to the layer menu there you have duplicate layer it would just ask you for a name three periods means it's going to ask you something, so if I choose that it'll ask me to change the name and it creates a duplicate or you could instead of choose, undo their dragged the layer down to the new layer icon. The bottom usually clicking that icon would just give me an empty layer contains nothing. But if you drag a layer on top of it, you get a duplicate, choose undo what I do is I use a keyboard shortcut because I need a duplicate layer so often that it's not convenient for me to go to a menu in the keyboard shortcut for duplicating a layer is command j control, jay and windows just think of it as jumping something a new layer. I take whatever layer I'm currently working on command. Jay means jump into new layer, so I'm gonna type that right now. Command. Now, I want this to look like there's a reflection of this so that there's, you know, a copy of it kind of down below is if there's a bunch of water down here, it might reflect into the next thing I want to do is flip this layer vertically so it's upside down there's two different areas where you going to be able to flip an image? One is thie image menu, but know that if you do this from the image menu, it would flip your entire document in all the layers that are contained within it if you want to flip only one layer, you don't want to go to the image menu you want to go to the edit menu and under edit on that side menu called transform his flip vertical, and that flipped on lee, the one layer that I had active, so the other layer that's under it still looks normal, even though it's been covered up now going to use move tool and photo shop, and I'm just going to click with us in this image in drag, straight down it's on a layer above the original image, so when I move it, I'm just saying through underneath to the original image and all this dragged this down, I can tell it's still aligns with the document that it's not off a little bit because those pink lines on the size that's my smart guides saying, hey, this document still lining up with the edges of the document, I'll get it down here somewhere like, oh, the problem is that now part of my image extends beyond the bounds of this document it's what's known as big data. I could use the crop tool, just pull it beyond the edge of my picture toe ad space, or I could go to canvas size and say let's, add space vertically, but there's another feature I could use instead if you ever have big data meaning you have part of your image sticking out beyond the bounds of your document, then you can go to the image menu and you'll find a choice called reveal all it's under the image menu it means make my document larger so that I can see all the stuff that's extending beyond the edge of the documents bounds so what I choose reveal all let's see what happens my document just got bigger so I could see that stuff that was extending beyond the edge I'll zoom out so you can see the rest of the document and now you can see that it just made it exactly the right amount larger so that I could see the stuff that was extending beyond the edge of the document then if you want that to look like a reflection, I would delete some of the contents of that layer so that I don't see a straight line here instead it's a soft line I could do that in many different ways I don't usually grab the eraser tool, but I could I could grab the eraser tool, get a soft brush and just I'm working on the top layer that's the only stuff that would be deleted the layer underneath I'm not working on so it wouldn't be leading in that and I could with a soft edge brushes come by here and just kind of delete away where we had that hard edge there she's undo if I went too far and just tried again the problem with using delete, you know, the eraser to like that is I might decide not to print this image right now. I might say that close it and a month later I might say I'll be cool to print this image I might printed out and noticed that it would have been more ideal to have that transition in a different spot, and if I've deleted it away with the race or tool, it no longer retains that information. I can't get it back s o I would rather not use the race or tool I would rather use something we talked about a little bit yesterday but didn't get that much into and that's a layer mask to make a layer mask, you go to the bottom of your layers panel and that's, where you will see the layer mask icon so this is later that's active when I click later mask it's going to add a second thumb now like that the thumbnails active because I could notice the corners are highlighted because now I grab my paintbrush tool and paint aiken either paint on the image itself four on the mask and I have to tell it where the paint should go I do that by figuring out which one has the corners highlighted if I want the pain to go on the image itself then I put it there if I want the pain to go on the mask I click there so now in a mask white leaves things alone just as they were before but black hides things so in studies in the eraser tool I'm going to come here and use my paintbrush make sure my foreground colors set to black and I'm gonna get a soft brush and paint across here now it didn't actually throw away that information instead we just have a mask here any part of the mast it's black hides the contents of that layer so it just hid that edge we can always bring it back by throwing away the mask or painting with whites in that mask to get this whole mask backto white man which would come back but now I'm going to use the move tool because right now there is this little kind of rocky area coming through here and maybe I don't want that I wanted to look as if he was standing in the water instead of standing on some rocks and stuff so I might use the move tool and move this up kid up there a little closer I can always continue to paint on my mask if I want to maybe get a slightly smaller brush hided in there something like that this area down the bottom is becoming white that's because I ended up pretty positioning the layers a little bit and the when we added space we had a background later when you ad space it can't add empty space if you have a background layer so it had to fill it with something it filled it with white had I changed the name of the background of something else before I chose reveal all where it made the document larger this part would have been empty will look like a checkerboard well sometimes you end up with a document or you're done positioning everything the way you want it and you just have some extra space like in that image of the bunch of photos of iceland if I got a mall position exactly the way I wanted I still had space around it tonight if you want to get rid of any extra space here's a command you could use first let's tried on that image of iceland that we were working with earlier this one and I'm going to throw away the bottom layer just so you're not confused by the whiteness that's around it remember how it looked like this before? All right, check out this feature if I go to the image menu there's a choice called trim trimmed means throw away empty space that surrounds my image when I choose trim it will ask me what would I like to throw away from the edge of my picture right now, it's saying let's throw away transparent pixels, which means empty areas you know something looks like a checkerboard, so if I haven't said too transparent now it says we're going to trim it away on the top on the bottom on the left and on the right to get rid of any extra transparent pixels anything doesn't contain any information see that trip or if I still have that layer in there the one that was full of white I can still use trim it's just transparent pixels isn't going to help me because there are no transparent pixels out here I don't see a checkerboard so instead I can tell it to look at what color is in the top left of the document whatever's up there and just crop that stuff out or the bottom right in this case either setting would work because there's white in both corners but it's going to do then is look at what colors in the top left in crop that out until it hits something other than that color something is different on this image that setting is going to matter more if I choose trim I can't tell it to use the top left pixel because top left pixel is black or dark brown and that's not something they wanted to crop out of my image, so instead I needed tele tv look at the bottom right and it just turned it out if you don't remember that command just use a crop tool cropping up so we had reveal all to show us the stuff that extends beyond the edge of our document and we had trim which means get rid of that solid colored or transparent stuff that might surround my picture and it's just nice to know that they're there let's try some other projects oftentimes I go on take photographs and while doing so, I run into a area that I like here this is a vintage gas station that's in the shape of a teapot it's near that I think it's near the washington oregon border tumor the town karen zillah washington miller washington okay, we were heading towards the border with, uh and it's in the shape of a teapot and so I went shooting that I shot it with a fish islands but it's a a circular fisheye where it gives me a full circle like that but the skies pretty darn boring here's another example sky not very exciting. So sometimes I just capture skies, you know, get some nice puffy clouds in the sky I don't care what the foreground is I'm going to try to get that sky yeah, these kinds of things I collect skies so let's open a couple of these images and see if we could replace the sky this is a raw file I just had open image to get it open and photo shop and let's go open that other image open image and then I can either copy and paste or in my case I used to move tool clicking here dragged to the other tab and then make sure my mouse is within this image before I let go then I can get it there if the sky is too large or small and transform it remember go to the edit menu free transform so he's going to see if we got enough space and there I think we do and now I want to make that so it only shows for the sky is so let's hide this layer just so I can see what's under it so the eyeball icon all turn off for the top layer and I'm actually going to work on the layer that's underneath just so whatever I do is thinking only about that layer I'll zoom in on my image by doing command plus a few times just so I can see and let's see if we could make a selection of that sky I can try using the quick selection tool we use that yesterday, didn't we? So with the quick selection tool I get a brush is biggest I can get that won't give me over spray on the sky so I look at the most constricted limited area and sometimes I find its easier to select what I don't want exits easier to select and sometimes they need to select what I do want it depends on what's simpler in this case, I hope the sky is going to be simple enough, but if the sky was overly detailed contained a bunch of trees and other things, I might instead select the gas pumps in the in the gas station there's a command under the select menu called inverse and it means give me the opposite of what I have, so sometimes you select whatever is easiest even if it's what you didn't want now it's selected part of the pump in here that I didn't want there was a key you could hold down that takes away from stuff mention it yesterday, it's the same key that changes the behavior of certain things and it's the option keep walton windows I'm holding it down right now I'm going to click that and drag on some of the pump where it's like and things that I didn't want it to let go of that key and then I'll get into the inside of the handle that's here and then I'll get over on the left side by that teapots spout see if I get that stuff, that stuff and the little white bulb on the top, I'll hold on the option kings I didn't want that selected click on it see if I get that all right, I'm gonna call that good enough for now good enough for a start now we have a selection of the area where I want my sky to show up I'm going to go back to the layer that contains the sky and I'll turn on its eyeball so we're seeing it when you add a layer mask if you have a selection active, the selection automatically gets converted into the layer mask the layer mask assumes that you only want to see what selected so it takes the areas that are not selected and it automatically fills them with black in the layer mask black hides things so that's what happens? So if you watch in my layers panel, I'm going to click on the layer mask icon and look at the kind of mask I get attached to this layer. Well, it's not a bit I'm not certain why it's not doing it, it should let's ah this is when photoshopped sometimes messes up sometimes it's your fault because you're doing something weird sometimes it's photo shops fault just because it's getting tired uh I'm not certain what it is right now because I don't just glancing at this see a reason why it wouldn't want to add a layer mask, so this is part of troubleshooting, which we're going to cover at the end of the day so sometimes what I'll do when something just doesn't work as I'll just think is there something weird with this layer maybe there's something I don't realize about it maybe it's locked you get the little lock single turned on or something like that so I might create a brand new layer and then click the layer mask I can just see if it works what did ok I'll choose undo and I'll go back to the layer I really wanted it on and I'll try it again he worked I don't know what what it wass all I know is it didn't work and I decided well is it something weird with this layer if so try different layer and if it works then maybe go back and try the other I don't know why it wasn't working if anybody online happens to know for sure what it was by visually you know seeing what I did let me know but I have no idea so anyway now we have a mask if you look at the mask it's based on the selection that we started with s o the areas that were selected are white white allows the must show up the areas that were not selected are black and that hides the image now I might need to find tune that a little bit because if I turn this off and on um I'm not sure if it's perfect I probably want to zoom up in anywhere where it doesn't look good, I grab my paintbrush neither paint with black to hide the sky or paint with white to let it show up, and I'd look around the edges but it's not too bad, maybe right where the trees air hitting, I might want to use a softer brush and get the slight soft transition there just the tiniest bit on the very edge I could either paint with my paintbrush to fix that or grab a little selection and filled with white or black s o the mask has changed there, but overall it's not all that bad, considering them out of time invested in it. The only thing I don't like is in the original photograph, we have this black kind of border around the image as a whole, and after I put my sky in that's kind of missing and I want to put it back so let's try to do that just so I can see the full circle. I'm gonna turn off the top layer because otherwise I just can't see how big surf circles should be at the top. I'm gonna go to my marquee tool. We use that before to make a rectangular selection, but if you click and hold down on it, there's more than one version. One of the other versions is called the elliptical marquis it makes circles and ovals what's weird about it though, is watch if I click on the tip of this little thing on top of the cap station and that's where I originally click and then I dragged like this notice where my mouse is it's nowhere near the circle itself that's kind of weird the way photoshopped thinks it's it's as if the circle has corners to it imagine you put that circle into a rectangular box well where I first clicked was one corner of that box where mouses now is the opposite corner that's a weird way of thinking in that so in order to select something that is in this shape, I need to think about this circle that I'm trying to select as if it was in a rectangular box so just imagine you built a box custom for it that came right up against its edge where would the upper left corner bey wouldn't it be near the corner of the document right about here that's where going click where would the opposite corner of the same box be wouldn't be down here and then I confined to the size one tip for using this is a cz long as he haven't let go of the bounce bud you're still a the point where you could drag this to make it larger and smaller here's a tip press and hold the space bar I'm holding down right now if you hold the space bar when you're making a selection with the marquis tool, you can move this election repositioning so I'm going to get the top edge tow line up with where I think it should go I'm gonna get the left edge to line up with where I think it should go and then I'll let go the space bar because on lee, why had the space bar held down his let me move it now that I don't have it held down I'm still determining the size of the selection I haven't stopped, so now I'll get the right side in the bottom say that's pretty close, but space bar when you're making a selection means let me move the selection before I'm done making it if you don't like that, you just won't remember that you could as an alternative do the following if you have your selection, go the select menu and there's a choice they're called transforms selection before when we did transforming, we didn't under the edit menu and that actually transforms your picture whatever's in the layer you're working on. But if you go to the select menu and choose transform selection, your picture is not touched what you're changing the size of is the marching ants the selection itself so when I choose that now I can sit here in scale just the marching answered ignores the picture and allows me to just find ten the positioning of that when you're done press returner enter so if you needed to find tune your selection a little bit go to the select menu that's where you find transforms selection okay so now I'm going to turn our layer back on and I want to get black up there in the corner right now I have the middle of the picture selected it's exactly the opposite of what I really want because I don't want to fill the middle of the picture with black I want to feel the opposite of that so if I go to the select menu I'm going to find in verse that gives me the opposite the selection looks similar but now I see it out on the outer edge as well and that kind of indicates now that this outer part of selected I could grab my paintbrush and just paint with black um I could do a bunch of different things but what I'm going to do is the following I'll go to the bottom my layers panel and click on that icon the same when we used to create an adjustment layer or a solid color layer and I'll use a solid color layer it's going to use my selection to say hey let's only fill the area that's selected and I'll just tell it to use black crowd there we have my circle back in they're gonna nice sky as well if you look at my layers panel though we have this is our solid color layer this little rectangle here indicates the color being used if I double click right here I could change the color and this shows us where is it showing up any part of the mask that is white says we're showing up any part that's black is not that I could change it later so it's the most versatile there's our sky which also has a mask on it the high in the areas that are black within the mask and then we got our background when it comes to the eyeballs, you don't have to click each one and let go individually you can click on one in drag up and down the list of layers if you wantto show her hide a whole bunch of layers at once, just click on one of the eyeballs you want to turn off and drag up the list. If you want to turn more than one off, I see a lot of people always like manually clicking individual ones don't have to do that then a little tip and that is sometimes I want to have a complex document and I want to see the original the way I work my originals always at the bottom and I rarely if ever touched that bottom layer instead all the changes I make are done with layers above it my retouching will be up here, my adjustments will be up here, everything will be up there and that will be my original untouched image in the bottom, so if I want to see before and after what I could do is turn off all the other eyeballs teo on ly make it so this is what I'm viewing and then to see the end result, I could turn all these eyeballs back on. The problem is sometimes I have fifteen or twenty or even fifty layers and clicking on wanna drag it all the way up? The list is a real pin to have to do if you have a lot of layers so here's a shortcut if you move your mouse on top of the eyeball for one of your layers, you could hold on the option key, which is all the windows I haven't held down right now and I click on this eyeball what that does if you option click and eyeball is it automatically turns off all the other eyeballs that means you're only gonna be viewing one layer whichever layer you're clicking on. If you want to turn all the eyeballs back on, just option click that eyeball a second time so I would frequently option quickly eyeball for the bottom layer to see original and then do it again to see end result of all the layers you see what I've done now let's say have done all this and I want to reposition the sky because I wasn't seen how it related to the pumps and the gas station at the time I decided where to put it it might be better if I move those clouds up a little bit I don't know if I have enough space, but I think there were some ground in that photo to so I'm going to click on the layer that contains my sky and let's use the move to try to move it oh wait a minute you see what's going on, you can see the edge I can see the teapot shape in there and that's because not on lee is the layer that contains the sky moving, but you see this little link symbol that's in between that layer and the mask that means they both move, so when I moved up the sky, the mask moved along with it. The problem is the mask lines up with my picture that's underneath if it moves up along with it don't look right because when I move it up you can see that so what I need to do is somehow get it so the image could move up, but the mass can stay in the same position it was in before I can do that by looking in my layers panel and just train off that little link symbol now I'm going to move either the image or the mask, not both in the way it determines which one is moved is by which one has its corners highlighted. So if I click over here, I'd move the mask. If I click over here, I'll move the image and it's, just turning off that little link symbol that was in between that allows me to do that so that now I could move this around and I might run out of space. The bottom will start seeing the bridge that was in this photograph to see it down there, and if I move it down too far, I'll just run out of document, but I can at least position or around here, see if I can get away with bringing it up a little higher over a little bit. I could also scale it up or down, but the key is that I was able to unlinked from the mask because the mask needs to line up with stuff that's underneath any questions about what I've done here? Um, I'm sure there's a bunch of questions out on the interwebs and some of your brains if you've never used layers before are going, wait a minute, masks and stuff, but other people have used mass for ages and just, uh, you know, wondering about other stuff, and I'm going to step back for just a second time earlier, you chose to save you were saving a document document, and you said that you can say the document either is a tiff or is a psd file on, but it doesn't make any difference because they both have the same resolution and they have the same quality they both maintain layers. Is there an advantage to using one over another? There are some advantages and disadvantages of different point file formats. The photoshopped file format, if I remember correctly, is limited to two gigabytes and size that might sound huge, but I've bumped into it many, many, many times, whereas a tiff file I think, has a limit of four gigabytes and size, so if you have a mega layer document overly complex one, you might run into that file size limitation, but that be somewhat rare. Um, you might find that the tiff file format is a little bit more efficient with its compression it's what's known as lossless compression, meaning it doesn't degrade the quality, but you might find the file size can get a little bit smaller, and tiff is a little bit more of a universal file format, meaning if there's other software that's designed that can open files that contain layers, it can probably open it to file there's a chance it can open a photoshopped file so it's little more universally accepted uh but in general there's no great reason pulling u one direction or the other if you use butter shot follow or not you're fine if you stiff you're fine it sounds like there's not necessarily any real benefit to saving is a photoshopped file tiff you gave three examples of white if is superior there are other reasons why tiff a superior and that is if you ever process hdr images which we don't have time to discuss here if you say that in a tiff file format then you can process it using camera but only if it's into file format um and all that kind of stuff I used to use photoshopped file format exclusively for images that contained layers and I would use other file formats for images that don't contain layers and that was just simply a management process for me so if I ever looked at a folder and I saw the file extension on the end of ptsd which is photoshopped I knew it had layers because that's the only time I do's photoshopped file format and if it didn't have ptsd on the end I knew it didn't have layers because that's just the way I manage my files but now since I can process hdr files in camera which is the way I prefer to do them that forces me to use tiff and since the photoshopped file format has limited to gigs and I've been running into it with a lot of my images because I do complex like painting images that might have one hundred sixty exposures within them that kind of stuff it's pushing me towards using tiff uh but it's up to you which show the two you prefer and you might find advantage with ok thanks so ben we take some questions certainly there was a request here from a c m eighty three who's who asked how had been feather the black mask when he did the inverted circle it looks like a hard edge okay so that's saying that when I added the top portion of this black thing if you compare it to the bottom portion of the picture the bottom part feels a little soft especially if I hide the top layer it had a some semi soft edge on it but the top one that I added has a crisp edge the way I would change that is with this mask that mask is like any picture you work on it's just a grayscale image attached to a layer and if that layer it happens to control what's visible in that layer but any tool that would work on a great scale photograph will work on that mask that means painting tools, retouching tools, filters adjustments like levels and curves all those kinds of things can be applied to this and so what I'm going to do to soften that edge is I'll just choose filter, blur, ghazi ambler, and I'll bring this up, and I'll just watch this top edge, and it will get softer as I bring this higher. You see it getting soft now, and I'll just decide how soft I want it. It's not going to blur the picture because look at the layer that's active there's, no picture in that lake it's, just a solid color, and in fact, the only part of that layer that's active is the mask. And so we're blurring this thing. And what that's doing is causing this edge that's here instead of going from black in abruptly going toe white. Now it softly has a soft transition between black and white and so that's how what I would do to get that edge. So thanks for asking. Before I closed, it was about excellent. One more quick question again, since since his fundamentals and just want to make sure everybody understands from j p in key west, can you explain again? How did you get all the individual images loaded and into separate layers in the combined image? What I did in this particular case, if I remember right, is I had this image active, I had the move, tow and I clicked within this, which would usually allow me to move it around, but I dragged on top of the tab for the other picture didn't let go yet because my mouse right now is on the tab, not the picture I need to drag my mouse into the image and why let go? It just moved it over there for me the other way if you don't like that method is to select all copy, switch to the other document and paste great those were the two methods that you would use most commonly thank you, but that brings up something where we could do a bonus here's a different way of stacking layers onus this is what I would have used with the iceland images if I would have done it or had already described the features we've used select more than one image here in bridge this could be fifty images if you wanted choose tools, photo shop load files into photo shop players and all that means a stack these images so that each one of the images becomes a separate layer in the same document. So when I choose that I have two documents selected want to choose that I'm going to end up with two layers in a brand new document and that will stack him for me so if I had ten or twelve or fifteen layers like we did with the iceland images I would have just said load files into fender shop players and it would've went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and stack them then it would be up to me to move him around and scale them and do whatever I wanted but they will become stack can I do that from lightning? Can you get from like room? Yes you can if you go to the photo menu of the top of your screen will be a choice called edit in and they'll be a similarly worded command I can't think I don't think it's load files and photoshopped layers it's called loaders layers and photoshopped or something like that it would do the exact same thing many under the photo and then edit in yeah eso anyway, here we have our layers it only looks like one image that's because if you look at my layers panel it's just that the top layer completely obscures my view of the bottom one. So with this I could again use my quick selection tool get a larger brush and I'm going to just paint across my sky get a smaller brush so I can get in between the building and the sculpture and for now I'm not going to worry about the top too much but it's not accurate up there it thought that the uh cross is at the top or too similar to the sky so it's elected them remember, you can hold on the option key alton windows, which means take away you get a minus sign and I can come in here and to that but it becomes a little bit of a pain to try to get in right where the crosses are I need such a small brush might use some other tools there. I'm not certain there um mainly I get a smaller brush and paint in their control you tip though um I want to combine selection tools right now I don't want to mess up this tool too much. Uh, let's see there's a tool we haven't used yet it's one of the simplest tools the lowest tank tech tools and photoshopped let me describe that tool then we'll come back to this image see if we can use it. I'm just going to create a new document of any size and in this document I'm just going to put something simple, innit? And my case of grady in't it's just to describe how a feature works and I need something to work on. This is something simple if I go to the quick selection tool and you click and hold on there's actually more than one tool in that slot and the other tool is the magic wand tool some people call the tragic one tool because it's not for a useful but it can be on occasion what the magic wandell tool does is when you click with it it's not all that magical all it does is it looks at the color that's underneath your mouths and when you click it selects that color and then there's a setting at the top of your screen called tolerance and it means how much can I vary from that color? If I bring the tolerance down to the lowest it'll go, which is zero it means select the exact color on ly the color right click on so when I click here it'll select on lee the things that are a particular color and if it varies at all, it won't select the other stuff around. But if I bring the tolerance up let's say bring it up to five now it can very five shades brighter five shades darker it'll still selected if I bring it up to ten now it could go ten shades brighter or ten shades darker when I click look it's a wider range and so this number the default is thirty two and so when I click it selects a range based on the shade I clicked on things a little brighter things little darker or things that very a little bit from, you know, deviate from the color I'm doing this one so let's go back to our other image I've did I save this election, I don't remember I don't know I'll go up here and say that again just in case I didn't before just get back to that I'm going to say that in case I screw it up and then I'm gonna come in here zoom up on my image and I think it might be easier to get this selected with the magic wantto now, since I already have a selection active, I have to tell photoshopped I want to add to the selection or take away then I could do that in two ways I could either do it in the upper left of my screen. Do you see these icons? This one means add to this one means take away that one means give me a brand new selection get rid of the one that's already there I could do that or I can use the keyboard shortcuts we've discussed earlier shifty means ad option key means take away it depends if you like I concert like keyboard truck it's since I've used front a shot for so long, I'm so used to the keyboard speeds me up so right now we have the sky selected I don't want to cross, I'm going to hold down the key that would take away, which is the option key I'm going to click right here hoping my tolerance is low enough that it doesn't think the sky is similar to this if it's likely a little bit too much, I can always choose undo command z and lower the setting that maybe you bring it down a twenty and tried again, then I might have to click on little edge here is well and try to get these things in here. Maybe I'll go over here to this one try the same thing I'm holding on the option key, which means take away because we have the sky with the cross selected, I only want the sky and I just have to click a few multiple times and here to try to get the variation that we have within this but the whole time ah, holding down the option key option means take away from the selection and I'm just continuously clicking and letting go on different areas until I get what I want other things I could dio we talked yesterday about quick mask mode and if you remember letter q for quick mask I could type, but right now I grab the paintbrush, touch it up there's all sorts of things you can do. I'm not going to spend the time, though, to really spend that because we talked about him individually it's just a matter and get your brain comfortable with the individual ideas, and once you're comfortable with the individual ideas you start combining together and getting overly fancy okay, so now I'm just going to take my layer that contains my sky and I might drag it on top and then I'm gonna add a layer mask let's see if it will work this time yeah all right there's my sky but I could see a little bit of the ground that was over here so I'm going to scale this up up we're going to run into an issue if I scale it up and that is when I scale it up because I just want to get it so you don't see that little part over here grab this corner here and scale, but I'm not on ly scaling the picture to see what's happening the mask is going with it darn it I can hit escape escape means abort whatever you're doing, what I need to do that in order to scale that up is unlike he's too because when they're linked if you move or scale this they both uh scale if this is supposed to stay lined up with what's underneath, I got to get that thing on linked not only that I don't want to scale the mask I need this kayleigh image donate so I need to click there now let's try I'll just type command t that's free transform community now I can scale it out the mask stays stationary when now we have our scott it's just a matter of me being more careful up where the crosses are I think I even skipped across over the left side, but, you know, we can always to a bunch of things different things was little hole over here on the left side and probably need to get sky and scrub your paintbrush make sure you're working on the mask. White makes things show up black hides them so I could come over here and just paint with white they bring this guy in over there, I just have to be careful is shaped that I draw. Okay, so masks are great love masks, but sometimes they mess you up because you try to scale or move a layer and so you might need to link or on link it defaults to having the two linked. I'm ready for a different project if you want to save these air just to save as and if they're originally raw files were jpeg files. First off, we can't save back into a raw file it's like a locked file that only a camera can make photoshopped can't s o if it's that or j peg filed j peg doesn't support layers, we can save it as a j peg, but then our layers can combine together. It still looks like this in the end result, but we can't open it later and change the individual layers because they've been combined into one they've been flattened, so I'd have to choose a file format here that supports layers the two most common would be photoshopped or tiff. Now, when you say it a lot of files, you'll find that when you click the safe button, sometimes you get options with tiff, I usually just use the defaults better will remind you are you saving layers? Because down here is this layer compression if I choose discard right now, I could change my mind. It would flatten the image in sometimes here it warns me friendship loves to warn you about all sorts of things that it's like you're converting an image to gray scale by choosing the choice called gray scale, and it warns you do you want to get rid of your color? So you sure why else would I have chosen? Great skill is my choice because you way too many choices, but sometimes you're going to get a choice that says maximize compatibility mainly we use photo shopped file format um usually want to turn that on what that means is saved the layers but also save a flattened version because some programs can't handle layers and they'll read the flattened version one of those programs is adobe light room so if you ever use photoshopped file format and you need to get import those images in a light room and get him to show up it needs a version that doesn't have layers in it so it can breathe it in and create a thumbnail for it and show it in light room and the only thing that's going to do that is if you have maximize compatibility on it will ask you that question whenever you try to save a photoshopped file format image maximize compatibility means save a flattened version as well all right let's see what else we can do karen and I go all over the the world of searching out unique things to photograph and in fact we've somewhat devote her life to that in that we I sold my home I sold ninety eight percent of what I own and we live in a tour bus and we have no fixed residents casey didn't know so oftentimes were out and if we're not shooting with a tripod problem is we'll go to a place like this and we can't get a photo of the two of us in it there's like nobody around to hold the camera and take picture didn't have a tripod with us so sometimes we'll end up doing is carol take a picture of me and I'll tell her to hold still and I'll look right where she's holding in this case or cell phone camera maybe and then I'll try to hold it in the exact same spot I walk up to and grab it and then I'll take a picture of her and then we want to combine those two together so it looks like we had a tripod and would get us both in there so we wanted to look like this even though this in this or the photos we took so let's take these two images let's tell photo shop toe load them his layers so just stacks him and then there's a bunch of different ways we could deal with this but let's see what we can do one is I could lower the opacity of a layer the opacity means how much should I can I see through this layer so if I lower the capacity I'll be able to see through this layer partially to what's underneath and therefore I might well see how they line up so I bring my opacity down you and I could see this sign and the other photographs starting to show up you see the word visitors center you can see it twice so I could then use the move tool to reposition this layer well I can see through it and try to get those tow line up closest I can although it looks like it's rotated at the wrong angle and all that stuff it's a bunch of different ways I can try to deal with this one of them is I could try to transform this edit free transform the way transforming works I've shown you already you can grab the corners to scale, but if you move outside of the corners and you look at your mouse, you'll find it looks like the curve with arrows on the ends, and that means you're going to rotate so I could try to rotate this to get the science the right angle. And then if I click just anywhere within this, I could move it. I could try to do this kind of thing, see if I can get it at all close, then a press return in just say I'm done, and if I no longer need to see through it, I could bring my opacity up back all the way up and have this now. Part of my image is extending beyond the edge of the document my head's been cut in half, right could go to the image many wasn't their choice called reveal long that lets me see that extra stuff so there I could see it, but now I want to see karen in there so I could add a layer mask, layer mass people hide parts of this layer based on where I paint, I grab my paintbrush tool and make sure in pain with black soft edge brush could paint down here. And I'm revealing the layer that's underneath all I'm doing is by turn off the layer underneath and create a hole in this layer to reveal what's under it and I could be careful with my panties the problem is it doesn't really line up I'm gonna choose undo a few times to get it what it looked like before I had the mask not sure if this is going to work or not I've never worked on these pictures but here's something you can sometimes trying if the contents of this layer is really the same as the contents of this layer in subject matter and in general composition then you can try selecting the two layers the top one was already selected I held shift and clicked on the bottom and try this out remember we hid semenya commands the very beginning I'm going to use one that I hit it's called auto align layers under the edit menu it's what's used when you stretch of panorama using photo shops tools for panorama stitching and it'll look for content that looks the same in each layer and try to line it up I'm not sure how good it'll do here but I'm just going to default settings in it click ok do you see what it just did? I'm gonna choose un do you see how distorted the bench and distorted the photo the angle of both now I'm going to hope it worked confined out let's just toggle the visibility the top layer and you'll see how it lines up with what's underneath look, the sign looks like it's in the same spot, doesn't it? It did for us that's kind of crazy auto align layers I had to select the layers first to make sure it news which layers tio analyze now gonna add my mask and I'll paint right where I want to hide the layer that's on top of reveal what's underneath which is where karen this and it lines up because I used auto align layers pretty nice after that I just need to use crop tool choose the crop tool I get a cropping rectangle automatically and photo shop c s six and I could pull in these edges maybe I crop right up to the word visitor center crop over here as close as I can to mean I want to crop a little over here prop up press return and then I'd have to decide what to do in the rest of the image where a missing stuff like here uh they're missing stuff up there there are tricks too easily fill those areas in but they're beyond the scope of this class eso you could copy some of this stuff moving over there you could uh crop off some of karen's legs so you can do all that stuff it's just beyond this class there is a class on compositing that will be doing in the future and that one would cover that kind of stuff, but auto online layers looks for common content in multiple layers and we'll line whatever it thinks looks the same, it will scale, it will rotate, it will distort to try to get them to look and match up. I went to africa while ago, and when I was in africa, I was shooting this scene, and the problem is these guys were moving around constantly and it's really hard to get the guy on the left to be doing something interesting at the same time, the guy on the right is doing something interesting, so oftentimes I cheat what I'll do is I'll just get a shot with kind of left looks fine, and then I'll concentrate over here on this side and I'll just continuously take pictures whenever they do something at all interesting because I'm not sure what's going to look past or what they're going to do next or if they're going to suddenly run away and I just got whatever I got shouldn't hand held here because in a little vehicle of I was gonna move around trying to get more of him, but he just wasn't interested he was like looking over the other way, that kind of stuff, but I thought there he looked interesting on the left and then maybe let's pick one for the right side that's kind of fun there so often times I will select those two images I'll go to tools photo shop load files in the photo shop players and it's not always successful, but I will try to use that auto align because the same log in both pictures it's just a matter of it the wheel to figure that out or not self select the two images that has held shift to get the other layer at it it's one of the ones have hidden but auto align layers default settings and I'm not sure if it's going to handle it or not if it doesn't have to do it manually, it looks like it handle it I could see the scene right there we'll find out I'll turn off the eyeball yeah seems to line it up then it so that I'll work on the top layer and I'll just add a lair mask and with that layer mask I'm going to come over here chooses soft edge brush they can't tell where the edge wass and I'll just kind of say hide this over there matter deciding where to stop the bottom of the bottom I need some extra space I'll switch over and paint with white to say bring some of this image back because it's useful to have the image down there where my fillings and space that and then after doing so, I just need a crop my image crop tool I gotta scroll over to see the rest of the image here crop in that way in the bottom I could crop up got a crop up to there because that's where I run on the image uh like I say and the compositing class, we, uh cover how to fill those areas in if you didn't have the right amount of info but it's beyond the scope of the s class because it's not quite a fundamental let's return enter to say I'm done and now I get it the most ideal out of the two shots and that's not uncommon for me at all, uh, getting some kid with a great facial expression over here, but then getting the crowd of people around them to look ok, well, I wait till you get the kid just right, then it might zoom out, get the surroundings, take multiple shots. I don't care what the kids doing now until I get good surroundings put the two together depends on what you use photo shop for do not use this for journalism. If you're trying to depict a news story, you will get fired by doing this, but if you're trying to make fine art in the tree, I consider myself a photographic artist, which means I'm not making photographs, I'm making images based on photographs, and so therefore, I don't expect people to think that my stuff are a single photo by any means, you have to think about how that applies to you. Yeah, when you go to that command open as layers and photoshopped you're, you're not given the option open in adobe camera, and so if you wanted to make car corrections or exposure corrections, would you go to each of those raw files first and make your corrections and then just choose the done command? Or in fact, I can select all these images at once? Click on the bottom image, hold shift, look in the top and if I tell it to open and camera would have more than one, it'll open and let's see thumbnails of the left, and right now, if I make changes to the sliders on the right, it would only change the images that are selected, so hits select all first. Now they're all selected, so any change I make over here is going to affect all of the images. You seem all changing over there, so I would do that hit done first, and in fact, I did that, and if you look in bridge, you see that little thing there, that means they've been adjusted. I did that ahead of time okay, thanks. Yeah, now we could do the similar kind of stuff you want to get crazy with it but your camera on a tripod here's karen's sister laura's old bedroom back when she used to live at home and you see you're watching tv it looks like a pretty boring pictured on that mean karen took it doesn't mean it's boring because she took it but it's not the most exciting image let's see if we can make it more exciting. Well karen had plans for making it more exciting. She left her camera on a tripod and she had laura move around that's her dog nyah there kari's dog and she had laura move around so should capture here doing this doing that doing this doing this doing that doing this all right, well let's take all those images of the cameras on a tripod they should relatively lineup eso anyway, these might not line up perfectly let's find out I'll turn off the eyeball on each layer and we'll just see if the room moves. I think I saw the teeniest bit yeah moved a little bit did you see it move when I move the first one so what I can do here is there's enough common content in these layers that if I select them all I think that uh otto align layers hopefully we'll be able to fix it for us any time you use auto align layers, you're probably going to have to crop the image because it moves the layer that means that I'll have a little bit where there's only one image sticking up not all of them you just have to get rid of that but I'm not going to worry about that around the edge and now all I'm going to do is choose one of these that I know I'm going to use a turn off all the eyeballs except for one and I'll say yeah I'm going to use that one I'll turn on the the layer above by just train on its eyeball and say ok, we're going to use her to and here's what I'll do so far when we've added a layer mask the layer moscow is comes in his white to begin with unless itis selection right? Well I could make a basic selection around her that just says what part of this image so I want to use like this imagine I included it out her elbow I can hold shift to add them and just add a lair mask boom so we only use that part of that layer then I could go to the next layer say what part of that I want to use I only want to use the reflection in the mirror you see here we have her head in the mirror but I'm this when we don't I don't want her head in the mirror so I'm going to click on that layer I'll use a selection tool and say I want to use this part of that layer and I had a mask now you see there I can see that little edge to see where the brightness is off a little bit and that's where I would usually use a soft edge just to make that blend in so I'll just come over here and blur the mask ghazi ambler give me a soft edge and just try to get it soft enough where you can't tell if it's good enough up here I can tell you go to the next one well there she's sitting in the chair so click on that layer and make a selection doesn't have to be overly precise just needs to not overlap certain other things nyah moved over there let's keep her so we have two dogs in here go around like this I'm gonna add a layer mask will probably have to make the edge softer but all right and got her in there I would usually soften that mass because I can see the edge a little bit right here but all I do is god sembler go to the next one on an office here on in the bed now so make that later active at the mask now there is you can really see the edge kanye so let's just blow the mask give me a soft edge like I could use about the same status is before the only thing is they're looking at where her foot is. It might be getting a little bit dicey over there. Well, that's, where I might just grab the paintbrush tool and touch it up by hand, go over there and get it to be just right. But anyway, I could just continue doing this. I don't know if I want her laying there or even there, but it's on lee, where this object touches something else where I would have to be really careful in pain in the mask. More precisely, but you get the idea how you can be a little more creative credit, more interesting image in an environment that otherwise wouldn't be that exciting. Uh, just make sure that when you do your masks, you don't use completely hard edges because otherwise you'll see edges like the one I can currently see on this wall back here because there's a slight difference in brightness. Ah, blurrier edge or if you're painting on your mask, used a semi soft brush so that that is not it's obvious. It's, nice and soft. Any questions about this there's? A question from ces reflecting starlight from hawaii who asked when auto aligning photos where the white balance isn't the same, how could you easily make it the same? Well, if it happens to be white balance and their raw files, I would have adjusted the white balance previously in camera so that I would, um just make sure the white balance settings are consistent, which means select all the images, go too wrong and there's temperature intense slider move them at all, and by moving them at all, it makes them consistent because they made a varied and so that's one way. But if it happened here after I was already done, let's, say the reason why this one chunk right here doesn't match the wall is white balance. What I would do is somehow get that layer selected, so it's highlighted this one, and then I could use an adjustment layer to adjust that, uh, for white balance, the only tool we've talked about so far is color balance a ce faras our fundamentals class and here's a tip I give you whenever you do an adjustment layer, and here I could make this warmer or cooler usually adjustment layers affect all the layers that are underneath them all the layers under them it's is if you just put a pair of sunglasses between you and all the layers that are under it, your adjustment effect but there is a way to get an adjustment toe on lee effect one layer start with a layer that you want to adjust active before you make your adjustment and then when you're making your adjustment with an adjustment layer turn on this icon right here that I can they change the appearance of in photo shop cs six I think it was it used to look like two circles that were overlapping but it did the same thing they changed it to a little square with a down point a narrow but if you click that watch what happens to this adjustment layer in my layers panel when I click it will be a down pointing arrow there and that means that this only applies to that only plaster one layer so is only one layer that was off you could credit adjustment layer clip it to it like that and fine tune the color but I would usually have tried to have deal with that ahead of time before I combine the images question that wouldn't have been able to be corrected by using what the healing tool I could try to heal across that it's just a matter of I think what they were bringing up is if the white balance was different and by white bounce they mean overall color feeling of each image so if she felt overly yellow in this overall it wouldn't be able to fix it with the healing russia's healing brushwood just heal the transition somewhere or something like that it's not going to magically suddenly make her less yellow and more blue, you know that kind of thing, but if you're talking about instead something like this transition right here, the healing brush could work very well right there. So similarly, when thiss guests took does wide panoramas and photoshopped joins the layers, there is a visible difference between the multiple layers. What is the best and infigen exposure and such? So what is the best way to solve this issue? And then please don't say change the exposure on my camera? Well, the first thing is when you are exposing, teo either be in manual mode so that the exposure is consistent or on the back your camera. If you're in program mode or aperture priority mode there's a button that locks the exposure on most cannons, it looks like an ass tricks like little star and on most nights cons. It says a l for auto exposure lock either go to manual mode, which would keep the exposure consistent or hold that button in when you're making your panorama, until you're done with every shot that will make it to the exposure is consistent between those shots, so that's the first step, but assuming you've already done that then when you stitch panorama together, you'll just want to select multiple images, and instead of using auto a line layers to do it, be sure you use this command photo merge that's what's designed for aligning the layers so that they line up is the panorama would and then making sure the exposure matches between them. It will try to make sure the color and the exposure match when you're using photo merge. If you're already doing both of those things, you're exposing correctly and you're using photo emerged with emerging, then it's a matter of what have to somewhat see the image to know exactly how it go about it. But when we talk about color in tonal adjustments in a different class, I would get into things like that. It might be just a little bit beyond this class, though, all right, a couple other things that I find to be useful. Do you remember what I showed you a few minutes ago, which was an adjustment layer that would only affect one layer there's a little icon with a little down pointing arrow and that causes that layered on ly apply to what's underneath, we can use the same feature for something else let's say, I want to do a promo for a trip to africa, I'm going africa coming up! Karen was working on a promo for it so she wanted to use this image and she wanted to do it to make text look more interesting. Let me show you what she did. Take me a minute to undo it then I'll show you how it's done. All right, here we have a simple document it's a document full of black so just create a new document. You can create a solid color layer full of black if you wanted to and then you can use the text tool the text tool will create text of whatever your foregone color is currently set to. So you could put your text in there. You know, turn off some effect she has applied. Then copy and paste your image over or drag and drop. However it is, you want to get a picture between documents and getyour other image on top of that. Looks to me like karen transform this to rotate it s o that would look better within the text, but you could do that afterwards. And here is the trick I want to show you, which is how can I get this image to show up within the text in my layers panel, we got the text here the image directly above it there's a line that divides those two layers it's kind of hard to see when this layer is highlighted, let me click on this one instead you see the line right there? Well, if you move your mouse right on that line, so just sit in real close to it there's a key you can hold down the change, the behavior things, same key we used to change the behavior of many different things. It also takes away from selections it has more than one function and that is the option key haltom windows if you option clicking that line, watch what happens see little symbol that showed up I haven't clicked yet that's just what happens when I hold the key down when I option click now a little down pointing arrow shows up and what that down twenty aero means is this layer should onley show up where there's information on this layer make this only show up for their stuff on this layer? So if I zoom out, it makes it so the photo shows up within the text I just held on the option key and click on the line that divided the two layers I'll choose undo because I know that's also available under the layer menu, I'll just have to find it because that's not the method I use be layer create clipping mask so that if I choose that does the exact same thing there's always more than one way to doing things and photo shop and that's just what I'm used to us option clicking on the line that divides it if you hate keyboard shortcuts the only his father shop once a month you can't remember him then instead go to the layer menu and it's called create clipping mask once we don't that karen got fancy she went back to the layer that contains the text she went to the bottom of her layers panel to the letters fx where you can choose things like adding a drop shadow orb evelyn boss or lots of different effects and she added a few of those to the layer that contained the text in it put them right on top of it if you can see it or not when I turn this off and on there's just a slight difference on the edge she just made a little bit fancy but I mainly wanted to let you know how to make one layer on ly show up where there's information in the layer below because sometimes that's very useful when you do that clipping mask those two layers then linked so if you if you had them you know someone a document you wanted to move them to another part of the document with are they moving together would you know they're not letting so if I click on the layer contains the text and I used to move tool it moves just attacks the image stays where it isthe aiken fine tune it if I take the layer contains the other one I can move it around or transform it they're independent of each other. If I wanted to move this to a different document, let's say I'd hold shift and click on the other layer to make him both active. When they're both active, you can move or transform them together. You can't paint on, you can't filter them, you can't do other things, but you could move and transform them so I could now drag this to another document, just like I have some others and it would move both of those layers thank thanks, let's see one other thing I like to do with masks with masks. So far we have been painting on them where we've been starting with a selection and it gets converted to the mask, but a mask is just a great scale picture. You can put anything in the mask, so karen was working on a different promo. She makes all the pro most right if you ever see our website. Karen maintains the website, and oftentimes we'll have like this event here, and if you ever saw the little promo for it, that might have had some text that said working foundations or something like that on it, karen would have made that so I sometimes either ask her to make a promo or make a fake pro for something. And here I want to just show you a detail of how one could be made so karen and I are going to africa later this year and we want to make a promo for it and had this uh is one thing that kerry made and this so far all it is to start off is this's a lair full of a solid color you go to the edit menu choose phil and say fill with your foreground color and karen add a little bit of noise you know this is not quite a solid shade and if you can tell that or not but all she did was go to the filter menu the choice called noise and she chose ad noise the only thing I have to do in the ad noise filter is usually it adds multicolored noise you see the multicolored nines and there's just a check box called monochromatic to say hey don't make it colorful and she just put a little bit of noise and they're just so she'd have something that didn't look quite like a solid color it might actually feel a little bit more sandy because they're supposed to be a sand dune we're goingto namibia there's where they have like some the biggest sanders in the world then above that she put this little thing which is just must be a graphic representation of sandy so how'd she do that well I didn't know it sincere but let's make one I'm going tio ground the lasso tool and I'm just going to draw a generic shaped like that I'm going to go down below my image over back up just to draw that a selection selection usually means that's the only part of the image you can change I don't want to change the bottom part I want to change the top saw select inverse inverse always means give the opposite so now we have the top selected a crater brand new empty layer by clicking on the icon next to the trash can icon so we put our paint there and I'll grab the paintbrush big soft edge brush and I'm just gonna paint like that's the selection makes it so I can't get over spray on the bottom because he only can change the areas that are selected right? I don't need this election anymore, so you go to select menu to de select and now that's sitting on its own layer here right there and if it's a little too strong agnes lower the opacity of it click on the word opacity dragged to the left so that's what you might have started with she threw some text in then at the bottom and she played with that menu at the bottom called fx toe add an inner glow in a pattern, but you can play with that stuff now what we want to do though is one to make it look a little more interesting at the top make a little promo for africa so here's what we're going to dio I want to put this sunset, which I believe is a son she said that we shot the last time we were in africa and I'm gonna drag it over to that document I'm just using the move tool ok there's an african sunset and let's go to bridge and open a different image this guy came in with a mask doesn't black hide things in white shows things and I could paint to do that well, why not take the picture and put it in the mask? So instead of having to paint, we use that for a mask so that will limit where layer shows up we'll see if we do it I'm going to select all and I'm gonna copy this I'm going to go to what wherever our document is, this one layered one and I'm gonna add a mask to this layer to try to limit where shows up now instead of painting in the mask, I want a paste a picture into the mask it's not actually easy to paint a picture heard a paste a picture in there if I just go to the edit menu and choose paste it doesn't know that I wanted in the mask so it just pops in on a new layer that's not what I want we choose undue I need to somehow be viewing the mask instead of viewing my picture there's a couple different ways of doing that one was a red over light but remember that but the other is you can view the mask directly to just view the contents of the mask over here on your main screen you hold on the option key and click anywhere within the mask like that now we're looking at the contents of the mask it's just all white but I option clicked on the thumbnail for the mask now if I choose paste it's going to put it in the mask you see it my layers panel sitting there and now all we need to do is simplify this to try to make it look like black paint that we might put in to simplify I'm going to adjust it you remember and levels this slider forces things toe white but I bring it in I want to force us much of the background a white as I can get the slider in the left forces things to black I'll pull it over until hopefully most of that uh the elephant will turn black and it might find tune this close enough click go for the rest of the inland shyness grab my paintbrush paint with white and say get rid of that junk that's left over get down here the bottom let's get rid of this stuff that levels couldn't handle now if black hides things and white shows things is not all mask works then can't this be used tow limit where later shows up imagine I was a little bit more precise down here at the bottom don't need the selection aim or so get rid of the selection now the way I looked at the mask is the same way I'm going to stop looking at the mask which is the option click on it oh clicking and windows just on the mass thumb now my layers panel well unfortunately black hides things so where the elephant is is being hidden I need the exact office of that well before when we've needed the opposite of things we had a selection and with a selection you go here and she's in verse we don't have a selection right now so that's great out this only works with selections only way c martian ants in your screen we need to instead adjust the image in one of the choices when you adjust the image was called in here somewhere invert that would turn your image to a negative like a photographic negative so it's working on the mask watch my layers panel you see the mask with the black elephant when I choose invert see what happen it turned the mask into a negative of itself and now we have our sunset inside. And often I could move it around if I want to move the masks separate from the image, I have two unlike it, and now we could use that for a promo. So the main thing is, think about any time you're out shooting silhouettes. Is there a way to get a clean enough silhouette where you can get a black shape of something interesting with the background not being close to black back, and it doesn't have to be a silhouette. Anything that is really bright on another wise, dark background or the other way around does matter here she'd handmade paper. I can throw that in the mask, adjust it were levels. So this turns white and that turns black, black hides things. Suddenly my image would be hidden out there. I can use all sorts of things, but I just want to let you know you can paste things in the mask, so use that as an idea and experiment with it.

Class Materials

bonus material

Fundamentals Resource.zip
Practice Images.zip

Ratings and Reviews

dennis hartman
 

Great teacher. The course is great even if CS6 seems hard to work on. I brought up my CS6 and did on it what he was teaching. What a learning curve. He made it fairly easy. Thanks for the great help.

a Creativelive Student
 

I have been learning by video for months but nobody ever explained the why to me. Knowing the why makes all the difference. It helps me remember so much better. As a teacher, I need to remember that. Thanks Ben.

agcphoto
 

I wasn't sure how useful I thought this session would be, but, by the time the middle of the second day arrived, I bought the course and the rest of the series as well. Thank you very much Ben Willmore.

Student Work

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