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Working with Documents

Lesson 3 from: Photoshop Mastery: Fundamentals

Ben Willmore

Working with Documents

Lesson 3 from: Photoshop Mastery: Fundamentals

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

3. Working with Documents

Next Lesson: Camera RAW

Lesson Info

Working with Documents

I'm going to open a huge picture might even take a while for this one to open this is a stitched panorama that I took in yosemite national park and it is extremely high rez if you look there's a waterfall they might look like a little white speck at the moment but if I somehow gordon here and just kind of zoom in on it, you'll notice that there is a when she get to the top of the waterfall there's a bridge there well now I'm in it two hundred fifty percent let's zoom out a little bit okay that's one hundred percent view but you can see how high resolution this images that's because it's a stitch panorama and I was going for a large file size that hasn't been sharpened and I can see that could use sharp innings that looks all soft there but I want to talk a little bit about just navigating around your document efficiently s o that you know how to do so because I do it automatically and I don't want to jump into moving around my document on getting you confused about how I'm doing it and...

so let's take a look at a few of our options when it comes to that the first is if you go up to the window menu one of your choices is the navigator I personally don't use the navigator all that often but I find a lot of people that are new to photoshopped find it to be very useful, someone I'd show it to you, and then I'll show you the alternatives, which might make it so once you get used to certain keyboard shortcuts and things, you might use it less. But the navigator is just going to show you a small preview of your image and at the bottom, and the navigator panel is a little of a slider where if you move it to the right, you're going to zoom in. If you move it to the left, you're going to zoom out within the navigator, then if you're not feeling your entire picture, you'll see a red box that shows you which part you are viewing, so I'm looking at that part right now, and if I zoom here, it will say, hey, you're going to zoom up to that. So if I looked at what's going to see on my screen right now, I can see that I'm looking at that little red boxes a portion of the total image, so this will sue minutes about these little icons here will also zoom in and zoom out by a preset amount like a preset change so that's one way you can do it, then to scroll around your document, you can click on this little rectangle on just drag it to say I want to look at this part I want to look over here at this part and that's actually really useful if I were to end up working on a lot of huge panorama so I might use the navigator palette to zoom around and look at it in all different areas s o we have that also in here if you hold down the believe it's the command key control in windows you can click and drag to make a new rectangle to say I want to look at this part so if I want to look at the entirety of whatever trees or whatever it is is over here I could hold on the command key my mouth's changes to a magnifying glass and I could just click and drag to define a rectangle to say that's what I want to look at let go and now if I look at my screen that's actually what I'm looking at within my document so uh can be nice I personally never use the navigator palette in general just because I'm used to using my keyboard to get around once you get versed in photo shop, you'll get more and more used to certain keyboard shortcuts but until you're used to them the navigator pal it's not a bad way to go so to replace this little mountain icon that zooms in or the smaller mountain icon that zooms out with your keyboard all you need to do is hold on the command key that's controlling windows in press the plus or minus keys in your keyboard so plus zoom in mind assume out that doesn't have preset amount and um if you want to zoom into a particular area, you do have a zoom tool at the bottom of your tool panel you will find down here little magnifying glass presuming on your document now they've changed the way this has worked over the years and when I zoomed up on this waterfall the way I did it because I use the zoom tool I move my mouth to where I wanted to go and I just clicked and held down the mouse button in it did this for me I'm just holding the mouse and I simply let go when I got in zoomed up it's much of that wanted to now that's different than the way it used to work. He used to work that with this tool you just click in each time you clicked it zoomed in a preset amount and if he wanted to zoom into a particular area you could click and drag and it would define a little rectangle on your picture and we let go you zoom into that part well that part about clicking and dragging no longer works because the moment you start holding on your mouse but and it starts this animated kind of zoom in feeling and if you're an old school photo shop user and you're used to the old way, if it working where you could click and drag to define up rectangular area, then all you need to do is go to your zoom tool make sure it's active in in that bar that spans the top of your screen known as the options bar is a choice up there called scrubby zoom scrub the zoom and that means if I click and hold continues women and zuman until you let go if you turn off scrubby zoom, then this is going to act more like the old versions of federal shop did if you're used to a version three or four versions old and so then what I could do is click and drag like this and to find a rectangle when I let go it would zoom into that area so if you're used to the old behavior, go to your zone tool turnoff scrubby zoom if you like the new way we're just click and hold, then turns kirby's iman and then if that's the case, the thing you should know about scrubby zoom is there is a way to zoom out using it all you need to do is hold down one key and your keyboard in this key is a key that generically and flutter shop one of its purposes universally throughout just about any command, not just zoom tool is to change some things behavior if there's a button in photoshopped that can do more than one thing to get to the secondary use of the button, you're going to hold down this key to do it and that's the option key. We'll be talking about the logic of further shops, keyboard shortcuts, but the option key has multiple purposes, two of which we've talked about so far one is, it often works on a copy of something if it's not working on a copy of something it's changing the behavior it's something that's two of its main purposes and we'll mention that over and over and over again. So by the time we're done with the two days we have here or by the time we're done with father shop mastery the siri's you'll be so used to thinking about that it'll be ridiculous on you'll start holding it down in tools you've never used it in and start discovering new functionality just because you know the option g means change the behavior of something or work on a duplicate of something and in your handbook for this, if you end up purchasing the course, you will have a section called the logic of the keyboard shortcuts, which tells you about what all those keys do and how to think about him so when I'm in the scrubby zoom fight click and hold will zoom up on the image and then once I'm zoomed up if I feel stuck there and I need a zoom out you could hold on the option key haltom windows and now when I press and hold you'll actually find if you look at my mouse closely usually it's a plus sign on it when I hold on option it gets a minus sign meaning zoom out so this hold option click and hold things you out a bunch of other things we can do that now with this usually there's a shortcut forgetting to zoom tool if you're in any other tool and you just need a zoom in briefly on your image if you wanted to manually get to the zoom tool you could hold down the command key in the space bar that's control in space borne windows it's not something you have to remember but I mainly want to show you that there was a change that they made to this in newer versions of father shop that you might not be aware of and it's a change that works only for holding down those two keys so I just want to mention it see if you like it and if so then you should remember the keyboard shortcuts if it's something where you're like a big deal then don't write down the keyboard truck so if I hold down the comanche in the space bar on a mac that would be control in space buying windows then I can click on my image and watch this I'm going I'm going to drag up or down or left to right actually left or right and it's a quick way of zooming look, I consume like crazy make you dizzy you know that find some disco music going on get teo throw up here really easy okay, so in order to do that you know about two keys and your keyboard its command in space and then you click on your image and drag laugh too, right? Hey some people like that some down if you don't like it then forget the keyboard truck at um with that um once I'm zoomed in on my image to move around, you could go to the hand tool and the hand tool just lets you with antal active move your picture with in your view, but I often need to move around when I'm in a different tool and you know, I'm painting and I just need to move over to seymour in the image or something else. So ah universal people a shortcut for accessing the hand tool is the space bar for as long as you have the space bar held down, you have the hand tool let go of the space part of your back and whatever tool you're in before that so if I ever need him move around the space bar is what I'm using to get me around when I'm done moving to where I want let go space so it's a matter of coming up with your own combination of those ways of zooming and the space bar to navigate around if you're old school before a lot of the other options are available where for decades he only had certain choices, then you'll find that you do command plus to zoom in command minus to zoom out in space bar to scroll that's programmed in my head from two decades of using photo shop and it's harder for me to get used to the more new ones because my brain like does it automatically without even thinking but some of the others could be a little bit more efficient depending on what you need to do then two shortcuts that a lot of people aren't familiar with but are universal they've been in photo shopped for many, many years is if you ever want to zoom out until you can see the entire picture you want to double click on that hand tool the little hand telling her to a panel just double click on it you're gonna be sitting in window if you want to zoom up to one hundred percent view one hundred percent view is pretty much the largest magnification that doesn't make the pixels look bigger you know the blocks that make up your image, then you want to double click on the zoom tool instead and that will always get you a one hundred percent view too short cuts that are useful and that's not just here in photo shop it can be when you're in certain other adobe products one of the places where we'll get it would be in adobe came a rock the same things apply, you'll have a zoom to lend a hand tool double clicking on are useful for a fitting window versus one hundred percent for you then let's say open more than one image if I opened more than one image, they're going appears tabs the top of my screen and I'm going to go open some more images I don't know if you remember or not keyboard truck it forgetting the bridge same keyboard shortcut is opening a picture just add the shift key so shift commando I could go over here and let's see if I can find a few more images here's some shots that took in iceland and I'm just going to grab a few of them double click when you won't open multiple images by default those images will show up his tabs across the top of your image your top your window right here and if you click on the name of a different tablet will switch you to those other documents couple things about working with tabs first off, if you hate tabs, if you're an old school photo shop user that was used to using photo shop before tabs existed or you're just used to using other programs where you end up seeing your documents is floating windows where you can rearrange them and seed to windows across from each other. That kind of thing know that you can manually drag a tab down in it'll pop into its own window so it's no longer grouped with the others. Then you go over here and pull down another one and another one and it's just now they might be stacked in different ways where there's others behind these tabs, that kind of thing. And if I go to the window menu, this list, all of the windows that I have open and I could switch that way to go between them and easily switch. There are other things also in the menus in here is a choice somewhere I'll actually have to look for it because I don't usually use it myself, but you can have it separate all those tabs, or here it is. Arrange aiken say, um, consolidate all two tabs, that means if I pulled down them into separate windows, I want to get him back into tabs. Like that, I can say float all into windows that means get them all out of those tabs just know that there's a choice under the window menu that gives you some choices, but if you absolutely hate the concept of tabs, you find that they're in your way all the time because you like looking at one picture next to another so you can compare them here's how to turn tabs off see just by default it's not going to use him you want to go to your preferences and your preferences air founded to the photo shop menu if you're on a mac under the edit menu, if you're on windows in your preferences, you're going to have a few different areas with settings and in here on the left side are you're different choices in one of them is interface under in her face you're going to find open documents as tabs if you turn that off now instead they're going to open a separate windows so therefore you could arrange them see him side by side and all that but then there's one other thing if you just turn that off though let me show you what happens if you drag one window near another if I drag this window near another one and if you can tell or not watch the edge of the other window watching to see if you see a blue border show up do you see when I get close? That means if I get this real close, those two are going to go into a tab, and so if you're trying to arrange your windows and moving really close to each other, you might accidentally get him together his tabs like that so let's go back into our preferences, it was under interface, and not only did we have a check box to disable opening the documents is tabs to begin with, but then there's this one it's kind of clunky lee named enable floating document window docking. All that means is if I dragged one window near another, should they to the two combined and show his tabs? And if I turn that off, then if I dragged one window near another, they're never going to try to combine together. So if you absolutely hate tabs, turn off those to check boxes, so now that has turned off any towns I already have made will still be there, but if I grab a window and I drag it now near another one, I'm never going to see that blue border go around it. I'm never going to see him try to combine, and so then if you hate towns, you don't have to deal with him anymore, but if you love tabs, you leave those preferences on go for it I'm going to leave those tabs turned on just because that's, the default behavior and photo shop, and once you get used to him, tabs aren't too bad, but I just want to make sure that you knew how to deal with that, just in case it bugs you wherever gets in your way. And now if I turn those preferences back on, I could now drag this window near another. I get a blue border gonna let go, they get into tabs. If I want them not to be tabs, click on the name, pull it down so it's away from the other window. Let go. It will be a separate window, and if you want to do it somethingto, all of the windows go to the window menu and there's, a choice called arrange a lot of the choices in here will have to do with either putting them all in towns or getting them all out of tabs so just know there's a menu over there. Well, that you might find some useful choice. It's on all right, then there's, a new preference and photo shop in the newer versions of photo shop where it will automatically back up your documents as you work on them so that if somebody pulls the power plug on my computer here and I lose power, I would usually lose everything that photo shop will have saved stuff behind the scenes, so the next time I launched photoshopped, it will see if there was anything you were working on that you never got a chance to save and photoshopped bombed on you, it will try to recover it and loaded back in there's a couple things I want to mention about first off if you go into your preferences, I believe it's under performance, but it could be under file handling take me a moment to look um see it's under file handling there are two preferences that are nice to know about just see where how they work in case you don't like the way some of them work and that is under file handling in your preps there's a choice right here of saving background that could be a little bit confusing if you ever had a large image and you have this turn on saving background the default setting hasn't turned on then if you ever save an image and immediately try to close it, it won't let you close it because it's not done saving it what'll happen is usually an old versions of photo shop you start saving an image and you see a progress bar and you could do nothing until that progress bar finished if you had a really complex, multilayered document, it could take some time some of my documents are over to one of the two gigabytes and size they're massive files and it might take five minutes to say that sitting and watching a progress bar you can't watch it for five minutes you go away from your computer and do something else, but with that little check box turned on, even those huge files khun save in the background and so you'll just see up in the title borrow it gives you the name of the file it'll give you a percentage you'll say saving ten percent thirty percent you know counting up to one hundred percent also right here is his automatically save recovery information every ten minutes that's where it's trying to save things in the background in case photoshopped bombs so if you live somewhere where your power isn't very consistent and you might lose power or for some reason photo shop is not very stable for you, it bombs a lot this is going to save you by saving information in the background if you don't like that here you could tell it how frequently it saves it so you could say this is how stable is your machine there's a bomb every five minutes thirty minutes where someone and you could get it to save in that like the time it will do it in the background does that slow down your workflow it all? I don't notice it so much but if I'm doing disc intensive things like editing video let's say then I would probably notice this if I'm doing normal image work I find that I like this because there's enough times or something weird happens and I lose you know otherwise lose some information if you're one of those people that is just not very good at remembering to save if you work on an image for three and a half hours and you haven't saved once and at the very end you to save I'd have this turned on most definitely do you think from personal experience they're well I know there were looking at other people seeing them working classes and I'm like you've been working this for two hours we computer just bombed but you never saved you know it's just I would have thought about it but this helps you but I want to show you a trick because what I have found is on occasion saving in the background actually can have an issue I don't know how to get it to happen but on occasion to get stuck what'll happen is they'll see the number counting up like it'll say twenty percent fifty percent save seventy percent changed and then it just stops and it never gets up to one hundred I go up to the file menu, I choose saving it says, hey, you can't say that it's already trying to save, you know it's already in progress of saving and won't let me do anything with it. I think what happens is if my hard drive ever hiccups where it suddenly but doesn't become available just for a moment. Let's say you have a stick drive against disconnected or something as you're trying to save to it, it will just get stuck and if that's the case here's how to save yourself because I've done this with huge images where if I lost the work, it would be a lot of time like a day. So if it's ever seen saving in the number stops increasing, it just sits there. Go to the image menu and choose duplicate that means duplicate my entire file. It'll let you do that and then with the duplicate active, go to the file menu and you save as internal let you safe. But if you had the original image and you try to choose saver, save ass and say you can't do that, we're in the middle of saving. So if it ever gets stuck image menu, choose duplicate and then say that and that's the saving grace as far as being able to get around it one of the thing before we get into came iran, and that is if you're making any kind of change in photo shop, doesn't matter what kind you're going to be used to screwing up a lot. I screw up a lot, so you got a screw up a lot. Unless you're perfect, I doubt it's the case, but let's say that you're going to be making a change each time you make a change photo shop is saving whatever it is you're doing behind the scenes so that if you choose that you didn't like that, you could always choose undo you go to the edit menu, you have undue. Most people are used to the keyboard shortcut for undue because it's the same in all programs in general, and you mess up a lot, so you're used to typing commands the toe undo the problem is, if you typed, commands me more than once, all it does is re apply. Whatever it is, he just undid. So if I come in here and I just mess with this image, if I typed commands e it's only the last letter that I can get rid of, and I just want to mention there's, a way to get back multiple steps I want to show you more than one way of doing it. So that if you mess up uh to a deep amount where it was five steps in that you realized you messed up, you know how to get away from it. So first, here is the way most people do it. You go to the window menu that's where you'll find a choice called history history will laugh list whatever you've done to this image, usually it will list the last twenty things you did, and if you want to go back in history, you just click on a previous step and it'll undo each one of those things that you've done. You don't have to go through back one step at a time you can just click all the way back and get their I never have this panel open because there are ways to access it from your keyboard and you mess up so often that it's just more efficient he used to it with your keyboard, so if the normal keyboard shortcut his command z most people are used to that controls and windows, you simply need to add one key to that add the option key of here in the mac all to fear in windows and I'll let you get back multiple steps, so I'm going to be doing on a mac option command z on windows that would be all controls he you know, let me go back multiple steps I just want to make sure aware of that because I find so many people having the info panel open at all times and it takes up some of your screen real estate and I find if I just get used to the keyboard it's a little more efficient if you need to reapply things because you type the undue keyboard shark at one too many times instead of adding option ad shift shift means redo what will go the opposite direction in the history panel so shift commands thee well, let me re apply if the last thing I did was undue, so option commands they go back in time shift commands, they go forward in time in that way, if you get used to that, you don't need the history panel open all the time and it just takes up less space. If you hate keyboard shortcuts, you only use photo shop once a week, you're probably not going to remember that if still used a history power. One of the things related to that is that I go to my preferences. One of the preferences underperformance is something called history states and it's right here this is how many undoes you get the default setting gives you twenty if you screw up a lot and it might be twenty steps in that you realize you've screwed up, you might want to increase that I believe you can bring it as high as a thousand but don't put it at a thousand because it needs to keep track of the all that stuff somewhere and it does it on your hard drive so if you send it to a thousand you work on big files your hard drive could fill up but I sometimes find twenty it's just a little bit too low and I like it set to more like around fifty I can't remember what I did more than fifty steps ago it's but sometimes twenty it's just a little a spit too little teo half but that was under preferences in the category called performance so now I'm going to be able to go back fifty steps in the future all right now let's start adjusting images with camera raw although actually before we do that a certain questions related to what we've done question audience good to speak a little too opening and closing many bridge because that's how I get yeah many bridge is nice it's something if you go to the window menu there's a choice in here should be called many bridge I have it at the bottom of my screen right now if I double click on the tab called mini bridge let me just close the documents I currently have open because there covering it up I'm going to use a quick little keyboard truck after that but many bridge can be used to browse your hard drive just like the main version of bridge and in here you have a little pop up menu which you can choose between favorites or you could say your computer to start navigating your computer and you're able tio navigate everything here the we'll end up using many bridge later on once we start getting into photo shop and start opening multiple images but it is available down here at the bottom I'll be double clicking on it to collapse it down and I mainly first set up favorites enbridge favorites are where you khun just have it remember particular folders and where they're located on your hard drive and then I access those through many bridge but we'll get into that a little bit later but we were just a couple of questions get in line so one as a couple of people were having including calamity creek designs I cannot turn on scrubby zoom it's great out what should I do so who might own have resumed? Ok if you don't have scrubbed resume my assumption although I'd have to double check to be sure is your video card might not be up to it let me find out if that's the case real quick it'll just take me a moment I think first let me make sure scrub using works thanks e o and then you know that's why you asked that question then I'm going to get on my preferences in underperformance. There's a check box called use graphics processor. First, I'd check to see if that's been turned off on their computer. It might be great out on their computer because you have to have a video card that is powerful enough allow that to work, but if I turn that off and click ok, I'm assuming that no, it still works that off I was assuming that that might have disabled it, but it could be that your video card wasn't up to it, but I was making the assumption that if I turn that off, it might disable the feature, but I wasn't right, so I'm not certain I've never had it not work in mind, so okay, not sure, so then I noticed that you zoom in a lot to your photos. I've seen you do this through many workshops fashion tv would like to know from singapore. Ben, how often do we need to pixel people? Any practical advice on what situations? We should at least zoom in at, say, four hundred percent to check our image? And what are signs of a bad image that we should be looking out for? Okay? In general, it's not usually necessary to zoom up beyond one hundred percent view unless you're really far away from your monitor like I am one hundred percent view shows you all the detail it's in your picture, anything above that just causes the little squares called pixels that make up your image to become big squares, and you're not seen any additional detail. So it's not common for me to zoom up past one hundred percent the time that I go to one hundred percent is when I need to do things that are going to do something to the fine detail in the image, and that would be things like sharpening it's, hard to judge sharpening when you're zoomed out in your picture because you're not going to see it at full strength. And so, if there's anything where you're having trouble seeing the fine detail of what is going to look like zooming up two hundred percent view can be useful there. Uh, but it's rare that I need to go beyond it. Good to know that from the master. All right. Did you have a question? Yeah. If you've got multiple files open, you have three four open and different tabs. Is there a keyboard shortcut to quickly switch between the different tabs? Yeah, there is it's let me open a couple here, here we go, it's controlled tab so I think that's the same a mac and windows, but I'll hit control tab if you hold down shift it goes the opposite direction so let's say you want to do a slide show of whatever you currently have open you can do control tab if you hit it once too many and went beyond where you wanted to go shift controlled tab means cycle the other direction thank you sure one other thing I should mention because I will do it constantly during the day because I was going to close images that I've made changes to and I'm not going to save the changes just because the next time you give a class like this I want the original images not the ones I've changed and you'll find that whenever I close the window I'll just do it very quickly with my keyboard. All I'm doing is going to the file menu and there's a choice called close the keyboard shortcut means close the window that's why it's a w for command w that's not what I want you to remember but just so you know whenever I close the file that's what I'm typing and it goes away but usually if I've made a change it'll ask me if I want to save the changes and here's something you might not be aware of any time you have a dialog box like this that has multiple choices try hitting the first letter if any button usually it's the same is hitting the button itself so if I don't want to say this, I'm just going to press the letter d it just didn't save, so whenever I'm closing a window and I don't want to save the changes, I'm pressing letter d for don't save whenever it asked me, I just do it very quickly and you might not notice I'm just trying to clear away the files we move on to something else. One more quick question from fashion tb instead of using the command z or undoing too many steps, is there a quick key revert image? And what exactly does revert image me revert image means I screwed up so much I want to start over from what it looked like when I first opened it see revert means revert to what it looks like on my hard drive, the last saved version on that's found under the file menu, and I would use that if I was just experimenting with an image and I want to start back fresh again to start experimenting from the original that you had opened. But it's under the file menu it's called revert, um, I don't know of a keyboard shortcut for it off hand just because I don't use it that often, but um, if you find that any menu choice does not have a keyboard shortcut, revert looks like it has when it's f twelve if you have the keys at the top, your keyboard, but you can change the keyboard shortcut for any command by going to the edit menu and there's a choice called keyboard shortcuts, it gives you the same list of menu commands that we had earlier, where is able to toggle him on and off with a little white ball except for there'll be a keyboard shortcut you could type in, so, yeah, when you open a new document and you khun drag and drop a picture into a document by sort of pulling it up into the dragging it down again, and I'm not sure I can do it, I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing, so sometimes it works and sometimes it does could you just demonstrate it? We'll talk about that when we get into many bridge, because many bridge we can drag him up and there's a preference also to control would automatically try to scale the image, that kind of thing? No, I meant within photo shop when you're dragging the tabs up into the towns like you want to drag between two towns, that kind of thing. Well, five open saying blank document and I'm trying to book photos into it, and I didn't drag them up somewhere under one of the toolbars above, and then they drags him down, and they were going to talk about that when we talk about layers tomorrow, okay? But just to answer you directly, if you ever want to move something between the two tabs, you have more than one tab. I want to move this image from this stab to another used the move tool clique within the file that you're currently looking at, dragged to a different tab. But don't let go tried down into that image. Then each time, the time you start clicking in the time you let go, both times have to have your mouse on top of one of the pictures. So you click within the image dragged to a tab. That image comes to the front, dragged back down into that image. Let go.

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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