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Extending The Canvas

Lesson 34 from: Practical Adobe Photoshop Basics

Khara Plicanic

Extending The Canvas

Lesson 34 from: Practical Adobe Photoshop Basics

Khara Plicanic

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Lesson Info

34. Extending The Canvas

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

08:02
2

Tips for Success

05:53
3

How To Undo Mistakes

06:05
4

Adobe Workspace

16:01
5

Using The Brush Tool

03:33
6

Using The Zoom Tool

04:25
7

Adobe Preferences

02:27
8

Correcting Exposure

19:15

Lesson Info

Extending The Canvas

So another situation that comes up here's actually like what we were just talking about. Let's say we want to take this image and put it on a magazine cover. I don't know that many editors actually would do it this way, but I suppose it's possible. Make yourself publishing something. Then you're the boss and you can do what you want. So let's say we want to take this image and put it a ZA magazine cover. We need to make it vertical for one. So let's put in some numbers here, and I'm gonna actually come up here and choose with heightened resolution. This is where I keep my crop tool almost just all the time, unless I am, unless I'm really making a social media graphic where I just want it square. But maybe I don't know the exact dimensions yet. Then I might come down here and choose square, and you don't have to know exact dimensions. Just reach you. But in this case, let's say we want it to be 8.5 by 11 so 8.5 inches by 11 inches. So that's that's nice boat we can with the crop tool yo...

u can actually drag beyond if you want. Well, so what's gonna happen if we do this? Let me zoom in a little so we can keep an eye on all this. Let's say we're going to just put this back in the center more or less. There it is. What do you think's gonna happen? Let's find out. Well, crop this way. So this is, um, cropping out of bounds? I guess. So, I'll hit Thea check, Mark. And what we've really done is created an extension of our canvas or built in addition onto our campus. So we put in these numbers, we crop this into, uh, the size that we needed. And now we have this extra space to fill. And there is also an option. If we undo this, there is a content aware choice here. So let's try it again. And see how content aware handles that. I don't remember if it does a good job or not, and it didn't do it at all, huh? Interesting. I think that's more for straightening will come back to that. All right, so we'll crop it like this, and we need to fill this in. So what we can Dio is, for example, I'm gonna grab this rectangular marquee and select a skinny little bottom of this. And because this is just black, I could probably just fill the underside with black, but also because it's just black. I can do this, which is bring up free transform. So impressing commander Control T I was gonna stretch it down because it's just black. I'm not worried about, like, pixel data or information. Well, just stretch it down this area. I will use the magic wand to click and just select all this transparency. And then let's see how content aware fill does to fill that in. So as we saw yesterday, you can goto edit Phil and choose content aware right here. Or, of course, the keyboard shortcut is shift delete to get to this box, and I'll choose content aware, and I'll hit okay, and then we cross our fingers and hope that we don't have to do a lot of retouching to fix it. And we go get some coffee and hey, look at I think that looks actually pretty good. I don't know that I would do a lot. My screen is full of fingerprints, so it's hard to tell, but I think it looks pretty good. But things I would look for is, you know, look at that and see if there's any weird, jagged e edges or anything. Sometimes when Photoshopped does these math computations, it creates what I call a bit of a misfire. And there's, like, a weird spot. And then, you know, you just retouch over it used the patch tool or any of the things we learned about to fix that. And then now that I've got this set up properly, I can look down here and I see Wow, I have a ton of pixels in this thing, pixels per inch and I don't quite need all of that so we could leave it and have the publisher deal with the extra pixels. Or we could just come up here in type 300 just crop it, and now we've also downsized it, so we have 300 pixels per inch, so that's your choice. But I'll go ahead and do that because I think the artwork I created for the cover needs that size. So where is it? So also in your course filed. There's a separate folder called Word Art that we're adding today and this file will be in there. But it's just some headlines that I made. So you can play along if you want to. And they're kind of silly to, I guess. I don't know, Theo Ultimate Watch party for a sunset. So there you have a What does this line on here that I'm seeing? Oh, I must have filled something in funny looks like When I was transforming this, I moved it. So I had a funny little line there. So I just feel that in with black, I must have hit my keyboard anyway. So there we took a horizontal image. We reformatted it, and we put it into a vertical format for a specific size. And then we filled in the difference that we needed. So not every image is so easy to just fill in the edges like that. So you really have to evaluate your images. And the more you practice, the more you try your hand at this, the easier time that you'll have judging like what images can be used in what ways and what things you can manipulate easily. and, you know, that'll work out well. And what? Maybe won't, but photo shop is amazing. But there's some things, like, Just, like, aren't gonna work. Some images just won't work. That's one thing I think people have a hard time with, Um, new photographers have a hard time with that. And also, clients have a hard time understanding that when, um when they make requests, sometimes, yeah, we have a crisis. Yes. What was the first step? You first, uh, when you try to make the your horizontally much to vertical. Yeah. So what we did was we just grabbed the crop tool. Um, it was a ways back That what we started with. Yeah. So we just grabbed the crop tool. We said in the dimensions. And then, you know, I just dragged this out of bounds. So we're gonna do something similar. We'll visit this again. Let's move to this next example. And in this case, let's say that the client wants a gallery rap. Okay, If you are a portrait photographer, you may be well familiar with gallery wraps, but gallery wraps are basically canvas images. So they're printed and and put on a campus in stretched around a frame, and what's cool about them is that the image actually wraps around the canvas. So it it basically becomes its own frame. It's kind of a neat thing, but for me they were the bane of my existence because I shot. I was shooting a lot of portrait's at a time and, um, really close up stuff I love really close up stuff, shooting a lot of high school seniors and babies and stuff like that. And then people would inevitably want a gallery round and with some crazy crop where, like there was no way to avoid having someone's like forehead wrapping around the frame, because I just I shot it so tight, right? So here's some ways that we can deal with that. So we saw campus extension just a minute ago, and we're going to do the same thing here. Let's say that our client once and they forget my sizes here that I plan for this. So let's say the client wants a 20 by 24 finished campus rep, so the whole thing will be 20 by 24. What that means when you make the file is that it would actually have to be 26 by 30 in that case, because the lab needs three inches on each side to do the rap to do the wraparound. So 20 wanted. I think 20 by 24 would become 26 by 30 because we add six inches to each side. So let's see what would happen then. If we crop this too, let's say 26 inches by 30 inches. I'll leave Resolution blank and we look at this and we're like, Okay, that barely fits. But I guess we'll call it good and we crop it. All right. Now we have to figure out where the rap is gonna happen. Let's make sure that those three inches on each side that are necessary to wrap around the frame are not going to take away important parts of our image. So what we can do is come up to the View menu and choose new guide layout, and I'm gonna come down here and turn off anything with columns and rows, and I'm just gonna check margins. Basically, we're gonna set guides up at the three inch mark on all four sides to see where this would happen. Why is it yelling at me? There we go. So these guides represent where the edge of the print would be. OK, so this inside part would be what faces forward on the print. Anything beyond the guides would be wrapped around the side, essentially becoming the frame. So that's very cool, except that this leaves us with a very crunched image. Like I don't like that his paw would be wrapped around the edge or the top of his head. And I don't like that The red I love this pop of color over here on this chair, and it would be wrapped around. We would not see it from the front when we look at this on the wall. So to me, this would not be unacceptable crop for that use. So what would we do? How would we solve that? Well, we crop to the size that we want the file to be so 20 by 24 inches. Oops. But now we need to build in the extra space around the edge to wrap around. So we're gonna use canvas. Extension came now. We could do this by drawing it out with the crop tool, but it's too confusing. So we're going to come up to image. And instead of image size, we're going to choose canvas size. And here we can tell photo shop that no matter what, our current image is size that we want the actual image herbal area to be something else. So, just like in a moment ago, when we drag the crop outside the boundary of the image and we basically built new image area, we're going to do the same thing here, just using a different way of doing it called canvas size. So we could come in and tell Photoshopped we want the finished canvas size to be 26 by 30. Or we could just tell it to add six inches to the with and six inches to the height. So see, if you don't like math, you don't even have to add 6 to whatever it was. Well, just tell it. We want six inches on each side, and we can even tell it where we want those sides to grow from. So, for example, if I choose this little anchor right here and I click OK, the extra area will grow down and on the left. If I bring that back and leave it in the center until it to add six inches relatively to all of the sites and I click. OK, what did I not do? Six by six? Oh, here's an example. When I cropped it a minute ago, I didn't delete cropped pixels, so it just came back. Oops. So that's a really world problem solved for you. So let me re crop this and delete those pixels. And honestly, I have found that to be I have found this to be more of an annoyance than a great feature. It is useful when you want to keep it, but most of the time when I crop something, I want to know it's cut off and gone so personally, I'd say, Leave the thought most of the time. All right now we'll go back here and say, six by six. And now we'll get a lovely Phil. Now it's filling it with white because this is my background color here. And when I did this down below, where it says canvas extension color, you can actually choose white or foreground or background in this case, both or we could choose other. And if I do that, I get the color picker box. And what I'm gonna dio is mouse over and sample this red from the chair and I'll click. OK, my God. And I'll put a number in here. How about it? There we go. Cheese. Keira. All right, So what happens now? Is it filled in this area with that color? Which is really fun, because now, when this gets put into a canvas, the image area will face forward like a normal print, and it will have a nice red side. So if you looked at it hanging on the wall from the side, you would see a red edge, which is kind of cool. And it's a fun way to add some pop and color to your photos, Um, and also to rescue yourself when a client is asking for a gallery raft and you can't give them the crop that they want. So I think I've always found that to be lifesaving, like I don't know if I've ever ordered a canvas where the image actually wrapped. I don't think so.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts
Photoshop Resource Guide
Practical Photoshop Basics (PS action file)
Word Art
Course Files

Ratings and Reviews

Kim Williams
 

I tuned into this class hoping to glean what I cold since it was free. I ended up purchasing the class because it is FILLED with so much great information in a fun and easy to understand format. Khara is an amazing instructor - I thoroughly enjoyed every minute. Worth EVERY penny. Thank you Creative Live for offering such great material, at even more amazing prices.

smurfy
 

What an unbelievable teacher Khara is. I have wanted to learn photoshop forever but was intimidated, overwhelmed, then I watched this course. OMG I learnt so much, more then I imagined. I am so excited now to start using Photoshop, I can't wait to try out everything she taught us. With the skills we learnt over these two days I think this course provides everything I need to know to feel and more. She was outstanding, the absolute perfect teacher for someone who has never ever used Photoshop. Also great moderation by Kenna. Thank you for this awesome, amazing, wonderful course. I am sure anyone who watches this course will agree it is incredible. I couldn't recommend it more. This course was just Smurfy!

Roz Fruchtman
 

I would highly recommend Khara Plicanic's Practical Adobe Photoshop Basics. The name of the class, implies that the class is for beginners, but that's not exactly true. Most of us learn Photoshop by the features we need to know at any given time. As many will agree, there are a number of ways to get to the same end. I can only speak for myself, but... I would bet that many of us don't know all the strategies that are taught in this class! Check it out, I doubt you'd be disappointed! Khara brings a fun and relatable approach to everything she does. She is very entertaining, while being a superb instructor. Last, but not least... This class brings with it a ton of useful bonuses. Warm Regards, Roz Fruchtman aka @RozSpirations

Student Work

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