Learning how to use Adobe Photoshop efficiently and effectively is the
best way to get the most out of your pixels and create stunning imagery.
Master the fundamentals of this program with Julieanne Kost, and
discover how to achieve the results you want with Photoshop and its
companion programs, Bridge and Camera Raw. This comprehensive course
covers nondestructive editing techniques using layers, masking,
adjustment layers, blend modes, and Smart Objects. Find out how to
perform common editing tasks, including lens correction, cropping and
straightening, color and tonal adjustments, noise reduction, shadow and
highlight detail recovery, sharpening, and retouching. Julieanne also
shows how to achieve more creative effects with filters, layer effects,
illustrative type, and the Photomerge command for creating panoramas and
composites. Thursday 19 February 2015
Adobe Photoshop CS6 Essential Training Lectures
Learning how to use Adobe Photoshop efficiently and effectively is the
best way to get the most out of your pixels and create stunning imagery.
Master the fundamentals of this program with Julieanne Kost, and
discover how to achieve the results you want with Photoshop and its
companion programs, Bridge and Camera Raw. This comprehensive course
covers nondestructive editing techniques using layers, masking,
adjustment layers, blend modes, and Smart Objects. Find out how to
perform common editing tasks, including lens correction, cropping and
straightening, color and tonal adjustments, noise reduction, shadow and
highlight detail recovery, sharpening, and retouching. Julieanne also
shows how to achieve more creative effects with filters, layer effects,
illustrative type, and the Photomerge command for creating panoramas and
composites. 
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is used by photographers, graphic and web designers, videographers,
and 3D artists, to enhance and manipulate photos, and create original digital artwork.
Photographers use Photoshop for correcting exposure or modifying color,
cropping, aligning, and rotating photos to achieve better compositions, restoring
and retouching images, combining multiple images into composites, and simulating a
variety of photographic lens effects. Designers use Photoshop for creating
textures for web backgrounds and photo realism, manipulating type by using 3D
extrusions and layer styles, creating comps of website and mobile application
designs, and applying special effects like blurs and lighting effects.
Videographers use Photoshop for assembling image sequences into timeline
animations, removing unwanted objects from various frames of their video,
repairing videos using cloning and healing tools, and creating
frame-by-frame animation for cartoons and special effects.
3D artists use Photoshop for creating three-dimensional shapes for use in other
applications, creating 3D objects using extrusion tools for use in title
sequences, and painting 3D environments for film and TV backdrops.
There are dozens of other types of people using Photoshop in their daily work, creating amazing projects and original artwork like these. Photoshop also integrates with other Adobe applications, like InDesign for print production and digital magazines, or After Effects in Premiere for video compositing. Whether you're a designer, photographer, or video production artist, Adobe Photoshop gives you the tools to help you achieve your creative vision.
It Begins in Bridge
As we take more and more photographs or work with more and more images, we're
going to need a way to quickly see them all as well as organize them before
deciding which ones to open in Photoshop. I feel that it's far too tedious to
actually use the file open dialog in Photoshop because I have to navigate and
look at each image individually. I can't see more than one image at a
time, and although I can scroll over and use one of these other ways to describe
the images. You don't really see the necessary
information that I like to see about each image.
Fortunately Photoshop comes with an incredibly powerful companion application called Adobe Bridge. And it's far easier to use Bridge to navigate the folders on your hard drive and open images. If you haven't already installed Bridge please see the introductory lessons of this course on how to install it. In order to quickly move to Bridge, I can use the File menu, and then Browse in Bridge, or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd-Opt-O on the Macintosh, Ctrl-Alt-O on Windows. This takes me immediately to Bridge. If Bridge hadn't already been running, it would also launch Bridge, and this is the default view.
Now Bridge is a visual media manager and it's going to help us to work with our images. You can see here with a path across the top that I'm in the desktop area. I also know that because right here in the Favorites area it's highlighted. If I want to see an additional folder structure I can click on the Folders tab... And then use the disclosure triangles in order to see the contents of different folders. When I click on the folder we can see the contents of that folder here in the content area, and if I select an image I get a larger preview over here in the preview area. If I select more than one image, we can see both of those images being previewed. If I want to open an image, I simply click on the single image, double click on it, and it opens it up in Photoshop.
Let's go ahead and close this image by choosing File and then Close, or on Mac, I can use Cmd + W, on Windows, Ctrl + W. And then, to quickly return to Bridge, we'll use that keyboard shortcut, Option + Cmnd + O. If I'm in Bridge and I want to move back to Photoshop the easiest way is to simply click the icon of the boomerang. That takes me directly back to Photoshop. Let's go back to Bridge for one moment because I just want to show you that you can also select an image or in fact I can hold down the Command key and select more than one image... And then I can click and drag these to any other folder. If i were to let go of the mouse rigth now Bridge would actually move the images on my operating system.
Now I don't want to do that so I'll go ahead an bring them into the context area and release the mouse. But you should just now that bridge isn't just for looking at images. You can also organize your assets and move not only your files, but also your folders. So, as you can see, Bridge is going to be much easier, and a much more efficient way, to navigate to different folders and view different images, and open them up in Photoshop.
Fortunately Photoshop comes with an incredibly powerful companion application called Adobe Bridge. And it's far easier to use Bridge to navigate the folders on your hard drive and open images. If you haven't already installed Bridge please see the introductory lessons of this course on how to install it. In order to quickly move to Bridge, I can use the File menu, and then Browse in Bridge, or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd-Opt-O on the Macintosh, Ctrl-Alt-O on Windows. This takes me immediately to Bridge. If Bridge hadn't already been running, it would also launch Bridge, and this is the default view.
Now Bridge is a visual media manager and it's going to help us to work with our images. You can see here with a path across the top that I'm in the desktop area. I also know that because right here in the Favorites area it's highlighted. If I want to see an additional folder structure I can click on the Folders tab... And then use the disclosure triangles in order to see the contents of different folders. When I click on the folder we can see the contents of that folder here in the content area, and if I select an image I get a larger preview over here in the preview area. If I select more than one image, we can see both of those images being previewed. If I want to open an image, I simply click on the single image, double click on it, and it opens it up in Photoshop.
Let's go ahead and close this image by choosing File and then Close, or on Mac, I can use Cmd + W, on Windows, Ctrl + W. And then, to quickly return to Bridge, we'll use that keyboard shortcut, Option + Cmnd + O. If I'm in Bridge and I want to move back to Photoshop the easiest way is to simply click the icon of the boomerang. That takes me directly back to Photoshop. Let's go back to Bridge for one moment because I just want to show you that you can also select an image or in fact I can hold down the Command key and select more than one image... And then I can click and drag these to any other folder. If i were to let go of the mouse rigth now Bridge would actually move the images on my operating system.
Now I don't want to do that so I'll go ahead an bring them into the context area and release the mouse. But you should just now that bridge isn't just for looking at images. You can also organize your assets and move not only your files, but also your folders. So, as you can see, Bridge is going to be much easier, and a much more efficient way, to navigate to different folders and view different images, and open them up in Photoshop.
Camera Raw Essentials
There are two primary formats that digital cameras capture today, RAW and JPEG.
But what can be confusing is that there are a lot of different flavors of raw.
It's sort of a generic term that people use to describe the unprocessed data that
the camera captures. For example Nikon's raw format is .mef
and Canon's raw format is .crw. These file formats are all very similar
and that they contain much of the same information such as meta data about the
camera settings and image information. But there's just no standard way of
writing a RAW file, so each one has its own unique order to the data.
There s one RAW format that's not proprietary, and that's the DNG format.
Many people convert their files into DNG because of the fact that it's an
openly-documented file format in hopes that their files will be able to opened
farther into the future and if they're kept in a proprietary format.
Adobe's the creator of the DNG format and more information can be found on their website.
It's important to know that if you compare the quality of a RAW format
versus a JPEG, there's more information in a RAW file.
For example capturing in RAW creates images with greater dynamic range, larger color spaces and, therefore, allows more flexibility in post processing. Basically you can make larger adjustments to your RAW files without losing image quality. Capturing in the JPEG format while rendering a smaller file that's faster to download forces the camera software to process the file using lossy compression, which throws away thousands of colors and tonal values. The end result is that you can't make as dramatic changes without losing quality.
Basically, capturing RAW gives you a bigger box of crayons to work with, so let's take a look at this example. I'm going to select these two images that are of the same scene, but one is a DNG or a RAW file, and the other is a JPEG file. Now in order to open these both in the camera raw, instead of using file open or double-clicking on them, I'm going to click on the open in camera raw icon. Then in order to see this full screen, I'll click on the full screen preview We can see that I have my 2 files open. The jpg file and the dmg file.
And that I can move back and forth between them by just clicking on their icons. What I'm going to do is, we'll perform a simple autoadjustment on the dmg file. And you can see that it's recovered a lot of information in the highlight area. Because this image was overexposed to begin with. I'll go ahead and move the highlight slider to the left even more to recover a little bit more information. Then we'll do the same thing to the JPEG. I'll select it and click Auto. And then move my Highlight slider down.
Now, let's zoom in to this area here. I'll click once, one more time so that we're viewing at 100%, and I'll use the space bar in order to temporarily access the hand tool, or you can click on the hand tool. And then just scoot this over. I want to make sure that I'm viewing the upper left hand corner, so here's the result of the processing on the JPEG and if I move to the DNG file and we zoom in either by clicking with a zoom tool or by selecting 100% and using the hand tool in order to scroll to the top of the image and we can see that there's a lot more information...
Being held in those highlight areas with the DNG file. So again, here's the JPG file you can see that we don't have a lot of detail in those highlights. And here it is compared to the DNG. Now even though we're pulling back in the detail in the highlights, this isn't to say that you shouldn't do your best to make the correct exposure in camera It's just to point out that if you need to make changes to your Photograph, you'll have more information to work with if you capture in Raw. Of course, if you really over expose your image, then even capturing in raw might not save you. If there's no information in the highlights, nothing can bring back information that's not there.
Of course, there are times when capturing in jpg has it's advantages. 1st, all the files are going to be much smaller. And therefore faster to download. Therefore, some experienced photographers like maybe and event photographer that's photographing each participant with the same background and a controlled lighting condition. Or who's confident that their images will not need corrections might capture in JPEG. But for most of us, I would recommend that, if given the option, capture in RAW, so that you have the ability to make corrections in post without compromising any image quality. In order to back out of the Camera RAW dialogue box without making any changes to this image, I'm going to select Cancel And then I'll choose yes. So there we can see the advantage of Raw over Jpeg in the ability to pull out information after capture.
Fixing Common Problems Quickly with Camera Raw
One of the huge advantages of cropping in
Adobe Camera Raw is that it's completely not destructive.
So you can go back at any point in time and change your mind
about what you want to include in an image and what you want to hide.
In order to open this file in Adobe Camera Raw because
its a jpeg file I'll click the opening Camera Raw icon.
Now the first thing that I'm noticing are these red
highlights, and that's because in a previous movie I turned
on the clipping warnings.
So we'll quickly turn those off by clicking on the triangles
in the upper left and the upper right of the histogram.
Now, to select the crop tool, you can either select it from the tool bar or simply tap the C key. Then, to drag out your crop, click and drag. Once you release the mouse, you can always re-size the crop by clicking on the anchor point and dragging, or you can reposition the crop by positioning your cursor inside of it and clicking and dragging the crop marquee. If I want to apply this crop I tap the Enter or the Return key. But you'll notice, if I tap the C key again to select the crop tool, all of that information that I had cropped is still there.
So camera Raw is doing non-destructive cropping. No matter how many times I go in here and change the crop and re-crop my file, all of the information outside of the crop will still be saved. If I have a specific aspect ratio that I want to crop to, Then, I can click and hold on the crop tool. In the drop down menu, I would select the aspect ratio that I wanted or I could even click Custom and enter in a custom aspect ratio. For now, I'll choose four by five.
You'll notice that the middle anchor points disappear. I can still move the crop marquee and I can still resize the marquee but it's being constrained to the aspect ratio that I selected. Another feature of the crop tool is the ability to show an overlay. You'll notice that the image has been divided into thirds, this is to help with our composition. Instead of putting our main subject right in the center of the image, we might want to put it near these intersecting lines, so if the door was the main subject I would want to scoot over my crop marquee.
To turn off the overlay, simply select it from the list. In order to apply the crop, I'm going to click Done. You'll notice that the thumb nail has been updated in Bridge, and there's a little crop icon to tell me that this image has been cropped. Now there's one last thing that I want to tell you and make sure that you're aware of. So let's return back into Adobe Camera Raw. When we select the crop tool, you'll notice that we did actually select an aspect ratio, but we didn't choose a specific output size.
So in Camera Raw, the crop tool only lets you select the aspect ratio. The file size, the image size that you either hand off to Photoshop or that you save the file out to, is going to be determined by either your work flow settings or by the save image options. There will be additional videos about file size and printing in later tutorials, but for now just know that your crop tool is only setting the aspect ratio. Excellent. Let's click Done.
And it's just that image to crop your image non-destructively in Camera Raw.
Now, to select the crop tool, you can either select it from the tool bar or simply tap the C key. Then, to drag out your crop, click and drag. Once you release the mouse, you can always re-size the crop by clicking on the anchor point and dragging, or you can reposition the crop by positioning your cursor inside of it and clicking and dragging the crop marquee. If I want to apply this crop I tap the Enter or the Return key. But you'll notice, if I tap the C key again to select the crop tool, all of that information that I had cropped is still there.
So camera Raw is doing non-destructive cropping. No matter how many times I go in here and change the crop and re-crop my file, all of the information outside of the crop will still be saved. If I have a specific aspect ratio that I want to crop to, Then, I can click and hold on the crop tool. In the drop down menu, I would select the aspect ratio that I wanted or I could even click Custom and enter in a custom aspect ratio. For now, I'll choose four by five.
You'll notice that the middle anchor points disappear. I can still move the crop marquee and I can still resize the marquee but it's being constrained to the aspect ratio that I selected. Another feature of the crop tool is the ability to show an overlay. You'll notice that the image has been divided into thirds, this is to help with our composition. Instead of putting our main subject right in the center of the image, we might want to put it near these intersecting lines, so if the door was the main subject I would want to scoot over my crop marquee.
To turn off the overlay, simply select it from the list. In order to apply the crop, I'm going to click Done. You'll notice that the thumb nail has been updated in Bridge, and there's a little crop icon to tell me that this image has been cropped. Now there's one last thing that I want to tell you and make sure that you're aware of. So let's return back into Adobe Camera Raw. When we select the crop tool, you'll notice that we did actually select an aspect ratio, but we didn't choose a specific output size.
So in Camera Raw, the crop tool only lets you select the aspect ratio. The file size, the image size that you either hand off to Photoshop or that you save the file out to, is going to be determined by either your work flow settings or by the save image options. There will be additional videos about file size and printing in later tutorials, but for now just know that your crop tool is only setting the aspect ratio. Excellent. Let's click Done.
And it's just that image to crop your image non-destructively in Camera Raw.
Automating Camera Raw
Once you understand the power of Camera Raw, then you're going to want to speed
up your workflow by learning how to process multiple files at one time.
Let's go ahead and make a change to this first image here.
I'll open it in Camera Raw using Cmd+R or Ctrl+R and we'll add a simple vignette.
I'll move over to the Effects panel. I will actually add a white edge here,
and I'm going to make it very obvious by not adding a feather to it.
We'll go ahead and make it more rectangular and then we'll bring in the midpoint.
I just want to make sure that this is a super obvious change.
Then I'll click Done and we can see that change in Bridge. Now if I want to apply that change to another image, the easiest way to do this would be to use the Edit menu, and then choose Develop Settings and copy Camera RAWm settings or use Cmd+Option+C or Ctrl+Alt+C on Windows. Now those settings are copied to the clipboard, I can select the next image. Use Edit, Develop Settings, an then paste those Camera Raw settings, which is Cmd+Option+V or Ctrl+Alt+V. Camera Raw is going to ask me which setting I want to paste. In this case I could paste everything, but I'm going to choose to just paste my post crop vignetting.
When I click OK we can see that the vignette from the first image has now been copied and pasted to the second. I also want to show you that you can access these menu items by simply right mouse clicking on the image, and then choosing Develop Settings and copying and pasting your settings here. And if we want to remove any setting from images, we can select multiple images, right mouse click, and then choose Develop Settings, and then clear those settings. You'll notice that as soon as I select Clear Settings, the vignette goes away as does the icon that represents the Camera RAW settings.
Then I'll click Done and we can see that change in Bridge. Now if I want to apply that change to another image, the easiest way to do this would be to use the Edit menu, and then choose Develop Settings and copy Camera RAWm settings or use Cmd+Option+C or Ctrl+Alt+C on Windows. Now those settings are copied to the clipboard, I can select the next image. Use Edit, Develop Settings, an then paste those Camera Raw settings, which is Cmd+Option+V or Ctrl+Alt+V. Camera Raw is going to ask me which setting I want to paste. In this case I could paste everything, but I'm going to choose to just paste my post crop vignetting.
When I click OK we can see that the vignette from the first image has now been copied and pasted to the second. I also want to show you that you can access these menu items by simply right mouse clicking on the image, and then choosing Develop Settings and copying and pasting your settings here. And if we want to remove any setting from images, we can select multiple images, right mouse click, and then choose Develop Settings, and then clear those settings. You'll notice that as soon as I select Clear Settings, the vignette goes away as does the icon that represents the Camera RAW settings.
Photoshop Interface Essentials
When people start using Photoshop to open their files, they typically use the File
menu and then select Open. Doing this brings up the operating
systems open dialog box, where you can see thumbnails of our images or if we
want to see more information we can select from any of the other options here.
And I can navigate to different folders, but if I want to see larger thumbnails,
or if I want to actually change information, like add metadata, keywords,
or copyright information, I can't do that in the Open dialog box.
I'll go ahead and cancel out of here, and instead, I'm going to use the File menu, and then select Browse in Bridge. Now Bridge is separate application that comes for free with Photoshop, or your creative cloud membership, but it does have a separate installer so you will need to install it. If you haven't already installed Bridge, please watch the video on installing Bridge in the introduction section. Here you can see that in bridge I can see a number of images at one time. I can increase the thumbnail size for each image, or I can decrease it. I can also quickly navigate to other folders, and see the contents of those folders.
When I select an image, I can see a preview on the right hand side. We can see information about image. And if I scroll in the Meta Data panel, we could even enter in information like copy right information. If I move over to the Keywords panel I can also add keywords, I'll switch back to the Meta Data panel. And then, we'll notice that on the left we can see that I have a filter panel, which is dedicated to helping me find the images that I'm looking for based on different search criteria. I also have the option to create virtual collections, of different images, without moving them around on my hard drive. If I want to open an image, all I need to do is double-click on the image in the content area in Bridge, and it will open it up in Photoshop. If I don't want to do anything to this image, I'll go ahead and close it using the keyboard shortcut Cmd+w on the Mac, or Ctrl+w on Windows. If I want to return to Bridge, I can either choose the File menu and then Browse and Bridge, or I can use the keyboard shortcut, Cmd + Option + o, or Ctrl + Alt + O on Windows.
If I decide that I don't want to open a file from Bridge, and I simply want to return back to Photoshop, I can click on the boomerang icon up here in the upper left. Again to navigate back, I'll use Cmd+Option O or Ctrl+Alt 0. And here's a little shortcut. You'll notice that the second image has an icon right here that tells me that it has been in the Camera Raw dialogue box, and some changes have been made to it. If I've already made those changes, and I simply want to open this image in Photoshop, and I don't need to see the Camera Raw dialogue box again, all I need to do is hold down the Shift key and double click in the image area. Instead of bringing up Camera Raw, I'll jump directly to Photoshop and the file will open.
As you can see, it's much easier to work with Bridge as oppose to the operating system's open dialogue box to find and open your photographs.
I'll go ahead and cancel out of here, and instead, I'm going to use the File menu, and then select Browse in Bridge. Now Bridge is separate application that comes for free with Photoshop, or your creative cloud membership, but it does have a separate installer so you will need to install it. If you haven't already installed Bridge, please watch the video on installing Bridge in the introduction section. Here you can see that in bridge I can see a number of images at one time. I can increase the thumbnail size for each image, or I can decrease it. I can also quickly navigate to other folders, and see the contents of those folders.
When I select an image, I can see a preview on the right hand side. We can see information about image. And if I scroll in the Meta Data panel, we could even enter in information like copy right information. If I move over to the Keywords panel I can also add keywords, I'll switch back to the Meta Data panel. And then, we'll notice that on the left we can see that I have a filter panel, which is dedicated to helping me find the images that I'm looking for based on different search criteria. I also have the option to create virtual collections, of different images, without moving them around on my hard drive. If I want to open an image, all I need to do is double-click on the image in the content area in Bridge, and it will open it up in Photoshop. If I don't want to do anything to this image, I'll go ahead and close it using the keyboard shortcut Cmd+w on the Mac, or Ctrl+w on Windows. If I want to return to Bridge, I can either choose the File menu and then Browse and Bridge, or I can use the keyboard shortcut, Cmd + Option + o, or Ctrl + Alt + O on Windows.
If I decide that I don't want to open a file from Bridge, and I simply want to return back to Photoshop, I can click on the boomerang icon up here in the upper left. Again to navigate back, I'll use Cmd+Option O or Ctrl+Alt 0. And here's a little shortcut. You'll notice that the second image has an icon right here that tells me that it has been in the Camera Raw dialogue box, and some changes have been made to it. If I've already made those changes, and I simply want to open this image in Photoshop, and I don't need to see the Camera Raw dialogue box again, all I need to do is hold down the Shift key and double click in the image area. Instead of bringing up Camera Raw, I'll jump directly to Photoshop and the file will open.
As you can see, it's much easier to work with Bridge as oppose to the operating system's open dialogue box to find and open your photographs.
Cropping and Transformations
I honestly believe that one of the most important features in Photoshop is the
ability to undo whatever you just did. Because just knowing that nothing that
you do in Photoshop is permanent, allows you to experiment and really play with
your images. For example, if I go to Image > Image
Rotation > Flip This Canvas Horizontally, it's really easy to simply Undo that last command.
I can choose Edit > Undo Flip Canvas Horizontally or we could use the keyboard
shortcut Cmd+Z on the Mac or Ctrl+Z on Windows.
Now as we work along and we do more and more things to our image, Photoshop is actually keeping track of all of the things we do in a History panel. If you're in the essentials workspace, you'll notice that your History panel is set to iconic mode. If we click on that it will go ahead display it for us. If we are in a different work space or your History panel isn't showing, you can select Window > History. My History panel is rather large and that's because I've used the grabber icon at the bottom in order to drag it down. This way as I build up history we'll be able to see those states. To quickly build up history in this image I'm just going to use the paint brush tool and paint in the image.
So I tap the B key and that gave me my paintbrush. It's going to paint with black because that's my foreground color and, as I drag a stroke across the sky, we can see that that gesture has now been recorded in my History panel. If I want to step backwards in time, I can simply click on the Open state. Or I can move forward to the Brush tool. Let's go ahead and make a few more strokes with a Paintbrush tool, and we can watch the history build in the history panel. But now if I decide to go back in time, and I skip back to when I first laid down the first brushstroke, you can see that the rest of the history states are grayed out.
If I make another brush stroke right now, these history states will actually disappear. In fact, we can do that. I'll make a second brush stroke. And we can see that I've lost all of those other states to go back to. I can still go back to the original state and toggle to this state, but they're the only two that I have left. If you want Photoshop to keep track of nonlinear history. Meaning that if you want to make a bunch of paint strokes, and then be able to go back in time, but still have all of these available.
Then you'll want to use the flyout menu on the history panel, and choose history options. The option that you want to check is the allow nonlinear history. As soon as I select that, and click OK, you'll notice that these states are no longer grayed out. And if I start creating another paint stroke here, they don't disappear. Instead, this paint stroke just got added at the bottom of my history. So I can still move back through all of those different states. If I want to use a keyboard shortcut to move back and forward, through the different history states, I can use the step backward and step forward keyboard shortcuts.
So in this case, if I want to step backwards, I'll use Command+Option+Z. If I want to step forward, I'll use Command+Shift+Z. Course the Ctrl key is the Cmd key on Windows. If I make enough paint strokes, you'll notice that the top most state here, the open state, eventually will roll off the top. Because by default Photoshop is not going to keep track of an infinite number of states. In fact, it just rolled off the top because I must have hit 20 different states.
If you want to increase the number of states that Photoshop keeps track of, then on the Mac, you'd choose the Photoshop menu. On Windows, you'd choose Edit > Preferences > Performance. It's right here that you would tell Photoshop how many History States that you'd want to keep track of. Now, it might be your first instinct to think that you want to put this as high as possible. But don't forget every time you make a change to your image, if Photoshop has to keep track of that state and the state before and before, if it's gotta keep track of 100 of those states, those states have to be kept somewhere in memory.
And if you're working on large files, eventually you'll run out of RAM. And Photoshop will have to write all of its temporary files to the hard drive so you might notice a performance hit. Now, Photoshop is smart enough. It doesn't have to write the entire file every time you make a change. It's breaking up the document into little sections or tiles and it's only remembering the changes that you made to that section. Of course, if you run a filter over your entire image, then it will have to keep track of all of that information but what we were doing just making the small brush strokes it only has to keep track of a little bit of information.
So you just need to decide a good balancing point. I think that the default history state set to 20 should be a good amount. So I'll just click OK. Now, if you get so far along in your image where you can't get back to the point that you want to. You have really three different options. We could close the file without saving it. We could go to File > Revert or you can click on the Snapshot at the top of the History panel. And this snapshot was created because of an option that's on by default under history options.
Its this option right here the automatically create first snap shot. And I like to leave that on because there's actually an advantage to have that snapshot. And that is when you choose to close the file without saving, or when you choose revert, both of those instances cause Photoshop to reread your file from the hard drive. If you simply click on this first snapshot, if that snapshot is sitting in RAM Then Photoshop can just grab it out of RAM which is much faster than reading that file on your hard drive. All right, so I'll leave that turned on, but I am going to turn off the Allow Non-Linear History for now and click OK.
And then we'll click on that initial snapshot. So you can see that the ability to go back in time using multiple undo and the history panel is a huge advantage as it enables you to work in a much more flexible environment. Where you shouldn't hesitate to try something new.
Now as we work along and we do more and more things to our image, Photoshop is actually keeping track of all of the things we do in a History panel. If you're in the essentials workspace, you'll notice that your History panel is set to iconic mode. If we click on that it will go ahead display it for us. If we are in a different work space or your History panel isn't showing, you can select Window > History. My History panel is rather large and that's because I've used the grabber icon at the bottom in order to drag it down. This way as I build up history we'll be able to see those states. To quickly build up history in this image I'm just going to use the paint brush tool and paint in the image.
So I tap the B key and that gave me my paintbrush. It's going to paint with black because that's my foreground color and, as I drag a stroke across the sky, we can see that that gesture has now been recorded in my History panel. If I want to step backwards in time, I can simply click on the Open state. Or I can move forward to the Brush tool. Let's go ahead and make a few more strokes with a Paintbrush tool, and we can watch the history build in the history panel. But now if I decide to go back in time, and I skip back to when I first laid down the first brushstroke, you can see that the rest of the history states are grayed out.
If I make another brush stroke right now, these history states will actually disappear. In fact, we can do that. I'll make a second brush stroke. And we can see that I've lost all of those other states to go back to. I can still go back to the original state and toggle to this state, but they're the only two that I have left. If you want Photoshop to keep track of nonlinear history. Meaning that if you want to make a bunch of paint strokes, and then be able to go back in time, but still have all of these available.
Then you'll want to use the flyout menu on the history panel, and choose history options. The option that you want to check is the allow nonlinear history. As soon as I select that, and click OK, you'll notice that these states are no longer grayed out. And if I start creating another paint stroke here, they don't disappear. Instead, this paint stroke just got added at the bottom of my history. So I can still move back through all of those different states. If I want to use a keyboard shortcut to move back and forward, through the different history states, I can use the step backward and step forward keyboard shortcuts.
So in this case, if I want to step backwards, I'll use Command+Option+Z. If I want to step forward, I'll use Command+Shift+Z. Course the Ctrl key is the Cmd key on Windows. If I make enough paint strokes, you'll notice that the top most state here, the open state, eventually will roll off the top. Because by default Photoshop is not going to keep track of an infinite number of states. In fact, it just rolled off the top because I must have hit 20 different states.
If you want to increase the number of states that Photoshop keeps track of, then on the Mac, you'd choose the Photoshop menu. On Windows, you'd choose Edit > Preferences > Performance. It's right here that you would tell Photoshop how many History States that you'd want to keep track of. Now, it might be your first instinct to think that you want to put this as high as possible. But don't forget every time you make a change to your image, if Photoshop has to keep track of that state and the state before and before, if it's gotta keep track of 100 of those states, those states have to be kept somewhere in memory.
And if you're working on large files, eventually you'll run out of RAM. And Photoshop will have to write all of its temporary files to the hard drive so you might notice a performance hit. Now, Photoshop is smart enough. It doesn't have to write the entire file every time you make a change. It's breaking up the document into little sections or tiles and it's only remembering the changes that you made to that section. Of course, if you run a filter over your entire image, then it will have to keep track of all of that information but what we were doing just making the small brush strokes it only has to keep track of a little bit of information.
So you just need to decide a good balancing point. I think that the default history state set to 20 should be a good amount. So I'll just click OK. Now, if you get so far along in your image where you can't get back to the point that you want to. You have really three different options. We could close the file without saving it. We could go to File > Revert or you can click on the Snapshot at the top of the History panel. And this snapshot was created because of an option that's on by default under history options.
Its this option right here the automatically create first snap shot. And I like to leave that on because there's actually an advantage to have that snapshot. And that is when you choose to close the file without saving, or when you choose revert, both of those instances cause Photoshop to reread your file from the hard drive. If you simply click on this first snapshot, if that snapshot is sitting in RAM Then Photoshop can just grab it out of RAM which is much faster than reading that file on your hard drive. All right, so I'll leave that turned on, but I am going to turn off the Allow Non-Linear History for now and click OK.
And then we'll click on that initial snapshot. So you can see that the ability to go back in time using multiple undo and the history panel is a huge advantage as it enables you to work in a much more flexible environment. Where you shouldn't hesitate to try something new.
Working with Layers
Photoshop's ability to work with layers is definitely one of my favorite features.
So let's take a look at how we can
master the layers panel in order to create a composite.
We're going to start in Bridge and select these first three files to open.
I'll select the first one and hold down
the Shift key, and then select the third one.
Then I'll hold down the Cmd key on the Mac or the Ctrl key
on Windows and tap the O key in order to open all three images.
Now we can see the tabs for all thre open documents and
we can click on the tabs in order to see each one individually.
But I wannna put all three of these separate documents into the same document, so I can work with multiple layers. There a variety of different ways that we can do this. One of the probably easiest ways to do it, would be to select the Move Tool in the Tool Bar, and then position it in the image area of the first document hold down the mouse and drag it over the tab of another document. When you position the cursor over the other tab that document will pop to the foreground. Now I need to position my cursor anywhere in this document window.
But if I were to release the cursor now, you can see that Photoshop just sets down the image exactly where I told it to. But what I really wanted it to do was I wanted it to center it, so I'm goonna use the keyboard Cmd+Z, or Ctrl+Z on Windows, to undo that. And then I'll return back to O3, the tree branches image. I've got the move tool selected. I'll click and hold down the mouse, drag it on top of the first documents tabs. And this time when I bring my cursor back into the image area I'm going to hold down the Shift key.
And that tells Photoshop to drop this other document directly in the center of the first one. Excellent. So another way we can do this that might be easier, would be to see all of our images at one time. So I'm going to select Window and then Arrange, and you can see that I have some keyboard short cuts next to the command for tile. We created this short cut in an earlier video. So we can either use the shortcut or just select Tile. And now we can see all of our images.
The one that's active, or the currently selected document, is a little bit lighter as far as the title goes. So we know that we've already dragged this document into the dark trees, into the composite. So I can go ahead and close this. And I'll do that by just clicking on the X icon in the tab. You can see that Photoshop automatically retiled my images. This one on top is still selected and I can see the layers in the layers panel. So I'll move down and click on the 02 tree trunks image down here.
Now, I can simply use the move tool and click anywhere in the image area, hold down my mouse and drag it on top of the other image. Again, if I hold down the Shift key, then Photoshop will drop that right into the center. Again, I'm going to undo that just to show you another way that you can drag and drop layers. So I'll use Cmd+Z on the Mac, or Ctrl+Z on Windows. Now this top document's still selected so I need to actually click down below down in the 02 tree trunks file in order to make it the currently selected document.
And then, instead of dragging and dropping from the image area, you should know, that you can also drag and drop from the layers panel. So I'll click where it says Background, hold down my mouse, and then just drag this up to the top document. Again if I want it centered, I need to hold down the Shift key. Excellent. We no longer need the 02 tree trunks file opened, so let's close that. And now we can see in our 01 dark trees file, I have all three layers here. If I want to toggle on and off the visibility of my layers, I can click on the I icon next to any layer.
I can even toggle off the background layer. Now I'm looking at transparency right now, but, you can see that my screen is all white, and that's because in a past video I selected the Photoshop menu on the Mac or the Edit menu on Windows and then I chose Preferences. And I came down to Transparency and Gammet I turned the grid size to None, but by default this will actually be set to Medium so let's go ahead and choose that and click OK.
Now you can see that when I hide the viability of all three layers, Photoshop is showing me transparency with this checkerboard. Now we need to take a look at the background layer, because it is rather unique. When you first open a document, Photoshop might open that document as a background depending on the format that you're opening. You should know that just because you can see the layer, that doesn't necessarily mean that the layer is active. Right now layer two is selected so if I do something to my image I would be doing it to layer two.
I want to make sure that I come down and click on the Background layer in the Layers Panel in order to select it. Now there are three things that you cannot do with the background layer. The first thing that you can't do is you can't move it or reposition it. Even if I have the move tool selected, if I click and drag in the background layer, when I release my cursor Photoshop brings up the error message that it can't use the move tool because the layer is locked. And that's true, you can see here there is a lock icon on the background there.
And in fact you cannot remove that lock icon unless you turn the background, into a regular layer. Before we do that, I want to show you two other things that limit what you can do on the background. If I wanted to reposition the background, if I wanted to change the stacking order meaning that I wanted to not reposition it in the image area, but I actually wanted to move it on top of layer one. If I click and try to drag in the Layers panel, you can see that Photoshop gives me that international symbol for you can't do this.
And when I release my cursor, sure enough, the background is still at the bottom. Again, we need to turn the background into a layer in order to reposition it in the Layers panel and change the stacking order. And the third thing that you cannot do with the background there is that you cannot erase the transparency. So if I tap the E key on the key board or if I select my Eraser tool and I start erasing on the background, I'm not seeing the checkerboard here, instead I am seeing white which happens to be my background color.
So let me Undo that and we are going to turn the background into a layer. Now there is many ways we can do this, we can go under the Layer menu, and choose New, and Layer From Background. Or we can simply double-click on the word Background in the Layers panel. When you double-click on the word background it enables us to name the layer. So in this case I'm going to name it Texture, because I'm going to use this as kind of a screen backed texture in my composite. When I click OK you can see that we no longer have a background and the layers been unlocked.
Now I can reposition the layer and the stacking order if I wanted to, by dragging it up, and then releasing the mouse. I don't actually want to do that, so I'll Cmd+Z on the Mac, or Ctrl+Z on Windows to undo that. I can also reposition the layer by selecting the Move tool, and then dragging it over to the right. Again, I'll use Cmd or Ctrl+Z to undo that. And finally, if I tap the e key again to select the eraser, this time when I drag the eraser, you can see that it's revealing that checkerboard underneath, so I'm actually erasing to transparency.
Excellent, let's undo that as well, using Cmd+Z on the Mac or Ctrl+Z on Windows. Now I'm going to tap the V key in order to give me the move tool. And let's go ahead and rename the other layers. I'll select layer one and I'll also click to the left of the thumbnail right here in the empty square in order to make it visible. Then to rename I'll double-click on layer one and we'll call this branches. Then I'll move up to layer two. We can make it visible.
And then double-click on layer two, on the name, and we'll call this, trunks. Now, tap Return or Enter in order to apply that. Now, if I want to change the stacking order, or reposition how these appear, all I need to do is select the layer that I want to reposition, and then drag it up or drag it down, until I see that solid gray line. Then I can release the mouse and I have changed the stacking order on my Layer's panel. Now, I brought in both of the branches layer as well as the trunks layer in order to determine which one I liked better.
If we toggle on and off the visibility of the branches layer, I think I am going to like the trunks layer better. So I'll make the branches layer visible, and then I want to delete it. The easiest way to delete a layer in Photoshop is to simply tap the Dlt key. But you could also drag it down to the trash icon in order to delete it. Now I know that I am going to want this trunks layer to be a little bit smaller. But I am not quite sure how much I want to resize it. So to make sure that I keep the document flexible, I am going to turn that layer into a smart object first by selecting Convert to Smart Object.
Now when I select Edit and then Free Transform, I can scale this down, knowing that I can always rescale it back up without losing any quality. I'm going to hold down the Opt key on the Mac or the Alt key on Windows, as well as the Shift key, and then just drag to make it a little bit smaller. When I like the size, I'll go ahead the Enter or Return key. Now I want to change the opacity of the texture layer, so I'll select it on the Layers panel and then I can either use the opacity slider here.
In fact, I can click on the word Opacity and drag left or right in order to change the opacity. I can use the drop down arrow here, and then use the slider, or I can enter in a value. So let's go ahead and enter in 50, and then tap the Return or Enter key. I also want to show you one additional way and this is actually my favorite way. As long as you have one of these top tools selected, like the Move tool or the Marquis tool, you'll notice that none of these tools have an option for opacity or blend mode here in the Options bar.
So I can select any of these tools. And then I can use my numeric keys, in order to change the opacity on the Layers panel. So if I tap eight right now, you can see that my opacity went to 80%. If I type quickly, and I know the exact percentage I want to go to, I can type in 56 and I would go to 56%. Now, if you wanted to go back to 100%, you would tap the 0 key. And if you wanted to go down to nothing, to 0%, then you tap 00 twice.
But I'm not really getting a very realistic view of that background, because the checkerboard is getting in the way. So I'm going to return back to the Photoshop menu, on Windows, you'd go to the Edit menu, and then preferences, Transparency and Garmet, and I'll change the grid size to None. We'll click OK, and now we'll use that keyboard shortcut, maybe the six key, to give us 60% of the texture layer. Just in case you're wondering why you have to have these tools selected, let's select the Brush tool for a moment.
You can see that the brush tool has an opacity slider. So, if I were to tap the five key right now, it would change the opacity for the brush. I don't want that, so I'm going to tap the 0 key in order to bring that back to 100%. So just keep in mind that if you're going to use the numeric keys to change the opacity on the layers panel, you've gotta select one of these tools first. So I'm going to tap the V key first, and then I would probably tap like, four to get 40% or seven to get 70%.
Now at this point, we've done enough work on this image that I would probably want to save it. Because there are multiple layers, we don't actually have to worry about saving over the original file. But, if it makes you more comfortable, you can still select File and then Save As. You can see that for the format Photoshop is going to default to the Photoshop format because this has multiple layers. I'll go ahead and save it into the original folder this 11 layers, but I am going to change the name.
We're going to call it Composite.PSD. And then click Save. I do want to leave on this maximum compatibility because that's going to enable me to take this layered Photoshop document into another application that might not support layers, maybe Lightroom for example. We'll go ahead and click OK and then we'll close the file for now. I'm going to use Cmd+W or Ctrl+W on Windows or you could use the File menu and select Close.
If we return to Browse and Bridge now you can see that our composite file has been saved along with all of our original source images
But I wannna put all three of these separate documents into the same document, so I can work with multiple layers. There a variety of different ways that we can do this. One of the probably easiest ways to do it, would be to select the Move Tool in the Tool Bar, and then position it in the image area of the first document hold down the mouse and drag it over the tab of another document. When you position the cursor over the other tab that document will pop to the foreground. Now I need to position my cursor anywhere in this document window.
But if I were to release the cursor now, you can see that Photoshop just sets down the image exactly where I told it to. But what I really wanted it to do was I wanted it to center it, so I'm goonna use the keyboard Cmd+Z, or Ctrl+Z on Windows, to undo that. And then I'll return back to O3, the tree branches image. I've got the move tool selected. I'll click and hold down the mouse, drag it on top of the first documents tabs. And this time when I bring my cursor back into the image area I'm going to hold down the Shift key.
And that tells Photoshop to drop this other document directly in the center of the first one. Excellent. So another way we can do this that might be easier, would be to see all of our images at one time. So I'm going to select Window and then Arrange, and you can see that I have some keyboard short cuts next to the command for tile. We created this short cut in an earlier video. So we can either use the shortcut or just select Tile. And now we can see all of our images.
The one that's active, or the currently selected document, is a little bit lighter as far as the title goes. So we know that we've already dragged this document into the dark trees, into the composite. So I can go ahead and close this. And I'll do that by just clicking on the X icon in the tab. You can see that Photoshop automatically retiled my images. This one on top is still selected and I can see the layers in the layers panel. So I'll move down and click on the 02 tree trunks image down here.
Now, I can simply use the move tool and click anywhere in the image area, hold down my mouse and drag it on top of the other image. Again, if I hold down the Shift key, then Photoshop will drop that right into the center. Again, I'm going to undo that just to show you another way that you can drag and drop layers. So I'll use Cmd+Z on the Mac, or Ctrl+Z on Windows. Now this top document's still selected so I need to actually click down below down in the 02 tree trunks file in order to make it the currently selected document.
And then, instead of dragging and dropping from the image area, you should know, that you can also drag and drop from the layers panel. So I'll click where it says Background, hold down my mouse, and then just drag this up to the top document. Again if I want it centered, I need to hold down the Shift key. Excellent. We no longer need the 02 tree trunks file opened, so let's close that. And now we can see in our 01 dark trees file, I have all three layers here. If I want to toggle on and off the visibility of my layers, I can click on the I icon next to any layer.
I can even toggle off the background layer. Now I'm looking at transparency right now, but, you can see that my screen is all white, and that's because in a past video I selected the Photoshop menu on the Mac or the Edit menu on Windows and then I chose Preferences. And I came down to Transparency and Gammet I turned the grid size to None, but by default this will actually be set to Medium so let's go ahead and choose that and click OK.
Now you can see that when I hide the viability of all three layers, Photoshop is showing me transparency with this checkerboard. Now we need to take a look at the background layer, because it is rather unique. When you first open a document, Photoshop might open that document as a background depending on the format that you're opening. You should know that just because you can see the layer, that doesn't necessarily mean that the layer is active. Right now layer two is selected so if I do something to my image I would be doing it to layer two.
I want to make sure that I come down and click on the Background layer in the Layers Panel in order to select it. Now there are three things that you cannot do with the background layer. The first thing that you can't do is you can't move it or reposition it. Even if I have the move tool selected, if I click and drag in the background layer, when I release my cursor Photoshop brings up the error message that it can't use the move tool because the layer is locked. And that's true, you can see here there is a lock icon on the background there.
And in fact you cannot remove that lock icon unless you turn the background, into a regular layer. Before we do that, I want to show you two other things that limit what you can do on the background. If I wanted to reposition the background, if I wanted to change the stacking order meaning that I wanted to not reposition it in the image area, but I actually wanted to move it on top of layer one. If I click and try to drag in the Layers panel, you can see that Photoshop gives me that international symbol for you can't do this.
And when I release my cursor, sure enough, the background is still at the bottom. Again, we need to turn the background into a layer in order to reposition it in the Layers panel and change the stacking order. And the third thing that you cannot do with the background there is that you cannot erase the transparency. So if I tap the E key on the key board or if I select my Eraser tool and I start erasing on the background, I'm not seeing the checkerboard here, instead I am seeing white which happens to be my background color.
So let me Undo that and we are going to turn the background into a layer. Now there is many ways we can do this, we can go under the Layer menu, and choose New, and Layer From Background. Or we can simply double-click on the word Background in the Layers panel. When you double-click on the word background it enables us to name the layer. So in this case I'm going to name it Texture, because I'm going to use this as kind of a screen backed texture in my composite. When I click OK you can see that we no longer have a background and the layers been unlocked.
Now I can reposition the layer and the stacking order if I wanted to, by dragging it up, and then releasing the mouse. I don't actually want to do that, so I'll Cmd+Z on the Mac, or Ctrl+Z on Windows to undo that. I can also reposition the layer by selecting the Move tool, and then dragging it over to the right. Again, I'll use Cmd or Ctrl+Z to undo that. And finally, if I tap the e key again to select the eraser, this time when I drag the eraser, you can see that it's revealing that checkerboard underneath, so I'm actually erasing to transparency.
Excellent, let's undo that as well, using Cmd+Z on the Mac or Ctrl+Z on Windows. Now I'm going to tap the V key in order to give me the move tool. And let's go ahead and rename the other layers. I'll select layer one and I'll also click to the left of the thumbnail right here in the empty square in order to make it visible. Then to rename I'll double-click on layer one and we'll call this branches. Then I'll move up to layer two. We can make it visible.
And then double-click on layer two, on the name, and we'll call this, trunks. Now, tap Return or Enter in order to apply that. Now, if I want to change the stacking order, or reposition how these appear, all I need to do is select the layer that I want to reposition, and then drag it up or drag it down, until I see that solid gray line. Then I can release the mouse and I have changed the stacking order on my Layer's panel. Now, I brought in both of the branches layer as well as the trunks layer in order to determine which one I liked better.
If we toggle on and off the visibility of the branches layer, I think I am going to like the trunks layer better. So I'll make the branches layer visible, and then I want to delete it. The easiest way to delete a layer in Photoshop is to simply tap the Dlt key. But you could also drag it down to the trash icon in order to delete it. Now I know that I am going to want this trunks layer to be a little bit smaller. But I am not quite sure how much I want to resize it. So to make sure that I keep the document flexible, I am going to turn that layer into a smart object first by selecting Convert to Smart Object.
Now when I select Edit and then Free Transform, I can scale this down, knowing that I can always rescale it back up without losing any quality. I'm going to hold down the Opt key on the Mac or the Alt key on Windows, as well as the Shift key, and then just drag to make it a little bit smaller. When I like the size, I'll go ahead the Enter or Return key. Now I want to change the opacity of the texture layer, so I'll select it on the Layers panel and then I can either use the opacity slider here.
In fact, I can click on the word Opacity and drag left or right in order to change the opacity. I can use the drop down arrow here, and then use the slider, or I can enter in a value. So let's go ahead and enter in 50, and then tap the Return or Enter key. I also want to show you one additional way and this is actually my favorite way. As long as you have one of these top tools selected, like the Move tool or the Marquis tool, you'll notice that none of these tools have an option for opacity or blend mode here in the Options bar.
So I can select any of these tools. And then I can use my numeric keys, in order to change the opacity on the Layers panel. So if I tap eight right now, you can see that my opacity went to 80%. If I type quickly, and I know the exact percentage I want to go to, I can type in 56 and I would go to 56%. Now, if you wanted to go back to 100%, you would tap the 0 key. And if you wanted to go down to nothing, to 0%, then you tap 00 twice.
But I'm not really getting a very realistic view of that background, because the checkerboard is getting in the way. So I'm going to return back to the Photoshop menu, on Windows, you'd go to the Edit menu, and then preferences, Transparency and Garmet, and I'll change the grid size to None. We'll click OK, and now we'll use that keyboard shortcut, maybe the six key, to give us 60% of the texture layer. Just in case you're wondering why you have to have these tools selected, let's select the Brush tool for a moment.
You can see that the brush tool has an opacity slider. So, if I were to tap the five key right now, it would change the opacity for the brush. I don't want that, so I'm going to tap the 0 key in order to bring that back to 100%. So just keep in mind that if you're going to use the numeric keys to change the opacity on the layers panel, you've gotta select one of these tools first. So I'm going to tap the V key first, and then I would probably tap like, four to get 40% or seven to get 70%.
Now at this point, we've done enough work on this image that I would probably want to save it. Because there are multiple layers, we don't actually have to worry about saving over the original file. But, if it makes you more comfortable, you can still select File and then Save As. You can see that for the format Photoshop is going to default to the Photoshop format because this has multiple layers. I'll go ahead and save it into the original folder this 11 layers, but I am going to change the name.
We're going to call it Composite.PSD. And then click Save. I do want to leave on this maximum compatibility because that's going to enable me to take this layered Photoshop document into another application that might not support layers, maybe Lightroom for example. We'll go ahead and click OK and then we'll close the file for now. I'm going to use Cmd+W or Ctrl+W on Windows or you could use the File menu and select Close.
If we return to Browse and Bridge now you can see that our composite file has been saved along with all of our original source images
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