Lessons
Day 1
1Class Introduction
19:04 2Overview of Days 1-15
54:32 3Overview of Days 16-30
1:11:53 4Preview of Content, Part 1 - Layers, Comps, Styles, Masks
49:10 5Preview of Content, Part 2 - Smart Objects and Paths
30:33Day 2
6Day 1 Introduction
13:31Day 1 Exploring Photoshop
16:51 8Day 1 Realistic Expectations
27:26Day 3
9Day 2: Best Practices I Part One
33:28 10Day 2 Best Practices I Part 2
25:59Day 4
11Day 3: Lay of the Land
55:16Day 5
12Day 4: Best Practices II – Working Non-Destructively
47:57Day 6
13Day 5: Layers I
58:50Day 7
14Day 6: Layers II
44:51Day 8
15Day 7: Layers III - Masks
1:01:47 16Bonus Video: "Layers"
09:05 17Bonus Video: "Vector Masks"
05:54Day 9
18Day 8: Getting Images In and Out
55:51Day 10
19Day 9: Resolution, File Size, Resizing
1:00:42 20Bonus Video: "Free Transform - Warping"
07:54Day 11
21Day 10: Cropping (Straightening)
49:38Day 12
22Day 11: Adjusting
56:22Day 13
23Day 12: Smart Objects & Smart Filters I (Introduction)
48:52 24Bonus Video: "Copying Smart Filters"
02:11Day 14
25Day 13: Smart Objects & Smart Filters II (More Advanced)
56:34Day 15
26Day 14: Retouching I (Replacing, Removing, Moving)
55:10Day 16
27Day 15: Retouching II (Fixing, Portrait Retouching)
1:01:28Day 17
28Day 16: Quiz & Review
53:05Day 18
29Day 17: Shapes, Paths, and Patterns
49:56Day 19
30Day 18: Selecting I
1:05:47Day 20
31Day 19: Selecting II (Compositing)
1:02:01 32Bonus Video: "Green Screen"
08:21Day 21
33Day 20: Type
1:03:45Day 22
34Day 21: Color
54:54Day 23
35Day 22: Painting & Brush Options
59:15Day 24
36Day 23: Automation I (Built-In, Not So Obvious)
58:04Day 25
37Day 24: Automation II (Actions)
1:00:05 38Bonus Video: "Actions"
04:20Day 26
39Day 25: Presets
53:47Day 27
40Day 26: Video
1:03:01Day 28
41Day 27: Finishing Touches
1:05:08 42Bonus Video: "Sharpen"
16:26Day 29
43Day 28: Tips and Tricks
52:22Day 30
44Day 29: Quiz, Review, Projects
1:01:30Day 31
45Day 30: Project, Strategies to Continue to Get Better
48:41Lesson Info
Bonus Video: "Green Screen"
in this bonus video want to talk about a different type of extraction which is on green screen now a lot of people wonder why would I use green screen if you can do nice extractions off of gray and white in photo shop and that is actually a really good question and the answer is I wouldn't do it normally if I have ah white background or a great back when I'm just as happy to shoot on that for if I know I'm doing extractions the one advantage of green screen is I figured out a way where I can automate extractions in other words create an action that automates taking someone off of the green screen and putting them on a separate background is the on ly color I've been able to figure out a way to do it with any accuracy and have it done automatically now I'm adding this bonus video to the section on making selections because it kind of makes sense there will also talk later on of course about how to make action so for this bonus when I talk about how to make the action don't worry too muc...
h if you're not feeling with actions because we will be talking about that in a later session so again the idea the reason why I would do this is things like photo booths or youth sports photos or something where you have aa lot of photographs to extract someone very quickly the good news is when we do this extracting you'll see it's still separates them onto a separate layer using a layer mass so if the results aren't ideal you khun still tweak it so here's how it works one of the advantages that having someone on a green screen is that I could look at it differently normally when I look at an image and I looked at the channels panel looks like this red green blue and we saw before we could do channel based selections but if I change the mode to l a be color then these are the channels that air here and when I went to the h al I thought there's already a pretty good contrast between the great background and the later gray person so we take that a channel and duplicate that's very important and I'm running to fill I'm gonna change it to the whole time this most gonna be overly overlays this wonderful magical mode that changes the way color work so when I hit okay you'll see the light gray areas get lighter but the other grey in the background doesn't get affected too much then go back to fill this time fill it with black in overlay now the reason that we're doing it this way through the phil command do this a couple of times is again I haven't had to touch any pink brush or anything so that means all of this khun b automatically done using an action so one more time back to the phil command and backto white let's see little bits of gray there click okay and that's a pretty darn good channel I would say so then we commander control click on this toe loaded as a selection and then we go back to our layers we can use refine ej and I have a pretty good extraction that I could then turn into a layer mask so let's do that again but this time we're going to do it as a and action now again don't worry we will go through all the steps of actions in a few days from now but the other thing I want to mention very briefly is part of the success of green screen is how you take the photos so giving yourself lots of distance between the subject and the background how it's lit is very important because that's half the bow all right so now we go to our actions panel I've already got a set of actions here I'm going to make a new one call it green extract or something I could spell all right and I was going to record these steps so we're going to change the mode so I'm basically doing the same things I just showed you l a b mode goto the channels panel click on the a channel duplicated then we're going to fill white overlay fill and I'm just using a keyboard shortcut to cut to the chase but you could do it using the phil command or the edit menu I should say do black overlay a couple of times and then back to white one more time then we command control click to load this as a selection go back to the main channel make sure we have some selection to one hit refine edge now for now I'm not going to adjust anything here I'm just going to tell it save our output to a layer mask and click okay and then let's just say that as a psd file and then stopped recording now the one thing that I will do here that will talk mohr again with actions is I want to be able to tweak this steps I'm gonna click on this little box beside that we'll talk about which is like a little interrupt switch all right so now if we go back and let's close this up and just to show you that it doesn't have to be a particular image let's use a different one and then try our action so hit play it goes all the way down to refine edge and at this point I could look more closely and say all right I do want toe try to use that refine edge on his hair a little bit and then click okay and then it continues when we look in the layers panel we get this pretty darn nice looking mask now again just to show that it wasn't just because I used it on that particular image here is a completely different one play again same thing at this point there's still a little bit of manual effort but imagine the difference between being able to go in and just do a quick will refine edge on certain areas as opposed to everything in each case it was to show you the mass looks pretty darn good now in this case I thought because there was green and his shirt I just have to go in here and just include that ugo now as I said the main reason why I would do green screen this way or with an action is so I can do many photos at the same time so let's quickly again we'll talk more about batch actions later on but should show you the idea let's go back here I have a siri's of photos that were taken at a wedding it's not really a wedding it's a fake wedding but anyway and I go tools photoshopped batch and tell it let's use the one that's called my actions green screen and let's make just saving close them and okay now in this case it's still going to stop me at every step and say do you want to tweet the layer mass I could if I was doing hundreds of these I could turn this off but for now I'll just let it go through each time as if I was tweaking it so again if I was going to do two hundred I would turn this off and do it later with refined mask which would be easier all right so let's take a look at what we got so here is all of my say files now in this view it doesn't look all that great because when they say it is a psd for some reason it has to put white in there but let's just look it one of them you can see that overalls pretty good when I do look at the mast yes indeed it does need some extra work but again that would not be a major issue to go in and tweet the mask and make sure I had this looking the way it was supposed to just by painting in our good friend overlay mode so that's the idea of doing green screen is the fact that we can record in action to do it day to day I would use white or gray backgrounds because it's frankly easier I don't have any worry about grin frank green fringing on people but again keeping enough distance between the subject and the background and proper lighting we'll make this work a lot better and it's great for situations on one automate extraction of a bunch of people really quickly in a way that still is non destructive because it gives me access to the mask to tweak it further
Class Materials
bonus material with purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Melinda Wong
Very good teaching. I really liked how clear Dave was with everything, the order he taught the material, and I thought the stories were very helpful. I REALLY wanted to understand photoshop and extremely thankful for his wisdom and knowledge. Thank you so much! This is what was holding me back from getting my photography started! :) It just seemed so intimidating and now I have a greater understanding.
a Creativelive Student
I'm a beginner and have found that the information Dave gives is great, although a little to fast at times. I'd like to buy the course but am curious. If I purchase can I watch it and pause it and rewind it? That would be extremely important to me. Thanks for a great service CreativeLive...
a Creativelive Student
Lots of information! Initially I thought I'd just watch the free version as I already have several Creativelive videos on Photoshop but I really like how the classes are broken into subjects and shorter, 1 hour sessions-it will make reviewing much easier! I love Dave's teaching style-he covers everything very well. (Plus the fact that he's Canadian, eh?) :D Thanks for offering such a great course! I'd would love to see Dave do a similar one on Illustrator.