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Overview of Days 16-30

Lesson 3 from: 30 Days of Photoshop

Dave Cross

Overview of Days 16-30

Lesson 3 from: 30 Days of Photoshop

Dave Cross

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Lesson Info

3. Overview of Days 16-30

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Class Introduction

19:04
2

Overview of Days 1-15

54:32
3

Overview of Days 16-30

1:11:53
4

Preview of Content, Part 1 - Layers, Comps, Styles, Masks

49:10
5

Preview of Content, Part 2 - Smart Objects and Paths

30:33

Day 2

6

Day 1 Introduction

13:31
7

Day 1 Exploring Photoshop

16:51
8

Day 1 Realistic Expectations

27:26

Day 3

9

Day 2: Best Practices I Part One

33:28
10

Day 2 Best Practices I Part 2

25:59

Day 4

11

Day 3: Lay of the Land

55:16

Day 5

12

Day 4: Best Practices II – Working Non-Destructively

47:57

Day 6

13

Day 5: Layers I

58:50

Day 7

14

Day 6: Layers II

44:51

Day 8

15

Day 7: Layers III - Masks

1:01:47
16

Bonus Video: "Layers"

09:05
17

Bonus Video: "Vector Masks"

05:54

Day 9

18

Day 8: Getting Images In and Out

55:51

Day 10

19

Day 9: Resolution, File Size, Resizing

1:00:42
20

Bonus Video: "Free Transform - Warping"

07:54

Day 11

21

Day 10: Cropping (Straightening)

49:38

Day 12

22

Day 11: Adjusting

56:22

Day 13

23

Day 12: Smart Objects & Smart Filters I (Introduction)

48:52
24

Bonus Video: "Copying Smart Filters"

02:11

Day 14

25

Day 13: Smart Objects & Smart Filters II (More Advanced)

56:34

Day 15

26

Day 14: Retouching I (Replacing, Removing, Moving)

55:10

Day 16

27

Day 15: Retouching II (Fixing, Portrait Retouching)

1:01:28

Day 17

28

Day 16: Quiz & Review

53:05

Day 18

29

Day 17: Shapes, Paths, and Patterns

49:56

Day 19

30

Day 18: Selecting I

1:05:47

Day 20

31

Day 19: Selecting II (Compositing)

1:02:01
32

Bonus Video: "Green Screen"

08:21

Day 21

33

Day 20: Type

1:03:45

Day 22

34

Day 21: Color

54:54

Day 23

35

Day 22: Painting & Brush Options

59:15

Day 24

36

Day 23: Automation I (Built-In, Not So Obvious)

58:04

Day 25

37

Day 24: Automation II (Actions)

1:00:05
38

Bonus Video: "Actions"

04:20

Day 26

39

Day 25: Presets

53:47

Day 27

40

Day 26: Video

1:03:01

Day 28

41

Day 27: Finishing Touches

1:05:08
42

Bonus Video: "Sharpen"

16:26

Day 29

43

Day 28: Tips and Tricks

52:22

Day 30

44

Day 29: Quiz, Review, Projects

1:01:30

Day 31

45

Day 30: Project, Strategies to Continue to Get Better

48:41

Lesson Info

Overview of Days 16-30

Day 16 is a little different, and this is one of the days it doesn't have a pdf because one of the other things I think helps our learning is something to test our knowledge. So I actually put together a little quiz. So on day 16 I would call it a pop quiz. Except I'm telling you right now there's a quiz, so it's not entirely unexpected, but it's basically test your knowledge. And it just bunch of multiple choice, some true and false of the things we've talked about up until then. So the 1st 15 days, it's a little quiz now what I do is I put together this little quiz, but I go through each question. You know, here's all the possible answers that I give you a little bit of time to consider, including some game show type music to count down your time for guests. And then, instead of just saying the answer is a and moving on, we kind of go through and say, Well, here's why I could eliminate this answer or this is and then kind of ultimately come to the correct answer after the quiz is don...

e, which is probably about half of that time, Then we kind of go through and say Now let's review some of the key things we need. We've talked about it. We've done 15 days so far, but within that, there's key concepts that keep coming up like the whole nondestructive end up with what you want kind of thing. And this is an example of what the quiz actually looks like. It's based on this app that I have called the photos Help Quiz Game. So that's why I already had the interface already done. But basically, that's what the kind of thing that you would see in case anyone is curious in this case. I don't have the answers light here, but it's deep, even though we haven't talked about yet. But that's that's what the kind of the, um quiz looks like and then exit. Once the quiz is over, Then I go through and review some key points was about our halfway point is after Day 15. So there's this quiz and review. Then we pick up from there and say, All right, let's now say on Day 17 we've already in the past covered what layers are and how to retouch and adjust our photographs. Let's get into some more specific topics of things that Photoshopped can do that might be a benefit to us in other ways beyond just a photograph. Fix up. I want to make the point that part of the structure of the goal of this 30 days is not. This is not called 30 Days of Photoshopped for photographers. It's called Three Days of Photoshopped, so we'll talk about how to adjust. Photographs will also talk about things like using shapes and patterns and paths to do other stuff. Whether you're designing a banner for a website or cover for a book or whatever it might be, it's not just about photography. So we'll talk about what shapes are and how to use them, meaning the built in shapes that air in photo shop and then also for those people that do have other software. If you're Creative Cloud member, for example, you have access to other software like Adobe Illustrator. So just for those people to do a quick little talk on how you can borrow stuff from elsewhere, so instead of you drawing something yourself, how and why you could use a shape from photo shop. So, for example, maybe either you created or someone created for you your logo on E. P s format. We talk about how we can build that into Photoshopped as a custom shape that's always available. So in addition to the ones that are built in that are available, how you can make your own shape out of something that's important to you, like a logo, for example. Then we also talk about the world of patterns. This is actually a lot more interesting than a lot of people realize. And here's one of the challenges with Photoshopped. I thought. I think Adobe many years ago decided in their great wisdom that we will provide you with examples of things like styles and patterns and these built in presets. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what their thought process was because some of the examples they provided or just really weird and not very practical. So, for example, in Photoshopped right now, if you went to anything that said, use pattern, I'll bet you unless you've already added this. The first pattern that pops up is bubbles pattern, and it's like a whole bunch of different. Two different colors of blue bubbles. Really, that's what you're gonna make the default pattern and Photoshopped. So as a result of people go, what would I use a pattern for bubbles? Not really sure. So I think a lot of people kind of give up on patterns because the default ones or just odd, what's even more odd is that in the pull down menu, Adobe has provided some patterns that actually really useful, but they don't appear by default. So your first impression is, Well, here's my patterns on use those. So part of this discussion is why we even do it, and then how we can create our own patterns so we can take some, maybe texture or something and say, I want to create a repeating pattern I can use as a background or something else. How can we do that? And a lot of people I find when they show this, they show they make a pattern, as I do, to begin with, out of like a circle. Well, that's easy, because it's a circle, But what do you want to make a pattern out of a photograph of a brick wall? The whole idea of a pattern as you don't want to see a tile where one pattern stops, the next one starts. So how can we do that? So we go through the concept of how you can create your own repeating tiling pattern. Hopefully, without making it obvious that you're creating a tiling pattern. It's a challenge. It's not easy, but least go through the steps on how you do it so that it, I hope, opens up people's eyes as to why would I even want to use patterns? Because again, the built in ones are just weird, just really are. And what's ironic and sad to me is that all the time Dobie is talking about in the next version of photo shop and they have these non disclosure meetings with people in the industry like myself and say, Here's our plans and so on, always somewhere on the lists and we're gonna update all of our presets. But unfortunate just keeps getting pushed further down the list, so every verse points like yep, no still bubbles pattern. Okay, it's still there, and it's still the default one. We'll also talk about the world of path now passes a really interesting part of photo shop because it's a little weird compared to everything else in Photoshop. It's normal. You do something infomercial like Apply a filter and you see the results right. You apply filtering go. That's what I've done. When you create a path, it's created with the intention of them doing something else. In other words, you don't just create a path and stop because a path is a non printing thing that you can do something to. So knowing how to create an edit passes important later on. We'll talk about now that I know how to do that. What can I do with it? For example, use it to put type inside an unusual shape or I even show an example. That's kind of interesting where you have ah photograph with drooping electrical wires in the class. On retouching, we talked about how to remove electrical wire, which is great if it's straight. What if it's got a little bend in it? Well, this is an example where you can actually make a path and then apply the healing brush along that path so it takes you way. It's much easier then, if you did it by hand, every time. So in this day, we basically just talk about what is a path. How do you create and edit it and then mentioned that the intention is to I know how to create them so you can use them in something else. Now, one thing I just realized I keep saying we, like is a whole bunch of us. But I mean, we talk about meaning. I talk and other people interact later on. Okay, Uh, another very important topic in photo shop in my mind is the world of making selections. And this basically means any time you're look at on image you want to work on and the phrase part off, I want to adjust part of this image. I want a copy a portion of any time you're not taking the whole thing, you have to make a selection. So we are gonna talk about concepts like how doe I end up with a great selection, and this is again my favorite expression end up with because I find a lot of people when they jump in to make a selection, they pick one selection tool and try to use it if it kills them. they just keep going and going and going and that it doesn't work. They undo and they start again. And instead, to me, it's much better to think of ending up with a really good selection that to me suggests right away using multiple selection tools and starting off with the automated tools. For example, the quick selection tool. Wonderful selection tool in the right circumstance. Magic one pretty good magnetic lasso tool. Pretty good. But start with an automatic one that gets you close. Don't expect it to be perfect cause it hardly ever will be. But one of the key topics to talk about is how to find tuna selection. So you start with the basics election, then you say now in to add this bit and to take that bit away. So you're still gonna end up with a great selection what, you're doing it in a progression of get a basic selection on there and then make it look better. We also will talk about, um, using things like quick mask and particularly using refine edge. This is a fairly new function and photo shop. So if you have an older version of photo shop or Photoshopped elements. This is one of examples where would be slightly different because it's been around for a while but basically was CS six and see See that really refined, refined edge to the point where it's as usual is today. So it's a very common technique to say make a really good edge with your selection and then going to refine edge to make it even better. But like a lot of things, my approach and this is instead of going through and saying, Here's what every single button does in refine Edge, it's the same thing is talking about tools. I don't use every single function and we're finance because if you do it properly, you need to use this part up here and this part down here and then you get a great edge. So I don't try and cover every single thing I say. If you do it that, take this approach. This is the result that you get now building on this because part of the point of making selections again is to identify the area you want to work on for things like copying onto another photograph to make a collage or adjusting a certain area. But a big part of it is these days is compositing where you take a person on a plane background and put them on a new background to make it look like they're standing there. That's become such a big part of what people do in Photoshopped. That that's the whole second day of making selections is doing compositing, but ideally doing it quickly and easily because just like we talked about retouching, I don't wanna If I was a photographer trying to offer new services to my clients to say, Hey, if you're a senior and you want a cool senior photo, I can shoot you on this gray background, put you on anything else. I don't want that to take four hours. I will be able to do it in half on hour or less. So I go through some approaches to compositing where you can do it quickly and easily and in particular again, don't just I don't want to just say do these five steps, but how is this gonna be? How we gonna have a better chance of success of certain things and an example of that is and I o I tend to use myself as an example because, like anyone else, I started trying things and came up with approaches. I thought work well. When I first started trying to do compositing, I would have to windows open the new background and the photograph of the person, and I would make my selection of the person probably zoom in much for than I should have. And I'd start obsessing over every little hair and fly away piece of everything and make it spend a long time making you look perfect. Then I would drag them on new background and realize because of the colors in the new background. I just wasted half of my time because I couldn't even see her hair on this new background. And after doing that, multiple times like suddenly thought, Why wouldn't I just drag that person on new background first and then every decision I make from then on is in the context of the new background. So that's an example of a key to success in doing compositing is make your life simpler by moving the person on to the new background first. That's always now step one to me is dragged them over then move on from there, building on things we've learned earlier. We learned in earlier lesson on adjusting how to use camera raw, smart objects to make ongoing adjustments. Well, that's a big part of compositing to me is ah, just something So it's easier to see what you're doing may not be the final way you want. For example, you might have a photograph that's deliberately taken kind of dramatic and dark, but now you can't see and one of the examples I have I'll show you in a second is ah, guy dressed up as a soccer player and he has really dark hair. Well, I took the photograph. I deliberately wanted to be dramatic. So now I have dark hair on a dark grey background, and I can think if I can't see where his hair is, how is my selection tool in Photoshopped going to see that? So instead, I temporarily adjust in camera raw to make his hair look better. Now its face looks horrible because all over exposed. I don't care about that. All I'm worried about is that edge. Then I make my selection. Once the selection was good. Then I pull the adjustment back to the way I want. And I can only do that because I'm making a temporary adjustment to the photograph, either through camera raw or some other method. We'll also talk about a big key to success in Compositing is making a look believable in terms of tones and colors and shading and brightness and all those things, and I show a couple of techniques that I came up with. It saved me a lot of time, which is things like adding and fake hair. You having a really hard time trying to make every hair show up, said, Just take a paintbrush and photo shop and paint little hairs in it. Fools people's eyes into thinking That's a really good selection. Actually, it's not. It's a decent selection, but I've put in fake hair that's the same color and looks appropriate. But it helps sell the believability because whether people realize it or not, if you see a photograph, I know I personally do this. If I have even a question of if it's a composite or not, the first thing I look at is their hair. Now my suggestion is if everyone just like Jim and I had no hair than life would be simpler. Compositing would take no time at all. You have to worry about reflections, but otherwise hair is no problem at all. So here's the example that I mean, I went out and shot this photograph and I deliberately did it try and simulate kind of a depth of field and then composited the soccer player on it, and I deliberately wanted this dark, dramatic kind of look. But as you see during this lesson, when I first opened the photograph up, his face is all blown out because I want to make sure I could see where his hair was. Then I made my selection. Did refine as it all those selection techniques end up with a layer mask, so building on the things we learn about with layer masking. But then knowing that once I had him in the right spot now I could go back and re adjust the camera raw settings to the place that I want. And the background is also a camera raw, smart object. So I have the ability of editing it as well. So this is another example of that do things in this non destructive manner, so you have as much possibility as you can of changing both pieces of it. I even talk in a couple of examples, and this usually throws a curve. It people, because I think I find a lot of people are thinking in terms has the best way to say this. They're thinking in terms of what they want to do, not the way photo shop works. So what I mean by that is they look at a photograph of a person. They say I need to put her over there. That's the way most people I think think of a challenge is what they're trying to do. My brain has got to the point of thinking, Yeah, but Photoshopped thinks hair is a lot more challenging than arms, because arms just have a nice, definite edge. Hair doesn't so thinking like photo shop. Maybe I should select it into pieces, do the easy part in one piece and the hair in a different piece. It still ends up looking like one person on a background, but I've approached it from a photo shop standpoint as opposed to a task standpoint, and I think that's a key way of thinking, and I show an example this compositing class of exactly that where there's a girl with lots of hair and I didn't do it in two pieces. Select her body, pop it on a layer, do her hair. Now I can tweak those refine edge settings a lot better, and I still end up with the look that I want but in way less time than it used to take me. A lot of people tell me that they've heard this refined edge is supposed to work really well, but they complain that doesn't work for them. And I think the problem for most people is they're expecting too much of it to say. Well, somehow I'd like you to find all these hard edges and hair blowing in the wind equally well, and my thinking is hardly any tool will really do that. So why not separated into two pieces hard, definite edges and not so definite edges? And as soon as I started doing that, my composites now take less time and in my opinion, look better than they did before. So we spend the whole class on this because it is such a big aspect of what a lot of people like to do in Photoshopped. Okay, then another switch of gears type is a whole part of working in photo shop. Now, if you have experience with working with type and other programs, some of this will be similar. But it's talking about how we do various things, including, of course, creating tight, adding type in the different options. The fact we can do both point type, which is single line or paragraph type. Ah, those that differences between those. Then I get into more specific editing of type one of my biggest beefs with type, and I wish on some level I wish someone had never introduced me to the thing called Turning. Because once you start current ing things, you never look a type the same way again. And Koerting is the space between two letters. So, for example, and it's funny because I used to live in Ottawa, Canada, and people used to always use the word Ottawa as an example because it's O. T. T A W A. Well in capital letters, you've got an A and then a w. And on a fellow just doing y M. C a there for a second. But what happens is naturally the gap between the A and the W looks too big because they every letter is spaced out the same. So Kernan means take that space and narrow it down, so it looks better. My problem is now every time I click on the type tool and you will see this and subsequent lessons where it doesn't really matter, because I'm just adding tight. But I can't help but Kurnit because it drives me nuts. Now it's almost so bad. My son went to graphic design school and will be driving somewhere on both Go Oh, look at the Koerting on that sign is horrible were like driving off the road, looking at like some big sign on the side of a store because they just stuck every letter equally spaced. But to me, it's things like turning and tracking and leading or things that make your type look better. I don't want the type to be a distraction. I want to look good, especially if we're putting type. Maybe at the bottom of photograph is are the name of our me is the photographer. I'd like that to not have people go Comic sands. Really? You know, I want to pick a font and a style and make it look good. So we talk about that, even talk about things like later on of how you can put type inside. Ah, custom shape. So maybe you wanna have type look like it's wrapping around the outside of an object fact. I'll show that this afternoon after lunch of an example of how we condone that kind of thing quite easily with type. There are other parts of type that I don't get a chance to talk about, that we may. I may decide to add as a bonus video if enough people are interested because at the last couple of virgins of Photoshopped, now we have to go to make paragraph in character styles, which is fairly new to the world of Photoshopped. Been around in a lot of other graphic design programs for a while, but that's new to photo shop. So because type is such a big part of a lot of projects, even though it might be considered a minor part, I think it's important. Understand what these things mean, especially turning tracking letting is the stuff that just makes your type to me look better. So it's not a distraction color. Well, that could be a whole nother class in itself. But this is really talking about not color management. Let me be very clear. This is not some people say, How do I make my photograph? My screen looked the same as my printer, and my responses will first of all, good luck. And secondly, that's hard. I mean, there you can do color management, calibrate your monitor, but all those things to me get you more predictability. But ever say my monitor and my printer ever gonna look exactly the same is questionable. So rather than getting into that topic, this is Mork color from a perspective of I want to add color into my document like paint with a color or add type in a certain color, have a design that's a certain color. How do we do that? So we talked about the color picker, which is one of the main ways will we choose color, um, in various ways, by percentages or visually, whatever you want. Also, by the way, let me take a step back there. Also a little bit on. Not a lot. But if for some people that are preparing their files to print, then all of a sudden we have to worry more about C. M. Y que versus RGB colors because there's a bit of a difference. So we talk a little bit about how you can see the difference, and also what happens if you don't pay attention to that difference. And that is that you'll have something on your screen that looks great, nice and vibrant. And when you send it off to the printer out there of the printing press, that switch is that C M y que all over sudden your colors to use a technical term. Go Blair, and you know what happened to my nice, vibrant color? Well, that's not a C m y que color, so we'll talk about the color. Picker gives you that warning, but also interesting trick To be able to make sure when you're in the color picker before you even go to choose a color, you can set yourself up for success by saying, Don't allow me to choose colors that won't print. That was a lot of double negatives, but that's what means Onley Onley. Show me the colors that will print properly and see him like a. Then we talk about other methods of using color, but also not just picking color but managing our color. For example, there's a swatches panel in Photoshopped, like a lot of things that comes with default colors, where Adobe says, Here you go, Here's some colors and unfortunately, for example, learned this many years ago when we did a lot more work with CM like a the 1st 2 or three colors in the swatches panel that are built in the defaults. Watches and Photoshopped don't print properly and see him like a because Adobe just said, Here's a nice red. Here's a nice blue, but they happen to be very vibrant colors that don't print properly in C. M. Y que So once again, just because this watches Aaron there by default doesn't make them good. It just means, Adobe said. Here you go, here's some so we'll talk about how you can create your own swatches and also manage them so that you can figure out that you're getting just this watches you want. We'll even talk about sharing swatches between applications because there's an interesting part of Adobe. I think they've done a marvelous job with that. Where there's a file format called Adobe Swatch Exchange, where you could have, for example, someone created a corporate look in Adobe Illustrator. You can export the swatches out of that file and load them into Photoshopped, or vice versa. Or in design. Also touch on the fact that if you're a creative cloud member, one of the cool little side aspects of Creative Cloud that's really interesting to me is if I post a photograph and save it up to my creative cloud. When I click on it on the side, it actually shows me. Here are the swatches that I can see are approximation like If it's a Photoshopped photograph, it just says, If I average it out, here's five colors that I see predominately in your file. And then there's Little Button says Download that as a swatch set, which is kind of cool. I also talk a little bit about something called cooler. Cooler is a really interesting concepts. Been around from adobe for a while. It's a couple of things. It's a community where people create and share color schemes. So if you're color challenge like, a lot of us are kind of run out of steam kind of going. I want to create something. It has some nice look of colors, but I'm don't know where to start. Then you can go to this website called Cooler. It's all free and you can say I want to look for and you can kind of browse through different color schemes. One thing that adobe is done recently, which I think is fascinating because I love when technology comes together. Old school, new school. I have an app on my IPhone called cooler, which is also free, and I could be in some cool place like the Creative Life Headquarters and go look with my phone as I'm moving around. It's picking colors and then I can go that one and then it up loads that and I can instantly use those in my other adobe applications. So even though that's really not part of photo shop, I threw that in there in this class. But I just think that's really interesting that you have that option to say I like these colors I'm visually seeing what are those and get those interest watches? Um, number two, though it's important in touch on that again a little bit, because one of the concepts that often happens when people are creating presets. Because that's what when you save your own swatches or some of the things we talked about, like tool presets and so on, they are added by default on to what's already there. And after a while, you can get this big long list of just too many, so a little bit in here. And there's another session. Later on, we talked just about presets, but how to manage it? So there is a potential way, and it's one that I suggest you might explore of how to make your swatches more manageable instead of having 400 trying to figure out which ones are which you can kind of say, This is a status watches for Client A. This is a set of swatches for Project be or whatever it might be, and this is just kind of related We just talked about is that you can get color from many sources, not just Photoshopped, but, for example, the eyedropper and photo shop. A lot of people don't realize this, but when the eyedropper is live, you can drag into anything that's visible. So in other words, if you're working in your photo shop window and off to the side, you can see a little bit of a website. You can drag that I drop out of photo shop and actually sample the color from any document that you can see no matter what its source. So it could be a Web site. It could be power point, anything. If it's visible, you can source it. You can also get like those things, like cooler, where you can say, I want to just find color schemes that other people have done. So there's a lot more to getting color into Photoshopped and simply the color picker. That's why I spent a day on it, because there's so many options and I want people to be aware of all the choices honestly, on a day to day basis. I probably use the color picker more than the other one because I'm not working with clients where they say it must be this particular color. But I even talk about that because in the world of client and working for print law. People use Pantone colors, so even talk about how does Pantone relate to photo shop? Because it's not exactly what people think it is. Okay, building on that, Then we talk about kind of. If you have color now, how do you get it on there? So using the brush tool and all the brush options that are available so controlling the brush options when you click on the brush tool the paintbrushes, many people calling the Technically it's called the brush tool. You go through your little check list and say, OK, I've picked my brush I've got This is my foreground color for painting now How do I want that paint to be applied? And part of it is just a simple thing like opacity. But there's a whole separate panel that says, Would you like that brush tip to scatter and rotate and be bless, see through and all these different options that are really quite remarkable of all things you can do. So we go through and say, Here is just a typical brush, but see what happens when I start playing with these settings and how they apply and I deliberately don't give you formulas like, Hey, if he used these settings, that's more. Here's what scatter does. Here's why you might want to consider using this thing called Geter. And we started Go through and say There's what these things do So then you can start to put into practice Also, talk about creating brushes. This is one of the most fascinating parts to me about photo shop is that anything can be turned into a brush and by anything I mean well, anything. If you can select it in photo shop, you could make a brush out of it. So, for example, if you take a photograph of a crack in the pavement, you could select that and say, Define brush. And now you have a brush that has this weird texture in it because you picked it up from the photograph one of the times I was here. Gosh, when we do that, that was in Remember now. But it was the class I did that was called Photoshopped Creativity. It was a two day class and one things we did in when the other studio and actually had a smoke machine and took photographs of smoke and turned those into brushes. So now we had this really cool brush that looks like smoke. So we talked about that quite a bit, including some of the key concepts of What do you have to consider when you're defining a brush? How does Photoshopped define a brush? Therefore, what results you're going to get now? I show examples off. Some things work better than others. For example, if you just take your text tool and type copyright me 2013 that's a easy brush to make because it's you can make it black and white. But if you have, for example, a texture of a brick wall or an old map or something that chances are, it's gonna look a little difference going Actel differently. So it's important to know what those all do. And perhaps most interesting of all, I think it's once you've done that. Now that I've created a brush, how can I use it in interesting ways? So here's an example of the kind of thing we'll talk about where that's a couple of the brushes that I made out of smoke, and I use it for two different things. One of them is on the layer master, You look around the microphone, you can see that the smoke is actually masking the microphone, but almost looks like the smoke is surrounding it. And the other layer. I played around with some blend modes and made the smoke kind of going through her. That was just, frankly playing. But I was able to do that for a couple reasons. One, I had them on separate layers to I had them set up with Mass, so I had the ability to adjust. And three, I was said. Now I got to smoke brushes. How can I use those in two different ways? Painting colored smoke and also painting on the mask with a smoke brush and both of those things to meet us. Open up a world of possibilities. And as I mentioned in the class, if you've got a few hours to waste, any point just going to Google and type free photo shop brushes and you'll find amazing raft of any possible brush, including ones that frankly, I look at and kind of go really blood spatter brush collection. Interesting. I'm not sure when I would use that one, but you can find just about anything. Most of them are free. There are some that they pay a little bit, but generally you confined free brushes. You load him into photo shop and then do anything with them. So that's an interesting part that can be both more productive. But also really, to me opens up creative possibilities. Because now and and I'll show you and I should mention this because I don't want anyone think, Well, I don't do this kind of work. We're gonna show you how to make a brush out of your signature. So we just want to sign your photographs. I just go click, because now you've got a built into photo shop is a brush where you just say, I just need to add my signature. So it's built in now as one of my presets. So it becomes a one click being instead of what I used to do is somewhere I have a file with my signature. Where did I say that under what name? Now it's just built into photo shop is a brush. Hey, then So that was kind of the brushes. Is Maurin the, I would say mostly on the creative side, but then we talk about automation and another one of my favorite topics because I like to try and do things as quickly as I can. Now. I have a different take on automation than most people, I think, and we did again. I did a two day classroom automation. I started off that discussion the same way. Well, now is that most people, I think, when they hear the word automation Photoshopped a meeting, actions and actions is part of what we'll talk about. But to me, automation is anything that saves me time and gets me to my end result or closer to my end result more quickly. So the phrase that I use in this class I use every time I talk about automation is anything that that I look at. I go well compared to the all turned over, doing it by hand. This is faster. So I find some people resist automation because ago well, I can't do the whole thing. I can't do like a dizzy, whereas I'd say 80 said. But I can't say that u s a dizzy because they can't do the whole thing. They don't do it all in my mind. if I could go eight h, that's still better than doing all that part manually, so we'll talk about automation. Important perspective of what are the built in automated commands we can already use that we will file automate, and there's some already there on. We'll talk about that from a perspective of the difference between using automation and Photoshopped versus starting in Bridge. You'll see me use bridge a lot because it's a very visual way Toe work as someone that uses several products in in the now cloud, formerly creative suite bridges like my central place for Photoshopped, Illustrator in design. And at the moment we can do nice automation right from within bridge. So the difference is in many cases, in Photoshopped. When you go to automate something, it says, Which folder would you like to automate? And every single image in that folder will have that automated command apply to it, which is good some of the time. But in my mind, sometimes I don't want to automate every single image. I only want certain one. So that's when I go into bridge, because I could go this one, this one, this one, this one, then run my automated command, so we'll talk about both the difference between them And also in this first day I throw in what I call not so obvious automation. So, for example, anything with the word content aware in it, even though technically it's a retouching tool. To me, it's a form automation because it's doing something much faster than the equivalent. If if I had do it by hand, it would take me way longer to sit there with the clone stamp tool for 20 minutes, as opposed to two seconds with the patch tool, for example, with content aware turned on. So in this first day automation, it includes a discussion off again, this whole compared to the alternative, doing things at least as much as I can automatically. And I don't cover every single automated command because once you get the hang of well, here's how you do it to me. That's more important again, as the overall concept of the approach I take in the fact that I can choose to just automate ah, part of it. Now, the reality is that automation does include actions. So in the second day, day 24 on automation It's all about actions now, as I mentioned this in the in the class. So for those of you that do end up watching this whole thing once get date a 24 just pretend I didn't say this right now because it would be funnier then. But, um, I ask people all the time. So here's a scenario. Let's say I this happens all the time. I'm teaching to a big group of people anywhere from 50 to 600 it's interesting to me that statistically it's always the same. No matter of the size of the room. And I always ask how people here are using actions, and usually it's less than 5% and even those people some of them are like Then I say, Okay, how when people have no idea what action is and what it does less than 10%. So that means there's a big chunk of people out there that are saying, Well, I know what actions are, but I don't use them, and my worry is, Why not? And I think when I started asking people, there are several reasons why people don't use actions as much as they should first of all. Okay, so one reason is they just I don't know what inaction is. Okay, fair enough. You're not gonna use it. Don't. So that's but that's usually a small percentage. Then there's a percentage of people that say, Well, I thought actions were only if I had, like, has to, like, 85 steps to, like, hundreds of images. And that's one form of action and we'll talk about others. But then, ah, very common reason that I started hearing more and more frequently from people is why they didn't use actions as they tried it once and had a bad action experience where something went horribly wrong. And then we will never touch that again because it was really bad, because in action could just as easily cause you great grief if it's not done properly. But for some reason, that scares a lot of people off because they go in with the wrong impression. So in this session, just like a lot of, I spend the first while talking about why we use actions, what they can and can't do, and don't get the perception that well, I'm not gonna use an action unless I need to do it to hundreds of images. To me on action is very useful. If you think yourself, that's the third time today I've done that exact same thing, and the chances are I'll keep doing it to me. That's a candid to say. Make that inaction on action simply means record those operations and play them back way faster than I could do by hand. So people have this thing misperceptions about action. So I spend at least part of this day trying to dispel those those concerns that you don't have to do this and it can be only three steps, and it doesn't have to be complicated, but anything that saves you time, even if it just today, you might record in action user for the rest of day and then not use it again. But then it saved away for future, just in case. Equally importantly, we talk about both recording the action, which is often part of the challenge, but also how to edit them because a lot of people have in action and have this perception of once it's created. If I did something wrong, I have to start all over again and that's not the case. You can go in and say I need to reorder these steps and to take that step out completely or I need to edit the settings. Actions are very specific. So if I recorded action that says Do this, do this now apply this filter. It will record the settings on that filter, and again, the perception is, Well, now I can't change those, but in fact you can in a couple different ways. So I talked about how to change it on the fly as you're running in action or how to re record it. So from now on, you have new settings, and both of those are very useful. I also talked about something that usually throws a curve. It people, because I have a whole set of actions, don't have one step in them. People like, Why would you haven't actually as one step? Because that one step otherwise would be like this image? Rotate arbitrary 10%. Instead, I have an action, says rotate. 10% or 10 degrees. I should say so. Even though it's only one step, it still would take me five clicks to get to that one operation So I show how you can create a series of one step actions and then threw on option in the actions panel. You can actually change the display of your actions panel, something called But Mode. Now those actions all become one step clickable actions. So instead of going what? Where was that again? Just go first of this. Now do this now to this. Now do this, and that's a lot of people. I think they're also their view of actions is some person out there is a well known photographer selling their action collection, which is great cause it means they've done the work for you. But most of them are doing the same thing. They just recording a series of steps that they like. My worry and I mentioned this in the class is that there's lots of wonderful actions out there. My worry is that some of them you run the action and it's called old fashioned retro look or something, and you run it. And at the end now your photograph looks like that, but you have no settings toe alter, so I'd rather have an action that said, Make it retro, but have it because there's this adjustment layer with ease settings, and now I can build on that and edit it. So even when I'm recording actions, a lot of the time, I'm suggesting my actions are still creating something that is non destructive and edible because I don't want every photographed honestly, look exactly the same. If I do, that's fine, too. Okay? And then we'll also talk about the other confusing part about actions when you do decide. Okay, I've created this look, and I want every single photograph or some of photographs in this folder toe Look that way. How you can do things called a batch Action where you say, run this action toe all of these images and give me some result and I'll talk in this class. I talk about some of the, um, potential roadblocks. I guess you'd say the things that people run into where they go, How come this isn't working properly? Usually, it's a little check box. In fact, if I remember correctly from this class, I even unintentionally demonstrate why you shouldn't check a particular check box. Because as I was going through in my batch action, I I went to click on a couple things and I clicked on the wrong one. So then my action didn't work at all. So I used that as a learning experience to say I let's analyze why that didn't work because I clicked on there because I shouldn't have silly Dave didn't go through his checklist to make sure he was doing everything correctly. So even when I like I said before, when I make a mistake, which I'd like to say doesn't happen that often, but that would be stretching the truth. But when it does, I try to turn into. Here's why that happened. Let's figure it out because I know that happens to other people all the time where they're like, Why isn't this working find that happens all the time. When people I used to work in organization, we had a help desk and they used to send us the most typical questions that people would ask. So help us create tutorials. And one of the five things was often people's questions with purposes. Why point? Photoshopped let me like Well, it's not really photo shopped, not letting you it's you don't have some settings. Correct is not like four shows. No, no, I'm not going to do that. It's not letting you do it because there's some combination of settings that isn't quite correct. So there's no such thing. Photoshopped doesn't have a brain that says, I'm just decide not to let that work today, although I must say, when I talk about the troubleshooting section the very end of this, I do talk about There are some times where Photoshopped just starts misbehaving and it it's not you, it's Photoshopped There something the preferences have got corrupted to the point where you have toe kind of reset them and start over. Okay, moving on Day 25. Now, throughout all the days we talk about things like what our tool presets and then how to make brushes and how to make patterns. This is kind of revisiting all of those things in one day because scattered throughout, I talk about let's make a preset out of that. Let's make a preset of this. But this is all about why we make presets, including all the standard ones, brushes, swatches, ingredients and also patterns, tool presets and styles. Those are the main presets, and we talked about this from a perspective of two things. When you go to a panel that's called, for example, styles or brushes, the contents of that panel are all presets, many of which have been provided for you and some may be ones you've created. How do you manage that? So, for example, if you look in the patterns panel a little picker and you think I really don't think I'm gonna use the bubbles pattern, how do I get rid of that? How'd oh, I just make the presets the way that I want. And that's all about managing your presets and also, um, And by managing presets, I should say that also, there's a big section on this thing called the preset manager because the preset managers what determines how that I determine what contents air in each panel. But also, how do I change the order? How do I delete ones? How do I save a backup? One of the worst things gonna happen to people is you go in and define a whole bunch of really cool brushes, and then Photoshopped has some horrible crash and burn, and they're all gone. So one of the things we talk about in this session is How can I create a backup plan where I have my presets saved away somewhere and I can get them back. Also on that, we talk about things like one of the great things about presets is they're very share a bowl. So if you have colleagues or friends or co workers, or you just go to a website and someone says, Here's a bunch of brushes, How do Why share them? How do I import them? Export them? How do I migrate them? If I have an older version of Photoshopped that I've already done things like presets and things like that, how do I move them over? Also talking, loving a backup one bullet here where it says Adjustment layer and other presets. All these other ones, like brushes, watches, grade etcetera are one style of preset, and then other places have presets to like adjustment layers. Some filters in the latest couple of versions of photo shop actions and work spaces, in a sense, are treated like preset. They're actually separate. They're not controlled by the preset manager. But if you go to this new, fairly new command called import Export or I think it's actually called export import anyway. It shows you a list of everything confined, including actions which are not technically a preset, but it still shows up in the past. It used to be much harder to move actions from one version of photo shop to another. Now, when you upgrade, you just hit the spot, says Migrate. And it finds every version of photo shop on your machine and says, Would you like me to move all the stuff over for you? So that's a whole lot easier than it used to be. Okay, The next day we kind of take a sideway step a little bit, because everything up until now has been what I would call everyday Photoshopped. When you're in photo shop every day, you need to work with layers. Need to work with presets. So all this has been very day to day kind of photo shop. Then we switch gears because one of my favorite ISS new things in Photoshop is video because editing video theoretically has been around for shop for a while. But realistically it started Photoshopped CS six because they totally revamped the way you edit video on ending video now in photo shop is awesome. I don't want to go and learn premiere pro or final cut pro or some because I'm not a video editor. But I want to have the ability to say I would like to at least experiment with video and create my own videos. So in this class, we talk about how it if you don't have video, you can create video, for example, a slide show. So we talk about how you can take a series of single still images in photo shop and turn them into a video slideshow, complete with music. What's really cool about this day is working with video and photo shop. One things I think is so fantastic about it is it builds on functions you already know how to do in Photoshopped. So the challenge for most people if they open a video editing software, The interface there is like What is all this? But in photo shop, it's still photo shop. You're still working with layers. There's just a new panel across the bottom called timeline, so now you're doing all the same. Photoshopped functions. The approach you take is, for example, let's say you had a photograph in photo shop where you want to convert to black and white, so use an adjustment layer and that would convert that photo black and white. Well, if I open a video clip in Photoshopped, want to make it black and white? I added adjustment layer, so the concepts are exactly the same. The differences things are moving. So the cool part about as you apply what you already know how to do in photo shop. But now you're doing it with the end result being movement. So, for example, bringing in a series of still images and say. But I don't want them just to be static. I want this one to zoom in this one. Japan, those air. Just simple little things in photo shop where you say at the beginning of this start here at the end of it and there, and it fills in the rest for you. So it's really quite interesting to me now because of the nature of how much there isn't here. This is just probably could be called the basics of video in Photoshop, because in one hour there is no way I could cover everything because there's a lot to do. But at least we get started talking about things like creating slide shows from still images and the basics of video editing. So if you bring in to video clips, how do you trim them? So they show the part? You want that kind of thing? So this is just getting a started so that people who were interested get a feeling for what it does, and then they'd be more likely to explore it a little further on. And I get said, the need part about this is creating video using techniques you already know how to do. There's a few things and video that are unique because it is moving, but overall I'm still looking at the layers panel and changing the order of layers, and I'm still doing smart objects and smart filters. But the difference is two things that move. So I want to show you an example here. Oh, let's see, about a year ago, are So Adobe said we'd like you to teach a class at Imaging USA, which is a big photography event, and I was like sure, there, like about video and I went okay and like in photo shop. I'm like, all right, because I knew that Photoshopped video was now possible. It honestly I'd never really done it before, so I thought, Well, so I called on a a model that I work with and her boyfriend now fiance to say, Can we go and just shoot some video as if it was like an engagement photo was kind of ironic cause we did this and then they got engaged later, which I thought was weird. Um, So without knowing what I was doing, I took my DSLR that captures video and we went to this really cool place and I captured a bunch of video and the couple things I learned the hard way is First of all, my feeling was I have so much video toe work with until I started putting it on the timeline. All of a sudden I was really short. One of my friends in the world of video has his expression. He said, video adding is all about deleting the stuff you don't want. So with video, you need to capture way more than you think. Because I thought I had so much footage and I put the song on that I had chosen, and all of a sudden the song was this long in the video was like, Oh, that's not good So I had to actually go into the song and make it shorter so and the only thing that I did different That's not standard as I borrowed a piece of equipment called a slider where you put the camera on it Does this nice kind of panning motion because nothing I discover with video is if every video shot is just staying in the same place, it kind of gets boring. So having some movement of some kind. So that's when you see the video. That's the only thing in there is just me with this little slider thing on a tripod. Me going like this with my camera, the other before I show you this. The other tip, I would say is it takes a while to edit video. I mean to get the way you want. Um, so if you decide to have music, make sure it's a song you really like. I'm gonna plug my ears now because when I play this video, I've heard this song 1000 times. I really liked it when I first heard it. I'm kind of kidding a little bit, but you do end up. It is also possible to turn off the sound if you want. So let's play this little video clip here. I love you. Want you home? Howman dog I love you Want you Hold May is wrong Hold May the bullies ball Note Howman I want you hold May Lance's wrong. Help me keep anything until the morning way Keep your arms around me Let your hands you keep me I love to do so that whole thing was done in photo shop and that was my 1st 1 ever. Son, I look, I'm like, Oh, I should done that better. But some of that was like anything the first time now I look at I think I wish I had filmed this and I wish I had captured that. But since I didn't, that's what I had to work with. But some of things you saw in there, for example, my favorite part is they're walking all of a sudden turns into that slow motion. All that was in a photo shop I saw. Here's this little clip about halfway through I cut it in half and said, Make this one take longer cause I figured that might work. And also I was like, Oh, slow motion. So that's what's kind of neat about this is that everything else was layers, for example. There was one part there, the very end where it kind of faded it out of focus. If I've been had decided the time that was my final shot on the camera, I would have changed the focus, but I didn't. So that was actually the Gaussian Blur filter over time. So it looks like the cameras changing focus. So that's what's kind of need to me about this video. Part is that it's based on things you already know how to do and then just it. The added fact is that it's moving and you have this stack. The only downside to me about doing this is that I wish I had a bigger monitor because as the timeline gets more video tracks, it starts getting taller and your window that you're seeing the preview get smaller and smaller. But other than that, I mean, that's again for the Onley thing. I guess that after a while, If I hear love, won't you hold me anymore? I just like to kill myself because I've listened that thing something times it still kind of a neat song now that I haven't listened to it for a while. But that's the only other thing about video editing is I might just turn off that sound for a while. I was working on it, but that was that's in that class. That's kind of showing you the basics of doing that video class, maybe a video classic, Creative Live possible. I think there's already been one of those, but anyway, um, so that's that's what that day is all about. So So if I could infer, please, Um, and it's a whole day of video. Well, the whole yeah, the whole one hour one hour is just Here's what you need to know from both and I did it in the perspective. Not everyone has video clips, so let's first start with still images and turn into video. But then also, when you bring in video clips, how toe edit and trim, and it's just really touching the surface to say this is to show you what's possible, hopefully to pique people's interest to say this is pretty interesting. Let me explore it further. Perfect. Do you feel like tackling if you actually all right? So, um, Laura Sita would like to know if when you do retouching. So we're going back to our retouching. We're touching day. Are you going to be using any liquefy tools? Yes, In fact, I do. And one of the the interesting thing has happened in the progression of tools. Liquefies been around for a long time, but in the past, you had to be liquefy was one of those tools where if you open the whole photograph and liquefy, it was painfully slow because if you tried to, like, retouch something, you take your brush tool and then pause and then watch it go. Now it's live. It's so much faster they completely rebuilt. And this is a thing that photo shop does every so often doesn't tell us, is under the hood, liquefies completely redone. It looks the same to us as a user. But now you take your brush. No, holy smokes is ever fast, so it's changed the approach. But I, for example, use liquefy to show not only the obvious or what I would think office things like I need to. This person has a piece of clothing sticking out, so I'll push it in. But also things like, I wish that person was smiling a bit more. So how can I make her look like she's got just her lips or just a little up? And her cheeks go up as if she's smiling a bit. So that's done with liquefy, and I deliberately chose a photo that was challenging because it's a stock photo of, ah girl with a headset with a microphone and our microphones like right here. So if I went to liquefy her lips, the microphone would go right, so I had to. Pharaoh, how could you do that? Well, there's a function liquefy that lets you free certain areas. So even though I don't spend a huge amount of time, it hopefully that one example go okay so I can freeze things. I can do it on its own layer as a smart filter. So if you're still fairly new to liquefy, at least get you started with. Here's some key concepts toe know how to use it. Awesome. Thank you. And Sam Cox would like to know, Are you cover how to organize actions? Um, can't you make too many actions? So it's hard to find the one you want. Well, a little bit. I mean, when I first started on actions, I usually suggest that the first thing you can do to make your life simpler is to create a set. And in set is Adobe for folder. When you look at it, it looks like a folder. Even the icon looks like a folder, but it's called Set. So if you put things into sets, then that's one of the organizational ways of working. So I start off the discussion saying, First, make a set, then put your action in that set and hopefully people will extrapolate from that that then I could make other sets. I don't know that I necessarily talk about moving them between sets, but you certainly can do that and also talks about how actions are very share a ble, but only if they're insects. It's easier toe export inaction if it's in a set, so that's from an organizational sampling. We do talk about a little bit fantastic, and along those same lines are you going to be talking about pausing and stopping and actions? Yes, that's that's a key part. There's two things that have that aren't obvious. One of them is that where sometimes you're doing some operation where you have to pause to do something, but also new in very recent photo shop, I well, depends. Here's where it gets tricky with creative Cloud because CS six for a while you got on Creative Cloud. It had this new function I know CC does. You'd have to check and see if it was on your version of photo shop. But now, for the first time ever ability to record tools in the past you couldn't, for example, record the clone stamp tool so you'd have to pause, recording, clone and then continue. Now you have the option of doing that or recording and actually show an example of photos with sensor dust and how you can automate using the healing brush to get rid of sensor dust on a whole series of photos, Which is kind of cool. Okay, all right. So up until the last two things, So video was one topic that was kind of outside of everyday Photoshopped every other day up until now has been Let's talk about layers. Let's talk about brushes. Day 28 is just a break from all those things, and I'm just gonna pitcher with a whole bunch of my favorite tips and tricks and techniques, which are just related to everything we've done so far. So it's like, Here's a thing we didn't talk about before, called layer comps, and hear some tricks with using the type tool in here is a complete type inside a shape are on a path. So things that are just kind of I don't say they're random, but there, perhaps less obvious, or what some people call hidden in quotations, because it's not an obvious thing that you would just find by exploring. So this is just a day filled with these kinds of my favorite little shortcuts and things of that nature, all of which, generally speaking, are aimed at being time savers, although some of them also Gombe or into the world of in addition to that, get your creative juices flowing to say, if I could do that, like if I could put text on a path, maybe I could use it for this purpose. So a lot of these air just kind of short little things to say, Hey, if you work with multiple layers, here's a function that can help you that we didn't talk about before and a few of them might kind of build on what's already been done. It might even review them a little bit. But this is again, mostly just tips and tricks and techniques and shortcuts and all those kind of things. Then we have another quiz. So since we're almost at the end, we're gonna do one other quiz. Same as before. We go through and say, Here's some questions for you and it's another one of those tests. In quotations of your knowledge, I try to make my questions not so challenging that you be like, I can't figure this out and some of them are so obvious. Almost give. In fact, I think in one case I do unintentional give you the answer to the next question because I didn't remember the order of questions, but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say this or not, but I've actually been involved in creating questions for the Adobe Ace exam, which is the certified expert. So they're they're really strict about creating questions that aren't tricky and don't try to have multiple right answers. So I kind of used that in my preparation of the exam. Just sort exam. The test, the quiz Just so it's still fun, but it helps us review. And again, I explain each answer. And I think at least once or twice I jump out of the examined Goto Photoshopped say This is what I mean. So it's not just the answer, is C. It's like it see. But here's why. And again, it also means Aiken review some of the key techniques we've talked about. Up until now, I didn't want people to feel like every day you're getting hit with more and more stuff. I'm relying on viewers to make the effort to say I'm going to try some of this stuff and, you know, do some of the assignments but also want to make sure that we're reviewing some stuff along the way. So this is where the review comes in is the day 16 where there's a quiz and some review, and then day 29. So there's this kind of review and there's also because I had extra time. I put in a couple of what I would call many projects to say if I just wanted to do this. Here's the steps that I go through. And so years ago I had a really interesting experience. I went to a photography workshop when I was first starting to get better at using my camera, and there were two instructors and one instructor was working away. Quickly click doing all the stuff at the end, he would say. Now, back when I did that fourth shot of her when she was leaning that way, I had it set to this and you could see everyone going one shot and the other instructor said, Okay, so right now I'm looking right and everything he did, he was thinking out loud. I thought that's a much better approach than trying to make people remember what you did. So on these many projects, I'm just head down some road in some case, don't really have a plan to show you. This is kind of the thought process that I'm using is as I'm well, let's see if this works don't really like that. Let's try changing passing. So it's not like I pre prepared these and said, Look at how wonderful this looks. In fact, I usually tell people right up front. If you go with the expectation of saying, Look at what A Photoshopped artist Davis. You'll be disappointed because I don't attempt to create amazing works of art. I'm It's all for me about teaching the process to say this is how we get there. So on these many projects, it's me saying And now I'm thinking I want to see what happens if do I don't like that. Let's not undo looked And to show this is kind of the process I would suggest you go through is try this, but all the way along, it's still that same recurring theme of but because I said up non destructively, I know I can go down this path and try things, and if I don't like it, I can pull it back, okay? And then we go on wrap things up with Day 30 to say Okay, what's next? Um, talk a little bit about troubleshooting because it occurred to me that a few times that I was showing something I ran into a bit of a problem, always frankly, because I forgot to check something. But it occurred to me that those are things people run into where they also forget. So in the very first couple of classes, we talk about this checklist concept here. It's like revisiting that by saying you can also use that checklist ago. Why isn't this working an approach to say? If it's not working, let me try to figure out why, including a little tip that I'll give you right now. If you're let's say you're trying to use, I don't know the brush tool. And no matter what you do your painting and nothing is happening, there's nothing is appearing and you're looking around going on. The settings look good. What's going on? If you make a new document and use the same tool and it works, that tells you it's not the tool, it's something else, like you're on the wrong layer or the layers hidden or the blend mode of a layer is wrong because of a brand new documents, almost like setting everything else to square one. So that way it lets you try the tool. If it works, the way you expected to, then it means something else is the problem. If it doesn't work, then that tells you it's got to be a tool setting or something else. Greater is amiss, but that's one of the simplest ways I see people sit there for half a Knauer going, turning everything on and off. The first thing I do is make a new document. Try it because that at least narrows down where the problem exists. So even though this is kind of a wrap up, it's also introducing the concept. And now you know how to do a bunch of these things. Let's make sure we set ourselves up. If we run into a roadblock, we can at least have some examples of way approaches to figure out what's going on. And then a few more sample projects, and I also give you some images to download, to say, Here's a nice little project You can try to composite this guy into this background, but here's a couple of their images to try and create something for fun and then also talk about strategies to continue learning. And what I mean by that is, well, probably the best way to describe it is Teoh tell another story, cause I like stories. So back in the early days of Photoshopped, the first books that came out were just like books that re vamped the instruction manual that came with photo shop. So it was different wording. And then back in photo shop 2.5, this brand new book came out, called the Photoshopped Wow book and was the first book that says, Here's really cool stuff you can do and actually remember seeing it at a trade show, going the wow book. Really? That's kind of a pretentious name, and I started looking through going wow s like this is actually really good name was actually written by and co written by Jack Davis. Was one of the people teach their creative lot. But it was the first book that said, I'm not going to tell you how to use this tool. Here's how you make it look like a American flag is painted on rocks. And it was the first book that did it. Interesting project base. But what I found is that that was really cool. So I follow all the steps and I would say Step 10. Now fill with black. Okay, Step 11. And at the end, I would look at my image versus the book and say, That's pretty close and I move on to the next project. I realized after doing a bunch of these, I was getting really good at following instructions because all I was doing this, whatever the book said. And I realized I'm not really getting that much further ahead. Not nothing wrong with the book, but the way I was approaching it was I was simply following their instructions. So then I started going back and saying, Well, what happened? Why are they saying on Step 10 filled with black, what happens by filled with gray? So I go fill with gray undo filled with black, undo, fill with white, undo any stand my did all of a sudden that little light bubble go Oh, so on a layer mask. Black does this. So that's kind of what this is all about is saying now that we've got all this information, how can I continue learning and its by trying tutorials the way they're written and then going back and saying now that I've done that, let me go off on some tangent and see what else happens when we talk about other kind of methods of experimenting and that whole setting your structure up in such a way that you could just continue learning new things. And by that point, you're either ready to move on and do all sorts of things, or you fall over and die because your brain is full with information and Dave. So some folks are asking a lot of hands on a lot of hands on stuff as we go through this, basically, that the structure, like I said, it's like if you ever watched a live class here on something like Photo Shop and we'll see this after lunch. I'm sitting at a desk and I'm doing things in photo shop and you're seeing that. But every so often I pause and I turn to the camera say now, the reason I'm saying this is because so it's not all screen capture. It's like I'm here. I have a nice audience. It's I'm pretending I do. I just It's a camera, so it's a combination of lots of hands on a be doing things, but also some of that I hate to use the word theory, but by theory I mean concepts and infirm, important information they need to know along the way. Right? So everyone's a mixture like that. Awesome. And can you tell us a little bit about finishing touches? Oh, yeah. Where did that did I skip over that? I know. I think we had something. Maybe with our keynote way. Skipped over. Yeah, Thank you. Because I was gonna say, that s o finishing touches. Problem is a I actually wrote a book a long time ago called Photoshopped Finishing Touches. But the idea behind it is I have a photograph, but overall, I like, but I want to be able to say, How can I kind of finish it off by adding more to it? So, for example, overlaying a texture or, um, changing the making a cool border effect. So every photograph isn't perfectly rectangular, So their techniques that say, I love this photograph, but I want to do something mawr artistic with it. So there's an example of a finishing touch to me. It's I have a photograph I like, but I want to make it look more unusual by having a border on it, so this has a couple of things going on. There's a layer mask I've painted on the mast, but I've also added a filter to make it look more like campus, but shouldn't surprise you by now to hear me say underlying it. I still have the original photograph because I just hide the other layers and end up with the original photograph. So everything is very creditable and, very importantly, reusable. So if, for example, I love that affect so much, I want to use it on other photographs. I just have to go Dragon drop, tweak done. I'm not going. How did I do that again? Because I've got all the pieces of it. So all the finishing touches are effects, which adds something to your photograph. But in this edit herbal, reusable manner. So again, it's not recipes. It's not like reading a book and saying, Do these six steps. It's like if you add a mask and fill it with black and then paint with white with a cool brush, and I'll show you an example of this after lunch so we'll get more examples. But that's kind of to me. What finishing touches means is some and on effect border an edge or something of that nature or overlaying texture, but in a way that gives me a chance to experiment and try things and also reuse it in other images. Awesome. Thank you very much. Wow, that's we're covering. A lot of the are a lot of stuff to do. That is great. So let me throw a few questions your way before we run off the lunch. Um, question from So Cal Canuck. Um, are we gonna be learning? No, only the different. I mean, I know we talked about tools, but are we gonna be covering developing a workflow at all? Well, um, I don't like the term workflow because it involves work. I always think it should be called like, easy flow, because that sounds better than workflow. But I mean, so technically, I don't say do these things in this order, but built into everything I talk about because of the structure of layers and smart objects and smart filters, it is a workflow. From a standpoint of, if you set up your structure this way, you can reuse it and redo it. When we talk about adjusting this a little bit of that, cause I talk about, ah, just globally first and then selectively after. So there's it's kind of built in here, and they're just not Technically, there's not a classical use this workflow and Jim. The other reason is, I feel work clothes or a very personal thing. Over the years, some said, Here's my work long Yeah, okay, here's my workflow and I find it's hard to say to someone. Here's my rifle. You should do this too. It's to me. It's more. Here's an interesting set up functions and tools and approaches Take. Now you build that in mold into your workflow or easy flow.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

30 Days of Photoshop - Bonus PDF Supplements
Homework Files
Q&A Check In with Dave Cross

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.

Student Work

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