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Editing in Photoshop: The Sky and the Moon

Lesson 6 from: Creating Fantasy Landscapes

Bret Malley

Editing in Photoshop: The Sky and the Moon

Lesson 6 from: Creating Fantasy Landscapes

Bret Malley

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Lesson Info

6. Editing in Photoshop: The Sky and the Moon

Lesson Info

Editing in Photoshop: The Sky and the Moon

Here's the idea that we have, um let's look at it with all its different pieces. So we have moon small. Let's take off the test moon and let's say Okay, this is what we want and come back middle ground. Okay, So this is where we're gonna go for with this section. So, um, you know, before on after, so is taking that sky and again, you can see it often times I will start with the facts special. I know it wanted to be all blue, and so by this case, I you know this one? I knew it was gonna be this blue planet, so I don't need that much color fidelity since I'm gonna be doing a lot of effects to it. But generally, what I would do if I wasn't sure about that was make sure that everything really matches in a lot closer than perhaps I'm doing with this one. So just keep that in mind as we're going here. Okay? So the first thing and we need is to bring over this image to the demo. So again I copy it may be were, apparently, click on it. Okay, let's come over here. to to this one. Close this one...

on then. So the sky so the very bottom of everything. This is where I need to paste it. Someone hit command V for paste. I'm gonna drop it underneath this and make it visible. Okay, so there we go. So with this, this is where you know, I might expand it to be larger, You know, if I like the way that's looking right. And this one, it's typically good to do smart objects just for this demo. For the sake of time. I'm I'm not going to, but typically, all right, click toe where it says and you convert to smart object. But again, that can bloat the file. If I'm not sure about the size of my if I know I'm gonna go back and forth, then it's always a good idea to do smart objects. And the other one? It should be a smart object. But so but then I can move things around. So I really wanted it. The background toe bia's If it's sort of lifting off into the air. Sorry. Let's get the death star. Uh, let's see here. Small. There we go. So that was the idea, right? So not your typical perspective. It's not keeping with it, but it created something interesting and unexpected. And how to use that right? Finding your inspiration and creating something unexpected. So from there, uh, is about the moon. Are we re to the moon yet? Yeah, I think we are. Okay, let me pull up the Okay. Thanks. Computer. The one called Moon. So the moon end Let me pull up. Let's go to the one called Textures. Textures Here we go. So these air the moon textures that I was using And actually it's really only these two, but the other one could work as well. So this is just a cookie sheet, right? Well used. Well, of lots of cookies made on this that were delicious, right? We can see sort of the gunk. It perfect for textures I use. This is funny. I'm seeing this more and more online of other people using this very one. Since this texture came with the book, eso is showing up all over the place. So your own cookie sheet you don't have to use mine is hasam, right? You can just take pictures with really anything and add textures to it. There's so much you can dio with that. This is some some rust that I found out near my where I grew up there. So if I take this so there's a few different things that I want to do. One. Sometimes it's cleanup work, and we don't really talked about cloning or healing or any of that yet. But one of the things that perhaps during photo shop week you discovered was how to do content aware fill. Right. So getting to use that that feature in practice here. So in general, if I don't like this patch, I can very quickly it's locked around. What am I doing with this track? Pad was nonsense. Okay, I can de select with command D Um, okay. And it's funny. I think it was better with a track pad. Uh, so I'm just gonna go around, actually May have wanted that last one. Let's say I want to keep that one. I can hold down Option or Ault And it will go into subtraction mode where I can just take a little subtraction piece from this. Uh, so typically I might want to to do this non destructively on a new layer for this purpose word. I'm just gonna bring it in and copying, pasting, and we won't be able to recognize anyways. I'm not. So the shortcut. A shift delete on their or shift backspace. I believe if you're on PC, then by default, it should be content aware fill, although every time that I think that for some reason said it to black. So just make sure you're the contents itself, says content aware on, and that's where it's going to use. It's awesome algorithm to look all around on. Fill it in with pieces that don't exist. Sometimes you'll get a tree in there, or so I know who knows what Photoshopped does. It likes to mess with you sometimes, but for the most part it works really well. It's really cool. So I do command D to de select and again I can see some repetition. I can see where it got it, but for what we're doing, this could be great. Ah, a nondestructive way of of healing. Or let's say getting rid of this section is to do the spot healing tool. So if we get this guy, this top one spot healing tool on and you can paint in straight lines. I'm actually gonna do this with the track pad. Since it doesn't have pressure sensitivity on, I'm gonna make sure that sample all layers is toggle on This is that non destructive part. That's really great when you're healing things. So always make sure you're taking a look up in the options bar for every tool because there's some really helpful features in there. Okay, so with this one, I can click once Hold down shift and you can draw straight lines and Photoshopped with that click once hold down shift, Click. Another point is going to draw a to be kind of like a selection. Click once, um, and then click another one thing it can do that. So Okay, so we have this and again it's nondestructive. I can move this out of the way, but that's fine, so I didn't do it perfectly, but it did it just great. For what? From when I needing eso The next step is to actually go into this. Let's say a I did that go backwards here so we can see all our textures. Let me backtrack here. So there's that texture, right? Very similar idea. And then this is where I'm playing with blend modes. So this one sets overlay on top of that other one, right? Basically, just want to create this gnarly looking planet some kind of texture to it on. Then, of course, adding this other one, you may have noticed I'm just kind of focusing on the middle part where it might want a moon or the moon shape. For this is creating these radical colors that I may not want. So just putting ah, black and white adjustment on it much. Is this guy here bringing that capacity down to really again limit that pallet so always really helpful when you're trying to make things sink together is just limiting the opacity army, limiting the the color on there, So bringing it black and white eso with that afterwards, I was able to get my circular marquee tool elliptical marquee tool on. Then if you hold down shift while you're dragging out, it will create a perfect circle, right, just like constraining the properties when you hold down shift. That's great. So then, from there, I don't need to do what he selected mask or anything. I could put a slight feather on it, but really, it's gonna be just fine. So then I just created the mask from that circle, so at least have the shape, which is great. But I did this also as a smart object. So if I started to do this in, let's say ah, let's see you wherever it is Here moving Which one of my end? Oh, yeah. If I started to do this on its own, I can come back on and then turn all of those layers into a smart object, selecting all of them, right? Click convert to smart object. Now they're placed away with it already massed out. It's good to go. But now, since it's a smart object, I can start adding filters. So in this case, I did sphere eyes. So let me just demo what that is. Um, actually, we'll do it twice here, so I'll delete this late smart filters in general. OK, goodbye. So if I go up to filter and I go to what is it? Distort on and then sphere eyes. Here we go. So with this one, it is a good idea, especially since this isn't perfectly centered to make sure that this content is perfectly selected. So I made a quick selection of that by holding down command and clicking on this layer and what it just selects everything that had a pixel or visible content to that layer so that that's a good way to quickly do that. Now, when I apply my filter, it's gonna be to the area just where I want it and not slightly off. So gonna go up to filter, and then I'm going to go to what? Am I going to go to the story? I was just there, Right. Uh, let's see where my brain for it. Okay to store. It starts with D s, but I could do it. All right, here we go. If your eyes, um And so what's nice is it's a smart object, So this will be nondestructive. So do amount all the way. 100%. Don't mind how it how it currently looks weakens you might hear, But for sake of, here we go. It's no a moon. It's a spaceship. Okay, so with this, So you notice how it gave it. A little bit of dimension will do before and after, right? So it gave it just a little bit dimension just from a couple different textures. Few different textures put on there. Um, what's nice is I can do that again. Looks like it added a Didn't need to do that. They're, um and I could do it again. T give it even more roundness. So do the last filter that you did is command f. Then it will automatically want toe. Apply it again on and there you go. So now we have something of more round. You'll notice, though, that it took away some of the detail. So if I have time, I'll show you where I added in just another texture that wasn't rounded. This is good for a base to show that sort of roundness that the shape of it. I'm sorry. The form of it, right. Where has that depth? But then I added a texture to re sort of populate with more sharp pixels because it did distort it and pull it. But it gets the gist of the idea, right? We're looking more less of a planet. So that's the idea with with the moon and then literally just bringing that into, um, into this This object your sorry into this group here. Well, where are we? Here we go. The ones that are colored. That's why color coded it. OK, eso here's that moon, right? So here's that's how that works. But how to make it blend in. That's where blending modes comes into play. So a lot of the fantasy landscapes is a combination of masking blending modes on all these different things. So in this case, I'm going to screen on Bennet's way too much. But that's the idea. Looks like it's seen through the hemisphere. Then It's just a matter of painting in some non destructive lights and darks is we're gonna clip aware that is not, uh, I don't know what I'm doing there. I'm gonna clip it later. That's not an adjustment layer, but it's just a layer itself by holding down option uh, or Ault and click between those two. So now whatever I paint on this layer, it will only affect that layer, which, in the case of a screen blending job, will make it disappear. So in moons, when we look at him in the sky, all the many moons we have, uh we don't see darkness, right? We just Seymour atmosphere, which is in the case of what happens here. Someone hit be for my brush tool, be hit d for the default. I'm just going to sort of paint this away right wherever I want. And wherever I paint, that's gonna be just a bit more faded. And you can, you know, match the lighting however you want. Use whatever brushes you want. But that's the idea, right? Only the light part's gonna shine through. And before you know it, there you go. You have a moon eso skip ahead to when it's coming out of the oven here. So I did that for both the one additional element that I added to that moon, a zai added just another piece of texture toe where it was especially distorted. And plus, I want a little more conscious in contrast, in interest up there. So I just added in a wedge, If we're gonna solo this, let's see command option? Nope. OK. One of those, like it had a right, is just showing it with all the different layers. I'm gonna apply that to it. Also playing with capacity, right is really important. So before it was a little bit too bright. So if we look at this the moon texture itself, that's a passing 30% right? So playing with passage e painting on should be good question. Yeah, yeah, it's maybe a multi part question. I'm wondering when it comes to doing. Um, some of the more, um, complicated images that you've done were, for instance, you built the house out of rock layers from something else. Are you building those files separately and bringing them in a smart objects? Or do you at some point abandoned the smart objects to Rast, arise them and work on them in the destination file? So for that one, I was still very much a monkey photo shopper. I had a rock in my pound. This will work. Eso I wasn't using smart objects at all. I didn't know about it when I did that. So you know, it is interesting to see my own sort of evolution. But now, however, what I would do, um I wouldn't do it out outside of maybe for some components, but without one, specifically, with so many little basically, I'm painting in photographs, painting photographs. I need all my masks to be there and to be there where I can edit them on the fly and to really make sure things are blended. So in that case, I want all the masks to be on whatever those layers are and not embedded inside a smart object where I can say I need to edit this and you're, you know, impounding and going in all these other ones. So great question. Yeah, I try to keep everything as much as I can. Not embedded in this case is helpful. Um, because then I can add the sphere eyes afterwards. So that's why that was important to make an invented smart objects. A good question now.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

Bret Malley - final image for Creating Fantasy Landscapes

Ratings and Reviews

Timary Lee
 

This is a great class. Bret is a terrific teacher and speaker. This is fast paced, however, and he does move quickly through things but that is actually a pro instead of a con to me. I absolutely loved his thoughts about creating your own gallery of 'stock' images, background and textures. I feel inspired by this class and capable of creating my own fantasy landscapes. Thank you!

a Creativelive Student
 

Very clear, practical and easy to understand tips that make significant and amazing changes in what otherwise will be regarded as a normal photograph - he brings normal to extraordinaire in a very clear and organized set of steps. Very well organized workflow. I loved this class.

Lynda Adlington
 

This was very good. I know Bret knew what he was doing when he was zooming through his layers, but I found it very hard to follow and really understand everything he was doing. I nice chap and good class.

Student Work

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