Lessons

Lesson Info

Lens Flare with Filters

(singsong) Bubbles Alright Glorious bubbles! I love this technique. (Simon laughing) And again. Simon's gonna take it away on this. But I really want to reiterate that this is for you to extrapolate on. This might feel a little bit like a one-trick pony but it's not. It's actually trying to think about filters in a way that they weren't intended for and really expanding on them so. So this is a great demo. This is the one where we open up the morning with having a filter do something it wasn't intended to. So some guy sat there and he goes, "Oh wow. Here you go, this does this." And you take that and you go, "Yeah, but maybe you can make it do something else, too." Alright, well there's step one, that's livin' man. That's really havin' fun; that's playin'. Now take that, throw another filter on top of it. Make it do somethin' completely different. Now you're two steps removed from what you were looking for in the first place. When you can get three and four, that's when I was, "H...

ey! Wake-up. You gotta see this." Yeah You'll hear that around the house a lot, too. This-- That was too much information. Huh? That was too much information. Oh, rewind that part. Alright so we got this little cute girl, in a field, she's lovely. We wanted to put bubbles floatin' in the air, make her even 10% cuter, still. If that was even possible. We succeeded. Here we go. We started, we did three different filters. We started with a lens flare, which we are somewhat familiar with, knowing that it's Lisa's favorite-of-all-time-filter. From that, I found a way to make a metal sphere. And it's using Polar Coordinates. It was kinda a hidden little thing: you saw it; you knew it was nuts; you didn't know what to do with it. Found out how to take a Lens Flare and do a Polar Coordinates with it. Let's uh, walk me through because I might forget how to do it. Why don't you do this? Why don't you call up your keynote for just one second and let's just give 'em a visual? So, on the handouts, and you're definitely gonna want the handouts for this section because these steps can be a little bit confusing. And it's confusing for us and we make these things all the time. So on the handouts, what you're going to see from making the Polar Coordinate with a Lens Flare. You're gonna follow step 1, 2, 3, through and then afterwards, your gonna make a brush. Leave that up here and I'll do-- I am. I'm gonna walk you through it. So what you're gonna do, is your gonna make a square document. The size doesn't really matter, especially for this because it's an effect. The idea is that we're gonna make a bubble brush. So the resolution doesn't have to be huge. But you wanna make a square, okay? And once you make that square document, you're gonna fill it with black. Alt+D-- We love black. X+X+Opt. Black's a lovely color Awesome. And now you're gonna go to your rent filter. (singsong) 'Cause we love filters. Filter. Render. Polar Coordinates. No, uh Lens Flare. Oh, excuse me, Lens Flare. You need a Lens Flare first, pardon me. Down to Lens Flare. We love Lens Flares, as well. Whatever pops up, they all pretty much work. The default's pretty good on this. The default works lovely. Alright. From here, we then-- Now this is where you're gonna pay attention. Okay, now we go to Distort. Polar Coordinates. And I believe it goes-- And right here, this is where you pay attention the first one. Polar to Rectangle. Polar to Rectangle, the other one. It does not default to that. And that's what you're lookin' for. You have a screen capture of that-- They will have it. Hit OK. Then, you gotta flip it, yeah? Yes, you're gonna go to Image. Mode. Image Rotation. Flip Canvas Vertically. Whoa. Image. Mode. Image. Image, Flip? Image, menu. Image Rotation. Flip Canvas-- Flip Vertical Yeah and et voila. Then filter again-- Oh, excuse me. Huh? Was that right? Yes. Yeah, it looks right. Yes, sorry. Down to Distort. Over to Polar Coordinates. So we go back to Polar Coordinates. But this time-- Do the other one. Danger Will Robinson. You click the other button. Boom! Holy smokes. (singing) La! Alright, that's just too tricky. I dig that. From this now, I've used this and you've got the chrome thing You can make bubbles, you can make balloons. I made a certain-- Mylar balloon? A certain motion picture agency has as their mascot, a mouse, and they wanted this mouse to look like balloons. Like a balloon animal. I did this, stretch the balloons into a mouse-shaped balloon animal. You can distort this using the Distort function. In whatever character you needed. Then they said, " can you make him gold?" and I said, "Yes, I can make him gold." And I made him gold. Alright, so here's the next tricky part. Now, the idea here, to make Bubble Brush, is you need to actually make a brush. So what you're gonna need to do is, we have a handout on this. You want to call your keynote up for one second? Okay. Alright, so here's what we're gonna do here, is we're gonna make a brush. So what you need to do on his file, and Simon's gonna walk you through this in one second. Is you're gonna first, need to make it black and white. And invert it. How you do that is your choice. On this one, you can go ahead and walk 'em through this and I'll talk 'em through it. But I want you to, don't forget the graphic. These graphics are not designed necessarily for you to read on the screen but when you get the program, you'll have them, you'll have 'em High-Res and you can read these really beautifully. So, however you make it black and white, I don't care. I happen to have used a black and white Adjustment Layer and Invert. You don't have to do that on this. You could just do it on the Flat file, doesn't matter. Right. It's not so precious because that took him two minutes to make that. Make plenty. Do it on a flat file, who cares? So make it Grey scale and Invert it. CMD+I for Invert. Invert. And now you need to Mask it. Very important, you need to Mask it. How you Mask it, that's your business. How do you Mask it? Uh, Marquee Tool?-- We live in-- Hit SHIFT+M, I'm gonna get a circular. Or OPT+M-- Who is that artist who was great at drawing a circle by hand? Giotto? I think it was Giotto. Yeah, he was an Italian Renaissance. He could draw a perfect circle with his hand. I, unfortunately, cannot draw a perfect circle: I am not Giotto. So I use the Marquee tool, I do not path it out. Because I cannot draw a perfect path with a circa; wish I could, so we use the Marquee Tool. This one, I use a Path, 'cause my Marquee's are not workin' but-- Again, exact same career, different methods. It doesn't matter how you get to Rome, it's how you get to Rome. Well, it's just not workin' right now on this little computer. So I gotta-- That's cool. Alright, so I gotta load that. I'm gonna CMD+J that, so that's now floating. Excellent. So what Simon did, he used the Shape Tool, shaped in a circle to make a selection. And now he just cut out the circle. It's perfect, it's done. So on our brush, I need a white background though, right? Yup. So that's why your gonna delete it. You're just going to have a floating layer. I am? Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So this-- You're so agreeable. Huh? You're so agreeable. Yeah well, I try to get along. Alright so this brush you're lookin' at, we inverted it because you want to lay down the paint; we're gonna paint light. It's going to lay down the paint on the light part of the bubble. The bubble's inverted so the highlights, are gonna get the white paint. So you gotta think backwards a couple times. But follow these steps, you'll get it. So basically, the black is where the paint is gonna lay. So now you need to define this as a Brush. That's under Edit. Define Brush Preset. That's right and oh, we have a brush class coming up. And the brushes in Photoshop are amazing, now. (singsong) Oh, you're gonna like it. Uh, Bubble Brush. B-U-B-B-L-E B-R-U-S-H. Now where the magic is gonna come in here, is all about the Brush Settings. You need to go to your Brush Settings, under your Window. Window. Brush Settings. Now, you don't have to write this down now, 'cause it's written down for you but this is were all the magic has to happen. You don't even have a choice about this. So where I like to start, is the Brush Tip Shape. So the genius about this is: look at all these choices. The hell of this is: (Simon laughs) look at all these choices. (students laughs) Alright, so if you start with the Brush Tip Shape, what you wanna do is, you wanna handle your spacing. It will give you a little-- So you're separating your brush. Down at that bottom one. So this is right in a row. (students laughing) This spreads them out. I think at this moment, I think I have to say: Don't panic. Like when you first start with the brushes, it's, "Oh my god! There's some many choices!" It's all cool, take your time, it's written down. Start with the Brush Spacing. And then we are going to move to Shape Dynamics. What spacing did you have, I'll follow along. I have, I liked 125%. 125 coming up. 125. Now, keep in mind, That had to do with he size of the file I made. I want everyone to hear me. The spacing depends on the Pixel size of the brush that you make. So the brush that I happen to have made: the pixel size was 200. I'm getting a little technical here, don't be afraid. The brush, I made, that is on the handout. That pixel count is 200. The brush he made is 175. It does not matter, it just means when you make your settings, the distance, the pixels length between this is going to change. Based on how many pixels you've made your brush. Alright? So that's the first Danger Will Robinson. Watch-out. Just make sure: if when you put in the settings that I have listed; if your bubbles are touching; don't panic. Just change your setting, okay? Alright, so let's go to Shape Dynamics. Next step down, Shape Dynamics. And this is where we do Size Jitter. Now on mine, I did 59%-- 59? For Size Jitter. So this is just going to say, it can be, how big was my brush? Big or small. So 200 pixels I think. Keep on goin' all the way down. And you control how much smaller, or how bigger, it goes. Pen Pressure, for control. Now, we haven't talked about this yet, so take a moment. I am trying to put my edit button on but look, If you are going to be a Finisher or Re-toucher for work, you need a tablet, period. Powered with graph, you just do. Now if you don't have a tablet, you can figure out how to do this without pen pressure control; I'm just not the person to help you with that. Because I only use a tablet. Must you have a large tablet Lisa? Alright, let's talk about this. Hold it up. Go ahead, do it. Alright, I'm a size queen; he is not. (laughter) Now it doesn't matter. And frankly, this is a small tablet for me. I like the big, big one. And he has worked on smaller tablets. It doesn't matter, I think we make the same amount of money a year. It doesn't matter; he likes small, I like large. Yes, but you can't put that inside your motorcycle jacket. No I cannot. And take it to work on a motorcycle. Point taken. (students laughing) That's important, man. But this fit's in a pillow case. Great, so let's go ahead and go with the Shape Dynamics. So we got Pen Pressure, 6%. 6% And the rest of it, I have left alone. And let's go to Scattering. So these are the two-- (whispering) Scattering. So the spacing at the front and the Scattering here, I usually dance back and forth between. So if it gets, well, you'll see. Well, when you add Scatter, these things will start moving around. And if they move off your preview there, I'll jump back to my Brush Shape and bring the Spacing down, a little bit. So I just dance back and forth until I see in this preview here, what I wanna paint. And now, he's got it set at Not Both Axis, I had both axes checked. Is it axes, plural? I click it on Both Axes. Turn that off and on for a second, though. So it just shifts. Look, this is not baking. But baking you have to be very precise. This is more like sauce making. Yeah. So you can, kinda play with it a little bit? Let's keep going-- And as you're laying it out, when you're paintin', if you're not gettin' enough bubbles, you just have to throw down a couple of extra paint strokes. Or go back and change your settings. Yeah. Again, not to precious here. So let's keep going. We've got Pen Pressure, we've got Count, 12. Woof, okay so here's where this maybe, No I don't wanna see that, I don't wanna paint that many. So I'll go back to Spacing and space them out some more. This is what I love, this is where he and I both do the same jobs often. And he did his very dispersed and I did a bunch of bubbles. I did the bubble bath thing, I like a lot of bubbles. He didn't, there's no right or wrong. It's whatever you like. So, anyway, can we just give them the numbers that I have? Just for now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you humor me for a second? What's your Count? My Count is 12 and my Jitter is 47%. And once again Pen Pressure. Up here? No I'm sorry, Both Axes, the percentage is 78.5. Got it. Pen Pressure? Yeah? 12. Pen Pressure. And then 12. 12 here? Yup. And then the next one down, 47. 47. And then Pen Pressure. Pen Pressure again? Again. This is just personal. And why I got to these numbers? Was, I was just playing and I went back and I went, "No, I want a little less." Again, not to precious. Let's go to Transfer. Transfer? There. You all have this on the handout, so no freakin' out. Opacity Jitter? Uh-hmm? 27. Got it. Control Off. Off. Flow Jitter, 20. 20. Pen Pressure and that's it. Pen Pressure? And that's it. Yes? Uh, yes sir. Okay. Cool. So let's just call that a Brush. Okay, you wanna save it yet or-- Yes. Let's stop-- Or test drive it. Stop, stop, stop, stop here. Very important. I think this is critical. You need to decide, whether you're gonna save your pen. I know this is a little low on the screen, but if you're gonna save your preset now or later. You do not need to save this now, but, what you have to know is: every change that he just made is not permanently saved with that brush. Until you click that button. So don't save it, we can save it afterwards. But just go ahead and paint. This is critical, that you understand this. Because how many of you have spent all this time making a brush and then closed out Photoshop and then Oh my god, it's gone! Okay. And we'll go back to her? Yup. Here's our girl. Makin' new bubbles. Yeah, We should call her Bubbles. Yeah, sure. Her name is Bubbles. B, uh, paintin' with white. Aw! And there they are. I'm gonna add um, Darkening. Alright, so couple things going on here, These bubbles, especially on screen versus print. Which is another business conversation. When you're working on screen, but the job is going to a print, how things appear is a little different. On this screen, it might look a little light. So, he is going to put a Darkening Layer underneath. So he can actually see the bubbles more. It might not be what you actually do for the job but for a screen you might need it. So on that note, we will often do jobs where we'll do a technique like this. And a filter and then we'll print it. And when it comes out, it's too much or too little. And then we'll make adjustments after the fact. And there it is, start layin' them down. And there you have it. Um-hmm. And sometimes you need to double up the layer. Because it's just a little too thin. And you might make a duplicate of your layer. So then once we have that and we do like that. Now we're gonna save this brush, yeah? Yeah, now this is really important. Please get in the habit of saving your brushes. As I said here at CreativeLive, we have a whole class on the brushes. The brushes in CC 2.18 are marvelous. That's all I have to say. They're absolutely marvelous and they're kinda complex. So we'll have a whole big, huge run-down on it. But the base of it is you wanna save 'em. And you wanna give it a name that you understand. You can include the color or not. You can also choose something different later and you're not committed, necessarily, it's flexible. But please try to remember to save your settings. 'Cause that takes a while to figure out those things. And it's a little frustrating, if you forget to save it. Once you got, man, you wanna have it in your bag'o'tricks. Cool.