Advanced Selection for Layer Masks
Rafael "RC" Concepcion
Lessons
Class Introduction
04:00 2Quick Ways to Make a Selection
13:03 3Create a Layer Mask
14:24 4Adjustment Layers Overview
10:11 5Burning & Dodging on a Smart Object
04:56 6Quick Color Correction With Layer Masks
06:22 7Advanced Selection for Layer Masks
13:01 8Smart Objects & Layer Masks
17:12Lesson Info
Advanced Selection for Layer Masks
you are going to run into some problems when you're doing this right, because it's not just it's not just making an adjustment, making an adjustment and and you're done. Sometimes you need to be able to add other things, too. This, like sometimes you'll need to be able to add sharpness, or you'll need to be able to add a specific filter to stuff. When you do that, what will happen is you're going to run into a problem here because you're really not looking at the totality of everything that you're working with in one spot, right? This image on Lee looks the way that it does, because it happens to be a collection of all of these individual layers. So whenever you're doing something, let's say like a sharpening effect or if you're doing you know, some sort of below or D focus, what are you going to d Focus? Are you going to be focused this or you gonna be focused there? So you're gonna be focused? This doesn't work that way, right? I'll show you Look, filter. Let's go Teoh noise. I know ...
sharp it. We'll go ahead and we'll go to sharpen and we're gonna sharp it and nothing is gonna happen. Right? Or if you just go to filter, you gotta sharpen. And you gotta unsure, Mask. Nothing is here, right? Because Oh, wait. There's something here holding your white right, because what's happening is you're basically applying Annan sharp mask to this mask. That's not gonna help you at all. Right? So what you need to do is you need to have the totality of all of this stuff kind of in one layer. In order for you to be able to apply something, you could do it. Uh, well, you could do it this way. If you go to layer and under layer, you can go to flatten image. You can grab a couple people like No, don't do that. That's not good. Right now. You can do it. Filter on sharp mask and you'll be fine. What's the problem with doing it this way, though that's destructive, right? I mean, none of those effects that have all of a sudden let's be honest. I kind of like the red hat and the orange doesn't look so good. Right? So if I needed to be able to go back yard director goes, but I wanted the hat really read were messed up. So instead, what you want to do is you want to be able to put yourself in a position where you grab all of these things and you merge them all together into making a new document or into a new file. But you want that file itself to be a layer so that you can apply effects to it. So the option for that is something called layer an under layer. You have an option called merge visible and you'll see that there's a keyboard shortcut, right Shift command and E. And what that does, is it? It's almost kind of like flatten images saying any layer that has an eyeball on it emergent. But that still didn't work that sucked. Don't do that. We're gonna add a modifier to this. So we're gonna go to image, aren't we? Go layer an under layer. I'm gonna go to merge visible, but I'm gonna add the option key as well. So it'll be option shift command e, or that's into called the claw. So you got to do the claw and e right you're not. If you don't get a cramp. You're not doing it right. Right. So we're gonna do all three modifiers option command shift and then e Once you do that, you're gonna notice that here we have all of the individual adjustments that we did. And then on top of that, you have this new layer, and that new layer happens to be the some of all of the adjustments that we did previously, which I think is pretty cool. Now I congrats that layer and I could do something different to that mayor. Let's say, for example, I wanted to do a sharpening effect, and we won't necessarily talk too much about the sharpening side. But let's just say that we do. People tend to do something like a high pass sharpening effect, right? So what they lose, they'll go filter will goto other, and we'll go toe high pass. And the high pass looks like this. It's basically a grave sheet of paper, so tend to look at the easiest way that I tell people to think about High pass is Imagine if you were looking at a piece like a picture, but you took the picture and you went like this and you're looking at the picture this way. And then that slider, the radius slider basically says, How much stuff do you want to pop out of that picture? If you drag the slider more, it's like it's like peekaboo, right? It's like you grab the cider and you're like, All right, well, you want more stuff, you want more stuff, you more less stuff, left stuff, less stuff. So inside of here, we got the radius slider and you move it and you notice that stuff starts popping out. You could see a little bit of the edges here. I see a little bit of the edges here, basically just going once you do that and you get to a comfortable level right to taste, then you're gonna go out and Photoshopped and people were like, Well, I generally like to use a 24.5. They made the number up. Somebody went out there and they played with it like this number looks good. I'm a 24.5 guy, so it's to taste. So do something until you get it to you, see the edges of the document. I'm looking at the edges of the shirt I'm looking at the edges of hat the edges of the face, and then I'm gonna click. OK, once you have that said, What I want to do is I want to be able to take anything that happens to be gray and kind of get rid of it. Anything that's not gray. I wanted to be accentuated, and that's pretty much what you're doing inside a blend mode and creative life scar a bunch of stuff on how to be able to use blend modes and things like that. So make sure you guys check this out. I don't want to necessarily. It's not gonna be a blend mode class, but you can learn a lot from there. But I will tell you kind of a quick, short of all of this stuff that if you don't know what they do, there's always a good hint here, right? If you click, you see how you have this section right here, which says darkened? Anything that's in here between these two lines will just do this dark in anything that's between these two lines will do this so anything between the lines will do the thing that's at the top so anything that you lighten screen color dodge, letting your Dodge all of that suffer just different. Either Hugh or intense variations of something that's gonna lighten something multiply color Berlin your burn or just a few variations of thing. Making things darker. Tom. It is. And I'll show you another way that people tend to work with stuff. We have a soft light. I'll zoom in to our friend here, take a look at Let's take a look at his chin and his shirt. Now, I don't know if I like this. We're not great, but I haven't said it soft like another quick tip. Hit the letter V to get into the move tool. Once you're in the move tool, I'm gonna use shift and plus and minus. Don't hold on the shift in the plus and minus and now watch over where it says softly hard, like vivid life. Linear like pin like hard makes difference. Exclusions. Subtract, divide Hugh. I can't tell you how many times people just sit around and go. I don't know if that's necessarily what I like. Let's go check other ones. People, people. Uh, yeah, that's what I'm talking about, right there vivid light. Alright, Don't get involved in the well. You know, technically vivid light does the court who cares visually. See it. Use your move to shift plus and minus spinal what you like. Now that you see it, it looks really good. My question to you is Do you want it on everything? Probably not brain Couple places that you would not want it. Grain. You would not want it If you're doing, let's say that you do something you do a picture of a tree with some Kyle's in the background You would want the treated probably to be pretty sharp but you don't want Kyle's in the background to be pretty sharp You want to selectively sharpen something rain If you have a little baby holding a rock I don't know why you would have a baby holding rock But if you had a baby and it decided to hold Iraq you would want the baby to be nice and soft and you would rock I'm unless it was like a biker baby But if you there there Um but then the baby would be holding the rock and you want the rocker. Had people have details. All right, when you deal with sharpening anything that has to do with sharpening, there's almost always 3 to 4 levels of sharpening that you should do to a picture when you're printing during. So let's just take a quick, tangential jump for that rain. When you sharpen lets you shoot. Draw versus JPEG. If you shoot JPEG, your camera will do contrast color sharply. If you shoot raw, your camera turns around and says, You do it. If you import into your camp, you import into your computer in raw, and you don't at that sharpening. You're literally at minus one because your camera would have done it had you let it. So any time that you should need toe. Anytime you import with a raw file, you should always sharpen, and they call it pre sharpening or camera sharpening. It's the sharpening that you should have added had your alleged camera shoot J back. Once you do that, the second thing would be Do you have you know, a baby holding Iraq in front of a tree with clouds Rock would get the sharpening baby won't get the sharpening tree would give the sharpening clouds don't get the sharpening. It's selective or creative sharpening. You add emphasis to specific areas to be able to do that. Once that's done, that's the second shopping once that's done, if you print towards cannabis, you would sharpen. If you print towards campus, that's going to be this far away from you. You would sharpen less if you print towards campus that's 25 feet away from me. You sharpen the snot out of it. If you did a portrait, Siri's of a couple and you shot it at 1. and two people in the subject over here is kind of OK, and the husband of the bride is like super sharp. You sharpen the snot out of it rain, so I usually tell people if you got out of focus, what you do is over. Sharpen it and printed on canvas. You mean you don't have to worry about it? Yeah, like it's That's it's art. It's totally cool. But you want to selectively sharp in all of this stuff, So those are the different types of sharpening that you would do in this. What I want to do is I want to selectively sharpen this. If something is in both. Okay, Depth of field shallow. You don't want to sharpen that stuff. So what I'll do here is I'll grab this same thing that we did before, right? We're gonna create a mask. Every time I click on the mask icon, it's gonna make a new mask. At that point, we're going to invert it and then paint it back in quick keyboard shortcut. If you go inside of here and you take this mask and you option click the mask, it automatically creates the mask and hides it. Now we can come back in here and go. All right. Well, his skin looks luxurious, so but I want some crackle in the beard and the goatee, so I'm just gonna paint that there, paint out there, Ain't that there? You know, I want some on the shirt and will do that. And let's just say that maybe I want some of the bottom part right here. A little texture on that option. Click on this. That's the mask for sharpening that we were doing for that. I didn't want to hit. The background is the background was a little out of focus, so don't wanna had too much to that. But that's very, very different from where we were here during. I still don't like that hat, so get rid of that. Not bad.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Dave Sordi
Great class. Lots of really important tips. RC is really good at understanding what question a student might have even before the question is asked. Highly recommend this class.
Zolti
It is a pleasure to watch him, and he manages somehow to keep your attention from the start to the finish without realizing the passing of time, He explains the do's and don'ts with Layer Masks, how to use each of them and when, I just simply loved the instructor and the class. He is one of my favorite instructor from Photoshop Week 2018, and if I could not buy all the bundle, but I would buy some classes, his are definitely chosen.
Mark Koller
Awesome class, love RC's style. Intro to layer mask is loaded with goodies.