Lessons
Class Introduction
02:57 2Understand How Elements Works
05:53 3Importing Images
11:31 4Workspace Basics: Organizer
14:47 5Workspace Basics: Editor
16:12 6Tonal Adjustments in Quick Fix
09:59 7Color Adjustments in Quick Fix
07:58 8Apply Black & White Filters
04:01Sharpen an Image
03:33 10Fix Red Eye & Pet Eye
03:05 11Straighten an Image in Quick Fix
03:01 12Explanation of Photoshop Elements
08:23 13Basic Cropping in Quick Fix
14:13 14Guided Edit Overview
02:46 15Guided Edit: Tilt Shift
04:07 16Ways to Save Files
14:37 17Layers & Simple Selections
20:47 18Combine Images with Layers
15:34 19How to Use Layer Styles
15:11 20Make Selections with Layers
11:05 21Make Selection with Lasso
10:43 22Compositing with Multiple Images
17:11 23Refine Edge Selection on Image
19:52 24Use Refine Edge on Images
12:40 25Create Gradient in Image
02:35 26Gradient Map Differences
42:38 27Options for Saving
11:40 28Brushes Overview
15:12 29Creatively Use Brushes
07:19 30How to Change Brush Settings
07:17 31Use Shape Tool with Brushes
08:22 32Work with Multiple Shape Layers
08:53 33Finish Image with Custom Shape Tool
03:21 34How to Load Brushes into Elements
04:59 35Add Layer Style to Image
04:46 36Clip Image to Shape & Use as Template
05:49 37Retouching Overview
04:11 38How to Use Content-Aware Fill
05:47 39How to Use Content-Aware Move Tool
09:38 40Spot Healing Brush on Blemishes
08:53 41Remove Frown Lines with Retouching
05:51 42How to Remove Tattoos
20:32 43Remove a Gap in Teeth
03:52 44How to Whiten Teeth
07:17 45Adjust Facial Features
03:29 46Working with Type Overview
23:17 47Match Type for Image
12:11 48How to Manipulate Type Layers
08:02 49Create Postcard with Type
16:08 50Add Type on a Path
16:59 51Organizing Images in Elements
16:03 52Add Keywords to Images
19:49 53Smart Tags Overview
07:51 54Using Albums in Elements
24:52 55Places Workspace Overview
06:20 56Use Event Tags on Images
04:56 57Timeline for Image Organization
02:45 58Recommended Workflow
07:26Lesson Info
Use Shape Tool with Brushes
One thing that can be extra cool is to combine the brushes with shape tools, so we're gonna add that. Now that we've talked a little bit about brushes we'll add shape tools and then we'll use brushes to bring them to life. The shape tool is this little blob down here. It looks like a little amoeba or something. That is the shape tool and there are different shape possibilities. You may not see the amoeba. You may see something just like a rectangle, but I believe the keyboard shortcut is U. See if it'll pop up. Yeah, the keyboard shortcut's U. So if you are having trouble finding it on your tool panel, just press the letter U and then it'll pop up. You can do things, like there's stars, there's a polygon. You can determine the number of sides here. There's an ellipse, a rectangle, and a rounded rectangle. You can adjust the radius of the corners. That's really useful for making web buttons and things like that. But my most favorite is this guy right here. This is the custom shape tool.
So that means that there is a collection of all kinds of shapes that we can access. So whatever shape you're seeing right here, if you click this little arrow, it will pop up and show you all of these other shapes that are available to you. And in traditional Adobe fashion, this is only a small sample. These are just the default shapes. You'll notice they're really fun things too. Like there's hearts, there's talk bubbles. Can you imagine all the things you can do with that? Some animal shapes, some food shapes. Let's click, instead of just default, let's click this arrow and you'll notice there's categories. There's a whole category of talk bubbles. So look at all the talk bubbles that you get. But I usually end up just coming way up here and choosing All Elements Shapes. 'Cause I actually find, I don't know, sometimes I see a shape and then I get inspired by the shape. So I like to just browse all of them. So If we come up and do that, we see we've got a lot of animal shapes up here. And these fun cartoon shapes, these are the ones that the other Photoshops does not have, any of these cartoon shapes. Or these frames. Or, check this out, this is a fun, I don't know what you'd call that, almost a like a big paint splatter. There's star splatters. There's these silly little dress-up shapes. We'll take a look at those hopefully in a little bit. Anyway, you get the idea. There's a lot of just neat things here. I thought we could take a minute and just, I'll show you how these work and then we're gonna paint them in using brushes. So let's make a little scene here. I was feeling like an outdoor adventure. Maybe we'll make some mountain shapes. I'm gonna grab this mountain shape by just, if you click once, you've selected it and if you just double-click instead, then you select it and you close that window. So how shapes are different than anything else we've see so far is that they are actually vector information. So when we're painting with a brush, we're painting pixels and it's a much more organic process like what you'd be used to if you were at home just painting on paper. But now, we've got the shape tool. It's actually a vector graphic and it comes with a fill color. So we need to specify a fill. In this case I'm gonna just leave it orange because I'm gonna paint over it anyway. Maybe we'll leave it, we'll make it gray so it's more neutral, I guess. I've just chosen this gray color here. That's gonna be the color that fills this mountain. To use this, all I do is put my cursor in the image and I just click and drag. If I hold the shift key, it will be constrained to its original proportions. If I don't hold shift, I can distort it and do things like that, but it ends up looking kind of weird. So I'm gonna hold shift and we'll just make this little scene. When I let go, you'll notice two things happen. One, it appears here filled with gray. So that's nice. That's what we were expecting. And up here in the layers panel, we get this new layer and it's called shape one. And it has this funny little icon here. This icon is what let's us know that this is a shape tool and it's vector information, not just pixels. You'll also notice that over here in the document, it has this little funny outline around it. That is also letting us know that this is vector. That outline is just because it's selected right now. If I click on the background layer, the outline goes away and you can see that we're just left with the mountain. So it look likes pixels, but it's really a shape layer. Let's actually duplicate that quickly. I'm thinking how I wanna do this. Yeah, we'll do one more. Let's draw one more. We won't duplicate it. We'll just draw another one. We'll make it bigger. Like that and when I let go, we get a new layer and another mountain. That looks pretty good. I think I'm gonna actually move the big one. I'm gonna grab my move tool and move the big one over here. And the small one, so I'll select the small layer and we'll put that over here. I'm liking it and let's rename this. By double-clicking on the text, I can call this Mountain Small and this one Mountain Big. Okay. Now let's add a hillside sort of here. We're gonna make a little valley. From that shape tool, I guess, I'm gonna move away from the custom one for a minute and I'll just grab this elliptical one. And we'll make this a different color, just so we have some separation. And for this, I'm just gonna click and drag a huge ellipse. That's just gonna be kinda this hillside stretching. It's so wide that I'm just really getting this curve. And when I let go, it is still, oh I didn't change it down here. It's still gray so look at that. Now we'll make it green. There we go. And I'm gonna put the mountains, so they're, I can decide, I guess, if I want the grass in the back or in front. We'll go with that. Okay, we'll go back to this custom shape. And let's add a, over here, let's add a cloud in the sky. We'll do this one. I'm gonna double-click that. And I'll pick my color down here. Something like this. Oops, I have to get that unselected. There we go. So we wanna make sure that we've got this set over here so we're making a new shape and not just editing one that we already have made. Goodness. All right. We're gonna just draw this cloud first. Then we'll change its color by double-clicking over here and choosing the color that we want. There we go. So we have this little scene that we're starting to build. And this is all just shapes, so as you can see, they're all on separate layers in the layers panel. If I wanna move them around, I just have to make sure I'm grabbing the right layer and then I can move it as needed.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Patricia
Just watching this class live. It's my first class with Khara; she is a wonderful teacher, moving at a steady speed but always being careful to let us know what she's doing in the moment. I would classify myself as intermediate in terms of PSE but I've learned lots of little things that will make further use even easier and more fun. I really appreciated her descriptions of the difference between PS and PSE and her encouragement in using Photoshop Elements and all that it can do.
Lilygram
I have only been able to watch portions of this class but every single part that I have watched has been technically clear and inspiring to me. Based on this experience and the thorough, 58 item list of lessons, I will surely be buying this class soon! Thank you Khara and Creativelive for making a class on this topic and making it be super!!
Ven S
Great course. You can tell she knows the programme inside out.