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Open as Layers in Photoshop

Lesson 8 from: Lightroom Classic & Photoshop Integration

Ben Willmore

Open as Layers in Photoshop

Lesson 8 from: Lightroom Classic & Photoshop Integration

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

8. Open as Layers in Photoshop

Automatically combine multiple images as individual layers in Photoshop.

Lesson Info

Open as Layers in Photoshop

Now let's take a look at another method for opening our images in Photoshop. This time, we're going to use open as layers in Photoshop. That's where we're going to end up with one layer for each image we have selected, and the width and height of that document will be based on the widest and tallest of the images we had selected. This can be used for all sorts of things. In this case, I'm going to use it for trying to remove tourists from a photograph by taking more than one photograph and combining them. This is the end result I was looking for, and I was standing there with my camera, just waiting for a clean shot of my wife. There's Karen on the right there and these fingers that are coming out of the sand, but I wasn't able to capture that in a single shot. Instead, this is what I ended up seeing is there were always tourists getting their photos taken with these huge fingers coming out of the sand. And so Karen was doing a yoga pose here. And if you want to see this series, by the...

way, look up on Instagram the world is my yoga mat, and there's over 600 pictures in the series, but this is one of them. And so I took this shot and then I was able to get this shot. And unfortunately, when all the tourists were cleared away by that time Karen was done. Her face was all red from being upside down, and I couldn't get her to pose for me again. There were constant tourists that it was only a moment I can get a clean shot, so I'm going to combine together those two images. I have one image selected already. I'll hold shift and click on the second one, and then I'm going to choose photo edit in open as layers in Photoshop, and therefore we should end up with a new Photoshop document that contains a total of two layers. And now you can see over in the layers panel. We have one layer for each image, and if I hide the topmost layer, you'll see it reveals the layer that's underneath. But I was taking these photographs handheld, so my camera was moving, and if I turn this layer back on, you'll see the position of everything in the photograph shifts a little bit, so let's do something to try to get them to a line. I'm going to select both layers. The top layer is already selected. A hold shift and click on the bottom layer. Then I'll go to the edit menu, and that's where I'm gonna find a trois called Auto Align Layers in Ottawa line layers. I'm just going to leave all the settings alone, which means it will just be set to Otto and I'll click. OK, that's going to use the same technology would use to stitch a panorama to align those images. So now, if I hide the top layer by turning off its eyeball icon and I turn it back on, you'll see everything's in about the right position. Then I'll work on the top most layer, and I'm going to add a layer mask so I'll go down here. Then I'll grab my paintbrush tool and I'll paint with black because black hides things when working on a layer mask. I'll use a soft edge brush, and I'm gonna paint where these tourists are so that I hide them and I reveal the version of the picture that's underneath. I'll do the same thing over here on the left. So if I were to hide the picture that's underneath, you'd see we just have a whole, you know, some missing areas in the top layer that are filling that in. And therefore I can get the image that I wanted to. The only other thing I'd probably do in this case is crop the image because when it aligned the images, it had to bend them a little bit to get them to be in the same alignment so I could grab the crop tool in this pool is in a little bit Professor Turner enter when I'm done, and then I could just save and close the picture. I'm not actually going to save it in this case, though, because if I go back to light room, I already have a version that I did earlier, and it is sitting right here, so I don't need two versions now. The only thing I need to do in addition to what I've shown you here is if I apply to any adjustment settings to one image, I'd want to make sure identical settings were applied to the second image. And you can do that usually by selecting both images when you head to the develop module. And just make sure the setting near the lower right called Auto Sync is turned on before you start adjusting any of the images. When that's turned on, then any adjustment I apply to this picture will also apply to any other picture that is selected at the same time. I make those adjustments, and so that is load files in Photoshop layers and use it all the time. I'd say at least once a week. Next, we're going to explore how you can make some unique layers in Photoshop that will make the integration with light room a little more useful.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Handbook
Lightroom Class Catalog and Images

Ratings and Reviews

Carl Grooms
 

Fantastic, clear explanations of these features. i have a much better understanding of how to go back and forth between LR and PS. Thank you Ben. this is must watch class for anyone that uses LR and PS

Student Work

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