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Photoshop CC: Focus Area

Lesson 13 from: Photoshop and Lightroom Creative Cloud Additions in 2015

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

13. Photoshop CC: Focus Area

Lesson Info

Photoshop CC: Focus Area

All right, let's, get into our photo shop in photo shopped. There are all sorts of changes that have been made and it's somewhat of a random collection, so we're gonna have to spend some time looking at little bitty features that are kind of randomly dispersed without the throughout the image or the program. And there are other features that are much more in depth, and so we could spend more time on them and so let's just start getting in or images and adjusting them in messing with them in photo shop. First off, if you happen to work in light room and you're not used to it, you could go to the photo menu was a choice called edit in, and you have the choice of editing in photo shop. I never go to this menu because there's a keyboard charcot that's, very easy to remember and it's listed right on the right side command e what makes that easy to remember? Well, you want to edit in front of shops, so command you for edit know that when you type command e, it looks in your preferences. If y...

ou go to your preferences there's a choice called external editing in right here, it determines what happens when you send an image to photo shop with command e it sends you what color space that will be in it tells you bit that resolution and when you're all done if you were a guest type command as to save the image which file format what it used to save it a lot of personal preferences here depending on how you like to work but that's what's used to figure out what settings would be you saw it a type command e and hopefully okay it opens it photoshopped in this particular image I want to show you a feature that allows me to isolate on ly the areas in the image that are sharp so if you end up with an image with a soft background maybe it's something where in this case I like this butterfly this year are moth I don't know which one of the two it is probably off but the background I find to be a little bit too colorful I want to tone it down or maybe I wanted to look as if it was fall and with fall color this would be more of a yellowish or brownish or gold ah background and because it's needs to be used for a catalog that is going to do that well if I go to the select menu there's a choice here called focus area if I choose focus area there's a check box called otto which tries to have it automatically calculate what sharpen the image and what's not and sometimes it does a good job of it but if I find it ground where it went in and grab too much of the image or not enough, I can move the slaughter, called the infocus range, and if I end up bringing it down, we're gonna have less of the image I end up bringing it up. We're going to have more, so if you find it doesn't include enough, you can bring that up or down is you bring it up, you noticed these areas that are just not quite a sharp start appearing, and I can see if I can get that whole branch might have to back off a little bit to get the green background to disappear, but what I want is only the really sharp areas, so I'm actually going to use the auto setting just to see what it gets, and then I'll show you how this is really designed to allow you to have a little bit more control. You might think it's, not just a slider. If you look over here, there is a little brush with a plus sign and a brush with minus sign I mean grabbed the brush with the minus sign. I'm going to move my mouth and top of the image, and you see where some of the green background is showing through, I'm just going to put this brush on top of the green background, click and let go. And you see now it knows that that is an area that should not be included I'll move it also in this part of the green tapping let go this part happened look out I can use keyboard shortcuts if I want to to zoom up on the image or there's a zoom tool right here you could also utilize you could change the brush size the same way you change a normal brush using your keyboard the square bracket keys and I can come in here and click on various areas to define what exactly should be excluded if it messes up and if I get rid of too much there's a brush of the plus sign on it if I get the brush with a plus sign on it and I click I can tell it to include an area sometimes it's hard to tell what should be included because you can't see it you know it's it's already been hidden so at the top is a choice called of you and you can choose how you're viewing the preview if you choose overlay you'll find a red overlay that looks just like quick mask mode so it makes it easy to tell what's being excluded whatever is covered in red and if I go with that blood brush they had the plus sign on it I could come in here and paint across part of this to say this part here should also be included and it will try to figure out how to include that so I could come in here and try to get this branch and see if I could get the areas that I would like included makes sense, so that was just a plus or a minus, but I find this doesn't always do a great job if I zoom up really close on the image, and I'm critical of what it's doing look at this edge doesn't look kind of j g and not that great, well, there's a check box in here called soften edge. If I turn on soften edge, you'll find that that edge instead of looking jaggi, we'll get a little bit of a feathering in it. There is a choice in here called advanced in this is if the image has noise in it, it can try to calculate the amount of noise, and that helps it separate things. It doesn't do a good job, you could move it up or down to see if you can get it to improve it. But what I find to be most useful is to use this to get the general selection I'm thinking about and then there's a choice right here called refine edge if I click on refine edge, it will send me to a dialogue box immediately called refine edge, and I find our finance khun really help minor results we'll all I do is I click the button that said refine edge then I could move my mouse on top of my image and wherever I paint photo shop will refine the results so wherever it doesn't look good I'm going to come over here and paint on it and that's going to get photoshopped the chance of onley enhancing that area that I paint on and you'll find that each area you paint over he is going to get a better looking edge if this was a partially transparent thing because maybe it's emotion or something I could come over here and paint across the whole thing and it might do a better job so any parts of those leaves where I don't like her leaves wings where it doesn't quite look right just paint across them and it's going to find tune it and usually make it stick much better so the combination of that new feature along with refine edge I find can be very useful I'll click ok here now we have a selection and I want to leave the areas that are selected alone it's everything else I wanted to make a change to so I'll go to the select menu and choose inverse to get the opposite and now because I have the opposite I could make an adjustment layer or if I don't use adjustment layers I could go up here and let's say got a human saturation and I could say, make that background less colorful, or if I wanted it to look like fall color, I could say here let's, shift the color, try to get it over towards more fall colors or if it's not cooperating because it's multicolored could even turn on colorized force it. But whatever it happens to be, I've now isolated that area and it was based on what sharp and what's not the place I did to get to it is I went to the select menu and it was called focus area. You don't need to have any selection to start with so many questions or comments related to focus area. Yeah, it seems like that would be a pretty good way to select out when you've got hair or fuzzy things in the air, and you're trying to select as long as the background soft, but you're going to find that you always need use refine edge when it comes to hair, so this might be a good way to get the initial selection, then be sure he hit that button that was called refine edge and you'll find you have to paint over the hairs to get the semi transparent quality of a lot of hair toe look good, but you can be a good starting point.

Class Materials

Bonus with Purchase

Ben Willmore - Class Handbook.pdf
Ben Willlmore - LayerComps Example.tif
Ben Willmore - Lightroon Dehaze Preset Pack.zip
Ben Willmore - DeHaze Preset Pack Quick Start Guide.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

TimK
 

Got to "know" Ben during Photoshop Week and a few other courses. He has consistently been one of my favorite Photoshop instructors. He is extremely easy to follow, stays on point without being cold or boring, and is immensely knowledgeable on just about everything Photoshop. He does not disappoint in this fantastic in-depth review of some great new features in PhotoShop and Lightroom CC 2015 ... there are some real hidden gems in there for you. Ben polishes them up and serves them to you with extra info, insight, and pertinent examples. He goes the extra mile to answer questions and delve into related subjects without going off the rails. GREAT, GREAT course. Thanks Ben, and Creative Live! -Tim K.

Jose A De Leon
 

I just purchased this course today and it's wonderful. Ben is one of the best Photoshop instructors I've encountered. I had purchased the complete Mastery course and this one is a welcome addition since it covers new features. Even though Photoshop and Lightroom will continue to evolve, the basic techniques and tools used are basically the same, so I find myself going back to the mastery course if I hit a bump along the way. Ben's knowledge is second to none, but his true gift is the ability to transmit all that knowledge in bite size and understandable portions that are never boring. Someday I will have the privilege to know him personally, in the meantime I will continue to buy his courses as they come out. Such a wealth of information. Thanks Ben and CreativeLive!

Larry
 

Ben is a wealth of knowledge and covers the material beautifully. Highly recommend his workshops to others!

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