Lessons

Lesson Info

Simulating a Drawing

If we want to simulate a drawing, the main thing I want to do is to simplify the detail in an image so let's look at various methods for simplifying detail because when you draw something it's rare for you to draw every little speck of texture that's in something if you look at the original picture in here on you look at every little thing there's so many small areas of detail that toe have that all drawn is going to be too complex and so we want to simplify the image. The first thing I'll do is turn into a smart objects, so any change I make I can easily turn off or change his settings on, and then I just want to show you your various choices for reducing detail while still maintaining the overall shape of stuff in your picture. You don't have to apply all of these things most of the time you pick one of them, whichever one you think would be most appropriate, but I'm going to apply all of them just so you can see what they do so first off I go to the filter menu I can choose noise an...

d there's a choice called reduce noise and so noises really fine little specks of detail and your image might not be noisy, but it might contain little bitty specks of detail that we can fool photo shop into thinking that their noise so all we need to do is come in here, reduce noise and make it so it's maxed out with its strength so it's really powerful when it's trying to do that in where it says preserved details will say don't preserve the details and that should cause it to start to simplify our image um doesn't really matter what the color noise is set to because that's only gonna affect variation in color and we're not really attempting to do much there and then sharpened details I don't want it to sharpen any details I wanted to keep him soft and so let's see what that's done to our image if you look at this portion of my image I'm just going to click on the preview and that will cause it to show you what you used to have and this is what we used to have gonna let go and here's what we have an ending up with and you see the start of starting to simplify the image now we could try to apply that filter more than once and it might be more aggressive then we're trying to get rid of detail but instead of applying it more than once I'm going to show you your other options for reducing detail another filter that I used frequently is also found under the noise sub menu and it's called median and with media and unless you bring it up to a really high setting usually it's going to maintain the shape of things like here with a really high setting, you notice we still have a sharp edge between the roof of the sky. Bring it down, though we just want to bring it up enough to get rid of fine detail, probably around five in this image, uh, I'll turn preview ofthe you'll see before lots of detail after not as much detail, but I constituent recognize that shape of a lot of things I can still tell where there's a diagonal on this wind male support that kind of thing uh, then other things you could do, you could go to the filter menu, choose blur. The problem is, a lot of the blur filters will give you a soft edge. I want to maintain a nice crisp edge here where the building's roof stops in the sky begins so a lot of the blur filters are not going to be as useful, but there is one called surface blur surface. Blur tries to blur just where you have some variation in brightness, not where there's a huge jump in brightness so not where there's this big edge more like where there's really fine detail and so its surface blur in order to get rid of detail your turn it up a bit, probably somewhere in the twenty's for a normal resolution image then you have threshold which controls how much of the image it's able to blur if you turned all the way up it's just gonna be blur and stuff as you bring it down it'll work on less and less of the image so depends on how detailed your images on dh how large it is as far as what setting should be used here and in this case I think I'm gonna have to get it down into the twenties yeah, there we go if you want to see what it's doing, I'm just going to turn preview ofthe here's before here's after you see how we're getting rid of mohr fine detail especially in the dark portions of the image but I can still recognize shapes like this little diagonal member on our um this is the base for a windmill other things we could use then teo get the look of a drawing now that we've simplified the detail. So now that we got down to none of the fine detail left let's start trying to get it to look like a drawing and it's going to resemble a trying it's not going to be an absolutely precise one because I'd have to do things like mask the filters that I'm working on two control exactly where they're applying that kind of thing but the filter that I want to apply is usually found in the filter gallery and it is called cut out it's right here at the top if I can zoom out on the picture a little bit tell and we have three different sliders here to control it a number of levels this is going to post arise the pictures you bring it down it's going to make it fewer and fewer colors left in the picture is you bring it up you get more and more colors in the picture it's a matter of finding the lowest setting that gives you the fidelity that you need in your picture so that's a little too lochs it's weird to have a blue log cabin kind of thing I need to bring it up higher so I can get the right colors in there I don't care if every little part of it is the right color just so overall it is in fact I think six look better we have edge simplicity if I bring it up it's gonna be a little too simple if you like uh you know the abstract you're welcome tto head high if you go down too low you're gonna end up with a little too much detail so you want to try to find what's the highest setting that still makes it look like the original subject matter and then we have edge fidelity in this image I doubt we're going to notice all that much of a difference with it click okay then what I'd like to do is have photoshopped trace around all of what's left to add like black lines as if I used a pen in trace around all these areas to accomplish that I'm gonna go to filter to style eyes and I'm gonna find find edges you see how it tried to find all the edges of those areas and draw lines around them the only problem with that is it put white in here and I'd rather have the colors we had a few minutes ago in these areas so there's one thing we need to change and that is if I look in my layers panel uh find edges there's this little icon to the right of it and if I double click on it it'll let me choose the blending mode that is used in the bloody mode called multiply mode is going to act as if you printed this on top of the image that's underneath using ink and if you did that this white part here you wouldn't use any ink so would leave left over whatever was already on the sheet of paper which is going to be considered whatever's under this or whatever was on there before so if I choose multiply now our lines apply two this is one way of making things look a little bit more like a drawing we went a little overboard with our reduction of detail because remember, I showed you every option that I used from reducing detail, I could come in here in turn off some of those by just turn off the eyeball, and it should re calculate all the other filters. And so if I used fewer of those, we would end up with more detail in iron result. Or if we use lesser settings on those, then you can end up with a much more detailed thing that would resemble morva drawn. Look, but it's up to you as faras what? Your preferences it's really nice, though, being able to turn on and off each one of these and have a completely re calculate. The other thing I could do is if I've done all this work and then I decide, well, this might not be the best photograph to use. All we need to do is go to the layer menu, too smart objects and say, hey, replaced the contents of that smart object. Just go find another picture. I think, uh, we had a picture of plane somewhere in here one of these. Well, why don't you use that let's? Use this click on place and it's just going to write, replace the contents, but then it'll re apply all those filters, so we have the same effect on a different image. This image is of much smaller image, though, so we probably need to use settings that are lower to get a similar effect or I'll just turn off a few of the the filters thing see how we can get a similar result. Any other questions? Let's see a question. This is a question from deb, who says my biggest confusion is what format to safer print or for a climate meaning, as a psd or a tiff would not work, but j peg loses detail. What do you recommend for this kind of detail? So if I have anything that how to say any time you have large areas of solid color, I would stay away from j peg or I mean, you can use j peg. The main thing is leave the quality setting as high as it can possibly go and onley save it a jpeg at the very end don't say that his j peg as a working file format where you're going to open it again tomorrow and do more work on it, do it as an ending file format just to send the client my original would stay in either photoshopped file for matter tiff, that would be my master file I keep in my hard drive. Then when a client needs that, they don't need the layers that aaron hear anything like that. If I need to save it as a j peg to save space, I'd save it is j peg with a compression, the quality actually turned up asshole as they can go. So the quality remains it's not compressed all that much, but this is going to do much better if saved us a tiff. So if I want to send it to a client, I would choose save as and when I say that as a tiff to give to a client, I would tell it not to save the layers. The file I'd keep on my hard drive, my master one would stop the layers, but I'm gonna give it to a client. Now I'll say tiff with no layers and when I save it here and ask you, um, if you would like compression and if you turn on the compression anytime you have large areas of solid color, this is going to compress down really nice with that. And so you end up with a much smaller file size so tiff would be preferred. Tiff will not degrade the quality whatsoever you can use, it is working file format where you open it, do more changes later. Okay have another saving question I and and you talk about this but maybe if you can review sure this is rex from reno who says regarding saving large files his tips our smart object layers saved in tiff and are there any features in psd saves? A tiff does not are there any features that a psd saves that a tiff does not uh overall tiff in photoshopped file format when you tell it to include layers are pretty darn equivalent I can't think off the top of my head of a feature that's not supported by tiff there are some features the other way around that aren't supported by photoshopped file format one is processing a thirty two bit image is an hdr through camera you need to have a tiff uh but in general they're pretty darn consistently side by side comparable. So I think of tiff is more of a universal file format where if there's a program that doesn't support photoshopped file format that it will probably support tiff and s o if I'm going to give it to somebody else and I don't know what software they're using, I would usually prefer to give them a two filed than a um photoshopped file format image michelle would like to know what's the difference between find edges and ink outlines find edges in ink outline so I'll have to go look att ink outlines to tell you yes, fact let's. Find it here. So I don't have the search. Oh, no found. And I'm not familiar with ink. Outline. Yeah. That's what I'm gonna find where is ink outlines? Because I'm not ask her if you can where it's located so I don't have to search brushstrokes ink ink outlines okay, let's, take a look in hk outlines we've a stroke length, intensity and let you have control over what's happening with ink outlines uh, but I mean it's a variation it's going to draw lines around the edges of things, but least in this case. Okay, just taking a while to calculate the main thing. Is it's still going to draw lines around the edges on? You'll have a little bit of control over it. Other filters that do similar things would be like there's one called trace contour. It traces a specific brightness level around your image will actually use it tomorrow and I can't think of one off the top of my head. But there is a one you can use for a placing find out just to still give you more control, and I'll discuss it tomorrow as well.