Lessons
Lesson Info
Camera Raw Smart Objects
Frankly, almost anything involves raw files. Personally spend as much time in camera raw as I can. That would be the same as saying I spent so much time in light room as I can, because frankly, it's just easier. You know, in photo shop, when you have a brand new person photos, often you open a photo and say, Just change the exposure there. Like, um, I don't know where to do that because it's not obvious. Whereas in camera light room, they're sliders and say exposure blacks whites highlight, and it's just to me. That's just easier, however, by nature have to temporarily turn this off so I can show you. This is the way camera raw works by default. Excuse me, is that you make whatever change you want and then you click open image. It applies those settings. It opens it in photo shop. But when you look at the layers panel, you see it's as background, and that's kind of like saying it's almost like there's a big period background period. This is it. So there's any settings you want to chang...
e. You have to start over again because by default, the direction from um from Camerata Photo shop is a one way street, and if you don't like anything literally, your option is toe. Well, I better just start again. So there's a setting we can change in camera raw, which actually to turn off because I keep it on all the time, which creates a much more efficient what I would call to weigh editing Street. And we'll talk briefly about the light room aspect of this in a second. So what you have to do once in camera raw is when you open the photograph, you have to click on the option that says workflow options. And I'll give someone $50 right now if they can tell me where there's a button called workflow options and camera. There isn't one. It's to me and I hate to say it. I love things that Adobe does with this to me is a very poor interface design because see, at the very bottom where it says looks like a hyper link on a Web site, says Adobe, Rgb, blah, blah, blah. That's actually the workflow options button who go figure So a lot people miss that because they just it just looks like information. But if you click on that, there's actually really important information in there. Like how big a file sizes it do You want to be sharp, mond, etcetera, But down the very bottom you'll see, it says Open and Photoshopped as smart objects. Now you have to imagine that says From now on, open every image raw file into cameras. Smart object, cause once you turn it on, luckily it stays on from then on. And frankly, that's what I would do because here's the difference. And this is going to start to play a role when we start incorporating texture, etcetera. So I'm gonna make a bad adjustment. So to make it obvious now, the button at the bottom says open object instead of open image. And what that means is it's a subtle but important difference. Now, instead of that layer being called background, it has the file name, and if you look really closely, there's a little symbol on the corner of that thumbnail, indicating it's this thing called a smart object. And I'm doing another class later on about in more detail about smart objects and smart fellas overall, but for now, for this purpose This is what it means if you do photo shop style operations to it, unlike before, where if I did that and didn't like the exposure? Oh, well, Too bad here, this has created still preserved a live link back to camera raw so I could do whatever I want in photo shop and then say, You know what? Now I look at it a double click on the thumbnail. It goes back to whatever settings I had. Now I can adjust it and click OK, and it updates preserving whatever else you've done. So this does not happen by default, and that's the important message. By default, it's a one way dead end street end of story. In camera raw, we click that little check box and it goes back and forth all the time. So what that means for us is a number of different things, not the least of which is, for example, maybe you're trying to select the sky to do something with texture. But it's hard to see the difference between the sky and the building. So maybe temporarily, you deliberately over a just in camera raw to make the sky easier to see. Knowing that you'll put it back later because you can, because we talked about non destructiveness, this camera smart object by nature. Well, let me say, first of all, by nature camera on light room or non destructive, that's just the way they work. You can never like Oh, that's a permanent changes. That's just not the way that raw editing works. But by making this camera smart object. That means we now have this two way back and forth. So from an experimental standpoint, it's wonderful to say, I'm not sure. So let me start off with it under exposed, then add texture. Now that I've done that, I'll go back and tweak it more as you'll see we could even have. The underlying photo was a camera smart job and the texture as a smart object so you can adjust both of them, which is really interesting. Now I'm not gonna take the time to launch light room, but I'll just say to you that light room has a very similar function. So if you start with light room, the difference is if you use the command edit in photo shop, then it's a one way street. If you go further down that menu in light room, there's an option says Open as Smart Object and Photoshopped. So then, from light room, it applies the settings it opens in photo shop. Here's the only little catch to it and for light from users, this will throw you off the first time this happens when you double click on the thumbnail. You might expect that would jump back toe light room, but it doesn't. It goes to camera raw because for whatever technical reason, they have been able to go directly back and forth. But the settings are exactly the same, and the sliders are exactly the same, just a slight different interface. So if you've touched exposure and clarity and blah, blah, blah and light room when you open in camera, it will look exactly the same way. So as honest this sounds that goes like this light room, photo shop camera, raw photo shop, light room. So it's but it sounds way more comic A. This once you've edited. When you start with light room, when you close and save it, it jumps right back to your light room catalog with the name Dash Edit on the end of it. So you still have your original raw file. But I will have a second file, which is your Photoshopped document. With all this smart object stuff happening so again, sounds way more complicated than it really is in practice. To date, I haven't used camera raw, and I'm wondering, can I still open a smart object in Photoshop? And will it go back and find calm camera, or will it go back to light? I'm not quite sure what camera abroad is not be Camera raw is a built in program that comes when you install photo shop if you have a raw file. So if there's a file from your camera, that's whatever your camera indication is like any F for C. R w or whatever. Your camera is a raw file that when you double click on it by nature, unless you brought it into light woman imported it. It should just open camera. Now, as we'll see, you can also do it as a filter from within. Photoshopped even toe a non raw file. But if you just have a raw file that's just sitting in a folder and you double click on it unless you have some. Your camera has its own application that you have to sort of tell it not to. Typically, it'll it'll launch camera on by default, sues you click OK, it opens in photo shop. I think what I've been doing is importing all my pictures into light room and then going from there. But I can then still work as you've suggested, and then it will just automatically go back to Kameron. Eventually. Bring sure, and that's the point of that is, if you are using light room is your main tool than that works fine. It's just the key differences people have got in the habit because it's easy of hitting Commander Control E for editing photo shop, which is okay, but it doesn't give you that ability to continue to edit the raw settings. So the reason I spend time on this is because for me, when I'm doing stuff with texture, I find that I'm constantly going. Now that I have that texture, I want to adjust the exposure slightly, whereas, and if it's a if I've done it once, then I it's too late now, so I want to have both layers. Both the photo and my texture smart enough that I can constantly jump back and forth and continue to tweak them as we'll see. Okay, so quick. Question. If I've done that started camera raw, I save it workflow. So now it's great an object. And now I've got that layer just like this with a smart object. If I duplicate that layer, do I have a different set of different exposure on the duplicated layer? Know, however, there is a way to do it. So if you duplicate ah, camera smart object and it's an exact clone, meaning if I edit the camera settings, they'll both edit. So just as a quick example, if I went in here and said, Let's make this grayscale looked OK, you can see both of them are grayscale. Okay, so let's undo that. So there's a little trick to it. It's a command that I'm just by right or control clicking, but it's called New Smart Object via copy or via copy if you perceive it that way, which sounds like the same thing, but it means now it's a copy instead of a duplicate. So now if I double click on the top one and choose convert to grayscale and click OK, you can see now I have the ability. So that means I could adjust the sky on one layer and adjust the building in the other or whatever, so it opens more options that way.
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Ratings and Reviews
Beatriz Stollnitz
Great class for anyone looking to blend a photo with a texture for a creative effect. Dave discusses Blend If, smart objects, Apply Image and many other techniques that enable us to get the most out of Photoshop when adding texture to photos.
Laura D
Loved this class. Dave covered exactly what I needed to know to add textures, including a multitude of ways to make the texture more or less subtle. I learned a lot. You do need some Photoshop background to understand all the content.