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Adobe Photoshop Integration: Content Aware Scale

Hidden feature that is fantastic has been around and is incredibly useful. It fits into the same content aware area is content where scale it's actually the first of the content aware features inside of photo shop, and we're going to go right into photo shop, bypassing our cr would take it for granted that we've already done our tango. Um, content where scaled cannot be done to a smart objects, so you are going to bring in regular good old fashioned, pixel filled layers. This was originally designed by a couple of my understanding of a couple of genius college students, part of a graduate program, and it was so good the technology was actually floating around for a while, and then adobe bought it up and hire the people excellent, amazing technology. Since then, a w's put content aware into the phil and heal and patch and all these other concepts. The idea is that photo shop looks at what it calls high frequency information and separate that from low frequency information detail from no...

n detail. So when you scale an image, it actually will scale low important information differently than high important information, meaning you, khun distorted image without distorting an image. I love building up the enthusiasm, uh, and and why you would use it, I'll say it even before I do it. Is one of its main use is is you've got an eight by ten and it's done and it's perfect and it's all set and you can't crop it anymore you don't have more space on either side take it down so it's not like you started with a bigger image and now you're going to crop you've got there by ten and that needs to be eleven by fourteen so now you're gonna have to do something toe bring it up so you you need to bring it up or you need to crop it down because it needs to fit in that space but you can't throw away any information I can't crop off that arm so I need to bring in or expand without affecting the important information that file very, very difficult it could be for a subtle things like eight by ten to eleven by fourteen or it could be something I've got a horizontal and it needs to be a vertical but I can't change anything in it okay? You're really talking about somebody selling their soul toe you know who to get this done but what's going on here is this we've got our layer we're going to make it so it can be moved around the file that's you know there's only one file and photoshopped that can't be moved or transformed and that's that background layer so anytime you see a layer that's named background you can see it has its own lock on it that's what we're looking at up here so to simply make this layer be ableto have transparency or moving or scale that I'd do anything you just double click on it and changed its name to anything else and it's automatically unlocked we're gonna come up here and we're going to go edit content aware scale and content where scale well, first up no we have to do regular free transform because of course that is what is normally done with scale right? Everything is universal and you know cute but I'm not particularly practical for what we're doing because this needs to be a square picture freaky nice I mean just kind of creepy you know why are the wheels not because it's smart and it's looking at this high frequency information so if I needed it to be this big course we're doing it you know a little comedy routine here but that is freakishly may I really want that car but that is very cool technology the final chi confined to knit from, you know, led by fourteen by ten I've got very little information a little room here I can't crop it anymore it has to be I can also do something like this do that reveal all trick we did the other day and now we've got that very cute it's trying it's best not to distort the image and keep things you know true to form now that I did to the file um without doing any special jiggery pokery to it I just did it and it worked often times it doesn't do that well okay, we're gonna do it on this one as well we've got an image horizontal that needs to be a vertical needs to be a magazine cover, so get in that exit last example in this one both russell brown did both of these these air his examples because he kansas a demo better than anybody that doesn't always work in other situations. So I'm gonna show you my image, which is goingto explain why it doesn't always work each time and how you can get it to work that secret mickey mouse club handshake so I'm gonna come up here and again we'll do a regular, you know, free, transform, so if we did that, we've got a bunch of skinny golfers and if we come up here and do it content or scale and we take this, I'm doing a slow for dramatic effect not because I need to that isn't actually, you know, we don't need it that skinny because we want to center them but that it just took all the information between those golfers is the beach, the clouds, the sky without affecting the golfers and that's amazing and it did it without any help from may it figured out that high frequency information and of course well then hit enter turn on are golfing and there we have our little magazine cover but it's actually fantastic it's amazing what it just did in that context on its own the problem is it doesn't always work sometimes you just get too greedy this is another one where I did this this is one of my shots and we'll do content where and this one you can see very cool you can actually do a little animation on here but you come up here and it's going to try it's best to not step my toes but at some point you kind of go okay out out okay, so what happens when content aware does not work? All those a couple things one adobe has given us the men's room option the men's room option the menswear option is actually protect skin tones so you click on that and it's going to go look through the images and again oftentimes we're working with portrait you want you can distort anything but obviously don't distort the face. So now when I come up here and do that same thing even though the sand is already kind of a skin tone ish color, it knows the skin tone and it's gonna not stub the feet as much as it can so protect skin tones is excellent and it does exactly that and I can expand this and add sand and they'll create sand just like we saw the content where phil so this is content or skill it's cool it's, groovy it's awesome it's something that can't be done in a cr it's quick and it's easy especially if you know little things like one protect skin tone which will help you quite a bit or this one where we're going to get a little bit greedy here this one I it's obviously a panorama this is out in front of my office in san diego, it needs to be for the, uh, local chamber of commerce it needs to be a tall, threefold panel image, so taking from a panorama into a tall vertical is a challenge and in this case we really don't have any high frequency information. We've got the contrast of the couple but that's a challenge? So the question is, what do you do when you need to control content where scale and you have very little information work with I don't have any skin tones skin tones would actually be the oranges of the sunset, so I can't turn that on, so what can I do? Well, you may have noticed when you go into, um, edit content where scale let's, go ahead and unlock that background so we can work on it that there's one more little option up here so actually a few more features but mostly in this case the default settings are actually quite good up here we've got protect protect what? Protect none protect alfa now this is going to protect the now channel has already made an alfa channel but the point is here is that you have there's no image where you can say I can't use content aware scale because it just doesn't work if you come up here and we go to channels and you make an alfa channel, it can use that alfa channel to do the protection that's what it's under its under protect so coming up here I'm in the channels palette, which most of you don't play around with anymore in the olden days, me and burt montoya used to spend a lot of time here before there were layers and photoshopped the only way you could re select an area I was in channels byrd wrote an entire book on channels and channel operations book, by the way, burt manuel if you don't know excellent teacher if you ever get a chance to sit underneath him he wrote the first book in the world on photo shop I wrote the second bastard so chops right channel shops, channels channel operations that's, right? So but and that's great so uh and if you've never made a alpha channel on here that's actually quite easy there's a couple ways that you can do it you can just make a channel and then kind of painted one way that I kind of like to do a alfa channel is something that has also been in photo shop for a million years and that's this little icon down here in the lower left hand corner again a lot of people have not run into it um but it's great it's this one right here and we'll leave that air so you can see it edit in the quick mask mode quick mask mode when you jump into that mode click it automatically makes an alfa channel for you cool it's in italics which means it's temporary it's going to go away when you get out of quick mask mode but it's actually very practical so if I come up here and I go to my paintbrush my good old fashioned paintbrush I can come up here and I can paint on whatever is now active in quick mask mode I take the paintbrush by definition it automatically selects and makes active this quick mask this alfa channel alfa channels store selections or masks or you'd like to think of them it can also be used for spot color and all sorts of things so I'm going to come up here with a big soft brush and I'm gonna protect that area and that automatically made the mask if we just turn off the color, it made that mask for me so it's very nice as a default when you jump out of quick mask mode, which, by the way, you just tap the cuchi and it automatically gets you in and out. Quick mask mode it's a great way to paint a selection if you have been used to using things like a lasso tool or other ways of making a selection, you can use any good old fashioned paintbrush tap q paint q you're left with marching ants so it's a great way of creating a alfa channel you'll notice when I got out of quick mask mode, it automatically got rid of that temporary alpha channel quick mask is used to make the selection you tap q paint tap q you're left with marching ants that's its purpose in life there's no, no reason why you can't turn any selection into an alfa channel and that's what this little icon is down here it's safe selection as a channel click on it and now you've got an alfa channel so you can make that selection. You could have lassoed the couple with that, have the marching and gone into al put channel into the excuse me into the channel palate and then made a now for channel any way that you want to make it is fine quick mask is awfully nice if you're not used to it the one thing you want to do because I painted the couple rather than painting everything from the couple what I really want is the couple to be protected I want them to be the hole in the mask rather than isolated from it and that's where that image invert okay adjustment invert wouldn't invert that mask so that is the one thing that you need to remember that using content where scale if you can get a white hole on a black mask in the alfa channel setting you now can protect anything and distort anything making sure that whatever is inside that area this guy has got no distortion to it so I'm gonna go backto rgb go back to my layers palette the layers palate is active not the channel and we're gonna come over here to that edit content where scale I'm gonna ask it yes please know I'm going to use alfa channel two you'll notice that whatever I make is now up here it will not have any alfa channels until you make them so I'm going to say yes would you please protect that and now when I come over here dude and I don't mean the contents were bending huh operator error what do I have selected as always good select before you manipulate there's three rules of computer graphics select before you manipulate save often never borrow money needlessly thank you for that. I've got protect skin tone so it's going to going okay? Everything that's not a skin tone, you're hosed, so turn that off, right? Because that's was really giving me a confused and it was deco you thought you were confused? I'm trying to do skin tone, so I come up here and I'm gonna come up here and now with that protection, I can even take something as extreme as this and it's going to re bend the curvature of the coastline, keeping my little hedlund here, keeping the couple undistorted because it's in that area of the mask hit enter and I have now taken something more than half the size and re calculated to be a nice smooth curve into the file that is just kind of freaky amazing. And it becomes freaking amazing because you know that secret mickey mouse club, a handshake that you need to have something in another channel that allows you to protect the file and now there's no file that you can't expand or contract any way, any way that you want to any aspect ratio that you'd like if you get greedy, yes, you will get some distortion, but as you can see from right here, that's a pretty amazing distortion the fact that it did all that he kept one smooth transition in that way fly