Lessons
Bootcamp Introduction
16:22 2The Bridge Interface
13:33 3Setting up Bridge
06:55 4Overview of Bridge
11:29 5Practical Application of Bridge
27:56 6Introduction to Raw Editing
11:00 7Setting up ACR Preferences & Interface
07:39 8Global Tools Part 1
16:44Global Tools Part 2
20:01 10Local Tools
22:56 11Introduction to the Photoshop Interface
07:13 12Toolbars, Menus and Windows
25:07 13Setup and Interface
11:48 14Adobe Libraries
05:57 15Saving Files
07:39 16Introduction to Cropping
12:10 17Cropping for Composition in ACR
04:44 18Cropping for Composition in Photoshop
12:40 19Cropping for the Subject in Post
03:25 20Cropping for Print
07:34 21Perspective Cropping in Photoshop
07:11 22Introduction to Layers
08:42 23Vector & Raster Layers Basics
05:05 24Adjustment Layers in Photoshop
27:35 25Organizing and Managing Layers
15:35 26Introduction to Layer Tools and Blend Modes
21:34 27Screen and Multiply and Overlay
09:15 28Soft Light Blend Mode
07:34 29Color and Luminosity Blend Modes
12:47 30Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes
07:43 31Introduction to Layer Styles
11:43 32Practical Application: Layer Tools
13:06 33Introduction to Masks and Brushes
04:43 34Brush Basics
09:22 35Custom Brushes
04:01 36Brush Mask: Vignettes
06:58 37Brush Mask: Curves Dodge & Burn
06:53 38Brush Mask: Hue & Saturation
07:52 39Mask Groups
05:52 40Clipping Masks
04:11 41Masking in Adobe Camera Raw
07:06 42Practical Applications: Masks
14:03 43Introduction to Selections
05:42 44Basic Selection Tools
17:41 45The Pen Tool
11:56 46Masks from Selections
04:22 47Selecting Subjects and Masking
07:11 48Color Range Mask
17:35 49Luminosity Masks Basics
12:00 50Introduction to Cleanup Tools
07:02 51Adobe Camera Raw
10:16 52Healing and Spot Healing Brush
14:56 53The Clone Stamp Tool
10:20 54The Patch Tool
06:38 55Content Aware Move Tool
04:56 56Content Aware Fill
06:46 57Custom Cleanup Selections
15:42 58Introduction to Shapes and Text
13:46 59Text Basics
15:57 60Shape Basics
07:00 61Adding Text to Pictures
09:46 62Custom Water Marks
14:05 63Introduction to Smart Objects
04:37 64Smart Object Basics
09:13 65Smart Objects and Filters
09:05 66Smart Objects and Image Transformation
10:57 67Smart Objects and Album Layouts
11:40 68Smart Objects and Composites
10:47 69Introduction to Image Transforming
04:34 70ACR and Lens Correction
09:45 71Photoshop and Lens Correction
14:26 72The Warp Tool
11:16 73Perspective Transformations
20:33 74Introduction to Actions in Photoshop
09:27 75Introduction to the Actions Panel Interface
05:06 76Making Your First Action
03:49 77Modifying Actions After You Record Them
11:38 78Adding Stops to Actions
04:01 79Conditional Actions
07:36 80Actions that Communicate
25:26 81Introduction to Filters
04:38 82ACR as a Filter
09:20 83Helpful Artistic Filters
17:08 84Helpful Practical Filters
07:08 85Sharpening with Filters
07:32 86Rendering Trees
08:20 87The Oil Paint and Add Noise Filters
15:08 88Introduction to Editing Video
06:20 89Timeline for Video
08:15 90Cropping Video
03:34 91Adjustment Layers and Video
05:25 92Building Lookup Tables
07:00 93Layers, Masking Video & Working with Type
15:11 94ACR to Edit Video
06:10 95Animated Gifs
11:39 96Introduction to Creative Effects
06:08 97Black, White, and Monochrome
18:05 98Matte and Cinematic Effects
08:23 99Gradient Maps and Solid Color Grades
12:20 100Gradients
04:21 101Glow and Haze
10:23 102Introduction to Natural Retouching
05:33 103Brightening Teeth
10:25 104Clean Up with the Clone Stamp Tool
08:07 105Cleaning and Brightening Eyes
16:58 106Advanced Clean Up Techniques
24:47 107Introduction to Portrait Workflow & Bridge Organization
14:47 108ACR for Portraits Pre-Edits
21:27 109Portrait Workflow Techniques
18:46 110Introduction to Landscape Workflow & Bridge Organization
12:17 111Landscape Workflow Techniques
37:36 112Introduction to Compositing & Bridge
06:59 113Composite Workflow Techniques
34:01 114Landscape Composite Projects
24:14 115Bonus: Rothko and Workspace
05:15 116Bonus: Adding Textures to Photos
07:05 117Bonus: The Mask (Extras)
05:18 118Bonus: The Color Range Mask in ACR
04:54Lesson Info
Introduction to the Photoshop Interface
Now we're gonna get in to the nuts and bolts of Photoshop and talk about probably the sexiest topic, interface and setup. No sarcasm at all (laughs). So setting up Photoshop is a really, actually it's very important. It's important for workflow, it's important for workflow efficiency. If you go in to my garage, it's probably gonna be a nightmare for somebody who has a nice, clean garage, but you're not gonna know where my tools are. If I go in to your garage, same thing. I'm not gonna know where your tools are. So you need to set up Photoshop in a way that's most efficient for you. And I relate a lot of this to kitchens. The best kitchen is not the biggest kitchen. We all might disagree, cause a big kitchen is nice. Cause everyone starts to hang out now in the kitchen more so than the living room, but the biggest, the best kitchens are the ones that are the most efficient for the chef that's using it. And each kitchen in gonna be different. Where you put those pots and pans matters. So...
if this is your kitchen, you might put your pots and pans in this drawer. I might put mine in that drawer over there. But I probably wouldn't wanna put my Tupperware way over here where the pots and pans should go, because that might need to go more near towards the sink, because I'm gonna be doing my dishes and emptying the leftovers into the Tupperware. Maybe I think about this too much, I don't know. But my wife and I moved in to our new house a few years back I was putting the boxes in the kitchen, in the places that I wanted those things to go. So she walks in, she's like, "Why are we doing this?" I was like, "Because we have to set this up "in the most efficient way possible." She's like, "Oh, there ya go." You know, cause that's how I think. I think about efficiency, I think about workflow. And I don't just think about that in terms of what I do in Photoshop. I think about it even down to the things that I'm doing when I'm brushing my teeth in the morning. You know, what do I do first? So once you, but you set things up for yourself so that you know, successfully, where you need to go in your kitchen to get the pots, to get the pans, and put it to the closest place possible that you're gonna need to use it. Photoshop is no different. When I'm working in Photoshop, there's different places to put your pots and your pans. And some of those are more efficient places than others. Some places I like to separate out, you'll see that I put a lot of my working stuff over here. And I put some of my tools over there. I like to have my tools in one place and the working document stuff in another place. And if we look at this, these are our cabinets. These are the places where we can put our pots and our pans or, if we're in a garage, these are places that we can put our tools so that we can work in a more efficient way. In Photoshop our cabinets aren't cabinets. We call them toolbars. We have menus, and then we have windows. Of all the things that could be modular based, the only two that are actually modular based that you can, you can modify to your liking, are the toolbars and the windows. The menus are solid, they're in place, they're already predefined by Photoshop. So once we get in to Photoshop, you're gonna see how this works. Now before we talked about Adobe Camera Raw, and we talked about Lightroom. So now we need to just, first let's just talk about how to even open Photoshop, okay? So that'll help us transition in to what we need to do once we get in to Photoshop. So, we're in Bridge at this point. If we wanted to open up Photoshop, all we'd have to do is double-click on an image, or we could right-click on that image and say open with, and then open with Photoshop CC 2018 as my default. Because I'm working within Bridge. Another way that we could open Photoshop is to go in to our folder structure that we have for our images. If we just go in to our desktop and I go in to any one of my folders, I can right-click on an image, and I can say open with, let's say properties. And I can have that set to open with Photoshop. So for me, I like to have everything that's an image set to open in Photoshop. I drive my wife, drives her nuts. She does not like the fact that a JPEG opens in Photoshop. She's like, "I just wanna look at it. "Why does it have to open in Photoshop?" I open PNGs, I open JPEGs, I open TIFFs, I open PSD documents. Cause I want, that's my command center. I want everything to open through Photoshop, because that's what I'm using to edit my images. If this was set to the default that would be in something like Windows, I could just go and change this to Photoshop and have the default set for Photoshop. It'll be a little bit different for a Mac, but you can associate what you want your images to open in. I prefer everything to open in Photoshop. It just makes my life easier. I don't have to think about it. That way, if I double-click on anything, I can open it up, and I'm right inside Photoshop. Another thing that you're gonna find along with Photoshop and opening Photoshop is going to be, right when you first get it, when you first get Photoshop, there's this thing called the Creative Cloud. It's the thing that you sign in to to get in to your version of Photoshop. So if you've never used Photoshop before, you have the option to put it on two computers at any given time. So I have three laptops. One of them's my travel laptop, one of them's my work station that I use as a laptop when I go on seminars or events like this, and the other one is my desktop PC. So if I log in to Photoshop on all three of those, by the time I get to the third one, it's gonna say, "Hey, you need to log out of all your other machines "before you can log in to this one." And all that's handled through the Adobe Creative Cloud. It'll even pop up when you try to open up Photoshop. But this is like, the Creative Cloud is your command center for all things Adobe and what you actually own within Adobe's ecosystem of programs. So by default, if you have the CC photographer's plan that comes with Photoshop CC and Lightroom, you will have the option to install this. Now you'll see here that I don't even have Lightroom installed on my machines. I'm probably one of the only people on the planet that doesn't use Lightroom. I strictly use Bridge, my own folder structure, and Photoshop. I don't go in to Lightroom at all. I have my own purposes for that. For me it's not a matter of, you know, being hoity-toity or holier-than-thou or something like that. It's because it manages my images in a way that I don't, I'm not comfortable with. So I have a very strict system on how I manage my images that I've been doing since I started photography, and I'm very comfortable with that. And I'm not a big fan of cataloging. So that's why I don't really jump too far in to Lightroom. But this is where you can open up any of your programs that you own. So right here we see that Adobe Camera Raw, which we already covered, is already automatically installed in to Photoshop. It's part of Photoshop as a plugin. So if we needed to open up Photoshop, we could even come in to the Creative Cloud and we could open it up here. Another thing to note about this, as far as versions of Photoshop are concerned, is this right drop-down next to it. It's got a couple things here. You can view tutorials, other versions, or install. So at any time, if you wanted to uninstall Photoshop, you could do that. I don't recommend it, cause I love Photoshop (laughs). But if you go to other versions, you can see all the other versions of Photoshop that were there before, and even install them. Which is really awesome of Adobe to do that, because a lot of programs, they just stay with what's most up-to-date, and you can't see the history or go back and install those things. So it's really nice that we have that access available to us.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Robert Andrews
Blake Rudis is the absolute best in teaching photoshop. His knowledge and how he presents the instruction is clear and concise - there is NO ONE BETTER. Yes, his classes require some basic skills, and maybe I'd organize the order of (or group) the classes in a different order, but, let me be clear - if anyone is to be successful or famous in the Photoshop world, it should be Blake Rudis. I strongly recommend his teaching. I started photography and post processing in 2018, and because of this class, I'm know what Im doing. The energy you get when you create something beautiful is profound, it makes you bounce out of bed (at 4AM) like a 5 year old, to go create. It's a great ride! Thanks Blake, & Thanks Creative live.
a Creativelive Student
Amazing course, but don't be fooled into thinking this is a beginner's course for photographers. The problem isn't Blake's explanations; they're top. The problem is the vast scope of this course and the order in which the topics are presented. Take layers for example. When I was first learning Photoshop (back when we learned from books), I found I learned little or nothing from, for example, books that covered layers before they covered how to improve/process photographs. These books taught me how to organize, move, and link layers before they showed me what a layer was actually for. Those books tended to teach me everything there is to know about layers (types of layers, how to organize them, how to move them, how to move them two at a time, how to move them two at a time even if there are other layers between the two you're interested in, useful troubleshooting tips, etc. ) all before I even know (from a photographer's point of view) what it is the things actually do. The examples of organizing, linking, and moving mean everything for graphic designers from Day One, but for photographers not so much. Blake does the same thing as those books. Topics he covers extremely early demand a lot of theoretical imagination for a photographer who doesn't already know quite a bit about what he is talking about. Learning about abstract things first and concrete things later only makes PS that much harder to understand. If you AREN'T a beginner, however, this course is amazing. I thought it would be like an Army Bootcamp, taking you from zero and building you into a fit, competent Photoshop grunt. Now I think it's more like Army Bootcamp for high school varsity jocks. It isn't going to take you from the beginning, but the amount you'll get out of it is nonetheless more than your brain can imagine. I've been using PS for years to improve my photographs, and even to create the odd artistic composite or two. The amount I've learned in the first week is amazing, and every day I learn something -- more like many things -- which I immediately implement to improve my productivity and/or widen the horizons of what I can achieve. If you ARE a photographer who's a Photoshop beginner, I'd take very seriously the advice Blake gives in the introduction: Watch one lesson, and practice the skills and principles you learn in that one lesson for two weeks. THEN watch the next lesson. You can't do that of course without buying the course, so it's up to you to decide whether you'd like to learn Photoshop and master Photoshop all from the same course. Learning it first and mastering it later will cost more money, but I think you'll understand everything better and have a much more enjoyable ride in the process. As for me? I'm going to have to find the money to buy this course. There is simply way too much content in each lesson for me to try to take on all at once, but on the other hand I don't want to miss anything at all that he has to share.
Esther Gambrell
WOW!!! I've been purchasing CL classes for several years now and have watched HOURS of "How-To Photoshop" classes, but this is the first one I've actually purchased because of the AWESOME BONUS content!!! SERIOUSLY??!!?!? A PLUG-IN??? But not only that, Blake is SO easy to understand, and he breaks down concepts in different ways to connect with different people's learning styles. I REALLY appreciated this approach because I am a LEFT-BRAINED creative that has an engineering background, so I really connected to what Blake was saying. THANK YOU FOR THAT! There are TONS of Photoshop courses out there, but I found this one to be the most helpful in they way Blake teaches concepts so that you know WHY you're doing what your doing. I feel like he taught me how to fish with Photoshop to feed me for a lifetime instead of just giving me a fish to feed me for one day. This is the BEST overall PS course out there!!! Thank you!!!!
Student Work
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Adobe Photoshop