Lessons

Lesson Info

Tips for Retouching and Text Wrap

so here's a guy that definitely needs some retouching here boy lottery touching necessary here so one of things that I feel if you can't retouch your own photo live and in person than you know you shouldn't be doing anyone else's but one of the things that especially as our cameras get better and the quality the photos get better we have this temptation to go let's go to one hundred percent view so I press command control one and all of a sudden I met yikes view which is why I show my own photo because no one else wants to get their face magnified quite that big but the temptation is to go oh I should work on this and this and this but we forget we're looking at a photo that's now suddenly enormous and we have to keep in perspective the chances are I'm surely not going to print this that big it's going to be maybe this big on my website so I know personally I usedto always get carried away by doing all this infinite detail work at this zoomed in view and I go back to small view and kin...

d of go oh I can't even really see what I just did because the human eye can't even detect that detail of work now of course it's different if you know this is going to be putting on a huge billboard then you might want to do that but one of the ways to avoid that temptation to get all this do all this detail work and then realize it wasn't worth it is to keep everything in context by giving yourself to views of the same document so the way we do that it takes a couple of steps the first one is under the window menu we choose new window for and I'll be whatever document name it is you're currently working on someone happens to have this clumsy name called d c s underscore blah blah blah so that's not duplicating the documents is very important you don't want to duplicate the document you want to make a second window or new window so now I have two versions to windows of the same file the second step is I go back to the arrangement you and I choose tile I know there's only two but I could do tile all in his days orjust do tile to up vertical when I do that it splits the screen so my typical way of working is too and large the detail one really big but then keep this one visible so any change I make and I'm going to make some very obvious change that I wouldn't actually do but I want you to see that as soon as I make a change it shows up in the other window so this is an excellent way for anything you're doing whether it's any kind of retouching or adjusting that you don't get lost in that let me zoom into four hundred percent and do all this tiny tiny little detail work that you can't even see and this has saved me I can't I can't even equate are quantify how much time I just know it has because I used to not do this and I'd zoom way into all the tiny little detail work and then zoom back out and kind of go okay that was a waste of time so tiling windows there's lots of reasons why this is useful now let's pretend for a moment that these are actually two different photographs two different versions of a photo shoot for example and I wanted to some comparison well if I go in here and choose match all it means now I've got the two of them looking the same size so this part isn't as much for retouching it just kind of comparison and normally if I'm working on this document and I zoom in using my shortcut I showed you earlier it would on lease zoom in that one file but if I want to zoom in both of them I can't use the option or all key in this case because that would make it zoom out so in this case I use the shift key so it would be shift command space bar and as you as I zoom in you'll see it zooming in both of them and that's not because they're the same document because it could be two different ones because this shortcut is telling photoshopped whatever I do do it to both same thing with the if I start to scroll it's going on ly scroll one but if I hold down the shift key at the same time now it's going to scroll both of them at the same time now a lot of times keyboard shortcuts like this it all comes down to timing because if I held down shift space bar it might not work quite the way I want because you know depending on the timing in this case it should be fine because there's no other shortcut for that but other cases sometimes you have to start with one shortcut and then modify it with the second one as you go but this concept of tiling windows we're going to see a number I want introduces right early on because throat other techniques I want to use I take full advantage of this for example we talk about smart objects I liketo have my smart object in one window and the contents in the second window so I can see what's happening or if I'm doing some kind of multi camera raw editing I want thie final version one window in the layered version of the second one on that would make better sense when we actually get to that part of things so here's another example of the couple of different ways to do things and the way you would do this will depend on a couple of circumstances so here's a photo I took and I want I need mork canvas to add something I want to add some text for example maybe well if I knew that I went to the canvas size command and it's saying it's seventeen point five six nine by twenty six point three eight whatever and I knew I wanted to be the with to be twenty four point whatever then I would type it in here but in many cases for me I just know what I'm going to use my hands here I want this much canvas yeah I have no idea how much that is I just know when I look at it it needs to be this white so instead of me having to go into the campus eyes command and guests some number I want to increase the canvas visually and there is actually a way to do it that most people the first time they see this they're like say what now but then it makes perfect sense when you think about it you press c for crop now the crop tool usually he is used to cut down the size of the canvas that's what most people use it for but by definition the crop tool is determining how big your canvas will be so if I want maura I just take a side handling say I'd like that much more canvas and when I hit enter now I have a campus eyes that's that big five no idea how big it is but doesn't matter because visually that looks right to me so going to the campus eyes command requires you to type in some value you know make it this wide or add two inches will sometimes I don't know if it's two inches or two point seven or you know what I mean this way I can to say that much now in this case it was a smart object so the new canvas was transparent so if you haven't unlocked layer the new cameras we'll be transparent if you have a typical background layer the new cameras we'll be adding whatever your current background color is so if I happen to have purple as my background color when I dragged with the crop you'll have big box of purple in this case I happen to know just by glancing at it I didn't have to do anything because it happens to be a smart object so now I would like to fill in the rest of this canvas with something that would look relatively useful so I'm gonna take my marquis selection tool because this is transparent aiken start out here I need the other marquee selection to of course I'm going to get as much of this is I can without touching her hand now if this was unlocked layer I could just do this directly to this these pixels but because it's a smart object I can't and frankly I probably wouldn't anyway because I'm reluctant to do things that are going to be very permanent and destructive so I like to do things with layers and things in ways that I can try something if I need to change my mind three or four steps later I still can't get a press command of control j which is most people always the shortcut for duplicate the layer in this case it duplicates whatever I have selected so what it duplicated was just this little piece right here now if I simply try to drag it over the chances are it's not gonna look terribly good so instead I'm going to leave it where it is and if I just did free transform it stretches the pixels and if there's any texture or anything at all you'll notice it it'll look very well stretched so instead I take advantage of content aware scale here's a tip that will last for this whole two days as of the last few versions of photo shop if you see anything with the words content of wearing it use it because it's a new technology which is one of the best things they've invented so if you ever look at some tool option and there's like regular and content aware or anything like that use the one this has content where it will be better so content aware scale looks like free transform but it actually does some kind of scientific analysis somehow that's beyond my knowledge that says I will attempt to stretch this in a way that doesn't just destruct it and make it look odd now if this was a brick wall still wouldn't work so that we'll have two we'll talk about that separately in this case you can see that looks pretty good to me considering I just took a small bit of background wall and stretched it but I stretched it intelligently not me photoshopped did using content aware scale so content or sales not new but it's I would say a lot of people under utilized it because they don't realize how useful it really can be now at this point um I could just leave it as is I think I will in this case because I want to throw in a little kind of a bonus thing that's really got nothing to do with this but it's when I saw this I thought well why would you extend the background it might be to add some text and the boring way to do it would be to add a rectangular block of text beside her but I want to do a fake in design type thing where the text actually wraps around it follows thie edge of her body and that's actually much more complicated than you would think but that's why I want to show it because it's a situation people run into and go well howto I can't rap tech text around things in full shop will you kind of can eventually and this is one that does take a few steps so this is how it works I'm going to start off by making just a quick selection with the quick selection tool and all I'm really worried about I don't have to do all of her I just want to make sure that the part where the texas going to kind of wrap around that that right edge when we're looking at it is the edge that I'm really worried about so everything else is really not important there's a way in photo shop where we can make a selection based on existing selections and a lot of people know already for example the shift key adds to the existing selection so not that that would make sense in this case but if I held down the shift key you would see it's added to that selection I'm gonna undo that if I held down option all it would remove from the selection neither of those is going to help me what I need to do is create an intersection between one selection and a new selection to end up with one that I want and this is one of these things there you just have to try and see how it works so the first time I tried it it didn't work because I thought I'll just hold down all of these shortcuts are these keys but then it's still went the wrong way I want this election the other side so I realized what I had to do is first in verse the selection then I get my marquee selection tool and remember shift as of the selection ault removes from shift and salt makes an intersection so I take my marquee selection to unholy downshift and option ault and I drag like this and you see I end up with a perfect what is just exactly what I want this side is rectangular back to make a little bit bigger now that I think about it let me do that one more time so this side where the tex is going to be inside eventually will be nice and rectangle but see how the other side kind of follows the shape of her the problem is if I did this right now the text would go right up against her and realistically photo shop does not have commands like other page layout software a graphic design software has where you could indented tex or something so what I need to do any time you have a selection you can go the select menu and choose modify and I'm going to contract it that means make a smaller version of the same selection here you just have to guess I don't know what the number is could be ten could be twenty five I'm going to choose we have twenty already I'll just use that click okay see now it's still following the edge of the selection now one little thing happened here that was something about the way it was now it's missed a little piece so I have to correct that manually so I press l for my lasso tool I want to take that part away from the selection so I just drag around like this so now I have the part that I want so all this is done has given me the selection where ultimately my text block will go but I can't do it yet because if I click with the type tool it would ignore this completely and I'd be right back to square one so the second last step to make this work because I go to the paths panel and I choose a command called make work path in this dialog box there's a function called tolerance which has something to do with how closely I want to follow this selection and years ago when I first was trying to do this I was like well what do I put in for tolerance and I looked up and it said the lower the number the more accurate will follow your selection well I thought I want this to be follow what really accurately but it just said the lower the number and I'm like on a scale of what the what so here's a little tip little side tip for you if you're ever in any dialogue box in photo shop where it's asking something like this like tolerance and you're like I don't know try typing zero if you do that and click okay it'll tell you the lowest number you can put his point five in the hires ten so it's just told me what the ranges which I didn't know two seconds ago so that's sort of a little side tip with your finding someplace where you're like I don't know what number of type here ty try either zero or ten thousand and it will pop up a little dialogue buck will basically tell you this is the reins you can use so I know that point five is the lowest number I can put in so I do that click okay and now I have this path so then the final step would be to take my regular type tool this tool is very smart because over here thinks I'm just doing regular type soon as I move inside the cursor changes to know oh now I'm text inside a path so I click once and I have to get something in there so I can change to a more realistic this is fairly new by the way I can't you can't really see it because my screen but now you can kind of hover over um fonts and it will show you but I'm just going to make it much smaller and honestly I don't want to sit here and type a whole bunch of stuff so if you ever doing something and photoshopped just tryingto kind of mock it up and see what it looked like as of photo shop cs six I believe this was theirs now on option called paste lauren ipsum where it just puts in random text that you can then edit and we'll see later on howto do this through the keyboard is I doing here so you can see as I make the type smaller and then change the things like letting and so on and getting maur the result I want of a block of text that's going to wrap around her arm I put in the textile line left looking better and then once I committed and click away and see now I've got this nice look of the tepes kind of wrapping around now that seemed like a lot of steps but it really wasn't it was just me narrating how to do it that took the time because really it's just make a selection in verse macon intersecting selection convert to a path type and as long as you have a shape that's relatively easy to select then you can do this relatively easily realistically if I was going to do a lot of this I would take this photograph and bring it into a different program like in design since I happen to have it but if you don't this is a nice way to do it in the equivalent but don't forget going right back to the beginning of this little mini technique is we used the crop tool to add canvas and again that's not a lot of these things aren't new it's just things that I know people don't necessarily come across when they're trying different things