Lessons

Lesson Info

Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Lightroom Smart Objects

Well, the first topic of the afternoon is we've kind of popping into camera a little bit throughout the days so far, and we'll talk about that more and also where light room comes into the equation, but I can't go too far without occasionally reminding us of the core functions were talking about here, which is all the bad things you shouldn't do, so hopefully by now you've heard me say these things, enough time, merger, race, flattened, deleting a race or arrest arise are all very permanent, very scary things that you should try to avoid and as I've mentioned multiple times, but I really want to stress this because we are creatures of habit. I talk to people all the time that say, but I still find there are times where I need to merge or I need to restaurants I'm like, yeah, I don't think so or if you are, then you may must be doing something that's more unusual, or you haven't thought it through the same way, and groups were going recently, they actually had instructions that someone ...

had written down probably five years ago that said, do these steps and step number five was rast arise and I was like, took my panel went make smart filter now, but that's a perfect example, we do things the way that we're used to doing them so when camera came along at first camera was another way to make overall a justin's to a photo and then it open and photo shop and there was no longer relationship and then light room came along. It was kind of someone you could say edit and photo shop, but it was almost a one way street, which is good, but I prefer much more to end up with this two way streets. I want to explore that a little bit as we go I'm going to start off talking about camera off first, and then a lot of the methods and the techniques talk about still apply the light and then we're going to talk about the light room aspect separately because there is one actual little twist to it. So normally when you and I mentioned before, we want to review just to make sure we're seeing the difference out of the box camera looks like this you open far away if you got all these sliders, you can make changes to it and then ultimately you click on a button that says open image so whatever adjustments you have made, you know they do something, whatever it might be that's what I want my photo look like when I hit open image, it applies those settings and opens it and photo shop and comes in as a standard background layer no further relationship to camera so there's anything about this that I say oh, I wish I had done x in camera my only option this point would be to close this and start over again because that that's by default it's a one way street camera ply settings open in filderstadt now just before I go too far I will say that one of the most exciting things that happen in created cloud version of photo shop and I say it that way because the reality of life in the dhobi now is new brand new cool features on lee come in cloud not previous version so if you own force up c s six cover your ears at this point because you'd be really sad to hear me say this but in this case I deliberately turned off the back and forth smart ability of camera to show you that if you have the creative cloud version the most a couple of recent most recent updates this is a really cool feature we talked previously about smart filters here is one of my favorite smart filters is under the filter menu there's now a camera off filter which means if I don't have to necessarily have started in camera raw I can access the camera raw ability for anything doesn't have to be a raphael in fact this could be one layer mostly transparent with a person on it that's already been extracted and you want to change it so there's, the ability to apply camera raw as a filter on a layer by layer basis is really huge to me because I love the ability in camera just move sliders have to worry about going to curse and all this fancy stuff camera lt's as presets so I could have already saved a preset just apply one of those two this to me that's a really interesting possibility and just to show you what I I mean by this let's, just do a quick little example here try to be incredibly accurate about of alleged say I've been working now I've got a separate layer of just has this little piece on it. Well, normally, at this point I would have broken any ability to edit and can't raw because it's just pixels on a layer, but the same will and I always doing it convert to smart of you to make it a smart filter or doesn't have to be, but I would prefer to be so we'll see what happens in this case. I think this is pretty interesting that it actually comes in just like that it's like, well, there's what's on the layer so whatever I do in here is only gonna affect the those pixels on that layer, and when I click ok, it applies that and now I've got camera raw filter as another option I think that's amazing because I've always loved the editing ability of kamerad be able to do it on a layer by layer basis after the fact you don't have to necessarily plan to say I better start in camera raw this could be like that wedding collage I was using earlier is a project and suddenly realized that one layer I wish there was a bit more clarity but clarity doesn't exist in photo shop and normally be too late but now it isn't so I was feeling at this point I should say sorry those of you that don't have a creative cloud version but that's kind of the reality of life with adobe now is that new features will be added to the cloud version nothing else unfortunately, but if there was any ever a reason to get the creative cloud version of foresaw this would rank high up there because cameras a filter I use it every day I mean to me it's just a brilliant ability I'm I asked this before, but I want to clarify does this have if you do it like this? So you're saying that if this is a j peg you can turn this into a filter of camera? My question is if I have a roth raul photo and I do it ms linear fashion and it's not a smart one, you know it starts off his role I take a you know, I select a area, and then I do the filter. Does that part right there? Have as much information as the original raw file? Um, probably not. Well, it's hard to say, because it I copied it just a sort of pixels based on like, this document is probably an eight bit document, not sixteen bit just because of the way I open it, so that from a technical standpoint, it may not have quite as much, but because we're using camera ross, the way to adjust, we still have a fair breath of ability to move a slider without something going all hope that looked horrible all of a sudden, I would say, more so than a j peg, but even then, having what start is ajay pecan layer by itself? Just the ability to have access to those cameras. Sliders is almost to me makes up for the fact that I might not have quite as much room to go, but it's still better in many cases than the alternative of trying to do it with, you know, levels and curves and hugh saturation. So if you had a photo that was, like, really blown out as a j peg, you might have less hope of pulling some stuff back then if it was raw, but you know, so I think we're going to address that like, if you start over the raw image and I know because sometimes or you know is something is blaring and yeah, I'm trying to get some information from there, but everything else is beautifully experience there's one little area we talked about, okay, for sure, so I really love this part of a zone aside, even if you don't start in camera, you have access to camera raw ability, I think that's really wonderful, so that's kind of an aside, but an important one. Um, normally, though I double click on a raw file if I did have a j peg and realize oops, I want to edit that on camera, I would right click on and say edit in camera or opening camera, so it sort of forces the j peg or tiff to be available to add on camera, but that's where you would notice there wasn't quite as much room to play, and if it's, a high quality j peg is not going to be horribly bad, but it's broads just gives you more room to play. The biggest difference, by the way, is white balance. When I open a raw file in camera, I see this white balance menu if I was open and j peg, it would say, as shot auto those are the only two choices and a j p j pic doesn't have traditional white balance built into it so that for many people is the biggest issue with jay pigs have to manual white balance adjustment to me that's more of an issue than you know highlights and shadows kind of stuff because relatively saying but the white balance is a key issue anyway. So for our purses I want to make this whole aspect of working smarter as we talked about before the way to do that is down the bottom here this little hyperlink looking thing is actually accessed the workflow options dialog box which contains a lot of very important information, not the least of which is color, space and bit depth and also sizing it'll typically default to whatever that this camera I was using for this particular image while there's twelve megapixel or fourteen or whatever but then also the ability to say I want to restrict it to make the longest side this measurement having to work out all the math you just say I don't care if it was forty to seventy eight pixels by three thousand you just say I want the longest measurement in this case because it's the with to be eighteen hundred it does the rest but for our purposes the main thing is this thing in the bombs is open and photo shop as smart objects this is even though I'm working in this one document, turning this on is like setting a preference say from now on, all photos should be open as a smart object, and as I said multiple times, I'm sure once I turn this on and realize what it, I never turn it off except to demonstrate how you turn it back on again, because if I ever decide, I don't want something to me smart, which is relatively where there is a way to do that, which I'll mention in a moment. So what this means is this little button now says open object, and that changes everything, because now I do have a two way street between camera and photo shop, so we make some adjustment we click open object in this case, I didn't have a document open already, so it made a new document that contains this in effect and it's already smart. Now I could continue doing traditional photo shop type things like working with masks and selections and layers and all those kind of things, but this has a constant link back to camera, and the way I suggest to think of it is when we talked about smart objects, I kept saying toe, look at the contents of the smart object, double click on it. That would open a separate document in this case there is no separate document it goes back to camera so that's the contents in effect is I double click and it says, well, let me go back to camera to edit this and so then you can make whatever change you want whatever it might be, click ok and it will come back and update so soon as I realized that I thought, well, this is very interesting to me because now this is very similar to what I love about adjustment layers things like really like about using adjustment there's that whole idea of I never committing to it by clicking okay, I'm just saying move this slider so now I use camera raw. One of the reasons I do this is for the same reason I use adjustment layers if I'm trying to mask something and it's hard to see, I will deliberately really push the exposure one way or the other temporarily to see what I'm doing in photo shop then once I'm happy, go back to camera and it kind of reset it so exactly the same principle as saying taken adjustment or make it fluorescent green so you can see how you're masking and then put it back it's just we're doing with camera instead of adjusting players now have you said that there are it's not unusual all tohave look look at a document been working on, I'll have camera smart object adjusting their with mask, you know, smart object, filter, whatever, because you could still build on things just it doesn't have to stay in the world of camera smart objects, the other nice advances by nature. The fact that this is a smart object means that also instantly has smart filters, so you don't have to worry once you bring in a camera smart object or as we'll see later, a light room smart object because of the word smarts in there, you don't have to do anything. The filter automatically is smart, so if I do something, whatever it is sharpened like, okay, you see there's, my camera, smart object, there's, that smart filter applied and as we saw with the template concept, if you update the contents of the camera filed by changing its settings as soon as you click, ok, it updates and foolish up, which includes anything you've done like re sizing or filters or anything like that. So it is very nice the way it works in concert with everything else it's not like you say, oh, well, I've done these other five steps I could've done twenty five steps, then go, I think I want a bit more saturation so you just go back to camera up the saturation and kind of filters through everything else and says well, now will have to adjust that and how that filter will look different but it's not like you have to do each of those things one step at a time, which does it automatically so that's why I'm so sold on this concept because it gives me such a nice back and forth ability so that's kind of the basic idea let's look at some examples of how I might use that and we had a conversation off line about shooting photos and things and I said there are many occasions where I try to get something as good as I can out of the camera, but at the same time circumstances sometimes are such that if I had more time, I'd say, well, let me get on a tripod and do multiple bracketing exposures and sometimes I'm like I'm driving down the road and I see there's a boat in the middle of a field that's kind of cool so I pull off the side of this busy highway and take my life in my hands by going click ok that's good let's get out of here and that's kind of this case so as best I could, but it was one of those challenging days where the sky was kind of bright, so it's a little backlit and it'd be pretty tough in one exposure to get this bang on and again, if I had more time, I would have done. I'm not a huge fan of hdr and some of the way it ends up looking, but the concept is a good one to say combine the best exposure for different things personally, I'm ok with manually doing this after the fact, thanks to camera, I think this is a really interesting possibility, so I looking at a photo like this I would kind do a quick analysis, okay there's two distinct problems the sky I would like to be a little more under like I'm trying to say darker and brighter, like color wise, it's saturated and the forward information I think things to be a little bit brighter because a little dark, but here's, what happens? I mean, it's pretty tough if I try to change the exposure of the boat, maybe put it more contrast, all of a sudden the sky is looking even whiter than was before it in camera, this little red overlay means the details going gone completely. Normally that would be a bad thing, but because ultimate I'm going to make two different exposures from the same one camera file, I'm actually perfectly fine in fact, I'd be just thrilled if the whole sky turned red because that would make my life easier, so I'll try and do that a little bit, but you see as I go in, I'm adjusting sliders and it's pretty good there and all I'm and this is the hard part you have to train your eyeballs to not look at the bad part. I don't look at the sky looked at the foreground in your eyes, so they want to keep going because you're drawn to like all that red overlay warning stuff, but I'm really trying to focus my attention on the boat and the grass nothing else and let's make it a little more vibrant saturated and again, you can do whatever you wish to in this case it's going like something like that and I choose open object and there's my camera raw, smart object in photo shop here's where we need to take one a slight detour off everything else I've been telling you up until now with smart objects I just kept saying now duplicate the smart object well, if I did that, I would have a problem. Let me show you so I don't just say it by duplicated now I've gotten exact, cohn and in my head, if I'm thinking, oh now let me make an exposure for the sky the problem is this is what would happen, I would click ok and you'd see both of them have changed because they're just exact clones of each other so in a case like this duplicate doesn't work for what we wanted to what I want to achieve is two versions of the same smart object that are independent of each other so I won't and it won had the other one edit I want to edit the settings independent in this case the sky on one and the foreign information the other so the way I do that is I have to use a special command that's made for this purpose and it's called new smart object buy a copy or via copy have we like to say the word via so I right click new smart object by a copy at first glance it looks exactly the same it still looks like I've got a copy there but the important differences I can edit them independently of each other it's still access is exactly the same information so it's not like a different photograph it's the same photo and the benefit of this when you do things like bracketing you're taking different exposures there's always a slight chance that your camera might shift that won't happen here because it's exactly the pixels are dead on aura's, eh? Like people likes a pin register they're exactly the same so in some ways is actually a better method excepto worry about any kind of shift at all so what this allows me to do now is I have these two smart objects both linking back to the original but independent so now for example, I could double click on one of them I say let's put it back the way it was as shot for a second and now I'm focusing my attention on lee on the sky I try to just not look at the boat which is going to be really hard because my eyes want to look there but you have to remind yourself I'm doing this in two pieces so pushed the exposure down let's push up the vibrancy and duration maybe some contrast now I'm getting a sky that it starts to look more like I was imagining and in our one of our many recurring themes I would probably air on the side of too much to make it easier do the next step and I can always pull it back so I'd almost rather go a little cartoony over the top you know saturation because it will help me in the next step. In fact, once again I would almost be happy if I did this and found that all of the four round part was really, really dark because in a moment it's going to disappear from view anyway so there's nothing wrong with doing that so when I click ok it'll update now I have two versions of the same thing one where the boat looks the way I want, and the grass and the sky is very pale and hardly visible and the other the other way around. So now I have to somehow combine them, and the first thing I would try, usually because it's if if there's enough different that's, why I said, I don't have a problem at all with the sky turning white as long as I see an edge between, in this case, the boat and the sky, I take the quick selection tool and a few quick drags. I've already got what looks to me like a decent selection, and then I need to look through the windows little bit, and I don't again. S talked about multiple times with the theory of masking I'm not obsessing over it, trying to get it just right the first time, because it will ultimately create a layer mass that I can edit. So at this point, I'm just trying to get decently close to it. I might still use a command like, refine edge and see what it looks like this kind of emulating what the mask will look like by changing the beauty on black, and it gives me a decent idea that it looks to me it looks like it might actually be ok, and then I just choose layer mask, click ok. And of course I did all that on the wrong layer, but that's ok, did that deliberately to show you you can just drag the mask onto the other layer and let's get this right way around. There we go. So now on the top player, I have nice guy mass so only this guy is visible on the bottom layer. I have the whole thing, but because this guy is covering it up, I get the result that looking the way that I want now it needs some work, the mass needs some tweaking, but in thirty seconds, I'm already much, much closer to the effect I want and recognizing that each of these are both of these can be edited so that I'm deliberately I've pushed the sky a certain way to make it easier to see what I'm doing, but I think that might be a little much I'm gonna finish off trying to make the mask look the way I want, and then once I've done that tweet one or both of these layers to come up with kind of a final result. Ok, so in this example let's, take a look at what the mask actually looks like. It doesn't look bad, but let's get a little close when we start to see some areas like in here around the little detail stuff where it's a little more challenging but overall isn't bad some of the through the window thing is tough because there's old glass on these windows and not on these areas there's some parts of here that need to be looking so earlier very brief that went into this thing called refined edge, which is a selection technique that allows you to kind of tweak the edge of the selection and that's really wonderful. However, in this case, unfortunately, I can't use it because it's no longer a selection there's nothing I mean, I've already I made my selection previous have made a mask so refined edge is kind of out of the picture now, but one of the my favorite features when we're doing this kind of operation is so when you're making a selection, you have the ability at that time to do refine, edge and try and get better and then you click ok to make a layer mask often what happens is you still notice few areas in a bit more help but it's too late you can't go back to refine edge anymore because it's a mask so we do instead is going the properties panel and in here there's a button called mask edge when I click on it, you'll see it's actually the same as refined edge just says refined mask now so this is getting me almost like a second run at saying all that refinanced look worked pretty well, but I need to tweak it a little more so let's see if we can't adjust this a little more and like maybe paint along this edge and see if we can't make it a little better and here and let's get up in this part and then start to shift the edge a little bit or actually, maybe this case is a little tiny bit of feathering might help looks a little better, so it's basically giving me a second opportunity toe look through and see the areas where I think could use a little help and it's going to make its best attempt to adjust it now there may still be occasions where you try and kind of okay, that just didn't work and I need to try something else, but I got to say a lot of the time the combination of first refine edge and then mask edge very often gives me the result that I want keeping in mind also that I have deliberately over adjusted the sky probably a little too much in my intention to come back a little bit so I shouldn't make too much of a decision yet I just want to see what it looks like here that's not bad, but I think I want to pull it back a little bit so I double click and come back and this is where now weaken you know, make some adjustment here and again I'm really looking at the sky, you know, it's affecting everything like ok, uh that's looking pretty good to me now the other thing I think is really interesting to me and I love this feature of kamerad and light room, which we'll talk about later by nature they're the most nondestructive programs in the world is even though I've made two versions of this photo with very different settings ultimately embedded inside the raw file is the original photo the way I took it so I can feel free to go down a path as faras I want try crazy settings converted to black and white do whatever because I know there's no option and photoshopped to save over the top of the raw file you can't it's not possible, so if I have a file called one, two, three or five dot any effort my case as my raw file no matter what I do in here ultimate can always go back and change it. So like here I've got there still open I'm working on two copies of the same smart object if I go back to bridge and doubleclick says this is the way you left it and I can put it back to the way it was when I took the photograph caution look so dull in comparison now doesn't and I hit done doesn't affect this file because their versions of it that I opened us as smart objects so enbridge I see the original but the one I'm working on a photo shop doesn't matter because they're not tied together every time you're saying go from camera into photo shop you're saying it doesn't call it versions, but in the fact it's like a version of this so it's almost like saying not quite, but almost like saying the raw file is my negative and I'm making a print from the negative and they're making another print from the negative but the negative stays the same that's kind of the principal of wrong why it's so great? And also why when we had the discussion about j peg versus raw that's the bigger problem with j p you can save over the top of it by mistake and make it permanent with raw it's not possible so that's to me one of the added benefit design way along in this project but I know without having to do anything differently I have that original file in there for salami do anything that I want now one of discussions we had earlier I think back to you were talking about a photo that had like waves where they all look great except like the little white caps were a little blown out or something this is how I would approach that ideas let's pretend that part of the boat here is still a little bit too blown out for my liking, so I would start off by just making another of those new smart object by a copy it's high this per second. And then even in this view, I might be able to say, really the issue is this area right here so I would mask it. So now the on ly part that I'm editing ineffective no technical and adding the whole photo report that's visible is this part or, in your case, the white caps? So now, on top of everything else, I could go back to my one in this case, I'm on ly focusing on that, so I would say, all right, well, the highlights airway to blown out, they're going to look really bad because it's not I don't have an exact version, but you get the idea that you could say on ly, focus your eyes on the part that you're trying to fix it's going to affect the whole photograph and that's the part you have to get used to is focusing and not being distracted by the waves look horrible because I already have the waves they're in a separate layer, so you do whatever you need to hear and click ok to update it. And then I get in this context that didn't work at all, but you get the idea, or that this should be end, or at this point, one another way to do it would be, too. In this case, I had a fairly simple selection, but maybe you didn't. So what you could also do using our same recurring theme is do this, take the layer mask, take the layer mask, he said, and fill it with black. So now that that updated camera file doesn't show it all, and then take your paintbrush with white, and now wherever I paint, I'll be revealing that version of the raw file. So that way you khun don't have to be quite severe just want to try to do it by I, as a this part over here need the highlights need to be a little less blown out, your actual kind of painting it in. So this is one of my favorite aspects of these techniques is let's. Think about this for a second, I said, make another camera raw exposure, fill the mass with black, and then paint with white to reveal, which is the same as making adjustment layer fill the layer mask with black and paint with white to reveal the adjustment there, which is the same as apply a smart filter and fill the mask with black and, you know, that's what once you kind of get well, that's an idea you can use it with so many different functions for so many different purposes and very often like that was a perfect example of someone says, how would you fix this? I'd say the same concept it's a slight different tool, so using adjustment layer it's, very adjustment is don't do a great job of things that are where the highlights or blown out kamerad does so I would make another smart object by a copy to affect the highlights and then just painted and where I needed to be. Okay, this is amazing. I'm loving this last question you're probably going to get I don't know if you're going to go to the next step, but say the grass right there. Are you gonna attend? I just wanted quick thing of how you would handle even the pick, you know, I'm too being super picky, but my photography it's like I have to be, we're going to get to that. Well, I won't, because in this case, it's just more of the same, like if I lived in the grass and said I'm now maybe the grass is too saturated, but I still like the way the boat looks. I would make another copy to adjust that, you know, I mean, you talk about in the back here? Yeah, the little that area to make it the baby, the blending I want to know how you would because you've already refined it. I think I mean even go a little further because those are the things I have yeah, and you could. And this is where I mean in an ideal world and that's where I've actually this is a project I did it, I printed and I did exactly what you saw, but I guess what the difference was I pushed each one further on when I did that refine and it just kind of went okay? I mean, it just it worked just fixed it because there was enough contrast that it was able to go, oh, I get it you're trying to distinguish between, you know, in a in a pinch if I needed to, I could it still amass so I could still get a little closer and start doing some more finicky and sometimes that the reality is there is no auto you no way, but I might look at that overlay mode on the you know, because you look at the mask what it should be there's a little bit of feathering in there, see how the edges just kind of little, slightly soft that's because when I did that last refined mask, but overall when you look at it there's a little bit, I mean, maybe painting and overlay a little bit might pull a little more in her out. I mean, but that's, I would do that more if I saw gray, you know, if in this case and the other thing is that it's, you have to do it in context to how the finnish file will be. Maybe I'm still looking at now, I think maybe that's all too dark. And so this in a real project, I would spend much longer on this and do much more tweaking. I'm obviously trying to show the shortcut version of, you know, this gets you close, then you continue to tweak and keep going, but this idea of saying I want to make a selection, so if you think that, let me take a step back for me most of the time, the reason for making a selection is ultimately to make a layer mask and a layer mask is black and white, so if I can somehow make my photograph look as black and white as possible that I already know I'm three quarters of the way they're towards getting a good layer mask so like in this case on this photo I'm thinking maybe just one replace this guy completely because this guy's okay, what? I have a much more interesting sky that I want to put in there so I need to select the sky but over here I'm thinking this part of this abandoned building is very close to the cloud, so it might be harder for it to make a good selection so I'm going to completely wreck this photograph with the intention of saying let me try and see if I can make it almost looked like a layer mask saying that put all the dark parts really dark and all the light parts is light as I can with the intention I mean this is going to sound really odd, but nothing I would love better right now with these warnings you're seeing to see read up on the top and blue at the bottom that would be like fantastic because that would tell me I had pure white pure black that's not going to happen, but this is over the edge of it it is happening quite a bit so I'm would not never leave this photograph to say, you know, keep it this way but it's that temporary nature, that same principle that I'm going to push everything really far to say well, let's, try that and see what I could get out of this it open object, it's, goingto apply those settings. And I indeed have a very dark and light kind of thing happening. So I use again a tool like the quick selection tool to try and start off and not in any way expecting it to be perfect. But I wanted to be at least be somewhat close. Then I happen to have sky. This is kind of fun because that abandoned buildings in puerto rico, and this is on the highway to jacksonville. So it's like, why not combine the two together? So and, of course, I should say I pulled off to the side of the highway because I would never take a photograph out of a moving vehicle while I was driving, because that would be really bad, especially with the seventy, two hundred. So we don't ever do that because that would be, you know, bad. So I open that one. Now, here's, where you you have to kind of make a decision the quickest way to make this pace it into that is that paste into command. Talked about before. When you do that, this is no longer smart or a camera smart object, so the quick way would be copy paste into but if I feel like I might still want to adjust this then I'd have to do like a dragon dropped two added into that file and keep the camera raw ability in this case for the purpose of demonstration I won't bother of that one yet so now I'm here and I choose I've already copied it and I choose paste into that creates thie file in here with the massive can already see some areas where it needs some help but before I go too far about making quick decisions I would very quickly now say ok the whole purpose of me deliberately making it look so black and white the issue is was to help me make that selection but clearly I don't want the photo to look that way at least I don't so camera defaults and now I'm just looking at the building because I already know I have the sky so part of the thing is training your eyes or just stopped looking at these parts up here because you already know that's already there so I'm just looking at the building going more contrast more clarity you know whatever it might be maybe change the color temperature a little bit okay and updates but still preserves the mass that's already there and once again it's still needs some work especially over here but I'm pretty close already in a matter of moments and that's with a lot of these techniques the reality is it might still take you forty five minutes to an hour worth of tweaking, but at least I've got to that tweaking part in five minutes, not another hour because it used to be I would take on hour to get to the point of being able to work on it for another hour and I'd much rather say let me get to the creative fund of blending and combining more quickly by doing it this way so copy paste into is the quick way if I want to preserve the ability is my look at that one I think now that sky that I pasted in there looked a little too dark to me, so I would actually in the long run rather take the full smart object from camera raw and dragged that over onto here, hide it and then do the whole selection and make a mask so that's not quite as automatic paste and paste into is nice because it doesn't automatically but then this no longer become smart, so in this case I would now go back now that's in there and do the same kind of idea make my basic selection again can tweak it if necessary later on but now I would just go in here and add layer mask so now I have the ability at it not only this one, but I also have the ability at it this one so to me that's an ideal situation is tohave the best of both worlds that I can add it both of them and I can still edit the mask so I think I'm going to pull this just a bit more brighter like this one of my favorite techniques to do owned by let me add one more thing before I say that the other difference is when you choose paste into it creates a layer mask and the layer mask is automatically unlinked so then you can move the sky around in this case when I made the mass this way it's linked you have to be a little careful that he went to shift the sky the mask would move with it and it would look really bad so in this case you'd have to say let me unlinked that and move this around find the place I want to look we added some trees in there to somehow so if you're ever having a really hard time um with like detail like this just find a place where there's more clouds behind so it doesn't matter that it's white that's like when that happens like yes I mean hardly ever does when it does you're like oh, thank goodness I don't have spent forever masking that part so that's kind of the principal to me of one of the ways they take a match of cameras to say overdo it, bring it back whether it's to make a mask or just when you're trying to blend things together, whatever it might be. There's nothing wrong with taking a chance and going long, gonna start with this really dark and then see he always because of this two way street, you can always go back and forth when you have a layer mask. This mask edge could be used over and over again, unlike refinance, which is a one shot deal now that I've adjusted the sky in the building, I might run this again and try and tweak a little further. So when you have to question before about the little trees, maybe I would run it more than once because you can. So now some things, like if you feathered it or something that might not work as well. What if you just done some little tweaking? Nothing wrong with taking a couple of runs at it to kind of see what results you get to?