Lessons

Lesson Info

Compositing Using "Place" Command

Okay, all right, so in the very first session was talking about why work not destructive, that sort of did the world wind version of compositing, someone on a background now let's, take that at a more leisurely pace kind of actually see what was happening here, but also see how we take advantage of a layer mass to make our life simpler. So here's the photograph that I want to use my background, this is the photograph that I want to make it look like she's wood for something I don't know in the forest actually, this is this is my style of photography. I shot this in my studio not because I wanted girl with leaves in her hair on a white background, but because I knew ultimately I want to put our different background, so I just made sure that when I was taking this photograph, I gave myself the best opportunity to make my life easier because we're doing a whole series of other photographs. In retrospect, if I put a darker background behind her with her blond hair, it might have been a bit...

easier, but frankly, photoshopped is such a nice job, then I could still probably get a pretty good result now in photo shop as we know there's always multiple ways to do things I want to combine these two photographs together previously I showed you like paste into in this case there's no point in doing that because the mass has to be created based on her hair. But what I want to do is I wanted make my life simpler other words that have opening a file and then dragged here and combining them there's, another command. I happen to use bridge to do this, but you could do it through just within photo shop and that is a command called place when you choose place it means import directly into my existing photograph. This second image and the reason I do it that way is it automatically scales it to fit. Usually what happens to people is they have two photographs they drag one of the other and one of them the scale is way off, like it's way too big to have to scale it down by using the place command one of its features is I will automatically scale the new photograph down to fit the existing one just eliminates a step because I use bridges more visual. So I say yes, this is the one I want and I choose file place into photo shop one the reasons that I'm a big fan of bridge is because I also used in design and illustrators or the fact that I could decide to place into any one of these is pretty cool, although you have to imagine, it says, placed in place into the current document within because it doesn't work unless you already have, like in my keys, I had that forest photograph already opened so now when I choose place in photo shops going plays into that document in photoshopped, however, with a slight detour because this is a raw file because a camera files going to first start in camera, we don't really talk too much about cameron will go into more detail on another day, but for now one of the advantages and for those of you at home, we talked about this a little during lunchtime, but weren't there one advantage of camera? Is it's a lot easier? Just move sliders, but here is another one of those, and I keep revisiting these concepts in my mind. Well, here's, what my thinking is, I want to end up with a realistic looking photo of hers in this forest, but at the same time I know how photo shop works, so I want to create a better contrast between the background in her hair so temporarily I might decide to do this that red you're seeing is a warning in camera telling you you're blowing out the highlights, which in this case is perfectly fine well, I'm trying to do is give myself better contrast because of her blonde hair if this was anything else this would not be a good idea because I'd be permanently changing the photo we have to look this way but because of the nature of the place command it means I'm by nature creating a link between this camera filing for shop which you'll see in a moment when I click ok and do this so again we'll talk in much more detail later on about thes thing called smart objects but basically what this has created is this thing called a smart object with the smartness being it remembers it's a camera file so I don't really want her to be this dark but to help me make an effective selection it's going to help tow have her look this dark so for example I always almost always start with this tool called the quick selection tool which is a really interesting selection tool its name I don't think is descriptive that could be if it was up to me I would probably call something to like the edge detection selection tool because it really works looking at edges and that's why I tried to first make mohr contrast so it would do a better job it would have done an ok job before probably but around parts of her hair be like yeah not releasing an edge here because her hair is blond in the background is white and by the way let me just add to my own horn a little bit I deliberately did this because I've watched you charles we will say look, I have this person with black hair on a white background well that's easy anyone could do that let's make a more challenging one like light blonde hair on a white background how do you deal with situations like that? Because it be too easy just go black hair white background so with the quick selection tool as I start to drag it looks and tries to find edges you see it went around her arm their arm there and overall to the edges most of her hair but it's missing a few bits and pieces but that's ok, because remember my one of my many things I say over and over again end up with I want to end up with something looks realistic so this point my feeling is that it should be an ok start part of what makes the quick selection to a work is this button called refined edge this is ranks up there with one of the top things that it will be introduced over the years because of cut out hours of work because it magic I don't know how it does it when you click refine edge you have all these options and again mind by default has always set to on layers the reason I use that is now every decision I make is in context where I'm seeing the background I mean, you show you the difference if I pick like on black now I can see more easily, but I might obsess over things that are important because it's not she's not going on a black background I would prefer to see the background she's actually beyond and to see part of it is quite light colored, so there might be whole areas I don't have to worry about if you go toe overlay mode now, aiken sort of spot where ok, khun see something? See those hairs that air kind of covered in pink? That means those aren't currently actively selected so quite often you kind of switch back and forth but the way this is a non tend to be all full blown session on how to do selections in replying edge, but basically this command is going to look for the different a hard edge and a soft edge s o if I move this radius up a little bit, it starts to get a little better her hair and then by zoom in a bit and by the way, this is a really good reason I keep kind of trying to relate things started before one the reasons I talked about why it's important learned shortcuts here's a perfect example if you're in the middle of another dialog box, going and clicking on the zoom tool may not be an option because you won't let you because you're doing something else, so but if you want to zoom in or scroll, you have to know keyboard shortcuts to do that effectively, so I want to get closer, and I want to be able to scroll around. I can do that because I happen to remember, what are the shortcuts for that tried to come over here? I can't use the scroll bars because I'm in the middle of this dialogue box, so that's, another reason for considering using keyboard shortcuts, and then I start going around here. In fact, in this case, I think I'll go to this overlay mode because then I can better see where there's some hair and what quite often happens is this. When you paint over to try and say, add this in at first, it doesn't look like anything's happening, but you'll see in a moment it probably actually is not bad, so I just keep kind of looking around and trying to add noticeable hairs here and there. This one there again, I was just using this space bar to kind of scroll around, and my goal here is just to get fairly close. Yes, and then we go backto on layers I look, hair is there in that other view, it didn't look like it was really there didn't and to me didn't look like you got it but that's why it's very important to switch between views and this is the key one I would suggest if you obsess too much over like on black or on white or even black and white you might feel like oh no I missed a bit but to me I always keep coming back to I need to view it in the context of the final background now recently I was teaching a session on this and someone said what if I don't know what color back was going to be it's like well then don't do it pick a background first so much easier to his theory was almost extract her and then pick the background later like you know that would work but you gonna make your life more difficult okay so I'm gonna pretend for the moment to say that I'm pretty happy with that now it's not final yet but the other key part of this dialogue box and refine edge is it gives you choices as to what do you want to be the final result of using this command if I pick selection all I would just have is a more refined selection but the one I use one hundred ten percent of the time is make a layer mask take this selection that I've been refining and make it a mask so it's automatically gonna add a mask that already has all that black white gray painted it click ok looks like this this would be a good example of where I would want oh, look at the layer mask briefly to see what I've got because I can already kind of tell some places that I need some work but I want to kind of analyze what I have so if I option or all click on it I can look at the layer mask and as I get a little closer you can see for example let's look at this see that little hair right there see it's kind of light gray that means it's kind of selected but kind of not these black areas mean their mass completely. These white hairs mean they're visible completely but with hair and other things you might want it to be a little more noticeable. So all of you to this point is kind of identifying saying here where it's great that should probably be black because that's should be see through to the background so this is a good way to kind of identify some of the potential problem areas. To be honest, when I first started working on mass, I would start painting in this view because I thought I could more clearly see what was happening but that's kind of dangerous because again you take away the context of what does it look like on my background? Because even though that part right there that little those little gray hairs in this mass view look like they're not there enough when I look at it in the context of my background, it might look perfect, so I always use myself as the example, so I don't blame other people, but before I used to think this way I would obsess I would zoom in and I obsess over every single little hair and then look in the background kind of go how it came to see them. I realized, why am I doing that to myself? Because I know I'm not going in my case I'm not going to change the different background and if I do at that point I made my paints a more on the mask but before I make any says, I just looked at this you to kind of identify where I think there are some issues like this hair, but let's see what it looks like in context it's still kind of there and maybe it's so maybe it looks perfect because her there's the sun is behind her so that there happens to be lighter than the rest. So that's a decision you have to make I can see areas though for example, where down here that to me is an issue because there's white and that part should be see through and over here that's why you're so there's some parts where you have to look at and kind of go in the context of this background, I need to tweak a little bit. So let's say, for the sake of argument that I did decide this little hair right here, I want to be a little more visible so we go back to the mass for a second. That means it needs to be mohr white. Not so great. So the challenges and I only say it this way because I know the answer. How do why make just that hair whiter without affecting any of the black pixels? And the answer is you zoom to four thousand percent now you don't that the way used to dio I mentioned jokingly before about someone getting a nobel peace prize of photo shop. This is actually what should have won because whoever discovered this the first time and I wish I knew who it was so I could say this person wrote this book I know the first time I read it was well known photos up starting this country. Nisman wrote a book on masking and selecting that's first place. I saw it, whether she discovered on, I don't know, but whoever did kudos to them because this is absolutely changed everything. I'm not exaggerating to say in the past I want to zoom way in and painstakingly try toe trace and get everything right now all I do is this I make sure my form colors white now just to prove it if I didn't do anything else and I painted that would not look good, it is just like big that thing of white not not good at all lower the overpass a little bit, but even that it's still not helping because I still have to be deadly accurate so somebody god love him discovered that if you change the blend mode, which is this menu here of the paintbrush toe overlay it's like this magical thing that says white now can paint gray but not black. So watch what happens over here not that you could tell this, but believe me when I say I'm taking my paintbrush, you know I said so here's, the thing photo shop is not voice activated you can't just say pick overlay mode you have to actually and choose it. So here I am now trying to paint and you can tell by the sound of my pen I'm trying to paint on the black and nothing's really happening there obviously was something still there, but look over here I just go over and just touch on this and all of a sudden look at that I'm getting mohr of the white but not touching the black that's what this magical overlay mode does it works the other way to wear over here remember those little bits like right in there where there's a little bit of gray but it should be more black I just switched to black and now I'm going to start getting more black and how's see how it's not affecting the white it's amazing and this has saved so much time however be warned don't russians surveyed this way resist the temptation to do what I'm doing right now which is exclusively paint on the mask because now again I've eliminated context so I want t to see how it's working but I would actually use it this way still looking at the photograph and now everything that I every decision I make like over here I can look at and see what's happening in the context of the photograph so if I go to this one and start that doesn't look good see how the hair is disappearing so now I'm seeing it maurine context because if you exclusively pay attention to what the mass looks like, it might fool you and the thinking all now I've that needs to be pure black where in reality it might need to be dark gray so by keeping the capacity of the brush a little lower and kind of gradually painting in that overlay mode and that's the magic formula makes this work is it means I congratulate do things and see what I'm going to get now sometimes like down here I'm not sure if it's gonna work let me just take a quick look you see right there there's not a a little even an inkling of black so painting an overly mo it's going to be no help because it has to be at least have slightly dark gray the work but because of my original selection there's nothing there in a case like that I would have to just say get a writ of overlay mode back to normal and now this is where I take advantage of the pressure sensitivity to try toe paint just those little areas with black to make it look a little more realistic now I've done full classes on compositing and selecting and masking and in there are going to weigh more detail about how you khun paint in fake hair and all kinds of this is more just discussion of masking but that concept of overlay mold when you're trying to adjust a mask gosh I again if I could add up somehow the amount of time that saved me over the years I can imagine because I used to spend all my time going paint they paint undue pain no undue and I was always going trying three or four painful glass too much whereas this eliminates that because you're just looking at it and it's a very similar a simple concept and here's a perfect example. If I was only looking at the mask, I would know to paint little spots there, but I saw that because I was looking at it in the context of the photo on the background, even here, nothing is permanent. So if I look at that and saying now that I've done that, I don't know that I should have done that, I can go back and change it. This is a perfect example of where having the mass linked with the layer makes sense because in the previous version so you like the photo behind the camera I wanted the massive state put in this case if I unlinked them, that would make no sense at all instead, this is where I want them to think together, so now I can reposition her in different areas and see what I whether I like it or not and sometimes there's a good example look at that little bit of of white right down here if I was just having a heck of a time trying to get rid of that depending on the photo you're working on, you might just find if you move to a different spot like hell here now and just have to crop it because part of her is missing but sometimes frankly that's his good solutions, anything is it dry just moving to a different position on the photograph then you may have to readjust your thinking a little bit in terms of what you mask but just to kind of summarize this part this started with two things first of all the place command which brought her in and scaled her down then I used a selection tool and refiners to get to this point, but if you remember way back when I started this, I said I'm going to deliberately make her a little darker to help me with this election, but at this point now that I look at a caution look so different on the screen up there on my screen she looks too dark up there it actually doesn't look too bad the less pretty assume the zig argument that I've done all that and I definitely definitely overall the exposure all too much because I used the place command with the camera raw file is created this link for me automatically so now I've done all that work including making this layer mask I double click it goes back to camera so now I can readjust the settings a little bit maybe like that when I click ok it's going toe update the layer but preserve the layer mask so now I might do another round of tweaking cause now also I could see a little more here and so on but every step along the way at this point nothing I've done so far is even remotely permanent, so I don't have to go oh no, I've already because I haven't if I decide to make her bigger I can because I scaled her down to fitz I've got room to go if I decide I missed some hairs now that I've changed exposure, I can go back and tweak it, showing a second another way to tweak it a step further so that's the recurring theme here is that you should never I hope, get two point or like, well, I have to live with that because you shouldn't if you follow these kind of procedures than there's hardly ever a point where you should feel like, oh, well, I guess that'll have to do because that but here's the it's always good news bad news is the good news is you're never finished. The bad news is you're never finished so you could keep tweaking and taking forever because you can so that's where you have to kind of balance, you know that process normal and overlay in the same math? Yeah, it's just because what you're doing is you're changing the brush how with the paint is applied to overlay and normal in fact, just not again, I swear to you, I don't getting kickbacks from walk him but I have a little button on my pen set up when I click it it goes between normal and overlay because I do that so often instead of going up to the menu I just programmed it in the settings to say normal overly normal over it's just on the fly I don't have to think about it anymore so it's one of the things where you change it depending on the need if it makes sense to be an overlay you pay normally but if you need to like that part that I needed to switch to normal and back you could also make to a process for that too um so you're saying that you you know, create the link in bridge from, you know, the broad enbridge can you do that in photo shop or in light room? Is there a way to do that? Well, this and the main reason I say it that way because I was in bridge because I used the place command that linkage happened automatically there is a way which will cover later on that says if you're starting in like room or if you're already in photo shop or you know starting from scratch that that link can be created and just happens that the place command does too nice things in one its scales and if it and automatically creates that link for you okay but it but only from within bridge well no if you did like if I was in photos I just happened to be in bridge because visually I like it but if I was just in photos off and shows place than it would go the only difference is I bring id when I do that I get a dalit box with like this and I have to figure out which one is it? I prefer to look at a thumbnail go that's the one I want so effectively it's the same end result so the place command itself is what's creating part of what's quitting that link there is also a way I haven't personally set up so that every time I open a camera file it is automatically late but that's a setting we'll talk about later on when we talk about camera raw okay now as we're going here that's kind of the basic principle of a layer mask is high versus delete and how you then apply it there's a ton of possibilities I mean it's just really is up to you decide what do I want to do with this? So let's just do another quick example of how I might use this so just a basic photo and open it and I'll take my selection tool and let's just say for them to start off with I don't know why but I just want a nice big oval shaped photograph for some project there's no simple way and photoshopped to say you can't crop into an oval because crops are rectangle, so if I want to have the photograph on ly showing within this oval than one of the simplest ways would be to then addle air mask because if you already have a selection, the mask is created based on that selection. So imagine if I said to you, I want you to mask this to an oval and only use your paintbrush should be here for a while trying to paint away and make it look nice, but the whole point is you don't have to if you then decide, ok that's kind of cool, but I want a much more interesting, funky kind of painted on border effect if we revisit our concept here it's, white and black that's what's making this happen. So if I were to take my pain for us, one of the fun, fun things about brushes and photoshopped is there's a whole bunch of really cool, funky, crazy brushes that come built into photoshopped. Some of them are like a texture others have, you know, different settings built in, for example, this is a fun one that I'd never used, but it's still fun to show, make it a little bigger start off, make sure I haven't big enough where you can, okay? That's too big well, overboard on my make it bigger, okay, so if this is actually a brush which is a maple leaf but it happens that have a function where as I painted randomly takes mate beliefs and makes them kind of appear all over the place, why would I do that? I have no idea, but in this case you can see as I start to paint we're looking at a little bigger so you can see what's happening because I'm painting on the mass with white see what's happening wherever I paint it's randomly painting a whole series of overlapping may police that look like this so now that's, my mask is a mass that has a combination of the oval I already made all these crazy random shapes, which means I just created a really unusual, very impractical border for my photograph, but the principle is the same matter what brush you use now I look at and go ok, I don't really like that I would paint over it and try something else, so every brush that's in here is a brush that let's use a as long as you still remember it fundamentally comes back to black, white, gray, whatever brushy use whatever filter you apply, whatever it does, you're doing it to the mask notice how the photograph doesn't look any different it's how much of it is visible so for example, I don't know that I would necessarily live with this make believe border thing, but let's build on it just because we can. If I went in and said let's, do a motion blur here's where you have to be careful. If I had the photographs selected by mistake, it would be blurry, but because I have the mask selected, look, what is doing it, blurring the mass, creating a very different effect when I can play with order. And now I'm getting this really unusual painted on look that no one would ever know happened to start with a whole bunch of silly little mate beliefs. Now the only danger high suppose you could say with this is this is the one place in photo shop where I desperately wish I'd have one more option, which is to make the filter editable on a mass. But right now, it's not so when you do something like, in this case, a gaussian or emotion blur on the mask. If I change my mind, I have to do some starting over again at this point that there's no function let's me say make it little less blurry as we'll see later with smart filters with regular photoshopped functions, there is that option, but not with a mask, unfortunately, but at worst you try a couple things and you either undo that moment or the next day said ok, that didn't work let me paint over so the beauty of it is applying filter the mass means the photograph itself is not being affected but the border it creates because this is what my mass looks like now so at any point here's another tool I use all the time with this the mixer brush tool this's a really weird tool it's got a ton of settings I mentioned earlier. This is where presets are great, but what it does is it functions as if everything was now wet paint instead of just white on black pixels. So if I push this way it's going to push the white onto the black or the black onto the white, depending on what kind of tool you have. So now you can create some really interesting kind of painterly edges simply by playing around with different combinations of brushes there's brushes like these, one of which are really crazy because they even do like just weirdness. Now I'm showing you again on the mask so you can kind of see what's happening, but normally I would do it seeing the photograph because that's ultimately what I want to really see it what's happening when I paint like this or like that, so for people that want to take a photograph and give it kind of a painterly feel to it this is a nice way to do without painting yourself into a corner where like oh now I've wrecked the photograph because I'm not doing anything with a photograph I'm affecting how the photograph is displayed so could I mickster brushed directly on the photo I could I'd be reluctant to do so because then it would be very permanent if I I made a mistake here if all else fails I can say ok, this is just going downhill fast so I could either delete the layer mass completely like this just drag it to the trash that says gone then I'm back to square one or if you still know you want to layer mask one of the first shortcuts I learned again as phil with the foreground color, which is white shift the leadership backspace story on keyboards working options leader all back space and that's effectively saying put the layer mask backto white let me start again so it's not quite as editable down the road as I would like but it's still a better alternative than then taking like some people would take the eraser and a race edges of the photograph to get that border but then they're gone so the recurring theme here of a layer mask is it's black, white gray is that whole show high kind of thing how you use that there is a ton of different options. In fact, now this is where it gets a little crazy. So hughes with caution at this point but let's just, uh, do this. So here's a that back on photo I had before it's kind of interesting it's got some weird little texture to let's just see what happens. I have not tried this before, so I have no idea what's gonna happen. I kind of do, but not really so I'm going to copy this whole thing. Here's one of my favorite little photoshopped tricks, if I was just choose paste at this point, it would just make a new layer so I wouldn't be don't let me just dragging and dropping. What I want to do is I want to use the photograph as a mask. So take if you imagine that photograph is a grey scale photograph that would be in parts of the photograph which show this photo parts would hide it. I guarantee you as weird and you would not do this every day, but I like to open up possibilities of the people leaves now this exists but here's the trick and this is the little one of these secret handshake parts of photo shop if you just choose paste again is going to make a new layer so somehow have to tell photo shop pace onto the layer mask and the way you do that is you have to be viewing the layer mask first. So you optional click on it to make that your view now on you choose paste it pace onto the mask so as you can see now I have what looks like a just a great scale photograph. If I look at in the context of the photo and let's, add a white layer hoops below. Interesting, odd not sure I like it, so let's keep tweaking on what if I were to invert the mask? It's more unusual, but still kind of odd. So let's, go back to this one, but this is where I might use something like levels. I'm applying levels to the mask, which means I'm intensifying either white or black by pulling these sliders. Now I'm in no way suggesting, gosh, I'm going to run out and try this tomorrow because it is a little weird, but I did the many years ago I did tutorial on this just sort of throw it out there, and I was surprised when people were like, hey, you know what? That idea I took it a different kind of went down this path, now that I know that exist, and look what I made that's like perfect that's. Exactly what I hope that's happened not there is going to try and piece to tree on top of the lake, you know? Yeah, I did it because the chances are who cares? That looks kind of silly, but if you know that that ability exists to say that's another option and it doesn't stop here now, I could say, well, you know, now that done that, it still looks little weird. What if I went back and did kind of just made it more free form and get another one of these blurs, like a gaussian blur or something that I'm blurring that pace of photographs and now just has a very different effect on it and inverted? I don't know. I mean, thean tension was not to show you. Look at this beautiful finish product is to say that's another possibility probably lower down on the rating of something I use every day. But when you know that that is a possibility to say you mean I can pace a photo, wantto a mask and use that and that's kind of interesting. So if you remember right back at the beginning, I talked about the main reason one of the main reasons for using keeping that ptsd is so I can reverse engineer now that I've done that let me go back and show you this image again and say ok, so I had this big layer here and you can see how it's kind of weird I wonder how that is I can look at the layer mask and go ok, so if I had to look at this I can tell by looking I must start off with a selection that I felt with black does have very hard edges, but then I also had some weird brush thing and overlay mode or something I don't know exactly what it is, but I kind of get the sense because I can see this whole area here is not solo black are solid white this is and this is so I know just by looking at it that this layer will be completely in here completely hidden where he is standing in part of her but all this other part will be kind of to use dental term monkey so when I look back at it that's why this looks the way those that's part of the reason there's another thing going on which we'll talk about later on which I know just by looking at this little symbol here, which is another reason why it looks the way it does but that's once you start to see what layer mass khun do, this is one of the many reasons to use it is then you khun experiment, but also when you are looking back at something you should be able to fairly quickly tell this text looks like it's behind his leg because there's a type player with the layer mask that means by seeing that I know just by looking at it. If I wanted to, I could still edit the type, because I've created in a way that makes it look like it's on the wall behind them. But I know it isn't a because I took this photo and there was no type there, but also because by looking at the structure of the document, aiken c type player with mask, another type player with another mask and that's where as you start to see what a layer mass khun do, then you start seeing how you can start building on that and trying different things now, as I'm working on a layer mask theirs when I'm working on it, there are things that I've kind of mentions before I want to kind of summarize them together here, I want to focus my attention on getting a result I want I don't want to interrupt myself by constantly having to go. Back and forth the different settings I just want the tool toe work so for example here now I've got this weird mass going on I want to start building on it so I have to look at it's okay, I've got it right now just a regular old brush that's got kind of a soft edge to it at one hundred percent of passing that means wherever I paint I'll be showing the photograph one hundred percent because I white light but I'm not sure if that's exactly the one so this is where there's a little list of keyboard shortcuts that I found made my life simpler when working with mass and I've already kind of mentioned but I want to summarize them altogether and the first one is the letter x is that swap between black and white especially I'm trying to just refine an edge and I go off a little bit I don't have to leave where my mouse is to go click on something I want to keep my eyes on that part I just go x hide ex show so I just swap back and forth so that's the first one that I use a ton the second one is on the fly sometimes I want to change the opacity because I don't want one hundred percent I want fifty percent I want sixty percent and also mention that before just a single number so if I'm in the middle of painting and I decide I want thirty percent just pressed three and now I've got thirty percent nice, which acts of white and I can really start kind of painting in the more I painted kinds starts to layer over itself so you can gradually paint things in and I press x to go back to black and press seven for seventy percent and there's, even if you really like keyboard shortcuts, there's, even a keyboard shortcut that's built in for overlay in normal, a little odd. Most shortcuts are usually commander control something this is on the mac option shift. Oh, windows all shift over overlay and then end for normal, which is just weird, but that's the way this because they ran out of numbers at a certain point. So I happen to have it programmed in my pen, but if I didn't, I could be working and suddenly right here are my where I'm working, I want overlay instead of moving up here, I just press that short cut and now it's overlay and I pressed the others work on its normal, so I'm just pressing that that way I don't have to take my mouse or pan away from where I'm working, so that little core of shortcuts really makes life a lot simpler because it means you're I hate it when I have to take my eyes off the prize and kind of move over here and click on something where if there's a way I could do it on the fly to me I'd much prefer to do that um now there's one other shortcut which is, um probably let's see your fighting that's not it okay, so how can I get in this world? Remember when we were in refine edge and one of the views I had was that kind of colored overlay to help me see that's sometimes a nice often we're tryingto kind of blend things in, but even though it's partially hidden, you kind of want to see the actual original the backslash key when you're president does that same thing so it gives that kind of colored overlay this case doesn't work, it doesn't really show all that well, but if I was the middle of like that example well with the compositing someone with hair this allows you to see did I miss any hair and you know where to paint so that's just the backslash key is like a little toggle switch to turn on and off that little colored overlay view which is sometimes useful so one of the other nice things about layer masses that it is part of the parcel in terms of when you save a psd it assumes it's there there I've had people say, well, you know, there are times where I decided to apply a layer mass to make it permanent I'm like you might as well just a race then because I mean, their theory was it was easier to make a mask but a certain point now that I'm done, I don't need any more I'm like e don't know if I would do that because how do you ever really know if you're done or not? But the other reason is when you're in the layers panel, any element in here can be used elsewhere, so let's use our vivid imaginations and say, wow, dave, that is an awesome mask you have created there and I could clearly see using that and tons of other documents pretend play along well, if that's the case, I don't wanna have to start all over again, so I could either copy and paste or drag and drop into a different document so you might have a photoshopped document. It contains layers where their only purpose is to preserve a mask you create that's kind of cool for like border and hedges effects and things like that. Now you just take that dragging the other document and you're almost already finished, so you're not like figure like, oh, how did I do that again? This case doesn't matter because you're just taking this information like this and the simplest way of all would be just select all copy then go to some other documents in this case is not going to make any sense at all let's do this so we don't wreck what I've already done now you see here it's a slight different size, but because it's just a bunch of pixel information, I'm not terribly concerned if I change the size like that it's kind of interesting little glitch there again just makes perfect sense in a case like this wonderful but the point is you're not starting from scratch again if you have a mass is even remotely close to what you want, why not use it and tweak it? That's the same conversation with things like presets you create a preset it's a good starting point doesn't mean you have to keep it exactly that way you start with it that way and then build on it later mass same thing you cradle air mask works perfectly in this environment you taken another photograph it's not quite right but it's a good start I would still rather do that that start from scratch every time I wanted to use like I took a picture of an old photo and it had a cool border border I wanted to use and put it on other photos so then I would use those techniques have that mask um on one layer have the background, you know, on another layer save it is a psd um and then would that live and, like the mask preset or were not present, just a document to the dax tendencies like to sort of preset it's just you've already done the work, okay, so it just means that you'd have to go find it, you know, like I know that I did that file called such and such and in that file was that cool border with a mask I made and then drag a new photograph into it or it onto the new photograph too. We use the work you've already done so technically from a photo shops on point presets, our adjustment layers, tools and things that are built in this is just it's not technically considered a pre set, but it kind of is in the sense that you've already done it. So I know a lot of people that have, like one photo shop document that a name something clever like no pre set limit masks or something or pre done mass and each layer is an interesting mask effect that big and then just taken to another doctor, I'm going looking for one on earth where did I do that? You're almost deliberately saying, well, that's kind of cool, let me take that and and make it available more easily to myself by making it a masking a document with layers. Ok, do you have to unlinked that mask from the photo before you copy it? Or if you do copy and paste? No, because all you're doing is saying select the mask if you want to drag and drop technically most of time, you can't just drag the mask, so what you do is drag the layer with the mask and then basically get rid of the layer, so I'm kind of do it that way is dragging and dropping is more of a layer function than a mask function. It depends a little bit on the situation, but let me show you in this case, uh, let's do this let's just say, but I wanted one more type player down here on dh. A little smaller that's, a really bad color. I can't see it, okay, but I also wanted to look like it was behind him. Well, I already created a layer mask for that so rather than me do that all over again. One of the other nice benefits of layer mask is there duplicate a bull. Just make up a word so you can copy them by dragging one of things I do like about photoshopped, I think adobes and a very good job is consistency where you can make assumptions for example in almost any part of photo shop if you see something whatever it is ah layer um object something that you say I want another one of those if you hold down option and drag, it makes a copy across the board doesn't matter what it is so in this case the same theory applies I want this same mask on this type player so I hold down option click on this mask and drag it it copies it and right away look it's already done now my today layer is behind him it's already unlinked because the first one was so now I could click on my type player and decide where I wanted to appear so that's the other another yet another benefit of the layer mask is if you already created one, chances are you can reuse it in some other part of the same document just by duplicating it if you option or old so option mackel windows, click on the mask and drag it if there's no layer mask it just makes a new one that there's an existing layer masculine assume you want to overwrite the existing layer mask with this new one so that's the only part we have to really think about it should I do that or not? Because I've already made a layer mask it won't add to it it'll say make use this instead, which happens work sometimes they you've update the mask, and now it makes sense for the other two layers to have that same mascot option dragged off to drag, and then they're replaced with that updated mask. Now some people look at the layers panel here and saying, boy, that's starting to get complicated looking like yes, but that's a good thing, because in this case, complexity means look at all these options I have, like an imagine if I opened the original j peg, I couldn't I could have got to that point of making it look like the word today was behind him, but I want to start from scratch because there was no mask here because I have preserved the layers that mask was already theirs by looking at it, I can see well that's, clearly him, so I was able just drag it over with that copy thing and I'm done now if I happened to have a massive was only say his lower body and then I suddenly move this up here and didn't work I could still receiving their c right by his hand. I must have missed a bit because I didn't care about that down here, but up here see that little part of me see how it's going to sneak in through there a little bit that shows me that there's something wrong with that layer mask so at this point click on the layer mask and paint over that part to say let me just fix that little park is clearly that's not very good just like that and of course I did that entirely on purpose to show you how easy it is to update a mask on the flight but that it is so I work with people and they're like in some cases they're almost apologetic for how much stuff there is no last time like don't ever apologize for that I'd much rather see fifteen layers than three unless twelve of them are blank that's probably not ideal, but you know any time and this is example where some people think in their mind well, now that I've got the type looking good may not just merge those three will merging by emerging, you're also rast arising, which means you can't edit either the type or the mask. Why would you do that? There'd be no reason to and here's something I don't think I've said before that much today, if not at all and that is long time force up users forget how times have changed because one of the reasons people used to talk about merging layers was the files getting really big and the only reason that man does I'm running out of storage room well, yes, I did say this before then just go buy more storage like don't make that the reason for giving up on all this edit ability because you're worried your file sizes so big unless you start getting messages saying not enough ram or something operational that's a little different that means you're using a huge file and you're running out of space that way. But if it's just you're thinking yourself when I say that's gonna be a big file okay? I rather have a big file with all this editing ability then a nice streamline file that I suddenly went back to him but I can't change that, you know? And in the early days of photoshopped that was a legitimate concern because hard drives weren't that big and there wasn't that much ram on a machine so you would worry about gosh, this is getting awfully big to my mind that on lee is a problem if if it won't work operationally because it says sorry not enough ran that means the combination the ram you have in the size of this file I can't do what you're asking me to, but even then sometimes you can work around it by doing the work another document dragging over or something I just I pains me when I see people go out like I'll just merge these like, you know why I don't do that I mean I honestly have to think very carefully is there ever a situation where you'd be apply obliged to merge, erase flattened, delete rast arise and the answer is I can't think and just so no one gets confused this is complete different than saying save a copy that's flattened yes definitely you know, to send to a lab or to a co worker for sure but for you, for your purposes save all this stuff especially layers and mass that's the key elements of working not destructively do we have any more questions before we finish this is a little off topic, but on topic are we just curious? We're goingto but the things that we're doing the action that's actually he said, you're going to be talking about actions later or these things we're doing now like are we going to talk about patching it all well that's more part of the the action part of things and typically you create an action that does one operation that you need to you can apply that one operation to a whole bunch of images at one point, so we'll talk about that okay, great let us know what you wanted to with adjustment layers when we get back please well, everything could possibly know about adjusting layers and whatever time we have a veil the players are so powerful and not just as as ah another choice other than like those standard commands. But there's. Some things we could do with the many different ways we're talking about. The different types of just layers. How masking fits into the picture, how you can use to be more accurate, and also for some kind of special effect kind of stuff, too.