Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating A Series Of Objects

So another little trick we can do which is kind of interesting is if you're trying to create something and need a siri's of objects so make just a simple example here and let's do it in this case actually will do pixels just for the purpose of demonstration doing going to make a little square here is I'm holding down the shifty and I wanna siri's of these squares kind of evenly spaced out across my page for a border or something else well, the long involved challenging way to do it would be just do playing the layer and then trying to manually dragged them so they're evenly apart instead what I do I've kind of on and off again talked about this command called free transform, which allows me to do things like scale on rotate if I have used free transformer use the keyboard shortcut all that is saying is take this in fact in this case these pixels and do something to those so would scale or move or rotator whatever I don't I wanted somehow tell photo shop what I really like to do is tran...

sform a copy of this once I want another square moved over here so the way we do that there's a ongoing kind of a trick in photo shop is any time you're using a keyboard shortcut and you want to add some extra feature to it usually the answer is throw in option or alter so as example here, free transformers command tea or control t if you wantto make a copy that you do command option tea or control multi and what that tells photoshopped right away is whatever I do to this shape, do it to a copy so we get a little closer here so you can see now if I just simply drag it and hold down the shift key and say let's, move it! I know that far when I hit enter it's made a new layer and it's made a copy, so now I want to continue doing that well rather me try and do it again, which I could, but I have no idea how far that is now again a fire to speculate perhaps that might be easier in the near future, but I'm just guessing, but anyway it's still unnecessary because there's a wonderful keyboard shortcut, which is I always describe it as the entire left side of your keyboard t meaning command option shifty or control all shifty, believe or not that's the keyboard shortcut for this is not the technical name, but I call it whatever you just did do it again. It's actually called repeat transformers each time I press it, see how it's just nicely making another copy that far apart so if you're ever manually dragging things and trying to somehow measure them that's the hard way and the added benefit is still all separate layers so, like in this case, I only wanted nine boxes across, but they're not evenly spread out because I kind of guessed moved the first one this much if these were all on one layer, which sometimes happens depending how you do it, I couldn't move them independently, so this visits my favorite theory of end up with I want to end up with a whole bunch of boxes evenly spread out, but right now I've got all these layers here, which actually in the short term, will help me because all I do is click on the last layer, so actually want this layer take my move tool want that layer right about there, but I want the rest of these evenly spread out, so just give me twenty minutes all zoom way in. No, I want to that this is one of those things and photo shop where somebody clever person went, someone might want to do that, so all I don't let me actually say it out loud. I've got the top player selected, I hold down the shift key and click on the bottom of also about all those square layers selected with my move tool there's a whole series of buttons. Up with the top these first ones are a line like align the top ally in the center I don't know line them because there are already a line based on how I moved them these ones are distribute so if I pick distribute by their centers it just does the math for me and evens it all out imagine how long it would take in you to somehow figure out you know how you do it the math you know, to say these one of these has to be this far apart okay, so I'll tell you a secret how I used to do is it's kind of embarrassing and german probably did this at least once or twice in his life to where before this existed you had moved the first box that much and then draw a new box to say this is how far then move that box over and use that as your spacer because that was the only way to do it. And then in the end you delete that box and hope that he did it all and it took so long now it's just like ok, you know this is where I want the first ones on the last one you do the rest for me and it's still live in the sense that I could at any time go wait there's one box too many so delete that box and then go that this one and move it over and just do it again so it's just one of those things where if you set it up that way so I'm still ending up with look that I want, but I'm making sure I'm giving myself the ability to continue to edit now this is a perfect example where someone out there is probably thinking so at this point I would merge all those layers together. No, I would not because even though in my mind I might think it looks perfect right now who's to say that someone might come along and say, oh, wait is supposed to be seven boxes or six or ten, so I would prefer to do something else and we'll talk about what those something else is might be shortly, but I would not merge them together. I would do something else to say I want to reduce the clutter in my layers panel but preserve all the pieces and unfortunately some people in their mind that means merge and while I could to me I'd be taking an unnecessary chance. I certainly don't want nine layers displaying in my layers panel so let's do this, I'm going to save this so I don't have to do it again I'll show you in the next class how I would fix that because that's when we're going to do it so let's just do that's real quick. Okay, alright, another, um a little interesting built in feature of photo shop this case is actually a duty from photo shop or bridge. I like to do it from within bridge because it's very visual is when I know I have several images that I want to combine somehow in photo shop instead of opening, say, four separate images and then manually dragging them together. I can take those images, and again I'm doing it from within bridge. I'll show in a second how you can do it right from within photo shop. I just use bridge because I never rename my files, so I need to look at them visually and there's an option on enbridge it's called load files into photo shop players and that's about the most perfectly descriptive built in ability because that's exactly what it does there's no trick to it. It just says take the files you've selected and make one new document with these loaded in on separate layers and apparently photoshopped had crashed in the background, so we'll just wait for it to lunch. That's always fun when that happens. Now these are fought for raw files, so what it will do eventually is it will open them based on however, I last edited them in raw and, um if I wanted to I could have headed them first, but the whole point of this one is to speed up the process of instead of me opening four separate documents it's goingto do that all for me now how you would use us why you use this I just picked for photographs from the same photo shoot but a very common way is people do almost like manual bracketing when they do different exposures and they want to then combine them together by hand but each image has to be on a separate layer to do that instead of manually load them all in this just does it and you can see in this case now I have the four photos in one what I might do with these who's to say but just to give you an idea of some other this is a nice automation to get me started still got a ways to go with whatever I want actually do with this but instead of me having to do the alternative of open and because they're raw files on each one click ok in camera on then open and photo shop and then dragged them all into one document this just does it for you now in photo shop it would be in here there's a script that says basically the same thing and they just call it load files into stack for some reason but so if you were within photoshopped, the only difference would be you'd have to navigate to a folder and look at file names and figure out the files based on their name, not based on the visual aspect of it. But while we're in here, let me show you one other little goody here, the purpose of that automated command is toe load everything into one document on layers, but what if I ultimately want to see all four photographs, and right now they're all right on top, another so one of the ways that I can do this is I'm going to just drag her out of the picture right to the edge like that. Now, technically, that layer is still there, but it's out in space where you can't see it, the reason I did that is because instead of me having to guess how much more canvas should, I add to able to see that layer by moving it over? As far as far as I'm concerned, this document now contains a hidden layer that's out there on the side. So I go into the image menu, and she was revealed all, and it makes the canvas big enough to show that one, and then I could go toe this layer and do the same thing this way, then choose review all so this is a nice way we're instead of you guessing I need to make this document bigger you just have to kind of figured out and do the math and sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get it all there like that when he's a little bit more let's drag it out even more like that the law review all is such a powerful underused command because most people think why would ever use that well here's a good example if I want to get to that point and again I used myself example what I would have done in the past before I realized I could do it this way is look at the measurements and then do the math though so I need a document which is forty seven inches by you know trying to figure it all out and have me do all the work instead of letting photo shop do the work for me it happens that the way this one works it just loads them in as layers they're not they don't have any connection back to camera or anything like that and that's one of the few downsides to it so if you want to have the keep the live camera type editing thing that you might have toe to take a different approach but this is just a really nice way to do things really quickly and he's in get it toe look the way that you want so if you ever are playing with layers and you move things around ago why I feel like something's missing moving a layer out of the boundaries of your document means it's kind of in effect crop shall we say? But then you have the option by reveal all will say I will make the canvases biggest I need to get that part visible again, dave, I don't know thiss inappropriate tool to use but a lot times I'm going to some focus stacking with this spear good, yeah definitely in fact a lot of what line and everything because this yeah, because in this case, obviously these were just a serious of random photos, but if I did use this script called load files into stack one of the options is it even says a temple of the fact that his attempt to doesn't say alive his attempt to automatically align the source images so with the normal loaded to photo shop but you have to then go to auto line layers by using this load into stack it will if you check that it will attempt to not only bring them into a docking but also do some aligning personally, I still use auto align just because I tell my cia command is called a ten to figure it may or may not work so but that's that's definitely a case where or I used for situations where I can't I don't want to do technically hdr, but I still need to have a couple of different exposures of the same thing I've taken on tripods will bring two or three of them in on top each other and do some masking to combine them, and this just cuts to the chase that I mean, having to go drag, drag, drag, drag, drag and get them all in there. This just does it that much more quickly and there's a lot of these kind of built in if you look under, we won't go there every single one of them, but under automate there's, a siri's of automated features in here and some scripts, and they have their based first particular things here's a simple example when I used all the time, the simplest thing of all sometimes I just want to have I'm gonna save save argument that I want to send this person these four photographs with before I spending time doing a lot of heavy duty we touching or editing, I just want to show picked to tell me which ones you want to work on, but obviously I don't want to send her raw files because she doesn't use raw and I don't want to send her huge files that she can then decide on that I don't need your help anymore. So I want to send her small j peg versions instead of opening all four of these and then let's pretend there's forty not for because I would take even longer the long way to do it be open each one in camera, click ok, then go save that await image size, make it smaller, save us, jay pick instead I just take all of these and again it could be four or forty and I have I do the thing with enbridge again all these functions I'm showing you could also be done directly from photo shop. I just happen to use bridge because I like the visual aspect of saying I want to pick and choose and that the tool is called image processor it's a little, but the thing that's been happening lately don't know why I actually do know why, but I can't talk about that uh, ok, just to prove the fact that photo shop is not busy, but when that happens one more time, okay, right then it's going to force me to do it, so let me show you the alternate way to do it from within photoshopped I'll just have to go and that's the reason I do this because now I have to go and find the right folder, which is just a little harder, but okay, so what I love about image processor is it just does exactly what I wanted there's no bells and whistles that's just like all I want to do is take the full files in this folder make them j peg and make them smaller that's it I don't do anything else and that's all I mean that's at the surface level that's all it does you could also say I also want to tip file if you want to have two different versions for some reason so by default it probably looks like this when it first opens is j peg is selected but you can also pick the other ones and re size to fit is not by have left that off it would go through the four images or forty or whatever in that folder and say I will make a j peg version that's exactly the same size what I want to do is also make them smaller so I choose resized to fit and in here it has a width and hype measurement it would make better sense if it just said longest measurement because this throws people off when they see life like typed in nine hundred by nine hundred that's almost suggests it's going to resize it to a square but it means really it's saying whatever the longest measurement is take it make it nine hundred pixels so if it's landscape orientation it'll be nine hundred pixels by whatever the math calculates as in my case there portrait will be nine hundred tall versus whatever the mathis s oh that's the one part of this which kind of throws people off is the wording is a little bit unusual later on the end of the class will talk about actions if I had created action, I could choose to run it at the same time, but all I'm trying to in this case is to simply say, just give me some j peg smaller j peg of these selected files and by default it wants to save it in the same location and that's ok, because whatever I checked here in this case, j peg it will automatically make a new folder called j peg and I will put the results into that folder. So now I have to worry about overwriting the my originals or anything like that, and I just had run and then it sits here and goes through if I had forty images, we would have done this right before the coffee break because it would've taken a while, but with four u c has not doesn't take all that long to go zip, zip and I'm not doing anything I'm just waiting for it to finish we go now if I go back to bridges see, there is that j peg folder and there there's my four much smaller j peg files so that's just an example of one of the kind of built in abilities that's not necessarily obvious because I guess the name image processor kind of gives you an idea of what it's for but until you actually look at and say ok that's kind of a neat idea because believe it or not before that a simple matter of saying for example, years ago people used to struggle with this and said I have ptsd is I just want to make him tiff files I always wanted to change the jake they get to record a whole action to a whole batch thing simply to change my informant now it's a built in ability usually from within bridge although I'm not sure why it's not working today or from within photoshopped says take the contents of this folder based on how are they look right now so one of the ways I uses all the time if I was to show you inside a working folder you would see typically a bunch of raw files which my originals a bunch of the same name dot psd which were my master files where I've been working on them and then a folder called j peg so I would have worked on things in raw brought them into photo shop to do what I was doing in there dot psd and then once I got all those psd files save out a version which is j p so that way I've got two levels of editing I have what looks like these flattened j peg because they are, but I know they're tied to psd versions, which are often also tied to the original raw file, so if all else fails, I can even go all the way back to the original raw document and say, I wish I had edited that differently just as an aside, someone asked a question through my twitter account on topics of when we're going to talk tomorrow more about like starting in light room but their question was when we talked yesterday about things like cloning and healing itself on two separate layer they said what's the difference we're doing that in light room and the answer there is really is a difference because the nature of light room and cameras that they are very nondestructive. The only difference to me is that the cloning brushing type tools in light room and cameron are good to me they're better and photo shop and because I now gravitate more towards using tools like the patch tool as opposed to the clone tool that's where I would say the difference is if if it works for you, if you're in light room and you do cloning and you're happy with the result, you know that when you take that file out you still have the ability to edit that in light room that's great if you find it doesn't quite serve the purpose that's when I would jump into photo shop and do the work in there, but again, we'll talk more about that wanted to mention because for some reason, something tweaked my mind about that when I was looking at this, I don't know why, okay, how we doing with the questions from the internet or anything like that? Um, we're looking pretty good, but we got one from jess in the uk, so asking. So if you open for images through image processor, then you cannot edit the raw images. Question mark no, you can and that's that's one of the beauties. If you look in this photo, you can see this is exactly what I end up with. There's meyer four original raw files there's my j pic, however, if I did edit the's raw files that I delete the contents of this folder and use image processor again. In other words, there's no link between them, they won't update. So if I update the raw files s and decide that's, my new version, I have to run image processor again to get four new j picks, so it's, not like on that's quite common is saving out something doesn't create any kind of link to say if I update the original you know, also update the copy that just doesn't happen but at worst it would be, you know, edit the raw files and then run image processor again let's see, we got here so let's do a shape she is that once it's a habit okay, so this is kind of a hastily thrown together example, but I showed you that example of using this a version of free transform that makes a whole series of copies but there's even another version, which is actually probably just a cz practical and that is let's assume let's use our vivid imaginations say these air much more interesting things in these two shakes we've seen before, so on the one of the layers I take free transform and I transform that much and I'm not paying attention to any percentages to say, oh, that was seventy nine point whatever eyes go that much and I realize five minutes later I also need to scale the other one the same amount and instead of trying to eyeball it and say, how can I figure that out if I just hit commander control t would just open free transformed and I'd be completely guessing in fact I probably dragging on top the other one to do it all manually beachy kind of long way so the little trick is command shifty just says free transformed the same amount you just did so it's kind of a slightly different version of transform again which is men's means take the last transformation you did and just do that one thing so I don't have time to make a copy is going to say apply the same transformation to a different layer so this is really nice when you're tryingto work on something and say ah shoot I need those two objects to be scaled the same size but I'm doing them separately now if you plan to head like in this case if I was being really clever I would have thought of that and selected both layers because you can free transform more than one layer at the same time so that would have been the ideal way if I thought about it ahead of time but if you didn't then you do have that option of saying oops I didn't plan on that so now let me transform the same way so a lot of the time and photos up there's a lot he's kinda little modifiers that just do little things there well helpful like that option all key always usually ads in some practicality and unfortunately there's no often there is no thing to tell you like you know some keyboard shortcut for something some of them do but not that off like that command shifty I don't think that's anywhere and photoshopped to say oh there's a shortcut for this is just one of those things that is built in there. And, thankfully, someone along the way figured out and passed on to other people. So that's. Just another little trick for when we're doing transforming.