Lessons

Lesson Info

End Results and Reverse Engineering

So here's another example of when I talked before about the advantage of working non destructively, is that reverse engineering repurpose ng so imagine for a moment, this is my a little project that I was working on, and I dig it. I'm like that's cool it's fun. However, if that was the on ly one that I saw on my hard drive, I would kill myself. I wouldn't be very unhappy because as soon as I see dot j p g on the end, I know that can't have layers it's not physically possible for a j peg to have layers, so if that was the on ly version I had and I opened in photo shop and I look at my layers panel, I see background layer want want that's it so I can say is isn't that lovely? But I can't tell how did I do it? I certainly can't. I mean, I have to try to recreate it somehow. I suppose I could take an educated guess because this was my file, but I did it two years ago issue, so I'd much rather be able to look at and say, how did I do that? Close a couple, these other documents isto save con...

fusion, so thankfully I have the psd version of it. Now this one it takes a little longer to load because it's a much bigger file but look at the difference of my layers panel I can look at this and see every element figure how I did it I can find out what font is that because I might like that thought not recognize it I can kind of reverse engineer and go oh I plights and filters there and here's the original background there so I can figure out a lot about it and equally importantly, aiken repurpose it so I really like the look of that filter I can put that into another document and have the same kind of look part of the goal that we have here I think is at least my goal is to say I'd like to set myself up for success by not having to start from scratch every time and a lot of people I feel their work flow is do something in light room, a camera, whatever bringing the photo shop and then treat each photo as an individual case which sometimes that is true. But when I watch people work I see there's a lot of commonality that you're doing to these images so why are you starting from scratch every time? Why aren't you saving presets? Why aren't you you know, taking that adjustment you already having another document is dragging into this one instead of starting from scratch every time and that's because we are creatures of habit and we do things the way we always have so in this particular instance again I can look at and and figure everything out we'll be talking to all these things you're seeing like masks and adjusting players and everything else but every single element of it I can start toe, turn on off and see how I did it and I can even for example again talk about this in more detail. But in this particular document I have a filter called gaussian blur in the past if I blurred something, I have to click ok and once you did it unless you had a pad of paper with a bunch of notes on it if you came back two weeks later and said how much they blur that there was absolutely no way to know now even though this was created quite a while ago I can double click on it and it tells me you blurred seven point two pixels like awesome because I was going to say eight but I'm you know I had no idea but that's kind of the point and now I could say that will touch such a great effect let me apply that to a different photograph and just tweak it a little bit instead of starting from scratch every time so that that's why the title of his classes workflow too smart flow one of the things that I only semi jokingly say to people is when they talk about their work flow. Is that the only problem? That's got the word work in it, as in you're working too hard, so as much as work flow is an industry term, I'm pushing for a smart flow. I think that's a much better term because I'm still getting my stuff done, but I'm not working so hard because I'm not starting from scratch every time I'm not trying member, how did I do that? I'm looking at documents and reverse engineering and repurpose ing and doing all those things to make my life a whole lot easier. The other thing that's interesting to consider is any time you're trying to do something that could cause you trouble, I've deliberately now going back to my j peg version just to make a point. If I decided, for example, I wanted to change the color of his shirt that's something in foolish up it's doable, but to do it in the best way, it would involve applying an adjustment and then masking it, and we'll get talk about mass in more detail that masking is an area where I think a lot of people definitely worked too hard. So in this case, if I want to change the color of his shirt instead of trying to what I see a lot of people do is they zoom in tow like a million percent, and they're doing like teeny tiny detail editing to me that's also working too hard, I'm going to use that philosophy is saying end up with and I'm going to deliberately just go completely overboard and we'll go through these steps and more details pronounced and do it really quickly to show you the idea where I've deliberately picked of completely off base color like fluorescent green it because an adjustment layer with it affected everything, but I don't want it to affect everything, so I just temporarily fill the mask with black, then if I take my paintbrush and again, don't worry, we'll go through all the steps of this very quickly. Now I'm doing in such a way that in effect, I'm painting in the adjustment where I wanted, and I'm not worrying about incredible accuracy at first, I'm just saying let's, get this started and I can already see a couple of areas where I need some help, but imagine I was trying to change the color of his shirt, just a slightly different blue they'd be so little difference between the new blue in the old blue that I'd be going, I can't really tell what I'm doing here, I can clearly see what I'm doing because I'm at least for now, deliberately making it a ridiculous color that I don't really want, but because I know once I'm finished then aiken, because it's a justin layer, I can pull the settings back to a more reasonable number. I just made my life simpler and again, this is just flying through this, we're going to go through the specific steps with that's, another one of those end up with philosophies is I know I want to end up with this shirt having a subtle difference, but to make my life simpler, I'm going to deliberately overdo it, and this is a concept I use gosh, all the time and photo shop, I see people trying toe just like select a person to take them out of a photo, and they resumed into a million percent with the lasso going going like painstakingly slowly, I'm like that's the hard way just think end up with and take five or six runs out, and each time you're getting better and better and better that's way faster than trying to get it just right the first time and that's, just the nature of the beast people feel like. When I'm in photo shop, I need to get this thing accomplished, and so why? But I just approach a little differently, and I want to make sure I end up with the look that I want, and soon as I discovered or applied the concept that adjustment layers are by nature temporary, if you want them to be, it means that I can temporarily change the colored of fluorescent green to make my life simpler and then pull it back. And even though I haven't finished, I'll show you what I mean. Let's pretend for a moment that I had successfully mass this and painted it now, I could say, but I just want to do a slight tweak. You see how there's a various slight difference in a shirt? Imagine if I was trying to paint on that there was such a subtle difference, I would take me forever to try and see where I was painting, so instead of doing that, but why not make my life simpler temporarily by pulling it a certain way and that's kind of a recurring theme you'll see as well, I use a camera a lot and we'll talk about this concept, but you'll see and more detail, but let's save as example, I want to do some compositing why want to put someone on to a background? So this is the person that I wanted this is deliberately taken very dark that's the intention when I took this photo, I wanted to have this dark field, but because she has, like, black hair on a black background that's like photo shop is good, but it's not magical it's not going to be able to distinguish her hair from the background, so this, as we'll see later, is also temporary. I would not normally want to do this to someone where I'm over exposing to cause problems. I'm over exposing it temporarily to make my life simpler when I'm trying to select her and again, please don't worry feels like I'm zipping through this because I am because this is a this the overview phase of why we work this way, and then we'll look at each of these things in turn, so I've temporarily made her very overexpose I can now drag her into here to say, I want to look like she's staying in front of this wall. So now, at this point, I can start using some of my tools, for example, to make a selection because there's a much greater chance that photo shop is going to be able to recognize the difference instead of her hair kind of blending into the background there's enough of a difference that photo shops tools should have a better job. At getting a decent result but even here this is another example of how you have to think about what is the end result that I want to achieve I want to make it look like she is standing in front of this wall make it look realistic enough to sell it so right now the colors don't match up that the luminosity the price we want to call it doesn't match but that's ok because I'm only doing this to help me make a selection also photo shop has this wonderful function called refine edge where it will attempt to look for either hard or soft edges my experience has been it's very hard for this button this function to do a wonderful job of both hard edges and really soft edges like hair in one shot so instead this is what I do and again I'm just giving you the kind of overview idea I duplicate this layer and then I say ok let's deal with the challenging part first on this layer I'm only going to worry about making the hair look as good as I can I'm not going to worry about her arms and her arrest of her body and what do you see? This is the quick selection tool just has to do it really quickly and then when you go to refine edge there's this option called on layers and that shows me in context so every decision I make right now from now on I'm seeing in this dialog box the fact that there's the brick wall behind her just have to get past kind of the floating head thing because it's you know, it is a lot of first to see that, but then you use the functions in here that can start to make the edge look a little better and we can start toe paint around and get the edge looking good and I'm not going to worry about making it look fantastic it's already not bad all things considered so let's pretend the secondary mother that's what I wanted and I click ok, so now I have weird floating head on there but that's ok? Because I made a duplicate copy and on this one, I would say now that I know I've got a separate layer with their hair let's get the rest of our looking pretty decent and this should be pretty easy because it's a hard edge so that looks pretty good right there. I'll just say later mask and now when I show both layers, she's successfully selected pretty well but still way too bright. So because these air these things called smart objects, which we'll talk about a much more detail, I know that I can go back to camera and there is a way to do a similar thing in light room I say let's, make some little tweaks here click ok? And then I will update while preserving the layer mask and now it already looks a little more realistic, so that was a much quicker I normally wouldn't do it that fast with us this kind of show you the idea that if this was five, six years ago, I'd have been saying now let me take the next hour to extract her off of the background in the most painful way possible because that's just the way everyone did it, but once that sort of clicked with me that as long as it ends up looking if you I was going to cover up the layers panel with my hand out that you could see that, but if you didn't see the layers panel, you wouldn't know that there were two she's actually two layers to get that effect. So if you think as long as the visual aspect looks the way that you want, how you get there is unimportant as long as you're doing in a way that's efficient so it might even be there might even case where you might end up with three layers to make that person look realistic, but when will someone looks at the finish photo? They're not going oh I can see where there's a gap between her head and her body then it needs some more work but if I showed you this first, I don't think anyone would have said looks to me like there's two layers there if you did, you're clairvoyant or something because there's nothing by looking at just the image to tell you that keep you going to go over this later on, but just quickly you keep the raw image open as you're working on this one. Well, what happens is this is actually something that that is an option from either light from our camera rise to make a back and forth path. So when I wanted to edit, when I double click that actually jumped back to camera ross I mean effect able to edit the layer within camera on, then back to photo shop and that's because it's something called a camera smart object by nature that doesn't happen by nature it's a one way street from camera or light room to photo shop the end this is an option you can turn on that lets you, if necessary like in this case, take advantage saying, let me deliberately make it overly bright tow help me do my editing, then once I think I'm finished, then jump back the photo shopped to kind of update it ok, and that's and it's it's hard to see them to see if I could get a little closer here for you, but uh there's a little tiny symbol on that layer that indicates is this thing called a smart object which means it's already it's somehow it's different in this case it happens to be a camera raw smart object which means it's started in raw and it came into photoshopped establishing a back and forth ability a cz we'll see you also have the option just making a smart object yourself, which is another kind of concept but even this idea this is when I talked before about working non destructively helped with accuracy. This is an example. Before I came up with this concept in my mind of working this way, this would have taken me an hour and that's probably because I've done it a fair bit in the other old way of doing it now after twenty minutes or less, I'm I'm probably have a better and result in a fraction of the time because I've gone in thinking long as I end up with it looking realistic how can I make my life slash photo shops life simpler it's not just about me it's about that tool look work better if you can see what is doing. I probably told this story as well on creative live before, but I was remember this because in the one of the challenges with photo shop is people think anything's possible in photo shop and somehow it's magical because I'm sure you've had this happen where some who doesn't use photo shop hands you a photograph it says can you just and they ask you do something ridiculous like they have this dark, blurry photograph they wanted to just fix it you know, years ago I was working at the company and they sent me a photograph that would like to extract the person off this background to put him on a different background I was like ok and they said this photograph I probably still have it so marcus I kept it for a long time it was a dentist white hair white lab coat stand against a white wall and it was slightly overexposed so I'm like sure I'll just extract if I could tell where his arm is but it was just he just kind of melded into the background they have thought somehow I would magically figure out where his arm was I'm not sure how and that was probably the first times I thought wait a minute what if I were to temporarily really wreck the photograph like pushed the exposure way back all of a sudden I could see the edge of a czar but more importantly, so could the quick selection tool or that time probably the magic one tool because now there was an edge for it to detect so I was when the little light bulb went oh so if I temporarily do something to make photo shops life easier that will save me time and that's kind of one of the recurring themes here is that we tend to go down a certain path because we've done it before, but any time you can think differently, I always think backwards, you know, that will end up with I want to end up with her. Looking realistic in front of this wall is best I can without taking hours and hours to do it. How can I do that in a more efficient manner? And part of that is taking imagine these tools where, again a split into two layers temporarily change the exposure or whatever, some setting dramatically to make it easier to see. Knowing at the end, I pull it back to a more reasonable way that looks right to me. Okay, so the recurring themes you'll see and and again, we should have a prize for who keeps track of how many times I say things like, end up with and save his ptsd, but it really is a key element, because none of these means anything. If you do all this work and then go okay, and I will say this a j I mean, you want to save a copy this ajay peg, but you want to preserve this just in case. Day one of the questions I had for you and this is something I picked up from adobe just a few months ago is that they suggested when you save a file as a d n g and you have done something, uh, you know, with a smart object or only manipulated in light room, that actually all the steps and all the metadata, uh, even your keywords and everything will go to the d n g and so it is a much less destructive type of head it can. You could you have done, and part of that is I guess it comes down to if I know a lot of people and I completely understand and support this, who do? Sometimes they use on ly light room and don't even have the need to come in to photo shop because everything they need is neither global or or in a way that they feel light room can do the job for them. And that's great in a case like that than d n g to me makes perfect sense because it's mean by nature, light room is not destructive, so the dmg file format just builds on that even more if you're going to include photo shop in there than that. Isn't really as necessary step because when we talk about that in whatever day that is we'll talk about that you'll see there is a way where you can create a work flow that goes light room to photo shop as a smart object and then comes back into your light room catalog with as a psd file that has all that information built in it just happens to be psd that's got kind of the light from information embedded inside it so to speak so and adobe also and I understand this d n g is there invention their file form invention that they hope will become an industry standard but at this point it has not so not that I ever expect photoshopped to suddenly go away but if there ever was in case down the road I would have prefer to have a file format that I knew was going to be I could use photo shop on it like a tng it means you need to use camera are like p s defile means I can open and photo shop I also happen to use other doping programs like military in design and they also allow me to bring those psd files into that with all the layer information as well so that's for me the main reason but so what they're saying is certainly dead on but I think when you'll see once if you incorporate photo shop is part of that method more than just using light room alone, then it makes better sense of just go psd back into your life room catalog. Thank you. Ok, so that gives you a bit of an idea of kind of the why behind considering working this way is because we can do things like be more accurate, slash safe time. Um, I must admit that I still have times where I zuman a lot closer to see, like finding right this level. Her hair looks pretty good, but if I were to zoom in, closer I am by would probably start to see things where it wasn't quite so good. So there's a lot of little things we can do along the way that can help us. For example, I'll talk about this more in a moment, but there are keyboard shortcuts, of course you could use to speed up your work. But one of the things that concerns me is I see people do this all the time where they zoom in to, like, in this case, one hundred seventy eight percent let's make it two hundred or even higher three hundred and they're doing work at this level of detail. China make it look just right, and I feel like I want to remind people is that how big it's going to be when you print it? And are people gonna walk right? Put their face up to your print this close to see did you get every little hair? And I think because we can do that and photoshopped, sometimes people get too caught up in doing that, and they do fine detail. I always remember the first time this kind of clicked with me. I don't remember what projects work, and I just remember I was spending an awful lot of time trying to fix something in this person's eyeball because it had little flecks and I was zoomed in, so the whole eyeball filled up my screen and I was, you know, doing like an hour's worth of work. And then when I say that out, the file was this big, I thought, wait, her eye is like a microscope couldn't even pick up all the work that I don't I thought, ok, that was a I just effectively wasted all that time because to me, you want to keep it in context. That's another key thing for me is that just like, in this case, I deliberately pulled her on this new background afforded any work of extracting. Because in the past, what I would have done is extract her off on just a transparent background. When you do that, you see all kinds of stuff going to fix that, but then you drag her on to do background like that was kind of pointless because in the context of this background, I don't see all that. So by the same token, I realize if you're zooming into a million percent to do a little fine detail work, I mean, if you're preparing a billboard, go for it. But if it's ultimately going to be a photo you're using is a head shot on a website is going to be this big whyyou zooming in that far so one of the little sort of side tips that I always mention it, I think, is really useful because it's built into photo shop, but it's one of those perhaps not so obvious things you can do right now, I only have this one document open, and I go to the window menu and I choose a commander here called new window for and then it will give you the name of your current document and that's not duplicating the image is creating a second view of the same one, so the first step is create a second window and that just means now I have two things open but because of my setup I can't see them both at the same time so then I go back to the window menu and there's a command called tile so now you see on the right hand side I have a much closer approximation of this is how big is going to actually look when I'm finished so now if I work on this one and start to do any work every decision I make for example if I take my paintbrush and I were to do some little brush stroke getting to a point we can actually see something on here you can clearly see I did a big brush stroke but over there I have to even look to see where it is and that's kind of an example of don't get too caught up on just because photo shop can let you zoom in really close and do all this finicky little detail work you have to always be thinking context if you don't know if there's a good possibility that it might be printed as an enormous canvas print then okay but if you know going in the purpose of what I'm doing here is to make a business card or whatever it is that's going to be this size then don't spend a lot of time at some enormously zoomed in view that on ly you will know unless you put little arrow saying look, I fix this it took me two hours but no one wants to see that so that's another thing we can do that that as a workflow kind of being smarter is keep everything in context including sizing now there are times where you do want to make sure I get every little detail but the combination this case of I'm seeing this in the context of the actual back and then to use that helps and then also now with this split screen kind of view I could look at it maurine context to go ok, well I'm working this zoomed in to help me but I have to remember it's really only the this size and again there were two steps to do that the first one is new window for the whatever the name of your file and then tile you can't tile horizontal berkeley whatever you want but it just means you work on the zoomed in view but then you're constantly checking the second mme or actual size you to say am I wasting my time here and by doing things that are actually going to be visible to the naked eye? Ok, ok, now I am uh I should just ask questions of the people here do shortcuts in the software whatever softer using to use keyboard shortcuts yes, I can't stress enough that I think keyboard shortcuts are a necessity but not to suggest we need to learn a zillion shortcuts it's more that's the tenth time I've done that today I wonder if there's a keyboard shortcut for that and if there is start using it because I wish there was a way to have had a tracker over the last ten years I think how much time I've saved by using keyboard shortcuts versus going to menus especially ones where you have toe kind of dig down you know this menu sub menu but also even things that if for those people I know there are people watching that don't like using keyboard shortcuts to feel like I can't remember them and I get that completely I'm maybe an audit e I can remember people's names or their birthday but I know every short cut off the top my head which is really sad that I don't remember all those other things but and sometimes it's not me it's my fingers I never had that experience where someone asked what a keyboard shortcut like I have no idea but if he had figures on a keyboard, you just press it because your fingers know what it is. So for those people that aren't a big fan of keyboard shortcuts let me give you just a quick example here of why I think keyboard shortcuts are important so I'm just going toe set myself up here toe do something okay so I want to be working away. So I first of all, I need to move her over. So I go over like click on the move tool and I move her over here and now I think I want to go up to this point and add some paint that means have to come over click on the paintbrush comeback here wait it's the wrong size let me pick a different size, make it bigger and it's not the right color. So for each of these operations, I'm physically going back and forth. Click on it too will come back here and then do some painting so not a huge thing, but just in that one will operation to me. I made about four five unnecessary gestures because of some built in keyboard shortcuts. So as an example, every tool in photo shop has a single letter you can press to activate the tool instead of going and clicking on the tool. You just press a letter, I would say most of them, but probably more accurate terms say many of them have very logical letters like em for marquis and tea for type and see for crop and l for lasso, others a bit more of a stretch like v for move and others make no sense whatsoever at first, but the more you do it then it just becomes second nature of example, in this case, let me do exactly the same thing. I want to move our oversight. Press v I've got my move tool I make sure I'm on the right layer. I passed briefer my brush it's the wrong size I press bracket keys to make my brush bigger and there I go now that wasn't a huge difference, but it might have been twenty seconds, twenty seconds multiplied by every photo is a lot of equals love getting your life back so you're not every time especially I'm working on a screen this big for one of those lucky people have those enormous monitors that's like a lot of real estate to go back and forth no click on a tool come over here. Go back! Look another tool now what I always tell people about this is the reality is learning shortcuts that eventually will speed you up. Well, initially slow you down so in order to learn shortcuts to get it really in your head this is what you end up having to dio what's the shortcut for that can't member. So you go and look at it, and you remind yourself that what the shortcut is. Okay it's am so then you go back and you sort of tow it almost slows you down first and then you get the having one on you and for marquis and the more you do that kind of forced the issue then it becomes second nature now when I'm teaching in a case like this I probably do a hybrid of shortcuts because I don't even think about it and trying to not use shortcuts so you can see where I'm going but when I'm just working by myself you hardly ever see menus pulled out unless I know there's not a shortcut for that because I'm just using shortcuts that I know where they're and most people I think find there's think I counted one day I want to say there's sixty four tools something like that sixty four tools and photoshopped but that doesn't mean we really use that many generally we use on a day to day basis a handful so it's not like you have to memorize sixty keyboard shortcuts it's maybe six that's what you do so as you're going through if you're in that old habit of going need to use the patch tool click on it but then make note to self okay it's j for the patch tool that's easy remember right um I have the whole story with that but I've told that probably so many times on creative live I won't say it again this time but as you go through and it takes time now, here is an example where it it gets a little potentially confusing because you'll see under this slot there's five tools, and they all say j b signed them so that's telling me the shortcut for that whole family of tools is the letter j and the way it works is like this, and I'm working on my moved excuse me, my move tool. And I saw the need to use the patch tool by press the letter j it goes to the last tool I used from that set, which in this case happened to be the patch to excuse me, the spot healing brush. So in order to tuggle through them, you have to throw one more key in which is shift so shift and the letter will toggle through all the the tools in that group. Another is a preference, by the way, where you khun, keep that on or turn it off. So by default shift and the letter will toggle through all the tools that share the same slot. There is a preference that turns that off. So the means every time you press the letter j it will switch through them. At first I thought that was a good thing, but then I realized when I was trying to switch back acting like the move tool and the the healing tool everytime I pressed jay was switching to a different tool I want to go school back and forth so personally I have kept that jay that shift and the letter function on but that's that's why they're calling preferences because it's up to you but as a simple example just if you know or no other keyboard shortcuts, what this one is doing is making get to the point where I'm not wasting all that time to go go over and manually click on a tool especially if if I'm working in some area like on her hair I know my mouse or in this case my pen, his position right where I wanted to be, the last thing I want to do is move away from it and try and come back to where I wass so I much rather press a letter that means as my tool is my pan or mouse isn't exactly same spot I'm switching tools just by pressing the letter so those were the first ones I would start with because this doesn't it's no combination of, you know, command option shift all whatever it's just a letter and as I said that once he used the most I think you'll find are fairly logical and so that's the first place I would start the second place I would start or continue on is I tend to spend a lot of time going between zoomed out view fit on screens I see my whole image and zooming in and there a couple of ways of doing that but the way that I honestly never use anymore in fact, if you could tell that you look really closely on my hand tool and the zoom tool there's all like cobwebs on them because I haven't touched them and so long because they're shortcuts for both of those. So if I want to zoom in there's one of two ways I do it under the view menu they're shortcuts for zoom in and zoom out command our control plus actual minus that's pretty easy remember the only problem with that it's ok, is that when you use that keyboard shortcut by nature says zoom into the very middle of my document so if you're trying to work in the top left hand corner every time use a shortcut it will zoom in not to where you want so instead I want to use the zoom tool, so I have a couple of choices there I could either press the letter z I would have said that because I'm from canada, but I'll say z to make everyone more comfortable and that will switch to the zoom tool and that's okay but I what I want to do is I've already got my say paintbrush and I want to zoom in and then go right back to my paintbrush instead of having to remember all these letters if you hold down commander control in the space bar it gives you the zoom tool temporarily I'm holding down these two keys as soon as I let go it goes back to ever tool I hat so there is you will see in a second there's a number of these kind of temporary tool shortcuts where he is close you're pressing down some combination of keys and lets you use a tool when you let go it was right back something and now you're not having to go back and forth or be clicking on different tools so if commander control in the space bar apparently there's no overlay function for space bar because I'm the little thing on the bottom just says command but I'm actually using both and now I can start to zoom in so I want to work on this area right here instead of me letting the zoom shortcut go dead center I consume whomever I want um option or old in the space bar gets the zoom out tool now the on ly reason forever clicking on the zoom tool is there is an option here which is turned off for some reason called scrubby zoom not sure why that's not currently showing which is odd anyway, scrubby zoom is a fairly new option the last few hours force up where in the past you'd like I hear I'm drawing kind of drawing a marquee around the area want to zoom into scrubby zoom just lets you take your soon as you move to the side and just starts to zoom in on that particular area. So so but here's where how I'd be working as I'm doing something with my paintbrush whatever now I need to scroll around because I want to go further down and I could come and use the scroll bars but again assuming for a moment that that I have a really big monitor that's a lot of real estate to cover so instead I choose the hand tool and that's the space bar so commander control in the space bar is the zoom tool space bar on lee is the handle so now I'm keeping this my finger on the space bar so I can scroll around when I'm ready I let gold goes back whatever tool I had, so for things like dealing with a lot of little specks of dust or something, this is brilliant because it means I already have my spot healing brush wherever I'm using I just go tapped up that drag that that that I'm not spending half my time going back and forth to some other tool or leaving where my mouse or a pen is to go over and use the scroll bar and especially you're trying to go down into the left I don't want to have to come to this scroll bar and then this scroll bar do the same thing that I could just do with the hand tools this is what is now referred to as a spring loaded key meaning as long as I keep my finger on it, I've got the hand tool because I let go it reverse whatever tool I just had so for things like retouching it's great because you zoom in enoughto see the detail you want but now you can't see the entire image we need to move around so now use the tool of choice whatever it is spot healing closed out whatever with the tenancy at any time you need to just go move up a bit down a bit now some people hear all this and go how will I ever remember that? Well, one of the brilliant things that adobe did is it's very visual. So if you're thinking to yourself, I should try using that a short cut for the whatever tool the zoom tool but you can't know what it is just try it this whole down keys and eventually no but seriously I mean if you're not sure I'll say what is the key? Is that option or ault no that's giving me the eye dropper ok? Is it control now? That's menu now that's the move tool that's the hand tool how the rio so I'm just I'm not doing anything. I'm not clicking. I'm just pressing and holding some of these key modifiers like command option shift or control all ships space bar to see what the cursor, the visual feedback it gives me and that's why, as I said before, it it it legitimately will slow you down at first to try and get faster because first you have to think about a way a minute. What was that? Oh, yeah, it's the space bar but then you do that enough times and now it just becomes without thinking, I'm pressing the space bar because I need to me it's just space bar scroll I'm not having to think what what is that again at part because that's been doing it for a little while, but I think it's worth noting that that for anyone that's reluctant to dry shortcuts, these really khun speed up your work but be prepared that at first that will slow you down. Similarly, there's a lot of these kind of shortcut combinations that are just whatever tool you're using viewing options like the zooming in and out or using, I use this shortcut all the time that on screen is commander control zero one hundred percent is commander control one command on the mac control for windows so that means at any point if I'm working and I didn't do that split screen thing and I want to see how does it look overall, I know I can press command control zero to fit the whole thing to see the context or go back to a hundred percent or even a little closer I used to go every time called the menu pulled down that's why he's getting paid by the hour so then I would use the menus because you know it makes a lot better sense in that way. So that's the kind of thing where the beauty of these shortcuts it doesn't matter what you're doing and photoshopped as my what tool you're using any time you want to change your view, these air viewing shortcuts so they're applicable to almost anything no matter what type of photography or work you're doing or what function you're trying to achieve. These are temporary interruptions instead of actually switching tools here just temporarily activating one. And again if I wish there was a way to somehow have excel spreadsheets that every time I've used this tool I've saved point something seconds and over a month that adds up because you're not and I think the other part of it is I know personally if I'm working on retouching and for example, working on blemishes on someone's face I don't want to be thinking about ok now I have to change that this tool I just it's just happening because I'm focusing on the task at hand, which is retouching but along the way I have to scroll left and right zoom in a little bit so that kind of eliminates that out of anything have to worry about because it's just happening almost by nature, but at first it didn't I used to have to go okay, what was that again? Oh yeah space bar and remind myself so for those people that are not using shortcuts, I strongly encourage everyone to ease into the world of keyboard shortcuts this way tools and then viewing shortcuts because those air global then you'll find as you go further along as I said before gosh, this is the my mother uses the word umpteen as a matter of measure of a lot the umpteenth time that I've done that same function I wonder if there is a shortcut that can save any time now here's the we'll talk in the next session about how you could take it a step further because there is one slight problem with this concept and that is that when you first get photo shop, adobe chose what they would allocate shortcuts to including things so that means the default shortcut is for that destructive levels command which I don't want to use so somehow hopefully he said knowingly there's a way I can change that it just doesn't happen that way by default so in the next session will talk that about that more so here's the unrelated question but just curious I obviously can't ask everyone out there but in terms of our audience here anyone used a walking tablet I was going to ask you what what model it was I used to walk him in the past I'm not using one currently but certainly have a couple of my home okay? And I'm my intention is not in any way to turn this into a sales pitch for a tablet, but I consider this one of my most effective efficiency tools on top of everything else I'm doing in photo shop for me this saves me so much time because of the nature of how the pen works and then one feature alone that it has which to me if you do any kind ofwork where you're changing things like the size of the brush on the fly this is worth the investment this happens to be the into its five which is their latest model but almost any model of welcome tablet has this key element called pressure sensitivity and that means I'm changing the size of my brush by how hard I press so if I could have a brush when I go here I'll just show you an example do it this way so you can see a lovely red okay, so I've chosen a very big brush and you can see you see that circle that showing me how big the brush by nature is, but look what happens if I I'm going to show you and I just realized I'd be painting read on top of bread, which would not be terribly useful, so let's go black instead so you can see that's how big the brush really is. But look what happens if I barely touched my pen but it's not turned on hold on, he said that nothing happened, so let me pick one that's actually gonna area, so I didn't change the size of the brush. Technically it's still a ninety pixel brush, but I'm just varying the intensity of how hard I press on the tablet and it's instantly change in the size of my brush instead of me having toe either go back up to that function or you'll find no a keyboard shortcut which I happen to instead of worrying about that. Now, as I'm trying to work with specks of dust, I'm just varying the intensity of how hard I press the pen on the tablet and the nature of the pen you can set up what it controls my pressure sensitivity controls size of my brush you can also have control other things as well, but to me that alone, but I think of how much time was constantly having me go bigger, bigger, bigger, smaller, smaller, smaller this way, it says on the fly and it's, just like anything else, you get used to the intensity of how hard you press to change on the flight that and I don't have a big monitor here today. This is my laptop screen, but if you're working on a big monitor, think about how you get from say, bottom left top, right? You generally take your mouse and kind of go scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll and eventually you get up to the top. This is absolute, so if I wanted the top right, I just point there, I don't have to go move up to there, I just go top, right bottom left pulled on the menu. Now the reason I brought this up is it's to me, it's very somewhere to keyboard shortcuts. I've met many people over the years that said, someone told me I should get a tablet, so I did and I couldn't get used to it and sitting in a box somewhere and that's, because it's so different than using a mouse, you have to think of it differently and take a whole different approach in fact, I just did a little video the other day just called like five tips for new welcome users and their for one of the things I think it was the second tip was take your mouse and hide it and make this the tool the problem is a lot of people view this has all use this for a light room or photo shop and then use my mouth for everything else no take your mouse sell on ebay uses for everything when I'm on the internet I'm using this to browse you know websites if I'm white writing award document I've got my pen in my hand I'm typing my word document and using this for the menus that's the only if you view this as a separate tool just for one function you'll never embrace it properly and it will every time you have to kind of get used to it again so most people I think find it takes a bit of time but once you do get used to it gosh it just by the nature of it it's faster and I want to bring that up since our main topic for this class is all about efficiency and improving your workflow to me this is an element unfortunate it's not inexpensive one but if you're spending a lot of time doing it you can I mean the entry level models are reasonably priced and they're good to get you started but my advice to people if you don't currently have a tablet and you're considering getting one is you have to give yourself time to get used to it because it is different you can't even though it's a replacement for the mouse it doesn't work the same way a mouse does so you have to kind of change your mindset and I remember when I first got one I was constantly looking back and forth now I don't know I'm thinking about it I just developed over the years knowing where my mouse is relative my cursor is relative to where I am in the tablet and when you add in that little pressure sensitivity thing I mean that's pretty amazing to me that just by changing the intensity I just on the fly I'm making my brush bigger or smaller when I think about the alternate which would be coming back here or even using a keyboard shortcut like the left or right brackets I'm constantly pressing that trying to get bigger or smaller instead of this thing in a weightless make his biggest I think I might need and then do it using pressure and this I'm showing you just with the paint brush this of course applies to close stamp healing brush any tool that uses the brushes panel in photoshopped this applies to so if you're doing anything at all where you're tryingto vary the size the brush on the fly this makes it worth it now this tablet happens to also have buttons you can program on the side of it to replace things, and it has, like a little touch wheel where you khun, change your resume view, and the pen itself has little buttons on it where I can make this, like, right, clicking those air all to me, almost like a bonus that it does all that, but just the fact from a speed and accuracy standpoint, what is really sounding like an infomercial for I swear I don't get any kickback on which I did now that I think about it, but I don't get anything from walking for yes, hello, welcome hey, west, um, I mean, I'm good friends with people walking, and I must say, I'm going to be they occasionally give me a new model say, what do you think of this one? I'm like like, this one is a newer one, but still, and this one actually has touched features like, you know, on an ipad where you like, pinch to zoom all you can do the same thing on here. So as you're working, you can start doing things like scrolling stuff, using your finger, saying that's enough of the infomercial for walking, but I really think it's, not just a you know if you have one especially the letters you said can you probably have one or two hanging around somewhere that's of such a common thing that I hear is people tried it and kind of went it's not doesn't work for me I think it works for anyone if you give it enough time it's just it's so different that you have to kind of commit to saying okay I need to just you know all these years you know I think that and this I hate to laugh at people but I've heard this so many times like yeah I got this new tablet and I was trying to get it to work and I had this deadline with either retouched hundreds like that that's not the time to try and learn any new tool is when the pressure's on so as I think I said in my little video idea that pressure on the pen is good putting pressure on yourself to learn it is not good you want to give yourself time but I think that's to me that's a key element because now I'm just eliminated another function of having to always be thinking what was a shortcut to change the size of my brush now I'm just changing it on the fly and I also wanted to mention it so that throughout other segments if you suddenly are seeing the brush look a different size and wonder how is he doing that this is how I'm doing it, it's, just the pressure that I'm using on the penn. Okay, so this was intended just to be a kind of why are we even concerned about working this way and being non destructive and using all these more efficient methods in the next say what? We're going to talk about, how we can make our life simpler by changing up. Photo shop obeyed. It comes out of the box the way that someone adobe said, this is the way photo shop should look and feel in operate, but that's. Great. I want to personalize it, make it better for me. So how can I make photoshopped mohr to my liking? And how could I make my life simpler by pre doing some work to cut out work later on?