Lessons

Lesson Info

Scaling Masks & Masking Text

Ok, so one other example just continue showing different combinations of how weaken can do things once again I'm trying to create some kind of design element here and I've got a bunch of type players and a shape player so I want to group and this is going toe foreshadow a little bit of what we're gonna talk about in the next session is along with things like they saw before where I did like colored overlay and things of that nature whatever it might be let's just do a color overlay actually let's do a creegan overlay for the sake of argument is to show you it might actually use some of these beautiful grady ems that air in there because there's so so lovely maybe not so just doesn't this reminds me to say something that I kind of alluded to before but since I have a second I want to mention it now a common theme of photo shop which is odd but true is that in many cases where you open up kind of the defaults like in here I'm in gray and over late I'm showing show me what great since I h...

ave available interesting, interesting, weird, weird, weird weird weird weird weird cool weird odd you know that's the way it often happens is the stuff that's built in it's kind of like sure if I would actually use that but any time you see the little setting looks like a low gear that's a menu that isn't officially called this but it should be called look for the really cool stuff here the stuff that's built in that you see right away by default are pre sets that are often kind of unusually interesting but in here there's a big long list and many of these are fantastic you just have to go looking for them like they recently added photographic toning which has some wouldn't really help in this case moves like a photograph it has equipment putting different filter great graduate like neutral density filters and stuff that were photograph of things there now just built in here so it's an unfortunate recurring theme is that the defaults you often see displaying are sometimes you kind of go not sure it actually used that but then as you dig down further and see what are some of these things some of them in here are really quite interesting let's just go into for example medals that I hit upend now I've got some extra choices or color harmonies you can see that you know for certain situations again perhaps not in this case but you know as you start digging down further and so here I'm doing something and I'm playing around kind of like oh I like that I'm not in any way suggesting I actually do because it's a little odd but to make a point it's still just a in effect that I could either turn off on our offer say ok maybe that's not the best choice I should go with something different on whatever I feel that's much better stripe he's weird but what I was going to say was if I have uh see what can we use here let's do the swan I think this cloudy photo and I'm sorry this way drag it over there I'm not going to really explain in great detail what's happening here because I would take away from the next session after lunch but this is still give an idea of the other another option that's available now I have this photograph that's really big scale it down a bit this and what I really want to do is I want to have the photograph on ly visible where you see the the logo and you do that with a little trick will talk about after lunch that looks like that let me turn this off and maybe add a drop shadows you can see it better now this is a different for mass we'll talk about in a separate session but you see, it has the ability where now aiken play around or reposition things but yet as before everything remains completely editable because it's inside a group so it's still preserving all of that and on top of this I'm adding this option of doing all these other things as well so groups really are interesting possibility when you're looking at a situation going, how can I how can I get to a certain point to be ableto really get the effect I want and yet preserve everything so in any situation, if it involves multiple layers, then a group has really gone from simply organizational to a practical functions going to give me more options than I had before if you had I mean it's going one of those things where you look at a situation say, like in this case, having four groups is to me way better than having whatever they couldn't be like twenty six layers all this in a row trying to figure out which one was which I mean, it would still visually would look the same on the screen if we printed it was still print the same, but to me it's a whole lot easier to be able to go, which one of the zones that one there so look inside, is it a necessity? No, but it's going to make life a whole lot easier if you're trying to do something involves a lot of layers earlier, when we were looking at this one, this is another example where in this case I only had three photographs, so I chose not to put them in a group because at first glance there really wasn't any huge advantage. However, as you start to look a little closer at it maybe I do want to because right now remember we had a stroke around each of these three photographs but if I decide the stroke needs to be thicker I need to edit three different places so maybe that's not the best idea so perhaps I should revisit that idea and say let's, go back here, take these strokes off and then take the just the hopes the these three photo layers group them and then add my stroke this way so then it becomes this nice editable function I can easily work on so I guess the main reason I want to show that is that some people thinking well so a group is if I have like fourteen layers or eight layers you know not really if you have two or three sometimes still just easier toe put things in a group so you can added things like strokes and opacity and things like that on the fly if I wanted all of these to be lower opacity it's just easy to take the entire group and say let's lower the opacity of everything is supposed to go to each individual one and go lower unless you try to do it differently like different loves opacity that beetle different but in time you're thinking I want all of these or both of these or whenever number tow look a certain way that's where groups start to become a more efficient way to do it. So when you when you group there what did that do to your layer cops if anything well in this case it it didn't do anything because I close the docking without saving in the layer compton and when I demonstrated that but it would it would kind of mess things up potentially because layer cops remember at that moment in time where things were if I started now with layer calms it would be ok because I'm starting at this point at worst if you look in the layer cost pound, you see a little warning triangle that means you've changed something since the moment this layer accomplish created and sometimes it's just something like I put it in a group now so I just kind of update it usually that the only danger is if I deleted something then the warning symbol would say, well, now I can't show you that layer compass that element has gone missing, so in this case and this is one of things that comes with trial and error in retrospect, it probably would have would make sense to do the group layer style thing first, then start looking at layer camps second, because that we have already established the way they'd all look it's a little trickier with layer cops and groups because again, as soon as you change anything on a layer, the layer constant go wait a minute now, and you might want to make a different layer complex for, you know, styles and things of that nature. Since, uh, question from amy, can you rename a group to make them easier to identify? Certainly there were those two possibilities. One is that I have one here, let's, go here. We'll just start from this point, the league group on lee. So there's two possibilities as if you're really smart like I'm not and you say, make it a group. The keyboard shortcut just does the group, if you want to on the fly name at issues new group from layers and says, what do you want to call it so that's option one is as you're creating it, but let's, just pretend I didn't the like anything in, well, rephrase that, like most things in voter shop, if you see the name of something, the chances are you should be able to double click on it and call it something. So if I want to call this all logo elements or whatever, so just like you can rename a layer by double clicking it's the same principle with renaming a group and again in their discussion of layer cops that the on ly potential problem is I wouldn't be re naming things after I'd already be started make layer calm because that could again they've kind of butt heads a little bit and wouldn't be so happy about that. All right? Good. Okay, let's see where we're at here. So when you're so like let's, look at this example here I've got my four groups, each of which contains all these different elements and I was able to edit the text very easily. But now I want to start building on this and either adding photos whatever I might want to do do it then I again need to establish ok, so where exactly is this layer? Where does it exist? And I could either as I was joking, aside from getting paid by the hour, I just started looking for it. But that's where I do that same right click and that appears to be a cause saying it's in group one it's indented photos so that looks like is it? Yes, it is. So now I could go find a photograph and basically bring it into that area so let's, take a look and see here uh, right so somewhere in here I was really clever I would have remembered where I put this, so give me one second to find I think it's in here maybe erica just in case you always have to have a series of head shots just in case it comes up in the conversation. So let's, take happy manny. And if I just drag and drop that's the wrong one? Look, he just joined the wedding party on what happened there. Okay, let's, take away some of our complexity of too many documents open at the same time on, I think that's where I want to, all right? So I want to take his photo and ultimately replace that one right there. So always more than one way of of doing it personally, the way I'm ultimately gonna want this to be a layer mask, because the chances of my photo being exactly the same size as that is probably slim to none. So what I would probably do is this I use that controller, right, click to find the right layer, and then if you command or control, click on the layer thumbnail it loads it as a select. So it's, based on whatever that shape is. So because it's, that rectangle I previously made now that is selected, I go back to this one. My photo select all copy. We talked about this a little bit, yes, they with layer mass, I don't use paste, I choose paste into which is under pay special and the reason for doing that is automatically going to create a mask and and this is very important this case the mask is not linked because I want to be able to scale him down. Let's I want unique photos of my people like this way to see like they're there I would be kind of cool here's your I d card is only saying you're right now, but I don't do that, so I want to be able to free transform look what's happened this photo was so big that when I hit free transform, I came to see the handles to scale the photo down inside that mask. But before I do that, let me revisit what happened here because I made a selection of that place holder photo photo layer and I chose paste into it automatically made a new layer with the layer mask based on this size that's not linked if it was length and I tried to scale the photo down the mask would scale to and that's one of the advantages of using paste into is it does that in one step now I go to free transform and again, I cannot see the handles so a very, uh well known photo shop trick that helps the save time is when you do free transformed you can't see the handles you press commander control zero for fit on screen and it will scale down your view enough for you to see the handles I always make sure I hold down the shift key to keep it proportional and then option or all lets me scale towards the center and now I can use this is my method to kind of decide how big I want him to be something like that so now he's automatically inside that group because I start off by clicking on that place holder photo layer at a certain point I might choose do I really need that layer anymore? Probably actually technically don't because it's only purpose was to kind of place hold where ultimately I was going to put the photograph but may or may not decide keep in this case I probably wouldn't because if I ever do need that same exact shape again it's right here on the layer mask I couldjust commander control click on that and make a selection so if I was to continue that it's okay now I need to do the next one or maybe let's do this one over here again I have no idea which one that is it's a swell there it is because it must be that they're all they're all called photo because they're duplicates but it's within group one copy to so I'm kind of trusting that this is the right one because that's the one is picking and sure enough there it is low that his selection come back and get the next one copy and then pieced into we transform scaled a fit, scale her down, drag into place so I won't bother doing every single one but that's kind of the procedure where if you build the kind of set up ahead of time to me, that ultimately will be a lot quicker, especially for things like in week. I had this discussion during the break about trying make sure everything's the same size. This is one nice way to do that is just to use simply shape, placeholders and worry about the photos later that way, you know they're all starting off the same size and then by using pace into the layer mask, it's what's going to make sure it's the same size and this I think, is also an important point to make is, you know, this class right now, I'm talking about groups very quickly. I saw using a layer mass within a group because that's just make sense. So it's not like any of these techniques or stand alone it's entirely typical to say within this group will have a mask and inside that all of them have another mask on top of that and as we'll see in the next session, all throw some clipping mass in there and all of these things add up together to help you create the look you want and still have that whole non destructiveness that we want as well, so it had no point. Do I ever want to feel like, well, that's, the best I can do? I also even simple things, like I didn't have this is gonna sound funny, but I don't actually plan on using these head. Johnson here just happened to work out really well, but I mean, I deliberately planned this, and when I did, I made sure that my head shots were bigger than I needed, so I could scale them down as opposed the other way around, but as I was building, and I thought, well, conventional stick something in there, but that's, a very simple approach to take is they let me build the elements, including a place where a photo will go, and this could be a template for a wedding album. Or, you know, I d cards, or even as we'll see just a way to print your own photos with your name across the bottom, you can rebuild these sort of placeholder template things, and then just replace the contents with whatever you need to at that particular moment in time, and I won't do this because it would be painful for all of us to see, but if I didn't have groups and just had a big long list of layers to me would look so much more complicated that you'd probably be reluctant or what probably happened people would start searching through the layers trying to find the right one because I can't even see them here it makes much more sense to just go control or right click oh there it is and then it finds it for me instead of having a scroll through this big long list and go somewhere in here you know I have this layer because these air duplicate groups every set of layers inside is called the same thing so that black box is called photo photo photo circle circle circle so in a normal layer situation that wouldn't work you don't want to have multiple layers called the same thing they'd all be called circle copy three circle copy for and it just adds to the complexity so another kind of little added bonus of groups is it just to me it is from an organizational standpoint the naming system especially for something that's where you're repeating the same elements it almost is beneficial to me to know what each case this is called the photo layer or the circle air whatever it might be so digital dust had a had a question about modifying a key command unfortunately when you're when you're editing keyboard shortcuts the on ly option that you have is whatever is under here so if there was a keyboard shortcut that said for example new adjusting layer with no dialog box you could alec allocate a shortcut to that but because that's just that's not one of the functions unfortunate there are some times where in order to give it your own shortcut in here it's going tohave a naming dialog box first so the alternative would be to again as I did yes, they just a press shortcut minimally click ok kes you don't care about what the name is so unfortunately can't just do it in one step to say rename it unless like I said, there is some functionality that says that under this list but the chances are it wouldn't so therefore you're just saying whatever this function is called give it a keyboard shortcut so unfortunately there are a lot of them want to name something so therefore that's what your shortcut would do which is unfortunate but usually ah habit again is just to press shortcut then it merely click ok without even looking at it just to get past that now if it's something that's already for example um in the layers panel is a good and here's one that's already built in and this so this kind of angel's question but not if you're making your own shortcuts for certain things like for example, in the layers panel the shortcut for a new layer is command shift or control shift end. But it wants you to name it. If you want to make a new layer and not name it, then used at another key command option shift and just makes a new layer. So if it's an existing shortcut that brings up a dialog box throwing option and usually ignores thie, call it something box. But it only works for existing shortcuts. Not when you're making your own.