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Smart Filters

Lesson 18 from: Everyday Adobe Photoshop: From Workflow to Smartflow

Dave Cross

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Lesson Info

18. Smart Filters

Lesson Info

Smart Filters

So before we get started a I got one I mentioned a couple things I always love to see people's work and especially here the thought process because every so often people will post a photo and they just put it there and you don't know the story behind it or in camps days like how much thought and work went into it back. I love the fact that you said that sometimes you shoot with a plan and you're already kind of thinking of a filter and I think they're to me there's two wonderful sights of photography day one is do as much as you can, so the image right out of the camera or like I love it, then there's the other side, which is I'm going to shoot with photo shop in mind and do things that I couldn't do in camera alone, and I think the fact that both of those co exist is really cool because some people are in that get it right in the camera camp and I'm like, yeah, a lot of the time, definitely, but then I love the fact that can also see a scene and go that would look really cool if there...

was a ballet dancer in there I don't happen to have a belly dancer right now, but I might put one and later, you know and I I often will shoot with I'm almost like I wasn't in that example of yours I was already picturing the layers panel of how it would flip that and adjust that and I think that's the fact that both of those are people can do is is really interesting and part of the reason I feel like I'm more able to do that is because of the techniques that we're talking about in this class because in the past when you're trying to just experiment and see what happens, there was always that back of the mind feeling at a certain point you have to go oh, now I've done it you know? I can't change it all right? I wish I hadn't done that because photoshopped by nature is very linear where you do ten steps if you want to undo step number three you're kind of out of luck and that's why I harp on these techniques because I found it really along with productivity we've been a lot of the discussion of this class was cut your workflow in half and that's certainly a big part of it, but to me it's the other side is and let your creative juices flow because you can just know I can go down this path and if I do eighteen steps and decide back it step three I wouldn't wish I hadn't done that well ok then I'll tweak that and have all the other step it's an update and to me, that's, one of most exciting parts of this concept is knowing that you can have all that ability to experiment with out at any point going hadn't done that and every so often, and makes me sad when I I'll get an email from former student, and they'll send like a screen capture or say the worst, I shouldn't tell the story, but I will, uh, the worst case was someone who had been in the class, and, you know, how many times if we had the tally board, how many times I've said save is a psd, right over the last couple of days, they sent me this email, and they said, so I flattened and saving is ajay pay, but when I went back, I couldn't edit the layers, and I was like, that is correct, and I'm not sure where they're expecting me to say, I'll just go to this hidden feature that says, get back on my layers that I threw away, like so a perfect example of that. A nice little segue way is when we talked about using filters and photoshopped, needless to say, there's, I don't know how many there are one day I should probably count, but there's a lot, and I think most people have a certain number of filters they use all the time that therefore their favorite, they know what they do, but maybe a little more reluctant to try other ones because they're not entirely sure what they're going to do, or they don't want to do a filter and then suddenly realize against several steps later, they wish they hadn't. So yesterday, we finished off talking about smart objects and hand in hand with that is the other really smart thing, which is smart filters, and I think this is again probably one of the most dramatic changes to photo shop, because here's, what the way people used to do, I think, use filters and try to make them a least, somewhat flexible, so I've opened a stock photo, and I want to do something to it, so and I'm sure you like the before smart way to do it first, which worked, but it had one little possible drawback, so I think, why don't apply the filter directly, the background, their soul, duplicate the background, commander, control j and then I'll do some filter. Whatever it is, we'll just do motion blur for the sake of argument. So what would happen is people would look at the settings, kind of, try and find the right area and go think, ah, and that kind of hover over okay, because as soon as you clicked it, that was like I've done so you click ok, and so now I have a really blurry one and the original and that's fine when I say that is a psd, I've got both of them, but the problem is, if I come back three weeks later, I can probably guess that's a motion blur but have no idea what settings I used, so it doesn't give me any ability to edit it really? My only the only thing I can do is delete it and start again, you know that what people would say as well, at least I can lower the opacity to make it less blurry or something like that, but my problem is I don't want to make this the effect see through I just want to be less blurry, so in the past, really, the only way to do that was did leak that layer and start again, which was a pain especially in the problem was if I done four more steps than I would have had to redo everything. So one of the side one of the biggest introductions in recent memory of photo shop that I think has changed a ton of stuff is smart filters and really what it means is yesterday we talked about the concept of smart objects I said, you have to think of a smart object like that container that protects the contents and that can let you do, you know, scaling and rotating what also lets you apply filters so that the image looks like it's had a filter applied, but ultimately the original is still inside that protective container, so the way to do this is you have to somehow make this layer smart, and you can do it multiple ways. Since we're talking about smart filters, many people discover this by seeing convert for smart filters, which is exactly the same as right clicking over here and choosing convert to smart object or going to the layers panel and choosing make a smart object. So however you get there doesn't matter it's all the same. I'll just do it this way, since we're talking about filters. But when you say convert for smart filters, you have to imagine says bracket by making it a smart object because that's really what's happening. So at first glance, there's really no apparent difference except it's no longer called background, and it has that same little symbol we've talked about before, where you see a little thing on the corner of it that tells me this is now smart, so on the surface level it appears as though this is kind of the same is duplicating the background layer but you'll see in a second the very, very important difference and why this is so useful I go back to the blur and do motion blur and but that being differences I can just go yeah, that ok? I have to think about should I click ok? Because even though I talked over and over again about how ok could be a bad thing in this case it's not bad because if you look at the layers panel you'll see it says smart filter motion blur so if I just stopped there and save it is a psd it means two weeks from now I can say oh I apply the motion blur if I want to see how much I applied the motion blur I double click on it and it shows me this is how much you applied it so if I want to change something about it I change it and click ok if I decide remind me what it looked like without the motion blur I get his turn off completely if I do decide that I kind of like the effect but I wish mohr of the original background kind of show through globally across the whole image in this over on the side here there's a thing that's hard to miss I mean I should say easy to miss because it's just off to the side born you double click on this it opens up this little blending options which has motive capacity like a layer but it's the mode no opacity of the filter applied to the layer so that means I can say overall I like it but what if I were just lower the opacity a little bit so now it's a motion blur that's been kind of people back a bit so in effect this is as if I duplicated the background layer blurted and lower the opacity with the important difference yet I can edit all the pieces not just in the first scenario all I could really edit was the opacity this one I can say and again this is off the filter, not the layer so the layer still has his own independent blend mode but here I could say what happens if I change this to multiply at one hundred percent or whatever and when I click ok it just means for now that smart filter has these settings but on underneath all this it's still the original photographs of my head and another layer to this I could in turn change the blend mode of the layer in addition to the blend mode of the smart filter and that's what really makes this powerful is like piling on the other standard photo saw things we do with the ability to do this on an ongoing basis so if nothing else if you just stop there that's pretty interesting to me that that filters no longer become a one shot deal where you have to write down somewhere I used this filter and hope you remember this is part of that reverse engineering thing I talked about earlier is when you open a document I'll see smart filter smart filter smartphone lingers doubleclick go oh that's right I used those settings okay so that by itself is pretty cool we'll keep building on cincy other options as well and you can actually can you add a mask to to the smart filter can select yeah so this little thing right here is that's exactly what it is it's a mask just like every other matter we talked about a adjustment layer mass and layer mask works exactly the same way so I'm going toe to make this a little easier to see for now I'm going to take this out of multiply just so we have incredibly blurry thing first so on here and this is one of the fun things about voter shop is there some principles that don't change so any time there's a layer matt anytime you see a mask and photoshopped whether it's a layer mask or a filter master an adjustment air mask it always works the same way because it's white the entire photograph is being affected by this filter if I decided that I don't want the tree to be quite so blurry I might go to my paintbrush I got my four round color set to black and I could probably do it with the lower opacity begin with and I've got my pressure sensitivity set, so now I can start kind of painting in the area that I don't want to be affected. Could you do that before? Yes, was it anywhere near is easy, not even close because now take a look at this just then again, this is just a simple example again with every aspect of this convey edited, do I want the motion blur on or not? What settings? Though I want for it, though I wanted to be you see through or not and do I want a mask it so very often, when you look at a psd file of mine, you'll see lots of layers that have exactly what you see there smart filter something mast and then a setting that I can change what I used to do, and it seems funny to say this and I'm actually not kidding because before smart filters, there was no way to tell so I would duplicate a background layer and I do motion blur out actually renamed the layer motion blur minus fifteen seventeen because I was the only way to know later on and give you a least a hope of remembering how you did it we still couldn't edit it but at least that would give you the ability to kind of remind yourself what I love about this is just by nature, it tells you, it's, like a lot of people, talk about the history, function and photo shop, and I think I mentioned before, I think of history is today's history, because tomorrow that wouldn't help you. The smart filter is like history forever. You could always look at it and go back and sort of see what you did. Now, I always like to get the downside out of the way really quickly, because it will come up somewhere in the conversation, people often ask, can I add multiple smart filters to this? And the answer is yes, you can, however unfortunate, is only one mask. So if I added three more smart filters to this document, what happened is they would all be affected by the same layer mask, which sometimes is good, often it's, frustratingly, not what you want, so there is work around that we'll talk about later, but because I know some people will have that questions that comes up all the time. And someone asked often, people asked, will they ever change that? And based on a block post that someone from adobe did, like three years ago, it sounds like probably not because, apparently the whatever the coding to make that happen would be, and the power it would take on your machine to be able to render multiple mass for multiple smart filters would be probably not something we've seen any time soon because it would need, like, giga power, you know, machines to make it happen. So thankfully there there is a way around it, which we'll talk about later, but that's, just the one thing you need to be prepared force if you do paint on the mask, it will affect every smart filter, so as an example, I'm just going toe get where did this and phyllis of white again, just to show you that as I'm working away, and I'm not in any way trying to suggest you would do these kind of things, but I was trying to show you something that's really obvious, like let's. Add some noise to this, however, make sure you're actually clicked on the photo, dave, not the mask. When you do that, that would be much better, so let's overdo it did not pay not that much, so they get to one hundred percent. We've got that's really crazy and often one what I do, and we'll talk about this and more details well, that when I'm uncertain of how much to put in for something I don't have a problem with going overboard a first to kind of see ok now it's definitely too much now I can start to say what if I go back in and adjust both e blur amount first because they're piling on each other and the ad noise now should be probably a little more and maybe it's just a matter of keeping that amount of noise but changing it to give me these warning message let's go this one and maybe lower in the capacity or trying some blend mode or whatever and that could dramatically change the impact so if I stop their savings a psd the next time I open it I will see exactly this knowing that I'm on top of all the other smart filter advantages if I suddenly go you know what? Never mind I could just turn it all off because it's just on off button it's not there's nothing in any way permanent about would only be permanent if I use those bad words like you know merge and rast arise and flat and all those that would apply it and some people are saying but I need to print it okay then use the command for print and this printed there's just no reason to rest arise or merger flattened just to print it if you're sending it outside to a lab somewhere then save a copy that's flattened that's that's fine but keep this so you're preserving along with all the other things. Like adjustment, layers are also preserving the smart filter. Can you change the blend mode for every filter? Or are you stuck with the same blend of cannon that the little symbol on the side is perfect litter? So I had five filters, I could go into each one. The one thing that is applied to all is the mask. Okay, so that's the one, the one part that's, you know, a little bit challenging now where I think this, you know, you can build on these ideas. And this is similar to things we talked about in the last couple days with things like adjustment, layers is I might not want this whole photograph to look that way. I might want to try something different. So a very common approach taken. I'll show you a couple different examples of this throughout this session is to apply a filter to everything or filters in this case. Take the layer mask and inverted so it's filled with black. So now I have filters that are completely hidden. And as I've said before, if I left it that way, that would just be pointless, because I'm just added something that's completely invisible. But if you think the way layer mask works, black hides white shows so I take my paintbrush and I changed my foreign card a white that my pink brush in effect has just become paint with motion blur and add noise paintbrush so wherever I paint, I can paint in that effect, so if you're trying to add like, say, painterly effects to something or whatever, this is a really nice option. I'm again using the pressure sensitivity of my tablet to try and play with that that would have been so much harder before smart filters I would have said, well, I better make a selection first and duplicate that on so on layer into a filter just to that and now the edges don't blend well on block you know, just so many things that people would run into roadblocks to say that's not what I had in mind here and what I very frequently do, and I'll show this again as I deliberately overdo the filter so I can do the masking and then once I think that looks pretty good, then I come back and pull back the settings a little bit it's kind of the same principle as taking adjustment, layer and deliberately over adjusting it to help you see what you're doing and then pull it back exactly the same thing here so there's a lot of recurring themes that whether you're using adjustments or filters? It's that same end up with prince principle that always talked about that, says, I want to end up with a particular look, but to help me get there, I'm going to deliberately go a little bit overboard, sometimes way overboard, so I can really see what I'm doing, so I'm trying to get here. I'm just kind of brandon lee painting without worrying about detail, but I'm really trying to follow something, you know, the edges of something, and when I'm painting on a mask, some it's very often it's much easier to do that if you can really see what you're doing so that's, kind of the quick little overview of smart filters, and the one little downside is that is that the on ly problem that cannon you can encounter, which we'll talk about a solution for later? Is that one mask per all smart filters, sometimes depending on the filters? If you drag the order of the filters that will have an influence on the way it looks, depends on the filters you're using, but that is possible to say, I would like this this filter to be above that filter, and it doesn't sometimes that you don't see any difference. Sometimes you go, oh, wow, that really does look different now because of the the filter combinations that you're using almost every filter in photo shop is smart but if you go anywhere under the filter menu and you see anything that's great out that means apparently that the lens blur filter cannot be smart so luckily there's very few of those initially there were a handful now there's a very small number and not ones that I would tend to really worry about that much there's a whole new set of lens blur filters when they first came out they were not smart it seems so weird to say that they're actually really good but they weren't smart that couldn't be applied as a smart filters what I should be saying now is that the last couple of updates and photoshopped they are also smart which is a really interesting possibility let me show you that as an example here question have a smart filter your photo layer has to be smart and then you and then any filter becomes a smart for exactly and as we'll see you there are times where we talked about this a bit yesterday briefly and we'll talk about it more this afternoon whenever I start with camera they always open as a smart object so by nature every fill enough to do anything filters are automatically smart because it comes in that way so he used commands like place the place command automatically makes a smart objects you don't no longer have to do that convert to smart object because it already is so in many cases, for me, I don't have to worry about it, because I know what it's going to happen naturally. So here's another example? I want to make this smart, so I convert to smart object. I'll use thes blur filters on let's do field blur, the's, blur filters. Let me just talk about this for one second as an aside, because I hope this happens for every filter and photoshopped eventually. I don't know that it will, but I don't if you notice what just happened there when I did the motion blur a little dialog box this big open with a little preview in the middle with these newer filters, the whole photograph stays the same size and actually just changes the work space to say here's. Your filter controls on the side that's a really powerful feature, because now I'm not dealing with the little tiny box and trying to see what I'm seeing everything and this happens with, unfortunately, only a few filters and these air new ones that they've built recently, and whether they'll ever all get to this point, I don't know that would be kind of nice, but, um, I guess I can't. I can't show you this, I've already done it, but one, the little tricks, this field blur is really interesting because it's like a more realistic version of gods and blur, people use gods, and we're trying to do like depth of field, and it never quite looks right. This one definitely looks better, and the little trick I want to mention is it's kind of a weird interface thing, and I was using this last night, so I can't show you, but I want to do this thing called field blur and down the bottom, you see, it says blur effects when I first opened this, that was empty, so it looked like there were no blur effects, which is kind of odd, and I had actually click on the name blur effects to see the blur effects. So don't be surprised if the first time you go to use some of these filters, you click on it, and this part down here looks like it's empty. You probably have to just click on that tab name to say yes, I would actually like to use those. So, like in this case, one of things that photographers love to do it in the right environment is you no depth of field and create boca with lights and things like that well. This was taken with either a lens or camera setting tau have a bigger depth of field, so that didn't happen, so this is another example of the I want to end up with a concept I want to make the background look a little more like its depth of field boca kind of stuff, so I put the blur a little higher and you see down here in this case that has this option of putting on boca and it starts to create that kind of blurriness that you see when things are in the background and that kind of boca thing ana overdo it again at first make sure I can get the effect I want I don't really want the glow on them, so I'm moving this last little slide act it doesn't really matter when I do that you'll see why and then I clicked, okay? This one takes a tad longer because it is a little more complex what I'm asking it to do same theory though I don't really want that applied everywhere because certainly don't want them to look like that, so I'm going to take the mask and inverted to fill with black and using exactly same theory now my paintbrush becomes the boca brush in effect is now I can just paint wherever I wanted and get that effect without having to do that myself now there were ways to do this before and let me to say it was not this fast it was like, you know, apply these four filters and create a custom brush and you know all these kind of things where is here and now that I look at him ok, that was maybe a little much, but at least I'm looking at now in context I'm all about doing things in context, so to me trying to decide this settings for a filter first of all, when I'm zoomed out seeing the whole image and secondly, when I haven't done the masking yet and I don't want to make a selection first, I mean, I could, but then the problem is I'm kind of restricting myself here I'd rather they applied to everything make the mass black and then gradually and I've got my russia opacity sick, but sixty one half of the sixty seven percent, so I'm having I could do a few runs at and say, I want a little more here a lot more here and I'm kind of building it up so the layer mass looks like this and I'm that saying wherever you see white show the field blur completely wherever you see gray not so much ever see black not at all that's exactly same concept of any layer mass what has happens that has the added bonus that we can do it with the filters like this blur one now that I look at again, I'm thinking maybe I went a little too high so I could go back and tweak it, but now I'm seeing it knows how it's actually showing me in the context with the mask so I can actually make better decisions down say maybe I went a little bit strong there, and I can adjust this up or down or whatever I want and then updated click ok, and it will in effect, reapply it while still using the same layer mask so that I hate to call it paint with a filter, but it kind of is, in fact, that's the end result is saying if you set it up the right way, that means wherever you're painting with white, you're painting in the effects of that particular filter or filters. So any time you do apply a smart filter, if you see something that looks like this right now, collapse it down to save space, I can tell by the icon on the thumbnail it's smart, I can tell over here, this little symbol tells me, and the little down pointing triangle means there's more information they don't necessarily have to always show that list of smart filters, you can collapse it upto. Pilot up but we won't call it toe give yourself more room but then I can pull down that means I can either paint on the mask mawr I can double click to look at it settings and depending on the filter of the majority of them also have that little symbol on the side that lets you do that opacity blend mode there's a small group that don't like these ones because it is the nature of how these filters work but here's an interesting little side note there's a command that's been around a photo shop for a while now that is called shadows highlights which a lot of people don't use as much as they used to because for one main reason was because there wasn't an adjustment layer version of it I know for me that kind of stopped me from using it because as you know by now I don't want to use an adjustment directly to the image and just by complete accident one day because normally when you're talking smart filters all the filters under here right? Not exactly because if you look under image adjustments shadow highlights is available so it actually is a filter that they stuck under adjustments because that's how people would use it but technically shadow highlight is a smart filter, so I click ok now it's giving me the ability you shadow highlight in a flexible nondestructive way that wasn't there before some people don't bother because they do that kind of work in light rumor for camera or whatever but it's nice to know that if shadow highlights is a solution for a problem long longer have to worry about yeah, but if I do that I'm going to be stuck because you just do it this way now the one part that as good as that is this is really weird to me why they do this if you go under image adjustments there's something called hdr toning and it says it must be flattened so much for why it's not just great out as opposed to letting you think you can do it as a smart filter and then it says I actually can't so I just kind of a weird interface thing to me and said that it just it just don't make it available don't tease me think who I can do hdr toning is my father no, you can't says you just have to flatten it so poop on you, so I wouldn't use that okay? So as we're going along, everything word we're doing with smart filters follows that same principle here's another great example to me of the huge benefit of the way smart filters and work in conjunction with smart objects and I kind of alluded to this briefly yesterday, but here I have a type player and I saw that want to add a filter to it so it's just a regular type player and I go to any filter whatever it might be doesn't really matter, because soon as I do it's going to give me this horrible warning message that says the type player must be rest arised before proceeding, and then this part to me should be flashing in red. Its text will no longer be editable warning will robinson don't and the worst part all it says restaurants, the type that has prompted me to click ok if I did sure I could run the filter, but then I no longer at the type and we talked yesterday about how you could do a clipping mass to kind of solve that, but it still was kind of a work around here. One of the advantages of smart objects is you can have multiple layers inside a smart object, so I have to type players. I select both of them and choose convert to smart object. Now in the layers panel, the thumbnail looks like it has that rast arise, merged, flattened kind of thing happening. But that little symbol on the corner gives me the relief to know, but it's, not it's, still khun be edited, so now I could go in and do whatever the heck filter I want let's do this texture, isar thing I'll do it really strong so you can see it on my probably quite this much, but I want to be able to see what's happening you can see now I have texture filter applied to my type. The big difference though, is now I look at and I say spelt it wrong change the font, you know, change the color wherever it might be I just have to double click on the smart object to open a separate document with the original type in it and now aiken, for example at the type and say let's, use some other, um, typeface back over here so it's kind of like it was before. Now, if I'm ever concerned, like in this case, I'm not sure if the top of this type is cut off. I would use command reveal all just to make sure I didn't miss anything and then when I close it and save it, you see it automatically updates and the filters reapplied. This could have been done before using other methods, but first of all the bottom line was even though you could probably at the type you couldn't add it the filter because you have to just apply it to a separate layer now both of these both aspects of this combination khun b edited the contents of the smart object and the smart filter so again without hitting that broken record routine too many times as long as I say that as a psd this is what I'll see the next time I open it so if you had wanted to edit have the ability to edit the word separately would you have made a smart object out of each word rather than complaining and technically they're still I mean if I want to the filtered separately yes if I want to edit them in terms of content I put both of them in here because in this case I wanted the same filter for both now it there's always lots of ways I mean I might look at and say, well the bottom word doesn't look good because the filters to strong smaller typeface but I still want it there so I could just make a selection way we're sitting on here make a little selection around here and on my layer mask choose fill with fifty percent bre so I'm going to say on that part don't apply the filter quite a strongly now if I wanted complete control then yeah definitely I would have each type player separate to make sure but if you're trying to do something there's always ways to get to say I really like that but and this way now I can reapply the filter to both and it will just always be a little less on the smaller word because of that little bit of gray in the layer mask means don't hide it the filter completely, but don't show it completely fifty percent is exactly in the middle, so sometimes that's an easy solution is just say, you know, philip fifty percent on the mass to make it less obvious. The other reason that I really like using smart filters is it lets me experiment with filters that in the past I would have probably given up on because they were too complicated, and every time you went to try something was like starting all over again, and a good example of that is filtered, called displace this place is a really interesting filter that in the right environment can make it look like, for example, words are painted on the door way or a logo or whatever it might be, but the problem, as you'll see in the past, was always when I went to apply the filter, it gave me this dialogue, boston just said, how how much would you like to displace? And you're like, I have no idea, so you have to click ok, we didn't work undue three steps and tried again and it's still, we still don't know what number and type in when it's smart, but at least it's easier to update, and the way that the displace filter works is it uses something called displacement map which says, I will use whatever you give me to determine by, like, shadows and highlights howto bend whatever it is to fit, and so the simplest way to do that is to just duplicate whatever going to uses your background, and I'm going to duplicate it into a new document and his clique. Okay, so I could have easily just said duplicate document either way, and this document has to be a ps defile asked me the same size that's basically a copy of the same photo in earlier versions of photo shop, you had to convert it to a grey scale for this to work that's no longer the case, I only discovered that recently designed a habit I kept always been converting to gray scale, and then one time I forgot to and it still work. I was like, look at that somewhere along the way, they change that no one bothered to say anything, so what I would potentially do maybe not as much in this case, but if I had like, say, I don't know a brick wall where was really strong texture and the brick, not just the you know, the growth but the bricks themselves. I might try and blur just a bit because it would be so textured that whatever you're trying to overland top would be hard to see so sometimes I might this is the rare time you'd actually see me apply a filter directly instead of smart because all I'm trying to do is make it not quite so texture and sharp on we really just have the contours of a simple way to do that there's a filter called de speckle which doesn't give you any settings but it kind of does ah form of surface blur so that the details like the edges will still be there but any fine detail will be taking away a little bit so usually what I do on and I would say many of these backgrounds is do the dis speckle filter and then there's a nice little shortcut commander control f means the filter you just did do it again so I find often doing it twice is just the right combination of keeping the the edge detail but softening the other part is a little bit and I have to save this as a psd now I talked before about old abbots old habits die hard here's an old habit of mine that's actually not necessary but I still do it because I'm always afraid I'm going to forget which is the one that's called this displacement map so I put the word map in the name even though it's not at all necessary technically this is when I go looking for it I want to make sure I picked the right one so that's not you can call it anything you want but technically what we're creating right now is called displacement map which is how the displaced filter works so if you just went to displace about anything else you kind of go and we just pop up a dialog box you would know what to do so generally although showing example where you don't have to this is where I would start is making this first and then save it once had saved it served its purpose so I'm going to take my textile but again this could be a graphic or whatever you want to get some text on here make it really big let's use always like to use this fund because it's nice and big seek and see what's happening okay and could even bigger so my goal is to make this look like it's painted on the wall and has been there for a while so I'm trying to go for that grungy kind of look and just to make earth more fun let's do that and let's rotate it just a little bit. So whoever painted this just wasn't very good because they tilted it now that would bother people so let's make it more tilted. All right, so before I show you the smart filter thing let's revisit one of the topics we talked about with the not so obvious ways of doing things faster and photo shop because whenever I see a situation like this I'm gonna try this first just to see what it does and I might just fine that's good enough or I might incorporate as part of my smart filter and that's that thing type buckled the blend of sliders where it lets you play around with gradual opacity not just global so I do that by double clicking and I go here to the underlying layer and start to pull this and you'll see it's letting some of the darker areas show through that and I might if I let's look at it closer it's already helping and maybe if I change the blend mode to something like overlay I mean ok, we're not never mind I mean I could leave it like that I'm not going to because I wanted to really feel like it's changing but that wanted to point out that sometimes I think we jump too quickly in tow filters and things were sometimes a combination of like blended sliders and a blend mode you might be pretty darn close to the look you want I'm going to put that back for a second so you see more clearly the way it was before, okay so in order for me to experiment with the displaced filter, this type player has to be smart because that's what I'm applying the filtered I'm not applying the killers to the wall and applying it to the text so I convert that to a smart object when I go filter, distort, displace and here's where the challenge comes in, because this gamma stolid boxes says, how much would you like to horizontal and vertical scale? No idea and there's no preview, so you can't say, well, let me try, and this always used to be the problem that would stop people they kind of give up on it because they go back and forth, like fourteen times trying to find the right number, and that part doesn't change at least it's easier it's, like you're starting from scratch every time, so I'm going to take a wild guess and just put twenty and fifteen and that's the only thing I would say is I often don't go too much higher than that because it looks so distorted. It's not really realistic, but so is a general thumb. I would say, I'm going to be twenty five or less, but it really is going to depend when you click, ok, the next thing it doesn't say, what would you like to use as your displacement? Map says choose a displacement map? If I hadn't done that, duplicate the wall thing, first of this point, I would have been like, oh, ok, now, theoretically, you could pick any psd file and use that as a slave and map but it's not tied to this particular photo, which is why it works much better better most of the time, if you just if you pick one that you've created for this purpose specifically so I click open is going to take that displacement map and now if we look and see how the edges of it are really following mohr, the edge of and I would still tend to change the blend mode to something like overlay but you see now it really looks much more like it's been painted trying to pick on something that has surface my feeling is it's still, it may be a little much so if I double click now, I would say maybe I only want the horizontal ten and this twenty when I click ok, I still have to re apply that same map, but it's still much quicker than the previous version where you had to pretty much scrap it and start again. So I find myself this was a filter I used to use years ago, but I was often I kind of give up on it because it just took so much effort now that I know I can least try those numbers a little more quickly. The other reason it's kind of nice is that in the this filter is using this place and map and right now the words are right here so it's the story of their if I went to move the words over here it wouldn't nestle match up anymore but not reapply the filter to match up to this new part of the wall because it is using the underlying photo to do the distorting so if I moved it to a very different part of the image it might look ok, the chances are right have toe we run that displaced filter for it toe really look better and as before this is still type, so if I wanted to change it to something else gonna be, allow me to update so later today were direct actually next we're going to talk about in the next class the whole concept of what I refer to as templates even though technically photoshopped doesn't call them that if you think about it, this could be considered a template maybe you're doing bunch of senior photos where you're going to put the seniors photo right here and you want to put their name on the wall like it's painted on? Well now I've already I'm set to go I just reach person I just type in the new name in that smart object and I'm good to go, whereas if I was every time starting from scratch that would take a lot of time this way even this could be considered a template in the sense that it's ready to be edited just by double clicking on here, putting a name in and then going on to the next one. Now displace that's kind of the I was called standard, but the most typical way of using the displaced filter is taking a copy of the exact same background you're going to use and putting it on there just so you get the idea here. I want to show you one other thing really quickly. Here, let me go back to here. So, let's, take this logo. Put it on there, it's a little small, but we'll take it. No, I would not be too quick to enlarge something this big. But since I'm gonna eventually will try to make it look like the old painted on the wall thing, I don't have much of a problem with it. If I convert this to a smart object now I can take this displaced filter and drag it up there and it's already applied. And then we just have to change the blend mode on this one. You see, it already has that same kind of look to it I mentioned before the first thing, actually, before I did this place filter was doing the blend, if sliders very often and use a combination, we'll do the displaced filter, it kind of has the look that I want, but I want to essentially that just a bit more, so I double click on it and say, take the underlying layer kind of concept and start to poke it through a little more so we get that kind of look now hopefully we can get to a point fairly easily where if you didn't see the layers panel, he wouldn't necessarily walk in and say, well, clearly you've used a displacement map to add that logo after the fact you might just go, would you find that that's cool and that's? What I think is exciting about these filters, as you can get to the point of making it a little has someone has to think twice and it's not obvious that you've added something after the fact now, here's another way to use the displace filter that I'm really I love this one a lot. I think this is interesting, especially because often when I do this, I really have no idea what's going to happen and that's oddly interesting to me is where you just apply something kind of wait to see what happens.

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Ratings and Reviews

Roni Chas
 

DAVE CROSS IS AN EXCELLENT INSTRUCTOR. HE EXPLAINS TECHNIQUES SO THAT I CLEARLY UNDERSTAND WHAT HE IS DOING. I LOVE HIS TIPS, AND I LEARN SOMETHING EV!!ERY TIME I HEAR DAVE. I DID BUY THIS PROGRAM, I WANTED TO BE ABLE TO REVIEW IT AND GET IT ALL. I HAVE HEARD DAVE TEACH BEFORE AT NECCC CONFERENCE AND WAS SO HAPPY TO WATCH AND PURCHASE THIS COURSE. I CONSIDER MYSELF PROFICIENT IN PHOTOSHOP YET I CONTINUE TO LEARN NEW THINGS WATCHING DAVES PROGRAM! HUGE THANKS DAVE!!!

a Creativelive Student
 

I enjoyed this class by Dave Cross. I like his method of teaching and found him very easy to follow and I learned lots of good tips on smart objects and working non destructively. I have just made the move from PS Elements to Photoshop CC 2014 so have lots to learn so I look forward to more from Dave in the future. Thanks Dave, I thoroughly enjoyed this class.

a Creativelive Student
 

Dave Cross is a wonderful instructor! He has a fantastic teaching style and has great mastery of his subjects!

Student Work

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