Lessons

Lesson Info

Student Questions & Preset Buttons

We do have a question. Something you were just going over a couple of minutes ago has to do with dave I to use bridge is a reason that you don't use many bridges photoshopped or do you use many bridge sometimes? Well, how can I answer that without an adobe sniper? I used to use many bridge, and then I chose not to anymore, because I was worried that I might not be able to sometime in the future. That was bad to say in so many words, but, yeah, I used to use many bridge a lot because I liked that it was right there, but yeah, all right, thanks to you too much about more about, but things are a changing, and that might may or may not be something that will its usability may be different in the future, right? Uh, confluence of things there, there's. A lot of boundaries that are being crossed now. Yeah, no question there is there. And I think one of the the goals of adobe is to say, we want to give you all these options, which is both good and bad for a new person, because there's so many ...

options. But once you start to see how they work together, I love the fact that I never, ever anymore feel like if someone says well, can you create this? The answer is almost always yes, other than like, can you take this horribly bad photograph it's out of focus and fix that that's all different in terms of creating some look out of various elements? I I feel these days than we have been talking about smart, obvious, smart filters, but with all this combination that I feel like I can create the look that I want and still know that if I changed my mind, I want to add anything I can on various levels by combining all these things together, and some of them do kind of overlap where it's like in my mind, it used to be well, either use a clipping mask or layer mass. Now I'm often in both makes sense in this case, so use both to give me, you know, the most control over things. Sure, this also looks so like a lot of things that you only on lee used to be able to do. And illustrator, yes, yeah, and that's, that's actually a really good point. Now I'm the first one to say if you own various parts, including illustrator photo shop is still not the best place in the world to create where you're creating, like from scratch, like drawing things, but if you a same time I think there's a bit of a misconception that people think if I want to create a logo I should do it an illustrator and my first thought as well you should if you know how to do that but some people only know photoshopped so I wouldn't want to make a logo on photo shop at seventy two pp I this big but if I did it a little bigger and use vector and type objects they're completely scaleable so here's an example let's go back to this metal thing for a second what I mean by that so I'm going to make a new document and first of all we're gonna make it really small just to show uh we could do here ever ok, so if I and this is why we need to I think think about the combination of or or at least um think about what happens down the road when I start building something right now I think sometimes we think too much about I just get this done I'm always in the back mom going yeah, but what if down the road I need to make it bigger so for example let's do this let's bring this in here pop it in it's going to be enormous so we'll scale it down a lot and then make our good little clipping mask and one hundred percent you're like that looks great perfect little beautiful okay just pretend along with me a beautiful design for my website whatever it might be looks great the problem is doing it this way if I then come back and say ok I'm that needs to be way bigger so if I go to image size and suddenly make it triple the size the photograph itself doesn't look bad because it I scaled it down what had room to go but can you see the edge how it just looks really soft if I high this you can see it just doesn't look good when you scale up just a graphic element like that it just doesn't look good at all so if I knew going in it that was even the remotest possibility of that happening then instead this is where it's still going to be a clipping mass what I'm going to do it using a shape which is vector based so go to my lips tool make sure it's a shape layer clip it and now the same thing if I make it much bigger you see the difference how the edge is perfect because scaling up a vector makes sense doesn't have it there's no problem with that so if I did for some reason I feel like I don't know how to use illustrator I'm going to create my logo in photo shop I want to make sure I'm using vector objects and shapes and everything else that are scaleable it's not the ideal situation because frankly illustrator is better at that but same time someone does not use illustrator not going to spend four days learning how views illustrator to make design if you you can do it in photo shop but here's the other thing by the way, this is kind of interesting me step back here so the things that air scaleable in photo shop and that this kind of ties and why it happens that we're talking about clipping mask but this for anything so I made the clipping mask with a shape if I have type both of those both shape and type even though type looks and acts as if it's made of pixels technically there is vector type, so if you scale something much larger type also scales perfectly fine. The other thing that scales that surprises people is layer styles in other words, if you add a beveled edge or a drop shadow and you scale up the document those effects scale to they're not really they appear to be pixel base, but they're they're not there enough of a in effect that is applied to whatever layer on that if you make the document bigger, it just kind of scales itself up that's yet another reason why when people merge they throw that away because if you merge two or three layers together and then scale it up now you're just scaling pixels again so any time you can preserve the vector nature and vector means both shapes type and even though not considered vectors layer styles are scaleable as well so you could in theory create something in photoshopped that could be scaled up to a degree but if you want to do that, you'd have to make sure you were using effects that you know made sense from the scalability standpoint now that also reminding me there's something else I wanted to say which is not entirely related but it kind of this so let's uh actually scale us up a little bit, okay, so I have back to michael clipping mass thing going on here, I've got this shape layer that's causing the clipping and as we've seen before because it's vector I could alter the shape and do all sorts of interesting things and by the way, one of the interesting little sidelines long kind of interrupted myself, but I'll get back to my thought in a second. But just looking at this photo shop does have some decent abilities to create shape apps, and sometimes you have to think I want to end up with a particular shape and the way you do it might might take a sort of a sideline steps old machine an example of that just real quickly here let's say for the sake of argument that what I really want to create is a, um, like a teardrop shape? Well, there's, there may be a tears, actually, it probably is, but let's pretend that there wasn't I couldn't find exactly the shape teardrop shape that I wanted. So let's do this for a second so you can see what's happening here. Okay, so this is because it's, a shape shapes are made up of these paths and anchor points in each one of these anchor points are editable in a couple of different ways. For example, I could take the this white arrow lets me get too individual point to start, too, you know, play around with them in this way or that way. But then the other possibility, which is kind of interesting, is there's all these options here for working with past, which are a little more unusual, but they're kind of an interesting possibility. For example, when I think about it, a teardrop shape is really an oval that goes up to a point. So right now this top anchor point is curved on are what I really wanted to be is not curved. So this odd looking little tool convert point tool that's exactly what it does, it says, let me take a curve point and make it straight, no ideas, click once radio and all of a sudden, I've got the start of what I want now I might also, you know, drag it up a little higher or whatever, but instead of trying to draw that from scratch, now I've got the shape that I want and I can work on it. So that's kind of the other thing I forgot to mention I'm talking about vector shapes is that you may not be able to find exactly the shape you want, but by using some of these reshaping tools, sometimes you can get to that shape. I had a case just the other day where someone said, I really want one of those it's like a rectangle with a little triangle like you see on a map pointing to something, and they're looking through all the built in shapes and photo shop, and they found that there was a like thought bubbles but they wanted just like this little shape. So I said, well, you have to kind of think a little bit more like vector objects do so by take care a rectangle it's just made up of it's got four anchor points, but I want another, another little kind of triangle pointing down from this well, in order to do that, I need mohr anchor points, so if I just add three points on here and then take the middle one and drag it down. I've got the shape that I wanted that I could now use to point to something so sometimes it's a matter of not just looking at the shape that's there, but building on it by saying, I just need to add a few more points to able to pull this out or push that in or whatever it might be again it's illustrator does this and weigh mohr, but for many people trying to use illustrators just the whole another kettle of fish, so to speak that they don't know what they're doing enoughto just frustrate them, and I was a little sideways step, but what I really wanted to show you is when we had the conversation early about presets, I touched on just a couple, but I want to show you a couple more that kind of fit in here of what we're doing is if you're creating a series of looks that you want to look the same, for example might have, I don't know let's just pretend these we're going to be a series of battle buttons on a elektronik publication or something where I want them all to look the same, but I'm creating them separately so I might do that by saying, ok, it's going to be I know it's going to be this oval shape. At least for some of them, but overall, I want them look the same, so I want them to have a couple of layers styles of same, so a drop shadow and by the way, as a little tip with working a drop shadows, for whatever reason, the drop shadow controls wants you to use new america controls to say I wanted to be an angle of this and a distance of that that never worked for me, I always just found a lot easier to just click and drag, and so I want the shadow, like there just was found that was easier than trying to figure out the math, so let's make it a little softer, okay? And I also want a bevel and in boss, and I wanted to be chisel hard, and I'm not quite that thick, but some isil edge to it. Like maybe that and this part down here, a lot of people, when they're looking at layer styles, they only worry about this top part because that's the easy part, this just looks a little overwhelming and scary, so a lot people don't touch these things down here, but remember that little permission to experiment button over here, it means if you're not sure what this does and just try it and see there's a thing called gloss contour which a lot of people like I have no idea what that is so there's no way I'm going to touch that I would at least look at it and go through and see is there anything in here that's giving me the effect that I want it may or may not but there's no danger in trying kitchen always go back and say I look in your mind even you know someone asked me to explain what a gloss contours new I can't really quantify exactly how it works but I don't care I just know if I could on these little buttons things happen and sometimes I like the result ok? So let's save in sake of argument that is the look that I want that hard beveled edge with a little drop shadow over the next little while only making a series of buttons that involve making clipping masks and then adding this effect instead of trying to remember every time what setting dye used for a drop shadow on what same dye used for the bell on the boss this is another type of pre set and it's found under styles so the styles buttons are all preset styles that are one arm or combinations of layer styles so in here on to do is click on the creek new style button and call it something like I know devil with she you know or something that makes sense to me look ok and now I'm working away let's pretend it's a completely different document doesn't mean I'm to stay in the same one but just for the sake of argument pretend I wasn't and I go on get some other shape appear so we're gonna be able to get this to work this is an example of time but where sometimes I kind of got caught in a loop here because I wasn't paying close enough attention to where my new layer was going so it got caught in the group that was already there so let's disappear and go get another image this one okay dragging in clip it and I say that looks fantastic it's so awesome but I wanted to have the same feel as another button instead of remembering what was that I did I assemble, click on the shape and then apply the style what's great about these styles when you click on them it doesn't just add in effect it tells you it's a bevel in the boss and a drop shadow still edit both of them. So if you apply and then realize in this case with this clipping mass with this style of texture if the settings are a little too much they're still editable and that's why the recurring themes of presets and photo shop is the presets are, um a starting point so you can go through and try something now says we're on this topic how do I say this? In a nice manner? Some of the style presets are rather unusual in what they provide. Let's. Just take a look for a second to see what joyce await us will meet use thes built in layer styles that that's actually a style that adobe provides for us to say. There you go, here's one you could use because it's so so lovely and there's a lot of those that is kind of like make me go, however, and I'm going to give them a bit of a break here and say hopefully what their intention was was not to stress would ever use this, but to give you an idea, because you can go on and say, how did they do that and kind of figure it out? I hope no one would actually use this one, but here's another case that I mentioned before the built in ones in this dialog box. Frankly, some of them are just really bad, but then when you go to the pop up menu, some of these are great, so it's, just like they haven't had the time to say let's, take out the silly ones and put back in some really practical ones that are really kind of cool, can you take up silly ones like, yes, you can and I keep them in there just so I can poke fun of realistically and this applies to any pre set by the way like I think I mentioned yesterday that one of the tool prisons like fill with bubbles pattern ok thanks so the contents of all of these panels are controlled by something called the preset manager so if I go under edit to preset you see there's the preset manager on the first level what the priests manager does exactly that it says let me look inside the styles panel hears all the same ones you can see they're all the ones that are right there so if I wanted to I could go delete delete, delete delete delete it and or more likely take all of these and lead all of them and then or I should say and or say well this one I just made I wish it was up here because I use it all the time so you can order you're basically setting the appearance of what that panel looks like what's in there what order but it also serves another very important on purpose which is how you create a back up plan so let's imagine a moment that I created ten styles for a project I wouldn't want to do that again or let's actually use remember yesterday we created a couple of brushes well I got a bunch of brushes in here that I've created over time so since the last time I did it was probably this many brushes are all ones that I created out of something and rather than do that over again, if should I something go wrong and also they're they're gone because I mean, it is possible shouldn't happen, but it is possible that you know you something happens, the photo shop you re launch and all of a sudden what happened, those brushes I just made it doesn't happen that often, but it's possible, I would rather to not have to make those brushes or styles or tool presets or whatever it is over again. So in the precept manager, I just click on the first one and then shift click on the next one so I create this is the range of brushes that I have recently created that I would like to make sure I keep like a a backup copy of and you choose save set now what'll happen is in each case it will prompt you to save it and the appropriate fold in other words, because these air brushes it's, prompting me to save it in the photo shop brushes folder. If I clicked on styles and said save set, it would prompt me to save it in the styles folder ok, so you call it something I'm not going to actually do it in this case because it's not really a relevant but you name it something it has a dot abie are in the end, which is the adobe brush format, and if I save it in this folder, look in that voice he was already a bunch of them would say, like copyright and dave's demo brushes and dave's custom the's role ones that I've saved previously what happens when you do that is now if I'm working on something and sorry I got to turn that off because it's just crazy I take my brush tool and I realised away don't have my brushes iota this pop up menu and along with all of the built in brushes of I scroll through down there's all my brush is available to me and that applies to every kind of pre set if you paid ten styles and you save them, it'll show up in that pop up style menu so instead of having to worry about oh, I can't find them or some people who say they want to save clutter instead of having a zillion brushes, they have a small number and its load them as they need them so that's a another personal choice. This does not happen automatically, however, so it means at a certain point you must think you know what? I haven't done a backup of my brushes in a while or my whatever presets in the latest last two couple of versions of photo shop, they at least made life a little simpler because previous to this, what used to happen was when you went from, say, cs four to c s five used have to manually move all of your presets. There was no automatic way to do it. I was pushing for that for years, and thankfully they finally added this ability so that when I first unsolved photoshopped c c, for example, and launch of the very first time a little dialogue box said, would you like me to migrate your presets from previous earnings of photo shop? And I was like, this should be a hell, yeah, but because I was like, that's awesome! If you don't at that time, do that, or you choose not to where you forget to. There is now the option to do it yourself to choose here, it says, migrate presets and it will look and see what versions of photo shop I have on my machine. Now I keep clicking know so I can keep demonstrating this because normally would wouldn't appear has already done it, so if its senses a previous version that has presets, it will migrate them all of them. If you want to beam or pick and choose your own, you have the option of going and choosing export import and then it'll look and say here's all the presets I confined would you like me to export those tow another version or import here's all the ones that I confined in forthem I've already done it so there's nothing showing up there this is also how there's a hole it's kind of cottage industry out there where if you go on to google and type free photoshopped brushes for example you could entertain yourself for hours looking at all the brushes that are out there less so other things but there are some shapes and things that you download if you want to make sure they're in there this would be another way to make sure you bring them in okay? So presets appear and a part of reason it occurred to me is because I do this quite off when I'm working a clipping mask the whole reason is I'm trying to create a series of elements that looked the same so I don't wanna have to worry about how did that what was that setting again? I just make a style preset in this go click click click click and again the the part about this I think is a very nice aspect of the way it works is that this is the recurring theme of just about any pre set if I click on a pre set and it tells me it was done using these settings I might say there are times that's kind of what I had in mind but let's pretend it was I could look and say well apparently it's made up of these four styles so let me just check this out and see what exactly they did and I could go back and do that reverse engineering and see how they created this look because I might want to make something like it and not know where to start. So the one good thing about the process sir, in here even the ones that are shall we say questionable whether I'd ever used them or not still serve at least the purpose of me going well that's kind of interesting I might want to tweet that a little bit so I might often take one that they've created make some adjustments to it and then where it says a new style right inside this dialog box that's another way of saving a style into that um this panel and then also you wouldn't show up in the preset manager so the preset manager this is what it controls and we're going slightly off the topic of clipping mass putting this important cause we kind of touched on priest that's a little bit before but I want to make sure this is really ingrained because these are all the things you khun create his presets in photo brushes which you already saw swatches which is colors so if you're doing work where you're trying to create a consistent color scheme, you might define your own colors and then want to be able to share them. So as example, um, from here, I take my eyedropper, and there are certain colors in here that I want to use as part of this project, so I sample it with the eyedropper I go, this watches panel as clicking an empty spot and add that. And then I sample this one and added, and then this one and so on. So eventually you have a siri's of colors that you might want to use, then I want to make sure I can use it in other projects and even in other software. And this is one of the interesting things about the way that adobe products work together is I can't even go into the swatches, and we'll take a couple of steps that I can select these, save them as a set, and then there's another option to save us something called a see, which is adobe swatch exchange, and then these color swatches I could use in in design or illustrator. So for those people that use photo shop and other adobe products, this is a way where you can start the process takes an extra step, but that that's one of the other options that's available to you so in here we've got brushes watches grady ints so all the different grady in't ones including some of the other arm echo delete delete delete delete styles that we just saw patterns is kind of everything is a pattern overlay concept is an interesting one of theirs in here I have a whole combination off some patterns that are built into photo shop when I was that I've created myself well I was trying to achieve some effect I thought well what if I make a pattern and the difference is this we saw yesterday how to make a brush out of something but one of the problems that I mentioned is that when you create a brush it's like grayscale brushed it takes on your current foreground color it doesn't really give you color whereas here for example I have made a brush out of a photo of a mate belief excuse me a pattern I should say and then when I apply it now khun take it just that exact color photograph and apply it over and over again I'll just show you what that looks like because it actually has some interesting possibilities let's do something that makes no visual sense whatsoever but we'll do it anyway and I add a layer on here and let's uh just go here and she was bill and I'm gonna tell it to fill with a pattern and I'm going to go look at my patterns and here's my little mate belief, I wish you could see these a little bigger, but unfortunately can't make it much bigger than that. And then it says, how would you like to apply this pattern normal when I do that? Oh it's giant apparently hold on, they use a different one I didn't realize was quite that big. So this is part of the clipping, so let me unequipped for second. You can see that when I did that and said kind of normal pattern, phil that's like it's a siri's of kitchen tiles, and it just says, make the next to make the next one, which is kind of ok, but on fairly new option, which is kind of interesting, is when I do phil there's option called scripted pattern's really is quite interesting because it just totally changes the way this works, where I can just say, give me a random phil instead of just going tile tile tile when I choose random fill it dramatically changes all these options and I can control look at all the options like and look another precept hey, so I can change all this, so now I'm actually creating a whole series of little mate beliefs when I click ok, and now I get a much more random effect, I'm sorry that's just cool having the feeling is I mean and mostly because I think of how I would have had do that in the past they were taking me like three hours to just mainly go let me keep rotating these things around and this is one of these things where when I saw this I kind of thought maybe someday I will use this but I got to say this is kind of cool this is a photo shops sisi thing they just sort of one day it just appeared and remember looking into this menu and going what tree does that mean? So I clicked okay? And it actually is a random tree generator so if you want to add a tree to your photo shop document you can pick what kind of tree do I want a young maid belief or a that's right? This makes me laugh because I just think it's so crazy that I'm sure there are architects going oh my god that's amazing but I was just like, wait a minute what? And you could just play around with all these settings and eventually click ok and that you know adds a leaf or I mean a tree to your document kind of fun though at the same time I must admit when I first saw this I was like, I've got to find a project I can add a tree too and I'm still waiting but was there any control within that random generator for the leaves. In other words, could you, um intensify the number of leaves? I mean well and that's the part that takes a bit of getting used to because when you go in there and let's take the random phil I mean, all of these were goingto have it you know, you could say I want to change the color so they're not all red or I want to change the so there's some controls now there is all there are some very clever people out there that have discovered that this scripted patterns means you can actually if you know how to do a little bit of coding you can actually write a custom script that says I would like the minimum size to be this the max if eyes to be that and have even more control that's little beyond my small brain of howto do that kind of thing. But luckily, some of those people also share those things out there so and if you find a setting that you like, then of course you could create a custom presets and I remember how did I create that last time, but just the fact that this ability exists where a pattern used to be exclusively tile across period then they added this and I was one of these fairly small things that kind of said oh, by the way we now we now do this but you know the fact that you khun um I have all these things I remember what some of these arcs I haven't used it in a while but um oh, yeah this is a lousy if you want to create a picture frame around a photograph this is actually crazy look at all these options that you can say what you want snowflakes sure go port so all these things clearly and look, this is all some of these new like zen garden, okay? Awesome. So who he here we go perfect just what I had in mind. But even that of course I'm making sure I'm putting this on a separate layer because I want to make sure that if case I'd change by and say it's not quite as nice as I thought I do want to, you know, have that option to change my mind since I unintentionally kind of jumped right into the world of patterns let me throw one other thing at you the as cool as those random pattern things are as I showed you initially, the one drawback at first is if I choose a pattern that and let me take a step back when you define a pattern you make a selection in this case I selected a individual may believe in nature was on a transparent backgrounds I wanted the background to be see through so that's how you make the pattern but if it's this big, there will always be that big and the one thing in here, if you don't do scripted pattern and just say, I want to use this pattern set to normal that's just how big the maple leafs are and there's no way around that you can't go in and say, wait, I want them to be smaller if you apply the pattern this way. So because of that, in some situations I know that's, not the look that I want. This is where layer styles coming there's actually a layer style called pattern overlay. So instead of adding a new layer and applying the pattern as it is, and then doing that clipping mask idea, the other option would be going find that maple leaf. But the one advantage it has, it has a scale command, so I could say I would like a lot of much smaller. May police please so that's the one place where the pattern overlay layer style makes better sense because it includes the ability to scale, not just put it in the size that it is so patterns of one of those things where there they can be added a layer style you can put him on a layer and do a clipping mass there's lots of different ways to use them, but the combination is either the patterns that come with photo shop or make your own, and almost anything it made into a pattern. As long as you recognize that the one kind of catch to it is, I make a selection say, I would like this to me, I'm sorry need to be a rectangle. I would like this to be my pattern by just do pleaded for second, if you imagine that is ah, floor tile. The problem is that ultimately, that edge is going to try and match up with the opposite edge, so as you're trying to tile, the two sides need to really match operas you'll see definite seems in between. So although it's, I would say theoretically possible is quite challenging to try and make a seamless pattern out of something like that, because there's such a for change between like the bricks at the top of the bricks of the bottom or the side decide that it can be done, but it almost takes so long to try and create the pattern tile that you get better be darn sure going to use it a whole lot because it takes a lot of time. So I would tend to make patterns out of things where there's not such a noticeable pattern or individual shapes like just a circle so you wanna dotted pattern you know if you create one little circle on a layer by itself now you can apply that in many different ways so it is again theoretically possible and I've done it but I wore my hair oh doing it so to speak because it just took so much effort so it can be done but I would the nice thing I would say to consider is that um when you go in here a lot of the patterns that the ones that come with photoshopped the majority of them like all of these ones you see in here those air built in photoshopped patterns that are designed to be seamless so by nature that's what they do you don't have to do anything extra when you define your own pattern it could be done but it's much much harder okay so let me just finish off our little discussion on presets here since we're now delving into the whole thing the contours one I'm not even sure why I mean this is the thing that showed up in that layer style and contours change the way that the lighting works within layer styles but the average person I don't they ever actually try these let alone adm or so I wouldn't worry about those this is where these are all the customs shapes that I have when I look under that custom shaped tool I could either load mohr or in the case here I've actually used a method where I brought something or from illustrator to make my own custom shape so that's what those are at the bottom so the same deal I would take those save a copy just so I have a backup plan any time you're creating your own that's one of the purposes of the preset manager is also for that backup plan and then the tool presets this is the place where I'm pretty sure I've already deleted it must've already lied to fill with bubbles pattern because it's not there anymore but this is the same thing we go and say I don't use thes or I want to make sure I have a backup plan of my own presets for either move into a different machine and I want to carry over my presets or just a backup plan just in case the precept manager and this is an one important note the preset manager this is what it takes care of russia's swatches grady and styles patterns, contours, shapes and tools it does not include presets like adjustment, layer presense or any other place in photo shop where you see the word preset it's just these ones so if there other places like for example, when I made a preset for a black and white adjustment lair, it's automatically created in the preset folder for that inside photoshopped you don't see it, but it's automatically there when you use this migrate preset concept. One of the very nice things that they've done is it doesn't just look for like brushes. You can see it there, says actions where it says curves that's a preset that I saved with the curves of justin layer so it doesn't really nice job of finding ever even there's my work spaces. So the preset manager is just the visual process that you see in the various panels. These ones are this by using the export commanded finds every type of preset, including thie workspaces and the adjustment airs on things like that customize your hot key combinations. Those will also migrate now, it's actually good question I'm not sure of that one does automatically just see yet there it is keyboard shortcuts, and I don't know if that I save any menus or not, but yes, oh, there's, the keyboard shortcuts a great so those air automatically being well, she won't say it will make its best attempt to migrate those for you, but it worst at least you can see them now and do it yourself if need be.