Lessons

Lesson Info

Non-destructive Editing

first nondestructive editing, and this is kind of one of those very fundamental principles when it comes to photo shop about the approach to how we work within images. Now, when we're looking at the image and we have this, uh, simple flattened image right here that's already been processed, that's not really the point. Basically, what it is is we're gonna look at how we can start to work within this image. And a couple of those primary things are going to be adjustment layers, right? We're gonna look adjustment layers. We're gonna look at layers as an idea. Now what you want to do is you want to treat your image like a stackable set of transparencies where what is on the bottom is going to be the least visible. What is on the top is going to be the most visible. And the idea behind nondestructive editing is that you are saving space and you are making photo shop run more quickly. It's gonna run faster. If the file isn't is big, it's not going to be as much of a drain or boot on the sys...

tem, and it's ultimately just gonna make your life a little bit easier, Not gonna bog down. The system is heavily on, so the smaller we can make the file, the better off we're gonna be. So how do we work within photo shop to do that? Well, first of all, you'll notice that we have started with a background or a base layer, and this is actually primary part of the image on. It's already taken up a substantial amount of information and the file size. If you actually look in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, it says this layer by itself is 225 men. It's pretty sizable now. As soon as I duplicate this background layer, it practically doubles. It's now 450. Meghan. All I've done is I've duplicated the background. I'm basically at half a gig just by duplicating the background. That's huge. Now, why would I do that? Well, a lot of people will tell you Hey, let me go ahead and duplicate the background layer before I start so I don't mess with it. You don't have to mess with a background layer when you want to do things like clean up the image. That's usually the first step that usual. What we do, right? We go in the photo shop, we use the healing tool. We use the patch tool. We use the clone stamp or all of these different tools. You're probably gonna you know, you'll come into the image and you zoom in and you may grab the spot healing tool to remove. Well, I don't know. And I my something like that or whatever it is you're doing or you're just cleaning up the image it could be It could be something very, very simple. Now what's happening is it's doing it on this layer back in the day. Uh, these tools didn't necessarily have the ability to work, not destructively. And so what you would do is you want to duplicate that background layers that you could use the clone stamp of healing to a spot healing to other patch tool more successfully. You don't have to do that anymore. All you actually have to do is create a new blank layer, which you'll notice doesn't change. The size of the file were still a 225 meg, and if I wanted toe fix that little bit over here. I'm gonna make sure the spot healing tool. You can also do this from the healing tool. I'm gonna make sure I'm on sample all layers. What that's going to do is it's gonna sample from everything that's visible. And then when I create my new adjustment, it's gonna put it on top. There we go. And so what you've got, I'm gonna make this a little bit harder. I tend to like to use my healing tool as a harder brush. There we go. Maybe you want to come in here and fix this little piece right here, right? And you can get another way. And that way you can actually rebuild. Change parts of the image and it's barely gone up. Insides. I'm a to 33 instead of 2 25 So the more you conduce this, the more you're going to keep the size of the file smaller, making photo shop run a lot more smoothly. It's also gonna be less training on your system. Resource is things like ram, which would really get eaten up pretty substantially by photo shop, especially when you have these big files. Remember digital files, especially with a lot of cameras today are huge. You're looking at 30 40 50 megapixels. Those files are huge, and the more you work on him to just keep compounding with size. I worked non destructively. I still end up having a lot of layers for myself. It's not unusual for me to have an 8 10 or 15 gigabyte file, especially if I'm doing substantial composition essential composites in the image. It really depends on you, but I would say it's really not abnormal for me. Toe have a seven or eight gigabyte file on just a regular generic portrait at it, going through all of these steps and doing a lot of this nondestructive editing. And so the idea here is that when we don't duplicate the unnecessary pixels, it's gonna make your file size a little bit smaller. And so we use things like the healing tool, which is here. You want to make sure you're on current and below, and you could also be on all layers if it's the top most layer. But you don't want to be on current layer because as soon as you go to current layer, there's nothing there for it to sample from it's invisible, so if you go to current and below, you can come in and you can fix that issue. Generally speaking, I personally like to be on current and below instead of all layers. This is because since we are working on that stack will set a transparencies. Let's say you come in and you create a contrast layer on top of this, and it drastically changes the image. And you want to come down to this because you forgot to clean something up, right? We'll call this our cleanup layer right now. If I'm on current and below, I'm going to be able to make these changes and it not affect what's above it. Whereas if I'm on all layers, it's gonna kind of compound based on what's above it. You don't necessarily always want that. So, generally speaking current and below is probably what I would stick with setting setting your tools at. But you can also use all layers on if there's nothing nothing above it with a spot healing tool, you only really have the option of sample all layers, whereas with the regular healing tool you don't. So if you prefer to use the spot healing tool, which doesn't require you to create a sample point. It generally just gonna sample the information around it. It's a little bit faster, and it saves you the time of having to go through and create a sample point. But the down side of it is is you can only do a sample all layers, and there are a few other types of blending modes here are sorry blending options on this particular tool. I generally find that content aware is the most successful for me, and so that's usually what I leave it out. And then again, current and below here, the patch tool is probably the one exception to this. I do find that although you can use the patch tool if you change it from normal to content aware, you can use it non destructively. But I don't think it's quite is good. I actually think the patch tool is probably the one exception to this rule. If you are really dead set on using the patch tool, you should probably use it on a duplicated layer set to normal. But it's not really my favorite way to clean up the skin clean up the image, I think the healing to on the spot healing tool or a lot more successful at doing so. The only other thing that I would probably change part of the back around are sorry that the only thing that I would actually use a pixel a or four is using something called content aware fill now actually, like this crease in the background, I think it adds a little bit of visual interest. But let's say you don't I can't actually do what I'm about to show you. Non destructively needs to be done on a pixel base layer. I do find that if I'm going to do this, I'll do it in the background layer. And I'm okay with doing it on the background there. But just in case you want to create a duplicate, this would be an opportunity to do so. So if you said you just wanted to get rid of this, you could clone stamp it in. That might be very time consuming, but photo shop also has this really great tool called content aware fill. And if you make a selection over the area that you want to replace and you go to edit and Phil, or you can go to shift delete. That also brings up the fill dialogue. What you're gonna have in this drop down on contents is something called content aware, and it kind of works sort of similarly to the healing tool in the patch tool. And then it's gonna analyze what's around it and try to give you a best guess to fill it in, and it's pretty good. It's not perfect all the time. Sometimes you have to modify it a little bit, but it is actually pretty good at detecting certain parts of the image and filling it in again. You see a little bit of streaks and lines. It's not always amazing, but but it's generally speaking pretty good, and that's probably one of the few instances where I wouldn't be working non destructively. But it's kind of one of those things where you have to weigh it. Do I want to duplicate the background layer to fix this thing, or do I just want to do it on the background layer and because it's so minor, I will usually do it on the background layer. But I'll do all of my healing and my clean up using the spot healing tool, um, the healing tool and the clone stamp on current and below. And it's gonna allow you to work now destructively save the space and save save performance on your computer. So that's one of the very important, fundamental elements of how to use the tools non destructively. And because we probably is photographers going to use those tools a lot, it's really helpful that those are able to work, not destructively now. On top of that, you also have adjustment layers, and you can get to adjustment layers via this panel or you can actually click. I think she called it the black and white cookie of the half moon cookie, I think, is one of those where you can actually pull them up via text. I personally use it pulled up via text. Ah, lot of people like the icon. It's just a matter of personal preference that kind of get you to the same place. Basically, all of these are also right here. I just think for me it's a little bit easier to read the word, then look at a bunch of icons, but again, totally a matter of personal preference. So what an adjustment layer does is it actually doesn't contain any specific pixel information. It contains a set of instructions that will manipulate what's happening underneath of it, and it does it in a layer that's very, very small and very compact. So let's say you want to make the image a little bit brighter. We could do it this way, and it allows me to make it brighter effects everything that's underneath without actually changing a lot of that information. I start without actually using a lot of information, whereas if we were to select the layer itself, and I'm gonna turn off the cleanup layer here for just a second. But if we were to select the layer itself and we went to image adjustments and we went into curves to do the exact same thing, we'd either have to do it on the background layer. Or we'd have to duplicate the background layer, which again is going to generate ah, much larger size and what we're working on. And it also becomes destructive editing whenever you make an adjustment directly on a pixel layer, this is known as destructive editing. You're changing the fundamental pixels of the image, and it makes it a lot harder to undo and go back. The benefit of working out destructively is almost everything can be fixed at a later time, as long as you're not creating something on top of it that you can't see through. So, for example, I have this brightness layer up here at the top. If I want to change it later on, I can bring it down or I can lower the opacity toe, lessen the effect. These are all things that I can do very simply to make the adjustment. Usually, when I'm making adjustments, I always go over the top. I do a lot more than I need because I can easily dial it back using opacity. One of the easiest ways to do that is to make sure you have one of the non brushes selected. So usually I default the move tool, which is the short cut V. And then if you use the single digit numbers, you'll actually change the opacity of the image. So zero is 100 9 is 98 87 to 70 and so forth, and so one. If you hit any two numbers in rapid succession. So if I wanted 75 for example, I hit 75 and it would bring it up. Double zero is off. Zero is on. But generally speaking, it's probably if you just want to toggle it on and off easier to hit the I. But that's how you're able to use those numbers very, very quickly. And so I use those numbers quite a bit, especially if I've gone into an image, and I've crafted some kind of setting that I want to use somewhere else. Like Okay, I've made this curve adjustment layer drag it in, and I quickly change the opacity to whatever it was in the other image. This makes it easy to do so without having to dial in that slider. It just it saves you a few seconds. All of these things add up to save you a few seconds. Some of the things that we do, we're going to be, um, much quicker, and then some of them are just going to save you a few seconds here there, and everything's gonna add up to make the entirety of the flow much, much more successfully. So we've talked about. Using the brush is not destructively and creating adjustments to the image non destructively. Both of these things are important to the nondestructive workflow in photo shop, and they should kind of encompass your general day to day, uh, working within these files. All right, so that is working non destructively in the layer. That's one of them, or kind of larger philosophies about photo shop, and then we're going to dig into the specifics a little bit more.