Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating a Layout with Hand Drawn Frames

Let's look a little bit more about what we could do with some of the graphics that come with the course so that you get an idea for what we have and how you might incorporate into some of your designs, so I'm gonna just pick kind of a random image from here and I'll pick this one called happy birthday double click on it here it is now some of the graphics that you get with the course or simple there one color in there from when you open it, they'll be one layer, it'll just be whatever it's their other ones will have multiple layers. In this particular case, we have a total of four layers. If you want to figure out what's in each layer, either look at the name of the layers that'll give you some clue as to what it contains or simply start turn now five balls to see what is in a particular layer. So the top most player in this case is called text outline, and if I turn it off, you'll see it's a black outline around the text and then the one below that justice happy birthday that is most ...

likely the base color for the text below that it's called accent shapes and that is the little sweet peas that air there and below that it says text shadow and that's because there is a little ah, shadow it's not a traditional color or shape to a shadow, but there's like a double edge on that text. And so, with those also you can change the color of each one. Because if you look at him there, those squares that we saw before that are known as solid color layers, and if I double click on one of these, I'm going to get a color picker and I can come in here and choose a different color for it. I want the outline that's around it to be different color. I find the layer that contains that I double click on the left side and I can create any kind of combination I want for you the colors that air here. But since not everybody is a designer and that means not everybody's used to thinking about that. Ah, couple things first off, you can choose those colors out of your photos, so if you want color to go with your photo, which you can do is when you double click on one of these in this color picker is open. If you already have photos in the same document, just move your mouse on top of them and click and it will choose the color that you clicked on for whatever it is, you're kidding. In photo shop, you can even click and then drag outside of your document and choose it from anywhere on your screen. I'll choose the red of this little round dot there I got the red, we have to click within the document first before you drag on to the rest of your screen, and that means if you had a web browser open and you want to steal somebody else's colors. When this is open, the color picker clique within an open photoshopped document first and don't let go of the mouse but drag it over to where that but web browser is to somebody's web site, where you love their colors, go grab their color stealing you could steal colors it's not the same as stealing something else, like a shaper of photo colors. I think you'd get away with that, okay, so we can change his colors to where he will aunt also, karen was nice enough if I can find it, and I actually don't know if I'll be able to find it quick enough. Yeah, she also created a swatches file doesn't contain too many colors, but this little file that's just called swatches. If I double click on it photo shop will come to the front, it won't announce that it loaded anything, but it did. There is a panel called the swatches panel which is where you can store colors and it just loaded these last like six colors that were here as the swatches that karen supplied in what she ended up doing is she created this little swatches file and then she created this little kind of many guide to how you might put those colors together and use them in various ways so these are just the six colors that are in this watches file and these are some examples of the combinations you might use and just see how they go together. It was just an idea that I thought would be nice to include d'oh uh if you're not used to thinking about color so let's figure out how come we do things like here we have these stars and you notice that some of the stars are kind of ah pinkish color and the other one's air white if we actually opened the file that contains the stars all of it will be the same colors we have to make sure we know how to do that. I think we already do though if you create a new layer above it and you clip it to what's below then you could paint in that layer and when you paint in the layer it's clipped to what's underneath so the paint can't show up everywhere he could only show up where there's something below doesn't remember that just like with a photo get it to clip in there, so if you want to be able to change the colors in those areas, you could do it in that way. If it's not already set up for it s o anyway, karen was nice enough to create that uh also, when you open one of these graphics, you don't have to use every piece that's in it. Double click on this and let's use one of those colors and the swatches just clicking this watch er, you could just turn off a couple of the layers may want to turn off this and turn off the tex shadows all having outline or I don't want to use the swishy things, and so I'm just going to use that, so just turn off the pieces that you don't want to use, and therefore you can create more variations on what's there. Then here we have hand drawn frames and so let's make something with some hand ron frames of various kinds. Ah, all come in here and used this one. If you look at this one is made of three parts, the bottom most part is just the what we're calling the photo bounding box, the thing that's going to limit where a photo shows up above that is the corner shape, phil the color you won't want to have show up in those little corner shapes or if you want them to be empty just either turned off or make them white so it has really no color and then finally there's the fancy frame which is the black line that is around it and you can change the color of any of those by double clicking on the appropriate think so let's go in create a layout from scratch so I'm gonna go to bridge and let's actually use some of those images that we narrowed down the very first day last night I win in process some of him and I probably only spent ten minutes maybe fifteen processing them and I want to show you what I do after I'm done processing them because we talked about things like rating before we process we didn't really get into all that much of what you do after processing and we'll incorporate them into this layout so if you remember on the first day when we were editing down this folder of images we ended up doing star ratings in the way we thought about star ratings is a rating of one meant keep but ignore those were files that I didn't want throw away who knows we might need one of one of these others doesn't work out but there they weren't good compositions there might be blurry there might be something else said those were one star's um the two start images meant try to rescue these by processing them in the three star mains they're good regardless that this was going to be a good image and when we were in here in bridge we could go to this area called filter and we could limit how many of them were viewing so here are the three star images we know those were good ones we can use them uh then we can add in the two stars and so on so here's what I'm doing after we're done processing I would view the two star and three star images the revealing the ones we're hoping to rescue and the ones we knew were good and I'm going to go through these again by hitting the space bar here and I'm going to re raid them in this time if they are really good I'm gonna upgrade them to a four or five star rating four star rating means is they're the best images of this group five star rating means they're so darn good I want to show him even if nobody cares about this subject you know I'm going to show my my website I'm in show business card I'm going to use him for anything because these are my best images does that make sense and then we'll incorporate these so I'm going to take this and I just want to now think about a rating things either a three a four or a five and what that means is three is a good shot four is a great shot for this subject matter in five is an amazing shot that I'll show even if it's not this subject matter and not every image is going to get a change in its writing just if I think it's either good, great are amazing, so all right, I'm going to give us for I'm just gonna go through these really quick given what I like uh, in there and if I'd not sure I'll just skip by him because we'll stay at the same ready and they were before and I don't know if any of them will get a five it's rare for me to ever out of five. All right, then I'm gonna hit the escape key. I've gone through upgraded those that I thought might be worthy, although yeah, right now what happens is we're only viewing the twos and threes we didn't have you any force because we're not bringing those in body weight four of them got upgraded two four stars, so those are the best of the bunch. Those are the ones that if I'm going to show the client only few they're those if I need to show them or I'll should give him the three stars as well, but I don't share anything that is below a three star those the ones that are private that if other people see they might not think I'm the best photographer in the world so I don't want it to do that so here the images now I want incorporate into our land we got one two three four five six of them so let's do it I'm gonna grab one in first let's go to the photo shop we got our frame just want to make sure we had it open in in here I'm going to make sure that whatever later is supposed to restrict where the photo shows up is active and so if I look at it that's the frame that's the corner phil right there photo bounding box I'm in it then go over the bridge I'm going to open our first photo I'll say open image and I can either copy and paste or I can drag and drop with the move tool it's your personal preference in this case I'll use the move tool dragged to the other tab tracked down then I want to clip it to the layer that this below so go to the layer menu create clipping mask so it clips it and I typed command tea for transform the transformation handles are way beyond the edge of my picture it's it's a big picture compared to this so I taped command zero so I consume out to see them and I'm gonna bring this down get him in there like that, get him framed up. Now we're just gonna expand this out and create a a wider layout, and I want to see how a few systems we can use for organizing our layers in the process, because if I simply duplicate all of the layers that we have here, we're going to end up with layers panel that send up where we have to scroll for, you know, a couple of minutes to get to the bottom of the thing, so what I'm going to do is click on the top most layer I'm gonna hold this shift key and click on the bottom most layer to get all of them, and then I'm going to put them all into what looks like a folder see the folder icon down there now, there's, a couple different ways of creating that folder and what I'm used to doing this typing command g to group them into a folder, but some people hate keyboard shortcuts because you just don't remember if you don't use photo shop once a week. Are you going to remember, right? So instead you have the folder I can't at the bottom here, and if I have those four layers selected and I click on the folder icon in the newest version of photoshopped, it would put them in the folder. In older versions of photoshopped, though, it would just create an empty folder sitting there and it would ignore the fact that you had four layers already selected. If you have an older version of photoshopped, try holding down the shift key when you click on that icon, the shift key would mean actually put the layers I have into the folder ok that's an old older versions current version you just select the four layers click on the folder icon you're not after that I can double click on the name of the folder and change it and now that's just a way of organizing your layers where if you click on the triangle that's next to the folder it will expand it you consider layers that are contained within it. You can still manipulate and work on those layers or you can click on the folder itself close that up and now if I use the move tool it's going to move all the layers that are inside of there even if they're not selected in there if I end up turning off the eyeball and that it will hide all the layers that are inside of it, whatever you do when the folder itself is active effects all the layers that are inside of it there's only certain things you can do and that's active but that's part of it so now let's create a larger layout what I'm going to do is I want to have three photos wide two photos tall so I'm gonna come over here and choose a command called canvas size canvas eyes if you reduce it, you're cropping your image like using the crop tool is really doing candice size in reducing if you were to use the crop tool and you actually expand it beyond where you're document currently is you could add space to your document that would be also the same is using canvas size and increasing the size of your file so I used canvas size in here I can set this two percent I'm going to say make this three hundred percent of the current width and make it two hundred percent of the current height so make it three times as wide as a document currently is twice as tall and down here you got to say where should I put the current content of the document put in the upper left? So I click okay and you see how the document got bigger and whatever we already had was in the upper left makes sense so now it could move this around with the move tool and I'm going to duplicate this multiple times now you khun duplicate in many different ways but do you remember when I had some layer styles of applied to later I think had a stroke around the edge and I drop shadow in somehow I moved it to another layer. I just dragged it, but when I dragged it, it moved it there. It didn't copy it there, and if I held on the option qi, which is all time windows, it actually moved a copy. Well, watch this with no keys held down. If I use the move to ally, just move this around. But if I hold the option key down in I drag, it moves the copy hey, it's that I hold the option key down again just did another copy. Then I'll click on the one in the middle, teo kind of psych and move it over here, and if I want to get these tow line up, maybe you want to add a little bit more space. So what I'm going to do is actually grab one of these. I'll grab the top one and I'll move it so it goes beyond the edge of my document and I don't feel recall or not, there was a command called reveal all, and that means if anything goes beyond the edge of my document by document bigger, so I can see that stuff so that image on the right that's going beyond the edge when I choose reveal all it causes the document to get bigger so I could reposition it wherever I want and now let's get these to even be evenly spaced. I'm going to select all three of the folders and I'll go to the layer menu first let's align the top edges and since these are the same with we can also do layer distribute horizontal center make the horizontal centers he isn't evenly spaced there we have those three folders currently selected let's click on him and hold option to get a duplicate and dragged down now and so now we have six of them. Do you see it going beyond the edge of the document though? So we can again go down here and say reveal all and that'll make the document bigger. I think the checkerboard right now is looking rather distracting though like to put something else in there so let's actually go grab another picture now when we're in here right now we filtered this so if you look in the lower, uh, left were viewing only things that are three and four stars. Well, it's only things that are three stars and above that ever show client anything below that I don't want a client ever see and if I stop filtering turning off thes check boxes, I'm going to see all sorts of pictures in here we had so here's what I might end up doing once I'm done doing my star ratings after processing I'm gonna create a brand new folder in here I'll just go over here to the file menu there's a choice called new folder and I'm going to call this beach shoot out takes their two teas and takes out and I'm going to view all the images in my little filter area that are one or two stars those the ones I never want a client to see ever got a bunch of them in here I'm going to then command a for select all and over here my folder list if I expand this folder I see that new folder I created called beach shoot out takes going to drag those over there I would do the same thing if we had any that had no rating and it looks like we do we have two of them that one has no writing try get over to so now if I ever view this folder any time the only thing that's any good pictures that are visible there three stars or above I can filter them to limit how many I'm viewing and I haven't out takes folder that I'm only going to go into if nobody else is looking because I don't anybody to see those pictures they're the ones that didn't turn out all that well but let's incorporate mohr of what we have here let's grab another picture double click on it hit open image and let's just replace one of these I'm going to use my move tool drag it over to the other tab on down and now I gotta put this directly above one of those other boxes so let's figure out which boxes the middle one of the top I'll just turn off the eyeballs in these until the middle one of the top disappears okay it's that one I'll expand its folder and there I can see a layer that has already clipped do you see it here with the down twenty now if I drag my layer in between that those two so it's kind of in between the clipping it becomes part of the clipping did you see what happened there it got the arrow pointing down on it turn it on and just throw away the original drag it to the trash so now we have something else quick but if you drag a layer in the layer stack so it's in between two layers that have that little down point arrow you're goingto incorporate it into that grouping and then you could throw away the original one that was on top I'll type command tea to transform this and then let's get her in there and then we could simply repeat the process for the other ones you getting the idea you just turn off the eyeball to figure out where is the next one it's this one you can target the layer that is clipping the photo that's there I'll close these pictures already of open go grab another we've already narrowed it down to our best so he's my move tool did you see it clipped in there my layers panel I can't see the picture because this pictures covering out I decided to throw away the placeholder picture and then command tea to transform and I'm not going to replace the other three because it's repetitive but you get the idea and then finally the background doesn't look too exciting looking like a checkerboard so let's go back and look at our images again I don't want tothis throw one of those in the background that's when I might go to my out tex go to my outtakes and in my out takes oftentimes I end up taking pictures and I'm not sure if I'm going to use or not but they might be useful and I got this one oftentimes I look for things that aren't overly detailed to be able to use literally as backgrounds toe overlay other pictures on and this might be one of those so I'm gonna open that picture double click on it and I don't want it to be overly colorful accent wanted to compete with the others so I'm not going to adjust it just going to use it as is I'll use my move tool and I'll drag it over and I'm going to put it so it's underneath everything by dragging it to the bottom he's not going to leave some space at the top, because I want to put some text there. There's, no room for text at the moment, so let's add some space, I'll go to the crop tool and with a crop tual active, agnes dragged this beyond a piss way press return her enter, say, I'm done, and that's how you can add space cropped use my move to will get this gang moved around, command tea to transform and then finish it off with a little bit of text. Command a for select all, and I'm clicking on the size of the top, and I can use the up arrow key to change the size he hold shift it's like turbo, it means change the number a lot, and if I go back to my text tool up with the top, I have the color of the text, I could just steal it out of one of these pictures. Whenever the color pickers open, you can click on your image in the background. I might want to blur lytton or something, because right now, it's, a little busy, but you get the idea of how you can kind of throw together a layout using just these little frames, or if I wanted to use the the text that was available in those separate documents like the ones that say happy birthday or anything just open him up, select all the layers, track it over so you could do your own kind of things. So in this case, if I want the background to be simpler, I might come in and do something like a blur in this case I'll do a motion blur horizontal, destroy it kind of okay there's so many fine detail is gone like that any questions as far as what we did? Whatever we had these folders in here and you can put folders inside of folders inside of holders to organize things. So when I'm all done, I have a total of six folders because there's six of these rectangles for photos I can select all six and then create a new folder give that a name and his call it photos so that now if I wanted to move those photos uh I have one layer to click on they used to move tool, move mall where if I want to move them individually, I open the folder and I click on only one of what's inside. I don't know which one that is, but I'll move just that in self those folders, which are actually called groups are optional completely and they're just there to help you organize things if you find them to be useful, just remember that if you have the folder clicked on and use the move tool or if you transform it will transform everything inside that means I could click on this a folder called photos type command tea if they're all too big and right now you see how they're all scaling together and simplify when you're completely done name your layers that's all right like that just so if you open it up you know a month from now you're not completely clueless as to way they're there when it's still fresh in your head he might as well get in there and renamed some of those questions before I close it usually it's the moment I close it then you wait one second how would you print that? Somebody just asked how would you print that specific image right there uh printing is well how should I say tomorrow near the end of the day we're going to talk about what I would call finishing techniques in finishing techniques are things similar to sharpening or printing uh and so I'd like to address it then if you don't mind uh the other thing that you would have to think about is are you printing this yourself on your ink jet printer where are you sending it off to a printing company because if you send it off to a printing company when you end up choosing the size for something like let's say it's an eight by ten or something if it's actually getting printed on a printing press instead of likening chat printer you actually make the file you give them a bit bigger than that tohave what's known as bleed because when they print they usually pit more than one of these up on a big sheet of paper and then they trim away the excess to cut it down in order to do that they need your picture to extend beyond where you actually want the sheet of paper to end because otherwise if they're trimming when they cut the paper is off the little list bit you get little white cap on the edge because your picture ended and they didn't trim exactly where it wass so you I have to add bleed and we can talk about some of that stuff tomorrow as well so like how you prep it for that but question here maybe beyond one on one but how do you how did you get karin's fonts that's actually not curing spot that's not a hand letters she did know you can get funds that were made by people that to hand lettering were they but every single time you type a letter why you'll get the same why you know kind of thing whereas the hand lettered things that you guys were getting every letter is unique because every letter was hand drawn but this particular font happens to be one called on ly you pro and I'm not sure the exact origin of that font but I'm assuming you can find it if you go to ah what tax it called my funds dotcom my brain's not thinking about fonts at the moment but there's a website that I typically go to for that if you want to find free funds I think there's a website called font squirrel where you can search for those kinds of things but otherwise I think it might be called my funds that is a nice website for browsing fonts and if you type in is a category hand lettered you can find some that have a similar appearance and it'll tell you how to bring him in some place like that you know I mean I'm just I'm assuming that you have to bring him in like a preset or in action no it's it's a font okay it's a fun yeah, but yeah it's just like any other fund you'd use it's just not gonna look quite as good as true hand lettering if you look at these like for instance if I zoom up close on this it's like so smooth down here this was more made this is not hand lettered this is more made military to see how perfectly straight that finance this is a machine made font for the most part if this was hand lettered this line would not be perfectly straight and it wouldn't be perfectly consistent going down there so if we end up looking at any of the ones that karen created, you'll find that all of these have a very um if I had white behind this and put it on the bottom, you'll find none of this is straight you see how it's all kind of kabul looked around and so true hand lettered things don't have any of that consistency to it so when you get a font sometimes there you'll find some that have some randomness to it but every single oh will look like the same mo in all that s o you khun approximate it but you're not going to quite hit it still like to know about that so remember we have this variety of frames that we can use happen he picked this one here but you could do the same thing with any of the others and one other thing that could be useful let's say I happen to pick this frame if I was gonna have six of those on the page. The problem is when you see six of them side by side they're going to start looking to be identical so a couple ideas is if I select both of these layers first I can go to the image menu I'm sorry the edit menu choose transform in say, flip horizontal and that means make a mirror image horizontally now if I use that one on a page not next, right next to the other, but like lower right or something? It's. Not gonna look exactly the same, or I can come over here and flip vertical or rotate one hundred eighty degrees. That kind of thing. If you just do rotations and flipping tze and things, then you get it. So it looks a little bit more random or it's, not quite exactly the same on each. Uh, so it could be good, tio, no.