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Adobe Photoshop Functions You Never Use But Should

Welcome mr dave cross I didn't even know that one of the advantages of teaching in the san francisco studios in seattle the desk where we teach has a front so no one can ever see the shoes they actually had to put the can't one plant toe step away from the desk so they could because of the audience at home were like will show us the shoes so now I can actually you can actually see them but you do have to wear long pants though so that's the downside but um I also just realize something that that for me at least this makes sense to be in studio a being canadian that's my loqmanian joking studio a studio c okay for canadian for canadian okay that focus didn't make any sense at all then and the results ok, so this session is called photos of functions you never use but should and probably a more accurate name was photoshopped functions you probably heard of it maybe used a few times with don't you do this often? You could but that's just a clumsy name for a class. So because some people w...

ere like I like to use that but not that much and other things you may look at and go what and that's kind of the approach is again as we know there are always multiple ways to do things in photo shop and I'm always aiming toe to toe do two things to give you more ammunition to say well, in this circumstance, what would I do? Actually, three things work a little more efficiently, but also as much as you can follow up on that whole non destructiveness because I really believe that that's a real key to making your life simpler and one of the habits and I didn't talk about in the last class because it was sort of assumed I think to a degree is layers I've haven't had this happen very often, but probably not as much in the last five years we remember like maybe five years ago, I go to teach a group of people and out of ten people to would say, yeah, really use layers on my reaction look dumbfounded, go well, then what do you do exactly? Because so many things are based on layers today that it makes life so much simpler but there's ah layer function that I love and it's been around for quite a while, but it probably is one of the first ones that fits in this category where if you surveyed ten long time photo shop users, a very small number would even heard of this let alone used it because it's very if you didn't know what it did, you would look at this panel and kind of go all right then and just move along because before I show you this here is one of the realities of photo shop is that there are some things that you look at like say this dialogue box where this is the way most people if they've never seen this before this is what they would do is there an open this dialogue box and then stare at and go that's really complicated and they just cancel and move on and try something else right because you don't want to risk trying something you don't know what it does well this function that I want to talk about is called layer camps and when you first open the layer comes panel it looks like this nothing so if he didn't know what it did there's really no help for you to say what does it do? Because it's just a blank dialog box well, the concept of layer cops is really quite interesting because a lot of people at least I feel this way when I work in photo shop I'm often building up a whole bunch of layers trying different things say what if I maybe put this photo up here maybe it's over there and then I want the tight down here now maybe over there so because I have all these layers I spend time taking advantage that going move this over here hide that layer turn that on turn that off and at some point I want to show the potential options to my client as an example so I've done this for a couple of photo shoots with emily and I want to show her here's a little layout now what I used to do before layer cops and I have this habit as you can tell of comparing to the way I used to do it until I discovered a better way because many people are in the same boat is I would rearrange my layers and go save as j peck and call it emily won the night rearrange the layers of second way and save as a called emily too and then I did it with a folder called emily one, two, three, four whatever five and then she'd look at them and say, I really like this one, but can you just never noticed how whenever time anyone ask you question photo shop they often say, can you just and then they ask you like, can you just take off my glasses and make my hair looked better? And you know, they ask you to these impossible things, but they think photo shop is magical. Well, my problem was I look at version three and have to go okay, so that was the one where I move that and I put that lower opacity and have to kind of work backwards to figure it out the other option would be to have her sit beside my monitor and show her live and photo shop, which is certainly an option, but here's the problem that could incur with that so I want to showcase. So emily, this is option number one was, is this kind of lay out here just like, ok, like the second option would be to put the type up here and then take this box and move it over here and then take this one and move it down like this and she's like, cool. Show me the first one again, so then you put everything back again, and then she says, let me compare to this one. You can get the picture that each time, if you're having to go move this high, that that would become very cumbersome in this case, I can step backwards thankfully, but down the road, I can't. So the concept of a layer cop is, it says, let me take a snapshot of the current state of your layers panel what layers air showing where they are, whether they're see through or not all those kind of things instead of me having to go move this high, this show, this the layer comes, do it automatically, so all you have to do is open the layer compound, I just got it. Floating on the side here and fusion here in the champion's, could you just show them exactly again, where they'll find, like, ok, if mine wasn't showing, so I went to the window menu and it's called layer calm, so these were all the floating panels are once mine is visible, then I just sort of attached it to the bottom of my icons here, so you can put anywhere you want, but the first time you have to find it from the window menu. So now I have I'm going to say this, what you're seeing right now is kind of the first lay out. Shall we call it that I want to have as an option? So I used the standard if you didn't already know this, the little turning page icon and photoshopped is always knew, so I knew layer cop now just like calling files. Emily one emily to emily three calling layer comes later come one, two, three ain't going to help you too much, so I would call this like, um, all three photos and I quite like typing with all these people watching, um and then duo tone effect. Now you can call it anything you want and then down here at the bottom there all these comments so you could these air for yourself, so you'll see the name of the layer comp the comments you'll have the option to kind of to roll it down so if you wanted to you could say this is the one that has this turned on or whatever you want now what I usually do and you do this the first time is I want the layer come to remember not just the visibility of the layers but where they are and appearance now appearance is a little misleading because one thing a lot of people don't realize you know layer styles meaning drop shadow devil in boss technically layer styles also include blend modes and capacity most people don't realize that and they think of layer styles as just those things you add on but technically a layer style can also include opacity and blend mode so I would I would prefer that this layer calm remembers if I change it to multiply our overlay or change the fifty percent capacity okay so this is my first one and I did all I did so now you see there's just one thing in that layer com panel that just says whatever it's called now I make whatever change for example take my type player and put it up here and take this layer but over here but this layer down here and let's just while we're at it say I don't want that do it on a fact in the background so that's kind of my second look and so I just make that a lair company and I call it uh no duo tone and we're just going to pretend I type that properly because that's not part of the demonstration whereas I usually joke that's the canadian way of spelling duo tone on tone do tony so now before I go too far let me say the one thing that the little thing that catches people with layer cops layer calms remembers the visibility, the position and the appearance meaning layer style but not the size or not the contents so here's the catch if I wanted one layer comp with that typeface and a differently or accomplice a different typeface I'd have to make a second type player because you can't change the typeface of a font and then say make that a layer calm because now that's the new typeface so by the same token, if I want a big logo on a small logo I'd have to make two separate logos and then showing hide them as part of the layer company. So that's the one thing that throws people off is to say, but I want a layer cop where the type is red well then you'd have to either do that by a layer style or make a whole separate type player that's red so that's the one thing that you have to remember it a layer comp can't remember the contents meaning color font spelling all those kind of things that you have do separately because that's kind of the one thing that catches people because they'll make a layer compound then change the font go hey, they all changed yes they did because that's what supposed to have? Okay, so let's just do ah one more for now so you can get the idea like this and then we'll and even things like if I wanted to transform the type that would have to be another type player because if I rotate one it rotates to wrote them all ok in this case I'll just say I want to make her name partially see through so then we'll make a new one and call it uh two photos now normally my names are a little more a code in my head and then I use little comments but I'm trying to show you a little more what's going on so okay now let's pretend moment that I did five of these I don't want to bore you is showing you all these variations, but now there two things that have to happen to make this work the first one is which I do anyway, which is say this is a psd file because the psd preserves all the layers but also preserves the layer cops so now when she comes into my office to say, show me the different variations that all I have to do is say well here's the first one here is the second choice here's the third choice all I'm doing is clicking to the left of the name and she was go back to the first one sure how much easier is that then you having to go ok let me move the ice to say ok close your eyes for a second while I rearrange everything in my layers panel but that gets tiresome very quickly this way I just click on it now before I go any further with this I don't want you to think this is exclusively well if I have fourteen layers doing a layout it could be a simple as I have a photograph and I'm not sure if I want to be a black and white or maybe have a bit of a tent to it so why not add three adjustment layers and understanding layer cough to turn them on and off and then you could have different combinations off black and white and levels or whatever and that way instead of having to go of that layers panel go hide show show hide hide you're just going on off with a lair ok, so you also have little buttons here so if you had say six of them instead of clicking beside each one the little buttons just scroll through now I'm sure right now what I'm doing that you're watching the screen like her face this time watch the layers panel as I'm clicking on it, you'll see like they're one layer just the eyeball turned off beside it so each time is I'm going through it's doing it automatically for me so there's a lot of different ways you can do this or take advantage of this that rely on different combinations and as long as you remember that he said the biggest the catch that catches most people is they forget about the fact that well, if I want for example if you just do it if I want a different typeface I'd have to duplicated hide this one and then choose this one and pick something different whatever make it bigger now if you look really closely look att thie layer calms panel and you'll see it's still highlighted two photos fifty percent type because that's the one I was using but now there's no little symbol beside it that's saying, well, wait a second now you're just changing it so what I would the reason for me doing this is I want to make a fourth one okay, so let me do that first let's call it a text for now so let's say I go back to this one and you'll see you see what I mean by that little symbol beside the name that's join me this is current it's saved what the two things that you have to be careful of is if I wasn't paying attention and I said, oh, you know what? I don't need this type player soon as I deleted a whole bunch of little warning symbols come up saying, well, hold on a second you just deleted something that I'm using and if it's okay because for example it was a blank layer you realize you don't need then you can just click this little update button to say no that's ok, but in a case like this is like, oh actually, I probably maybe I shouldn't do that maybe I should just undo that and then everything's back weigh it wass thank so what often I find myself doing as I've already got a layer comp and I want to make a new layer comp it's very close to that first one, so I choose the one I already have tweak it and then make another new one or the other options sometimes like this one let's go back to this one and I decide I still want big type, but I really don't like that fond I want something else because that's much better he's your imaginations for a moment and now you'll see that little symbol is gone because you're like, well, hold on a second when you created this it had different content so in this case, I'm like, yeah, but this is my new content because that's so much better that's when I would click that update buttons they make that the new setting so it takes a bit of practice and in any situation like this, where you're looking at something you've never you haven't used before with layer camps, then to me the simplest way to learn it is not when you have a project where the deadline is an hour from now it's when you've got ten minutes on your hand, make five layers just basic a ll layers and just start going move new layer comes just to kind of get the hang of it and then when you implemented an actual project it makes much better sense because you've already kind of gone through that what happens if I delete or move a layer and see what happens? The great news is layer cops make your file size bigger by this much I mean it's just the little text instructions that say but look at that great capability is now built in the ability to go what's this look like what's this one looks like it just clicks with them very quickly thank their question does that ptsd file also word for future reference or when you say the psd it's just there it's just built in so I have lots of psd files where the only only kind of trick is there's no way of knowing until you go and look at the layer cause palikot did I make layer concert not because it's just built an aspect just like layers and all those functions are built into a psd so our layer comes well okay the question we've nothing right so I save this and get out well that comes to be there for the next seven file yeah the next time you open it'll look just like this with the both the layers panel and the layer comes with whatever name you call them in whatever order so they'll they'll just be there preserved inside of it thank you another question over here sorry didn't see you later comes stands as a layer composition yeah, it was it was based on this issue in the in the old days you know, like twelve years ago when people were they were doing cops to say here's a couple of options for the magazine cover this is it's based on that exact same principle this is a question about using the tablet and using the cops files and all the changes you're making I noticed that you don't use have the button auto select clicked does that make a difference with your travel later? It doesn't I just really hate auto select layers and I'll tell you why because sometimes I forget I have it turned on and I'm lazy, so I kind of I know the layer like, say, my type players already active in the layers panel, and when it is, I can click anywhere to move it with an auto select layer turned on right now, it would select the layer I don't want. So for me, what I do is I leave auto select layer, turn off and I just command or control click to auto select temporarily, so when you hold down the commander control key with the move tool it's like you're temporarily turning on auto select so that way, if I need to select a specific layer but doesn't become a global, always on kind of thing, that's really got nothing do with the tablets muchas I just don't really like that option because I would find myself getting into trouble with things I didn't want. Now the other kind of cool aspect of layer comes to mention it's now a part of this document, but maybe you're in a situation where the person can't come and sit right beside you and they want you want to still send them something so there's a couple of options we can do, and one of them is either layer, comp, stow files or layer comes to pdf and an autumn it's, a script that's built in that automatically either makes x number of j pegs based on how many layer comes you have or a pdf file made up of ex pages that has one page per company and the benefit of doing it this way rather than meet is going save as one two three four five is I know they're tied to exactly these layer cops so if I send her a pdf rush was oh I love the third one I know the third one is that one and that's the one I choose and move on from there so layer comes one of the things that's been around for a while but it's it's also one of those functions where as I mentioned the first time you look at the panel it's very nondescript it really doesn't if you don't know what it's for I doubt you would and even then if you clicked on the new button you just get that little dollar boxes says what you want to call it you mean like yeah I don't know what to do exactly so and this this brings up an interesting point I say this all all the time and I'm teaching photo shop is one of the challenges for us of learning photo shop is many people are self taught for the most part when you're learning photo shop you kind of use the phrase while I'm pretty much self taught and I realized many years ago that being with the problem with being self taught is the teacher think about it for a second it's like I don't know what I'm doing but somehow I will teach myself how to do this so when people say they're self taught what I really think they mean is I discovered a way to do something that kind of works I'll keep doing it that way until I discover a different way and later cops is a great example most people teaching themselves would not I happened upon this and go oh I get exactly what that does you know and it's unfortunate because it is a really great functions I can't even I want to say it I want to say it's photo shop five not c s five but like five or six like quite a few versions go layer calms came out and maybe it's just me and the way I worked in the media I was like yes that's awesome because it's save me time and it wasn't like me going ok emily three that was the one I don't know I'd have to open it to figure out which one it wass okay but I will again emphasize this one thing that to m enemies of layer cop is deleting a layer by mistake and having it influence all the layer styles and forgetting that if you want a version with a big logo on the first with a small logo or a big photo a small photo you have to make two of them and then high one and one lyric often show the other one. Otherwise if you try to change the content like thought phil color back anything that's gonna mess you up any time you can do things with layer styles though that's the way to go, for example here my type is this color because that's the color I happened to have when I chose it if I would like to make a layer comp of a different color than the solution for me would to be to use a layer style called color overlay because then I can choose whatever color I want and then make that into a new layer calm because I didn't change the font I just over laid a new color on top of it remember that's one of things later cops remembers his layer styles so very often the solution to a problem is to create a new layer style and or blend mode and then make that part of your layer comp. So that's one of the first things I usually show because I I've done official surveys now I haven't I've asked a lot of people and most people like layer calm I either have no idea they kind of go or often say you did a thing on that a few years ago and at the time I thought that was really cool and I forgot all about it again so your homework you here in the audience and internet as well is don't just look at this and go a layer cops have to actually use them. So what I suggest again is and I'm not kidding about this is don't wait for a project work makes sense one of things you should just try to just make a document that has a few layers in it. It was just a couple of photos, and even if you take your paintbrush and go one, two, three on different layers, that doesn't matter. It's implementing this because one things I realize also a long time ago in teaching a lot of people is we are generally creatures of habit. So you do things the way that especially when the pressure's on right, you know, there's probably a better way, but I know this way works, so you revert to that, so just like keyboard shortcuts don't work until you start forcing yourself to use them. This is the same thing layer comes to me, has all kinds of options way beyond just this kind of layout function. Like I said before, he was take a photograph and add three adjusting layers and then play with different combinations or change the blend moto multiply on one and see what it does and especially many of you probably experiences where you're working on something on the screen and then you printed on your own color printer and the colors don't necessarily look exactly the way you had in mind so a very easy solution is tohave layer contra go within a justin layer without print who I like the one without ok let's go with that one so there's there's plenty of day to day often does not want anyone to think this is well I don't do layouts it happens to excel at multi layer layout kind of moving things around but it's just a simple way to combine the visibility and position and layer style of a bunch of different things okay? So it's something that I don't use it every day but there are lots of situations where are instantly think this is a great way especially and this I think is key when you think there's even the remotest possibility you might have to come back to it later and figure out which one was that because if you have a bunch of files named version one version two version three it's like whereas if you have layer confidence specially because I didn't do it in this case but you'll notice for each of these I could say this is the one that has thie all right, you know, whatever and then that becomes a comment that you can see down there if you want to so it's a reminder to you if you want to be really specific about what does this layer comp anntaylor okay, okay, so that one took a little bit of time to kind of explain this is a real quickie, but it's it's always been one of my favorite things when I'm making selections because depending on what it is, you're doing there's a lot of different tools and different ways to make selections. One of my favorite is the quick selection tool because if you have any edges at all in other words, not like a white haired man with a white lab coat on a white ball, but if you've got like, in this case she's standing in front of a gray backdrop and I can see there's pretty good contrast, the very first tool I would use is the quick selection tool and the keyboard shortcut for quick selection tool, which makes perfect sense is w it's because it shares the same spot as the magic wand. So that's, why it's w for quick selection figure that one out anyway? The beauty of the quick selection tools you don't do any settings you just position your mouth somewhere in the middle and you drag and it try and and find edges for you and overall it looks like it's doing a pretty good job and I'm in this demonstration my purpose is not to make it perfect a selection of her hair, I just want to show you ok, so I'm making my selection to me at this zoomed out view it looks pretty good, but I want to be sure before I move on there's a step I do all the time and for so called refined edge and our finances take that selection as you've already made and try and make it better. What it doesn't do, though, is hoops you missed a bit if you missed a bit it's just going toe refine the fact that you missed a bit, so I want to make sure before I jump into this next step that it actually looks good and one of things I have always thought was kind of an odd reality about the way that a selection is shown in photo shop is it uses this flashing line that some people call them marching and side never really liked that term someone the student I had once called them dancing ants rather that was much more pleasant than marching ants, but anyway, that flashing line is what's supposed to tell you, do you have an accurate selection or not? My question is, how can I tell? Because there's like a flashing line in the way right? I mean, how do you know if that's if I got her arm properly because there's a flashing line right where I'm trying to tell? So what I used to do was I'd drag her onto new photographic who miss part of her elbow because that was the only way I could figure out the tell really easily now I just probably I should say now for years I just press cube q for quick mask and quick mask displays your selection in this colored overlay mode where whatever's colored is not selected. Where were there? Isn't color that's your selection? So just as an example, if let's make this obvious if I wasn't paying attention and I didn't realize I'd missed a bit and I press q it jumps out at me because I can go who I should see her elbow there with the flashing lines, especially for subtle things you might not notice it. So cue is for something called quick mask and by default it's red fifty percent see through like this if you were trying to select, I don't know a red car and you found that the red overlay on a red car was hard to tell this is the quick mass button right down the very bottom see just below the color pickers if I double click on that, I have the option of picking a different color when I first started using quick mask, I would do that if I was trying to select like a red leaf and after a while I found my eyes got a custom to even though the object is read, the overlay is just different off that I could tell so that's a personal preference but what it does is it very quickly highlights for me that I'm missing part or eye looks pretty good because then if it let's pretend it was really accurate, then I'd be okay to move on to refine edge because again, if I didn't do that if I just said ok, I'm I think I'm ready and go to refine edge ok that's one thing we're finance won't do is say you missed her elbow so you end up having to cancel and go back and improve your selection so to me it was a lot quicker queue for quick mask look at it and there's two ways you can use quick mass you can either just temporarily go in and kind of make note of oh I miss part of her elbow go back out a quick mask and fix it with a selection tool some people I find aren't as comfortable with, say, a tool like the lasso tool as they are with painting to some people for some reason find using a paintbrush easier if that's the case, then when you're in quick mask the way it works is we're seeing colored overlay of red and then no overlay well really what's happening is no overlay is white colored overlay is black so if I were to actually show you what this looked like that's what we're actually working on is a mask but it's called quick mask because it's just temporary and making this colored overlake so by default it displays like this so if I think that way I could take my paintbrush and I go through my little checklist for those of you that we're watching that segment and I say I want a hard edge brush because I want to make sure I get her arm this is where I take advantage of my tablet with pressure sensitivity and I want my foreign color to be white so I can start ups I say pressure sensitivity I used the wrong brush uh I could start painting to say this is the part that I want to add in so some people prefer working this way and let's say oops I went a little too far I just press the letter x which is the keyboard shortcut for swap the colors so now I'm painting with black and I can refine and get a little closer so I imagine some people like making selections using brushing technique because if they're more comfortable brushes ultimately for me I guess the best way to say it as I never started quick mask but I usually end there, so whenever I'm using a bunch of selection tools just before I go to a fine edge, I wanted a quick check just a quick little q goes in a quick mask, it looks good, press it again then with any selection to like, go into refine edge and go on from there. Okay, so that's another thing that's been around for a long time, but again, it's here's what? The reason? I think there's a lot of situations is that don't lend themselves to teaching yourself about a tool, for example, if you have nothing selected and you click on the quick mass button haven't happens because you haven't made a selection yet, so a lot of people go was this button do? And they click on it, nothing happens that here I don't know what it does we'll only do something if you have a selection, at least I should say he only it only be visible if you start with this election. Some people like to turn on quick masking just paint a selection from scratch. I won't do that if you're getting paid by the hour because that would be a very lengthy way to make a selection of something would be so let me paint that whole thing in, but then you look the lago I made another ten dollars awesome so first I wouldn't do that I would start with at least somewhat of a selection then go into quick mask and see what you got now the other interesting little selection technique that is also been around for a while but this is another one of things I know there's not probably not that many times were you zack ending to select something circular but this is an example of something that could be applied to lots of shape base election we're tryingto select something and the quick selection tool for example here would have too much of a challenge trying to select it because of the the edges in here and everything else. So the good news is of course we have the elliptical marquis tool. The problem is where do you start dragging with this tool to make it match up with what you want and what I used to do would take a guess a sad start over maybe here somewhere and start to drag and I'd be a little off so I d select and start again and then quite a few versions ago a photo shop a new selection command was added that now if I want to select something circular all I do is this I just make any get it one on there and then just like we have free transform which is like transformed the pixels we also have transformed selection so this put handles on our selection so now instead of trying to draw exactly the first time, I could just use the handles to position it exactly where I want, which for a lot of situations especially because if if this this is just a stock photo but if I was taking a photo and I was slightly off of square then it's not a perfect circle so trying to just draw circular selection you're going to miss part of it so one of the tricks we can do with this by nature and this applies by the way both the free transform and to transform selection if I click on a corner of my selection handles it automatically is doing everything both horizontally and vertically from that corner in that's just the kind of the default way that it works. But if I put my finger on the command key on the mat control for windows now what it's doing and I'll try and describe it first is it's taking just the upper quadrant of that transformed saying, let me affect just that piece not the whole thing, so you'll see the difference when I dragged this see the difference you know, it's just changing that one so now if that one corner is a little off, I can just kind of squeeze just that bit and now I don't have a perfect circle because frankly, I don't need one I need one which is a little pulled out or squeezed in or whatever, so I realized and again I often used this example because I was like everyone else I was just trying things one all this works that I was spending too much time redrawing selections where I could just take up one that was pretty good and then start massaging it and kind of tweaking it and then on one happy day and I love when you have happy accidents like this where I wasn't planning this at all I was like in the middle of a demonstration which was about embarrassing because they're saying and you can pull this and as I was doing something, I was kind of my attention kind of waiver for a second I was like thinking to myself that's weird there's a war button I went wait a minute, there's a war buddy so if you're familiar with warping, the free transform allows you to a warped the pixels by like pushing and pulling, so why not do the same thing with a selection? Now you've got all these options for saying I want to adjust my selection by and look at how many more choices I haven't in this case it doesn't make perfect sense of course, but see the difference where now I can I've got all these options for pushing and pulling to make something match I can't even drag right on it myself so if we use our vivid imaginations this wasn't a pretty decent circle this would be a great way to say start with a circle and then just kind of warp it in to say this part has a bit of a dent in it or whatever it is and you just hit enter and then you've got as you can see a perfect selection would be perfect if this wasn't such a good circle so the two things for making selections they're all these other functions like we're finance which are great but they that is still based on the assumption that you're starting off with a good selection so I want to make sure my selection is is tight and acura is possible and the two ways I like to do that are you quick selection just to view it in different way and if necessary using this transform selection and or warp to really get the edges to kind of pull in the way I want okay, so there's a couple little selection gizmos ok? So here's another one of these functions and now russell's left the room so I can say more thing away this is sponsored by adobe, right? Yes this is fantastic and don't get me wrong I need to say I love photo shop I made a living teaching it but they're every so often there are things that are either titled a certain way like the name of a tool that I'm like really or one of the things often adobe will say something like, we want this to be more discoverable is one of their favorite things to say, and then they hide something away in a place on that's about as un discoverable as it could possibly be and here's one of those things, this is again been around for a ton of time my guess this is one of these functions that most of you have probably at least seen somewhere along the way, but I'm willing to bet that most people don't use that as much as you could. So let me first of all, demonstrate how it works um, and then we'll show something also some examples, so I'm just going to get a black toe white, radiant on layer. Okay, so the function I want to talk about called the blend if sliders now most of you know very quickly, of course you've got opacity where, when you lower the opacity, everything on the layer becomes more see through, but what if I want to say take the lighter parts of the layer and just make those see through? I could try potentially using a blend mode, but then it's blending everything so that's not going to work, I want that black to stay full opaque black, but I want the lighter colors to appear see through so a blend most not going to do it for me, or the chances are the blood moon won't do it, so instead I just come over to the side and double click on this layer, and it opens what looks suspiciously like the layer style panel because it is, but I didn't click on drop shadow or beveled on boss it's just in this overall section called blending options and then down the bottom, you see, it says, blend! If now there are two sliders there that say this layer the layer, I'm on an underlying layer, which probably should states, because if I had more than one layer underneath, it would be affected, and I want to pause and say the fact that those grady ints our suit she's me, those little slider things look like they're filled with the grady int has actually nothing to do with the fact that I have a grading on a layer. They always look like that. But that's, the easiest way to demonstrate at first is showing you great all my screen and graded in the cider you'll see examples shortly about how it's the level of brightness not whether it's, white or black, so on this layer, if I take the white triangle and start to move it in you'll see it's in effect saying take every brightness value to the right of that triangle and make it appear transparent if I go to the other end I could do the same thing with black and even though there's an ok button here this is actually nondestructive meaning if I pull a triangle and click ok, I could still go back and edit it later so it's not a ok now that's my only choice kind of thing that's on okay for now or I could take the underlying layer and say let me take all the dark parts of this underlying layer and start to make them poke through or vice versa. So the cool thing about the blend of fighters as you can tell almost instantly if it has even a hope of working or not, the only unfortunate thing is it is global. So if I had like a photo of, I don't know a house with white windows and I wanted just the windows to be see through, it would say, yeah, but you also have a white fence so I can't pick one of the other is saying everything it's all based on brightness values across the board so that's the one disadvantages you sometimes it's actually maddeningly close toe working perfectly and you're like, oh that's so close but the cool thing is it is almost instant so let me show you a couple of examples of how I might actually use this so here's one of my favorite not scenarios is when you're working with a client and they say, oh, I'll send you my logo and they send you a j peg on a white background you're like l thinks that's awesome that's really very health, and of course I'm a bad example because if it was a real example, would be like a tenth of that size because they give you a little teeny tiny one off their website or something, so I want to not have the white on their well option. One would be to try a blend mode like multiply takes away the white. The problem is, it's wrecked my logo because now even the logo itself is multiplying against the background option two if I was getting paid by the hour would be to take my magic wand and try and remove all the white, which would take eventually I would get that done, but for me the quickest option is just a double click and drag this slider and go, there we go now. One thing it did do there was a white line in here and I want that to be part of my logo on I did that. Made this local deliberately show you here's the one problem with it so in this case if for those of you that were you were all here before so I could say it but for if you were at home watching in the first second I talk about my favorite specials end up with so I want to end up with most of the white gone but not the little white line around the inside so I can't do that with one layer because the blend of slider says take everything all white and remove it so what I have to do believe it or not is and I would wanna do this much more carefully than this but I would have to take this whole thing around here is going to be really bad example because I didn't plan ahead of time but onto it hopefully relatively well and then duplicate that's wrong keyboard shortcut duplicate that and then take away the blend of slider from that one and so I've ended up with the look that I want the other little catch about the blend of sliders is that even though it looks like that white around the outside of the logo is gone it's really been changed to appear see through and the reason I worded that way is now if you go awesome that looks great now I want to add little drop shadow to make it stand out from the photo a little more and here in low kind of gives away the other problem with the blend of sliders is when I go to add the drop shadow as faras photo shops concerned see what's happening, it's still thinks the whole white box is still there. So that's, why I talk about the blend of sliders creating the illusion off something being see through, like many things and photoshopped there's usually a solution, and this one is probably about the most odd one there possibly could be, which the chances are you would not teach yourself if you were teaching yourself over. Sometimes I want to preserve that ability to turn that are off in this case. Clearly, I don't, because I want that white to be gone, so if the blend of sliders, if you've used them and you're like it's all good, I'm ready to move on then here's the solution I love showing this because, like, but here's a solution to make the blend if slider become permanent now used with caution, because once you do this, you can't change your mind. Eight steps for now go wait, I want to use the blend of sliders, they're gone so the solution is you add a layer and put it below. The one you're working on so now I have here's my layer with the blend of slide with a layer below and I use the command merge down when the very few times over hear me use the words merge down and when you do that now that in effect is saying make that blended slider permanent so now if I had a drop shall you'll see it actually is around the low itself so again used with caution because sometimes you want to preserve able to go back and edit the blend of slider more but if the reason you're using it is to in effect get rid of the white or a color and you want to say and that's it because I don't want to have a white box around my logo that I'm ok and that a particular instance of saying merge down because my goal is to say take away the white and make it gone in this particular instance one last thing I'd have to do his from now on if I want to move the logo member in order to get that white stripe in the middle I have too low goes I don't want to merge them together because then I would lose some of that ability so what I'd probably do is just linked them together and I did was selected both layers click on the link symbol now if I take my move tool from now on they'll always move together because I need them to preserve that ability to have the little white stripe in the middle. Ok, so two more examples because this is a function that that, honestly, I think people don't use enough because it has lots and lots of really interesting possibilities, and one of them is maybe I have an idea, and I know in my head to do this properly it's going to take me twenty to forty minutes of careful masking to make it look the way I want, but before I even undertake that, I want to kind of do a quick, almost like comp and say, do I want to pursue this? Is it worth it? So before investing all the time, like, in this case, you can see the background layer is the photograph, you know, in some magazines they put the person kind of in front of the name of the magazine that's what I want to end up with, but to really do that, I'd have to make a careful mask and she's got hair flying and it would take a while and let's, imagine once again that I'm doing this for a client, I don't want to invest all bunch of time asking have him go now don't like it, so I'd rather in, like, second this go, what do you think of this idea? Now if I'm really lucky the blend of sliders might work well enough to be okay I'm done even if they're not it works fast enough it's a great way to say what do you think of this if you're working with someone else or just for my own purposes is this an idea that's worth pursuing so and the other beauty of the blended fighters as they do not require you to turn your text into pixels remember that five forbidden fruits one of them was rast arised rast arises a term that some people think on our to do this I guess I have to rest arise my type when you're asked arise your type you lose the ability to edit it I would prefer not to do that so the old the other thing I should mention about the blend of sliders there are some circumstances where they simply will not work because there's not enough difference in other words if her hair was red and the word was red the chances are it wouldn't work very well because they're not enough difference but because her hair is dirty blonde fairly light and the text is a lot darker at least has a chance I think as if I've never done this before I think this might have a chance of working, he said knowingly so the way I do it once again is I'm I want to go to the fashion layer the type player that will collect there's my blend of sliders and let's think about this I don't want anything with this layer I want the underlying layer her hair to kind of push through so I'm going to start dragging this black triangle but a virtual rise from their toe the letter f in a that's where you really want to look so you can go back and forth but they watch what happens I'm starting to drag a certain point oh uh is it perfect no but it took seventeen seconds and it only took seventeen seconds cause I was narrating so if you don't narrate it your own work it'll take like you know five seconds unless you want to say no I will drag the black slider just by yourself in your office that would be weird but you could now the on ly thing I know how well you can see this I should have shown this before but see how the on her hair the edges if they're not bad but they're a little on the jagged side one of the problems with the blend of sliders is that triangle is very specific that says when you drag this triangle to here it means any pixel to the left of that will be see through the next pixel over will not so quite often you get a very jagged edge because it's that pixel specific so the solution speaking of non discoverable if I zoom in here, see that see there's a little white lie in the middle of that triangle that's adobes way apparently of telling you if you know to hold down the option or all key, you can split the triangle into two halfs and now get a much softer edge and look at that all of a sudden I'm getting all that other air now is it perfect? I don't know I'd be pretty happy with that compared with how long would take me to make a mask. So splitting the triangles makes kind of a transitional zone to say these pixels or see through these pixels are opaque, this middle part to use a technical term kinda kind of see through kind of not, and you can adjust all the time and again, the beauty of this is you click ok. This little symbol to the right means you have adjusted something that's fairly new by the way up until probably a couple of versions ago you just have to remember use the blend of sliders then they added this little badge. I don't take credit for a lot of things, but I'll take credit for that one because I was for years going please give me some way to remember that I use the blend of sliders they finally put this little badge there, but again, this is still editable type so if I wanted to come in here and change something to see, I still can, but I've got that blended thing happening and the final way that I like to use this and this is a little precursor of talking about some things will be talking about later on this open this one back up again, here's what I love taking photos of textures because I just think textures of the coolest thing and the fact that they're everywhere and free so when you're walking with your camera is pointed like walls and cracks and all that kind of stuff, so I want to see what happens if I experiment with putting a texture over the top of this photograph, which of course again could be part of my layer camps and drag it in there now I have no idea if the size actually it it is big enough, but one thing was about to say just in case is that normally I'm not a big fan of making any photograph larger because it loses quality when you're using a texture, who cares unless the laws you're not making it forty times speaker? If you're making it somewhat bigger, it's ok, especially because you're not gonna leave it like that, obviously because that why would you bother? So what people normally do I think is they try some blend mode and it's kind of interesting well what I usually do first is try the blended sliders because I think this is really interesting is the ability to say and I'm quite literally I have this one I haven't tried before I have no idea what's going to happen I kind of do because I've used the blender flies but with this particular combination I really don't know and that's what I like about this is is going what happens if so it's okay, I know on the underlying layer I have some stuff so if I start to drag that I'm sorry to see the darker parts that's kind of interesting what if I now take the lighter parts legacy to my mind that's moving going too fast too quickly because the photograph is so bright so this is why I'd probably do a little bit do that split the triangle optional all thing and now it's a lot more gradual and I can start to play at the same time because I'm in part of the layer style panel I can still say and change it to multiply so I'm doing multiply and the blend of sliders and lauren the opacity or whatever I want so for me the blend of sliders serves a bunch of different purposes the simplest one of all get rid of the white around a logo quick and easy and simple also that idea of this kind of making a mock up to say is it worth trying to do a mass to put her hair in front of the type instead I did that in seconds as opposed to many minutes and the third one is just creativity what happens if I take this texture and start moving blend if sliders around and when you click ok so I mentioned before the whole thing is still there and I can still edit this so as long as I save it as a you know what p s d file I can continue to edit this because I've got all these levels of edit ability including the blend of sliders now before I make the blandest liar sound like the greatest thing ever there will be times where you will get incredibly frustrated because of their global nature of the global nature of that slider is you're like no I don't want you to get rid of that and it doesn't listen to you it just says everything that's red or white or black is going to go away so sometimes there's no simple way to kind of narrow it down so they'll be times were like oh that's so close toe working but it didn't but at worst it often gives me at least the motivation say police I know it's worth pursuing this idea because even though the blended slider didn't work I know if I manually create a mask I'll like the way it looks this is giving me enough of a feeling that I know it's worth pursuing ok, is there a question there? I'm I'm not quite as experienced and photoshopped this sum, but anyway may be a silly question, but if you want to take the texture of the two front photos and just leave it on the back what's the quickest way there well, basically it because everything revolves around layers I just have to look at where that texture lives, and right now I put the very top of the stack of layers so it's affecting everything below if I only wanted to affect the big photo, which is at the bottom, I just have to move it down in the stack and say, ok, so this needs to be further down here somewhere, and now you can see how it's affecting and even like do I put it above or below the adjustment layers on on option, you'll have to decide, but it all comes down to the stack of layers you said the blended is global in nature can you mask out a certain portion of a picture and then only use blend? If on that mast out portions so if you like mast out some white but only one will affect yeah it's a good theory but it often isn't doesn't quite work the way you want because you almost want to say mass the blend of slider right, but you need, but yet you're really masking the layer, so if you mask the white, it goes away, it doesn't stop it from being affected by their blended sliders. You know what I mean? So that was one of my first thought was, well, maybe I could use a mass, but because the mask is affecting the contents of the layer, all you're gonna do is hide the white anyway by masking as opposed to blend, if now there might be some circumstances where it makes it that much better, but I'm just saying this because I know from experience are times were like, you blend this lies you like? Yeah, and you get to certain point, you kind of know that was so close, but you know, it's, the good part is it takes seconds to try. So for me, I kind of go that's part of my little checklist I'm thinking who may be blended sliders? No, but I knew it took take seconds to try it. So now I've taken that off my list of possible solutions rather than spend jump immediately assume well, I got a mass that whole thing and take an hour I'd rather try the blend of sliders to see if it has a chance of working or not. Could you tell I notice that you moved it down to just cover them to be at the right layer or for the right kind of damage did you want to cover but could you clip it to um specific layer and still let the other layers showed through? Yeah I mean there's there's always really always comes down to and I'm surprised he didn't say this before today usually savory early on is the answer to every photo shop question is it depends you know, because it does like could you do that well depends do you want a or b so often the answer is c all of the above so you could do a clipping mask and a layer mask and the blend of sliders which sounds like so a lot of things they'll be doing in my creativity through nondestructive ms glass later this week because that's exactly what I want to do is be able to go down this path really far and sometimes I'll try what happens if I clip it with a layer and then also do this and also change the capacity but always thinking of these ways that are just changing the circumstances not make anything permanent back with the logo in the living room illustration you mentioned you had to in order to do a shadow or bevel you had to merge the two layers would be useful to just make a copy of the the blend mode before you emerge in and then you have to you could make one invisible and then emerged one so you could do the bevel but if you want to go back just keep it well yeah I mean that's it that's again it depends because if I look at a low on go I'm just actually sure I don't want that white box around the outside but if there was even a remote possibility that you might then yeah definitely anytime you think there's even a possibility if you might need to go back to something that would be a less duplicated first and work on a copy just in case so that's always a good philosophy of kind of backup plan, you know, just in case kind of thing okay, we're good with blend of sliders for now any other questions from that way do have just a really quick question from your k g who says so does the blend of slider always stay grey stay at grey if you have the option so yes, the bite at first it says blend if gray which for me I would say the majority the time makes sense to do it that way but you can also pick red green blue I honestly haven't found that many circumstances where I was like oh perfect, I can change it to blue and do this the fact is there though, suggest there may be some circumstance I have found most of time keeping it on gray and doing it based on a kind of brightness levels seems to make sense, but if you're here that's a good point if you're trying a loses and working and you're thinking ok, well it's a blue sky let's try and see what happens if I change it to blue one things I also didn't say before which I'll say now people who watched me teach before probably going I can't believe he hasn't said this yet because one of my favorite expressions is when you're inside a dialog box and you're not sure see this thing that says cancel, I like to call that permission to experiment because we're not sure what something does try it, move it to read and move this slider and see what it doesn't look, I didn't work cancel you click ok in this case you could settle back and re edit it so if you're ever unsure ago, I'm not sure what that will do it's okay, just try it so preview is a great little thing because you can say let me turn that on off to sea and then cancel lets you say that doesn't work and as an added bonus, anytime you see the cancel button here's something I do all the time I'm trying something, and I've moved all of these sliders and even overlap them, which is kind of interesting sometimes. So imagine I now said, ok, this is not working at all. I just want to put it back to square one instead of me having to go move all those sliders back in time. You see that cancel button if you hold down option all it changes to reset and puts everything back the way it was on this case because I've already done one step it's resetting it to the last time I used it, but if this was the first time and I moved all these triangles and I had reset, it would put it back to sort of zeroed out. So in any dialogue box, if you're experimenting at a certain point of going places, not working at all, I want to start over what a lot of people do is they had canceled and then reopen the same dialogue box, but if you hold down option all you'll see it changes to reset and you could just start again, and that applies to just about anything. So if I was in like levels and was trying all kinds, things going yuck, that's, horrible reset puts it back to square one, okay, let's. We do have actually there's a number of conversations going on in the chat room about this, so do we have time for a little more questions so one from annette de from palm beach does that blend of slider section also work if you are using channels well, kind of because that kind of is very somewhere the person asked about is it always great because when says red green blue, those are the same as when you're looking at the channels? So the answer is yes to a degree and then it's up to you again determine whether that's going to be of any benefit to you it's got to do things with either the red channel or whatever and a quick question from tom photo saying, can you or do you use the blend of sliders to create hd? Are images actually that's an interesting point? Because hdr is one of those things where the whole primitive premise to me of hdr as I've deliberately taking multiple exposures of a photograph gonna blend them together. But what if you only have one photo? You can't use hdr soft with one photo, so what often do is create say, a photo that has a blown out sky and all copy it and then using camera or something adjusted so now I have the sky that's so blown out it's white and I have underneath it the proper sky with the rest of the four looking really bad because the blend of sliders away to try and combine them together so kind of because it's not technically hdr but it's kind of faux hdr were saying combine a couple of exposure of the same image by using layers however here's a perfect example let's say you had a photograph of a barn where the sky was blown out white but then had a white front door as you move the blended slider not just the sky would be blended but also the white door and that's where it starts to be like oh that's so close but not quite okay thank you ok, so here's, another function and every time I go to show this I'm always thinking how many people will actually be able to use this and always the feedback usually is enough that people can see ways to use it and it's this has been around a photo shopped for a long time but it's probably one of the least I don't know why I use it all the time. I think it's fantastic most people who use force over that are familiar with the concept of actions where you can automate something. The only problem with actions is it just says do exactly the same thing over and over again I want to be able to say I want to create something where it's individualized so for example, in this scenario I've got this little card I want to make up that each kid would bring home and that say it would say I'm in grade x my favorite subject is something my teacher's name is whoever and my name is up here well, imagine if for each person you had to manually select the top layer and go frank my favorite subject is where is that layer math? So the idea of this is it's not an action where it's automating everyone the same it's individually applying information it's actually using variable data in photo shop which the first time I saw this I was like, I what? And I looked at I was like there are a lot of situations and basically it comes down to this if you're working on some project where some of the information stays the same but a lot of other pieces or customized and those khun b photos type players graphics whatever you want this is a function called variables now it takes a bit of a set up so there's a couple of steps to it so here's my variable story always start off with where I live in florida there's a complex with a ton of soccer and baseball fields and my son likes to take sports photos and we were driving by and we saw a sign that said next weekend was this big baseball tournament we thought like little league baseball thought that kind of fun to go and you know, take photos so I wrote down the number I mean, we've pulled off to the side and very carefully made note of the number and then call the guy and said, you know, my son I take photos just just for fun it's like, oh, your timing is fantastic because we had a guy on official photographers had to back out so could you do it? And in a classic example of not thinking before you speaking I was like, well yes and in fact I'm thinking photo shop I could make like little trade trader cards you know, for the kids I said I could actually make like individual cards was like their name and position and team name and stuff and print them out it's like great there's ah eight teams with twelve members each and I'm thinking that's going to take me forever and I was kind of backtracking going well, I but in the back of my mind I was like there's something about variables that I remember seeing somewhere and I looked it up like this will solve my problem and it did and was fantastic so I'm going to show an example with three or four but imagine it could be three or four hundred so this is just at this point this is a standard photoshopped document nothing has changed I mean, nothing's different all I've done is use layers, but that's key and here's a tip for you if you're the kind of person that doesn't typically name your layers, so when you look at your layers pound, you see layer one layer seven lee or nine copy for don't do that because in a minute, those names will become very important, so named the layers something that makes sense, like stars border. You know something, so you'll know because here is the first step. So this is at this point I'm finished and what I've created basically are placeholders. So eventually there'll be a photograph where this blue square rectangle ists, they'll be the kid's name where it says elizabeth, they'll be a different subject where it says subject consoling. Okay, now tip number two that I discovered the hard way when I first designed my little trader card. I just put a fake name at the bottom and I chose john smith. This is I was like laying everything out so john smith fit perfectly. And then once we did the actual they gave me a list of names. The second name was like jonathan cohen, ski the third and I was, like, went right off the edge of the page, ok? Good point so pick one that's the biggest name you could possibly think of and of that fits everything else will too because while you could edit it the whole point is you don't want to you want it to happen automatically so again this part is all at this point this is all just standard layers I haven't done anything different so what I do is the first step is you have to tell a photo shop which of these functions or which of these layers are the variable items the ones that need to change so you go under image variables define and first you have to tell what it is so what it does and this is why I made that tip about naming your layers because it actually shows you all the names now in this case these ones that all say shape copy I don't care about those because I know those are the stars so I don't those aren't changing so what you basically do is go through and figure out which ones are the ones that will change so I know subject because that says my favorite subject is subject so the subject is going to be replaced with math science art jim whatever it is so this is what's cool about burial that's so smart it knows this is a type player so it says well I guess you want variable type that right so I want to replace it and you have to name this something on what you name it doesn't matter, but in the next step you just have to make sure it says the same thing, so I'm just going to call this subject and I go through say so that that layer called my favorite something is that's not a variable that always stays the same it is the other part that fills in same is this my teacher is that doesn't change, but the word teacher will replace be replaced with whatever the teacher's name actually is, so this is kind of what you have to go through and that's all the same grade now again, I'm just picking names but what you call it you could call it forty seven and then in the next step where you create kind of this little data form, it just has to be called forty seven, so I like to use names little more logical than that uh, you go through and say name is going to be also name that doesn't change now here's all the up until now everything has been a type player and it recognized that when I go to this layer which is thie kind of placeholder, I've created that big blue rectangle it recognizes well that's a pixel layer, so I assume you wantto replace it with pixels and I go yeah, I call it photo you can have different options for fitting or filling all that kind of stuff so I just take a quick look all my variables have an asterix beside them so that's just my quick way to kind of scan the layers panel and scan this and make sure I have everything looking the way that I want and you click ok so now to make this work somewhere in a folder you have tohave each of the photos of the subjects and I would usually name it like ah file name which makes sense like their name if it said like one two three four five four five whatever that's okay too but for me this is a lot easier if you can and sometimes you can't but the bottom line is these have to be in the same folder and then you make a very simple text file and this is the part that usually at first kind like reconcile ing how this all works the top line here is whatever I called my variables so if I had a variable called forty seven one of those would have to say forty seven but I use names like name name of the student grade teacher subject photo separated by comments and then the subsequent lines are the information the first kid her name is lily she's in grade one her teachers mrs smith her favorite subject is art and the file is called lily dodge a pig which is right there so you have to have one of these per student in this case or in my case pro baseball player now the good news is which I did not know the first time so it took me a long time is if I had an excel spreadsheet I could just export as common delimited and all this has done for me I've manually entered them all myself which still took less time and editing and photo shop ok, so that's what this text file isn't just a plain text file where the first line replicates the names of those variable items and then each one it's one line per new file you're going to create and that's what's going to do is going to make a new psd file with all this information blended in now what I should say is what it should do fingers crossed if I did this properly is because that usually the first time I have to make sure that everything is matching up in terms of the file names but I'm just going to go with the flow and see if it works or not. So I've already defined the variables now I go and find that data set which is what they call the text file so you go on imported and I have to go and find where I say that in a very logical place I'm sure and photoshopped week functions variables aired is data now if it works, then the way you can tell us soon as I hit the preview button, it should show me the first one I look, my teacher's name is mrs smith her name's lily my fares I was archie's in great one. Hey, go the next one. Now, this is a new feature. Apparently it never used to flash like that at beginning. Just go. But now, for some reason, when you click the next button goes through. I don't know why it does that, but see how how it's it's actually working. Now imagine the alternative that's one of my other favorite specials compared to the alternative. This is such an incredible time saver of me having to go to each one and dragging the new photograph resize it, edit the name. Okay, now I will share with you now something that will save you from having a heart attack like I did because I didn't know this happened. I had the preview turned on it's like good it's working and then without thinking about the fact that it was called preview I turn it back off again and I went, oh no, what I do because I thought I had broken it, but the preview just to make sure it's working so you still have to run it to make this happen so the previous saying did I connect these things properly? Are the variables name the right things? Does it look good? So that's what the previews for now you click ok, so all of this means nothing until you do the last step which is run it at this point I've said to find the variables to find the data set. Now the next step is export them together and you do that by choosing export data sets us files so I would advise that the first time you try this you first do that preview just to make sure the first couple are working if it's not you get an error message is usually a missing comma or the variable name doesn't on your layer doesn't match up within the text file or something which you can usually identify fairly quickly. So when you export data sets his files, you say, where do you want to put it? And we'll put it in here and it by default wants to make it a psd file, which at first I was like, oh that's kind of when I realized good because what happens if that one name is too long? I want to be able to still edit it if I had j pegs that wouldn't help me so it's actually a good thing that it makes psd files and I click ok I think it's flash flash flash flash now if this was four hundred it would still take you know that you go grab a coffee and it be done so now if I go back to bridge and find there they are she looks really happy about having her photo taken doesn't anything really now these are psd files, so if I did notice oh mistake or need toe bree oriented or, you know, someone's favorite subject is I don't know physiology of whatever and suddenly it's too long I know I can open that psd file and tweak that type player because it's still a type player it's just it's filled in the blanks for me so it's auto generated each one as a separate ps defile based on the information you give it now when I first did this, I thought, ok, so it's good for like sports cards or whatever, but every time I show this at some van, people like could you use that for? And they fill in the blanks and come up with great ideas and I almost hesitate tell the story because I'm going to get choked up, but it was actually kind of cool because I showed it to this guy and he came up with the and he said you've literally just saved me one hundred hours week because I used to open a file and manually edited and what you just showed me save so much time I was like, well that's why we do this thing and I mean that's pretty cool when someone sees that and then a couple years later I found out from a woman that I know whose husband is involved he does all the scoreboard graphics for the nfl that they saw my variable store and they use that all the time now in all those nfl graphics and was like do I get free? Take its everything I like? No, this is still kind of cool, but the point is don't again that's like a lot of things I show don't look that this as well if I ever need to merge hundreds of things that could just be I want to make business cards for twelve people where their name address phone number is the same, but their photo and email address changes that's still be easier to do it this way then to manually repeat that operation over and over again. But for those occasions where you do say, gosh, I got to do a bunch of these things it's really cool and this's one of these functions and photo shop where the first time you do it it's going to take you an hour and a half and the second time I'll take twenty minutes because the first time we're like wait what's the ok that didn't work I was the same way the first time it took me a knauer of kind of checking a help file someone going wait, how does that work? And each time and now I've done ones with lewis would like hundreds and it's taken me seventeen minutes from beginning band because now I know I just gotta build it this way and I got a name the place holders this way and make sure that that common delimited file doesn't have any extra spaces in and all that kind stuff fantastic. Okay, so very, very useful. Okay, so here's another one now this is I am a little hesitant to show this because it kind of goes against every grain of my body that says do things using non destructiveness but there is a particular place for this function that again in this whole compared to the alternative situation this is a nursing possibility it's one of these functions that people look at it like I showed you before and they general look at this and go that's too complicated so they don't bother using it. But here's the scenario I want to replace the sky in this photograph and I look at and I say, well, the sky is so light that's almost a good thing now could I use the blend of sliders here possibly accept the white star and the stuff on the truck would also disappear I might still try it frankly because in fact let's do that instead of you're saying let's see what happens if it's ok so here's a photo of a sky it I took somewhere else has changed the order double click and I want to say take everything white on this layer and start to make its see through and you can see the here is that exactly example of the problem is it's close but I have do some other work where that part is see through and there's highlights on the truck and so it's not quite there but it's still worth that what was that twenty seconds to see if it's a possibility or not so I think it's more likely it's not gonna work so I need to make a selection to therefore create a mask now I could try using the magic wand I'm not a huge fan of that because their chances are it just takes a lot of effort or trying to find the right setting. So one of the options that we have whenever you make a mask he always end up with like in this case, if if for those you familiar with yoda mask would look like in this case it would basically be aah black silhouette of everything and holes where the white sky isthe that's what a perfect mask would be so sometimes when the options is instead of making a selection turning into a mask is try and kind of almost like, create a mask and then make it into a selection. So in other words, I would try and somehow take this and say, is there some way that I could take advantage of the information's in this voter? Wef turned into like a black and white mask, so one option is to simply look at I'm going to the channel's panel here and has come look at the individual channels red, green and blue that I'm looking for is which one gives me if I'm imagining I want black silhouette of the trees, white sky, which one of these is giving me the best head start towards that? And my feeling is the blue channel, because when I look between the other ones, I'm looking up here at the trees, it looks to me like that's, the darkest, to begin with it's not perfect, but it's a good start. So this is I'm going to show you kind of two variations here, and we'll get back to the calculations and second without even using calculations. One of the options is this. You find the channel that has the best contrast, what you're doing, and this next step is crucial if you don't do this next up, you will ruin your photograph. So you don't start working on the blue channel you take the blue channel and you duplicate it so this absolutely must say blue copy or else you'll wreck your photograph because the next step we're going try and make this black and white so I would do things like for example go to levels and try and darken it to the point where I'm seeing just like white sky and black trees now what's usually gonna happen is they'll be parts like down here where it didn't work but that's still a pretty good start and then I can start because really all this area down here can just be solid black because there's nothing down there so I could take that whole thing and fill it with black and start tweaking it that way so eventually I end up which is this black and white what looks like my mask and I'll just do finish this off very quickly this is not perfect but just get the idea and that still there's work to be done but just so you get the idea now I can commander control click on this and loaded as a selection so now when I go back to my photograph I have a mask that's ready to use and the way we do that is here's my sky I select all I'm seeing the keyboard but I could do it here is well of course copy and this is our little trick when you have an existing selection if you just choose paste, it'll ignore your selection and make a new layer so instead use a command called paste into and that pace it into my selection so it's basically, if I look at this you'll see there's my sky photo and there's the mask it was created now it's not perfect yet needs some more tweaking now sometimes just doing picking one channel like that works but sometimes it's still not enough so that's where this option called calculations so what the calculation does it lets you kind of like with this live preview was not kind of like it is a live preview so you can say what happens if I take the blue channel and the red channel and try multiply mode? Okay that's not very dark how about color burn that's better and what if I make both of them the blue channel and I'm aiming for that same situation of black silhouette with white trying to get as close as I can? I would never expect it for example nothing I do in calculations will change the fact there's a big white star there because that's just white so you can't affect that's ultimately I still have to manually gave her that myself, but my aim is to get as close as I can to this black and white look in here and then build on it so the advantage of this particular function is that by default it assumes you want the result to be a new channel. So instead of having to go what I did before I went to the channel's panel and I duplicated the blue channel, this will automatically generate a separate new channel from which I can make my selection. Now what some people use calculations for and I'm not a huge fan of this, but just to put it out there is as a way of making an interesting black and white photograph then you could make the result a new document so you'd have your color photograph and then you'd use calculations and play around all these settings and hit new document my concern is that's very destructive way of doing it because once it's a new dog has made you can't change anything, so I'd much prefer to use adjustment layers for that, but just so you know that's out there so in this case you just kind of look through and go ok, what combination is going to work in this case? It looks like blue and blue and color burn and you could go through you know each one of them and try and see that's even better ok, so eventually you click ok and now we have this new channel could delete the one I made before so here's the new one any time you see the term alfa one that's photoshopped for new channel separate channel above him beyond the red, green and blue so now I need that to be black and white so things that air gray need to be black so one of the simplest ways to do that often I should say it doesn't always work if use the phil command normally when you fill with black and if I clicked okay they would just fill the whole thing with black which of course would not be terribly helpful so instead if I jews phil black but I can't change the blend mode to this one called overlay on overlays like this magical mode that says black cannot paint over white it could only paint over medium to darker gray so the theory is it won't help with the white star or the white words but all those areas that are kind of medium grayish hopefully those should turn pretty black okay so now I just have to go in and kind of fix these little areas that I see on the screen and keyboard shortcut for phil for the sake of time this and if there were areas where I could see for example in here I could see areas to me that still have some gray in them you can also the same thing with your paintbrush and change the blend motive the paintbrush to overlay and just to show you I have black is my color if I I'm attempting to paint right now and really nothing's happening, if I come down here, you'll see it will paint over the dark gray so this is a great way to be able to not worry about painting over outside the lines by mistake. So then the final step again would be to load that his selection and then I've already got that sky on my clipboard so I can still use paste into now it still needs work, but it's a nice way to get closer the end result, so I'd have to go in and do some tweaking and maybe playing around blend modes. One of my solutions usually is when you payson new sky, it usually looks too vibrant anyway, so if you lower the opacity of usually, you're already two steps ahead of looking better now again, that's not to suggest this is final, but often it's when you compared the alternative of making a mass from scratch, making a mass with the information that's already there is usually a lot better, so I would rank this if this was the the ranking of things I use all the time it's like layer camps, blend of sliders, calculations like not very often, but it's one of those things that since it's there why not try it? If you're not getting results from something else, yeah, and variable sorry was up there, too. You have saved so many people so much time, dave, the chat rooms are going wild of maybe one one quick question just to clarify and closes out from bob underscore winnipeg. So tell us again, did you use, add or subtract function in calculations? Um, in calculations, I was just using the picking two different color channels than changing the blend mode. Now there are blend, most include, add or subtract, so the depending on the situation, that might be one you'd use and again, the benefit of it is because we're in that kind of preview mode. I don't have the answer to say, when this circumstance, you should use color, burn or whatever, you just look at it, say, what happens if I try, subtract er at or whatever.