Lessons

Lesson Info

Classic Features

All right, let's, look att some classic features some features that have been in photo shopped for quite a while, but you just might not be aware of now, the first one I think we've actually used before, and that is if I have a layer in one document and I want to move it to another document. Uh, we did that when I had the image of illustration of a vintage bus with shadow underneath in the background that I wanted to print with black only ink. I duplicated the file, did some special stuff and somehow wanted to get those layers back to the original. And so, uh, I use this but it's useful for all sorts of other things. What it is is if you hold down the option key ultima windows and you drag a layer down to the new layer icon, this little dialogue will pop open, and one of the choices within this isn't tell it what document to put the duplicate in. Now, one of the choices in there is to put it in a new document, and I use that quite frequently because I'll end up having a complex documen...

t anall either want somebody will want one particular element from within that document, and I just want to give it to somebody else, just the one little piece. So I duplicated. Why hold on the option key here I say one a new document and aiken type in the title for the new document click on ok and now I have that brand new document sitting on its own and it's got the name that I exactly typed in. All I needed to do was hold on the option key when I drag down the to the new layer icon but let's look at some other things that are similar to that when I used the move tool and I move around an object let's say went in here and found one particular tab within here. Maybe the tab on the left that's later I had active I could move that around, but if you ever want to move a duplicate of it like let's say only had one tab to begin with and I wanted these three instead of duplicating the layer each time there is a way to kind of automatically duplicate the layer. All you need to do is any time you're in the move tool, hold down the option key alton windows if you hold on the option key when you drag it's going to drag a duplicate in so if you need ten tabs, hold on the option key and dragged ten times each time I drag it's gonna be dragging a duplicate the same thing works if you ever have a mask, if you have a mask on one layer, you want to move it to a different layer if you just click on a mask and drag it to the other layer, it will move it there, but it will remove it from the layer it was originally on if you hold on the option key when you drag it thou it'll move a duplicate instead of the original and so that could be rather nice get rid of some of these because we're getting a little crowded now if you have layer selected here, I have a bunch of them selected and you're in the move tool you can press the delete key and you'll delete the layers that are selected so it's only going to target the layers that I have selected you have to be in the move tool, hit the delete key and just delete the layers just nice, simple way of of working other things that aren't always the most obvious, but it kind of classic features that they've been in there for a while is if you're not great at naming your layers, you can go into any layer double click on it and I'll call this I think this is the right most taps a right tab, then if you press the tab key, it'll bring you to the next layer center tab hit the tab key and I'll say left tab so if you want to after you're done working with a document quickly go through a name all your layers just start naming one and instead of pressing returner enter when you're done just hit tab to take you to the next one if you do shift tab, it'll go the other direction I'll go up and your layers stack instead of down and so that could be somewhat nice let's see what else we can do let's say I need to move one of these tabs but when I move it I get it near the edge of my document if you ever get something near the edge of your documents specially if you're in something like let's say the crop tool get the crop too and I want to crop out the tiniest portion that's in this image let's just say for instance that this image might contain let me say just up the smallest tiniest sliver of black across the top okay I don't if you can't even see that or not but there's the tiniest sliver black near the upper right of this document I'd like to crop it out so I grabbed the crop tool I grabbed this top edge and I try to bring it down just enough to get rid of that black area but the second I get near the edge it snaps to the edge and then I try to bring in the smallest distance away and that's about a smallest aiken dio it just always seems to want to snap and it's not just the crop tool it's a lot of other tools that will try to snap two things. It could be a little bit annoying well, after you press the mouse button, you can hold down the control key and your keyboard and for the length of time you have the control key held down snapping will be disabled, but you have to hold on the control key after you press the mouse not before so right now I clicked the mouse, then I hold control and now let's see how close I can get to getting rid of just that tiny little area of black I can get right up on it in lecco. Just make sure you let go of your mouse button before you let go of the control key because the moment you let go the control key it's going to go back to snapping again. So you want to make sure you're released your mouse before that so that uh it doesn't suddenly snap to the edge once again and remember it's not just the crop tool it's any tool you find snapping to something else sometimes it's when you're moving a layer, you can have these things called smart guides where it will when it aligns with some other object somewhere else within the image, suddenly it seems to have a little different behavior. Hold on the control key, you'll prevent that from happening. Then in my laters panel, we have all these little thumbnails, but sometimes those some nails are so darn tiny it's, hard to even tell what's on him. In this case, these air smart objects in the smart object icon covers up ninety eight point six percent of the thumb. Now, if you want to control the size of those thumbnails, the like official way of doing it is to go to the side menu of the layers panel in within the side menu. There should be a choice called panel options in and there you could choose the size, but I find that to be a little less, uh, enjoyable than another method, which is, if you just go to the empty area below all the layers, impress the right mouse button. You're going to find a list of the different thumbnail sizes you can have, and so you can change them there. And so I just find that to be quick and easy. If you want to annoy a co worker, right, click and choose no thumb now, then they're not going to see any thumbnails at all for their layers. The other thing is sometimes when I'm working with a document, certain elements within my document will be so darn small, it will be really hard to tell what's in a layer, for instance, look at these layers. Can you see what's in there it's really hard to see what's there because they're so tiny? Well, the other choice that you have is if you right, click at the bottom not only can choose the size of your thumbnail, you can choose if you're thumbnails show the entire documents bounds or are clipped the layers bounds, which means show me just what's in that layer ignore the empty parts, so if I choose clipped thumb now two later bounds now it's much easier when I'm working with small elements to tell that these air the individual tabs and if I open this up that look at those dots, you know, much easier to see, because it's not trying to show me the entirety of the document and then the tiny little peace uh and said it's cropping the thumbnail to show me where it actually contains info. If I really hate that setting want to get back, I can use right, click down their bottom again and say clip thumbnails to document bounds, and then they'll go back to the, uh original kind of set up I like this shot took that when I was in yellowstone yeah, these guys are just sitting down so they're just hanging out it's hard to tell us it really you know tall, mega tall grass and they're standing up now they're laying down uh other things we can do let's say that you know I have some sort of a layer in adelaide or mask well when you add a layer mass, the default behavior of that is to start off with a layer mask it's full of white so when I had my layer mask you see it starts with white white usually allows that layer two completely show up, but sometimes I want the opposite behaviour I wanna mask that starts off full of black so that whatever is in that layer completely disappears and I can grab my paintbrush tool and paint with white to tell you where to show up. I'll choose undo if I want an inverted mask the opposite is you of usual all you need to do is when I go down to my layer mask icon I'm going to hold on the option key ultima windows and I'll click and now you see what the mask started out as starts off with black in it and I use that quite frequently whenever I want to hide the entirety of the layer and then there's quickly paint in little portions of it other little layer tricks is if you want to create a brand new layer somewhere, usually when you click the new layer icon the new layer will appear above the one that's active sometimes I wanted to instead appear below the layer that's active for instance let's say I had my little web interface here and I want to create a layer that is, you know, down near the background but that just happens to be that I'm working on this layer right here well if I credit brand new lair usually you click and appears above the layer that's active if I would rather have it appear below the layer that's active, hold down the command key controlling windows and click the new layer icon in the new layer will instead go underneath and I frequently need to do that let's say I'm on the bottom most layer of my document the bottom most layer contains some text in other than the tax the rest of the document just looks empty and I would like to create a new layer underneath so I can apply a grady int or something as a backdrop to the text well, instead of having to create a brand new empty layer and then drag it down I just hold on the command key when I click on the new layer icon there are also some things with filters that could be a bit different so let's take a look some of your filters have default and results that can be modified by holding down certain key is in your keyboard. One of those is to come in here and render some clouds. If you ever find that you go to the filter menu and render some clouds, this is the default look let's see what it looks like, though if I hold down the option key when I do it, I'll choose undo come back up here in with the option key held down I'll render my clouds and if you can't tell the difference there but what's different about it is it's much higher contrast, the blackish areas are much blacker. The white ish areas are a bit brighter, that kind of stuff so it's just kind of something you probably wouldn't discover unless you held down every key on every filter teo see which ones do this, but with clouds you can get high contrast ones by holding down the option kate a similar feature another filter is let's, say go to the filter menu and again go down to render, and this time I find a choice called lens flare with lens flare, this usually comes up and you see how tiny that preview is it's like microscopic and within the preview, there's a little cross here that you can click on and drag around to position your lens flare well, how easy is it to really position that precisely when the preview is that small inn if I do command plus I can try to zoom in but it's not really letting me so I'm stuck with that tiny preview well, here's how you can precisely position a lens flare what you want to do is first open the info panel and make sure the measurement system down here at the bottom of the info panel I believe it needs to be set to pixels the way you choose your measurement system is next to this x and y there's a little cross here and if you click on it you can say what measurement system would you like? I'll say pixels then move your mouse to the exact position on your screen where you would like your lens flare to appear so I'm gonna move my mouth so it's right on the tip of this one antler right there and in the info panel you're going to see some numbers I'm going to write them down I see three seventy five in one twenty six and that represents the position of my mouse that I'm in right now now I want to apply the leads for us l choose filter render lens flare and you know how we have that tiny little cross their good luck trying to position it exactly where I showed you but what I can do is hold on the option key and click on the cross hair as long as I have my option key held down when I click on the cross there, it should ask me the position I'd like to put it in and I'll type in three, seventy five and one twenty six and that's going to pray should place it exactly where I had my mouse previously, so when I click okay, intelligent right on that exact tip that's there the preview is so down and small that it's ridiculous tohave to position it from within there, so I always end up grabbing those little coordinates kind of a bonus tip related to that is whenever I apply lens flare to an image, I try to put it on its own layer so therefore I could do further retouching to the image that's underneath, or if I find I don't like the lens flare in the future, I can throw it away that kind of stuff to put a lens flare on its own layer first set up the lens for a filter for the position you like and everything meaning test it to see that you like it, then I'll choose on do to get rid of my lens flare and to put it on its own layer here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna create a brand new empty layer but when you create a brand new empty layer usually click on the new layer icon and it just gives you a new layer without asking you any questions she's undo if I hold on the option key on the other hand when I create a new layer I'm holding on option right now alta windows I click on the new layer icon and it asked me this question and what I want to do to get it on its own layer is two things I need to change the setting called mode the mode that I'm going to use his one called hard light and then on lee after I've changed that menu will a check box below become available it says fill with hard light neutral color what happens is in hard light mode fifty percent gray just disappears and if I turn this on it'll automatically fill this layer with fifty percent gray different glennie modes have different neutral colors but all of the ones in this general category here use fifty percent graves they're neutral one so only after I choose that bloody mode will I have access to the checkbox I click okay and now if you look at my layers panel can you tell it that layers full of fifty percent grey well now I can go to the filter menu choose render inches lens flare it'll apply just find that fifty percent grey layer click okay looks fine on my image if I had tried to do that and an empty layer instead of one that had fifty percent grey in it here's an empty one good onto the exact same filter it wouldn't have worked at all because lens flare can on ly brighten her dark in your picture, and if you feed in an empty layer, there's nothing in there to brighten their dark in so that's why I had to do that special trick where I ended up with a layer full of fifty percent gray, and that gave it something that I could brighten her darken hard light mode made the fifty percent great part go away in the areas that were brighter than fifty percent grayken still bright my picture there is that of darker khun darken, and so I can get that lens flare on its own layer, which allows me to throw it away, lowered its opacity or do anything else I'd like to it, which can be useful depends on bush meat. If I need to move a lot of layers around there's a trick that I use, and that is when I'm in the move toe there's a wayto automatically make certain layers active when you're in the move too well, usually you have to click on the layer you'd liketo work with and then use the move tool to reposition it. But if I hold on the command key when I'm in the move tool and I click on the image it's going to target the top most layer that contains something in that area so I'm holding down the command key I click right here where there's one of these little dots and now if I drag you can see him moving all the dos and the text in this case that's associated with it with default settings if you have arranged your layers into sets that look like folders it will target the entire set but you can change the way it works so it only target a single layer but going to the top of your screen when you have the move to elective and right here's a little pop up menu that says should it target a group which means those little folder looking things or individual layers instead so now I could come in here and if I change which layers active I could get individual dots all I do is command click to make them active and then I could move you can also command click and get more than one layer selected if you command click on one to make it selected to add another just add the shift key so right now I have shift held down as well as command and I'll get these three shift in command when you clicked his toggles should that layer be active or not I find that to be overly useful to be able to rearrange things and document very quickly but wouldn't be readily apparent unless somebody told me that I could hold on the command key to do this. Holding on the command key is actually a shortcut for using a different feature that's in photo shop in that feature is found in the top left of my screen is called auto select and all holding down the command key does is toggle that honor off temporarily, so for the moment I hold on, the command key auto select will be activated, and when I let go, it'll be turned off. If I like having that turn on all the time, that would mean every single time I click it would automatically change which layer is active. I personally find that to be annoying because they accidentally change which layers active too commonly, but if you like having that turn on all the time, then holding down the shift key, I'm sorry, not the shifty. The command key would temporarily turn it off so that for the moment I'm currently clicking, it would not target the layer that's underneath, but I prefer to leave it off by default and then just command click when I need to to move things around. If you want to target a bunch of layers, you can also command click in an empty area down here if it either looks like a check bore checkerboard or it would contain the background layer, then you can click in drag and you'll get a rectangle and now anything that touches the rectangle is selected so that if I moved now you see all those pieces that touched the rectangle, so that means that if you get used to command clicking when you're in the move tool, you don't need to rely on your layers panel quite as as much depending on what type of document that might be being. Sometimes I'll end up using a tool, and in the process of using it, I'll find it set up in a weird way. For instance, when I talked about painting on the mask earlier today, I think I set my mode on my paintbrush tool to something hold hard micks and I lowered the opacity of something really low, and that was fine for when I was working on that mask, I think was a mask of a tree, but later on, if I you know, the next day is the next time I used the paintbrush tool, I'll probably forget the settings that I had it set to last time, and if I find that paintbrush tool just is not acting the way expected to like right now I'm trying to paint with black and nothing showing up well with any tool in photo shop if I find it's acting oddly what I will do is go to the upper left of my screen in near the upper left of my screen will be a copy of the tool icon right here ify right click on that I'm gonna get a pop up menu and I can reset just that one tool all that's going to do is clear out all the settings there in the option spar that spans across the top of my screen and put him in default settings where I can reset all my tools so every single tool will go back to their default settings so reset tool and that's what I'll do if I just can't figure out why is this tool not acting the way it usually wood we'll go reset the tool on at least all the settings will be at their defaults you'll notice often times today when I go into an image and it's been changed in some way when I want to move on to another one you'll find that closed the image really quickly and it never seems to ask me if I want to save the change is the reason for that as I used special keyboard shortcuts and photoshopped if you want to close a document if you go to the file menu there's simply a choice and they're called I don't even know where it is close the keyboard shortcut is command w that's what I usually type when I want to close this window so I'm going to type command w then since I've made a change to my picture and asked if I want to save the changes well, instead of clicking the buttons that air here because that takes time to move my mouse up there instead I just type the first letter of whatever button I'd like to click on so I usually don't want to save these because these are things going to use it other times that I'm teaching and I want to have the originals so I taped command w to close the window this pops up and then I just type the letter d and d is the same as hitting don't save so if you ever see me clothes a document really quickly on dismiss it I'm just typing command w to close the window and then the letter d for don't save but I could press the other letters that would be the first letter of the buttons now sometimes that's different on windows on windows on occasion you will find one of the letters on the buttons to be underlined and if so pressed the letter that's underlined, um I think it's a little bit more of a standard procedure on uh certain windows programs to head to the little underlying now showed you that you can reset your tool if it's acting odd, but what if father shop as a hole just something's weird about it and you can't figure out what the heck it is or for me, I do this any time I'm about to teach photo shop and what that is. I want to reset my preferences to the defaults because any time I teach always like starting with defaults of photo shop he's going to act like it did right out of the box. So if you want to reset your preferences, quit photo shop I just type command q to quit, then get your fingers ready because you're gonna have to hold down three keys on your keyboard in order to reset your preferences. What you want to do is on a macintosh. You wanna hold down shift option and command? Ahh windows that would be shift ault and control and what you need to do is not hold them now, and yet you need to hold him down the millisecond after you start launching photo shop because your operating system will think you want to do something weird. If you haven't held down at the moment, you try to launch it, but it's like the moment you do. Let's say I try to open this image which would cause photoshopped a launch I'm going to start pressing those keys the moment elek cohen the mouse from double clicking on this so let's see if I could do it fast enough so if I hold down shift option and command that's shift ault and control and windows at the moment I launched photoshopped it'll asked me if I want to reset my uh photoshopped preferences file and if I choose yes, it just trashed my preferences and now photo shop should be close to its default state but you should be aware that there are generally three preferences files for photo shop and only one of them has to do with the main part of photo shop the other things you could reset his bridge if I quit bridge and then I launch bridge, however, you would usually launch it. One way of doing that is to go to the file menu and photo shop and choose browsing bridge or you could just find the icon on your computer double click on it you can hold down the same three keys so if I choose browsing bridge and I get my fingers ready, I can choose it hold down those keys and if I did it right ok, this comes up I can reset my preferences in general and I can purge my entire thumbnail cash remember how that could save space if you wanted to? But I personally don't want to do this because I set up what would you call favorites in bridge so I can quickly switch to particular folders and this would wipe those out, so I don't want to do this at the moment, so I'll say cancel, but if I was going to teach a class or, uh, I'm going to a location and teach a class, and I'm not on my computer, I'm on somebody else's like just a workshop computer, I'm definitely gonna reset the preferences because who knows what the heck they had him set to last time. Now, the third preference there is is the one built into adobe camera it's got its own preferences and you can reset it by holding on the same three keys when you try to open a raw file, so I'm gonna double click on a raw file and then immediately hold down those three keys and you see how it comes up in all reset. And so if you're about to teach a class and you want to make sure your photo shop is set up like default installation, you might as well a reset the three preferences files, photoshopped bridge and came around to be honest, I don't usually reset bridge. Because I don't change bridge that much as faras its layout but I do have favorites put in bridge if I go to bridge and the left side you have folders and then you have favorites and in here I do it so I could switch to like a portfolio to show people or other things and those who get wiped out if I recently preferences right? Any questions, comments, random collection always getting star always questions been always questions you want to put you in the mood for taking a couple sort of like potentially random questions these random techniques so yeah, I love that so here's one from john and blackhawk and it says ben whatever happened to the control shift tilda to extract leinart from its background? I think this went back to see us two or three ok, the control shift tilled up I don't remember if it was control shift or if it was I don't remember if it was exactly that, but I remember what they're talking about, ok? And is there a way to do that now? Uh yeah, and I don't I won't know if I'll get exactly to the keyboard shortcut or not we'll find out, but let me just show you what they changed, okay? First off the fact that they mentioned control means their windows users because that would be commanding a mac eso control on a mac would be command so command shift tilda is what they're talking about what that used to do is if you went to the channels panel the channel's panel if I remember correctly and I could be wrong here but this just from memory is the top most channel says rgb used to have a tilde next to it so it used to be command tilda tio automatically get to that as if you clicked on it and now instead it's command too so I'm not sure of command shift to would do it I don't think so let me try one other thing okay it looks like I might be able to target it with command option two s o I would tell them try command option two and see if it gives them what they expect and if it doesn't instead just open the channels panel put your mouse on top of this little thumb now for the rgb channel hold on the command key which would be controlling windows in click and you will get what you expect great it's just I think it would be command option to that would do that with the keyboard truck perfect thank you yes and george would like to know when I'm using the text tool is there a way to jump from text block to text block easily without having to click on and off the text tool icons and going kind of back and forth yes, I don't use the text to a lot of photo shop, so it might take me just a little bit to figure out what it is because I might not have it stored in my head, but let's see, I'm going to create a text blocks when she was a colored contrasts well, click here and say I don't know some text and then if I want to create a new thing of text, usually you would have to click somewhere else or quick to a different tool in back. If you would like to create another layer, hold on the shift key and click and now there's a second layer of that hold down the shift key. Click again here's a third but it's shift clicking that will allow you to get to the others if I want to switch back to one of these. Ah, let me see if I can do that, maybe let's see if it did it no it's adding new ones, I think there's a method the main thing is if you want to say you're done, you can press the enter key in enter means I'm done not return, but enter and on a laptop keyboard you might think there is no enter, but there is it's on the return key and I think you have too it might be function return on a mac at least. That's a good tip too. Yeah, there's an fn key which means function ki kind of thing f n and then return you should do that. So that means if I'm editing this layer here and I want to say I'm done hit, enter in that I can grab another layer, but I'm done with that. I can go up to the other. So hopefully that answers his question fantastic. And then one last one I'm intrigued by this one dpt cam asks, can you mention the bird's eye view mode when zoomed in? Please, if you haven't, if you don't already have it planned so let's, sam zoomed up and I'm retouching and I'm out in really tight at miss image and I'm looking at this particular area if I want to move to a different spot with us in this image, you hold on the h key in a press the mouse button, it zooms out and you see the rectangle that shows you that's the amount of the image image you were viewing previously you dragged us to a different area of your image and just let go and resume you back in nice.