Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating 'Templates'

I have a series of photographs that I want to print on. I want them all to be have a nice white board around them, maybe have a little stroke around my photograph into sharp in the photograph so I could every time I want to do that, create a new document or maybe making action, but that might be a little clunky to paste the way I do it. So here's another possibility I'm gonna take, um, see you take this one. I'm gonna choose place in photo shop. You don't have to do it that way. It's just the advantage of that is going to scale it appropriately to fit. So I click. OK, skilled fits into the overall size like and then scale to that size, I want to make sure it's in the right place. So this is a simple way that you select all and then you can do alignment commands. Case you need to de select now. Also want a small stroke around that image like a black stroke. Not that big Go. Uh, let's make it. I want to make it big enough that you can see it. I normally would make it smaller. I wanna mak...

e sure you can see it. And then this is a camera smart object, right? Which means it's smart, smart object, which also means if I do a filter the filter Smart, right. That's the nature of smart option. So I go to sharpen and do something like, say, smart sharpen. I'm gonna overdo it Normally wouldn't sharpen anywhere near this much, but I want to make sure you can see that something's happening. Okay, so I do all that now I have my photo in there and it automatically has has a stroke on it. It has the sharpening. And now I would hit print. Now I suppose every photo I could save Ah Photoshopped version of it. But once I printed it, it's for print. I don't know that I really want to keep ah copy of every single one. What I could do is say this is a PSD file. Give it some appropriate name, and then any time I want to print another file, just replace this photographed with the new photograph, which still sounds like a bit of work. But let me just do one quick thing to make sure I'm going to use the right one. So here's one of the really cool aspects of smart objects. If you think about the contents, the contents of this file happened to be camera raw, but we have It's still contents one way. Another. So one of the options with a smart object is if I right click, there's a command called Replace Contents, and I go and find the right folder. This is the part that takes the longest of this whole operation and hit place because it's a raw file. It opens in camera raw first, but then when I click OK, it automatically replaces this one. It automatically puts a stroke and it's automatically sharpened. Swords have to hit print, so I literally go replaced. Contents. Wait a few seconds print. Okay, that's good. Next one replaced contents. Now the only thing that could be a problem here is if these files weren't exactly the same dimensions. So if you if you had photographs of different sizes, it would replace contents, and someone would be like, Whoa, what's happening here? So because I'm using raw files, I was pretty confident that all of these are my standard sizes, so that they would be act the same way. But for any situation, we're trying to kind of a volume thing. I need to print a bunch of these instead of manually going. Let me drag the next photo win. Let me resize it, Ogata. Add a stroke. Got to apply a filter, even though it's technically not called a template because there's no such thing. It in effect, is because I would just save this is a PSD file and give it some name, like for printing or something. Any time in another print, I literally open it. Replace contents, looks good print. In this case, it took a little longer because I had to build it the first time. But that's just another great example of another nice feature of smart objects is you can replace the contents with something else. For example, a designer might say, Well, you know, I'm gonna design a logo for someone. But instead of just showing them their logo on like, here's your logo. I want to say, Look, this with your logo would look like in bust on the letter thing, our coffee cup or whatever, but I don't want to do that every time. So I'm signing a bunch of those people I don't want every time. Go. Let me squeeze that logo on here. So what I might do instead is at a new layer. And let's do a rectangle, make a selection and fill it with something, doesn't really matter and then converted to a smart object. Now I need one over here and one on the portfolio. That means I need two copies any time you duplicate a smart object. It's an exact clone of the 1st 1 which works well in this case because I want to. If I replace one of them, I want them both to update. So the hardest part of this is doing the legwork to go came to do free transform and rotate and kind of do some jiggery pokery here using the commander control key. That's a technical term for making something look the way you want, put it down in this corner, and then let's add a bevel and emboss, maybe like who? I don't know in Boss, maybe pillow when boss would be better. Okay, then we go to our coffee cup version. It's a bit too big, so we scale it down and we rotate and we take our warp tool kind of make it fit. Doing this really fast too fast, probably. And maybe change the blend mode of this one to multiply something like that. But now I've got, in effect another form of template. Now, in this case, I could right click and choose replace contents. But I have no clue whether my logo is the right size or not. So in this case, it would be better to go back to the original concept of double click to edit the contents of the smart object. Now I double clicked on one. Remember their two copies of exactly the same thing. So if I put something else in this one, they'll both update. So I just have to go and find Ah, let's use this one. Drag that into our contents window. See, there's a good example of why it was a good thing I didn't just choose replace contents because it's the wrong size. And I would tell you that I did that deliberately by picking this logo. But I had no idea hide the blacks. I don't want that hit save and just like that now imagine anything you're doing where you had some layout or something Where Every time you're going, this is like the 10th time in the last two weeks I've taken this layer and gone Let me squish, rotate, whereas if you could do it once those black squares or rectangles could be thought of as a placeholder in effect. So now you're just replacing it with something else. If you have one copy or 17 copies of the same smart object, they'll all update. So I've had using a simple example. Someone said, Every time I create a logo for someone, I like to make a sheet with all different sizes and I always go. Copy, scale, copy, scale copy, Which is that works said, Why don't you make ah smart object and duplicated a bunch of times and they looked like my dog. They went like he didn't know anyone outside said, Just make do play. And I talked him through. The whole thing just makes square should like I did here and it won't replace contest. He actually sat there, and I thought he was gonna have a big bruise from the impact of his jaw going when he thought that just took. I mean, here's the thing. It took probably five minutes to set up the 1st 1 But then after that, five seconds from then on, every time he made a new logo for a client, replaced contents, bank, print or save a JPEG or whatever. So that only works with the same picture. The same logo. Correct, because I duplicated it. When you make a use, the duplicate command it's an exact clone. If you wanted to have, like, five place holes, each one will just have to be its own independent smart object could really replace contest replaced and do it that way with different people, different pictures. So I look at this photo on I the way I would look at. I think I want to do a bit of editing of the sky independently from the rest of the photograph. So again, in theory, I could try using the adjustment brush and camera, but no thanks. So what I would do instead is something I this first, just look at this guy. Do not look at the boat. Don't stop looking there. I can tell you are Don't do it so you just make an adjustment. Say I want to make the sky look good. There we go. I hit open object. So now I need a 2nd 1 to be able to edit the other part of the photo and then blend them together. This is where I can't use, cannot use the duplicate command because you just saw a moment ago. That way, if I added one, they both changed. So I need to make another copy of this. That's the same from the same original raw file, but can be edited independently. And the way you do that is you right Click and you choose new Smart object by a copy. So it looks at first glance like the same thing. But the difference is I can edit them separately. So now I double click to go back to camera raw. And by the way, you could do this from light room as well. Same principle, and say, Now let's ignore the sky and look at the boat and the grass, so I'm making changes based on what I want to do for that part, I'm gonna overdo it a bit. You can see what's happening and then you click. OK, so now you have two versions of the same image in photo shop, and they use whatever method you prefer. Two. Added them together on his do the sort of really quick one. That's not gonna look great, but you'll get the idea, obviously needs a lot of work, but that's kind of the principle. Let's use our vivid imaginations from without. That mask looks perfect, because clearly it doesn't. But once the mask has been made, now look at and say Okay, now the grass looks just really wrong. So I go back and make some further editing. And that's again the advantage, of course, of the fact that we're doing this using the camera smart objects is once I have the two images in place, then it gives me all this political back and forth and keep tweaking and adjusting. Okay, so obviously the longest part of this would be masking and blending together, which is beyond what we're talking about in this class. But the principle of so that's the difference. If you duplicate a smart object using the standard duplicate layer command, it will be an exact copy like that, one of the logo in the two places. If you want to make two separately creditable versions, they do New smart object. Buy a copy. Okay, so that's the difference between the two. But there's another example going back to this template idea where I've talked Teoh. This came from a conversation I had with a friend of mine who's a wedding photographer, and he was debating about the whole thing that waiting for doctors debate about is my clients want the digital images. Some people never give their digital files. His feeling was, I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna charge a premium like this is Ah, high ticket. If you want my digital negatives in effect, then I'm gonna charge a corner. So he made it like a benefit. So he said in my slide presentation, I want to show them and look, you'll get this DVD with your photo on the cover and kind of make it a a really big thing to sell, he said. My problem is, every time I'm gonna meet with a bride and groom, I have to make a new version of this. And I said, Why don't you make a smart object Temple and he went, Uh, so this is what I would do now. This part took a while. So I'm gonna do like, the cooking shows where they put something of Oh, look, it's ready. But this is the principle. You would make a placeholder for your photograph and converted to a smart object and then look at and I need one to Can you see the reflection there? There's so I need basically ah, Siris of these. So I go make copies that I would take the 1st 1 and I would free transform it to fit etcetera. So that's the hard part that takes some time. So I'm not going to do that. I'm gonna go to the pre prepared one. But basically all that's all it is. It's a series of the same smart object, duplicated with masks to fit. They're all copies of the same one, so I double click on any one of them. There's the original placeholder. I go on, find what I want to put in there, which is these layers. I drag him in scale accordingly, if necessary, Save done. Savers J pay put in my PowerPoint slide show next. So legitimately it took me 45 minutes to set up the 1st 1 with the placeholder thing. But once I did that, that's how quick it is. From now on, I literally double click on the placeholder, put the new photograph and save done, and if you need to, you can, you know, tweak and adjust and all that kind of stuff. But compared to the alternative every time, what he was doing was bring the photo in scale, it transform. Now it's just a 32nd process. This is kind of little off. But is there a chance that this can go over to like a slide show? Well, he would do was at this point, he would say, This is a J peg and stick it in his slide show in the middle of the middle of his presentation about all the things he could do, and that's exactly he's doing it for. You just had, like, a power point or something, so he would just replace contents savers J. Peg. Then he would close without saving because he didn't want this save. He just wanted the J pick the next couple. He would put their or whoever it was the senior or the, you know, engagement, whatever it waas. Okay, um, now I learned a little trick recently which I hadn't heard before, which I thought was pretty cool. I always would be saying, When you do this, make sure you're not saving over the top of your original because you don't want to save it each time. So even though technically there's you can't save a PSD template are PSD as a template? There's actually a way to get to that end result. All you do is see the file name right here that just says PSD all you do. This is crazy to me that this is the simple just add letter t. Now that's a template meaning from now on, See, it's called one a whatever DVD cover. If I open it from now on, it's gonna I've already got it open. That's a good example. Hold on. See, now is called untitled one. I opened the wrong one, but anyway, that's the idea. So just by adding instead of a PSD file, if you make a PSD T for template, it means it will always open untitled copy of your original. That way, you can preserve the template, but each one is a new documents being open from that as a simple matter of changing the file name after the fact. There's no option when you save it to, say, save as psd t. But just simply adding a T on the end of it, I was like, That's brilliant. So I used to always say, You can't Save is a template now you kind of can. Do you recommend doing all this? An eight bit or bit is a response time penalty for 16 bit? Are there scenarios where you edit in 16 bit? I typically don't do a lot of 16 bit because there's it's gotten better, but there's still some things I can't do certain filters of certain operations. And for me, my output eyes typically either on screen or my own printer where I've tested haven't seen any great advantage to bit and because eight Bit is quicker allows him to everything. I tend to do it that way. Cool. Thank you. If double clicking the smart object takes you to camera, how can use tools like clone stamp? Okay, so basically, in that, that's where you have to do one of two things. So there's two different possible answers to that question. The 1st 1 is so here I am in a photo shop. If I decide I want to do some cloning of something in here is to add a blank layer and use your clone stamp tool on that layer trying to something It looks a little better than that. Didn't work very well. Okay, however, and this is the big. However, that clone stamp is a one shot deal. Meaning if I go Oh, now what? I've done that. Let me go back to camera raw and change the exposure. I'm going to have a slight problem because the clone layer doesn't update. So the other alternate, which, frankly, a lot of cases is actually better, not as easy to use. Perhaps his photo shop is anything you're doing like that is do it in here. So actually used the, uh, spot removal clone. I don't like it as much in here, but I mean, you can in theory do it, and it will. So you're doing like the equivalent of cloning or healing in camera raw and the bandage of doing it that way, unless was pretend that was a perfect job that I did. There is now. If I change the exposure, you'll see whatever I've done in terms of cloning and healing will also update. So it depends on the circuit best as long as you know that if you just do it on a blank layer, you really can't go back and re edit the camera raw file because then it won't match up anymore. So if you if you do the healing or cloning last than that works as well.