Lesson 4
* Using the crop tool
- The first step is to select the Crop Tool which is located right here, and notice a tool tip shows a C in parentheses.That C is the keyboard shortcut, so you can either click on the tool to select it, or you can just press the C key, nothing more. And when you do you'll see this crop boundary surrounding the entire image. Now if you don't see the boundary, it's probably because you're too far zoomed in like so. In which case just press Control zero . And notice that this boundary has these implied handles right there , in the corners and along the top, bottom, and left and right sides.
* Rotating and other crop tool tricks
- Press the shift key as you drag a corner handle, like so. And if you drag far enough, you'll go ahead and swap the width and height. So instead of seeing a vertical image, you'll end up with a horizontal image instead, and then of course you can drag the image inside that boundary as much as you like. You can also establish a specific aspect ratio by going up here to the options bar, and clicking on the word ratio to bring up this popup menu of specific options, including different aspect ratios that do not include resolution, so in other words, they can contain any size image you like.
* Straightening a crooked image
- Switch over to this image,immediately seeing this vertical crop boundary here, and that's because my ratio is still set to seven by eight. To get rid of that, go ahead and click on the Clear button, but notice that that does not immediately restore the crop boundary. Press the Escape key, and then, click inside the image again to make the crop boundary as large as the image. Now notice that the image is crooked. So you can see that the horizon line is higher on the right than it is on the left, so obviously, this image needs to be straightened. And you can do so using this Straighten tool, that's located up here in the Options bar. And to get to it, just go ahead and click on the tool like so, and then drag inside the image. And you can, by the way, drag along a vertical element if you want to, but it's generally easier to drag along the horizon line.
* Filling in missing background details
- Switch over to the Ruler tool by selecting it from the Eyedropper tool fly out menu, once again, and then drag down along the axis of this shark. we don't have a heads-up display next to the cursor when we're using the Ruler tool, as we do with the Straighten tool, but, you can see the angle listed up here in the Options bar. And so, if I were to move one of these points, you can see that angle value change on the fly. , and then, go ahead and click on the Straighten Layer button, in order to straighten the image. And you can see that we end up with these transparent wedges in each of the four corners, which obviously is not something wanted.
* Using the perspective crop tool
- Click and hold on the Crop Tool to bring up this fly-out menu, and then choose the second option, Perspective Crop Tool. Now the thing you need to know about this tool, is that it always applies destructive modifications. In other words, there's no delete pixels check box that you can turn off up here in the options bar. Go ahead and drag inside the image in order to establish an initial rectangular crop boundary, and then you drag each of the corners like so, into the desired locations. Now what going to do is set things up pretty generally at first, and then going to zoom in on the image so can make sure doing a good job, because after all, this frame has a few filigree details that like to avoid. So, going to drag this corner handle up a little bit, and notice that we also have a shadow that's being cast along the top of the painting, which also want to crop out of this image.
Lesson 5
* Converting the flat background into a layer
- The move tool. the name of this image is gallopinghorse.jpeg. The jpeg format is well suited to saving photographic images, but it cannot accommodate layers. You always end up with a flat image which appears as this background item here inside the layers panel.And that image must be rectangular and it's limited to the four walls of the canvas. Compare that to the final layered file which has all shapes and sizes of layers inside of it. So down here at the bottom, we have a flat white background, but notice if turn it off reveal areas of checkerboard which indicate transparency. And that tells us that this horse layer for example, is actually smaller than the canvas which is why we have some checkerboard action at the top of this thumbnail. And so in order to achieve this effect we have to convert the horse to an independent layer. And so, go ahead and switch over to that flat image and take a look up here at the top of the tool box where we have the move tool. The move tool allows you to move layers and selections inside Photoshop. And so, for example, let's say armed with the rectangular marquee tool that just go ahead and select a portion of the horse's head. If I want to now move that selection don't drag the selection using the marquee tool because that's going to move the outline independent of the image. Instead, would press control z, or command z on the Mac to undo that movement and then would switch to the move tool up here at the top of the tool box.
* Customizing the transparency checkerboard
- Dial in a custom color if you like just by clicking on one of these swatches, so one swatch is one set of checkers, and the other swatch is the other one. It could click on the white one, and drag this circle around inside the color field all the way up to the upper right corner if want red, and then could click OK and now see this red and gray pattern at work in the background, which is a little garish, but at least it's obvious. Now you also have the option of changing the Grid Size, so you can make it larger if you want to, and again, that's going to update on the fly in the background, or you can go with Small if you want tiny checkers. You can even choose None, although that's going to give you a white background, which is pretty deceptive.
* Turning a color photo black and white
- Two categories, either you can change the brightness of an image, or you can change its colors. And adjustment layers are always non-destructive so you never permanently modify a single pixel inside the image, which is always a great thing because it means you can go back and change your mind anytime you like. So, go up to the window menu and choose the Channels command in order to reveal the RGB composite up here at the top of the stack, as well as each one of the independent channels that make up that composite, red, green and blue, hence RGB. Now, every digital photograph begins at some point as an RGB image, even if it later gets converted one way or other to CMYK and that's because digital cameras and scanners are RGB devices, that is to say, they have electrodes that are designed to capture red, green and blue light.Properties panel by clicking on that little double arrow icon or you can click on the Properties icon here inside this icon column. And either way, you'll be able to see your horse in all of its splendor. Now, as say, we're going to be talking about adjustment layers, lots more in the future, but I just want you to notice this. If turn that layer off, we restore the color image, so it's not harmed in the least, turn it back on and we've got a black and white image.
* Expanding the canvas to a layer
- Turn that layer back on and then zoom out by pressing control, minus, or command, minus on a Mac a couple of times. And then switch to the crop tool which as you may recall has a keyboard shortcut of C. Next, drag up on the top of the crop boundary like so. And incidentally, up here in the options bar, make sure that the Content Aware check box is turned off. If it's turned on, Photoshop will try to add more information up here at the top of the image. We want it to be blank. The setting for Delete Cropped Pixels doesn't really matter because we're not cropping the image, we're effectively uncropping it so we're not getting rid of anything.
* Employing a clipping mask
- So, with that wing #1 layer selected, go to the layer menu, chose New Adjustment Layer, and then, once again, choose Brightness/Contrast.Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask. That way, we're going to clip the new layer inside the wing layer so that only the wing layer is selected, and show you the difference between clipping and not clipping, before this movie is out. But for now, just go ahead and turn on the check box and click Okay. And now, go to go ahead and drag the brightness slider all the way up, but that's not really going to do the trick, even if we crank the contrast value up as well.some very dark grays inside the bird, and some very light grays outside of it. We want black on white. So again, you want to turn on the Use Legacy checkbox, and then crank the brightness up to its absolute maximum, which is now 100, and take the contrast value all the way up to 100, as well. And if you zoom in, you're going to see that that gives you some really jagged edges, so go ahead and click on the contrast value, and press the down arrow key to incrementally reduce that value, as you're seeing happen here, until we get down to 95, at which point we get some pretty smooth transitions, and then you can go ahead and hide the properties panel and press control + zero, to zoom out.affecting just a single layer here, because everything in back of this new layer is black and white as well, so going to just turn off the dark contrast layer, so that you can see the original tones in the horse, and also turn off the B&W layer here, so that we're seeing the horse in full color, and notice now that the bird is red, as opposed to black, which is interesting, but it's only that way because of this light contrast layer, so this is the original bird, if turn it off, and this is the crane as it appears now.
*3 ways to duplicate a layer
- Drag wing number two to the top of the stack and then reestablish the clip layers by Alt or Option clicking on the horizontal lines, first between light contrast and wing number one and then between paint away and light contrast. And that way, if turn the wing number two layer off, you can see that everything is back to the way it should be. So, that's one way to duplicate a layer. It can make a mess of things as we're seeing. Go ahead and press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of that layer, and then click on wing number one again.Here is method number two, and this is most people's favorite method of working, by the way, even though it's a little wonky when you first see it. You go up to the Layer menu, you choose New, and then you choose Layer Via Copy, which is just the craziest command name. But what it means is you are going to copy the active layer. The cool thing, the reason everybody loves this, is because it has a keyboard shortcut of Control + J, which I've decided stands for jump. And of course that's Command + J on the Mac.And there you have, quickly and furiously, three different ways to duplicate layers. You can either choose the duplicate layer command, you can press Control + J, or Command + J on the Mac, to jump the layer, or you can Alt or Option drag the layer up and down inside the stack. Here, inside the seriously powerful world of Photoshop.
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