30 Amazing Photoshop SECRETS, TIPS, and TRICKS (You Probably DON'T Know!)

then you know that with the eyedropper tool you can select colors from any application not just Photoshop or that there's filters that allow you to expand or contract the masks learn how to do this and more in this amazing Photoshop tutorial hi you welcome back to the Photoshop training Channel I'm mrs. Ramirez in this video I'm going to show you 30 amazing photoshop secrets tips and tricks that you probably don't know my goal for this video is to show you techniques that will help you increase your productivity and enhance your workflow before we get started I would like to ask you for two favors number one if this is your first time at the Photoshop training channel then don't forget to click on that subscribe and notification buttons if you're already subscribed and click on the notification bell so that you don't miss any new Photoshop tutorials number two if you see anything in this video that helps you in your everyday workflow then click on the like button and let me know down in the comments below which tip or technique that was also I would like to thank MSI for sponsoring today's Photoshop tutorial today I'll be working with my MSI prestige 15 laptop ok let's get started first I'm going to show you how to use the eye dropper tool to select the color from any application not just photoshop start by going into the tool bar and selecting the eyedropper tool then as you probably know you can click and drag in Photoshop will select the color within your image but if you minimize Photoshop then click inside of a canvas and drag outside into another application Photoshop will start picking up the colors from that other application for example I'm on my Instagram page and I can highlight the blue of the PTC logo and that becomes my foreground color and once I expand Photoshop once again I can use it inside a Photoshop with whatever tool I want in Photoshop 2020 there's a really cool feature that allows you to zoom into the contents of any layer sometimes you may be working on an image and in the thumbnail preview you can't really see what is in that layer so you can hold down the Alt key on windows option in the Mac and click on a layer thumbnail to zoom into the active pixels later in this case it was those birds that we saw flying here if I do the same thing on the bridge layer hold alt on windows option on the Mac and click Photoshop will zoom out and will see the entire image if you're someone who's constantly retouching photos then this is a must know trick for you in Photoshop you can open up the same document in two windows so that you can work on the details and the overall image at the same time let me show how that works you can go into window arrange at the very bottom you can select new window for then the name of the document that you want to open into windows in this case I only have one document open so I have one option I'll select it and now I have two tabs with the same content then I can go into window arrange and select either to opera santol or to up vertical in this case I'll select two up vertical that will place a two windows side-by-side then select the zoom tool and then the options bar make sure that you uncheck zoom all windows then I can zoom in really close on the window to the left and I'll zoom all the way out on the window on the right then I can select the Spot Healing Brush tool make sure that sample all layers is checked in the options bar and then you can start painting away any distractions notice that as I remove these bolts from the bike they start disappearing on the larger image so this is how I can fine-tune small details but still keep an eye out and see how my changes affect the overall image with the curves adjustment layer you can quickly color balance your image by using an algorithm inside of the curves adjustment layer to apply it select your layer then go into the new adjustment layer icon and select curves from here you can enable the auto options if I were to press Auto right now you'll notice that Photoshop doesn't really do that good of a job but if I hold alt on windows option on the Mac and click on the auto button you'll see the auto color correction options and then you'll see a list of for algorithms that you can use when Photoshop applies this auto color correction in my opinion to find dark and light colors that's the best job so I'll select that and you'll notice that almost immediately Photoshop color corrects that image you can then further enhance the image by selecting snap neutral mid-tones and to make this algorithm the default algorithm that gets applied when I hit the auto button all you need to do is check the save as default checkbox and press ok now the next time I apply a curves adjustment layer and hit auto Photoshop will apply that find dark and light colors algorithm and it will probably do a better job in auto color correcting your image by the way if color is important to you make sure that you're working with a device that can reproduce colors properly on-screen I'm working with the MSI prestige 15 laptop it features MSI's exclusive true pixel display which is a combination of several features specifically designed for creative pros to get the best color possible these features include a 4k display a 220 PPI 4 great on-screen detail which can reproduce Adobe RGB at 100% this gives you a wide color range and more accurate colors delta-e - also for high color accuracy to ensure that your work is displayed exactly as you intended you have true color technology each MSI prestige 15 laptop is calibrated at the factory and these laptops are Kalman certified which means that you're gonna get great color representation which is obviously very important for creative work if you want to find out more about the laptop that I use then check out the link down below in the description in the previous example you saw how you could use the curves adjustment layer alongside the auto color correction options to apply an algorithm to automatically color correct an image in this tip I'm going to show you how you can use that same technology to color match an image when you're compositing so first I'm going to select my runner layer and this is just a photo of a woman standing here and if I were to hold shift and click on the layer mask thumbnail I can just say with that layer mask and you can see her original background and what I'm gonna do now is create a curves adjustment layer so I'm gonna go into the new adjustment layer icon and select I want this adjustment layer to only affect the layer below so I'll click on the clipping mask icon and now this adjustment layer is only going to affect our runner next I'm going to make sure that the curves adjustment is selected not the layer mask notice that the focus a white outline is on the layer mask I want that focus on the actual curves adjustment layer if it's not then this will not work so make sure that you follow this step then you can hold all done windows option on the Mac and click on Auto you'll notice the default algorithm is now the algorithm that we set in the previous example find dark and light colors the first thing that I'm gonna do is uncheck snap neutral mid-tones because we don't want that or we want to do is find the dark and light colors in the previous example we color corrected the image we're making the darkest color black and the brightest color white now we're going to use that same technology to apply different colors so the shadows and highlights and the colors that we're going to apply are the colors of the shadows and highlights of the background that way we can create a color match so if I click on shadows it'll bring up the color picker and I can hover over the image and click on the darkest color so I'm going to click on some of the shadows here up against this wall and you'll notice it it's a very dark blue and I think that's gonna work and I'll press ok then I can click on the highlights swatch and click on the brightest pixel on the image be careful not to select any specular highlights or lights like the ones you see here on these headlights instead I'm just going to click on the snow because the snow should probably white and maybe it would be a little bit brighter than that so I'm just gonna click and drag up and I'll press ok I'll press ok one more time and Photoshop will ask me if I want to save the new colors as default I definitely don't want to do that so I'll click on No next I can use this curves adjustment layer to control the contrast of the image here's another quick tip for you if you create a black and white adjustment layer you'll lose all the color of the image but it will make it easier to see the luminosity of the image now I can go back into my curves adjustment layer and continue adjusting this curves layer to make my composite look more realistic if you can get the black and white image to look realistic then you'll get the color image to look realistic as well so just make sure that the darkest colors of the foreground match the darkest colors of the background and do the same thing for the highlights once you have something that you think will work for your image you can just simply disable that black and white adjustment layer and you can see your final result this is before and this is after the blend if sliders in Photoshop are a powerful set of sliders that help you create complex masks in Photoshop unfortunately by default they don't give you true transparency and that could bring in some problems in this tip I'm going to show you how to actually create transparency using the blend of sliders before I do that though let me show you how the blend of letters work I have two layers I have this sunset layer and this photo of a grass field and what I want to do is I want to replace the sky so that we have this orange sunny sunset so how do I do that if I just create a layer mask I'm gonna have a lot of problems in the intricate areas here with the trees leaves and branches so I can use blend if to easily mask those areas out I'm going to go into the channels panel and from here I have the red channel the green Channel and the blue Channel which make up the image that I'm looking at channels are really easy to read when you click on a channel you will see a black and white image the bright areas represent a lot of light in the color of that Channel in the dark areas represent a little light in the color of that channel to make white you need to have 100% intensity on all channels and to make black you need zero intensity in all channels and with blend if we can use these channels as a reference to show or hide pixels based on the intensity of light so what you need to do is click on each individual Channel and see which channel has the most contrast between the items you want to keep in the items you want to delete in this case the blue channel has most contrast between the sky which we want to replace in the foreground which we want to keep I'm going to click on RGB go back into the layers panel and double click to the side of the layer I'll bring up the layer style window and from here I can use the blend if sliders this layer controls the layer that I'm currently on and the underlying layer controls the layers below that in this case the sunset layer and I have the option to adjust the gray and channels I'm going to select the blue Channel remember that there is a lot of brightness in the sky it was almost white so that means that I can use the white slider on the this layers section of the blend if to hide those bright pixels see that's see how I immediately hide the sky if I wanted to hide the foreground I can use the dark pixel slider see that pretty cool stuff so I'm gonna adjust this I want to drag this to the left and then right about here I'm going to hold alt on windows option on the Mac and click to split those points in half and spread them apart to create a smooth transition between visible and invisible pixels when you're done you can press ok and this is did a very good job the next thing that we need to do is adjust the foreground so that it matches the background so if I create an exposure adjustment layer click on this icon to clip it to the layer below and bring down the exposure to match the sunset image it will not work because we're now changing the luminosity of the image therefore we're changing the light in each of the channels so it changes the blend so how can we make actual transparency so that my adjustment doesn't affect the layer well it's actually quite simple but a lot of people don't know this unless of course you watch the Photoshop training channel because I've shown it in several tutorials but anyway all you need to do is click on the layer right click and select convert to smart object this will create transparency and you can actually see the layer thumbnail see how we have a checkerboard in the layer thumbnail now this means that this is actual transparency and no matter what adjustment we make it won't change the blend and obviously this composite is not perfect we still need to fine-tune it a bit if you want to see a completed version of a tutorial similar to this one then check out my sky replacement video I'll place a link down below in the description Photoshop 20/20 gave you the ability to rotate a brush let me show you how that works if you go into the brush settings and flatten a brush you can see now that when I paint I have a flat brush I can now rotate the brush by using a keyboard shortcut if I tap the left arrow key in the keyboard notice how the brush rotates to the left and when I paint I get a different result obviously if I tap the right arrow key the brush rotate clockwise and you'll get a different result you could also achieve the same effect by going into the options bar and clicking and dragging on this rotate brush icon and you can see how that adjusted my brush rotation one of my favorite tools in Photoshop is the clone stamp tool it allows you to copy pixels from one area to another so in this case I have a blank layer and I can hold down the Alt key on Windows that's the option key on the Mac to set a sample source and you can see the preview overlay above my brush and when I paint I will obviously paint in those pixels in that area so that's how the Tool Works and I'm sure that a lot of you probably already knew that I'm going to press ctrl Z command Z on the Mac to undo and what I want to do is show you three powerful keyboard shortcuts for this tool first I'm going to sample that same source once again so I'll hold alt on windows option on the Mac and click on her shoe and again you will see the preview overlay above my brush and if you hold shift and Alt on Windows shift an option on the Mac and tap on any of the four arrow keys on the keyboard you will notice that you will offset that sample source so you can adjust the sources that you sampled after you set it also by holding the first two keyboard shortcuts Shift + Alt shift + option tap on the left bracket key by holding those two other keys Photoshop will scale down the source so I can clone in a smaller version whatever I sampled obviously if I tap on the right bracket key it scales up so I can paint something that is much bigger than what I sampled and another thing that you can do is rotate the source to rotate the source hold Shift + Alt again that's shift an option that Mac and tap on the greater than and less than keys on the keyboard those are the same keys as the comma in period so if I tap on the period key it will rotate the source clockwise and if I tap on the comma it will rotate the source counterclockwise and just as a reminder I am using a North American keyboard in some regions these keyboard shortcuts unfortunately are not available so I'm just gonna rotate my source further I'll make it smaller and then I'll start painting so as you can see with these keyboard shortcuts you can really control and fine-tune that source to get the perfect clone also if you want to reset the source you can go into window clone source and make sure that you reset the rotation and scale with this button in Photoshop 20/20 and you or you have the ability to quickly remove a background with a layer selected you can go into the properties panel and scroll down into the quick actions if you don't see the remove background feature make sure that you click on this lock and you'll see a remove background button when you click on that Photoshop will use artificial intelligence known as the dhobi sensei to remove the background from the photo now this is not the tip the tip is something else so I can show you what the problem is I'm going to create a solid color background layer and the color is really not that important but I want it to be a dark color so that we can see the outline around our model notice that the selection is really good but we still have a little bit of fringing that is that white outline that you see around her and there's a lot of ways in removing these outlines but one of the best ways is to use the minimum and maximum filter I'm going to select the layer mask make sure that the focus is white outline a store on the layer mask then go into filter other and select minimum this filter allows you to contract a mask notice it when I reduce the radius the outline comes back but as I increase the radius the outline goes away and in this case I'm going to set it to a high value just so we can remove it completely we'll set it to 3.5 also notice that we have a preserve option this is an algorithm that preserves either roundness or squareness roundness works great for people in organic things squareness works best for buildings and man-made objects when you're done you can press ok and if I double click on a hand tool to put the image to screen you'll see that we did a really good job in removing the fringing if I press ctrl Z command Z on the Mac to undo I will bring it back and you can see the difference so remember you can use the minimum filter in the other menu to contract the mask and if you want to expand the mask you can use the maximum filter I have a tutorial here in the Photoshop training channel where I go in-depth with these two filters I'll place a link to it down below in the description sometimes when you're compositing it may be difficult to see what areas a mask is affecting so I have this composite here that contains several layers and I have a layer mask in this models layer to hide the background if I hold the shift key and click on the layer mask thumbnail I will disable the layer and you can see the original background when I hold shift and click again it removes the background now sometimes you may actually want to see what is really being affected and it's really difficult to tell in a composite so if you want to see what the layer mask is affecting you can use the backslash key with the layer mask selected to see a rouble a--the overlay it's a red overlay that just goes over the areas that the layer mask is concealing once again that's the backslash key that's the key that is right next to the bracket keys on the keyboard all the way to the right after the letter P in North American keywords one quick way of making a vector mask in Photoshop is to use one of the new technologies for making a layer mask let me show you what I mean by that if you go into the quick selection tool you'll have access to select subject and select and mask buttons let me just click on a layer to enable those buttons and if I click on select subject Photoshop will make a selection around whatever it thinks is the subject of the image in this case that's a really good job selecting the jet maybe it missed this part here so I'm gonna hold alt on Windows option on the Mac and click and drag with a quick selection tool to deselect those areas now if I simply click on the layer mask icon I'm going to create a layer mask but if your goal is to create a vector mask then you can use this selection to get you started on that vector mask to do so go into the paths panel and then click on this icon this will convert the selection into work path if I hold alt on windows option on the Mac and click you'll see this window that shows the tolerance a lower value gives you more points on your vector so if I press 1 and then press ok you'll see that I get a lot of points on my vector in this case this is probably too much so I'm gonna press ctrl Z command Z on the Mac to undo and I'll try again in this case I'll try 3 pixels and I'll press ok and now I have fewer vector points and I think this works much better next I can go into the layers panel and hold ctrl on Windows command on the Mac and click on the layer mask icon while I have this work path active once I click Photoshop will turn that vector path into a vector mask and now I can control it with the direct selection tool or any of the other vector editing tools in Photoshop you can press ctrl alt in the number 2 on Windows or command option in the number 2 on the Mac to load the luminosity of the image as a selection so Photoshop selects the bright pixels of the image this works because in the channels panel you'll see that the RGB composite has a keyboard shortcut of ctrl 2 this means that when you have another channel selected you can use control 2 to activate the R we composite control - it activates all these channels and you can use control three to enable the red channel control four to enable the green Channel and control five to enable the blue channel but if you add the Alt key to those keyboard shortcuts then you will load those channels as a selection so if I were to press ctrl alt and the number three I would load the bright pixels in the red channel control alt in the number four will load the bright pixels in the green channel in control all three will load the bright pixels in the blue Channel once again Control Alt on Windows command option on the Mac and the number one fantastic feature that Photoshop has is that when you create a new channel Photoshop also assigns a keyboard shortcut and you can use that keyboard shortcut to automatically load a selection so you can save a selection in Photoshop will apply a keyboard shortcut to it let me show you what I mean by that I'm gonna go back into a layers panel and I'm going to press ctrl D on Windows command D on the Mac to deselect then I'm going to select the quick selection tool from the tool bar and I'm going to enable the layer and click and drag over her glasses to make a selection next I'm gonna go into select and click on save selection I'll give my selection a name I'll call it glasses and I'll press ok now I'm going to press ctrl D command D on the Mac to deselect and I'm gonna go into the channels panel here you'll see the new channel that I've created the glasses channel which is the selection that I just created and when I'm working on my image if I need to bring up that selection I can load it by using the keyboard shortcut ctrl alt in the number-6 see how Photoshop added this keyboard shortcut to this channel so if I were to press ctrl alt and then that number 6 Photoshop will load that save selection as an active selection so I can go back into the layers panel and I can continue working on my image applying different adjustments and by using that keyboard shortcut you can load save selections really quickly as you work if your ever working with the brush tool and you make a mistake you obviously want to erase so if you go to the eraser tool and you erase you don't necessarily get the same effect because the eraser tool has a different brush and of course you can try to locate the same brush that you are using with the brush tool so that you can brush away using the same brush tip but there's actually a much faster way of doing that what you need to do is select the brush tool paint and if you decide that you need to erase you can hold down the tilde key that's the key on the top left of the keyboard next to the number one on North American keyboards and notice now that as I hold down that key and I erase I erase using exactly the same brush that I have active so the pixels that I erase match the style of the brush that I currently have active in this next example I'm going to show you a powerful feature that will allow you to create mask with editable text let me show you how this feature works first I'll show you the document that I'm working with I have a background layer a rounded rectangle a texture and a text layer if I want to place this texture layer onto my rectangle I can hold ctrl alt G on Windows command option G on the Mac to create a clipping mask which means that my texture will be confined to the visible pixels of the rounded rectangle layer then I have this text layer titled dog and what most people would do if they wanted the word dog to knock out a hole on this texture layer is that they would create a selection around the word dog and then create a layer mask on the rectangle while holding the Alt key on Windows that's the option key on the Mac so you can create an inverted mask so everything that was selected is not selected on the layer mask you're creating an inversion at the same time that you create a layer mask by holding the Alt key so this will give you the effect that you see there and that's the effect that we're going for but if I want to edit the text I can't I would have to recreate that entire mask so how can I keep this editable well we can keep it editable by using a knockout let me show you how that works I'm going to delete this layer mask and I'm going to enable this dog layer then I'm going to select the dog layer hold shift and select a rectangle layer to select all the layers in between in this case we only have one layer in between the texture layer then I'm going to press ctrl G on Windows command Z on the Mac to put those layers into a group and inside of this group I'm going to double click to the side of the layer to bring up the layer style window from here I'm going to use this feature called knockout and and I'm gonna move this below the design so that we can see what we're doing and I'm going to click on the knockout drop-down and select shallow nothing's going to happen but watch what happens when I bring down the fill opacity the word dog will disappear and it will become transparent and I could see a hole being cut through all the elements inside of this group so this only works if you put elements inside of a group if there was no group this wouldn't work and if I were to select deep it will punch a hole through all the layers including the layers outside of the group and that's not what we want we don't want transparent pixels there I just want shallow so that Photoshop cuts a hole through all the layers inside of this group so anything outside of this group will not be affected I can press ok and if I want to edit my mask or my knockout to be more specific I can do that by double clicking on the layer and typing in a different word like cat so you can use the knockout feature to create mask with editable text one of the most powerful image manipulation tools in Photoshop is the puppet warp tool and by adding one keyboard shortcut you can make it even more powerful let me show you what I mean by that so I have this photo of this dancer and I've separated her from the background and filled it in with content-aware so that I could manipulate her and not leave any holes behind I also converted her into a smart object to work non-destructively and to access the puppet warp tool you can go into edit and select puppet by default you should see a mesh I like to have the mesh disabled so that I could better see the image that I'm working with and now I can simply click on her to add points and then I can click on the points and drag them to a different location see that's see how I can manipulate her body and if you add just one keyboard shortcut it makes this tool much more powerful if I hold alt on windows option on the Mac and click on the pin I'll get this circle overlay then I can click and drag on it to rotate the pin and further distort the pixels on this image if I right-click on a pin I could delete it and the image snaps back into place I can select this pin hold alt and click and drag to rotate so I can adjust how far back dancer stretching and of course I can create another point hold alt on windows option of the Mac and rotate her wrist like so when you're done you can click on the checkmark to see your results and you can click on this eye icon to see the before and the after layer styles are a great way of applying effects to an image and they can also help you composite images together to make a more realistic in this example I have a background and a soccer ball I can double click to the side of the layer to apply a layer style to this image for example I can apply a gradient overlay to create a shadow underneath the ball notice that I have a gradient as going from white to black and I set the multiply blending mode to make the white pixels transparent I can also apply a drop shadow to make this a more realistic composite unfortunately I can't get the right angle of the drop shadow by using the options in the layer style window so what I can do is press ok and then convert these layer styles into layers so that I can manipulate them any way that I want to do so I can right click on the FX icon and select create layers then I can press ok and you'll see that Photoshop created two new layers the layer on top controls the gradient fill and I can manipulate it with the move tool by clicking and dragging on it and I can select the drop shadow layer and place it anywhere that I want and I can also transform it because it is now a layer I'm going to press ctrl T to transform then I can right click and select distort and I can distort it so that it matches my scene I can also use the arrow keys on the keyboard to nudge it up and of course I can apply filters filter blur Gaussian blur and I'll press ok so remember converting layer styles into layers gives you complete control over them sometimes in compositing it helps a lot to look at an image with fresh eyes an old method of seeing an image with fresh eyes was going into image image rotation in selecting flip cameras horizontal the downside of doing this is that you're actually distorting pixels and with larger composites this could take some time now in Photoshop we have a new feature that allows you to visualize a composite in a different way without having to actually distort any pixels if you go into view flip horizontal Photoshop will do the same thing but it will not distort pixels the pixels are not changing only the view so we can instantly flip an image see it in a new way and see if there's any adjustments that we need to make to return the image back to its original view you can go into the View menu and select flip horizontal once again and you're back at the original view even though I'm on a powerful MSI Prestige 15 laptop there is no need to spend all that time transforming the image instead use the View feature that way Photoshop changes the way the image is displayed rather than transforming it the Spot Healing Brush tool is a fantastic tool for removing blemishes and other distractions from portraits and in this tip I'm going to show you an amazing drop that you can use to further enhance this tool first I'll select the Spot Healing Brush tool from the toolbar then I'll select this blank layer and make sure that sample all layers is checked if I paint directly over the wrinkles Photoshop will do a decent job but if i zoom in you'll notice that it's not perfect I lost a lot of the detail and texture of the skin and if I continue healing that area you'll notice that Photoshop will continue distorting the texture of the skin and it's not gonna look very realistic I can of course bring down the opacity but that doesn't do that kind of a job either I'm gonna undo all those changes and what can we do instead well first you have to analyze the image and think of what you have to do in this case I want to minimize the wrinkles I don't like completely removing wrinkles it feels unnatural so I just want to minimize their intensity in this case the wrinkles are dark so what do I want to do I want to lighten them so I will select lighten from this drop-down menu if the blemish or distraction that I'm trying to remove is brighter than the skintone then I would select darken in this case I want to lighten it and once I start painting directly over those wrinkles you'll notice that Photoshop is only targeting the darker pixels of the image you can actually see that the highlights of the wrinkles are still there and that's okay because I'm not trying to completely remove the wrinkles I'm just trying to minimize them so after I make these adjustments what I can now do is bring down the opacity to zero which will bring back the wrinkles and I can just start increasing the opacity to minimize the wrinkles again I don't want to completely remove them I want to minimize them if I double click on a hand tool to fit the image the screen you'll see the full photo and if I click on the eye icon you'll see that before and if I click on it again you'll see the after so remember with the Spot Healing Brush tool think about the blemish or distraction that you're trying to remove and select either darken or lighten depending on the brightness of that blemish did you know that you could add a pixel perfect lens flare to your photo by using a hidden menu in this step I'm going to show you how you can access that menu with one keyboard shortcut first let's zoom into this area right here in the headlight I want to place a lens flare that is exactly on this pixel here I have a black layer set to screen so that black becomes invisible and when we apply a bright flare to this layer the only visible thing will be the flare that way we work none destructively and we don't affect the actual background the first thing that you need to do is figure out exactly where this pixel is in relationship to the canvas to do so you can go into window and select info from here you'll notice that as I hover over the image the X&Y coordinates in this area will change and to make things easier to see I'm gonna switch over to the move tool by pressing the V key on the keyboard and I'm gonna hover right in between the center point and you'll notice that the X&Y coordinates are 836 by 848 so that is exactly the coordinates to that precise pixel that I'm hovering over so now with that information I can go over into the lens flare filter and apply those coordinates to it let me show you how to do that I'm going to collapse the info panel then I'm gonna go into filter render lens flare from here I need to bring up that hidden menu and you can bring it up by holding the Alt key on Windows that's the option key on the Mac and click on this preview window that will bring up the precise flare Center and you can enter those values there we had 836 for X and 8:48 for Y I'll press ok and you'll notice that the flare will move precisely to that spot and then I can select the lens type and adjust the brightness just so that it's easy to see I'll make it brighter than I normally would and I'll press OK and you'll notice that the lens flare is precisely right there right in the center I'll double click on the hand tool to fit the image to screen and you'll notice that my lens flare is precisely where I told Photoshop to place it if you want to convert your hand drawings into vectors inside of Photoshop you can do so very quickly with a brand new feature in Photoshop 2020 first you need to go into your libraries panel then select your layer and click on this plus icon and select create from image this will open up the create from image window which is actually Adobe capture inside of Photoshop Adobe capture is a more app that allows you to create acids to use in Adobe desktop apps but in the Photoshop 20/20 release Adobe added this capability inside of the libraries panel inside a Photoshop which means that you can create assets using the layers in your document we can create patterns shapes color themes and gradients in this case we're going to create a shape this is a vector shape and you can use the details lighter to determine what will become part of the vector graphic and a eraser size slider so I can reduce that and click and drag to remove areas that I don't want included in my vector graphic when you're done make sure that you enable smooth on save and then click on save to cc libraries this will save this vector graphic into your currently selected library you can see it appearing here in my current library I'm going to close this window and I'm going to disable the drawing layer and then I can click and drag my vector graphic from inside my library onto my working document and I can scale it up and click on the checkmark when you're done to commit the changes and just like that I created a vector graphic from a hand drawing if you remember the Creative Cloud you have access to a lot of free content that you may not be aware of for example there's over 1,000 free professional brushes you can download and it's actually very easy all you need to do is select the brush tool then from this down-pointing arrow you can go into the gear icon and select get more brushes this will open up your browser and take it to a page where you can download over 1,000 free brushes from Kyle T Webster you do have to log in with your Creative Cloud ID and once you do you'll have access to all these different brushes I recommend downloading the concept brushes are great for compositing or you'll need to do is click on the download button for the corresponding set and then double click on the ABR file that's the Adobe Photoshop brush file to install it in your version of Photoshop now that you've downloaded over 1,000 free brushes from Cal Webster how do you stay organized how do you keep the brushes that you like and more importantly how do you access them from all your devices well let me show you this awesome trick with libraries first go into the window menu and select brushes from here you can select any brush that you like you can try all the brushes that you downloaded from Kyle Webster and try them out on a blank layer to see how they work for example I really like this clouds brush so I would like to have this brush accessible not only do I want to have easy access to it from this computer but I also want to have access to it from my desktop so how do I do that well really simple all you need to do is click and drag this brush into the libraries panel Photoshop will save it into your libraries and no matter what brush you have selected if you click on that brush from the libraries panel you'll enable it and you can start painting with it so go through all your brushes and save your favorite ones onto a library and here's another tip you can save them by groups so you can create a new library and then group your brushes by categories so for example you're gonna have a category titled cloud brushes and another category titled special effect brushes and drag more brushes into that new group so I'm going to go back into the brushes group and I'll just drag one of these brushes into that special effect brushes and now I have access to these brushes from anywhere I'm logged into my creative cloud account Photoshop actions allow you to quickly apply effects your images for example you can go into window actions and select one of the default actions for this example I'm going to use the word frame when you click on a play button Photoshop will create a 50 pixel wooden frame just with one click but that you know that you can export a text file that shows you exactly what each action contains this text file could be like a written tutorial it's a great learning tool let me show you how you can save an action as a text file click on the actions button then click on one of the sets they have the folder icon then click on the flyout menu and hold ctrl + Alt on Windows that's command option on the Mac and click on save actions by holding down those two keyboard shortcuts your actions will be saved as a txt file then you can press save and Photoshop will save that action as a txt file then when you open up that txt file you'll see the set that you saved and then we can scroll down and you'll see the action wood frame which is at 50 pixels and you can see all the steps for that action including each individual value for everything that was used in that action so again this could be a great learning tool almost like a step-by-step tutorial on how to create special effects did you know that Photoshop can actually write step-by-step tutorials for you let me show you how this works I have this image open and if you press ctrl K on Windows command key on the Mac to bring up the Preferences panel you can go into the history log in here you can check this box history log and the three options that you can select and how to save these items are metadata text file or both in this case we're going to select the text file so we can get an external Photoshop edit lock text file and we're going to log a detailed history log that way all the steps are shown in our history log then I'll press ok and I'm just going to start making adjustments to this image for example I can create a curves adjustment layer and make an adjustment then I'll add a hue and saturation adjustment layer make an adjustment to that and then I'll apply a filter and again the important thing about this example is not the final look of the image but instead the history lock that is being created I'm going to now go into the location on my history log which was in my desktop so I'll bring that up and here's my history log and you can see that Photoshop recorded all the steps that I made a new curves adjustment layer and the type of adjustments that I made the hue/saturation adjustment layer and the Gaussian blur with the settings so all the adjustments that I made were recorded Photoshop will keep recording everything that you make to stop the recording you can press ctrl K command key on the Mac once again then go into the history log and uncheck the history log checkbox and press ok in Photoshop you can use adjustment layers to create color grades for example in this file I have these adjustment layers that create this color effect and if I wanted to save this color great to use on a different photo I can do so by using a very cool technique let me show you how it works first I'll select the curves adjustment layer hold shift and click on the virus adjustment layer and place all the adjustment layers that make up my color grade into a group I can do so by pressing ctrl G command G on the Mac and I can call this cool effect that's the name of my effect if I disable the eye icon for that group you'll see the before and the after and the way that I can save this is by taking this group and going into the libraries panel and drag it into the library when I release you'll see the cool effect applied to the image to apply it to a photo all you need to do is drag it into the canvas but you need a keyboard shortcut if you simply drag it into the canvas the effect won't work what you need to do is hold alt on windows option on the Mac and click and drag it into the layers panel and notice now that we have a group with those adjustment layers everything is editable so if you need to you can make adjustments to your effect on your new photo so consider using libraries to save your color effects you'll have access to them from all your installations of Photoshop as long as you're logged in to the same Creative Cloud account and it's a great way of working non-destructively in Photoshop you can get seamless clouds let me show you how to do that if you go into file and new and create a document that is a perfect square that uses values that are to the power of 2 for example 2 by 2 4 by 4 8 by 8 16 by 16 128 by 128 256 by 256 512 five 12 and so on you can get seamless clouds so in this case I'll do 1024 by 1024 and I'll press create I'll have a perfect square and if I make black and white my foreground color I can go into filter render clouds I'll get seamless clouds these clouds are seamless so if I go into filter other and offset I can offset these clouds and notice that there is no seam that is because the algorithm that generates the clouds repeats itself so if you set the right document size you can get seamless clouds and this could help you to create a pattern or an effect that doesn't have a seam if you are using the clouds filter and just to show you what happens when you use dimensions that are not to the power of two so in this case I'll just type in width of 999 and the same height and click on create if I go into filter render and clouds I will no longer have seamless clouds and I can prove that to you by going into filter other offset and notice that this time I do have a seam when I offset the image here's another awesome tip for the clone stamp tool if you're working with an image that has several adjustment layers creating an effect and you want to clone something out you can obviously select the clone stamp tool and you can create a new layer above the ground to work non-destructively if I hold alt on windows option on the Mac to select a sample source and click I can obviously start painting those pixels in but watch what happens when I paint those pixels in Photoshop will take the effect that the vibrance adjustment layer is applying to those pixels and then when I paint it will reapply that effect with the adjustment layers and that's not what we want obviously so if I create a new layer above the layer stack and do the same thing this will work but we're also going to run into a problem if I the side to change my effect for example if I open up the group and I make an adjustment to the curves adjustment layer notice that that piece that we painted will not change within the group and if I drop it below the layer then it will apply a different effect so there's two solutions number one you can just disable the group and paint but sometimes it's best to work with the effect that you're applying so if you want to clone something and disregard all the adjustment layers in the group all you need to do is click on this icon here which will disregard all adjustment layers so even with the effect applied I can create a new layer and I can start cloning and Photoshop will disregard the adjustments that I've made with those adjustment layers if I disable the cool effect folder you'll see that those pixels were not affected by the adjustment when I copied them and painted them on this layer if you ever create a Photoshop document that's meant to be a template then let me show you how to save it so that you don't accidentally overwrite it in this case I'm working with this file here which is a template that I made for Instagram this is for an Instagram multi post seamless panel and actually I have a tutorial on this so if you're curious as to what this is and how it works I'll place a link to it down below in the description but basically it's those swipeable seamless panels that you see on Instagram and this is a template for it and if I want to save this I can obviously go into file and save as I'll save it on my computer and I can just save it on this folder and I can just save it as a PSD so I'll call it seamless panel template and if you save it as a PSD dot PSD which is a Photoshop file but then add a letter T after that that will make it into a Photoshop template I'll click on save and I'll press ok let me bring up the folder so you can see the file and here it is it's a seamless panel template and the file type is PSD T you can see that there and I'll double click on it and there it is but notice one thing here in the tab you can see that it reads untitled me this is a separate instance from the original template so I can't override that template by accident because if I was working with the actual template and I cropped it for example and then saved it then I would lose those changes on my template but by using a Photoshop template file you cannot override that image make sure that you save files that you intend to be templates as PSD teeth's next let me show you a cool trick for applying highlight on an object when you're compositing so in this case we're going to apply a highlight on this man's face we have a light source here and we want to make it seem as if there's actual light hitting him right on the side of his face so of course we'll work non-destructively by creating a new layer and then I can select the brush tool and I can hold alt on Windows option in the Mac to temporarily bring up the eyedropper tool and I can click and drag this yellow light and I can increase the size of my brush by tapping on the right bracket key and I'm just going to paint on the side of his face like so then I can press ctrl alt G command option G on the Mac to clip this layer to the layer below which means that the visibility of my layer is now controlled by the layer on the bottom which is this one here and as you can see you can clip multiple layers into a single layer so these two layers are controlled by the layer that you see here and the trick that I want to show you is that if you double click to the side a layer to bring up the layer style window and from here we'll select the color Dodge blending mode but the trick here is that you uncheck transparency shapes layers watch what happens when I uncheck that layer see that see how it changes the blend and now it looks more like a light hitting the side of his face but instead of using opacity to minimize that light we're going to use the fill opacity to reduce it see that see how that looks more like a light hitting his face and we can use the blend if sliders that we looked at earlier to help the blend so I don't want this highlight affecting the shadows so I'm gonna click and drag this over to the right and to make a smoother transition I'll hold alt on windows option in the Mac and click to split those in half to create a smoother transition between visible and invisible pixels and then I can adjust the fill opacity to control the intensity of that light I can press ok and if I need to make an adjustment of the color of that light I can go into image adjustment hue and saturation and adjust the hue and the saturation so you can fine-tune these sliders until you find a color that works for you and you can always control the fill from this slider as well to control the intensity of that light before and after smart objects are a great way of applying adjustments distortions filters and transformations non destructively but sometimes you may want to bring back the original layers in this example I have this composite and I've applied the camera filter to a smart object to apply a color effect but if I change my mind and I need to go back into my smart object I can always of course double click on the layer thumbnail to open up another tab and look at the individual pieces of that smart object but if you ever want to bring those individual pieces back into your original working document you don't need to open a smart object instead what you can do is right-click on a smart object and select convert to layers Photoshop will then warn you that you're about to lose the filters that we've applied but once you press ok you'll notice that Photoshop creates a group and inside of that group you'll see all the contents of the smart object in this tip I'm going to show you a Photoshop feature that I feel is underutilized and they can help you remember where everything is in Photoshop let me show you what I mean on the top right you'll see this search icon if you click on that you can type a search query for example the Spot Healing Brush tool which is a tool that we looked at earlier in the tutorial and notice that as I type the word Spot Healing Brush Photoshop will give me results for items inside of Photoshop learn content Adobe stock photos and photos inside of my Lightroom library so I can just click on Photoshop so that I only look at photoshop tools in this case you can see the Spot Healing Brush tool here when I click on that Photoshop will highlighted and blue here on the left and will automatically activate that tool also this is a smart search tool you could also type in a category of tools for example retouching and Photoshop will show you all the retouching tools that are available to you so if you forget what are the tools that I talked about today are no worries just search for them with this feature and they'll finalize the tutorial by showing you a couple of photoshop Easter eggs first how to add a banana into your toolbar if you click on this tree I con you can go into edit toolbar and if you hold the shift key and click on done Photoshop will add a banana into the toolbar now the banana doesn't do anything it's just an icon but you can enable it on your friends computer if you want to freak them out also there's two more Easter eggs that I want to show you if you press ctrl K command key on the Mac you'll bring up the Preferences window and from the interface tab you'll have the color theme and you can click on the color theme to change photoshop's color theme and if you hold alt and shift that's option shift on the Mac you'll see the icons become toast and if you hold ctrl + Alt the icons will become a cup of coffee ok if you made it this far make sure that you click on that like button and let me know in the comments down below which one was your favorite secret tip or a trick if this is your first time at the Photoshop training channel don't forget to click on the subscribe and notification buttons and again I would like to thank MSI for sponsoring today's Photoshop tutorial if you haven't already make sure that you check out the msi prestige 15 laptop this is the computer that I'm currently using I'm using it to work on the road or when I present at conferences it's a very powerful machine it has a six core i7 processor the display is amazing you're gonna get great colors out of it it's a 4k display with 220 PPI it can reproduce Adobe RGB at 100% and s RGB at 100% as well it is also Kalman certified so the color reproduction and this thing is amazing and it also comes with a very powerful video card an NVIDIA GeForce 1650 GTX max XQ so if you're looking for a powerful computer to run Photoshop this is something that you should definitely consider I'll place the link to it down below in the description if you want to find out more about it and thank you so much for watching this video I'll catch you again in the next Photoshop tutorial

Channel: Photoshop Training Channel

Views: 300,632

Rating: 4.9669995 out of 5

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Id: ZDU4B6_McRE

Length: 58min 5sec (3485 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020