Master Layers - Photoshop for Beginners | Lesson 2

so here we have a picture of a landscape and I want to draw some birds instead of drawing right here I take a transparent sheet of paper and draw the birds right here now the pen isn't working as well but you get the point I now have the freedom to move the bird around I can rotate the birds digitally I can even enlarge it however if I had directly painted the birds right here I cannot even erase it erasing it will erase the image I cannot move it around I cannot rotate it or enlarge it however in this one I can do whatever I want and on top of that I can remove it as well similarly in Photoshop we have the same landscape and if we create a new layer by clicking on this button inside of the layers panel we have a new layer right here and right inside of it if we paint the birds we have the freedom to rotate it by pressing Ctrl or command T don't forget transform we can rotate it we can make it larger or smaller we can move it around do whatever we want we can even turn it off and on on the other hand just like in that paper example if we had not painted on that transparent sheet in this case the layer and if we had directly painted right here we couldn't rotate it remove it or do whatever we wanted we couldn't even press Ctrl or command T because this background layer is locked even if we unlocked it we pressed controller command T it would just make the whole thing larger take the whole thing and move the whole thing around that completely takes away your freedom we cannot even erase it if we try to do so by picking the Eraser tool right here and try to paint over the birds it just will erase the whole thing so all in all what are less we just did the experiment the layers are like transparent sheets of paper one on top of the other and these sheets of paper can contain a graphic or an adjustment now what do I mean by an adjustment so here we have our landscape as a background on top of that we have our birds as a graphic and on top of that we can have an adjustment we're gonna get to it later but for right now you can click on the adjustment layer icon and choose any of these adjustments for example let us choose photo filter you can add this color to the entire image let's check that and then you can increase the density according to your liking so there you go it warms up the entire image so here you have the graphic of birds and on top of that we have an adjustment which adjusts all of the layers beneath it we have lots of fun projects in this lesson so make sure to download The Practice files linked up in the description also if your pics creative patreon member you can download the finished psds of all of these examples and all of the videos that we have created assets for here at piximperfect so first of all why are layers so important so here we have a very simple design of which I got the idea from Adobe Express if you're interested I'll link it up in the description Adobe Express is one of the easiest ways to create designs quickly without opening Photoshop but this is the Photoshop class so here is a very simple gradient background on top of that we have some text now I wanted the subject to be on top of the text and we have a fun project on text behind subject later but for right now we have this text on top of that we have a subject and then we have some other text so right now we have the flexibility to change literally whatever we want not just the background and the text have a look at this so of course we can double click right here single click right here and change the background to whatever gradient we want we can create our gradient as well hit okay hit OK again we can change the text as well for example we double click on the T to select that text and change it to for example match and on the other hand we can even move the subject make it bigger smaller there's also a fun thing we can do select the subject layer press Ctrl or command T you can make it smaller or larger rotate it to whatever you want on top of that here's the fun thing you can go to edit and then pop it warp this is exciting you want to make sure show mesh is checked so that you can see what is happening right there you can expand it a little bit to avoid artifacts again this is an advanced adjustment but you can play with it so right here we can create a point right here we can create another point so create points across the body and then you can move it for example you can select this point hold the ALT key or the option key a circle appears around and then you can just drag to move so cool isn't it select this one hold the ALT key the option key just move it like that and once you're done hit enter or return so here was the before here's the after you can create more points to lock in the subject but you get the point now let's go back to how it was remember we learned about history you can open up the history panel by clicking on this button or going to window and making sure history is checked you can click at the very top to go back to how the document was when you first opened it now let us merge all of these layers select the topmost layer hold the shift key select the bottom most layer every layer in between will be selected another way of selecting multiple layers is holding the control or command and keep on clicking on layers you want to select for example you want to select this one you hold the controller command you want to select this one both of them would be selected if you want to select layers in series you know what to do select the first one hold the shift key select the last one in the series Once selected if you press Ctrl or command e all of those layers would be merged right now I'm stuck I cannot even change the background I cannot change the text everything is burned into those pixels and I cannot even move the subject I would have to make a selection remove the text add that back in so all of those flexibilities are gone and that is why layers are extremely important by the way another shortcut to merge all of the layers whether you have selected them or not is pressing Ctrl shift and E there you go I didn't even select all of them and everything is merged if you select some of them for example you selected the subject and the text layers so let's select the first one hold the shift key and select the last one you want to select in the series I don't want to select the background and then you press Ctrl or command e only those would be merged so controller command e to merge this selected list and Ctrl or command shift and E to merge all of the layers irrespective of whether you have selected them or not by now I'm sure you already know this and I'm so proud of you but we have to discuss this topic that is visibility a little more in detail take a look at this project that we did here's the original image by the way how am I doing all of this that is why this discussion is important on top of that we removed the blemishes let's turn on that layer as you can see here's the before some blemishes are there here's the after blemishes are removed on top of that we applied some skin tones we added a little bit of contrast there was some discoloration on the lips as you can see right here we fixed that with discoloration layers on top of that we did some dodging and burning as you can see it makes it amazing and on top of that there's some contrast uniforming the skin tone adding shine to the eyes real light jaw light we boosted the lip colors we added some redness to the cheek here's the before here's the after you see that and we reduced the overall highlights now why is visibility important because sometimes we need to turn off and on layers to see whether we need it or not or whether we need it in that much intensity or not in this case let us say we don't like the eye shine and we want to turn it off so how do we turn off the visibility think of it this way how do we see how are you watching this video with our eyes right if we didn't have eyes we wouldn't see similarly in Photoshop if we didn't have that I we wouldn't see that layer so when you see the eye that layer is turned on and when the eye goes away that is not visible so that's an easy way to remember it to see or not to see now it is not just limited to that now let's say you want to see just that layer and nothing else how do we make something solo you simply hold the ALT key or the option key click on the I and all of the other eyes just go away in other words their visibility goes away now if you hold the ALT key or the option key again and you click on that I again everything turns back on let's say in this example you just wanted to see the subject layer you hold the ALT key or the option key and click on the I of the subject layer only that is turned on everything else turns off and if you want to set it back to how it was hold the alt query option key again and click on the I everything turns back on let us take it a step further and let us say layers at random who have turned off and you want to turn everything back on how do we do that let's right click on in here and choose show or hide all other layers click on that do it one more time and everything is turned on now did you know in the later versions of Photoshop you can zoom in to the contents of a particular layer for example let's say you're working on the good text you can hold the ALT key or the option key and click on the good it zooms in right there you want to work on the subject you hold the ALT key or the option key and click on that layer it zooms into that so whatever you have in any layer let's create a new layer let's take a brush and just paint some random stuff right here okay if you hold the ALT key or the option key and click on that layer it zooms into that so that's a funky little feature to help you focus on a layer now let's say you don't see the layers panel something came over you you closed it or it simply went missing first thing to do is not to panic secondly if you're missing any panels in Photoshop all you need to do is to go to window and make sure that panel is turned on in this case it is layers just simply click on it it will show up and then you can stick it up right over here now let's understand the concept of background list with a very simple example so here I've opened an image of a beautiful texture wonderful light leak and whenever you open an image or create a new document with a background it shows up as a background layer and it has a lock icon right there now what does that mean let us understand now let's say you want to apply this texture or light leak to a particular image let's open that image let's go to our finder or Explorer and I'm just going to drag in and drop in that photo over the canvas now this is fantastic let's name this layer how do we name a layer in Photoshop we double click on the text and you can name it to whatever you want however if you try to name the background layer it won't let you do it unless you convert it into a regular layer and that's what it's doing right now let's hit cancel for now the other thing we you want to do is we want the texture to be on top of the subject of course because we want the light leak to be above the subject but we cannot do that we cannot change the order so far we have talked about two properties of the background layer you cannot name it you cannot change its stacking order also when you're adding texture sometimes you want to reduce the opacity but you cannot do that with the background layer you cannot even change the blend mode which we have to do to apply that texture so basically the background layer is something that is meant to stay in the background and absolutely prevent transparency for example let's turn off the subject layer for a moment if you take the Eraser and even if you try to erase it just paints it white you know why it paints it white because the background color is white have a look right here the square at the top is the foreground color the square at the back is the background color now if you click on it and set the background color to something else for example red and then if you select the Eraser tool right here and you try to erase it it will turn red so at any cost the background lab prevents transparency and that is why you cannot even move it so if you choose the move tool right here and if you try to move it it won't let you move it there you go it shows the error now how do we get around it you guessed it right we have to convert the background layer into a regular layer there are lots of ways to do it the easiest way is simply clicking on the lock right here now it's unlocked layer zero also you can double click on it name the letter whatever you want for example let's name it light leak hit OK and there you have the lightly clear so any of the ways you can use now let's bring the subject under the light leak now we want the light leak to interact with the layers beneath of course we can decrease the opacity and that looks okay but we wanted to interact and how do we make the layers interact with other layers in various ways and here my friend is your introduction to blending modes or blend modes and what does blend modes do the answer is in the question it Blends the layer in various ways so click on the drop down right here and you can choose whatever blend mode you want and as you hover through it it's going to give you a preview of how each blend mode is going to look like now blend mode is a whole different lesson which we'll cover in the future I also have a video on 27 blend modes and what they do scientifically right here they have several videos on blend modes but we'll cover it as a part of this course for right now just know that screen brightness multiply darkens overlay adds contrast and normal blend mode is the regular normal blend mode shows the image the way it is and then you have other blend modes like color which colors the image according to that layer and there's a plethora of those for right now let's choose screen and there you have it a wonderful light leak texture but this is too much how do we make the layers more transparent you already know this and that is opacity simply decrease the opacity in this case I'm going to go for 76 that works perfectly now what if you wanted you don't really have to but what if you wanted to convert the subject layer into a background layer so that it just doesn't move around you cannot change the opacity or the blend mode how can we do that all you need to do is to go to layer new and choose background from layer make sure that layer is selected first of all if you pick that and there you go this is now a background layer you cannot move it it will show you an error you cannot erase things because now it will paint it with the background color you cannot change the opacity or the blend mode so that's how the full circle works now I need to point this out ideally we would open the subject Image First and on top of that we would bring in the overlay but I did it in reverse order just to explain how background layers work now this is what you would do you would open the subject image and on top of that you would bring in the light leak like this now the reason I'm showing you this again is that this is right now a smart art object we can cover smart object later but you should know that smart objects look like this it's like a layer but with this icon and one of the limitations of smart objects is that you cannot paint on it you cannot change the pixels so if you take the brush try to paint on it it won't let you do it it will ask you to convert that layer into a regular layer if you try the smudge tool it just won't work if you try the healing tools it won't work in any way it won't let you change the pixels so in that case you would have to convert this layer into a regular raster layer right click on it and then choose rasterize layer and now you can do whatever you want for example first of all let's change the blend mode to screen like it was before change the opacity to about 80 percent and right now let's say I don't like the lines on top of the face so I just want to erase it so I would choose the spot healing brush tool click and hold on the patch group choose the spot healing brush tool you want to make sure you sample just this layer not the layer beneath so let's turn it off and just paint on the spots you want to remove there you go they're gone so easy from right here as well there you go so whenever you're adding texture this is an important tip you don't want a lot over the face there you are but you have to keep it natural at the same time by the way I got this light leak from envato elements it's a platform I highly recommend unlike many other stock platforms you can just pay a monthly fee and get access to unlimited assets millions of assets like leaks photoshop brushes Photoshop plugins as well images stock videos and the list just goes on so check it out for the latest offers and discounts check the links in the description you should know some quick shortcuts for opacity for a quick check for example right here the opacity is set to 80 if you have any non-brushing tools selected And I stress this again non-brushing tool for example the move tool right here if you press any number for example you pressed four opacities right now 40. if you pressed seven opacity 70 if you pressed eight opacity is 80. so it's a good way to check so this is how it looks with 30 60 40 90. maybe I like something around 70. now if you press two numbers quickly in succession the opacity would be that for example 74 press 7 and 4 quickly now it's 74. four five it's 45. 75 75. 96 96 so pressing it with a little Gap in time sets it to that for example 7 is 70 4 is 40 but press quickly for example 4 6 now it's 46. now do keep in mind that if you have any of the brushing tools selected for example the brush tool right here that has opacity in the options bar if you press the shortcuts for example you pressed five it changes the opacity of the two three for thirty eight for eighty five six quickly for 56 all right similarly for the pencil tool as well it will do the same 30 50 56 all right similarly for the mixer brush or any of the brushing tools even the art history or the history brush tool those are tools that you wouldn't use the art history and the history so much but you get the point these are important ones like the mixer brush and the brush too so make sure you're not in any of the tools where you have opacity in the options bar only then when you press the shortcuts the opacity of the layers change another shortcut that applies not just to opacity but any new numeric parameter in Photoshop is this if you hover the mouse over that parameter text in this case it is the opacity if you click and drag to the right it increases if you click and drag to the left it decreases and you can easily tell when the cursor turns into a pointing hand with two arrows on either side similarly with any other parameter for example fill you can decrease it and increase it by the way what is fill and how is it different again fill is a very vast topic and we will cover it in the next lesson you can do some incredible incredible effects with it and we will have some fun projects too another shortcut if you hold the shift key and then if you click and drag to the right or left it goes very quickly so quickly with just little movements it is now zero and just with a little movement it is at 100 however if you hold the ALT key and then if you click and drag or the option key on a Mac it happens very very slowly like this much movement got me to zero and this much movement gets me to hundred so for final adjustments hold the ALT key and for quick adjustments hold the shift key as you drag in that opacity and for normal speed and don't press anything now let's talk about the concept of transparency transparency is denoted by Checker boxes in Photoshop so if we take an eraser and try to erase the white background it is not doing anything actually it is doing something it's painting it in white because the background color is white so let's change the background color to something else for example green and if we try to erase it it's not making it transparent why because this is a background layer we just learned it so let's turn this layer into a regular layer by simply clicking on this lock right now if you take the Eraser and you try to erase it have a look right here there is nothingness and nothingness is shown with Checker boxes like this now how do we remove the background right here very quickly since all of the background is white we can easily use the magic wand tool the magic wand tool simply selects similar colors so let's pick that and now make sure tolerance is around 20 that is fine and the settings are the same as what you see right here and click on the white areas and all of the white areas are now selected you can simply press the delete key and now it is transparent now you might really ask what is tolerance and mesh well it is easy to understand let's say you're throwing your birthday party all right and you have food enough for a particular number of people and that is your tolerance the amount of food you have is your tolerance now you called a friend she came over but she brought another Fender first and you're like okay I didn't invite her but that's fine I have enough food that is your tolerance now what if that friend brings one more friend you're still like okay I have enough food it will be all right but let's say that friend brings four another more friends and you're like okay now this is not gonna work we would have to get more food probably similarly in Photoshop tolerance is the amount of food you have and the amount of colors you can feed or in other words select so if the tolerance is one right here we have a gradient from purple to Blue right if we click right here only that one friend comes in that is very close to you he or she cannot bring other friends which are similar to them but if the tolerance is higher like let's say 10 and then if you click more friends can come in because you have more food right now if the tolerance is at 40 and if you click right here more similar colors get selected so you get the idea of Tolerance now it is simply how much similar colors can the selection select or in other words tolerate so once you have the background taken out you can save this as a PNG not a jpeg because jpeg does not support transparency it will have a white background if you save it as a JPEG so let's go to file of course you can choose save a copy and save it as a PNG you can also go to export and choose export has also quick export as a PNG choose export as there's so many ways to do the same thing in Photoshop let us choose the format as PNG that is fine width and height is fine you can also choose to convert it to srgb which is the standard color profile and embed the color profile click on export let's save it as be transparent there you go now whenever you have any image where you want to bring in the B as an asset you can open that image and on top of that if you bring the regular image the white background will come with it of course but if you bring the transparent one only the B will come in so I deleted that layer and we'll learn how to delete layers later so let's drag it and drop it right here there we go just the beep looks fantastic in this one time for us to do a fun project and with this we'll learn the basic functions of the layers panel now we'll cover an effect which is very popular especially with a later iPhone wallpapers text behind the subject and we have seen it everywhere it's high in demand let us do it so when you look at this image this image looks a little tilted or crooked so let's select the crop tool the shortcut to which is C you can also click right here but always remember shortcuts and how do you find the shortcuts if you click and hold it just says right there for example the shortcut for the brush tool you click and hold it says right there that is B crop tool is C all right now once the crop tool is selected at the top you have the straighten button right here click on that and draw a straight line along the thing which should have been straight so I'm going to create a straight line along this and this is about straight it was showing zero degrees so what is crooked let's go back to how it was so what is really crooked as you can see the matte is crooked The Horizon is straight but the mat is crooked how do we fix this first of all let us make a copy of the background layer and here's the first basic function how do we duplicate a layer we simply do that by pressing Ctrl or command J we make a copy of the layer that was selected again I'm going to repeat that again for you select the background layer or any layer you want to create a duplicate off and press Ctrl or command J now another long way of doing that if you are charging by the hour is simply going to layer new and choose layer wire copy have a look at the shortcut Ctrl or command J there you go now here's another basic function if you apply any filter to it by going to filter let's say noise and add noise let's add a lot of noise it is burned into the pixels you cannot reduce the filters later you cannot change the values later so you're stuck so how do we fix this first of all let's go back by pressing Ctrl or command Z or Z now right click on that layer and choose convert to Smart object or you can also go to filter and choose convert for smart filters both will do the same thing and it will convert the layer into a smart object hit ok now we're going to discuss the advantages of smart objects later but one of the major advantage is that if you add any filter in this case let's go to noise and then add noise again hit OK it adds as a smart filter now you can double click on it and change the value to whatever you like you can also delete the smart filter by dragging it and dropping it to the trash can right and that's also how you delete a layer so another basic function how do we delete a layer let's drag it and drop it into the trash can one more way of deleting the layer simply selecting the layer and pressing the delete key it also deletes the layer and yes of course with the layer selected you can click on the trash can icon it also deletes it but it shows up this warning if you don't want to see it check don't show again and click on yes to take it away so again let's press controller command J to make a copy and let's name this layer fixed we'll fix it now let's convert this layer into a smart object by going to filter convert for smart filters hit ok now let's apply a filter that is so amazing that there can be a class for it let's go to filter and that is the camera raw filter now of course you have all of those basic functions like exposure contrast highlights shadows and all of that let's collapse these settings for now scroll down and go to geometry and inside of that click on this button right here now we know that this is straight so draw a straight line across it there you go and we want to straighten this thing so let's draw a straight line across this one and it will make it straight hit OK once you're satisfied and the best part is this is a smart filter you can double click on it and change the stuff right here click on draw guides and you can change the lines let's hit cancel for now now to put the text behind we have to have the subject at the top so let's make a copy of the fixed layer press Ctrl or command J and let's name this layer subject now we want to Simply mask out the background from this one so that only the subject stays so let's select any of these three selection tools the magic tool the quick selection or the object selection two and once you do at the top you will see select subject click on that and it will make a pretty good selection of the subject however it's not very very accurate so to make it more accurate here's another tip for the later versions of Photoshop and that is if you click on the drop down right next to select subject you will have the option to process it in the cloud so if you're not too concerned about privacy it will be safe I don't know but it's up to you do it at your own risk so choose Cloud click on select subject it does a better selection and it creates a better result so as you can see it is better have a look at this it is much better than the previous one so once you have the selection active you want to click on this button that creates a mask or in other words a cutout so right here as you can see white are the areas that show up and black are the areas that hide right now you cannot see it because other layers are turned on but if you hold the ALT key or the option key click on the eye and only keep that turned on you can see it properly as you can see the subject is white so you can see that and the background is black therefore you cannot see it let's turn everything back on hold the ALT key of the option key click on the I now just behind this we want our text by the way if you don't want to see the smart filters if you want to just hide it in click on this Arrow right there There You Go hidden let's select the layer beneath it choose the text tool and click to type in now it's very small let's make it larger like this so that we can see as we type type in stay centered all right let's make it larger select the move tool press Ctrl or command D and let's make it larger like that now this is behind the subject but there's an issue the background is too bright and we cannot even see the text so how do we create an adjustment so that all of the layers under it become darker simply by creating an adjustment layer and how do we create an adjustment layer simply by clicking on the adjustment layer icon which is this circle with half gray or white and half black click on that and then choose exposure for now you can also choose curves that is a little more advanced for now keep it simple and choose exposure and we wanted it behind the text so let's bring it behind the text and simply decrease the exposure there you go that text is now visible let's keep it 0.5 minus 0.5 and that's just perfect now the stay centered text definitely needs to stay centered and how do we make that happen we already learned about it in lesson one so after this video If you haven't watched watch that simply with the move tool selected make sure inside of the three dots aligned to Canvas is selected and then you can Center it according to the can this right here click on this button or click on this button to align it to the left but right now nothing is happening you know why because the exposure layer is selected not the stay centered layer you can Center it horizontally you can align it to the left to the right center it vertically up to you so I'm going to set it to how it was this way now let's add a little more text right here let's say this is a live class and by the way we want the subject to be centered as well and for it we have to stretch the image press C for the crop 2 and you want to make sure delete cropped pixels is checked off we don't want to do that and Center it so that the subject is in the center I stretched it a little bit now what about the rest of the areas of course you can fill it with a lot of tools that are coming up in Photoshop but you know what nobody's gonna notice all you need to do is select the fixed layer where you had fixed it now you should know that we cannot change the pixels of the smart object so here's another basic function let's say you selected an area and this whole area and you want this area to be on a separate layer all by itself how do we make that happen once you make that selection and we made that selection with the rectangular Marquee two I'm going to do that again for you so we selected the rectangular Marquee 2 and we made a selection with the fixed layer selected and then pressed Ctrl or command J that is the same shortcut as creating a duplicate layer and when you do have a selection only that area goes into the other layer press controller command D and I want to stretch it but if I try to do that it just makes everything larger so how do we make sure it doesn't maintain the aspect ratio we hold the shift key and then just stretch it trust me nobody's going to notice unless you tell them this is perfect now again of course you have to Center the stay centered text so select that with the move tool selected Center it horizontally now let's add some more text right here with the text tool selected let's click right here let's say this is a live show let's type in Tuesdays at 7am maybe or 8 am up to you whenever you wake up let's keep it that way and change the font double click on the T to select all of it I'm going to have Poppins it's one of my favorite fonts bold this is nice press controller command D with the move tool selected and let's make it smaller and set it right over here let's make it a little more smaller there you go you want to see all of it this is perfect now we want to add a little more text on the right as well and we want the same size so again another basic function you can hold the ALT key or the option key click and drag it makes a copy and now you have a copy of that layer similarly right here as well you have the subject layer right if you hold the ALT key or the option key click and drag you have another layer right here all right so that's the shortcut to do a copy do you want it to be on the same line and double click on the T type in join us live there you are love is fine too let's have it on the right hand side double click on the D and let's have it some red color something like this is fine okay also if you want to make sure everything is aligned properly you can go to view and make sure snap is checked and you can snap to everything so right now what happens is whenever you try to move something and something is in the same line it will snap to it and it will indicate it with those pink lines so I want this to be in the same line there you go now they're in the same line and once they're on the same line you can hold the shift key and then when you move it it moves in the same line there you go now it snaps to the end of d as well properly so that's a quick tip now if you want to make it a little more fancy let's add some grain to the background and to do that we have to create a new layer and let's learn a new way to create a new layer press Ctrl shift n command shift n on a Mac the new layer dialog box is going to show up let's name it grain you don't have to understand much right now just change the blend mode from normal to Overlay just know that over laser blend mode which hides anything that is 50 Gray absolutely neutral gray if you have anything brighter than neutral gray it will make that area brighter if you have any color darker than 50 great will make that area darker so let's choose overlay and choose fill with overlay neutral color which is 50 Gray check that hit OK that way you have a new layer called green and it is filled with gray you cannot see it because the blend mode is set to Overlay and overlay hides everything that is 50 gray if the blend mode was normal this is what you would see let's change it back to Overlay now before adding any filter to it what do we do we change this layer into a smart object y so that we can change the values of the filter later so let's select that layer go to filter convert for smart filters hit ok now let's go to filter noise and add noise let's add a lot of noise at about 40 right 40 make sure uniform is checked you can also try gaussian and see what kind of results it creates if this is something you like you can go with it for me uniform is fine I don't want to add color noise so choose monochromatic and hit OK let's check that again hit ok now the noise is very very sharp if you want to blur it a little bit let's go to filter blur and then gaussian blur let's add about 0.8 0.8 or 0.6 up to you 0.8 is fine hit okay now have a look how fantastic this looks I'm going to zoom in a little bit have a look at it the subject is clean the background is textured this just looks awesome now what now again is the advantage of converting this layer into a smart object we can double click on gaussian blur and change its value right here so for example I want to set it to one hit okay I can double click on add noise and change its value I can increase it or decrease it so you get that flexibility with it now to finish it off let us apply an adjustment at the top and we're gonna choose a color lookup something you can play with experiment with click on the adjustment icon and then choose color lookup the color lookup allows you to apply Luts or look up tables to your images Luts in other words are simple mathematics to tell all right make the bright pixel slightly darker make the darker pixels slightly reddish so there are different mathematical presets and you have all of these presets right over here for example this is fall colors this is crisp winter late Sunset all different kinds of wonderful presets by the way I love it you can also download free Luts from the internet you can buy them you can create them as well I have a video on creating Luts right here which you can check out so for this example even late Sunset looks fantastic on this one we can go with it and decrease the opacity I think it's too much let's decrease it to about 76 I don't know there's something about that number it always comes to that another good one that I use time and again is crisp warm it adds that warmth to the image let's decrease the opacity set it to about 62 that's fine and there you have it now let's talk about layer grouping grouping layers is very important so for example if you selected join us live Tuesdays at seven stay centered I want to Center all of this all right all of them are now selected so with the move tool selected if I try to Center them it just centers everything on an individual level all right however if we select all of these layers so select the first one hold the shift key select the last one in the row everything is selected press Ctrl or command G to group all of these layers and let's name this text all right so all of the text is in one group I can decrease the opacity of all of them collectively I can move them around collectively there are many other Advanced features which we can cover later but for right now we can Center it collectively so even if all of it is moved to the right with the move tool selected you can make sure that align to Canvas is chosen and then you can Center it this way even if aligned to selection is selected you can select all for example you can press Ctrl or command a to select the entire canvas and then you can Center according to the entire canvas so for me I always have it set to selection so in case I need to center it according to the selection I can do that if I need to do it according to the canvas I can select the entire canvas and do that now after you're done with the selection do not forget to press Ctrl or command D to deselect also grouping the layers helps you clean the entire thing up so this is all the background so select the first one hold the shift key select the last one press controller command G and this is the background and then you have the grain then you have the subject so everything is just so clean right now now you might also notice that the selection of the subject may not be that much accurate if you come down right here there are areas that is left out and it's all in the cutout right here if you just want to see the cutout or in other words The Mask you can hold the ALT key or the option key click on the mask button to just see that there you go white other areas which show up black are the areas which hide you can hold the ALT key of the option key again and click on the mask back in to see the entire image so to fix it you can simply take a brush zoom in so these areas are left out right so take white as the foreground color so you can easily take the time to paint that back in again there are very quick ways to do it if you paint a little extra by the way you can paint that area in Black because black hides there we go like that masking and selection is a whole another lesson for the future another important thing to keep in mind whenever you're working in Photoshop is that you take a break if you're engrossed in your work for too long you might miss certain mistakes that you're making it might be obvious when you come back from your break and in this case I feel why not add one more adjustment layer one more color lookup I really really loved the late Sunset right here it just made it look absolutely dramatic of course we don't want it too much how about we add it just to the background so if we take it under the subject how would that look well that's not too bad let's add a little bit of it oh now that is starting to look something exciting so at about 38 is fine what if you bring it to the top just experiment what if we take it down there you go what if we make another copy of it so select that press Ctrl or command J and take it to the top of the subject and we want to apply it just to the subject and that's another basic function so if there's a lead that you just want to apply to the layer beneath that you can hold the ALT key or the option key and click on the line between these two layers an icon with a square and a down arrow shows up if you click right now you see this Arrow right there that means it's only applicable to the subject now you can control the opacity just for the subject so for the subject I want just a little bit of it 28 and there you go so how it works is that for example let's say I create one more layer and I just start painting on it so with the brush selected let's choose a funky color like green so you can see what's happening and I start painting like this it paints over the entire image however if I hold the ALT key or the option key and click on the line between these two layers here we have an arrow we have another arrow everything is directed towards the subject it will be limited just to the subject let's create one more layer let's choose another funky color like red hold the ALT key option key click on the line between these two layers again whatever we do will be limited to the subject of course you can break it hold the ALT key the option key again and click on the line again it shows the icon with a cut click on that and it's outside of the clipping mask so in this example the real world application is we have one color lookup just for the background and we have other one just for the subject and we can control them individually you can even go ahead and choose a different color lookup for the subject for example this one or soft forming this just opens up a lot of possibilities for you I like this one I'm gonna go with it makes it pop we have already learned this in lesson one but in case you missed it if you want the layer thumbnails to be bigger just right click on the empty space you can choose no thumbnails no thumbnails are going to show up small ones medium ones and large ones however if the list is too long and there is no space to click on you can click on the hamburger icon of the layers panel and inside of that go to panel options and from here you can choose the size in other words the thumbnail size of the list let's keep it medium hit okay that's fine let's close this keep it clean there you are finally let us discuss the different types of layers we have already discussed and covered a lot of them throughout the lessons let's clarify them first of all we have our raste delay these are regular layers made up of pixels now since it is made up of pixels you can modify the pixels for example here we have a blue gradient background and on top of that we have a regular raster layer made up of pixels I can go ahead and erase it if I want to so let's choose a hard round brush we can erase it no worries we are just simply making the pixels go away it's made up of pixels so that is not an issue I can paint in pixels that's not an issue I can change or modify the pixels for example by choosing the smudge tool or the blur tool so I can push it around do whatever I want now since we are modifying the pixels directly of course there are drawbacks for example right now let's say there are 1000 pixels just let's say for Simplicity press Ctrl or command D and I'm going to make it really really small hit enter and just apply it okay so the number of pixels reduced from 1000 let's say to 50. again if we press Ctrl or command D and try to make it larger again we don't have any details because we only have the information of those 50 pixels and we are trying to expand it to 1000 pixels so Photoshop has to guess all of that data in between and that is why we lose all the details so if you're making things smaller or larger again and again it is not very advisable to use raster layers so what would we do in this case we would right click on it and convert the raster layer into a smart object and that is our second type of layer now you can press controller command D you can make it as small as you want and then you can make it as big as you want and you don't lose any details smart object is simply a preview of The Source or the original image now this image is still made up of pixels the smart object is simply a preview of that image not the image itself so right now whatever I'm doing to it for example making it smaller make making it larger we are doing to that preview the source is not affected however if you click on the thumbnail of this it opens the source for you in a separate document and now of course you can modify the pixels for example I'm going to take the Eraser and erase this Branch right here all right this one as well and if I save it by pressing Ctrl or command s the preview gets updated as well let's close it there we go this is simply a preview of it and since it is just a preview you cannot change the pixels of it if you select the Eraser and try to erase that you cannot do it so how do we get around that we simply create a mask so click on the mask button the mask is created remember anything that is the White shows up anything that is black hides so just take the brush and paint with white and black so let's paint with black to erase it so right here we are painting with black and let's paint with white to show it again here's one more advantage over the Eraser that you can bring things back as well the next type of layers are adjustment layers we already discussed that they adjust the layers beneath it and you can turn it off you can change the adjustment at any point of time let's say you want to change the blue of your shirt let's create a hue saturation adjustment layer by clicking on the adjustment layer icon and then choosing Hue saturation with the help of the hand right here click on the hand if you click and drag on the blue it will increase or decrease the saturation if you drag it to the right it will increase the saturation if you drag it to the left it will decrease the saturation pretty cool isn't it also if you hold the control role or command and then if you click and drag it changes the Hue so we can have it this color or any other color you want that is just fantastic so I'm going to keep it this color for example you can change the saturation you can make it absolutely black or gray it's up to you now not all of the blue is selected to make sure all of them is selected you can expand the range the first thing to do is first increase the saturation all the way to the right hand side also the Hue so that you can see which areas are being affected and then you can expand the range from right here the range of colors that are selected if this is all confusing to you don't worry about it right now just play with it just enjoy it and I have a master class also about Hue saturation if you're interested that you can watch after this video so once you have selected the range of colors that you want to Target you can modify it according to your liking let's make it black or gray up to you I'm gonna make it black looks pretty cool with that so here's the before here's the after and then you have text layers and shape layers which are vector based you might ask what is a vector well raster is a kind of graphic that is made up of pixels if you zoom in you can see the pixels for example this one right you can see those boxes right here Vector is a kind of graphic that is not made up of pixels but based on mathematics now since it's not based on pixels by the way Adobe Illustrator is one of the most popular programs to create vector graphics and this is illustrator since it's not based on pixels no matter how much you zoom in it will never pixelate so I'm going to zoom in right here so even if we are zoomed in let's say how much 64 000 it's not pixelated and it will not text layers and shaped layers are vector based does that mean it will never pixelate in Photoshop of course not because it's on a raster canvas this canvas is made up of pixels 4000 by 4000 pixels so this is a text layer right of course because of the canvas it will show pixels however if you make it larger for example if I select the game text press controller command T no matter how large I make it it will not pixelate because of the enlargement you get the point so in Photoshop it's Vector based it is a vector in a vaster canvas of course similarly shape layers as well so let's say I was to add a shape layer click on the rectangle tool icon if you don't see it click and hold in that group and you will have all of these shapes let us choose a rectangle and create a rectangle right here let's do it this way all right that's nice and you can simply change the color by double clicking right here and change the color to whatever you wish so I'm going to change the color to this one that looks nice and you can use one of those points around the corners to create a curve that's also nice and this my friend is a shape layer and you can tell it's a shape layer by looking at this icon right there you can tell a layer is a text layer by looking at the T and you can tell a layer is a smart object by looking at this icon right here this subject layer is a smart object so that's all about the basics of layers in Photoshop please use the chapters to skip to any section of the video if there's an area you don't understand watch that again follow along and most importantly enjoy have fun with it download the practice files do your experiments use your own images you are the artist there should be nothing controlling you nothing keeping you inside of boundaries Break Free there are some exciting topics inside of test that we haven't covered yet because they deserve their own class like fill like layer Styles then there are so many other things which we will cover in future lessons thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed it and if you did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any other feature tips tricks or tutorials I would like to take this moment to thank all of these nice and amazing people for supporting piximperfect on patreon and helping keep Pixel Perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating foreign [Music]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 620,147

Keywords: photoshop for beginners, photoshop course, layers, basics of photoshop, adobe, tutorial, compositing, graphic design, text behind object, masking, overlay, blending mode, adjustment layer, smart object, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: unCS9syPJjg

Length: 48min 46sec (2926 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 18 2023