TK8 PLUGIN for PHOTOSHOP: Personalizing the TK8 Plugin (Speed Up Your PHOTOSHOP Workflow)

today i'm going to show you how to personalize your tk8 plugin so stay tuned you don't want to miss this one hello everyone and welcome to the joy of editing with dave kelly it's tk friday again and the tk8 panel has been out for a little over a week now and i hope you're enjoying it i thought i would devote this episode to customizing your tk8 plug-in or personalizing it to help you speed up your workflow and to make your photoshop experience all that more enjoyable you know it's more than just luminosity masking it's also about your own personal workflow what you're seeing on the screen right now is the tk8 instruction manual now i'm going to provide a link for this manual in the description below this video you get this manual when you purchase the tk8 plug-in but in case you misplaced yours go ahead and click on the link and download it because you're going to want to have it as a reference things just keep getting better with tk products now tk8 is really customizable and i really want to break some of that down for you today and show you how you can really speed up your workflow when you really personalize the panel for your own daily photoshop use and like i said it's more than just luminosity masking it's a workflow tool and that's exciting now let's get into the personalization of the tk8 plugin now if my plugin looks a little bit different than yours it's because i've started to personalize mine now the tk plug-in consists of the tk8 multi-mask panel and the tk8 cx and combo panels but all together they're called a plug-in just in case you were wondering this customization will be taking place with the cx and the combo panels now you may use just the cx panel or just the combo panel but after today you may decide to use both of the panels which i'll explain why shortly there's a new feature in the tk8 plug-in and that is the fact that you can have help on any one of these buttons anytime you hover over a button you'll notice you have help whether you're using the multi-mask panel or the cx panel or the combo panel you have that instant help for you which is really nice especially when you're first getting to use these panels and you're not familiar with everything yet but after a while you'll start to know what things are and you may want to shut those tool tips off so here's how you do that if you come to any of the panels and look for the tk icon see on the multi mask it's here here it doesn't here it is on the cx and here it is on the combo just click the tk you'll notice you have a show tooltips all you have to do is uncheck it and now the tooltips won't be there now if you say well i forget what this particular icon is all about if you hold your option or alt key down you can still see the help information so that's really nice though you don't have to be bothered by always seeing the tooltips if you don't want to my next tip is concerning actions now both the cx panel you'll notice it has actions as well as the combo panel has actions okay so they both have actions but here is my tip i want to use the cx panel for all the different functions that it gives me you know all the different buttons and so on and so forth but i want the combo panel to always have my tk8 actions displayed for me and never go away and then whenever i need to quickly grab an action i can simply click on an action and i'm good to go let me x out of here real quick and i'll show you what we need to do what we have to do here is come up to the tk icon give us a click and you notice right here where it says close tk it's checked on right now okay so what that basically means is whenever i run an action for instance let me just go ahead and run an action let me run this soft pop action by the way we'll just run the soft pop action here give it a second it runs the action here's my before and here's my after it gives my image a nice soft pop but you notice the actions close down and i'm back to the combo panel again but i want the actions to always stay open so here's what i can do let's x out of here come to the tk icon click this and see right here where it says close tk uncheck that and now let's x out of here so now let me go ahead and turn the tk actions on again let me go ahead and um let's just use another action i'm going to delete this layer in a second but let's use the vignette action i'll click the vignette action and watch it adds a vignette i'll click ok it adds a vignette to my image here's the before and there's after you can see the vignette but you notice the action stayed open so that's very interesting right so that means i can utilize the tk8 cx panel for all the functionality that it gives me but i can also keep my actions open at all time now if i don't want to see this pellet right here i can shut this or the panel i should say shut that it's gone but then i can open it back up and now that'll remain open to my actions anytime i open this back up now that'll remain that way until i shut down photoshop once i shut down photoshop and open photoshop back up again i'll be back to what that combo panel looks like but all i have to do is turn the actions on again and then as long as i keep photoshop open those actions will always be there so all you have to do is remember when you first start up photoshop if you want your actions open up just open them up and they'll stay open as long as you have this closed tk unchecked so that is my tip now if you want to you could take this combo panel and drag it somewhere else and always keep it open in other words maybe you don't want to keep open and closing up this panel here let me drag it over and add it to the channels and pass section here if i'm not using channels i got it right here and that's always open for me okay so here's my layers here's my multi-mass panel here's my actions open for me all the time here's my combo panel can you see how powerful this customization can be it really excites me let me show you something else before i forget let me x out here real quick now if you're a person has a lot of user actions found in this icon right here if i click this here's my user actions you can set this up to keep your user actions open up all the time too go ahead and click the tk icon and your customization menu will come up and all you need to do is uncheck see where it says close user uncheck that and that way you always have your user actions available at your fingertips and coming up shortly i'm going to show you how to make a user action that you can put in here that will launch any photoshop plugin that you want that's going to be really cool so stay tuned for that but you can keep that open all the time if you want to so you can either keep your user actions opened up or your regular tk actions i like to keep the tk actions opened up because i use them a lot but whatever is your preference but you also have this icon right here with your user actions in as well so that's there for you all the time too now i do want to point this out as well the cx panel and the combo panel are independent of each other in other words if i add user actions into the combo panel they won't automatically be added into the cx panel so they are different so you have to load them up each individually with your own user actions which is actually something nice because we could come to the tka combo panel in other words i can have all my actions in here for launching programs but then i could have a whole set of miscellaneous actions that i've created in this section the next tip is going to be right click color tagging how do you like that for a term right click color tagging let's take a look at my tk8 cx panel now you'll notice i have a lot of different buttons that are have they're colored and these are buttons that i've color tagged so they're buttons i use a lot and i want to be able to get to them quickly and find them easily color tagging buttons is one way to help us customize our workflow and speed things up here's a button i use a lot to resize my image to fit the screen i'm going to right click on it and we'll color tag it so now it's going to be easy to find here's a button i use a lot to remove selections or re-select selection so i'm going to right click and color tag it and another one i use is this one here to either hide a selection or to reveal the selection but it doesn't get rid of the selection so it's one i use a lot and sometimes i can't find it so now i'll be able to find it should you decide you no longer want to color tag a certain button just right click it and the color tagging goes away right click again and the color tagging comes back it's just that easy color tagging also works with actions but it's a little bit more elaborate and what i mean by that is if you right click on an action that you like to use a lot like i like to use the spotlight action if i right click here it gives me a choice of colors for instance i may want to make this one orange for some particular reason so go ahead and click it and now it's orange if i right click it again i can change it to say maybe like a purple if i want to remove it i could right click it again and just click on this icon that removes the color tagging but i'm going to go ahead and color tag it with purple so it comes in very handy on your actions as well and i highly recommend that you use this color tagging because it's really going to speed up your workflow hey let me know in the comment section below what you think about all these different customization things that you can do and let me know how you're using customization to speed up your workflow with the tk8 plugin the next customization tip is how to program this instant action right here this is a special button called instant action you can put one action in there could be maybe say your favorite action to load up this instant action all you have to do is command or control click this icon and when you do it'll tell you to choose an action set now it's gonna list your different action sets here now i have a group here called open filters i'm going to click this and i'm going to fill this with one of my favorite um topaz plugins and that's topaz studio and i have an action made to launch topaz studio 2 right here so i'm going to click here and now that is programmed into this instant action i'm going to go ahead and launch topaz studio too but to do that i have to have a pixel layer to do that so what i'm going to do is i'm going to get rid of these two layers so vignette is selected and i'm just going to come up to my trash can which is color coded so i can find it easy click this gets rid of my vignette filter i'm going to get rid of my soft pop by clicking here and then i want to duplicate this background layer by clicking this action right here see how quick that is on your workflow when you use uh the tk8 cx or combo panel really nice so there's my uh background copy now if i click this action click it and it will launch topaz studio 2 and then i could get started inside of topaz studio 2. of course i'm not going to do anything because i'm just showing you how it works so for now i'm just going to go ahead and click cancel and that brings me back into photoshop but that's how easy it is to program that instant action with an action my next tip is concerning your user actions and how you can create actions to launch other photoshop plugins and i'm going to actually show you how to make that action let's start by making an action i'll show you how to make an action to launch a plugin so what we'll do is come up to your actions click on your actions open up the actions and you can make yourself a new folder by coming here and clicking folder and you can put a bunch of different actions inside a folder like different actions but i have a folder already made here called open filters so i'm just going to click on that open filters folder and then i'll simply come here and you see the little plus here click this give your action a name i'm going to call this action l u m space a i for luminar a i now i'm using two words and i'm using three characters maximum per word now there's a reason for that it'll make sense don't worry about that right now if you stay through to the end of this video you'll understand why i'm doing this but for now do it this way so i'm this is luminar ai and i'm going to go ahead and click record and you see my little record icon is lit up now because i'm recording all i have to do now is come up here to this little hamburger menu i'm going to call it click here and click on insert a menu item when you do all you need to do is come up to filter then and find luminar ai which is in the skylim software section luminar ai click that and now it says software skylim software luminar ai and click ok and now i've recorded that action and i'm done so i have to click stop this is very important after you're done just click stop that's a really fast and easy action to make and that's how simple it is to make an action to launch a photoshop plug-in now we're done we can just click this icon and shut our actions down now let's go ahead and load that action into user actions now if your user actions aren't open all you need to do is click this icon here and click the plus and i have that under open filters and it's the last one i made called loom ai for luminar ei i'm going to go ahead and click this and now it's installed as an action now i can right click this and color code it let's give it a color code like blue or any color you want really i mean you have your choice of any of these colors now let's go ahead and give it a test say we wanted to make it a smart object before we send it into luminar ai so let's come and click x and get out of here and let me turn this into a smart object by clicking this icon right here it'll convert that into a smart object it takes a second or two and now we can come to my user actions and click luminar ai it'll go ahead and launch luminar ai now remember it's going in as a smart object it gives it takes a second or two for luminar ai to launch here and here we are in luminar ai and i could go into edit and do whatever i want in here but of course i'm not going to do anything so i'm just going to click cancel because i'm just showing you that it does work okay so just like that we've made an action to launch luminar ai and it lives right inside of here this is my last tip for you and it is dealing with reprogramming certain buttons on the tk8 cx panel or combo panel now i'm on page 31 of the instruction guide remember you can download this just click on the download link below the video in the description and you can get this instruction manual but you notice these buttons that are highlighted in red like the 100 button these buttons in here including the blend buttons and the different sizing buttons and then we have the adobe camera raw filter button in the content aware field button these particular buttons can be reprogrammed so if you find there's a button that you really don't use say you don't use the size button or the canvas button which i don't generally use too often or at all i can reprogram these i'm going to show you how this works or say this 100 button you don't use it a lot you can reprogram it or maybe the content aware feel or the adobe camera raw filter if you don't use that that much you could reprogram those buttons which is really handy i've already went ahead and reprogrammed some of my buttons for instance this button neural filter any ufil now remember i told you only use like three characters and two words and this is the reason why because you only have so much space here you can only use two words in here and you have so much space so any u for neural fil for filter and down here two words tp uh topaz for topaz and this is studio now i remember i changed this uh what's it called the instant action button to topaz studio 2 because it's probably the plugin i use the most so i may want to change this one out so let me go ahead and change this one out all i need to do is command click this and click reset and it resets it back to content aware feel now we'll fill it with something else before i do that i'm going to right click this layer and rasterize it because i want to send this layer into a lens blur filter and i can't send a smart object into a lens blur filter what i'll do is take this content aware fill button and change it to a lens blur icon so what i need to do is make an action to launch a lens blur filter so what i need to do is come up to my actions i'm going to click on this group called open filters and click the plus here and give this action a name and it's going to be called l e n for lens space b l r for lens blur click record and then all i have to do is come up to this menu here and choose insert menu item and now we'll come to filter and it sits in this blur section and it's called lens blur so click that and now the menu item is blur lens blur click ok and then click stop that's very important now we can close this action down now we can command or control click caf content aware fill and then we can click this action here for open filters now i'll just click lens blur and now you notice that content aware feel has now been replaced by lens blur so if i click on this lens blur filter it'll send this background copy into the lens blur filter just like that now i'm not going to do anything with it now so i'm just going to click cancel so now i've reprogrammed content aware field would be my lens blur filter i want to do one last thing i'm going to take this acr because this is one of the buttons i can reprogram i'm going to command or control click it i'm going to fill it with an action which is found in this group called the joy of editing called depth map i'm going to click that and now that depth map lives in there and the reason i'm doing that is because i like to use a depth map with my lens blur filter and the way i get that depth map is by getting it from the neural filter and i just did a video on this which i'll link at the end of this video and i'm gonna end this video with a demonstration and that is how i utilize the uh depth map lens blur and neural filter one after the other by reprogramming my tk8 cx panel so what i do is make sure i have my background layer selected i click on neural filter which launches the neural filter then i'll click depth blur make sure i have it checked on i'll check off output depth map only it'll make me a depth map i click ok then all i simply do is come to depth map and give this a click and what it does is it duplicates my background layer which i'm going to send into the lens blur filter but it also added a depth map to my channels panel all right and then all i have to do at this point is click on lens blur it sends that layer into the lens blur filter and then i can utilize my depth map right now it says none i'm going to put depth map on i utilize my depth map and then what i can do is i have this set focal point selected right here i can click any part of this image like if i want this part to be in focus it'll let this part of the image be in focus the rest out of focus or i can click here because it's got a depth map involved right and it's just that simple and then i just click ok and then i'm back in photoshop but that is how i'm using the tk8 cx combo panel to speed up my lens blurring process because it's quite an involved process and go and watch that video and again i'll listen at the end of this video but it uses a lens blur filter a depth map and a neural filter it's really cool and with the aid of the customization on the tk8 cx panel it really sped up my workflow time by the way i'll give you a link to download my depth map action for free in case you want to try installing it into your tka plug-in for some practice but give this a try customize your uh tk8 plug-in i think you'll be really happy please leave comments and questions in the comment section below hey if you enjoyed this tutorial today please give it a like and share it with your friends and if you're not yet a subscriber to my channel please subscribe click that bell notification icon then every time i upload a new tutorial you'll be notified about it well i want to thank each and every one of you for joining me today in the joy of editing with dave kelly and i'll see you all right here next time but until then happy editing [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Joy of Editing with Dave Kelly

Views: 2,051

Rating: 4.978261 out of 5

Keywords: TK8, TK8 Plugin, TK8 Multi-Mask Panel, TK8 Combo/Cx Panel, Photoshop, Speed up Workflow, Photography, Photo Editing, Tutorial, Training, Luminosity Masks, Actions, Workflow, The Joy of Editing With Dave Kelly, Dave Kelly, The Joy of Editing

Id: lLzHpwe6Hpc

Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021