Photoshop’s default behavior is to add a layer mask whenever an adjustment layer is created. You can however use the fly-out menu on the Adjustments panel to check/uncheck “Add Mask by Default” to toggle this behavior.
Discover how easy it is to emulate traditional photographic techniques in this free video (Photographic Toning Techniques in Photoshop CC 2017), from Photoshop CC 2017 Essential Training: Photography on Lynda.com.
I wanted to share with you my “Advanced Photoshop CC Tips for Photography and Compositing” presentation from earlier this month at Adobe MAX. Enjoy!
I’m excited to announce that my new Photoshop 2017 Essential Training: Photography course is now live on Lynda.com!
Whether you’re an experienced photographer or someone who has just recently purchased a camera, learning how to use Photoshop is the best investment you can make to get the most out of your pixels. In Photoshop CC 2017 Essential Training: Photography, Julieanne Kost reviews the Photoshop features and techniques that are most useful to photographers, from tonal adjustments to retouching.
Photoshop CC and its companion app, Camera Raw, are loaded with tools and features for photo editing, retouching, color correction, and creative effects, so you can always produce the highest quality images. This course gets you up to speed with Photoshop and shows the most efficient ways to perform common editing tasks, including noise reduction, shadow and highlight detail recovery, compositing, and even painting. Along the way, you will learn the secrets of nondestructive editing and mastering features such as layers, adjustment layers, blending modes, filters, layer masks, and other features that make Photoshop the most popular and powerful image editing software on the market.
Topics include:
• Making creative changes with adjustment layers
• Adding color and gradients with fill layers
• Retouching portraits
• Combining (aka compositing) multiple images
•Working with Smart Objects
• Applying filters like blurs and glow
• Painting with Photoshop
• Adding text and watermarks to photos
• Using artboards and libraries
• Exporting and sharing images from Photoshop
If you’re looking for more information, you can check out all of my Lynda.com courses here including:
Adobe Camera Raw Essential Training
Photoshop 2017 Essential Training: The Basics
Photoshop 2017 Essential Training: Design
Introduction to Photo Compositing
The Art of Photoshop Compositing
Photoshop CS6 Essential Training
And did you know that you can watch these videos off-line by using the Lynda.com desktop or mobile app?
Enjoy!
I’m excited to announce that my new Photoshop 2017 Essential Training: The Basics course is now live on Lynda.com!
Here are the details:
Learning how to use Photoshop efficiently and effectively is the best investment you can make to get the most out of your pixels. Photoshop CC Essential Training: The Basics filters out the noise and complexity so that you understand the basic features and concepts you need to use Photoshop effectively, whether you’re a photographer or designer.
Julieanne Kost reviews the basics of digital imaging, from bit depth to image size, and shows how to use different Photoshop tools to crop and retouch photos, while always maintaining the highest-quality output. She shows the most efficient ways to perform common tasks, including working with layers, making selections, and masking. Along the way, you will learn the secrets of nondestructive editing using Smart Objects, and master features such as adjustment layers, blend modes, filters, and much more—increasing your productivity every step of the way.
Topics include:
• Opening files in Photoshop, Bridge, and Lightroom
• Arranging your workspace
• Modifying keyboard shortcuts
• Changing color mode, bit depth, and document size
• Cropping and straightening images
• Working with layers and layer masks
• Using brushes
• Making detailed selections
• Retouching
• Editing images with the Content-Aware tools
• Using blend modes
• Creating Smart Objects
• Using adjustment layers to change color, tone, contrast, and saturation
• Applying filters
If you’re looking for more information, you can check out all of my Lynda.com courses here including:
Adobe Camera Raw Essential Training
Photoshop 2017 Essential Training: Design
Photoshop 2017 Essential Training: Photography
Introduction to Photo Compositing
The Art of Photoshop Compositing
Photoshop CS6 Essential Training
And did you know that you can watch these videos off-line by using the Lynda.com desktop or mobile app?
Enjoy!
Discover new features and enhancements made to Artboards including new background color properties and easier duplication of layers and layer groups, Adjustment layer support for Looks and Fill layer support for Patterns created in Capture CC, read-only Library Collaboration, and new export options for embedding color profiles and additional Artboard improvements.
Note: because of the new background color support, Artboard backgrounds export as visualized on the canvas (i.e. if you see a background, you will get that when you export – you must set transparency to export as transparent).
The visual representation of “transparency” as a checkerboard works the same in Artboard documents as it does in regular canvases. Therefore, if you have changed your Preferences > Transparency & Gamut to None, then you will not see the checkerboard representing transparency in an Artboard.
While making changes to an image using an adjustment layer, hold the “\” (backslash) key to toggle between the before state (when you started making changes) and the current state (the changes you’ve made).
One of the lesser understood features in Photoshop is the Gradient Map Adjustment Layer. This is unfortunate because it is really useful for creating richly colored, yet subtly toned image effects including mimicking traditional cross processed looks. In the following examples, I converted the original image to black and white using Lightroom’s Develop module, then opened the file into Photoshop and added a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer from the bottom of the Layers panel. Instead of using the default gradients, I clicked on the downward pointing triangle to the right of the gradient swatch in the Properties panel, and then clicked the gear icon and selected Photographic Toning. Although most of the presets appeared overly saturated when applied at 100%, that was easily solved by lowering the opacity of the Gradient Map Adjustment Layer. In the final example, I decided not to convert the image to black and white and instead use a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer to shift the colors in an RGB image.
Original black and white conversion.
Photographic Toning Preset – Gold Blue applied as a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer at 30%.
Photographic Toning Preset – Gold Copper applied as a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer at 50%.
Photographic Toning Preset – Gold Sepia applied as a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer at 45%.
Original RGB image with Photographic Toning Preset – Sepia Selenium 3 Gradient Map Adjustment Layer applied at 75%.
Note: although you may achieve similar results for some effects using the Split Tone or Tone Curve panels in Lightroom’s Develop module or ACR, I prefer the level of control over both color and tone achieved using Photoshop’s gradients.
After converting layer(s) to Smart Objects, applying Image > Adjustments > (xxx), adds the adjustment as a Smart Filter. This can be helpful when the same mask is needed for all adjustments (although you could also achieve this by placing all adjustments within a Layer Group and adding the mask to the group).
Available adjustments are: Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Curves, Exposure, Vibrance, Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, Black and White, Photo Filter, Channel Mixer, Color Lookup, Invert, Posterize, Threshold, Gradient Map, Selective Color, and Shadows/Highlights.
I would be curious to know how (if) you are using this feature…
In this Episode of The Complete Picture, Julieanne demonstrates how to reduce the color palette of an image to create a posterized effect with the most control and maximum flexibility possible.
In this Quick Tip, Julieanne demonstrates the new Color Lookup Adjustment layer and walks you through how to download a template to quickly apply these new “looks” to your images.
Here is the linked file that I refer to in the video. LUTimage_replace.psd
If you’ve ever created a special style or “look” to apply to your images using multiple layer adjustment and blending options, then the ability to create and export Color Lookup Tables (LUTs) in Photoshop CC could potentially save you a significant amount of time. Although historically Color LUTs have been used primarily by the film industry, I believe that many photographers and designers will find the ability to remap any color in an image to any other color quite powerful.
These “looks” can be used to simply color correct an image, or they can be used to take an image to the extreme! Certainly we can use presets in Lightroom and/or Camera Raw to make creative color manipulations, but in Photoshop, we can use Color Lookup Tables to incorporate not only the entire range of Adjustment and Fill Layers (such as Curves, Selective Color, Channel Mixer, Gradient Fill, even other Color LUTs!) but even more features including blend modes, opacity, and the advanced blending sliders.
For example, the image below has three different “looks” applied using a variety of layer adjustments and blending options. (Click on the image to view it larger.)
Now, instead of having to apply each series of adjustments to another image, these adjustments can be exported as a single Color LUT (File > Export > Color Lookup Tables). Note: I chose to save my LUTs as ICC Profiles because it isn’t dependent on a color space, but you can also export a 3D LUT file or a Device Link. Click here for more information on the types of LUTs.
To load and apply a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer to another document, choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Lookup and, in the Properties panel, load the custom LUT. And don’t forget, the Color Lookup Adjustment layer can then be selectively hidden/revealed using the Adjustment Layer mask as well as blended using blend modes and opacity for additional creative opportunities.
For those of you who might be asking “Why not just drag and drop the adjustment layers onto another file?” Well, color LUTs created in Photoshop can be used in Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, SpeedGrade and other applications that use 3D LUTs to help get the same look and feel across images and other media (like video), even though these applications don’t share the same math and color correction techniques. The Color Lookup Table can also include the results of dozens of adjustments, and apply those to images in different colorspaces (which doesn’t always work when dragging adjustment layers between documents).
Note: there is one caveat, you can not use layer masks to selectively hide or reveal any of the adjustments while making the color lookup table – they need to be applied to the entire image (canvas) area.
Click here for more information (as well as a downloadable file to quickly see your own image with each default LUT applied).
Chris Cox has also posted two additional color profiles for you to download and try.
Clicking on the adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the Layer’s panel quickly adds an adjustment layer while bypassing the New Adjustment Layer dialog box. However, when adding Gradient and Solid Color Fill layers, I often want the option to change the blend mode of the layer (before choosing the colors). Fortunately, Option + (Mac) | Alt + (Win) clicking the icon will display the Adjustment Layer’s dialog box where I can quickly make the changes I need.
Click here (2014 Favorite Layer Shortcuts) to download a compilation of some of the Layer shortcuts that I am going to share today in my compositing course at ADIM. Of course this isn’t a complete list, so feel free to search the blog for more in-depth tutorials, training, techniques and shortcuts for working with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.
I’m really excited to announce that my new class: The Art of Photoshop Compositing is now live on www.lynda.com!
“Join Julieanne Kost as she walks you through her creative thought process and explains how she transforms concepts and raw images into entirely new works of art using Adobe Photoshop. Discover how to select the images you need to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Master the tools used in compositing, including adjustment layers, masking, blending, and Smart Objects, so that the technology doesn’t get in the way of expressing your creative vision. Learn how to adjust scale and perspective and manipulate texture and focus to help viewers temporarily suspend their disbelief long enough to enter your world.”
Topics include:
I look forward to hearing your feedback!
