Learning Photoshop the proper way -Part5

Hello,

so i started to write this blog some months ago and some people really enjoyed it.

I did not had the motivation last few months because of having a new job. I had to move because of it so i was a little bit stressed out and stuff :-)

Last blogentry didnt seemed to get as many attention as the ones before. I guess it was because i did not talk about Potoshop at all and only talked about pictures. I still think you should spend alot of time thinking about pictures, art or whatever your into, compared to the time you actually spend in Photoshop. I think of it like playing Starcraft without a solid opener. You need to understand whats happening in the picture that is in front of you. Otherwise you will just play around with colours and this and that and then close Photoshop again. Photoshop is a tool for you to change or paint Pictures the way you want (or a client wants you to). You can know every tool or function Photoshop has to offer you. This does not make you any good at it. Yeah your "mechanics" are like the ones of a Grandmaster but your understanding is bronze. But of course you need to know some basics. Ohterwise your screwed.

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First things first

This entry is a bit advanced. But the thing i will talk about this time is something that became more and more basic and logical to me, the more i used Photoshop. So i hope this kind of "technique" will save you alot of struggle later on. To me this is fundemental in my workflow.

Please stay with me even though english speaking people might get a "WTF" moment here or there. Not everyones born in England or the USA or payed attention at school ;-) Also ask questions if something is confusing you!

Also if youre still new to Photoshop this will be most useful to change colours, brightness and saturation and so on. Later you can use this technique for other tools.

Selections and Masks

Some entries ago i told you to use the Path tool because its a bread and butter tool you just have to know. When you manipulate pictures you always want to change "that thing over there" or "this certain thing that bugs me here". Maybe its just this one thing that needs some more red or you want to blur or whatever. But you first have to select it. You have to define space in which you work within a picture. This is essential. Otherwise you just puke all over the image.

There are alot of gimmicky tools photoshop offers but we go all the way back before Photoshop was even around. Before computers existed.

Back when i was still playing with toys there was a certain technique to manipulate pictures without computers.
Basicly the idea was you have "negatives". They are called Lithofilms i hope they are called the same in english. So imagine you have a big negative of a picture in front of you. Physicly. And you spray chemicals or light on it so you can change the brightness of it. Say you want to get rid of a shadow. They used chemicals to get the "black parts" out of the the picture. But they could not just spray those chemicals all over the picture s[o they put a special red foil over the parts they wanted to protect. Its basicly the same idea as this:

[image loading]

(a random picture on google images)

Only with this knowledge we can fully undertand the following function Photoshop offers us.

Alright. Lets prepare for battle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Double click that Mask item!!
[image loading]

(Give it 100% youll understand soon. Also use Masked Areas unlike me. I forget to change it back for the screenshot. I like the other one better but for understanding use Masked areas. Its the default one.)

I hope you read and understood the last blog posts and fooled around with Photoshop a bit.

So this is how it works: You can switch between "Selection Mode" and "Mask Mode" at any given time by pressing the button Q. There is a reason why it is Q.. its because this function is so important they put it on a confi place for your hand.

Anyway..

You see that one icon switch from grey to dark grey when you press Q. Keep an eye on it so you wont get confused at the beginning. Dark grey means you are in the "Mask Mode".

For the nerds: You only work with vizualized 0 to 255 bits or 0% to 100% now. No colours involved at all.

Alright.. Stay withe me!!

So there are two ways to approach this:

We are in the "normal Mode / selection Mode".. the one you are probably in if you did not press Q yet.. and we use tools like.. making selections (Key: M) or other tools that can make you selections (Path tool i talked about in Part2 i think). You can then press Q to make a temporary mask/foil out of this selection. Now its red, right?. This IS the red foil i talked about earlier. The red parts protect the image from the changes we will do later. You now defined a space where you can change something in your picture. VERY important is that you understand this "Mask Mode" is there to visualize a "Selection". We dont touch the image itself. We define the space we want to change later on.

The other way around is like this:

If we are in the "Mask Mode" (by using Q) we can now for example paint a Mask with a brush. This also means we can paint Selections because we can switch back and forth with the button Q and make Selections out of Masks and Masks out of Selections. Get it? This i huge! We dont have to limit ourself to static slections the Selection Tool or the Quick Selection or many other Tools give us.

We can use all those Tools and then switch into the Mask mode and refine those selections. We can use all the Tools given by Photoshop to also work in the "Mask Mode". Not only the brush. We can use the for example the "Dodge Tool" or the "Burn Tool" only to define what space we want to work in. This gives a hole new level of depth to Photoshop and many of its tools! We now dont just use to Dodge Tool to paint/make a certain part of the image brighter. We can use the Dodge Tool to tune our mask/the space whe want to work with.

Think about the Sprayer again. He only has a paper cutout. It will block all the colour thus making a shape. 100% colour where theres no paper and 0% where the paper bocks the paint. The paint wont go threw the paper. But we can say "Here i dont want colour to be sprayed on the wall BUT here i want 25% of the color go threw the paper and here 12%". We can not only define Space where we want something to change we can even define how much % we change. And this is the magic of the Mask Mode.

Alright heres an example. Think of the Sprayer once again.

Step 1 Normal / Selection Mode

We do a square selection (Shorcut for the tool: M) in the normal Photoshp Mode we are used to.
[image loading]

Step 2 Mask Mode

We Press Q thus switching to the "Mask Mode". Again, the red is your foil that protects the white (which woul be a picture for example) behind it
[image loading]

Step 3 still in Mask Mode

We take a Brush (Shorcut for the tool: B) with a soft edge (right click while Brush is active) and click once (or draw something)
[image loading]

Steph 4 Normal / Selection Mode

Switch back to "normal Mode" and fill your selection with Colour by rightclick and "Fill ..." or click alt+backspace or ctrl + backspace. Now you painted colour only where your mask lets you.
[image loading]

The logic behind this is hard to undestand if you are new. But this is not only a clean style of working it has much more benefits. Sure we can fill this Mask/Selection with colour. But we can also use those tools:
[image loading]

(this is the bottom of the Layerwindow)

Now whats the connection between those precious tools in the screenshot above and the Mask Mode.

Go threw Step 1 to 4 again. You have your selection, right?
Now just click on one of those tools in the screenshot above. It will automaticly make a mask. Now your.. lets say Curves tool only works on the space you defined with the steps taken before. Same as the black colour worked when we filled our selection with black. We need / should use the Mask Mode to make clean and complex Masks for the Masks we "cut out" our Layers in the Layerwindow.

We can do very very complex colour corrections for example. Lets say we want to Photoshop a picture of us for a new job. But we dont want to pay this local photographer whos ripping everyone off, right?

Because we dont have a Studio we only have like one light in our room thus making one side of our face way to dark where the light does not reach. We now change this error by only using one tool, only one layer, only one set of colour correction. Only one Curve, or one Brightness change.

THIS IS working clean. The more clean and complex your Mask are on your Layer, the better the result and controle over the picture!!! This will consume most of your time. Changing the colour will be fast.

For the advanced people: Imagine you can tell your Clone Tamp Tool exactly where to Stamp and with how much opacity.

f you work like this you will avoid having 50 Layers on top of each other and have redundant changes to your image. If you want to make something more green you do this with only ONE thing. You dont first make it more bright, the second change is to make it less blue and on top you give it more contrast with a third tool. And the one thing that makes your face less red is also making the background less red and so on... Thats bullshit. Less is more. Sure sometimes you need to use more than one step but keep it simple by using good and clean Masks.

I think this is really advanced after writing it all down. I thought it would be easier to explain and the fact my english is not that good makes it even harder. But i hope you get the idea.

Defining spaces you want to change beforehand and then change those spaces with as less tools as you can.

Feedback is appreciated as always!!

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Hope you guys liked this one. Someone in the last blog said he wants this thread to be more about Photoshop and the technical side of it. So here you go. I hope this helps you. Try to understand and use this method of working because it will open a hole new layer of possibilities within the program and the tools that come along.

I wish you all an awesome weekend full of Stacraft and Photoshop

Ask questions if something is unclear! Ill answer them all.

Much love,
leech

Previous Parts:

http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/photoshop
http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/photoshop/rss

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ps. the person who made the pictureuploader script is a genious ♥

Learning Photoshop the proper way -Part5

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