IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! My name is Nigel French and welcome
to Photoshop for Designers: Shape Layers.
| | 00:09 | In this course, we'll look at using
shape layers to create artwork that is
| | 00:13 | crisp and scalable, as well as how to
combine shape layers without pixel-based
| | 00:17 | imagery and photographs.
| | 00:20 | I'll start by showing you the
fundamentals of drawing and combining shapes.
| | 00:24 | Next, we'll move onto creating
some effective and surprisingly simple
| | 00:28 | designs, some exclusively with shape layers,
others that combine shape layers with photographs.
| | 00:35 | I'll show you how to use
Photoshop's filters, adjustment layers, and
| | 00:39 | Masking tools with shapes.
| | 00:41 | We'll also be looking at
creating your own custom shapes,
| | 00:45 | combining Photoshop with Illustrator,
and the basics of working with the Pen
| | 00:50 | tool, us something that
causes people a lot of confusion.
| | 00:54 | So let's get started with
Photoshop for Designers: Shape Layers.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a Premium member of the Lynda.
com Online Training Library or if you're
| | 00:04 | watching this tutorial on a DVD-ROM,
you'll have access to the exercise files
| | 00:10 | used throughout this title.
| | 00:12 | The exercise files are in a folder
called Exercise Files and they are arranged
| | 00:17 | in folders by chapter.
| | 00:20 | If you're a Monthly member or Annual
member of lynda.com and you don't have
| | 00:24 | access to the exercise files, you can still
follow along from scratch using your own assets.
| | 00:30 | So let's get started!
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|
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1. Working with Basic ShapesThree ways to use the shape tools| 00:00 | In this title, we are going to be
working primarily with the Shape tool, which
| | 00:04 | is this one down here and has the
keyboard shortcut U, single key shortcut.
| | 00:09 | If for example you wanted to choose
the Polygon tool and you are in the
| | 00:12 | Rectangle tool, you can just press Shift+U to
cycle through, until you get to the polygon.
| | 00:17 | So Shift+U will cycle through
your various different shape tools.
| | 00:21 | We'll also be using these two: the
Path Selection tool, which will select the
| | 00:25 | whole path, and the Direct Selection
tool, which will select the individual
| | 00:30 | anchors and segments of the path.
| | 00:32 | Now when working with your shape tools,
there are three different behaviors and
| | 00:37 | they are apt to cause some confusion,
so let me just go over these first of all.
| | 00:41 | On the tool options when you choose
one of your shape tools you can draw with
| | 00:45 | shape layers, with paths, or with filled pixels.
| | 00:49 | So first of all let's draw a shape and
I'm going to choose red as my foreground
| | 00:55 | color and then draw myself a red circle.
| | 00:59 | Now I'm going to switch to my Pen
Path tool and I'll draw myself a circle.
| | 01:07 | It's not going to have any color.
| | 01:09 | And for the third option, the
filled pixels, I'll do the same thing.
| | 01:14 | You'll notice that it won't let me
draw filled pixels at the moment.
| | 01:17 | I need to actually be on a normal layer.
| | 01:20 | So I'm going to come back to
Layer 1 and do the same thing.
| | 01:23 | Let's deal with this third option
first of all, because it really is the last
| | 01:28 | time we'll mention it.
| | 01:29 | Filled pixels are not of much use to us.
| | 01:32 | When we draw a filled pixels those
pixels actually fill the layer itself,
| | 01:37 | they don't create a separate layer
which floats above your other artwork.
| | 01:41 | So they are not very flexible and they are
not scalable in the way that shape layers are.
| | 01:47 | And that's the whole thing about shape
layers and what makes them so useful is
| | 01:50 | that they create vectors which are
scalable, and that means that we can mess
| | 01:56 | around with their sizing and the
transformations on them to our heart's content,
| | 02:00 | without degrading them.
| | 02:02 | Secondly, the Pen Path. Now this
draws a pen path and that pen path is
| | 02:07 | represented with a gray outline.
| | 02:10 | If we come to the Paths panel,
we see it listed as Work Path.
| | 02:14 | Now I can save that path if I want to
and I can recall it at anytime. To save it,
| | 02:19 | I would simply double-click on it, give
it a name, click OK, then it's going to
| | 02:23 | be saved with this document.
| | 02:24 | A pen path is just potential.
| | 02:27 | It's potential that we can call on at anytime.
| | 02:29 | It's not going to affect the
appearance of our document and that gray
| | 02:33 | outline really isn't there.
| | 02:34 | That's just for our viewing convenience.
| | 02:37 | If I click beneath Path 1 on
the Paths panel, it goes away.
| | 02:40 | You can bring it back at anytime.
| | 02:43 | I can hold down my Command+Click or Ctrl+
Click and that turns it into an active selection.
| | 02:49 | So we are going to be doing some work
in this second mode, but most of the time
| | 02:54 | we're going to be working in
this mode, the Shape Layer mode.
| | 02:58 | When we draw a shape layer--I'm now
going to deselect that selection--when we
| | 03:02 | draw a shape layer, this is what happens.
| | 03:04 | It creates a whole separate layer.
| | 03:07 | It's a color filled layer. Uses the
color that you have chosen as your
| | 03:11 | foreground color. You can very easily
change it, and it draws a vector mask on
| | 03:16 | top of that color, and it's this vector
mask that defines the shape of the shape layer.
| | 03:20 | So if I click on the vector mask, we
can see the gray outline around it and I
| | 03:25 | can change the shape of that if I want to.
| | 03:27 | I can also choose my Move tool. I can
move around completely independently of
| | 03:31 | the rest of my artwork.
| | 03:33 | This gray outline we may at times find
a bit distracting and if we do, we can
| | 03:38 | come to the View menu and we can choose
Show and we can hide the Target Path,
| | 03:46 | then it's going to go away.
| | 03:46 | Something else I want to mention
about pen paths, while we are here.
| | 03:50 | What pen paths would be used for is,
| | 03:53 | well, one of the things that would
be useful is to make a selection.
| | 03:58 | And you can't see me, but I'm doing
the symbol for inverted commas there,
| | 04:03 | a selection, because it is not really a selection.
| | 04:06 | It's a pen path, but it can easily
become a selection as we saw earlier.
| | 04:11 | We can hold down Command+Click or Ctrl+
Click on that pen path and it becomes
| | 04:15 | an active selection.
| | 04:16 | What we do with the pen path once we've
made it, drawing around our subjects with
| | 04:23 | the Pen tool, is entirely up to us.
| | 04:26 | Maybe we want to mask the background.
| | 04:29 | That's probably the most
common usage of the pen tool.
| | 04:31 | And once the pen path is made, we can
modify if we want to. If I activate it.
| | 04:37 | And then I can go to my Direct
Selection tool or my Path Selection tool
| | 04:42 | and click on that path.
| | 04:43 | With the Path Selection tool I will
get a whole path or with the Direct
| | 04:48 | Selection tool I will get
individual anchor points of a path.
| | 04:52 | I can then move those around and edit
the shape of that path as necessary.
| | 04:57 | With the path active, I can come to
my Layers panel and I need to make sure
| | 05:04 | that the whole of that path is active,
so I'm going to deselect and then come
| | 05:07 | and click back on it.
| | 05:09 | I can come to my Layers panel and hold
down my Command key or Ctrl key and click
| | 05:14 | on Add Vector Mask, and you'll see that
what's happened there is the background,
| | 05:18 | formerly opaque, now becomes
transparent and we've added a vector mask.
| | 05:23 | This vector mask, although a much more
complex shape than what we saw earlier, is
| | 05:28 | just the same as this vector mask really.
| | 05:31 | It's just a more involved shape.
| | 05:34 | There is just one more thing I'd
like to mention about the conventions of
| | 05:38 | working with shape layers in Photoshop,
and that is that although they are vectors,
| | 05:44 | when we zoom into a view size bigger
than 100%, they are going to look like pixels.
| | 05:52 | So for example, over here I have
filled pixels and here I have a shape layer.
| | 05:57 | I'm going to get my Move tool and drag
the shape layer, and that's the one on
| | 06:00 | the left next to the filled pixels.
| | 06:04 | When we zoom in, they don't look any
different. They both reveal the jaggies of
| | 06:10 | something that's being viewed at
a zoom level of more than 100%.
| | 06:15 | But the one on the left is actually a
shape and when printed is going to print
| | 06:21 | crisply and can also be scaled
without degrading its quality.
| | 06:26 | This is just a Photoshop convention
different from the way Illustrator would
| | 06:30 | display the equivalent artwork.
Just something for us to keep in mind.
| | 06:34 | So just to summarize, we can work with
shapes, we can work with pen paths, and we
| | 06:41 | could, if we like doing things
the hard way, work with filled pixels.
| | 06:45 | We are not going to -- we're going
to be concentrating mainly on shapes.
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| Converting shapes to paths and vice versa| 00:00 | Here's something that can create a lot
of confusion. Because we have these three
| | 00:05 | different behaviors, two of which are
very useful, there is a good chance that
| | 00:10 | you get the one that you don't want.
| | 00:12 | And so how do we convert a shape layer to a path
or how do we convert a path to a shape layer?
| | 00:18 | So let's start out with a shape layer.
| | 00:20 | I'll draw myself a shape and let's say I now
realize actually I didn't want to a shape,
| | 00:25 | after all I wanted a pen path.
| | 00:28 | Well, if we come to the Paths panel, on
the Paths panel the vector mask of that
| | 00:34 | shape layer is listed right
there, Shape 1 vector mask.
| | 00:37 | If I double-click on that
I can save it as Path 1.
| | 00:42 | I can now come to my Layers panel and
I can delete the shape layer, but we
| | 00:46 | still have Path 1 left.
| | 00:48 | So that's how we go from
a shape layer to a path.
| | 00:51 | Let's now say we drew this as a path and
we realized actually I want a shape layer.
| | 00:57 | So we have the path active and if
it's not active, come to the Paths panel,
| | 01:02 | click on it, and now come to your Layers
panel, and come down to your adjustments layer,
| | 01:09 | and choose Solid Color,
whatever color you want, and then that solid
| | 01:14 | filled layer uses your vector mask, just as
if you had drawn the shape layer to begin with.
| | 01:20 | So that's how we go from a shape
layer to a path and vice versa.
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| Moving, deleting, copying, and rasterizing shape layers| 00:00 | Here we're going to discuss
drawing, moving, deleting, copying and
| | 00:04 | rasterizing shape layers.
| | 00:07 | So I'm going to start out with my ellipse shape.
| | 00:10 | I have red as my foreground color and
I'm just going to draw myself a circle.
| | 00:15 | Now if I want this to be a perfect
circle, then I need to hold down the Shift
| | 00:19 | key to constrain it.
| | 00:20 | The same is true for working with
rectangles, if you want perfect squares.
| | 00:25 | And if I want to draw the circle
outwards from the center point, which generally
| | 00:29 | I personally do, then I want to
hold down Option or the Alt key.
| | 00:33 | The only problem with holding down the
Option or the Alt key is that as soon as
| | 00:37 | you do, you'll see your cursor switches
to your Eyedropper tool, because that's
| | 00:42 | the shortcut for accessing the eyedropper tool.
| | 00:44 | So what you need to do is start drawing,
and then throw in the Option or Alt key,
| | 00:48 | and I'm also holding down the Shift key.
| | 00:52 | So there I have my shape layer.
| | 00:54 | Now, you'll notice that I
didn't first create the layer;
| | 00:56 | the layer is created for me.
| | 00:59 | So let's now look at deleting a shape layer.
| | 01:02 | If I were to drag the vector mask,
just the vector mask into the trash,
| | 01:09 | I get this message. I delete it. What
I get is a field of red, because I've
| | 01:13 | deleted the masking shape
| | 01:16 | that is giving definition to the shape layer
and we are left with just the solid fill color.
| | 01:21 | So I'm going to undo that, and if I
want to delete the whole layer, drag from
| | 01:27 | the color fill thumbnail and then
that will get rid of the whole thing.
| | 01:32 | But I actually don't want to delete
this, so I'm going to press Command+Z or
| | 01:36 | Ctrl+Z to put it back and we next
want to look at copying a shape layer.
| | 01:39 | So I'm going to switch to my Move tool
now and to copy the shape layer I could
| | 01:45 | drag a copy onto the Create New Layer
icon and that will Create a new layer.
| | 01:51 | But I'm not going to do that; instead,
what I'm going do is hold down the
| | 01:55 | Option or Alt key as I drag
away from the shape layer
| | 01:59 | and that creates a new shape layer on the fly.
| | 02:03 | Now we get two very distinct behaviors.
| | 02:05 | If we copy that way, starting out in
the Move tool and copying the whole layer,
| | 02:11 | and the other way is if we choose our
Path Selection tool, then we have two
| | 02:16 | variants here, but we
want the Path Selection tool.
| | 02:18 | It's going to get the whole path.
| | 02:20 | And then when I click on that we see
the gray outline indicating the path.
| | 02:25 | And now when I hold down my Option or
Alt key and drag away, what I'm doing is
| | 02:30 | I'm adding another circle to the same
shape layer, and we can see down there in
| | 02:37 | the vector mask thumbnail that we now
have two circles on that vector mask.
| | 02:41 | And one reason why I might want to do
that is so that I can use these tools up
| | 02:47 | here to determine how these shapes are combined.
| | 02:50 | Maybe I want to create
some sort of crescent shape.
| | 02:53 | In which case, I could click on that
one and the front shape will be subtracted
| | 02:58 | from the back shape.
| | 02:59 | Lastly, let's look at rasterizing a shape layer.
| | 03:04 | Rasterizing is the term we use for
converting it to pixels, so that we can do
| | 03:10 | other things with it.
| | 03:11 | There are certain things you can't do
with a shape layer, and what most comes to
| | 03:16 | mind is the ability to apply
filters to the shape layer.
| | 03:20 | With that said, I must stress that
there is actually a workaround if you
| | 03:24 | like that will allow you to apply filters to
a shape layer, but we'll get to that later on.
| | 03:30 | So let's say I'll come to the Filter
menu and down to Blur and then choose
| | 03:34 | Motion Blur. I'm going to
get this warning message.
| | 03:37 | This shape must be rasterized before proceeding.
| | 03:40 | It will no longer have a vector mask.
| | 03:42 | Rasterize the shape?
| | 03:44 | And I'll just go with that effect.
| | 03:47 | So I've gained something. I've gained
the ability to be able to soften the
| | 03:51 | edges, apply some sort of filtering effect.
| | 03:53 | What I've lost is the ability to scale
this now as a shape layer. I've lost the
| | 03:58 | vector mask that was
applied to that shape layer.
| | 04:01 | So I don't want to do that in this
case. I'm going to press Command+Z or
| | 04:06 | Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 04:06 | There is an alternative to
rasterizing the whole layer and that's just
| | 04:11 | rasterizing the filled content of the layer.
| | 04:15 | And this is quite interesting.
| | 04:16 | It's not much known about option and
it's only available under the Layer menu.
| | 04:22 | So I'm now on the top shape
layer, the right-hand circle.
| | 04:27 | If I come to the Layer menu and then
down to Rasterize, we have the option to
| | 04:32 | rasterize the shape and
that's what we saw before.
| | 04:35 | But I could rasterize the filled contents.
| | 04:38 | Now when I've rasterized the filled
content, if I choose my Brush tool, I can
| | 04:44 | choose any color and I can now paint
in on that shape, inside, using the
| | 04:55 | existing layer mask.
| | 04:57 | If I was trying to do the same on the
left here, for which we haven't rasterized
| | 05:01 | the filled content, nothing is
going to be happening over there.
| | 05:06 | So here I've rasterized the filled
content, allowing me to paint inside the
| | 05:12 | vector shape, but I've not lost
the scalability of that vector shape.
| | 05:18 | Just to wrap up what we've seen in
this movie are the basics of creating,
| | 05:22 | moving, deleting, copying,
and rasterizing shape layers.
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| Drawing rectangles, rounded rectangles, and ellipses| 00:00 | Here we're going to look at to drawing
rectangles and rounded rectangles, no
| | 00:04 | more rules apply. Hold down the
Shift key, if you want a perfect square.
| | 00:08 | Hold down the Alt key if you want to
draw the square or rectangle outwards
| | 00:12 | from the center point.
| | 00:14 | Now the thing about holding down the Alt key
is that when you hold down the Alt key,
| | 00:19 | look at my cursor there. I have a minus
next to it and if I draw, what's going
| | 00:24 | to happen is I've added that
shape to the existing shape layer.
| | 00:29 | Note what I wanted to do.
| | 00:30 | I wanted to create a new shape layer.
| | 00:32 | So I'm going to undo that and this
time I'm going to start drawing and then
| | 00:38 | hold down the Alt key.
| | 00:39 | So you need to start drawing first,
then hold down the Alt key, if the Alt key
| | 00:44 | or Option key is what you want to use
to draw the shape from the center point.
| | 00:50 | Now in addition to this, if I also wanted
it to be a perfect square, Shift key as well.
| | 00:54 | Now here is something that you can't do.
| | 00:56 | Well, that you can't do as easily as
you might like be able to do and that's
| | 00:59 | create a shape at a specific size.
| | 01:03 | There is no Transform panel here
where you can just type in the dimensions.
| | 01:08 | We need to use our rulers, so we can
just use that ruler as official guide or we
| | 01:13 | can come to our Info panel and now let's
say I want a square that is 275 pixels.
| | 01:21 | Well, I can hold down my Shift key
and I'm just looking at width and height
| | 01:26 | values on my Info panel until I
get to 275, right there. Right!
| | 01:38 | So I now have three separate shape
layers. Maybe I want to get rid of them, so
| | 01:43 | I'm going to hold down the Shift key to
select all of them, and then I'll delete them.
| | 01:48 | Delete them, Yes.
| | 01:49 | Now I'm going to create a rounded
rectangle and again, I'm going to begin
| | 01:55 | with what we can't do.
| | 01:57 | What I can't do is as I'm drawing
with the Rounded Rectangle tool, I cannot
| | 02:03 | change the radius on the fly by pressing
my up, down or left and right arrows, as
| | 02:09 | you can in Illustrator.
| | 02:11 | So unfortunately you do need to get it
right and if you get it wrong, let's say
| | 02:16 | I think that's not rounded enough,
then I just really have to get rid of that
| | 02:21 | and then come up to theRadius and
increase the Radius value and draw again.
| | 02:28 | And another thing that you can't do
is you can't, once you have drawn your
| | 02:33 | rounded rectangle, come and select it with
the path selection tool, as you might expect,
| | 02:39 | and then change the radius anywhere.
| | 02:41 | Once the radius is in, it is the way
it is, and if it's not the way you like
| | 02:45 | it, just draw it again.
| | 02:47 | So while there are some limitations,
| | 02:50 | the convenience if being able to work with
your shape layers directly within Photoshop
| | 02:55 | does I think outweigh these shortcomings.
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| Drawing lines| 00:00 | Drawing lines is very straightforward,
but there are three things to consider:
| | 00:03 | the line weight or thickness, the
angle of constrain, and whether or not you
| | 00:08 | want to add arrowheads to your lines.
| | 00:13 | Firstly the line weight, currently 1
pixel. If I draw myself a 1 pixel weight line,
| | 00:17 | it's going to look like that and
I cannot change the weight of that line
| | 00:23 | after I've drawn it.
| | 00:24 | Unless I were to come to my Layers
Effects and add an additional stroke
| | 00:28 | weight to that line. That would do it,
but it's better to get the line weight
| | 00:31 | correct to begin with.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to undo that by pressing
Command+Z or Ctrl+Z and now I'm going
| | 00:38 | to increase the line weight by pressing my
right bracket to increase the line weight.
| | 00:45 | In addition, if I wanted to draw my lines
constrain to increments of 45 degrees, either
| | 00:51 | straight or diagonal, I
would hold down my Shift key.
| | 00:55 | Now here is something to watch out for,
because if I hold down my Shift key and
| | 00:59 | draw another line and I start with my
Shift key held down, Photoshop is going
| | 01:04 | to interpret that as me wanting to add the
second line to this existing shape layer.
| | 01:10 | You can now see we have two lines, if
you look at the vector mask thumbnail.
| | 01:16 | If that's not what I want, and
actually it's not what I want, then start
| | 01:21 | drawing the line, then hold down the Shift key,
and that's going to create you a new shape layer.
| | 01:30 | The third point I want to make about
drawing lines is the ability to add
| | 01:33 | arrowheads to them. Unfortunately you
cannot add arrowheads after the effects,
| | 01:37 | you need to get this right to begin with,
and you do this through the star fish
| | 01:42 | looking like tool up here, and I'm
going to add arrowheads at the start.
| | 01:47 | I find this a little bit
counterintuitive, because you if I add arrowheads at
| | 01:51 | the start, that doesn't mean it's
going to add an arrowhead in the direction
| | 01:55 | that I'm dragging. Quite the opposite.
| | 01:58 | So if you want to add an arrowhead in
the direction that you're dragging, which
| | 02:01 | seems more likely, then you
actually want arrowheads at the end.
| | 02:05 | If you want to make the arrowhead
curved, then you want some concavity.
| | 02:09 | I'm going to change the Concavity to
50%, and if I only want the-- in this
| | 02:15 | case, the arrowhead as long as it is wide, I'm
going to make that percentage the same, 500%.
| | 02:23 | So now I can drag an arrowhead in
the direction that I'm dragging and it
| | 02:27 | would look like that.
| | 02:28 | So, some simple things to consider, but
not to be overlooked when working with lines.
| | 02:32 | The line weight or thickness,
the angle of constrain, and whether or not
| | 02:37 | you want to add arrowheads.
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| Drawing polygons and stars| 00:00 | The Polygon tool allows us to
create straight sided objects with a
| | 00:04 | specified number of sides.
| | 00:06 | I have a simple grid here just so I can draw
the different objects within these grid cells.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to draw five-sided polygon.
| | 00:14 | It will be drawn from the
center point outwards, like so.
| | 00:17 | I don't need to hold down the Alt
key in order to get it to draw from the
| | 00:20 | center point outwards.
| | 00:21 | Let's say I now want to draw a five
pointed star. I can come check the star
| | 00:25 | option, indent the size by 50%,
and that's what I'm going to get.
| | 00:29 | Now if I want the star to have the
bottom two points on a horizontal plain,
| | 00:34 | I will do the same thing and I'll hold
down the Shift key and drag up, adding the
| | 00:39 | Shift key after you've started drawing.
| | 00:41 | So we have a fewer other options.
We can add more sides to our star.
| | 00:46 | Let's say we want a 10 pointed start and
we want to change the indent of the star.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to go to 90%.
| | 00:54 | I am going to do that one down here.
| | 00:58 | That's what that one is going to look like.
| | 00:59 | I'm not going to go back to a 50% star
inset and this time I'm going to smooth
| | 01:05 | the corners, and it's going to look like that.
| | 01:10 | And how about me smooth the indents
this time? And that would look like so.
| | 01:18 | One other thing and that is
the ability to change the radius.
| | 01:22 | This is where we can specify the
distance from the center point of the star to
| | 01:26 | its edge, and I'm going to make this 150 pixels.
| | 01:32 | So it's an absolute rather than a
percentage measurement and then when I draw
| | 01:36 | right there, regardless of how far I
drag, that's going to be 150 pixels from
| | 01:41 | the center point to its edge.
| | 01:44 | So those are just some of the things
that we can achieve using the Polygon tool.
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| Drawing pen paths by adding, deleting, and converting anchor points| 00:00 | Now while this isn't a title about
using the Pen tool, we can't really talk
| | 00:04 | about shape layers without also
including the Pen tool, because it's a
| | 00:08 | fundamental selection, although it's
technically normal selection tool, but it
| | 00:12 | is used to make pen paths, which can
then become selections, but it's also a
| | 00:17 | fundamental shape drawing tool.
| | 00:19 | People tend to either love or hate
the pen tool and if they love it, it
| | 00:24 | properly didn't start out as love, but
has become that way through practice, and
| | 00:28 | probably a lot of practice,
because it's a bit counterintuitive.
| | 00:32 | But once you get the grasp of the
Pen tool, it really can become your most
| | 00:36 | flexible selection and shape drawing
tool and one that will serve you well in
| | 00:41 | all sorts of situations, and because
there's also a Pen tool in Illustrator
| | 00:46 | and in InDesign, any tools that you acquire
here in Photoshop you can also apply there.
| | 00:52 | So starting out with my Pen tool, I
have a white background and I have a grid,
| | 00:57 | I've a 600 pixel squares document and a
gridline at every 100 pixels, and I've
| | 01:04 | changed the color of this grid so
that when we draw our pen path it doesn't
| | 01:10 | merge into the grid.
| | 01:11 | So though I snapped to the grid, I'm at 100%
view size and I have Snap To > Grid turned on.
| | 01:21 | So I'm just going to run you through a
simple exercise which would introduce you
| | 01:25 | to the basic pen tool behaviors.
| | 01:29 | We're going to start out by drawing a
square and I hastened at that if you
| | 01:32 | really want to draw a square, don't do
it this way. This is just as an exercise.
| | 01:37 | So with my Pen tool I have an X next to it.
| | 01:39 | That indicates that I am about to start a path.
| | 01:41 | And I'm going to click on that grid
intersection and then hold down my Shift key,
| | 01:48 | move over four grid squares,
click again, down four, click again, over
| | 01:55 | four, click, and then back to where I started.
| | 01:59 | And when I get back to where I started,
I have a circle next to my Pen tool,
| | 02:03 | indicating them I'm about to close the path.
| | 02:05 | Okay, so there have a closed path.
| | 02:08 | So now what I'd like to do is convert
this square into a four pointed star and
| | 02:14 | to do that I'm going to
need to add some anchor points.
| | 02:18 | So I need to come to the Add
Anchor Point tool. Or rather I don't.
| | 02:21 | All I need is to have Auto Add/Delete
turned on and then when the path is
| | 02:29 | active, and to activate the path I
can just hold down my Command key or Ctrl
| | 02:33 | key, which toggles my Direct
Selection tool, click on the path, let go, and
| | 02:40 | now when I move my Pen tool over a
path segment, I get the plus, so the add
| | 02:45 | anchor point behavior.
| | 02:47 | So I'm going to click there and you can
see that it's also added Bezier control
| | 02:52 | handles to that point, and
there, and there, and there.
| | 02:58 | So now what I'm going to do is I'm going
to select these anchor points that I've
| | 03:02 | just added and bring
them in towards the center.
| | 03:05 | To do this I need my Direct Selection
tool, so I'll come and select the first of
| | 03:11 | them and bring it in towards the center
and then I'll repeat that, moving the
| | 03:17 | equivalent distance in towards the
center for all four of my anchor points.
| | 03:24 | Now notice that because we have this
Bezier control handles on each of those
| | 03:28 | points that I've added, what I'm
doing is I'm creating a curved point.
| | 03:32 | What if I wanted to convert that
curve point to a corner point, so that I
| | 03:36 | actually have a four pointed star, rather than
this interesting shape that I currently have?
| | 03:42 | Press the P key to go back to my Pen
tool and I'm now going to hover over this
| | 03:46 | anchor points. I could come and choose
the Convert Point tool, but I don't need
| | 03:51 | to do that. Instead, I'm just going to
hold down my Alt key, which will access
| | 03:56 | my Convert Anchor Point tool, click on
those anchor points one by one, and I now
| | 04:03 | have a four pointed star.
| | 04:04 | Now what I'm going to do is I'm going
to do that sort of conversion in reverse.
| | 04:08 | I'm going to go from a
corner point to a curved point.
| | 04:11 | I'm going to do that with these outside points.
| | 04:15 | So when you go from a corner to a
curve, just clicking is not enough;
| | 04:19 | you need to click and drag.
| | 04:21 | So I'm going to hold down my Alt key
and click and drag and I'm dragging in a
| | 04:25 | clockwise direction.
| | 04:26 | And I'll do that for all four, like so.
So we now have a propeller, a four leaf
| | 04:42 | clover, whatever you want to call it.
| | 04:45 | Let's now reverse that whole process.
| | 04:47 | So I'm going to Alt+Click on these to
go from curves to corners and then I'm
| | 04:57 | going to move my anchor point over these
points that I've added. I get the minus
| | 05:02 | next to my Pen tool, indicating that
I'm now about to subtract the points, and
| | 05:11 | we're back to our square.
| | 05:13 | So there we see the basic Pen tool
behaviors, adding anchor points, converting
| | 05:18 | anchor points and subtracting anchor
points. You can do it all from within the
| | 05:23 | Pen tool, so long as you have Auto Add/Delete
turned on and you just move over a path segment.
| | 05:30 | If there is already an anchor point
there, you'll get the minus; if there
| | 05:34 | isn't, you'll get the plus; and if you
hold down the Alt key, you'll get the
| | 05:38 | Convert Anchor Point tool.
| | 05:40 | So we can use the Pen tool in
conjunction with the shapes that we draw to
| | 05:45 | further modify those shapes, and it
becomes a very, very powerful combination.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing pen paths with hybrid anchor points| 00:00 | Picking up from where we left off with
the Pen tool, in the previous exercise
| | 00:04 | where we made into a full pointed star,
then into a four leaf clover and then
| | 00:08 | back again to a square.
Here we are back at that square.
| | 00:11 | And what I'd like to do now is
make the square into a sphere and the
| | 00:15 | sphere into a heart.
| | 00:18 | So the first thing I want to do is
rotate this through 45 degrees so that we make a
| | 00:23 | square into a diamond.
| | 00:25 | So I've chosen my Free Transform, and
I'm going to move to one of the corners
| | 00:30 | and hold down the Shift key while I
rotate this through 45 degrees increments, to turn
| | 00:36 | my square into a diamond.
| | 00:39 | Accepted that transformation by
pressing Return. I'm now going to choose my Pen
| | 00:43 | tool and hover over these anchor
points and I want to hold down the Alt or
| | 00:49 | Option key so that I access my Convert
Anchor Point tool, and I can now click
| | 00:54 | and drag and I want to be dragging up
in this case to make my curve point
| | 01:01 | into a corner point.
| | 01:02 | Now I'm going to go about 1 1/2 grid
squares, now I need to go over the
| | 01:06 | equivalent distance for the other three points.
| | 01:09 | So I'm dragging in a clock-wise
direction, holding down Alt+Shift, like so.
| | 01:28 | Now it's not a perfect circle, but it is
definitely a circle, so that's good enough.
| | 01:32 | Next thing I'd like to do is make this
into a heart and for this I am going to
| | 01:38 | switch to my Direct Selection tool by
holding down the Command key, grabbing
| | 01:43 | this top anchor point and pulling this
anchor point down to about there, and now
| | 01:50 | we're going to encounter something different.
| | 01:53 | What we need to do is make this anchor
point into a hybrid point, so that we can
| | 01:58 | affect just one of its Bezier control
handles, because at the moment, if I hold
| | 02:03 | down my Command key and access this
Bezier control handle and pull this up,
| | 02:08 | the other one is going to go down.
| | 02:11 | So as you can probably guess, what we
need is to hold down the Alt key while we
| | 02:15 | do this and then I can pull it up.
| | 02:21 | And then I can do the same on the
other side so that we have the top of our
| | 02:30 | heart and just to finish this off I
now need to convert this curved point
| | 02:36 | into a corner point.
| | 02:37 | And to do that, of course I'm going to
hold down the Option or Alt key and just
| | 02:42 | click on that point like so,
and we have a lovely heart.
| | 02:46 | Of course, you can also create a
heart using the Custom Shape tool, but
| | 02:53 | that's another story.
| | 02:54 | There's something quite
satisfying about drawing it on your own.
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| Inverting paths| 00:00 | Here is a quick tip that I mentioned
because it does cause some confusion.
| | 00:04 | Let's say I've drawn an orange star on
a black background, and actually I want
| | 00:09 | the background to be
orange and the star to be black.
| | 00:12 | How do we invert the
shape that we've just drawn?
| | 00:14 | Well, it's actually quite easy.
| | 00:16 | You don't need to draw it again from scratch.
| | 00:18 | If you come and choose your Path
Selection tool and then click on the path
| | 00:22 | outline, you then have these options up here.
| | 00:26 | Do you add to the shape area, do you
subtract from this shape area, do you
| | 00:30 | intersect with it, or do you
exclude the overlapping shape areas?
| | 00:34 | What we want to do here is we want
to subtract from the shape area and
| | 00:38 | that gives me that.
| | 00:39 | I am going to take a look
at my vector mask there.
| | 00:42 | The gray area has now
become white and vise versa.
| | 00:46 | If you have inverted it and you
decide after all you want it back the layer
| | 00:50 | it was, then you just need to come in and
click on the Add to the shape area behavior.
| | 00:55 | So just a quick tip on how to
invert a shape, should you need to do so.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Combining ShapesAdding, subtracting, intersecting, excluding, and combining shapes| 00:00 | Before we start designing with
shape layers, let's take a look at the
| | 00:03 | shape layer behaviors.
| | 00:05 | I'm talking about these options right here.
| | 00:07 | Now if I choose my add layer and I have
five separate layers here, each labeled
| | 00:13 | with one of those behaviors.
| | 00:16 | I'll choose my add layer. If I just
start drawing a circle, that circle is going
| | 00:21 | to create its own shape layer above
the add layer, which is not what I want.
| | 00:26 | So I'm going to undo that and to make
sure that the new shape is added to this
| | 00:32 | existing vector mask, I need
to click on the vector mask.
| | 00:37 | With the vector mask selected with
frame edges around its four corners, I then
| | 00:43 | have the option of choosing
any one of these five behaviors.
| | 00:47 | Now I'll choose the Add to shape area
and then draw my circle, and in this
| | 00:52 | instance the circle is
added to that vector mask.
| | 00:57 | I'll now continue and do the same thing,
but using the appropriate behavior for
| | 01:03 | each of these layers.
| | 01:04 | So now on the subtract layer, I'll
make sure I have the vector mask selected,
| | 01:10 | choose the Subtract from shape area
behavior, draw myself a circle, and it's
| | 01:16 | going to look like that.
| | 01:18 | Come to the intersect layer, make
sure I'm on the vector mask, choose the
| | 01:23 | Intersect behavior, draw my circle,
intersect will look like that.
| | 01:28 | Come down to the exclude,
choose the Exclude behavior.
| | 01:35 | Now I'm now going to draw a circle in
the middle of the existing circle, and
| | 01:40 | it's going to look like that.
| | 01:41 | It's going to punch a hole through that circle.
| | 01:44 | There is a fifth option and that is
Combine. It's not one of these behaviors
| | 01:48 | here, but what it allows us to do--
I'm going to choose my Path Selection tool
| | 01:53 | just to select some of these paths--
is to combine the shapes into one, which
| | 01:58 | currently is not happening.
| | 02:00 | These shapes do remain
independent and you can continue to edit
| | 02:05 | them independently.
| | 02:07 | There may be times when you want
them combined into one with any
| | 02:11 | overlapping areas removed.
| | 02:13 | So I'm going to come to the Combine
layer and with my Path Selection tool,
| | 02:19 | select the shape that is on that layer and
I'm going to hold down my Alt or Option
| | 02:25 | and drag away from that to create a
second circle. That second circle is created
| | 02:31 | with the Add behavior.
| | 02:33 | But now if I want to combine them-- and
perhaps it isn't necessary to combine them.
| | 02:37 | Because if we look, for example, at the
Stroke layer effect, I can add a stroke
| | 02:43 | or any other layer effect to these
shapes without seeing the overlapping areas.
| | 02:50 | So ask yourself if you really need to
do this, but perhaps I want to edit the
| | 02:55 | shape and have a bit more
flexibility in editing the shape.
| | 02:59 | If I were to combine these two shapes,
and to do so, I'll come and click on the
| | 03:05 | Combine button, then the
overlapping shaped areas are removed.
| | 03:10 | And if I now choose my Direct
Selection tool, I can click at the areas
| | 03:17 | where they formerly intersected, and now I
can see that I have new anchor points added.
| | 03:22 | And I can come in and edit those anchor
points to further customize that shape.
| | 03:29 | So there we see the four
basic types of behavior,
| | 03:32 | Add, Subtract, Intersect, Exclude and
then this fifth option of combining the
| | 03:39 | shapes into one, removing any areas of overlap.
| | 03:42 | The key to making these work is to
make sure that you're on the vector mask itself.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Aligning and distributing shapes| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to see how we
can align and distribute our shape layers.
| | 00:05 | I have a Background layer.
| | 00:07 | I'm going to choose my Shape
tool by pressing the U key.
| | 00:10 | I'm going to use my rectangle.
| | 00:13 | I have a different color from
the Background layer chosen.
| | 00:15 | I'm going to draw myself a square by
holding down the Shift key and dragging.
| | 00:20 | Now I'll switch to my Move tool by
pressing the V key, then hold down my Alt or
| | 00:25 | Option key and drag away from that to
create a copy, and you can see that I'm
| | 00:30 | deliberately dragging at different
distance. And I'm making sure they're no
| | 00:36 | actually aligned with each other.
So there we have a few copies of that.
| | 00:40 | Now let's say that I
wanted to align these layers.
| | 00:43 | Well, I would come and select them
all by holding down the Shift key and
| | 00:48 | clicking through, starting at the top
and clicking down at the bottom, and then
| | 00:52 | I get my alignment
options on my tool options bar.
| | 00:56 | So I can align their top edges.
I can distribute the space evenly.
| | 01:01 | And I could align their bottom
edges, their center edges, etcetera.
| | 01:07 | But what I can't do is I can't at the
moment align these as a group and if I
| | 01:13 | did want to do that, if I wanted to
take this group of six shapes and then put
| | 01:18 | them in the center of my canvas,
horizontally and vertically,
| | 01:24 | that wouldn't be possible at the moment.
| | 01:25 | And if I were to try it, then what's going to
happen is something like that, not what I want.
| | 01:33 | So instead, what I need to do is group
these together, Command+G or Ctrl+G to
| | 01:38 | put them in a group, and then we
can center them as a group, but you'll
| | 01:44 | notice that my Align and Distribute
icons have now become dimmed, but if I
| | 01:49 | press Command+A to Select All, they come back,
and then I can align the group to the selection.
| | 01:58 | So I can now click on my center
vertically and my center horizontally.
| | 02:04 | So the basic alignment options, they
work as you would expect. The only trick is
| | 02:09 | that if you want to treat things as a
group, put them in a group folder and
| | 02:14 | then make a selection and
you can align to that selection.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Coloring shape layers| 00:00 | Here are some quick tips for
coloring your shape layers.
| | 00:04 | I'm going to choose one of my shape
layer tools, in this case the Custom Shape tool,
| | 00:08 | and I'm going to use this
typographic ornament as my custom shape.
| | 00:13 | I have the color set here, or I can
change the foreground color, either works.
| | 00:19 | And then I'm going to just draw my shape.
| | 00:21 | Now if I want to change that color, I
can double-click on the solid color fill.
| | 00:31 | I can also just change my foreground
color and use Alt or Option and the
| | 00:39 | Backspace/Delete key. Or if I do want
to fill it with my background color, Ctrl
| | 00:42 | or Command and the Backspace/Delete key.
| | 00:46 | What I can't do at the moment and
which is sometimes useful to be able to do
| | 00:52 | is I cannot get my paintbrush--instead
I am painting in that shape--nor can I
| | 00:57 | get my gradient, and in this case I
have a spectrum gradient chosen, and drag a
| | 01:03 | gradient across that shape.
| | 01:05 | I could make a gradient fill and clip it
to the shape and that works fine, or I
| | 01:10 | could apply a gradient overlay to the
shape, but let's say I actually wanted to
| | 01:14 | paint with a gradient inside the shape.
| | 01:17 | To do that, what I would need to do is
come to the Layer menu and down to Rasterize.
| | 01:24 | Now I don't want to rasterize the shape
because then we'll lose the scalability
| | 01:27 | of the shape. We'll lose the
benefit of it being a shape layer.
| | 01:31 | But if I rasterize the filled content, I
can now drag my gradient across there, or
| | 01:37 | I can go to my Paintbrush and I'll set
my foreground color to black and I can
| | 01:42 | paint inside that shape.
| | 01:44 | So something to consider there.
The option of going to rasterize and
| | 01:49 | rasterizing the fill content, which
retains your vector mask, but just gives
| | 01:55 | you a few more options for what you
can actually do with the color that fills
| | 01:59 | that vector mask.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a poster by combining simple shapes, part 1| 00:00 | Okay let's have some fun with our shape
layers now by re-creating this WPA era
| | 00:05 | poster, 1930s poster, public
information poster, and we are going to use shape
| | 00:12 | layers to do this and we are
going to start from scratch.
| | 00:14 | I am going to split my screen so that
we can refer to the original.
| | 00:18 | I am going to come to 2 Up layout.
| | 00:23 | I also want to maximize the amount of
screen space that I have available so
| | 00:27 | I am going to come and just drag off
my history panel and drag off my mini
| | 00:33 | Bridge and then choose 2 Up again
so that we extend across the full width
| | 00:37 | of our available area.
| | 00:39 | The typeface that's used here is a
publicly available freely available for
| | 00:44 | noncommercial use font called WPA Gothic,
and let me just show you where you can
| | 00:50 | get that. You can get it from the
FontStruct site amongst others, where you
| | 00:56 | can download it and use it
in noncommercial capacity.
| | 01:00 | I don't have the rights to distribute this.
| | 01:01 | So I have converted fonts to shape layers so
that we don't have any missing font issues.
| | 01:07 | All right!
| | 01:10 | In our starting state, the first thing
that we want to do is create these
| | 01:14 | background fields of color.
| | 01:16 | So I am going to use my Rectangle
tool and I am going to draw a rectangle.
| | 01:22 | Now, probablyI want to set the color first.
| | 01:24 | If I come to my Swatches panel, we can
see that I already have the colors set up
| | 01:30 | in the Swatches panel. So I am going
to choose the appropriate color and then
| | 01:34 | draw myself a rectangle now.
| | 01:37 | Now it may end up ever so slightly
different from the original, but that's okay.
| | 01:41 | Now when I do that, we see, because we
have the type already in there, the type
| | 01:44 | becomes visible now on
top of that field of color.
| | 01:49 | To add the bar at the bottom, what I want
to do is come to my Path Selection tool.
| | 01:55 | Click on that path and rather than
create a new shape layer for this I want it
| | 01:59 | to be incorporated into
the existing shape layer.
| | 02:03 | So I am going to hold down my Option
or Alt Key and the Shift Key, because I
| | 02:07 | don't want to move around as I copy it,
and drag it down to the bottom like so.
| | 02:15 | And I might as well give that shape
layer a name. That's not going to hurt.
| | 02:21 | So next let's do the body.
| | 02:25 | The body is going to be composed of one
shape that is a circle and another shape
| | 02:30 | that is a combination of a rounded
rectangle and a rectangle and then we have
| | 02:35 | this collar bone, and that's a
separate shape on top of that.
| | 02:40 | So let's start out with this circle.
| | 02:44 | Choosing my Ellipse tool, I am going to
start drawing with the circle, and then
| | 02:49 | I am going to hold down the Alt Key. All right!
| | 02:51 | There is my circle.
| | 02:55 | Now I want to reposition it so I
am going to choose my Move tool.
| | 02:58 | I want to change its color.
| | 02:59 | I am going to press D to switch to
my default colors, black and white.
| | 03:05 | Press Alt+Backspace or Delete key.
| | 03:09 | Now I need to put a stroke on it.
| | 03:10 | Now putting a stroke on a shape
layer can be rather tricky thing.
| | 03:15 | One option that I have is to create
a smaller circle inside this circle.
| | 03:22 | If I were to choose my Path Selection
tool, to select that what I could do is
| | 03:27 | Command+C to copy, Command+V to paste,
Command+T to go to Free Transform.
| | 03:34 | Hold down Alt+Shift to
scale from the center point.
| | 03:40 | Press Return to accept that
transformation and then I want to exclude the
| | 03:45 | overlap and now I need to fill it with
this color and it would look like that.
| | 03:52 | After all that, that's not how I am
going to do it, because that just seems
| | 03:57 | like way too much work.
| | 03:58 | So I am going to undo those steps
until we are back to just a black circle,
| | 04:04 | and what I am going to do is I am going to
come to my Layer Effects and add a stroke.
| | 04:10 | So here I need to choose the color of
my stroke, come and sample that from my
| | 04:15 | Swatches, and I will
increase the size of my stroke.
| | 04:22 | Let's have it be 10 pixels.
| | 04:24 | No, maybe it needs to be more than 10 pixels.
| | 04:28 | So let's revisit that.
| | 04:29 | I want to go up to 14 pixels.
| | 04:34 | So there we have applied a layer
effect to our shape layer. Okay.
| | 04:40 | Now what I want to do is create the
neck and the shoulders and for this I need
| | 04:47 | to create a new shape layer.
| | 04:48 | So I am going to press U to choose my
Shape tool and then Shift+U to cycle
| | 04:56 | through until I get to my rectangle.
| | 04:58 | So I am making sure that I have the
appropriate shape behavior chosen and it's
| | 05:04 | this one, so I create a new shape layer.
| | 05:06 | I am going to draw myself a
rectangle that looks like that.
| | 05:12 | And it's going to inherit the layer
effect that I applied to the previous shape layer,
| | 05:18 | so it too has a stroke, which
just turns out that's what we want.
| | 05:23 | On top of this, I am going
to add a rounded rectangle.
| | 05:28 | Now the problem with the rounded
rectangle is that you have got to get the
| | 05:32 | radius right, because you
can't change it afterwards.
| | 05:36 | And I suspect that that is not enough,
so I'm going to increase that to 50
| | 05:42 | pixels, and that could be wrong
but let's see where that gets us.
| | 05:47 | So now I am going to draw myself a
rounded rectangle, and you'll notice I am
| | 05:50 | coming down below the existing
rectangle that I have just drawn, because I want
| | 05:54 | to draw this rectangle
outwards from its center point.
| | 05:57 | So I am going to start drawing, then
hold down the Alt Key. And of course how do
| | 06:03 | I center it according to my canvas?
| | 06:06 | Well, I could just go ahead and drop
what I have here and then transform it, but
| | 06:12 | let's say I wanted to draw
it from the center point.
| | 06:15 | In this case it's going to be easiest
to turn on my ruler and then go to my
| | 06:22 | Preferences to Units & Rulers and I
will change my Ruler unit to percent and
| | 06:30 | then I can draw myself a guide at the 50% mark.
| | 06:36 | So now when I draw my Rounded Rectangle.
That's where it's going to start from.
| | 06:45 | In which case I now need to reposition
the other shapes that I have drawn and
| | 06:52 | what I can do here is come and find them.
| | 06:56 | So I have my rounded rectangle, my neck
and my head, and I want all of these to
| | 07:05 | be aligned horizontally like so.
| | 07:10 | Now for the neck and the shoulders I
actually want to combine these into one and
| | 07:16 | what I have gone and done is I
have drawn them on separate shapes.
| | 07:21 | So I need to just reconfigure that
and this is a very common issue that you
| | 07:27 | are going to run into.
| | 07:28 | If you have drawn them as separate
shapes, how do you make them into a
| | 07:32 | single shape layer?
| | 07:34 | Well, I'm going to come and choose the
neck, which is this one, and with my Path
| | 07:43 | Selection tool I am going to select that and
I am going to cut it and I get this option.
| | 07:49 | What do I want to do?
| | 07:50 | Do I want to delete the whole layer?
| | 07:52 | Do I want to delete the vector mask?
| | 07:54 | Do I want to delete the
vector mask contents only?
| | 07:56 | I want to delete the whole layer and
then I will click on the vector mask of
| | 08:04 | the shoulders, and I am going to paste
what I copied to the clipboard or what I
| | 08:09 | cut to the clipboard on there, and you will see
that that automatically adds it to that shape.
| | 08:17 | Now if I move the head shape above the neck
and shoulders, it's going to look like that.
| | 08:24 | And now if I select both of those and
move these down below the background
| | 08:30 | layer, it's going to look like that.
| | 08:33 | So you can see we're getting closer.
| | 08:36 | The next thing I want to do is create
the shape that represents the collar bone.
| | 08:43 | So let's see how we can do that and I am
going to do this with my Rectangle tool.
| | 08:51 | Let's name these layers.
| | 08:54 | it's going to make things a little bit easier.
| | 08:56 | We will call this one shoulders
and we will call this one head.
| | 09:03 | Now on the shoulders layer, if I
choose my Rectangle tool, I am in this pinky
| | 09:09 | color and I will just draw
myself a rectangle like so.
| | 09:15 | I now need t o zoom in a lot closer.
| | 09:17 | This layer that I have just drawn has
inherited the stroke, which I don't want,
| | 09:22 | so I am going to throw the stroke away.
| | 09:25 | I can then reposition it.
| | 09:27 | Perhaps I want to draw myself a guide
to enable me to do that more easily and I
| | 09:32 | will draw one on the right hand side as well.
| | 09:36 | So now with my Path Selection tool, I
am going to drag that over to there and
| | 09:44 | you can see that I have deliberately
gone a fair way beyond the top of the blue
| | 09:53 | field of color and that's intentional,
because what I want to do next, and I
| | 09:57 | may even need to go further.
| | 09:58 | In fact, I think I do
need to go up here further.
| | 10:03 | So I am going to press Command+T to get a
free transform and pull that down a bit further.
| | 10:07 | Press Return and what I am going to do
next is with my Pen tool, I am going to
| | 10:13 | come and subtract that anchor
point just by clicking on it.
| | 10:19 | And what we are left with is this
triangular shape, which I can now duplicate.
| | 10:26 | I will choose my Path Selection tool
and I am going to hold down my Alt key and
| | 10:33 | drag that over to the right-hand side
where with it still selected I am going to
| | 10:40 | come to my Edit menu to Transform
Path and choose Flip Horizontal.
| | 10:49 | So we now have the body shape intact
and let's just turn off the guides.
| | 10:57 | And if you see a rather distracting
gray line around any of your shapes, as I
| | 11:03 | currently am myself, press Command+H
or Ctrl+H to hide that. And in my case I
| | 11:12 | can see that I just need to come into
that one shape there, select it, and nudge
| | 11:19 | it a fraction to the left.
| | 11:22 | There we have head and shoulders and the
type and the background colors all in place.
| | 11:30 | I will continue this in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a poster by combining simple shapes, part 2| 00:00 | Here's where we left off with our
re-creation of this WPA era poster.
| | 00:05 | Now we still have left to create the
toothpaste, the toothbrush, and the mouth.
| | 00:09 | And it's the mouth I'm going to do first.
| | 00:12 | So I'm going to come to my top layer
and then I'm going to choose my Rounded
| | 00:17 | Rectangle tool. Zoom in to the
area where I want to draw the mouth.
| | 00:23 | I have a Radius of 100 pixels.
| | 00:26 | Realistically, when I'm doing this I
don't really bother about what the color is.
| | 00:31 | I just draw the shape, see what I
get, and then change it accordingly.
| | 00:36 | We could set the color first right here, but
I like to work a bit more fluidly than that.
| | 00:41 | So I'm just going to draw this
shape and then we'll change the color
| | 00:45 | afterwards as needed.
| | 00:46 | So I'm going to start drawing, then hold down
the Alt key, and there's my mouth right there.
| | 00:52 | Okay, so it's blue, so I need to press
my X key and make white my foreground
| | 00:58 | color and press Alt or
Option on my Backspace/Delete key.
| | 01:02 | Now the mouth is a little bit too big,
so I'm going to press Command+T or Ctrl+T
| | 01:05 | to go to my Free Transform and
just adjust that as necessary.
| | 01:11 | Press Return to accept that transformation.
| | 01:14 | And I'm going to adjust it a little bit more
because I can't stop adjusting it. All right!
| | 01:19 | I'll be happy with that one.
| | 01:20 | So now what I want to do is draw the
black lines to represent the teeth.
| | 01:26 | So I'm going to press Shift+U to cycle
through my shape tools until I get to my Line tool.
| | 01:33 | I want a line white of 4 pixels.
| | 01:36 | And likewise, with the mouth,
I'm just going to start drawing it.
| | 01:40 | Don't worry about whatever color it is.
| | 01:42 | We'll sort that out later.
| | 01:44 | Start drawing the line. Okay, there it is.
| | 01:46 | Obviously, we want it to be black,
so I'm going to press D to make black
| | 01:51 | my foreground color.
| | 01:53 | And then Alt or Option on
my Backspace/Delete key.
| | 01:57 | Aha, now here's a problem.
| | 01:59 | What's happened is the line has
been added to my existing shape layer.
| | 02:04 | I didn't want that to happen,
so I'm going to undo that.
| | 02:08 | And now when I start drawing with the
line, I'm holding down the Shift key to
| | 02:12 | constrain it, but I need to add the
Shift key in after I've started drawing and
| | 02:17 | not before, because if I add the Shift
key before, Photoshop thinks that I want
| | 02:22 | to go to the Add to shape layer behavior.
| | 02:26 | And in this case, I don't.
| | 02:28 | So I'll start drawing,
then hold down the Shift key.
| | 02:32 | And that's made a layer by
itself, which is what I do want.
| | 02:36 | Option or Alt on my Backspace/Delete key,
and I'll now select the two of those
| | 02:41 | layers, come to my Move tool, and I
could use my Alignment options here just to
| | 02:47 | make sure they are aligned as necessary.
| | 02:50 | Back to my Line tool now, let's zoom
in a little bit closer and I'm going to
| | 02:56 | draw a vertical line like so.
| | 03:00 | And then I do want the other lines
to be added to this same shape layer.
| | 03:06 | In this case, it's called Shape 4.
| | 03:07 | I'm going to come to my Path Selection
tool, select the first of those, hold
| | 03:13 | down my Option or Alt key, drag away
from it, and then just repeat that.
| | 03:18 | I'm not even going to try and get them
evenly spaced because in the next step
| | 03:23 | what I'm going to do is hold down the
Shift key, select them all, and then I can
| | 03:30 | distribute their spacing.
| | 03:32 | And I always get mixed up about which
one this is, so with these distribute
| | 03:37 | options here, just trying one.
| | 03:38 | If it doesn't work, then try another one.
| | 03:40 | I think it's that one that I need.
| | 03:42 | And I got lucky that time.
| | 03:44 | So there's my mouth made
up of these three layers.
| | 03:48 | What I'm going to do is hold down
the Shift key, select all three layers,
| | 03:53 | Command+G or Ctrl+G, group them
together, and then we will call it mouth.
| | 04:02 | So I'm going to zoom out so
that I can see whole of my poster.
| | 04:05 | Press Command+A. I'm in my Move tool.
| | 04:09 | And now I can come and choose my
alignment options just to make sure that the
| | 04:12 | mouth is horizontally aligned on the canvas.
| | 04:15 | Click that and it's going
to align the whole group.
| | 04:18 | Now I'm going to press Command+D or
Ctrl+D and next I want to recreate the
| | 04:23 | tube of toothpaste.
| | 04:25 | So this is going to start out
with just a regular rectangle.
| | 04:30 | It's going to overlap that field
of color at the top. That's okay.
| | 04:34 | So I want to change the color of that, Option
or Alt+Backspace/Delete key. Let's zoom in.
| | 04:43 | I'm going to draw another rectangle.
| | 04:47 | And then I'm going to draw a
rounded rectangle on top of that.
| | 04:55 | I'd like all three of these shapes to
be aligned together, so I'll select all
| | 05:00 | three of them, come and choose my Move
tool, and not that one, but that one.
| | 05:09 | And with the top shape which is the
cap and the-- or the top two shapes.
| | 05:15 | In fact those top two shapes
could really become one.
| | 05:18 | Not that it's really necessary, but
let's do that anyway just because it makes
| | 05:22 | things a little bit tidier.
| | 05:24 | So I'm going to select that shape that
is currently Shape 7, cut it from there,
| | 05:31 | and I want to delete the whole thing.
| | 05:34 | So that's the option I want. Click OK.
| | 05:37 | And then click into this one and paste it.
| | 05:41 | And we can see that we've
now added that to there.
| | 05:45 | And then we want to change the color of
this whole shape layer, shape layer 6.
| | 05:49 | I want to change that to white.
| | 05:53 | This needs to go underneath Shape 5.
| | 05:58 | I'm going to select both together,
hold down the Shift key, group them,
| | 06:02 | Command+G or Ctrl+G. We'll name it toothpaste.
| | 06:08 | And then let's just zoom out.
| | 06:13 | We can see that the toothpaste needs
to go underneath the top field of color.
| | 06:18 | So I'm going to drag this underneath
what I've called the background layer.
| | 06:24 | And I've actually misspelled that.
I just noticed that, so I'm going to...
| | 06:27 | And that's not going to make many
difference to the appearance of the poster but
| | 06:32 | it's always good to spell things right. Okay.
| | 06:35 | Finally, I'll need my toothbrush.
| | 06:38 | And this is going to be
another rounded rectangle.
| | 06:42 | In fact, several rounded rectangles.
| | 06:46 | So I'll draw the first one like
so, let's get in a bit bigger.
| | 06:51 | And I want to change the color of that
and then I'm going to draw my bristles.
| | 06:58 | I want the bristles to actually be on a
separate layer from the handle of the toothbrush.
| | 07:03 | That needs to be white, so I'm pressing
Command or Ctrl and Backspace/Delete key
| | 07:09 | and I'm going to switch to my Path
Selection tool, select the first of those
| | 07:12 | bristles. All of the
bristles can be on the same layer.
| | 07:16 | So I'm going to hold down my Alt or
Option key, drag away, and then repeat that.
| | 07:30 | And I can come and select them all.
| | 07:34 | Maybe I want to make sure
that they are distributed evenly.
| | 07:40 | And perhaps they are a little bit too
big. With them all selected, Command+T or
| | 07:46 | Ctrl+T, put a transformation rectangle
around them where I can resize them as
| | 07:52 | necessary, press Return.
| | 07:55 | They now need to go underneath the handle.
| | 08:00 | Two layers can be selected together.
| | 08:02 | Command+G or Ctrl+G to make them into a group,
and I'm going to call that one toothbrush.
| | 08:11 | And the toothbrush also needs to
go underneath the background layer.
| | 08:15 | And now we have our finished poster.
| | 08:19 | So we see it's pretty straightforward
to create striking graphics like posters
| | 08:24 | like this that are made up with these
very bold and impactful shapes, just by
| | 08:29 | using by a basic shape layer options,
rectangles, rounded rectangles, lines, and circles.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Designing with Shape LayersCreating a logo with shape layers| 00:01 | Here we are going to re-create this
simple logo with the aid of shape layers.
| | 00:05 | I am going to split my screen so that we
can see the beginning version on the left.
| | 00:10 | The beginning version is missing the bagel and
missing the sun boast shape in the background.
| | 00:16 | So firstly, let's re-create the bagel.
| | 00:19 | Clicking into the beginning version,
expanding the group that contains all the
| | 00:23 | elements relating to the bagel, which
is the type, and this type on a curve.
| | 00:29 | I will click at the top of that group
and then come and choose my Ellipse tool,
| | 00:37 | change my color to the bagel color.
Make sure that I am in the Shape Drawing
| | 00:43 | mode rather than the Pen Path
mode and draw myself a circle.
| | 00:47 | If I want that circle to be drawn
from the center point, after I started
| | 00:52 | drawing I will hold down the Alt Key
and for it to be a perfect circle I will
| | 00:56 | also hold down the Shift Key.
| | 00:58 | Okay, now what I want to do is choose
my Pen Path tool and select that Pen path
| | 01:04 | and then copy it, and now paste it.
| | 01:08 | But I currently have a two versions
of that circle, I am now going to press
| | 01:13 | Command+T or Ctrl+T, to take me to my
free transform and scale down the top
| | 01:19 | version, holding down the Alt key
and the Shift key, something like so.
| | 01:27 | Press Return and now with the top
smaller circle selected, I am going to come
| | 01:32 | and choose Exclude Overlapping Shape Area.
| | 01:36 | So there on a single vector mask
we have created the bagel shape.
| | 01:42 | So now I am going to give this bagel
some dimension by applying some layer
| | 01:45 | effects to it, just by double-clicking
to the right of the layer name and then
| | 01:49 | we will start out by giving it an
Inner Glow, and I want the inner glow to be
| | 01:55 | darker, rather than lighter.
| | 01:56 | Currently it's lighter, so I am going to
change the blend mode from Screen to Multiply.
| | 02:03 | And I am going to change
the color to a darker color.
| | 02:05 | I am going to come over and sample the
existing bagel color and then just go
| | 02:11 | with a darker version of that.
| | 02:15 | And then I will increase the Size of
the Inner Glow up to about 100 pixels.
| | 02:22 | Next, I am going to add a Bevel and Emboss.
| | 02:26 | So I want to increase the Size of
the Bevel to about 20-something pixels.
| | 02:32 | Now this is going to add a highlight at the
top left and a shadow at the bottom right.
| | 02:38 | I am going to soften that a little bit
just to round it out and I am also going
| | 02:43 | to increase the Depth to about 200%.
| | 02:46 | And then finally I am going to change the
color of the Highlight Mode and the Shadow Mode.
| | 02:51 | The Highlight Mode, and sample the
existing bagel color and just use a lighter
| | 02:56 | version of that, and then use the
same approach with the Shadow Mode.
| | 03:01 | Sample the existing bagel color
and use a darker version of that.
| | 03:09 | Next, I want to apply a Gradient
Overlay, which is going to just change the
| | 03:15 | angle of the light on the bagel.
| | 03:17 | So I am going to click on that.
| | 03:19 | I want to change the blend mode of
this to Soft Light so that it's a lot more
| | 03:24 | subtle and I think that's pretty
much what I want to do with that.
| | 03:28 | Let's just check what that's doing.
| | 03:29 | Yeah, we can see it's just
darkening the bottom of the bagel.
| | 03:33 | And then finally, I'm
going to add a Pattern Overlay.
| | 03:36 | And if I get this, this is
because this may be the default pattern,
| | 03:39 | obviously not what we want.
| | 03:41 | So I am going to come and
choose another pattern set.
| | 03:45 | The one that I want is color Paper.
| | 03:47 | I am going to have that
replace my existing patterns.
| | 03:50 | I am going to scroll down in this list
until I get to this one, White Textured.
| | 03:56 | Choose that one and then I'm going to
reduce the Opacity of this to around about
| | 04:02 | 60s and then I am going to increase
the Scale of it and so we can bring out
| | 04:09 | some of that texture.
| | 04:10 | And that's a reasonably good
fat simile of a bagel I think.
| | 04:15 | Okay, firstly just before we move on
to the background, I need to just adjust
| | 04:19 | the stacking order, the layer order.
| | 04:21 | So I am now going to move the bagel
down and it needs to go underneath the ge,
| | 04:31 | which is of the word BAGELS which is
on a separate layer but above the whole
| | 04:35 | word BAGELS, it needs to go right there.
| | 04:39 | And since I've positioned this circle
and sized it slightly differently from the
| | 04:44 | original, I am going to have
to move this piece of type.
| | 04:48 | That's now in a wrong position. Maybe
I realize that the hole on my bagel is
| | 04:53 | just a bit too big, and
it really is a bit too big.
| | 04:55 | So I can come and adjust that.
| | 04:58 | If I choose my Path Selection tool, I
should be able to, if I click on to that
| | 05:04 | vector mask, select that inner circle,
Command+T or Ctrl+T, and then when I
| | 05:13 | transform this, holding down Alt and
Shift, all of those effects should update
| | 05:19 | according to the new size of the circle.
| | 05:23 | And I may still need to
move this just a fraction.
| | 05:26 | Switch to my Move tool and nudge it down a bit.
| | 05:28 | Okay, so that's job 1. Job number 2
is we need to get this interesting
| | 05:35 | pattern in the background.
| | 05:37 | So I am going to come to my background
group and click on to my bottom layer,
| | 05:43 | which is just this field of blue.
| | 05:46 | I am going to choose my Custom Shape
tool and then I am going to add all of my
| | 05:54 | available custom shapes.
| | 05:56 | Do I want to append them?
| | 05:59 | Yes, I do in this case and then I am
going to scroll down until we get to this one,
| | 06:05 | the Registration Target.
| | 06:08 | Then I am going to position my cursor
in the center of the canvas and click and
| | 06:14 | drag holding down the Alt key
to add the registration target.
| | 06:22 | Now at this point, it's a bit unwieldy
and what I am finding is it's difficult
| | 06:27 | to grow because my view size is too big.
So I can either do that and then make
| | 06:32 | it smaller and transform it or I
could just make it smaller and do it from
| | 06:37 | scratch, but I will do it this way.
| | 06:38 | So I have already added it
and now I want to transform it.
| | 06:42 | Command+T or Ctrl+T, hold down Alt and/
or Option and Shift and size that up, so
| | 06:50 | that it extends beyond the bounds of my canvas.
| | 06:55 | This is a little it distracting,
because we can see all of these gray lines,
| | 06:59 | which indicates the path
edge, and I want to hide that.
| | 07:04 | You can come to the View menu
and choose Show Target Path.
| | 07:07 | So I am going to turn that off.
| | 07:10 | I want to fill that shape with white.
| | 07:13 | So I am going to make white my
foreground color and press Option or Alt+Delete
| | 07:18 | like so, and I also then
want to adjust the Opacity.
| | 07:23 | I am going to take the Opacity down and
here is something else that I want to do.
| | 07:28 | I would like to feather it,
so that we make it soft.
| | 07:34 | Now you may be thinking, wait a minute,
all these shape layers are vectors, how
| | 07:39 | can they be feathered?
| | 07:40 | Surely they can't be softened.
Well, in fact, they can.
| | 07:44 | If we go to Masks panel, I can just
increase the Feathering amount and you can
| | 07:50 | see as I am doing that it's
softening all the edges of that path.
| | 07:55 | Now one other problem that I have is
that the interior of that target shape is
| | 08:01 | showing up in the center of the
bagel and we don't want that to happen.
| | 08:05 | So I could spend some time try to
position it just so, so that we don't see it.
| | 08:12 | But easier than that, I am just
going to double-click onto my Masks
| | 08:17 | to make that smaller.
| | 08:18 | What I am going to do is add a layer mask
to this layer, currently called Shape 2.
| | 08:23 | Obviously we already have a vector mask.
| | 08:26 | That's the shape itself. But there is no rule
that says that we can't also have a layer mask.
| | 08:31 | So I am going to click on Add Layer Mask.
| | 08:35 | It's currently white and with my
Elliptical Marquee tool, not my Elliptical
| | 08:42 | Shape tool, what we are working on here is
a pixel mask. I am going to draw a circle.
| | 08:47 | Hold down the Alt key and draw a
shape outwards from the center.
| | 08:52 | I can reposition that if I want and
then I just need to fill that with black,
| | 08:55 | Option or Alt+Delete, and that's going
to mask out those protruding bits of the
| | 09:01 | shape that were showing up inside the bagel.
| | 09:04 | I am going to deselect that now,
Command+D or Ctrl+D. And just as a final
| | 09:10 | finishing touch, I would like to
add a little bit of texture to this.
| | 09:14 | So potentially the problem with the
shape layers is because they are so crisp
| | 09:19 | and so flat in color,
| | 09:21 | they can sometimes look a
little bit one-dimensional.
| | 09:24 | Now we've already added some feathering to this.
| | 09:27 | How about we also add some texture as well?
| | 09:30 | I am going to do that by adding a layer
above my first layer and I'm going to
| | 09:37 | hold down the Option or Alt key and
click on Create New Layer, and I am going to
| | 09:41 | call this layer noise.
| | 09:43 | I am going to change its Mode to Overlay
and fill it with Overlay-neutral 50% gray.
| | 09:51 | And then what I am going to do is on
that layer I am going to come to the
| | 09:56 | Filter menu and choose Noise > Add
Noise and you can see exactly what's
| | 10:01 | happening there in the background.
| | 10:02 | It's just making things a
bit more interesting I think.
| | 10:05 | This is probably a bit too much.
| | 10:07 | I would like it to be Uniform and I
would like it to be Monochromatic, but maybe
| | 10:11 | 15% I think will be sufficient.
| | 10:16 | So there we have our logo much
enhanced through the use of two simple shape
| | 10:23 | layers, which don't look that simple in
their finished form, but all they are,
| | 10:27 | it's two circles, one excluding the
overlap of the other to make the bagel with
| | 10:32 | some layer effects applied and then
the burst shape in the background, it's
| | 10:38 | been feathered using the Masks panel,
and it's also had some grain or noise
| | 10:45 | applied to it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying blend modes to shape layers| 00:00 | Combining shape layers with blending
modes we can very flexibly, very quickly,
| | 00:05 | and very easily create
some nice looking designs.
| | 00:08 | All this is, is a series of overlapping
rectangles with different blending modes
| | 00:13 | applied to each of the
layers and different opacities.
| | 00:17 | There really is no right or wrong
here. Theree is a certain amount of
| | 00:20 | experimentation that's involved.
| | 00:22 | But it's very easy to do that.
| | 00:24 | So if I expand the Shapes group, we
can see we've got nothing more than a
| | 00:28 | series of rectangles.
| | 00:30 | Most of them have the Multiply blend
mode applied and in this case there,
| | 00:35 | most of them are at 50%.
| | 00:38 | For the lighter colors, I've gone with
Hard Light just so that we retain some of
| | 00:43 | that color where it overlaps the darker color.
| | 00:47 | So we're just getting interactions. It's
sometimes a bit unpredictable how those
| | 00:51 | interactions are going to be, and like
I said, there is no right or wrong.
| | 00:54 | It's just a question of trying it and seeing.
| | 00:58 | So I'm going to turn on the Shapes
Begin layer group, and turn off the
| | 01:03 | Shapes layer group.
| | 01:05 | We can see how we can just create
something similar. Not necessarily the same.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to select these layers one by one,
and I'm going to change their blend modes.
| | 01:14 | Now, in a situation like this
especially when we are on a white background,
| | 01:19 | a blending mode of Multiply is
probably going to yield the best result.
| | 01:23 | So I'm going to go directly to
that blend mode for my layers.
| | 01:27 | Keyboard shortcut for that, as long as
you are in your Move tool, is Shift+Alt+M,
| | 01:33 | or Shift+Option+M and
that's that layer down there.
| | 01:37 | Then I'll just move down my
layers and I'll do the same thing.
| | 01:41 | Shift+Option+M. If I wanted to, I
could use the keyboard shortcut for moving
| | 01:46 | between layers, and that's Alt+Right
bracket to go to the layer above and
| | 01:52 | Alt+Left bracket to go to the layer below.
| | 01:55 | Set my blending modes to Multiply.
| | 01:58 | Now maybe I don't know
it's going to be Multiply.
| | 02:00 | So maybe I want to try out my
different blending modes, in which case I could
| | 02:04 | press Shift+Plus or Shift+Minus
to cycle through my blend modes.
| | 02:11 | But Multiply is actually the one that
I want, so I am going to set them all to
| | 02:15 | Multiply and already things are
looking a lot more interesting.
| | 02:20 | Now, we can in addition to changing the
blend mode, we can change the opacity.
| | 02:25 | If you're in your Move tool as I am, you
can just press a number on your keyboard.
| | 02:28 | So if I press 5, I go to 50%, select
the layer, type in the number of the
| | 02:33 | opacity. I'm just clicking on the layer,
pressing 5 to change its opacity to 50%.
| | 02:40 | And because we're doing this with
shape layers rather than with regular pixel
| | 02:45 | layers, we can very easily
come and resize these layers,
| | 02:50 | without any degradation. Things are
going to just remain nice and crisp.
| | 02:53 | So let's say I'm on this layer
Shape 6, Command+T is going to put a
| | 02:58 | transformation rectangle around it.
| | 03:00 | I can just size that as I want to,
to really bring up whatever sort of
| | 03:04 | interaction I want with any of
the layers that are beneath it.
| | 03:08 | Now, if you think this is an overly
simplistic use of shape layers and you think "Wow,
| | 03:15 | I've never seen a design that
looks like that," well check this out.
| | 03:19 | Royal Academy of Arts, I was
there just a few weeks ago.
| | 03:22 | summer exhibition, massive banner.
They must have done it in just the same way.
| | 03:27 | So this is really a professional
application of the use of shape layers
| | 03:34 | and blending modes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying layer effects and styles to shape layers| 00:01 | Spicing up a flat piece of otherwise
static artwork using blending modes, a bit
| | 00:07 | of texture, and some layer effects.
| | 00:10 | So here I have three overlapping custom
shapes and they are all using-- well I
| | 00:15 | think there's three different jigsaw
puzzle pieces that are part of your
| | 00:19 | standard custom shapes.
| | 00:21 | Here they are right here.
| | 00:23 | So we have these full potential jigsaw pieces.
| | 00:25 | I've used three of them.
| | 00:26 | They are each on separate
layers, different colors applied.
| | 00:30 | Let's first of all change the blending
modes and I'm going to select that first one.
| | 00:35 | Go to Move tool by pressing the V key,
Shift+Plus just to cycle through my
| | 00:41 | blending modes, and see
which one I happen to like.
| | 00:44 | I'm going to go with Multiply. Well
maybe Color Burn. And since Yellow is there
| | 00:53 | at the bottom, that's going to have no effect.
| | 00:54 | It's just the top layers that we
are applying on top of the others.
| | 00:58 | So already things are
looking a lot more interesting.
| | 01:01 | What if we in addition to
this add some layer effects?
| | 01:04 | I have some effects already
applied to the cyan layer.
| | 01:08 | They're currently turned off.
| | 01:09 | I'm now going to turn them on.
| | 01:11 | We can see that we can through the use
of an Inner Shadow, if I turn that off,
| | 01:16 | turn it back on again, an Outer Glow,
mainly a Bevel and Emboss, and finally a
| | 01:24 | Gradient Overlay. Through the use of
these different effects-- Double-click to
| | 01:29 | the right of the layer name to bring
up the Layer Styles panel. This is where
| | 01:33 | you put in the effects.
| | 01:35 | And having applied the effects to one,
I can then just copy the effects to the
| | 01:41 | other shape layers simply by holding
down the Option or Alt key and dragging
| | 01:45 | the fx button to apply
them to the other layers.
| | 01:50 | Finally, we can add some grain to the
whole thing, add a bit of noise perhaps,
| | 01:56 | and I'm going to do this at the very top.
| | 01:58 | So I'm going to create a new layer.
| | 02:01 | I'm going to hold down my Alt or Option
key as I create this new layer, so that
| | 02:05 | I get the chance to set it to the
Overlay blend mode. Filling it with
| | 02:12 | Overly-neutral color.
| | 02:14 | I'll call it noise and then I will
come to the Filter menu and choose from the
| | 02:21 | Noise group, Add Noise, and just
add as much or as little as I want.
| | 02:27 | I will add 10% noise in this case.
I'd like it to be uniform, monochromatic.
| | 02:33 | If I zoom in on that, we can see that
we've now added some texture to those
| | 02:39 | otherwise flat shapes.
| | 02:41 | So just the application of
these three simple techniques.
| | 02:45 | Applying blending modes, applying layer
effects, and applying some noise to the
| | 02:49 | artwork can really help lift it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding strokes to shape layers| 00:00 | Here we're going to look at creating strokes
and dashed strokes to apply to our shape layers.
| | 00:06 | Let me just point out that this
treasure map has been drawn using some pirate
| | 00:11 | custom shapes that I downloaded from
Adobe Exchange, and if you wanted to do the
| | 00:15 | same, they're right here.
Pirates05 by Karl Bihlmeier.
| | 00:21 | And they include the palm tree,
the treasure chest, and the anchor.
| | 00:25 | The others, the waves and the compass,
just come from the standard custom shapes
| | 00:30 | that are part of Photoshop itself.
| | 00:32 | Firstly, I want to put a stroke around
my map. Now my map is derived from some
| | 00:39 | rendered clouds, and then a vector
mask, but it's going to function just as
| | 00:45 | a shape layer would.
| | 00:46 | The vector mask is just drawn with the
Pen tool to create this rough outline of
| | 00:51 | our Treasure Island.
| | 00:53 | And there are a few layer effects
applied to that, but what we're missing though
| | 00:57 | is a Stroke layer effect.
| | 00:59 | So whenever you want to put a stroke
around a shape layer, the easiest way to
| | 01:04 | do it is through a Stroke layer style, and
I'm just going to increase the size of that.
| | 01:10 | So that's one issue.
| | 01:11 | The other issue is a dashed stroke
and this is a lot harder to achieve.
| | 01:17 | I'm going to use my Pen
tool just to create a pen path.
| | 01:21 | Now I want to make sure that I'm
working in my Pen Path mode, rather than my
| | 01:25 | Shape Layer mode, and I don't want to
be drawing this pen path on a new layer.
| | 01:31 | So I'm going to come and crate a new
blank layer and then draw the path to my
| | 01:37 | hidden treasure, just by
clicking and dragging with the Pen tool.
| | 01:41 | Now what I've created there is a work
path. It's going to show up on my Paths
| | 01:46 | panel as a work path, and I can now
stoke that path by coming to the Paths panel
| | 01:53 | menu and choosing Stroke Path.
| | 01:56 | When you use this you can stroke a path
using any of your painting or retouching
| | 02:01 | tools, and then we'll use
whatever that tool we last used.
| | 02:06 | So if I choose my Brush, I don't even
remember what the last use of my brush was,
| | 02:10 | but I doubt it's going to be what
I want, but let's just see what I get.
| | 02:15 | Click OK and it's just a black stroke.
| | 02:17 | Okay, so what we need to do though is
stroke the pen path with a dashed stroke.
| | 02:23 | So I'm going to undo that, and the
best way to create a dashed stroke.
| | 02:27 | And this is not going to end up being a
shape layer. This is going to end up being
| | 02:30 | pixels, but there really
is no other way of doing it.
| | 02:33 | So it's a bit of a work around
really rather than a feature.
| | 02:36 | But what I need to is choose my Brush tool
and set up my brush options first of all.
| | 02:41 | Now for a dash stroke, I need a square
brush, so I'm going to come to my brush
| | 02:47 | picker and I'm going to choose Square
Brushes. And do I want to append these, or
| | 02:55 | do I want to replace what's already there?
| | 02:56 | I think I want to append them, so those
square brushes are going to end up being
| | 03:02 | at the bottom of my brush list.
| | 03:04 | So I'm going to choose that one maybe,
a 16 pixel. That might be a little bit on
| | 03:11 | the big side. Maybe a 12 pixel brush.
| | 03:14 | Let's just paint with that
and see how wide that looks.
| | 03:17 | Yeah, maybe go down in size a fraction,
so I'm just going to press my left
| | 03:22 | bracket couple of times, go down to 9
pixels, or try that once again. Still not
| | 03:29 | going to work, but I want you to
see why it's not going to work.
| | 03:32 | So when I fill it now, it's sharp.
Well, it's the step in the right direction,
| | 03:38 | but we don't have any dashes there.
| | 03:39 | So I'm going to undo that and now
I need to come to my Brush panel.
| | 03:45 | Come to my Brush panel where I'm
going to change my brush spacing.
| | 03:49 | So I want the Spacing to be probably
200% so that we have the size of the brush
| | 03:57 | itself working as the size of the dash.
| | 04:02 | Let's just type that in, 200%.
| | 04:06 | Now in addition to that I also need to
sort out the angle of the brush, because
| | 04:11 | otherwise--and if we just go ahead
and stroke it now--we can see that that
| | 04:18 | dash is not angling to
follow the line of the pen path.
| | 04:22 | So I'll undo that and then we need to
come to the Shape Dynamics, and in this
| | 04:29 | area here Angle Jitter, I'm going to
turn the Angle Jitter down to 0 and the
| | 04:35 | Control is going to be changed to Direction.
| | 04:39 | So now when we go ahead and apply the
stroke, we get those squares of the brush
| | 04:47 | stroke actually following
the shape of our pen path.
| | 04:53 | And because we've chosen New Layer,
| | 04:55 | that has actually gone onto a new layer
and we can now come and deselect the
| | 05:01 | path and that's going to go away.
| | 05:03 | So not really a feature so much as a
workaround, but if you do need to achieve a
| | 05:09 | dashed line, then that's the best way to do it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying Smart Filters to shape layers| 00:00 | What makes shape layers so flexible is
the fact that they're vectors and thus
| | 00:04 | scalable without degrading their
quality, but that means that we can't apply
| | 00:08 | filters to them, because
they are vectors. Or can we?
| | 00:12 | If I go to the Filter menu and let's
say I want to add a Motion Blur to this
| | 00:16 | simple shape layer, I'm
going to get this message.
| | 00:21 | It's telling me that it's going to
rasterize the shape, i.e. turn it into
| | 00:24 | pixels, and I don't want to rasterize it
of course. It's no longer a shape, so I
| | 00:30 | can't now scale it, I can't come and
choose it with my path selection tool, and
| | 00:34 | maybe edit its shape,
change its shape in whatever way.
| | 00:38 | That option is lost to me now.
| | 00:41 | I'm going to undo that.
So here's a way around that.
| | 00:45 | If before we apply filters we
convert our shape layer to a Smart Object,
| | 00:50 | first time we do that we'll this message.
I'll suggest checking Don't Show Again.
| | 00:57 | Now that's Smart Object is going to be
stored elsewhere. It's going to be stored
| | 01:02 | in the temporary items folder, but it
means that if I come to the Filter menu
| | 01:07 | and down to Motion Blur,
| | 01:11 | now I'll have the blur follow
the angle of the plane itself,
| | 01:16 | I can apply changes to that and we
can still size the shape layer as part
| | 01:21 | of the Smart Object.
| | 01:22 | Now to get to this Smart Object, let
say there is something about that plane
| | 01:27 | that I want to change.
| | 01:28 | I would need to double-click on the
Smart Object, but first time I do it, I'll
| | 01:32 | get this message again. I would
suggest choosing Don't Show Again.
| | 01:36 | It takes me to just that particular
power of the composition where I can change
| | 01:43 | it in any way that I like.
| | 01:45 | Let's say that I wanted to just adjust
the shape of the wings. I'll just select
| | 01:52 | the wings with my Direct Selection tool
and make a very crude edit to them and
| | 01:58 | then when I save that, Command+S, and
when we move back our original documents,
| | 02:06 | we see that change updated in place
with the filter still applied to it.
| | 02:11 | What's more, we can affect the extent
of that filter by working on the filter mask.
| | 02:17 | So for example, if I didn't
want the top portion of the plane to be
| | 02:22 | blurred, I could add a gradient filter mask.
| | 02:26 | Now my plane looks a bit silly since I
made that change to it, so I'm going to
| | 02:30 | actually go back to my original Smart Object,
I'm going to undo the changes that I just made.
| | 02:37 | Command+Z, Command+Option+Z, as many
times as necessary to get back to this
| | 02:43 | point where I want it.
| | 02:44 | Save it again and now return to my
original document. I'm going to see the
| | 02:50 | wings restored to how they were, but
I'm going to now click on my filter mask
| | 02:56 | and come and choose my Gradient tool,
and I want to use a foreground to
| | 03:01 | transparent gradient and I will drag
over the top of the plane, like so, and
| | 03:07 | that's going to restore that portion
of the Smart Object, aka shape layer to
| | 03:15 | it's original un-blurred state, and
we can see what's going on with the
| | 03:20 | filter mask right there.
| | 03:21 | Where it's black, it's blurring
the effects of that Smart Filter.
| | 03:26 | What's more, when you apply your
filters in this way and not exclusively to
| | 03:32 | shape layers by any mean, but when you
apply filters in this way to any layer,
| | 03:36 | you can double click on the name of
the filter and revisit it and add in more
| | 03:42 | or less. I'll just change any of the
parameters of the filter and see those update in place.
| | 03:49 | So the conventional wisdom that you
cannot apply filtering to shape layers
| | 03:53 | because they're vectors, doesn't hold
true if you covert your shape layers to Smart Objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining shape layers with layer effects, blending modes, and Smart Objects| 00:00 | We've seen how to apply
layer effects to a shape layer.
| | 00:03 | We've seen how to apply
blending modes to a shape layer.
| | 00:07 | We've seen how to convert a
shape layer to a Smart Object.
| | 00:11 | Now we are going to combine all three
of those things so that we can move from this,
| | 00:15 | the example on the left which
is a shape layer just drawn on to a
| | 00:21 | background of crumpled paper, to this on
the right where that same shape layer is
| | 00:28 | blended into the texture, where it has
three different colors applied to it,
| | 00:33 | and where it's edges off to displaced by
using a Displacement Map filter. And yet
| | 00:38 | it is still a scalable vector shape.
| | 00:42 | So I am going to come over to the
example on the left as starting point and I'm
| | 00:45 | using my 2 Up view here to see
the two examples side-by-side.
| | 00:51 | So firstly, and I must say that these
techniques are all in the Photoshop for
| | 00:56 | Designers Textures title, so I
strongly recommend that you check that out.
| | 01:00 | What I am going to do here is I am
going to select the Texture layer and I'm
| | 01:06 | going to duplicate that and I am going
to drag that to the top above my shape layer
| | 01:10 | and then I am going to
set its blend mode to Overlay.
| | 01:15 | Now I'm going to change the
background of my shape layer.
| | 01:20 | Now the way things are with shape layer is
you could only apply a single color to them.
| | 01:24 | You could rasterize the field contents
i.e. the color fill layer and then you
| | 01:30 | could paint in on to that color fill layer.
| | 01:34 | But that's really not going to
give us what we want in this case.
| | 01:37 | What I want to do is fill the interior
areas of the shape layer with another color.
| | 01:43 | I could try this.
| | 01:44 | I could try putting a
solid color fill behind it.
| | 01:48 | I am just going to come and sample
the green that I have here and drag
| | 01:52 | that underneath it.
| | 01:53 | That's not going to work because
it's also going to apply that color to
| | 01:57 | my background texture.
| | 01:58 | Now I could maybe copy my vector mask
on to this layer and then invert it and
| | 02:03 | that would work, but that I think
is getting a little over complicated.
| | 02:07 | So I'm not going to do it that way.
I am just going to back up those steps.
| | 02:12 | Instead what I am going to do is this.
| | 02:14 | I am going to select my shape layer
and I am going to convert it to a Smart Object,
| | 02:19 | by right-clicking on it
and choosing Convert to Smart Object.
| | 02:23 | Now I can go and edit this as a
separate document and I can do that by
| | 02:28 | double-clicking on the Smart Object badge.
| | 02:31 | So here what I am going to do where we
see just the shape layer by itself is I
| | 02:36 | am going to come to the empty layer
beneath it and I'm going to sample that
| | 02:41 | green again and I am going
to fill that with the green.
| | 02:45 | Now at add the stroke around the shape
of the ornaments I am going to come to
| | 02:49 | the shape layer and to my layer effects
and to Stroke and we will have a 3 point
| | 02:56 | or 3 pixel black stroke.
| | 02:59 | So this is Shape 2.psd. It's a Smart Object
that's stored in the Temporary items folder.
| | 03:05 | When I click Save I can now return to
my starting file and there it is. We see
| | 03:13 | it now in the context of the whole composition.
| | 03:17 | To finish this off what I want to do
is, and I am going to do this quickly
| | 03:21 | because this is ground I have
already covered in the Textures title, but
| | 03:25 | I'm going to go to my Channels panel.
I am going to Command+Click on the RGB channel.
| | 03:31 | Come back to my layers, turn on my
shape layer, and that selection that I have
| | 03:36 | active, I am going to use as a
layer mask for the shape layer.
| | 03:40 | Now when I do that, that's just going
to help me blend in the shape into the
| | 03:46 | texture and then since the effect
of that is too strong I am going to come
| | 03:51 | to the Masks panel and
reduce the density of that.
| | 03:55 | Now one last thing that I want
to do is apply a filter to this.
| | 04:00 | Now I am already setup for applying filters
nondestructively because this is a Smart Object.
| | 04:07 | So I can come to my Filter menu and
down to Distort > Displace and what I am
| | 04:14 | going to use is the copy of the
crumpled paper. It needs to be saved as a PSD file,
| | 04:19 | which it is, and crumpled paper
is what I'm after and I am going to
| | 04:24 | displace it by full pixels.
| | 04:26 | And you can see what that does and I am
now going to switch to my consolidated view.
| | 04:31 | If I zoom on the edges there, we can
see that it's displacing those edges
| | 04:37 | according to the texture on
which the shape layer is sitting.
| | 04:41 | Now just to hammer home this point,
because this is a shape layer I can come and
| | 04:47 | edit it here and I can do
whatever I want with it here.
| | 04:50 | Let's says that I want change the
texture that I'm using. I'll come up to my
| | 04:55 | Custom Shapes and instead of using
that one I am going to this one and I am
| | 05:00 | going to draw another one which will create
a new shape layer. I will turn that one off.
| | 05:06 | I will save this and now we will return to
our document and that's going to update in place.
| | 05:15 | So there we see everything,
all sort of thrown in together.
| | 05:19 | The use of blending modes, the use
of layer effects and the use of Smart
| | 05:25 | Objects and Smart Filters, but
it all began with a shape layer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating shape layers from type| 00:00 | There's bound to come a time working
with type when you want to distort it
| | 00:04 | beyond what you can do
and have it remain live type.
| | 00:08 | There are some basic
warping options with your type.
| | 00:11 | But in this case, they are not
going to give us what we want.
| | 00:14 | So what we're going to need to do
is convert our type to a shape layer.
| | 00:19 | Let's switch over to our starting
state where we have the type still as type
| | 00:24 | and if I come and select it, we can
see that the type is in Gill Sans Ultra Bold.
| | 00:30 | If you don't have Gill Sans Ultra Bold,
then just choose something that's nice
| | 00:34 | and big and solid, so that we can fit
as much of the picture into the letter
| | 00:39 | shapes when we come to make the type
into a clipping mask for the picture.
| | 00:44 | Now, there are certain things that I can
do with it while it's still type and I
| | 00:47 | may as well get it as far as
I can with it being live type.
| | 00:51 | So I am going to press Command
or Ctrl+T and we'll scale it up.
| | 00:58 | I can also slant it like so.
| | 01:02 | But what I can't do is do any real
kind of perspective distortion on it.
| | 01:09 | I am just going to press Command+Minus to
see a bit more of my canvas around the picture.
| | 01:13 | So at this point, it's time to
convert our type into a shape layer.
| | 01:21 | Now, as a shape layer, it is still
vectors and will still be nice and crisp.
| | 01:26 | We're not rasterizing the type here,
which is a very important point to make.
| | 01:31 | So I am now going to press Command or
Ctrl+T to go back to my transformation
| | 01:36 | rectangle and if I hold down Command+
Option+Shift or Ctrl+Alt+Shift, I can
| | 01:42 | now do a real perspective distortion where
one side gets a lot bigger than the other.
| | 01:52 | Reposition as necessary. If I want to
distort it, I am just holding down the Command key.
| | 01:58 | So there, I can just position it into
place and let's scale it a little bit more.
| | 02:05 | So when I like that
transformation, I will press Return.
| | 02:08 | Now, I need to put that piece of type--
or that now shape layer that has been
| | 02:14 | derived from type--beneath the picture,
select the picture, hold down my Option
| | 02:19 | or Alt key, and click on the line
between the picture layer and the shape layer
| | 02:25 | to make a clipping mask.
| | 02:27 | I could also do the same thing
from the Layers panel right there.
| | 02:30 | Currently this is Release,
because it's already made.
| | 02:33 | And just to finish this off, to my
shape layer derived from the type I can add
| | 02:39 | a drop shadow and I'd like it
to be a nice big drop shadow.
| | 02:42 | I am just going to come and pull it
off to determine the angle of the shadow.
| | 02:47 | I'd like it to be a hard shadow.
| | 02:50 | So I am going to go to the Normal
blend mode, 100% Opacity, and I am going to
| | 02:55 | increase the Spread up to 100
and maybe increase the Size as well.
| | 03:02 | So that's how our shadow is looking
and just to get the letters some
| | 03:06 | definition, I am also going to add a stroke.
| | 03:09 | I'd like the stroke to be white and
maybe a little bit more solid than that.
| | 03:19 | So there is our end result created
by converting a piece of type into a
| | 03:25 | shape layer, so that we have much
more flexibility in how we distort that vector shape.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating web buttons using shape layers| 00:00 | Shape layers are extremely useful
when designing websites, especially when
| | 00:04 | you're first coming up with the website,
and you're not really sure yet how wide
| | 00:09 | the sidebar is going to be, how big the
footer is going to be, what color it's
| | 00:12 | going to be, how many buttons you're
going to have, etcetera. Because you can
| | 00:16 | show this initial sketch to your client
and they can say, well, actually I'd like
| | 00:20 | the left sidebar to be a bit bigger.
| | 00:22 | You just go to the left sidebar,
press Command+T, and then you can increase
| | 00:28 | its size as necessary.
| | 00:30 | And because your shape layers are
vectors, they are going to scale without any
| | 00:34 | kind of degradation whatsoever.
| | 00:37 | Beyond that, there is also another
very useful way in which you can use shape
| | 00:41 | layers and that is combining
shape layers with Smart Objects.
| | 00:45 | That's what I've done for our four tabs up here.
| | 00:49 | These are little Smart Objects and to
make something into a Smart Object,
| | 00:53 | you mply click on it, right-click, and then
choose Convert to Smart Object. Simple as that.
| | 00:59 | So I've made these with nothing more
than a rounded rectangle with a Bevel and
| | 01:06 | Emboss applied to them.
| | 01:09 | Having created one, then converted into
a Smart Object, and then copied that
| | 01:14 | smart object four or three or however
many times, this is an extremely useful
| | 01:20 | way if you need to make
changes to these buttons.
| | 01:24 | So, rather than having to change them
all, we can just go to the Smart Object,
| | 01:28 | change that, and they will all update in place.
| | 01:31 | So what I am going to do here is double
-click on one of the smart objects, it
| | 01:35 | doesn't matter what because
they're all exactly the same.
| | 01:37 | They are all tied to the same one.
| | 01:39 | So when I double-click on that,
we'll see this message. Click OK.
| | 01:44 | This is what it looks like.
| | 01:46 | Now, let's say that we've received
instruction from our client that they want to
| | 01:50 | change the color of the button to
something other than what it currently is.
| | 01:54 | They want it to be a green, a bright green.
| | 01:56 | So I am going to fill
that with the bright green.
| | 01:59 | I am going to save it, and then when
we go back to our original layout, they
| | 02:05 | will update in place.
| | 02:07 | So not only are the shape layers
scalable without degradation, but when they
| | 02:13 | are combined with Smart Objects, you
can have several instances of the Smart
| | 02:20 | Object reference the same source and if you
edit that source, they will all update in place.
| | 02:26 | Now, this has many, many
applications, but a website is just one that
| | 02:30 | really comes to mind.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using shape layers to mask multiple layers| 00:00 | We can have a shape layer
or a custom shape layer
| | 00:04 | mask any kind of other layer.
| | 00:06 | In this case, it's masking not just
one photographic layer, but several.
| | 00:11 | So here is a composition celebrating
the Isle of Wight, a lovely island off the
| | 00:16 | south coast of England and
here's how it was created.
| | 00:21 | I'm going to turn off the type and I'm
going to turn off the shape layer that is
| | 00:27 | masking all of the other photographic
layers, and you'll see that they just
| | 00:31 | instantly disappear as soon as I do that.
| | 00:33 | So I need to just unclip them from
that shape, and what we see here is that I
| | 00:38 | have four overlapping photographs.
| | 00:42 | Using layer masks, I have blended these
photographs together, so that we get this result.
| | 00:52 | It looks a bit of a mess at the moment
really, when we see it like this, out
| | 00:56 | of context, but now when I mask these
five layers to this one shape layer, this
| | 01:04 | is how it turns out.
| | 01:05 | I'll turn the shape layer back on, and
to create a clipping mask to that shape
| | 01:09 | layer, if I hold down the Alt key and
click on the lines that separate the layer
| | 01:15 | from the layers beneath,
and there is our result.
| | 01:21 | Put the type on top of it, come and put
a drop shadow around that clipping shape,
| | 01:28 | and it works pretty well.
| | 01:29 | So where did I get this shape from?
| | 01:31 | Well, I certainly didn't draw it.
| | 01:32 | I searched online and I found
a vector outline map of the UK.
| | 01:38 | I copied and pasted that very small area
that I needed and then when I pasted it--
| | 01:43 | do you Paste it as Pixels, Smart Object,
Path, or--and this is how I pasted it--
| | 01:50 | I pasted it as a shape layer.
| | 01:54 | So it comes in as a shape layer. I can
now scale it like any other shape layer,
| | 02:04 | and then I can clip all
of my images to the Isle.
| | 02:07 | If I unclip my images from the one
that's already there, it doesn't really
| | 02:12 | matter, that's all, what
color the shape layer is.
| | 02:16 | We do need to size it down a bit
further, so that it all fits on the canvas.
| | 02:20 | So I'll size it down like so.
| | 02:23 | I will unclip these.
| | 02:27 | I'll drag my new version down
to the bottom and then reclip it.
| | 02:32 | There is the result and then I would just
need to go and add the drop shadow to that.
| | 02:43 | So a shape layer is not just derived
from these basic shapes, nor derived from
| | 02:51 | these custom shapes, but indeed, can
be any piece of vector artwork that you
| | 02:56 | can create in Illustrator or adapt in
Illustrator and then paste into Photoshop
| | 03:04 | as a shape layer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding shape layers to a photo illustration | 00:00 | Here we're going to look at combining
shape layers with photographic images.
| | 00:04 | I'm going to recreate this image.
| | 00:07 | Let me break it down for you first of all.
| | 00:09 | I have a background field of color.
| | 00:11 | On top of that, I have a shape layer,
this target shape, but we're using it as a
| | 00:17 | sort of light burst.
| | 00:19 | On top of this, I have a photographic
image which has been masked to reveal that
| | 00:25 | light burst in the sky.
| | 00:26 | Then we have some clouds.
| | 00:28 | These clouds were adapted from some
Illustrator symbols which I copied and
| | 00:33 | pasted into Photoshop and then applied
some simple layer effects to, and we've
| | 00:39 | got each of those on a separate layer.
| | 00:41 | Then on top of that we have this piece
of type which has been converted to a
| | 00:46 | shape layer. It has some effects applied to it.
| | 00:49 | Lastly, we have that just to
finish the whole thing off.
| | 00:53 | So I'm going to switch now to this, the
starting point, and step number one is to
| | 01:01 | create a mask for the picture.
| | 01:06 | So I'm just going to do this kind of
roughly using the Quick Selection tool,
| | 01:11 | which happens to work
very well in this instance.
| | 01:15 | So I've gone over the sky.
I've unlocked my background layer.
| | 01:19 | And because it's the sky that I want to
mask, I'm going to hold down the Option
| | 01:23 | or Alt key and click on that to
see the transparency beneath it.
| | 01:28 | So next, I'm going to
come to my Custom Shape tool.
| | 01:33 | And from my Custom Shapes, I'm going to
choose my target which we've used once before.
| | 01:39 | It does turn out to be quite
useful, this one. It's right there.
| | 01:46 | It is a little bit unwieldy, because we
are going to need to drag it beyond the
| | 01:50 | bounds of the image.
| | 01:51 | So I'm going to put my cursor at roughly
the center point and then start drawing
| | 01:55 | the target, holding down the Alt key so
that we draw outwards from the center.
| | 02:00 | I just want to make sure that the edge
of the circle is not going to be visible
| | 02:04 | on the edge of my canvas.
| | 02:06 | So there, that seems to be big enough.
| | 02:08 | Now I need to move that
underneath my picture layer.
| | 02:14 | And I also don't want to see these
edges, which are going to keep cropping up
| | 02:18 | every once in a while.
| | 02:19 | They are a bit irritating.
| | 02:20 | But if we press Command+H
or Ctrl+H, they will go away.
| | 02:25 | Beneath this, I want to
put a solid layer of color.
| | 02:29 | So I'm going to choose Solid
Color and I want a darker blue.
| | 02:35 | I'll drag that underneath the
shape layer and that's what we get.
| | 02:41 | So I'm now going to turn the type on
and I have a separate exercise where we'll
| | 02:45 | be talking about how exactly this
gradient was made, because it's a bit tricky
| | 02:50 | since the type is on a curve.
| | 02:52 | But for now, I'm just going to
turn that on in its finished state.
| | 02:55 | I'm going to turn on the Butter layer
and let's go and get some clouds now.
| | 03:00 | So I'm going to pop over to Illustrator
and use one of the Illustrator symbols.
| | 03:05 | So the symbol that I want is this cloud.
| | 03:08 | It's in the Nature symbol group which
you'll get to by coming and clicking on
| | 03:14 | bottom left of the Symbols panel.
| | 03:17 | Then when you find it, you can click on it
and it will be added to your Symbols panel.
| | 03:22 | Then you want to add an instance of the
symbol to your artboard just by clicking.
| | 03:27 | Now at the moment, this symbol is
actually a lot more complex than it appears.
| | 03:31 | It's got a gradient in it and
that's not going to translate to a
| | 03:35 | Photoshop custom symbol.
| | 03:36 | So we need to simplify it.
| | 03:39 | First thing I'm going to is I'm
going to break the link to the symbol.
| | 03:42 | Then I'm going to come to the
Object menu and choose Expand Appearance.
| | 03:47 | Now you might think that would be enough.
| | 03:49 | But if I were to now copy this and go
over to Photoshop and then paste it and
| | 03:55 | paste it as a shape layer, we can see
that we are going to still end up with
| | 03:59 | this border around it.
| | 04:00 | So that's not any good.
We need to go one step further.
| | 04:03 | So I'm going to undo that,
switch back to Illustrator.
| | 04:07 | I've already expanded the appearance.
| | 04:09 | Now I can expand it.
| | 04:13 | Expanding it is going to allow me to
expand the gradient that fills this shape
| | 04:18 | into a specified number of objects.
| | 04:21 | So when I do that nothing really
appears to change, but there is now a gradient
| | 04:27 | that has been rendered as a series of lines.
| | 04:32 | We want to get rid of all of those.
| | 04:33 | In fact, if we go to the Outline
View, we can see them all there.
| | 04:37 | They're no good for us.
| | 04:39 | All we want is the cloud shape.
| | 04:41 | So I might here just be
able to select the cloud shape.
| | 04:45 | And if I clicked on the outline of the
cloud, I can see its segments and then
| | 04:51 | hold down the Alt key and click on
it and then I get the whole cloud.
| | 04:55 | I'm now just going to nudge that up a
bit, away from all that gradient stuff,
| | 05:00 | which I can then come and delete or just ignore.
| | 05:05 | Back in the Preview View mode I need
to make sure I have all of those anchor
| | 05:11 | points solid so that the
whole thing is selected.
| | 05:13 | Now I can copy it, now I can go back to
Photoshop, now I can paste it as a shape layer.
| | 05:20 | Now it's going to come in as a single shape.
| | 05:23 | So now I want to change the color of it.
| | 05:25 | I'm going to press my D key to go to my
default black and white with white as my
| | 05:30 | background color. Command+
Backspace or Ctrl+Backspace to fill it.
| | 05:34 | I might want to transform
it and I can position it.
| | 05:42 | And perhaps I want to give it a little
bit more character than it currently has.
| | 05:46 | So if I were to go to my layer styles,
let's see. We can give it an Inner Shadow
| | 05:55 | and possibly we could
also give it a Satin effect.
| | 06:00 | If I turn on Satin, and I think I'll
dramatically need to reduce my Opacity.
| | 06:06 | But I can now drag around inside
the shape to sort of drag the cloud
| | 06:13 | shape within itself.
| | 06:15 | I always find this one a bit hit and
miss as to exactly what you're going
| | 06:18 | to get, but I'm going to increase
the Size, increase the Distance, reduce
| | 06:22 | the Opacity, click OK.
| | 06:24 | One other thing I might consider here is
coming to the mask and feathering the mask.
| | 06:32 | So now that I have the one cloud there's
nothing to stop me duplicating it to get others.
| | 06:35 | I want to make sure that I'm not in
any danger of duplicating the vector mask
| | 06:40 | within the shape layer, but I
actually want to duplicate the whole thing.
| | 06:44 | So I'm going to click away from it. Click back
on it so that the vector mask is not selected.
| | 06:50 | Then with my Move tool selected, hold
down the Alt key, drag away from it,
| | 06:55 | possibly press Command+T
to go to Free Transform.
| | 07:00 | Maybe I can have this one go the
other way. Maybe I can rotate it slightly.
| | 07:05 | Maybe I can just adjust its scale a
little bit so that it's not quite as uniform
| | 07:12 | as the one that we already have.
| | 07:15 | Let's see, let's have one more of those,
and this one we'll make a little bit smaller.
| | 07:21 | So there's just one of many, many, many
things you can do combining your shape
| | 07:26 | layers with your photographic images.
| | 07:29 | In the next movie I'd like to show you
how to get this gradient effect working
| | 07:34 | with a shape layer
that's been derived from type.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using shape layers to apply custom gradients to type| 00:00 | Here we're going to see how we can use
a shape layer to limit the extent of a
| | 00:04 | gradient and to make the gradient
travel in exactly the way that we want it to.
| | 00:09 | And in this case what we want the
gradient to do is follow the arc of this type,
| | 00:14 | which doesn't happen automatically.
Because I'm going to turn off everything
| | 00:18 | else apart from this type just
so that we can concentrate on it.
| | 00:21 | We'll just see this type on a solid background.
| | 00:25 | But this is the finished version.
| | 00:26 | Now, if I just go to the version that
is still editable type, and the typeface
| | 00:33 | that I'm using is Bernard MT Condensed.
| | 00:39 | What we see is there is a gradient
overlay applied to this, and the gradient
| | 00:44 | overlay is going to start around here
and it's not warping in the same way
| | 00:51 | the type is warping.
| | 00:52 | I have a Warp effect on the type.
| | 00:55 | If I select that, we can see
that the Warp effect is an arc.
| | 00:58 | But the gradient isn't warping.
| | 01:00 | So we're not getting the gradient
starting and finishing in each of the letters.
| | 01:04 | So what I did to get around this was
convert my type layer to a shape layer, and
| | 01:13 | that's what I have on the layer beneath it.
| | 01:16 | So this is a type layer that
is converted to a shape layer.
| | 01:19 | The same gradient overlay is there.
| | 01:21 | That doesn't solve the problem.
| | 01:23 | What I need to do is I need to be
able to select each of these letters
| | 01:27 | individually and then apply
the gradient to them individually.
| | 01:32 | Of course, another workaround would
be to put each letter on its own layer.
| | 01:35 | But that's way too much work.
| | 01:36 | So we don't want to do that.
| | 01:38 | It's not going to let me do that,
because if I try and choose my Gradient
| | 01:41 | tool and then drag my Gradient tool
on that color fill layer, it's going to
| | 01:47 | tell me that I can't.
| | 01:48 | The content of the layer is not
directly editable. Unless we do this, unless
| | 01:54 | we come to the Layer menu and we
choose rasterize not the shape but the fill
| | 01:59 | content, and interestingly the thumbnail
for that changes from a square to a rectangle.
| | 02:06 | So now what I want to do is using
my Path tool I want to select these
| | 02:11 | letters one by one.
| | 02:12 | So I'm going to select the P and then I
need to come to my Paths panel where I
| | 02:18 | can click on Make Selection.
| | 02:20 | Now, that's an active selection, I can
limit the gradient to within that selection.
| | 02:25 | So I'll come to my Gradient tool.
| | 02:27 | I am going to choose this gradient
that I've already made but choose any
| | 02:30 | gradient that you like.
| | 02:32 | Then I drag from the bottom of the
letter to the top of the letter and following
| | 02:36 | the angle of the letter.
| | 02:38 | It still doesn't work, and why doesn't
it work? Because I haven't turned off
| | 02:42 | the Gradient Overlay.
| | 02:43 | Now when I turn off the
Gradient Overlay, it works.
| | 02:46 | So we need to make sure that that is turned off.
| | 02:50 | Let's do it for another letter.
| | 02:51 | So I will switch to my Path
Selection tool. I will select the letter.
| | 02:56 | Paths panel, make the path into a
selection, press the G key to go to my
| | 03:03 | Gradient tool, click-and-drag to
describe the gradient within the shape, and the
| | 03:10 | angle of that letterform.
| | 03:12 | I know it's really rather labor-intensive,
but I can't think of a better way of doing it.
| | 03:18 | I'll just do a couple more. Select the
letter, Paths panel, make the letter into
| | 03:25 | a selection, choose your gradient and
drag your gradient, and one more.
| | 03:33 | Select the letter, make the active path
into a selection, come and choose your
| | 03:41 | gradient, drag the
gradient within the selection.
| | 03:46 | So when you've done that, that's the
result you're going to get and this has
| | 03:51 | been combined with a drop shadow and a
stroke as well to really help lift it off the page.
| | 03:56 | So there, I think an interesting
approach to making the gradient behave the way
| | 04:02 | that you wanted to using a shape layer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Working with Custom ShapesFinding and loading custom shapes| 00:00 | If you need a particular custom shape
there is a good chance that somebody in
| | 00:04 | the Photoshop community has already
created it and made available on the web.
| | 00:09 | There are a great number of sites where
you can download custom shapes from and
| | 00:13 | install them and use them in Photoshop.
| | 00:16 | I'm going to show you an example of how
to download and install some custom shapes.
| | 00:20 | Here are some websites where
you can find some custom shapes.
| | 00:25 | Adobe Marketplace is one and if you
come to the Photoshop Marketplace and then
| | 00:30 | over here on the right-hand side
you can browse by custom shape.
| | 00:35 | We have here custom shapes mixed in
with layer effects and some other things as well,
| | 00:41 | but there are plenty
of custom shapes in there.
| | 00:42 | It's not the easiest place to find
them I have to say in terms of sifting
| | 00:47 | through lots of stuff that
might not be relevant to you.
| | 00:50 | Smashing Magazine is an excellent
resource for any kind of presets and
| | 00:55 | other things as well.
| | 00:57 | So we come to Smashing Magazine and
just type into their search field Photoshop
| | 01:01 | custom shapes followed by what is
you're looking for and there is here an
| | 01:05 | article about some excellent custom
shapes sets and I am just going to scroll
| | 01:11 | down to get to one that I think is
particularly interesting and it's this one,
| | 01:16 | Weathered Flying Bugs.
| | 01:18 | I'm going to click on that to follow
the link, which actually takes me to
| | 01:22 | deviantART, and here I can download the file.
| | 01:26 | The file is going to be in
the CSH, Custom Shape, format.
| | 01:33 | So you download it and then you can
put it where ever you want really.
| | 01:36 | There is no rule as to a
particular place that it has to be.
| | 01:41 | It does make sense to put it
in the Custom Shapes folder.
| | 01:45 | So the Custom Shapes folder is in the
Presets folder, which is in your Adobe
| | 01:50 | Photoshop folder, which is in your
Applications folder, or your Programs folder
| | 01:54 | if you're working on a Windows machine.
| | 01:57 | So you put it in here.
| | 01:58 | To install it you can just double-
click on it from anywhere or you can go to
| | 02:03 | Photoshop and come to your custom
shape picker and to the fly-out menu and
| | 02:11 | choose Load Shapes and then
just point your cursor to it.
| | 02:15 | Right there, that's the one we are
after, Weathered_Flying_Bugs, and if I open
| | 02:20 | that those are then
appended to my existing shapes.
| | 02:24 | Of course, I should also mention that as
well as this starter set of shapes that
| | 02:29 | we have here, you can also start off
by choosing All, and then do you want to
| | 02:35 | append these or do you want these
to replace what's already there?
| | 02:38 | I'm going to go ahead and append them.
| | 02:40 | So now we've got all of the available
custom shapes that come with Photoshop
| | 02:46 | plus the butterfly shape set that I've
just added and now that we've got that
| | 02:50 | butterfly shapes set, I can to my
heart's content draw as many of these as I
| | 02:55 | like and then adapt them to my own purposes.
| | 02:59 | So before you reinvent the wheel and
create your own custom shape, do an online
| | 03:04 | search and find out if somebody has
already created the kind of shapes that you
| | 03:08 | need for your project.
| | 03:10 | It could end up saving you an awful lot of time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating your own custom shape| 00:00 | Here we're going to see how we can
create our own simple custom shape and I have
| | 00:04 | created this Approved stamp
and we're going recreate this.
| | 00:09 | Once your artwork is ready what we
need to do is come to the Edit menu and
| | 00:14 | choose Define Custom Shape.
But let's recreate this from scratch.
| | 00:18 | So I'm going to turn this layer off and then
come to my Type tool. Just click on my canvas.
| | 00:26 | It's remembering the size and the font
that I was using before, so it just so
| | 00:30 | happens to be exactly what I want.
| | 00:31 | I'm using Helvetica Neue, Condensed
Black, 226 points. It's centered.
| | 00:38 | But what I'm also going to do now is
just drag it into the center of the canvas.
| | 00:43 | Once we've drawn the border around it,
we'll center the two relative to each other.
| | 00:48 | Now on a separate layer what I'm going
to do is draw a rounded rectangle, which
| | 00:52 | will become the border. So I'm going
to come and choose my Rounded Rectangle
| | 00:56 | tool and then positioning my cursor
roughly in the center of the canvas, start
| | 01:02 | drawing, and then hold down my Alt or Option
key to draw outwards from the center point.
| | 01:09 | Now incidentally it doesn't matter
what color I'm doing this in, because the
| | 01:12 | color is determined by the color that is
applied to the custom shape once you've
| | 01:17 | drawn it as a custom shape.
| | 01:18 | I'm just drawing it in red because it
seems to make the most sense in red, but the
| | 01:23 | color is actually irrelevant.
| | 01:25 | So I'm going to come and choose that
rounded rectangle with my Path Selection
| | 01:30 | tool and then I'm going to copy it.
| | 01:31 | I'm going to paste it and then working
on that copy, Command+T or Ctrl+T, to go to
| | 01:39 | my Free Transform, I'm going to hold
down the Option or Alt key, and scale it in
| | 01:44 | from the sides and down from the
top and the bottom towards the center.
| | 01:50 | Press Return to accept that and then
come up to my Exclude Overlapping Shape
| | 01:56 | areas option to punch a hole through
the rounded rectangle, making my border.
| | 02:02 | Now at the moment it's not going to work.
| | 02:04 | It's not going to work because I have
my artwork on two separate layers and I
| | 02:09 | need to get all of the artwork on one layer
so that I can define it as a custom shape.
| | 02:14 | If I select those two layers
and come to my Edit menu,
| | 02:18 | the option is not available to me.
| | 02:22 | So just before I copy the Approved type
on to the border layer, what I'm going to
| | 02:27 | do is align these two together.
| | 02:30 | So I have them selected, I'm going to
press Command+A or Ctrl+A, and then I'm
| | 02:35 | going to go to my Move tool by
pressing V, and then I'm going to center them
| | 02:41 | horizontally and vertically, which
makes me think that I would like to adjust
| | 02:46 | the size of my border.
| | 02:47 | So I'm now going to just click on my
border. Command+T or Ctrl+T. I'm going to
| | 02:54 | hold down the Option or Alt key and
bring that down a bit towards the center.
| | 02:59 | Okay, let's deselect to my active
selection, Command+D or Ctrl+D. I'm going to
| | 03:04 | come to my type layer. Now my type layer
needs to be converted to a shape layer,
| | 03:09 | so I'm going to right-click on
it and choose Convert to Shape.
| | 03:14 | Now what I want to do is
combine the two on to one layer.
| | 03:18 | And because on the top layer I've chosen
to Exclude the Overlapping Shape areas,
| | 03:24 | it's going to be a lot easier to copy the
type on to the border layer and vice versa.
| | 03:30 | So I'm going to come and choose my
Path Selection tool and I'm going to drag
| | 03:35 | over those letters, making sure that
all of those anchor points are selected.
| | 03:40 | I'm going to copy those. I'll turn off
that shape layer that was derived from my type.
| | 03:46 | I'll click on to the vector
mask of the top layer and I'll paste the
| | 03:52 | letters shapes on to that.
| | 03:53 | So now that I've got everything on one
layer, I'm going to deselect my path just
| | 03:59 | by clicking beneath my layers and then
come back and select that vector mask.
| | 04:05 | Now important here. I need to select the
vector mask rather than just the shape layer.
| | 04:10 | If I select just the
shape layer, nothing happening.
| | 04:14 | If on the other hand I select the vector
mask and I can see the border around it.
| | 04:19 | Come to the Edit menu, Define Custom
Shape, and I'm going to call it that.
| | 04:27 | And then to test it out I'm going to
switch to a blank document. I'm going to
| | 04:32 | come to my Custom Shape tool.
I can choose my custom shape.
| | 04:39 | I can just drag that out, holding
down the Shift key if I want to keep it proportional.
| | 04:43 | Maybe I'd like to rotate it.
Command+T or Ctrl+T. Just drag that
| | 04:47 | into position and use it
however it's appropriate in my artwork.
| | 04:52 | So there we see the basic steps of
creating your own custom shape.
| | 04:56 | Once it's drawn you can very easily
just change its color like so.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a custom shape from an Illustrator symbol| 00:00 | Let's see how we can adapt an
Illustrator symbol and turn that into a
| | 00:04 | Photoshop custom shape.
| | 00:06 | So here I am in Illustrator and
Illustrator has some very useful symbols libraries.
| | 00:14 | So I've come to my Symbols panel and
then I'm going to come to the icon at the
| | 00:18 | bottom-left of the Symbols panel where
we have all of these symbols libraries.
| | 00:24 | First of all I'm going to come to
Florid Vector Pack and we get these nice
| | 00:29 | little decorative pieces of vector art.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to add one of those to my
symbols and I'm then going to place an
| | 00:37 | instance of that on my artboard.
| | 00:39 | Now this is a very simple piece of artwork.
| | 00:42 | It's not layered. There are no colors.
This is going to work really well turning
| | 00:47 | this into a Photoshop custom shape.
| | 00:50 | All we need to do is break the link to
the symbol and then we just have anchor
| | 00:55 | points and path segments.
| | 00:59 | I can now copy that, switch to
Photoshop, paste it and paste it as a shape layer,
| | 01:06 | and then we have our shape layer
now in Photoshop and then I can come to
| | 01:12 | Define Custom Shape. Give it a name.
| | 01:14 | Thereafter, I'll be able to
access that from my Shape menu.
| | 01:20 | Let's have a look at something that's
going to present a few more challenges.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to come now to the Nature
symbol set and I'm going to choose the ant
| | 01:30 | and add an instance of that.
| | 01:32 | I'll move the ant over there, and
I'm also going to size the ant up.
| | 01:38 | So I press E to go to my Free
Transform and I'm going to click-and-drag.
| | 01:43 | Then when we look at the ant, we see
that actually there's a lot more going on here.
| | 01:50 | We have several different
colors making up this artwork.
| | 01:53 | So if I were to break the link to the
symbol and then try to do I did before,
| | 01:58 | Command+C to copy, switch over to
Photoshop and Command+V to paste, as a shape layer,
| | 02:05 | it's not going to work.
| | 02:07 | We need to adapt this artwork
in Illustrator first of all.
| | 02:12 | So let's see what we need to do.
| | 02:13 | I'm going to come to my Layers panel
and on the Layers panel we can see the
| | 02:18 | artwork for the ant.
| | 02:20 | If I expand that-- I'm just going to pull
this out so we can see it a bit more clearly.
| | 02:26 | So here we have the ant and we expand it
and we see that it's made up of a group.
| | 02:30 | Now, within this group there is
another group and within that group, what do
| | 02:33 | you know, there is another group.
| | 02:35 | Let's expand that and then we get several
paths in that group and another group there.
| | 02:40 | So it's actually quite a
complex piece of artwork.
| | 02:44 | Surrounding the whole thing is a bounding box.
| | 02:47 | All we're really interested in is this path
down at the bottom. This is the ant shape.
| | 02:53 | So I can come and click on the bull's
eye of that sub-layer to select just that,
| | 03:00 | and then if I choose my Direct
Selection tool and holding down the Alt key,
| | 03:06 | drag away from that to isolate that
particular path and then copy that over to
| | 03:12 | Photoshop and paste it as a
shape layer, that would work.
| | 03:15 | But, let's say that we also
wanted to retain some of the detail.
| | 03:19 | Now, a shape layer can't be derived
from anything that has multiple colors.
| | 03:23 | It all needs to be one color.
| | 03:25 | It all needs to be on the same vector
mask, effectively it all needs to be
| | 03:30 | clasped using a compound path or
excluding overlapping shape areas.
| | 03:37 | So what I'm going to do is adapt this
piece of artwork here on the right and
| | 03:41 | I'm first of all going to select that
outside bounding box because we don't need that.
| | 03:47 | So let's delete that and then I'm
going to select this area of yellow detail.
| | 03:52 | We're going to get rid of that.
| | 03:54 | I'm going to come to my Select
menu and choose Same > Fill Color.
| | 03:58 | It's going to select all of those
yellow dots. And I'm going to delete those.
| | 04:04 | Next, I'm going to select everything
that we have left and come to my Pathfinder
| | 04:10 | panel where I'm going to choose this
option, the Exclude overlap, which is going
| | 04:16 | to have those formerly blue shapes
knock a hole through the black shape.
| | 04:21 | Remember the color that we're creating
this in is going to be irrelevant when we
| | 04:25 | turn it into a shape layer.
| | 04:27 | So now I can select this piece of
artwork, copy it, switch over to Photoshop,
| | 04:33 | paste it as a shape layer, there it is.
| | 04:39 | I can now select it.
Edit menu > Define Custom Shape.
| | 04:45 | Anytime I want an ant right now,
just the place to go to get one.
| | 04:49 | So there we see how we can adapt some
of the great symbols that are already
| | 04:54 | there in Illustrator if you have
Illustrator and turn them into custom Photoshop shapes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a custom shape from an Illustrator Live Trace object| 00:00 | We've seen how to create simple custom
shapes in Photoshop but what if we want
| | 00:04 | to create a custom shape from a more
complicated piece of artwork like this
| | 00:08 | wood-cut portrait of Shakespeare?
| | 00:11 | Well, what we need to do is simplify
this as much as possible and then in
| | 00:15 | conjunction with Illustrator's Live
Trace we can vectorize this artwork and then
| | 00:20 | copy the result back into Photoshop
and turn the result into a custom shape.
| | 00:25 | But there is going to be some back and
forth between Photoshop and Illustrator
| | 00:29 | and there is great synergy between
the two programs, so I think is a very
| | 00:33 | interesting technique.
| | 00:35 | What we have here is a vector mask
applied to the portrait, so that's the first
| | 00:41 | piece of very necessary
simplification, masking out any unnecessary detail.
| | 00:47 | So the vector mask was created with
the Pen tool, just drawing around the
| | 00:51 | figure and then when the path is
complete turning that path into a vector mask
| | 00:57 | by clicking on the Layer icon and
holding down the Command key and clicking on
| | 01:01 | the to Add Mask icon.
| | 01:03 | So we are at this point. What I'm going to
do now is place this artwork in Illustrator.
| | 01:10 | Coming over to Illustrator I am going
to choose File > Place and choose my artwork.
| | 01:16 | Make sure that I have the
Link checkbox checked.
| | 01:19 | That's very necessary and then I am going to
zoom in on my piece of artwork and I will go
| | 01:25 | ahead and Live Trace it.
| | 01:27 | It may take a moment because it's
quite a complicated piece of artwork.
| | 01:30 | Well, the result isn't too bad
but we need to simplify it further.
| | 01:34 | So I am going to come to my Live Trace Options.
| | 01:37 | We are using the Black and White mode,
which is what we want in this case.
| | 01:41 | I am going to do a few things here that
will dramatically reduce the number of
| | 01:46 | anchor points on path and
give us a simpler result.
| | 01:49 | But this alone is not going to be enough.
But first of all I am going to check
| | 01:53 | Ignore White and then turn on my preview.
| | 01:56 | Now that it's not having to draw around
any white shapes we have approximately
| | 02:02 | half the number of anchor points. So
that's a big step in the right direction.
| | 02:07 | I'm also going to apply some blurring
to the image, which will help remove any
| | 02:12 | nasty jaggedy vector tracing results.
| | 02:16 | So I'm going to blur it by 0.2 pixels
and then I will press the Tab key and
| | 02:23 | that will cause my trace to update and we've
reduced the number of anchor points further.
| | 02:28 | And lastly what I am going to do here
in my Tracing Options is I am going to
| | 02:32 | increase the size of the minimum area.
| | 02:34 | I am going to double it to 20 pixels.
| | 02:37 | This is the minimum size of
detail that is traced around.
| | 02:41 | So by doubling it we are excluding the
very small details and then if I press my
| | 02:46 | Tab key we will trace again.
| | 02:49 | Starting out with nearly 17,000 anchor
points, we have come down to just over 5000.
| | 02:55 | I am going to click Trace there and
now I am going to return to Photoshop.
| | 02:59 | We can see that the problem area is
we have got a lot of jagged stuff going
| | 03:02 | on around the nose.
| | 03:03 | We are still seeing the wood-cut texture
in the face and we don't really have as
| | 03:09 | much detail and simplicity
as we would like in the eyes.
| | 03:12 | So coming back to Photoshop I am
going to three things here, maybe four.
| | 03:17 | The first thing I am going to
do is make it black-and-white.
| | 03:22 | The next thing I am going to do is adjust
the contrast using a Levels adjustment layer.
| | 03:28 | I am going to get the black point
slider and I am going to bring that towards
| | 03:32 | the center. That's going to
make the dark grays black.
| | 03:36 | I am going to get the white point
slider and bring that towards the centwe.
| | 03:40 | That's going to make the light grays
white and you can see that we are losing
| | 03:43 | some detail and that in this
case is what we want to do.
| | 03:47 | And I am also going to get the mid
point slider and move that slightly towards
| | 03:51 | the left. That's going to
lighten the mid-tone values.
| | 03:54 | The next thing I want to do to simplify
this image further is apply the Median filter.
| | 03:59 | The Median filter is going to look
for stray pixels and remove them.
| | 04:03 | Before I do this I am going to convert
my image for Smart Filters and then I am
| | 04:09 | going to come to the Noise group >
Median and apply a Median Radius of 1 pixel.
| | 04:16 | And you can see that's quite
dramatically simplified things, admittedly at the
| | 04:20 | price of slightly blurring the image
but that's okay because when we vectorize
| | 04:24 | it it's not going to matter.
| | 04:27 | One more step I would like to take here
is applying some dogging and burning to
| | 04:31 | bring out the shadow and highlight
details on the face especially because this
| | 04:36 | is what's going to be
problematic when we live trace this image.
| | 04:40 | So to do this I am going to add a
Doge and Burn layer above my image
| | 04:44 | layer currently Layer 1.
| | 04:47 | I am going to hold down my Option or Alt
Key when I click on Create a new layer.
| | 04:50 | I want to check a number of things here.
| | 04:53 | I am going to name the layer dodge and burn.
| | 04:54 | I am going to use previous layer to
create a clipping mask so that it only affects
| | 05:00 | the layer beneath. Also so that
is clipped to the layer beneath.
| | 05:04 | I am going to change the Mode to
Overlay and I am going to fill with
| | 05:08 | Overlay Neutral Color.
| | 05:10 | That's going to give me a layer of solid gray.
| | 05:13 | We need some pixels for our Dodge and
Burn tools to work with and a 50% gray has
| | 05:18 | no effect in the Overlay blend mode.
But when we stop painting on it we are
| | 05:23 | going to be darkening and lightning
areas, which will affect the image below.
| | 05:27 | Firstly I am going to burn and I'm
going to increase the size of my brush and I
| | 05:32 | am going to go over some of the shadow areas.
| | 05:35 | I can change the size of my brush as necessary.
| | 05:40 | Now going in the other direction using
the companion Dodge tool, I can go over
| | 05:45 | some of these busy areas on the face
and lighten them effectively removing some
| | 05:53 | of that what is ultimately going
to prove to be distracting detail.
| | 05:56 | So we just want to get rid of it.
| | 05:57 | Okay I could do more but I
am going to stop right there.
| | 06:01 | Now I am going to save the file.
| | 06:03 | I am going to switch back to
Illustrator where I will get this message telling
| | 06:10 | me that the image has been updated.
| | 06:12 | I do want to use the updated version
and we now see the updated version traced
| | 06:17 | using the existing trace settings
and if we go and have a look at tracing
| | 06:23 | options we can see that we've
dramatically reduced the number of anchor points.
| | 06:27 | Remember, we started with 17,000.
| | 06:29 | We're down now to just under 1500.
| | 06:34 | I am going to need to expand the result
now or rather I am going to expand a copy.
| | 06:39 | So I am going to hold down the Option
or Alt key, drag a copy over, and expand
| | 06:44 | that copy and I want to see how we c an
simplify things a bit further still using
| | 06:50 | a couple of useful tools.
| | 06:52 | The Eraser tool and the Blob Brush tool.
| | 06:56 | So let me get in here to
a comfortable view size.
| | 07:00 | I am going to hold down my Command key
and click away from the illustration to
| | 07:04 | deselect and then I can now just start
painting with my Eraser tool to smooth
| | 07:10 | out those bumpy details and if I wanted
to incorporate some of these highlight
| | 07:16 | areas that are in the hair, I can do
that with the Blob Brush and when I go over
| | 07:22 | those areas, they are
incorporated into the existing background.
| | 07:29 | Now, you may find that when you use
the Blob Brush that what you're actually
| | 07:34 | doing is creating extra paths that are
also in the same fill color and while
| | 07:40 | that looks okay, that is going to add
to the complexity of the illustration.
| | 07:44 | So as a final finishing touch,
select the elements and then using the
| | 07:50 | Pathfinder, combine them.
| | 07:52 | So I am going to just carry on and do
a little bit more that, incorporating
| | 07:57 | details that are really going to
be too fine to read and also just
| | 08:01 | smoothing things out.
| | 08:02 | I am going to select it all again and
just make sure that I incorporate any
| | 08:08 | overlapping details, absorb it all
into the simple illustration, and then I am
| | 08:14 | going to select all of that, copy it,
come over to Photoshop and probably best
| | 08:20 | to do this in a new document.
| | 08:22 | I am going to create a new document and we'll
have the new document to be an 800 pixels square.
| | 08:28 | I am going to paste my shape layer.
| | 08:33 | It's going to look like that and I
can now come to the Edit menu and choose
| | 08:38 | Define Custom Shape.
| | 08:40 | It's still a little bit on the
complicated side, but can probably benefit from
| | 08:43 | being simplified a little bit more.
| | 08:45 | I will give it a name and let's get rid
of that and we'll just now draw a few of them,
| | 08:52 | choosing the Custom Shape tool,
and choose that custom shape and draw away
| | 08:59 | till our heart's content and then just
change the color of this as we choose.
| | 09:06 | And just to give you an idea of the kind
of thing that we can do with it here I
| | 09:09 | have just drawn three versions of this
custom shape. I've overlaid it with some
| | 09:14 | type, overlaid it with a couple of
rectangles, changed the blending modes and
| | 09:19 | it's not going to win any design awards
I don't think, but it's a pretty simple
| | 09:24 | and effective poster.
| | 09:25 | So just one application of what you can
do with a more complicated custom shape,
| | 09:32 | and most importantly how to get
there using Photoshop in combination with
| | 09:37 | Illustrator's Live Trace.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating seamless patterns from shape layers| 00:00 | This movie is about using a custom
shape to create a repeating pattern.
| | 00:05 | Now this may be something that you've
seen before and it's pretty easy to do, but
| | 00:09 | the twist on it here is that we're
using a custom shape and then our pattern tile
| | 00:13 | is consequently going to
have the benefit of being scalable,
| | 00:17 | should we decide that we want to
change the size of our pattern.
| | 00:21 | So I've used the light bulb custom shape
and it's somewhere in our standard shapes.
| | 00:27 | It's right there. And I've got one of these
that's right in the center of the canvas.
| | 00:32 | Now in order to get this to repeat
and tile perfectly I need to put other
| | 00:36 | versions of the light bulb at
the four corners of my image.
| | 00:40 | And I need them to line-up exactly. So
here is a trick that we can use to have
| | 00:45 | them line-up exactly.
| | 00:48 | To do this we're going to use the
Offset filter, but the Offset filter is not
| | 00:52 | going to work on a Vector shape without
rasterizing it and we don't want that to happen.
| | 00:57 | So before I do that I'm going to
make the stamp of my layers above my
| | 01:01 | current layer stack.
| | 01:03 | And I'm going to Merge Visible
but Merge Visible into a new layer.
| | 01:08 | So I'm holding down the Alt
or Option key while I do this.
| | 01:12 | So that's made a rasterized copy of
my layer at the top of my layer stack.
| | 01:17 | Now I'm going to come to my
Filter menu > Other and choose Offset.
| | 01:21 | Now this document that I'm working
with is 200 pixels square, so I want to go
| | 01:27 | horizontally 100 pixels and vertically
100 pixels. That's going to divide my
| | 01:32 | light bulb into four and
position it exactly at the four corners.
| | 01:37 | Now what I want to do is come back to
my original light bulb shape where I'm
| | 01:43 | going to copy this four times,
one, two, three, four, and pressing
| | 01:47 | Command+J four times.
| | 01:50 | And I now want to get these copies and
place them exactly over the rasterized
| | 01:56 | portion which we're
essentially using as a tracing layer.
| | 01:59 | So I'm going to start with the top
image and then I'm just going to drag that
| | 02:04 | and position it exactly in place like so,
and then I can come and select the
| | 02:11 | next one, and the next one.
| | 02:16 | I'm clicking on the vector
masks to make the path active.
| | 02:24 | So now my top tracing layer has served
its purpose. We can turn that off. In fact,
| | 02:29 | we can now throw that away.
| | 02:32 | What we're left with is five custom
vector shapes that will make up our pattern.
| | 02:38 | So what we need to do next is define
it as pattern tile, but before I do that
| | 02:44 | I'm also going to just add a little bit
of noise to the background so we have a
| | 02:47 | bit of texture. I've already done that actually.
| | 02:49 | It's on a Smart Filter. I just have
it turned off for the moment, but when I
| | 02:53 | turn it on we can see that we just get
a little bit texture there and if that's
| | 02:56 | a little bit too much, and I think it is,
because it's been applied as a Smart Filter
| | 03:00 | I can double-click on the Smart
Filter name and reduce that amount I'm
| | 03:04 | going to go down to 4%.
| | 03:07 | So now I can come to my Edit
menu and choose Define Pattern.
| | 03:11 | It's going to give me a little
preview of it there. I'll give it a name.
| | 03:17 | Now that it's defined as a pattern I
can fill any area or any canvas, and I'm
| | 03:22 | going to have a canvas that's 900 pixels x 550 pixels.
And then I'm going to press Shift+Delete, which is
| | 03:31 | the keyboard shortcut for the Fill
command, or use Edit > Fill, and I'm going to
| | 03:36 | fill it with a pattern.
| | 03:37 | And the pattern I want is that one.
| | 03:42 | And there we have it, our repeating
pattern created using the offset filter.
| | 03:46 | But where the custom shape really
comes into play is its scalability.
| | 03:50 | So we took the precaution of
retaining our original pattern tile as a
| | 03:57 | vector custom shape.
| | 03:58 | So that if we needed to go back and
style the whole thing, let's say we needed
| | 04:03 | to come back to the original and we
decided that we actually want it to be an
| | 04:08 | 800 pixels square, we could scale it up
here and we're not going to suffer any
| | 04:12 | kind of degradation quality.
| | 04:14 | It's vectors that we're
working with and not pixels.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Saving and loading shapes with the Preset Manager | 00:00 | The Preset Manager is where we manage
our custom shapes, amongst other things
| | 00:04 | like brushes, swatches, styles.
| | 00:08 | The Preset Manager lives under the Edit
menu and if I switch to my custom shapes
| | 00:13 | we see a list of all of those
currently loaded custom shapes.
| | 00:17 | What we can do here that we can't do
elsewhere is we can select them and we can delete them.
| | 00:21 | We could, if we wanted to,
rename them. Not that we're referencing
| | 00:25 | them by names so that's not
particular, but we can also make subsets.
| | 00:29 | So let's say that I want to select
all of these and I would like to make
| | 00:34 | these into a subset.
| | 00:36 | So I select them and I choose Save
Set and I'm going to call it myshapes.
| | 00:41 | So let's say now I want to replace all
the shapes that I can currently see with
| | 00:46 | just that subset that I made. I can
come to this fly-out menu and choose
| | 00:49 | Replace Custom Shapes. I choose what
it is I want to replace them with, the
| | 00:54 | shape set that I just made, and that's now
all I see. The other one is still there.
| | 00:58 | That's just not currently loaded.
| | 01:00 | The other thing that's worth
mentioning is that my custom shape set I just made--
| | 01:05 | remember I called it My Shapes--
it's not currently showing up in this list.
| | 01:10 | And it won't until you quit Photoshop
and restart Photoshop, assuming that you
| | 01:15 | have had a clean quit out of Photoshop,
i.e. that you haven't crashed. Then when you
| | 01:19 | restart Photoshop your custom shapes sets you
have named and loaded will appear in this list.
| | 01:27 | So the Preset Manager is just a
housekeeping tool and it's a way of managing the
| | 01:31 | custom shapes that you create and
also organizing them into sets that makes
| | 01:36 | sense for how you work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Working with Vector MasksWhat is a vector mask?| 00:00 | In this title there has been a lot of
talk of vector masks and in this movie I
| | 00:04 | am going to talk about exactly what a
vector mask is, how to create one, how to
| | 00:08 | delete one, how to disable and
enable one, and how to copy one.
| | 00:14 | So firstly creating a vector mask,
currently you maybe hadn't noticed that I
| | 00:18 | have a gray outline around
my kettle. That is a pen path.
| | 00:23 | This pen path has been saved on the
Paths panel. It's called which Path 1.
| | 00:29 | I am going to first of all deactivate
it by clicking beneath. That makes the
| | 00:32 | gray outline go away.
| | 00:34 | This pen path was created by
drawing around the edge of this object.
| | 00:39 | Now you can see that as I am
drawing this, I am getting a solid shape.
| | 00:43 | That is because I have the
wrong type of behavior selected.
| | 00:47 | So in a situation like this, press your
Delete key twice and you will be asked,
| | 00:52 | what you want to do?
| | 00:53 | You want to clear the
vector mas. Yes you do, okay.
| | 00:56 | So then you reset to the Pen tool
behavior and then you can draw your pen path.
| | 01:01 | And I realize I am not going close
to the edge and I am just sort of
| | 01:06 | illustrating roughly how you would do this.
| | 01:10 | While it's in progress it will be a work path.
| | 01:12 | To make a work path into a saved path,
you literally just double-click on it
| | 01:17 | and you give it a name.
| | 01:19 | I don't need that one, so I am
going to throw that one away.
| | 01:21 | Now it's not necessary to save your
path in order to use it as a vector mask.
| | 01:27 | But you might do so, because perhaps
you are sure yet that you want a vector mask.
| | 01:32 | The difference between a path and a
vector mask is that the path is just potential.
| | 01:38 | It's there to be called on
any time when you need it.
| | 01:42 | The vector mask applies to the specific layer.
| | 01:45 | Having drawn my path, rather than saving
it as a path I could have made it into a
| | 01:52 | vector mask, or if I'm being especially
cautious or I'm not yet sure where I'm
| | 01:58 | going with this illustration, I could
save the path and then later on turn it
| | 02:03 | into a vector mask and
that's what I am going to do now.
| | 02:06 | So the path is active and I could make
it into a vector mask by coming to the
| | 02:10 | Layer menu and choosing Vector Mask >
Current Path and then that will reveal
| | 02:17 | the background layer.
| | 02:18 | I am going to undo that. And instead
of making my vector mask that way,
| | 02:25 | I'm going to do it this way, because
I think this way is slightly easier.
| | 02:29 | With an active path all you need to do
is hold down the Command key or the Ctrl
| | 02:34 | key click on what's now the Add vector
mask, usually the Add layer mask icon.
| | 02:40 | But it becomes Add vector mask
when you hold down Command or Ctrl.
| | 02:44 | So there we have it, the vector mask.
| | 02:47 | The vector mask is like its companion,
the layer mask, continuously editable
| | 02:53 | and nondestructive.
| | 02:55 | So what do I mean by that?
| | 02:56 | By nondestructive I mean that if we
don't like it we can just throw it away and
| | 03:02 | we are back to where we began.
| | 03:03 | So we haven't actually deleted any of
that background; we are just masking it.
| | 03:07 | I am going to undo that.
| | 03:10 | By continuously editable I means that
if we go and get our Direct Selection tool,
| | 03:15 | the white arrow, and we come
and click on the path edge, we see the
| | 03:22 | anchor points and then I can adjust
those anchor points. And it's quite common
| | 03:27 | to want to do this.
| | 03:28 | Because when you actually see the mask
in the context of its new background you
| | 03:32 | might realize that it wasn't as
accurate as you as you originally thought it was
| | 03:36 | and you can use this technique to come
in and just finesse the edge of that mask.
| | 03:44 | Should we want to temporarily disable
the mask, we could hold down the Shift
| | 03:48 | key and click on it.
| | 03:49 | We get the big red X appear there.
| | 03:52 | Hold down the Shift key and click
on it again and that brings it back.
| | 03:55 | The essential difference between a
vector mask and a layer mask is that the
| | 04:00 | vector mask is made from pen paths and
is consequently smooth and sharp on its edges.
| | 04:07 | Except when it's not.
| | 04:09 | Because you can actually feather the
edge but that's another story and we will
| | 04:14 | be dealing with that in a separate movie.
| | 04:16 | But typically the quality of a vector
is its crispness and its scalability.
| | 04:21 | A layer mask on the other hand can be softened.
| | 04:26 | It can transition from 100% Opacity to
0% Opacity and that softness can vary
| | 04:35 | around the edges of your layer.
| | 04:37 | While it's possible to feather
a vector mask, the feather is going to be the
| | 04:42 | same degree of feather all around. In
this case, the kettle, we can't have one
| | 04:47 | side softer and one side harder.
| | 04:49 | But before we get on to the feathering
aspects of vector masks, essentially what
| | 04:55 | makes this object, this kettle, a good
candidate for a vector mask versus a layer mask
| | 05:01 | is the fact that it is made up of
very graceful, very smooth, and because
| | 05:07 | it's photographed very crisply and
it's all in focus, very crisp shapes.
| | 05:11 | So it really blends itself to the
quality of vectors as opposed to a layer mask.
| | 05:18 | Which is not to say that we
can't also have a layer mask with it.
| | 05:22 | And that's another story and I will be
dealing with that in a separate movie.
| | 05:26 | But we've seen how to create the
vector mask. We've seen how to disable the
| | 05:30 | vector mask, how to edit the vector mask.
| | 05:33 | What if we wanted to copy the vector mask?
| | 05:36 | Well, the results that we get likely to be
little bit odd, but sometimes it could
| | 05:42 | be a happy accident. I am going to
turn off the current background layer and
| | 05:47 | let's say that I want to select that
vector mask and I am now going to drag it
| | 05:51 | onto this layer of branches down at the bottom.
| | 05:55 | If I want to copy it, well if I want to
move it first of all, I just drag it and
| | 06:01 | then what we are seeing now is the top
layer without its vector mask. If I turn that off,
| | 06:05 | we see the bottom
layer with the vector mask applied.
| | 06:09 | If I want to copy the vector
mask you do exactly the same thing.
| | 06:13 | But as you probably guessed you also hold
down the Option or the Alt key as you do so.
| | 06:18 | So I have that same vector mask applied to both.
| | 06:22 | So those are the basics of working with
a vector mask, creating it, using your
| | 06:27 | Pen tool or any combination
off your Shape tools: editing it,
| | 06:32 | remember it's continuously editable,
disabling it, moving it and copying it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Converting to a selection, vector mask, or layer mask| 00:00 | I think it's helpful to remind ourself
that layer masks, vector masks, paths,
| | 00:05 | selections, quick masks, alpha channels
others that I am forgetting to mention,
| | 00:11 | they are all pretty much the same thing.
They are all just ways of isolating
| | 00:14 | parts of your image.
| | 00:17 | What I have here is a four-up
arrangement and there is a path, a saved path in
| | 00:24 | this document and I used the path to
isolate this Metro sign because it's made
| | 00:28 | you of straight lines and graceful
curves, therefore it's a good candidate for
| | 00:32 | the Pen Path tool to select it
and also because it's against a busy
| | 00:37 | background, which makes it a bad
candidate for using the Magic Wand or the
| | 00:41 | Quick Selection tool.
| | 00:43 | But the point I really want make here
is that if I activate that path-- and I am
| | 00:48 | going to come to the leftmost version.
| | 00:51 | If I activate the path, we see
the gray outline of the path.
| | 00:55 | That's what a path looks like.
| | 00:56 | Now I'll come to the second one.
| | 00:58 | I'll activate the path.
| | 01:00 | Now the path can very easily become a
selection and all you need to do to make
| | 01:05 | it into a selection is come and click
on this icon, the third from the left, or
| | 01:10 | Command+Click on the path thumbnail.
| | 01:13 | So that's what an active selection looks like.
| | 01:16 | In the third example we have the path active.
| | 01:20 | The active path can become a vector mask.
| | 01:24 | So with the active path I can come
to my Layers panel and if I unlock my
| | 01:29 | background layer just by
double-clicking on it, click OK,
| | 01:31 | I can then hold down Command or Ctrl
and click on what's now Add vector mask.
| | 01:39 | So that's the path converted to a vector mask.
| | 01:42 | In the fourth option let's say I want
to convert the path into a selection and
| | 01:50 | then the selection into a layer mask.
| | 01:53 | Once again I need to
unlock the background layer.
| | 01:56 | This time I don't need to hold down
the Command or Ctrl key. Just click and
| | 02:00 | I get a layer mask.
| | 02:02 | A layer mask is going to be black and white;
a vector mask is going to be gray and white.
| | 02:07 | To edit a layer mask we would use our
Brush tools and then paint all on the
| | 02:12 | layer mask and if I paint in black I
am going to hide more of the image.
| | 02:17 | I think I need to refresh the view by coming
and clicking on that then coming back to it.
| | 02:21 | So that's how we edit a layer mask.
| | 02:24 | To edit a vector mask we need to have
our Direct Selection tool and then we
| | 02:31 | click on the outline of the mask and then
we can pull that around and edit it that way.
| | 02:37 | So I hope you see the distinction
between them. Vector masks are sharp.
| | 02:43 | Layer masks have the potential to be soft
on transitional and that this softness can
| | 02:50 | vary around the edge off the subject.
| | 02:54 | Some other terms that get bandied
around in the same breath are alpha
| | 02:59 | channels and quick masks.
| | 03:01 | So just to quickly demystify what
these are I am going to come to this one.
| | 03:07 | Here I have an active selection also
known as the Marching Ants, but if I com to
| | 03:13 | my Channels panel, I can then click
on this icon right here and it's now an
| | 03:17 | alpha channel or a saved selection.
| | 03:20 | So I can then deselect that by pressing
Command+D or Ctrl+D and I can recall it at anytime.
| | 03:27 | The alpha channel is the equivalent
in pixels to the saved path in vectors.
| | 03:34 | So they are very, very equivalent to each other.
| | 03:36 | I am going to now activate that path
as a selection by Command+Clicking on it again.
| | 03:42 | Just one other
thing and that is a quick mask.
| | 03:46 | A quick mask is sort of temporary state.
| | 03:49 | It's an intermediate state.
| | 03:51 | It is to pixels what a work path is to vectors.
| | 03:56 | So if I press Q or come and click on
this icon at the bottom of my Tool panel,
| | 04:01 | I go into Quick Mask mode, where the
deselected or masked areas of my image are
| | 04:07 | represented by a color overlay.
| | 04:09 | The selected portions show
up as the photograph itself.
| | 04:13 | And the Quick Mask channel appears on
my Channels panel for as long as I am
| | 04:19 | in Quick Mask mode.
| | 04:21 | If I press Q I exit Quick
Mask mode. That goes away.
| | 04:26 | That's broadly equivalent to the work
path that we get any time we start drawing
| | 04:32 | with our Pen tool or
indeed with our vector shapes.
| | 04:38 | If we are
drawing in the Pen Path mode.
| | 04:42 | So let me just show you what I mean by that.
| | 04:43 | If I choose the Pen Path mode and
then I can choose any one of these vector
| | 04:47 | shapes and I am going to draw right
there and now I come over to my Paths panel
| | 04:52 | and there I have a work path and you'll
see like the Quick Mask channel its name
| | 04:58 | is italicized just to indicate that
it's this kind of temporary state.
| | 05:02 | It's not actually going to
be saved with the document.
| | 05:05 | So I hope that's going someway towards
clarifying the difference between these
| | 05:10 | different things but more than that
really just emphasizing all the things that
| | 05:15 | they have in common.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Linking and unlinking vector masks| 00:00 | The topic of this movie is linking the
vector masks to the layer, but I am going
| | 00:04 | to talk about few other things on
the way to getting to that point.
| | 00:08 | And to start with, what I have here
is a letterform that I have combined
| | 00:13 | with some custom shapes.
| | 00:14 | These custom shapes come from this
custom shapes set, Floral Elements, that I
| | 00:20 | downloaded from this website,
dezignus.com, with a Z, and I installed those custom
| | 00:27 | shapes and if we have a look at them
there are right many very useful floral
| | 00:33 | elements to choose from.
| | 00:36 | So I wanted to combine some leaves
with my letter and because I wanted to
| | 00:41 | combine them on the same vector mask,
I have to first select my letter.
| | 00:45 | I am just going to come down to this
letter right here. Let's put it into a
| | 00:49 | different color. I right-clicked on it,
and I chose Convert to Shape, and then
| | 00:55 | click onto that vector mask.
| | 00:58 | I chose whichever shape I wanted,
let's say that I want that one, and then
| | 01:08 | making sure we have the Add To behavior
chosen, I draw my shape and then that
| | 01:15 | gets added to it combining on that vector mask.
| | 01:19 | And then we're using that vector mask
and applying it to an image and it's
| | 01:25 | giving us this effect.
| | 01:26 | In addition, I've added an
Outer Glow and a Color Overlay.
| | 01:30 | But the point that I really want to
make here, the topic of this movie, is
| | 01:35 | what this little linking icon is all about.
| | 01:38 | So for the most part we want this on,
or at least the way I work, I want it
| | 01:43 | on most of the time.
| | 01:45 | What this means is that, if you get
your Move tool and you start moving this
| | 01:49 | layer around, the mask moves with
the image layer and vice versa.
| | 01:57 | So that would seem like what you want
most of the time, but there are times when
| | 02:01 | you might want something different.
| | 02:03 | Let's say that we got our letter and
leaves combination positioned on our page
| | 02:08 | where we want it and we just want
to dial in the cropping of the image.
| | 02:14 | To achieve this I can come and uncheck
the linking icon, make sure that I am
| | 02:18 | actually on the image layer, and now I
can drag that image around within the
| | 02:24 | letter shape, and I can also nudge it as well.
| | 02:27 | So the shape itself is going to
remain where is and it's just like we're
| | 02:32 | adjusting the cropping.
| | 02:33 | Now that seems like a very useful
thing to do when you may think, well, why
| | 02:38 | don't you do that all the time?
| | 02:39 | I tend to do it in a slightly
different way and I am going to show you how I
| | 02:43 | would achieve the same end. And that is
in this example down here, where rather
| | 02:49 | than having the vector mask actually
applied to the image layer, I have the
| | 02:54 | vector mask just applied to a regular
color fill layer, in this case black but
| | 02:59 | that's irrelevant, bearing in
mind what I am about to do next.
| | 03:02 | And what I'm about to do next is put an
Image layer above that and I will turn that on.
| | 03:10 | It will look like that. And then I clip
the Image layer to the layer below and I
| | 03:16 | do that by holding down the Option
or Alt key and it looks like that.
| | 03:20 | So now if I want to adjust the
cropping, I don't worry about unlinking the
| | 03:25 | color fill layer from the vector mask. All
I do is move the photo layer that is on top.
| | 03:31 | End result is exactly the same.
| | 03:34 | Feel free to choose
whichever option works best for you.
| | 03:37 | If I did want to reconfigure this, the
clipping group approach to this, what I'ved
| | 03:44 | called the vector mask approach is perhaps
a little bit misleadingly, because they
| | 03:48 | both use vector masks but in different ways.
| | 03:51 | But I could reconfigure it like this
if I first unclipped it, holding down the
| | 03:56 | Alt key or the Option key and clicking
on the line that separates the layers,
| | 04:00 | getting the vector mask, and then just
dragging the vector mask on to that layer
| | 04:06 | and then I would just uncheck the
linking icon and now it's going to behave
| | 04:10 | exactly the way this one did.
| | 04:13 | But what's changed about its appearance
is that we have lost the layer effects.
| | 04:18 | That's because the layer effects are
tied to the solid color layer, but all we
| | 04:23 | need to do now is just drag the layer
effects on to the image layer and we're
| | 04:28 | exactly where we were with
this example at the top here.
| | 04:31 | So couple of different approaches to
working with linking and unlinking a
| | 04:38 | vector mask to its layer or
clipping a layer to a layer beneath it that
| | 04:44 | contains a vector mask.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using shape layers to create a photo grid| 00:00 | Here is an approach that I have from
time to time found useful and it's sort of
| | 00:04 | an alternative to working with vector masks.
| | 00:06 | It's working with clipping groups.
| | 00:09 | Vector masks are involved as well. The
vector mask comes along with the shape layer,
| | 00:14 | and then we clip the
image to that shape layer.
| | 00:17 | Now the advantage of this potentially is
that it gives you the chance to map out
| | 00:22 | how you want to create a grid
of pictures, like I have here.
| | 00:26 | And if I turn off all of the image
layers, you can see that I'm using this
| | 00:33 | technique just to rough out the way my
grid is going to look and I have applied
| | 00:38 | a different shade of gray to each of
these grid squares, or grid rectangles
| | 00:43 | rather, and then I place the image and
one by one I position the image above the
| | 00:49 | relevant rectangle, and it's
going to start out looking like that.
| | 00:53 | And then I know that I wanted to
fill this predefined area of space.
| | 00:58 | So to make that happen, making sure
that the picture is above the rectangle,
| | 01:04 | I will create a clipping mask, and I can
either do that by right-clicking on the
| | 01:08 | layer, Create Clipping Mask, going to
the Layers panel menu > Create Clipping Mask,
| | 01:13 | or the way I most often do it,
hold down the Option or Alt key, and click
| | 01:17 | on the line that separates those two
layers, and then that image is going to be
| | 01:21 | clipped to the shape beneath.
| | 01:23 | So is this a better way? I don't know.
| | 01:25 | It works, it works just as well. And
then if I want to adjust that cropping,
| | 01:30 | I can drag the picture around and we see
that it's only going to be visible where
| | 01:35 | we have the rectangle defined by the
shape layer beneath, to which it is clipped.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Feathering a vector mask edge| 00:00 | We are going to talk about
feathering a vector mask, which sounds like a
| | 00:03 | contradiction in terms because a vector
mask is by its very nature crisp, but we
| | 00:08 | can now actually add a
feather amount to that vector mask.
| | 00:11 | We have all seen effects like these
where we put a circular or spherical mask
| | 00:18 | around a picture so that it looks like
this, and then we can come to the Masks panel,
| | 00:24 | increase the Feather amount,
and we get this type of effect.
| | 00:30 | I am going to just press
Command+H to hide my active path.
| | 00:35 | Well it has to be done sometimes. We
have all done it and we probably will do it
| | 00:40 | again, but it's probably not
something we want to make a habit of.
| | 00:44 | So let's have a look at another
perhaps more useful thing that we can do with
| | 00:47 | feathering the mask.
| | 00:50 | So here I have a composition that's made
up entirely of shape layers, a piece of
| | 00:55 | type that has been converted to a shape
layer and combined with this butterfly
| | 00:59 | which is also a shape layer.
| | 01:00 | I am going to just zoom out a bit so
we get a bigger perspective on that and
| | 01:05 | again I am going to press Command+H or
Ctrl+H to hide the edges of my path, and
| | 01:11 | it's going to look like this.
| | 01:12 | Now here I am using feathering on some of the
masks, just to give a sense of depth of field.
| | 01:20 | This large leaf that is in the
background, I am going to pull my Layers panel
| | 01:24 | off and expand it, so we can see all the layers.
| | 01:27 | The large leaf in the background, if I
come to this and then turn the Feather
| | 01:33 | amount down, and once again I'll
have to press Command+H to hide my edges,
| | 01:38 | you can see that the edges of that
leaf are a little bit too crisp, but by
| | 01:43 | feathering those edges, we give the
impression that we have a shallow depth of
| | 01:48 | field and the leaf is in the background.
| | 01:50 | So what I am doing here is as the
subject comes closer to the foreground, I am
| | 01:56 | applying a decreasing amount of
feathering to its mask and that builds a sense
| | 02:02 | of depth within the composition.
| | 02:04 | So there is another, a perhaps less
obvious way of applying feathering to a mask.
| | 02:09 | Now what you can't do with feathering
though and what you would need a layer
| | 02:12 | mask in order to achieve, should you
want to do this, is you can't add differing
| | 02:18 | amounts of softness around the edges.
| | 02:21 | The feathering amount is going
to be uniform around the edges.
| | 02:25 | If that's all you need then a vector
mask is going to serve you just fine.
| | 02:29 | If you do need to vary the softening
or the transition from the mask edge in
| | 02:35 | transparency, then you will a layer mask.
| | 02:38 | This title has been relatively pun-free,
but I can't resist the temptation to
| | 02:42 | make a pun here. Applying a feather
to a vector mask really does blur the
| | 02:49 | distinction between
layer masks and vector masks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting vector mask density| 00:00 | Here we have a fruit crate label
that I've recreated using shape layers.
| | 00:05 | We have this thunderbolt that gets
repeated and I've put all of those in the
| | 00:10 | flash group and I've converted my type
to shape layers just so that we don't have any
| | 00:16 | problems with missing fonts.
| | 00:18 | DYNAMO, each of these letters is a
separate layer, just so that I've got more
| | 00:24 | flexibility for rotating them. Then
you'll have effects applied to them and on
| | 00:30 | top of everything we have a gray
overlay layer filled with neutral gray and
| | 00:36 | applied to that we have some noise, and
that's what's giving the whole thing its texture.
| | 00:44 | But the point I want to make here is
sometimes it's useful to be able to adjust
| | 00:48 | the density of your vector mask and
down here, Shape 2, if I show you just that
| | 00:55 | layer by itself, this is my shape layer
and it's sitting on top of a just solid
| | 01:02 | field of red that has a
Gradient Overlay applied to it.
| | 01:06 | Now by adjusting the Density of the
vector mask of the Shape 2 layer, I can
| | 01:11 | get a different effect.
| | 01:13 | I am also going to turn on the Noise
layer at the top, because that's very much
| | 01:17 | a part of this design.
| | 01:18 | So with those three turned on, I can
then adjust the Density of this vector mask
| | 01:23 | and we can just really dial-in the
color and the interaction between these
| | 01:28 | two layers and get it just how we want it.
| | 01:31 | And just like the feathering and
just like the mask itself, this is
| | 01:35 | continuously editable, so you can
come back and change your mind and adjust
| | 01:39 | this to your heart's content.
| | 01:40 | Now here is another time when you might
want to adjust the Density of a vector mask.
| | 01:45 | Here I've used a vector mask
creative with the Pen tool to isolate the flower,
| | 01:50 | and if we turn the mask up to
its 100% Density we get that, we are
| | 01:56 | cutting the flower from its background.
But maybe we don't want to cut it from
| | 01:59 | its background. Maybe we just want
to emphasize it a little bit more.
| | 02:03 | Ad perhaps the vector mask could help us
do that, if I reduce the Density of the
| | 02:08 | vector mask, we reinstate the
background but at reduced opacity.
| | 02:14 | Adjusting the Density of a vector mask
also has some practical benefits when you
| | 02:19 | are actually editing the vector mask.
| | 02:22 | So I am going to click on to the vector
mask and I'm going to choose my Direct
| | 02:25 | Selection tool and then I'll come in
and look at this path edge, and I realize
| | 02:31 | oh, I made that in a bit of a hurry.
It's not quite so good as I thought it was.
| | 02:35 | Although remember whenever you're
doing this, no one is going to know what you
| | 02:38 | left out, but they will if your
mask density is less than 100%.
| | 02:44 | So you can reduce the Density of the
mask to less than 100%, just so that you
| | 02:50 | can get a clear idea of where you're
going with the editing of the mask edge,
| | 02:55 | gives you a much better idea of how
accurate you need to be. Because if the mask
| | 03:01 | density is 100%, you are
not seeing the background.
| | 03:05 | Sometimes you don't want to see the
background but sometimes you do, so you
| | 03:08 | have the option of adjusting the
density of the vector mask, so that you can
| | 03:13 | better edit the mask edge.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining vector masks with layer masks| 00:00 | Typically when you are masking an
image, it's an either or proposition.
| | 00:04 | You either want a layer mask for all of the
qualities that it offers, the potential
| | 00:08 | to transition between 100% opacity and 0
opacity, or you want a vector mask with
| | 00:14 | crisp clean outlines. But
sometimes you might want both.
| | 00:18 | Here I have these two New York City
subway tokens, old subway tokens, and I have
| | 00:24 | masked them so they sit on this field of black.
| | 00:28 | If I disable the layer mask we
can see that's how the image begins.
| | 00:33 | Let's say that I would like these to
transition from 0 opacity to 100 opacity so
| | 00:39 | that we fade them in from the bottom.
| | 00:41 | So I am going to come to the image
layer and I am going to add a layer mask.
| | 00:45 | Now of course you can't apply a gradient to
a vector mask, but you can to a layer mask.
| | 00:51 | So there we now have a layer mask as
well as a vector mask. I am now going to
| | 00:55 | choose my Gradient tool and making
sure that black is my foreground color,
| | 01:00 | making sure that I am using the
foreground to transparent gradient, that it's
| | 01:04 | a linear gradient, Normal blend mode, 100%
Opacity, I'll then just drag up like so.
| | 01:12 | Now if that's not far enough, I don't
think it is, I am just going to drag
| | 01:15 | again. You can keep going at it
multiple times with the foreground to
| | 01:20 | transparent gradient, so we get that effect.
| | 01:24 | So it's the gradient that is softening
the transition from the bottom of the
| | 01:28 | image and the gradient is applied on
the layer mask and it is the vector mask that
| | 01:33 | is actually cutting out the shape.
| | 01:34 | Here is another example. Sometimes an
image just has both qualities combined and
| | 01:40 | you want to use both a
vector mask and the layer mask.
| | 01:43 | So in order to cut out this beautiful
modernist building, what I've used to
| | 01:48 | cut out the basic outline of the
shape is a vector mask, which seems like a
| | 01:54 | good choice because it's a very
graceful curve and the vector mask is going
| | 01:58 | to give us the crispness that we want,
but to also mask the areas of blue sky
| | 02:05 | that get trapped inside the railings. If I
disable the layer mask that's what it looks like.
| | 02:10 | For that I am going to use of a layer mask.
| | 02:12 | So I have already applied the vector mask.
| | 02:15 | I am going to actually delete the
current layer mask so that we are at this
| | 02:22 | point and I'm going to re-create it.
And I am going to come to my Magic Wand tool,
| | 02:27 | and I want to make sure that I
have a Tolerance of 32. I do not want
| | 02:34 | Contiguous checks because I don't want
each piece of the selection to stop when
| | 02:38 | it reaches different color, so I'll make
sure that Contiguous is unchecked, then
| | 02:42 | you can click on that blue and that's
all that it's going to get. And we lucked out there.
| | 02:47 | It doesn't always work quite as
well as that, but it did in this case.
| | 02:51 | So now with that selection active, I
can come and click on my Add layer mask.
| | 02:56 | Now if I do that, I am going to get
the exact opposite of what I want.
| | 03:01 | So when I've realized that I've got the
opposite of what I wanted, I can press
| | 03:05 | Command or Ctrl+I to invert that, or I
can anticipate the problem and hold down
| | 03:11 | the Alt key when I click
on the Add layer mask icon.
| | 03:15 | So there we see the blue sky, the
trapped areas of sky masked with a layer mask,
| | 03:20 | but the overall shape of the
building masked with a vector mask.
| | 03:28 | One of those occasions when it's a good
idea to use both vector and layer masks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with paths and clipping paths| 00:00 | A clipping path is a now obsolete
way of making the background of an
| | 00:04 | image disappear when you place the image in
a page layout program, most likely InDesign.
| | 00:11 | When I say obsolete, I mean it's still a
valid technique but it doesn't actually need
| | 00:15 | to officially be a clipping path anymore.
| | 00:18 | I have the pen path outline
around this Metro sign saved as Path 1.
| | 00:23 | I could, if I wanted to, come to
clipping path and define it as a clipping path.
| | 00:30 | I don't need to do that. It's necessary.
| | 00:32 | Where I have to do that?
| | 00:34 | When I place the image in
In Design, the background would fall
| | 00:37 | away automatically.
| | 00:39 | But we can still get just the effect
that we want without actually making into a
| | 00:43 | clipping path, so I am just
going to leave it as it is.
| | 00:46 | So I am going to come over to
InDesign where I have the image placed.
| | 00:49 | It's just a humble JPEG and you can
save paths with JPEGs. And then to activate
| | 00:55 | the path I am going to select it, come
to the Object menu, down to Clipping Path
| | 01:00 | > Options, and Type.
| | 01:04 | I now have this option, and I only
have this option because of the path that
| | 01:08 | was saved in Photoshop.
| | 01:09 | When I choose that, there were some
other options that I might want to use.
| | 01:13 | None of them relevant in this case, so I am
going to click OK, and then the path is activated.
| | 01:20 | Had I saved that with a clipping path,
this is how it would have landed in
| | 01:25 | InDesign. If you just save it as a
regular path you get the option of turning
| | 01:29 | that path on or off.
| | 01:30 | And now at this point, I can come to my
Window menu, I can come to my Text Wrap
| | 01:35 | panel, and choose this third Text
Wrap option, and increase the offset from
| | 01:42 | the image to create an interesting text
wrap, and then I'm just going to press
| | 01:47 | my W key to see that
without the guides turned on.
| | 01:52 | So that's just an example of how
paths in Photoshop interact with paths in
| | 01:58 | InDesign and in Illustrator.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Thanks for watching Photoshop
for Designers: Shape Layers.
| | 00:04 | I hope you've learned some valuable
techniques and I hope that you'll be
| | 00:07 | incorporating the use of shape
layers into your own designs in future.
| | 00:11 | Please check out my other titles in the
Photoshop for Designers series, and you
| | 00:15 | can find me online at nigelfrench.com.
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