466 Lighting up the windows of a dark mansion

- In this movie, I'll show you how to light up the windows in our nighttime mansion. And we're going to do so using a very basic adjustment layer, as you're about to see, that's masked using vector-based path outlines. So, I'm going to go ahead and switch over to my image in progress here, and then I'm going to zoom in on these top right windows. And you want to get in there really tight. And then, go ahead and select the pen tool. We're not going to do anything scary with it, we're just going to be clicking the create corner points. Now, you have the option of drawing paths around each one of these window panes here, which would mean you'd have to draw four paths, or you can just draw one big one and then subtract these two strips of wood away which involves just three paths, which is the way I'm going to work.

So, I'll go ahead and click right about there in order to set the first corner point, and then I'll click in this corner, and then down here, so you can see, I'm just surrounding all four of the panes of glass right there, and if you don't get a point in exactly the right location, for example, this top-left point doesn't look right to me. Then press the ctrl key, or the cmd key on the Mac to get the white arrow tool on-the-fly. Then just go ahead and click on that point to select it. And then, you can press an arrow key to nudge it to a better location. I'm also going to move this guy by ctrl or cmd clicking on it, and then pressing the up arrow key to nudge it upward.

And if it's not exactly right, it's kind of hard sometimes to decide where these points really go. Don't worry about it too much. Bear in mind that you're way zoomed in, everything's going to look great when you zoom out. All right, now I'm going to click here and over here, along this horizontal stretch of wood here. Then I'll click down here and over here as well, and then I'll go ahead and close up the shape. Now, I'll do the same around this vertical bit of wood. Now, this edge is obviously too far out, so ctrl or cmd-click on this anchor point and then I'll ctrl + shift + click or cmd + shift + click on this one in order to select both of them and then I'll press the left arrow key in order to nudge those points to the left.

All right, now what you want to do is switch to the black arrow tool, which Photoshop calls the "Path Selection Tool" and then go ahead and marquee all of the path outlines to select them. All right, now what you want to do is go up to the layer menu, choose new adjustment layer, and then choose invert. That's going to bring up the new layer dialogue box. And I'm going to name this layer 'windows' and then click okay. Now, that causes the display of the properties dialogue box which doesn't do anything, but tell me that there are no options for invert, which is why I'm just going to go ahead and close this panel.

Now, what you want to do is shift + click on this big path right here, in order to deslect it, and so now, with just the two crossing paths selected, I'll go up to the Path Operations icon, up here in the options bar, I'll click on it and then choose Subtract Front Shape in order to subtract the wood from the windows. Now, that's pretty much how all of the other windows work, incidentally, except for these three down here, which are all a little more interesting. So, I'm going to go ahead and zoom in here, very tight, as you can see, and I'm going to start by selecting these guys using the pen tool.

So go ahead and switch the pen tool, once again, and you want to make sure that your vector-based mask is selected here inside the layers panel. That's very important, and if it isn't, just click on it. And then, I'm going to create a point down there, and one very high like so, that'll just allow me to make sure the tops of all the windows are properly aligned and then I'll click down at this location and back over here and it looks like this point might be too far to the left, so I'll ctrl or cmd + click on it and press the right arrow key to nudge it to the right. And then I'll click up here, down here, along the bottom, and up the right-hand edge and then over the top, and now, it looks like this bottom-left point isn't far enough to the left, so I'll go ahead and ctrl or cmd + click on it and I'll press the left arrow key.

I'm just going to click around this guy like so, in order to get everything in place and I'll ctrl or cmd + click on this point, I think is the one that's off, actually, and I'll go ahead and nudge it up, let's say. All right, now, we need to trace these top arching windows, and we're not going to do so by creating smooth points with the pen tool, instead, I'm going to surround those windows with the ellipse tool. So, I'll go ahead and click and hold on the rectangle tool here, and choose the ellipse tool from the fly-out menu. And next, you want to change this first option here, from Shape to Path, so that your editing the vector-based mask instead of creating a new shape layer.

And now, I'll just go ahead and surround this window, and you may need to use the spacebar in order to adjust the positioning on-the-fly, as you see me doing right here. And then, once you think you have things in place, just go ahead and release the spacebar and finish surrounding that window, and then let's go ahead and trace this guy as well. Even though these look like circles, they're actually just near-circles, they're ellipses, so I'm not pressing the shift key in order to constrain the shapes. All right, now we want to subtract this area between the windows here, and I'm going to do that, once again, using the pen tool.

And so I'll just go ahead and click here, click over at this location, click down here some place and then click over here and that looks like that's a little too low, so I'll press the up-arrow key to raise it, and then I'll close the shape. All right, now what you want to do is press the "A" key to switch back to that black arrow tool. Click on the path, just to make sure it's selected, and then go up to the Path Operations icon, once again, and choose Subtract Front Shape. All right, now we need to subtract away these poles. We're going to do that using the simplest shape tool there is, which is the rectangle tool.

So, I'll go ahead and select it, make sure it's set to Path, over here on the far left side of the options bar, and then just go ahead and surround each one of these poles, and again, if you need to adjust the position of the shape on-the-fly, just go ahead and press the spacebar, it works with the rectangle tool just as well as it does with the ellipse tool. And now, go ahead and surround this third pole, like so. And then, I'm going to press the "A" key, to switch back to my black arrow tool. This guy over here in the right is selected, so I'll just go ahead and shift + click on these two to select them as well, and then, once again, return to the Path Operations icon, and choose Subtract Front Shape.

All right, now, I'm going to go ahead and zoom out here, by pressing ctrl + 0 or cmd + 0 on the Mac, and just to save us a little bit of time and effort, I've created the other path outlines in advance, and to get to them, if you're working along with me, just go ahead and click on that Mansion layer, so that our existing vector-based mask doesn't get in the way. And then, you want to switch over to the Paths panel, where you'll find this More Windows item. You may also see a work path. If you do, just go ahead and drag that guy down to the trash in order to get rid of it. And then, go ahead and click on more windows in order to make those paths light up.

Drag around all of them in order to select them. And now, you just need to press ctrl + c or cmd + c on the Mac in order to copy them. After which point, you want to click off the path in this empty area in the paths panel, that is, to turn the paths off. Now, switch back to the layers panel and go ahead and click on that vector-based mask once again, and then press ctrl + V or cmd + V on the Mac in order to paste those paths into place, and then you can click off the path outlines to deselect them.

That, folks, is how you light up the windows in a dark mansion using nothing more than and invert adjustment layer, masked using vector-based path outlines.