From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

712 Jogging your memory with the Note tool

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

712 Jogging your memory with the Note tool

- Hey, gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. This week we're going to be talking about a feature inside Photoshop that I'm guessing you seldom if ever use. You may not even know it exists, and that's the Note Tool which may sound like a prosaic i.e. boring topic, but it's actually quite useful for annotating what you're doing on the fly so that you can remember it later and communicate it to other folks that you're working with. So here's a personal anecdote. I create a ton of content as you may know. You may, too. And I'm frequently working on files late into the night. I'll wake up the next day. I wouldn't say the next morning necessarily but the next day without a keen memory of how I got to where I am. I mean inside the file. I know where I am in my house. I'm just fine. But where the artwork is concerned, I may not really know how I created a certain effect which can be very frustrating especially since the nature of my work is to tell you how I got from one point to another which is why it's so awesome to be able to tell myself what I'm doing later on using the Note Tool. And I've even gone to the extreme of telling you when I think the Note Tool is very useful for tracking static modifications as opposed to dynamic ones in which case you can pretty much just double click at an item and see what's up. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. All right, let's start with a look at when you might and might not want to use the Note Tool. Again, for purposes of remembering what you've done or for conveying your modifications to coworkers who you might be collaborating with. So, it's basically the difference between dynamic edits in which case you don't really need to use the Note Tool because you can just look at your parametric settings versus static edits when the Note Tool can be very helpful. So dynamic edits include things like adjustment layers. So if you have an adjustment layer, you can just double click on it to find out what settings you applied. Text formatting. You can just select the text layer. For example, this guy right here. Static edits. And switch to the type tool. And then you're going to see your formatting attributes up here in the options bar. If you want to see more then you click on this little panel icon in order to bring up in this case the character panel. Layer affects, you can always see how those are put together just by double clicking on an effect. Same goes for blending options. Smart filters. That is to say filters that you specifically apply to smart objects, and we'll see what that looks like in just a moment. Transformations applied to smart objects. Again, we'll review that as well. And then metadata settings. For example, any camera raw modifications that you apply to a specific image file as well as any metadata that you enter by going up to the file menu and choosing the file info command. And you can see in this case I've credited myself as the author. I've added a copyright notice, a URL, and so forth. So that stuff, you can always review and modify at your leisure. So let's see specifically what's going on with smart filters and transformations applied to smart objects. Here we are inside that file I created over the last couple of weeks, and notice that this full moon layer at the bottom of the stack is indeed a smart object as indicated by this little page icon in its bottom right corner. And so here we are seeing a list of dynamic smart filters. If I want to remember what camera raw settings I applied, I just need to double click on a camera raw filter. Now you may get an alert message telling you that you're only going to be able to preview the effects that you assigned using this filter and none of the ones on top of it. Really doesn't matter in our case. Just click okay, and that's going to bring up the big camera raw interface complete with the exposure, contrast, highlight, shadow setting, clarity as well that I've applied to this specific image. All right, I'm going to go ahead and cancel out. So it's very easy to remember what you've done with smart filters. Also you may notice if you take a look at this thumbnail right here that I have scaled and rotated this image. Now because I applied those transformations to a smart object, all I have to do is go up to the edit menu and choose the free transform command or you have that keyboard shortcut of control + T or command + T on the Mac. Again, I'm going to get this alert message telling me pretty much the same thing that I'm not going to see my smart filters. I'll just go ahead and click okay. Notice the smart filters are temporarily hidden both here inside the image window and inside the layers panel, but if I go up to the options bar, I can see that I've scaled image by 80% proportionally and I've rotated this guy four degrees. And I can even see the pixel coordinates as measured from the center thanks to the fact that the center point is selected inside this tiny reference point matrix. And then if I want to make some modifications, I surely could or I just could press the escape key having noted those modifications that I did make. All right, let's switch back to that other file. Now, the Note Tool can be extremely useful when applying static edits, because those are the ones you might noodle around with and then forget the very next day. It's very easy to come up with some great stuff one day and then forget everything you've ever done the next. And these include things like pixel based retouching, so if you're healing or cloning or what-have-you even content-aware fills that kind of stuff is assigned to static pixels, and therefore if you want to remember what you've done you're going to have to jot down some notes. Anything having to do with the brush tool. So any kind of brush strokes and brush settings by the way Non-So that smart object so Non Smart Object filters that is static filters, anything you just do on the fly. Non-So transformations including those applied not only to pixel based layers but shape layers, vector based shape layers and paths because even though that stuff is non-destructive that doesn't mean you're ever going to be able to bring back your numerical values. The fact that you scaled for example, a shape layer by 80% and rotated at four degrees, that stuff goes out the window unless you're working with Smart Objects. Layer masking and channel operations, this always surprises people that this stuff is static. Sure it's non-destructive, so non-destructive and Static are not the same thing. Anything you do with masking is non-destructive but it's pixel based as well, so if it's a pixel-based layer mask then you're applying pixel based brushstrokes. And so that's the kind of stuff that if you want to keep track of what you've done, you've got to add a note. And then hard crops, that is a destructive modification or anything you do to the background which is always destructive, that is the background non layer here at the bottom of the layers panel. Okay, so after that lengthy intro how do you use the Note Tool? Well, I'll go ahead and switch back to this image which contains a bunch of notes currently, I'm not seeing them if you're not seeing the notes either then you go up to the View menu, choose show and then choose notes in order to bring those notes up on screen. And incidentally, you can hide and show them from this point on, just by pressing Control H to hide the notes, that's Command H on the Mac. And by the way that invokes this command right here extras and extras, are all of these things by the way. So you can hide your selection outlines along with your notes for example, and then if you want to bring them back then you just press Control H, or Command H again. All right, let's say you want to take a look at any one of these notes, then just go ahead and double click on it and that's going to bring up the notes panel right here. And so notice that what I was keeping track of because one evening I'm working on this file at home and I need to make sure I update my notes, my actual handwritten notes that I keep while I'm making these videos. Then I needed to tell myself that I modified some Camera Raw settings, ACR settings including exposure and shadows. So even though those are dynamic modifications because I'm working with this Camera Raw smart filter, I still wanted to make sure I remembered my most recent modifications. All right, then I could just click on this note to see that I masked away the dinosaurs toe, inside the front wheel so that's just something I want to draw to my attention. You can also move from one note to the next by clicking on these little arrow icons, in a bottom left corner of the notes panel. All right, now this guy's this one down here so you can see the note that's selected at any given moment in time, and in this case I just wanted to make sure I remembered how clever I'm being. See how RT is an inversion of T-Rex in this case right here, so I'm going to give this guy a different color by going up to the options bar and clicking on the color swatch to bring up the color picker dialog box and I want this note to be green, so I'll just change the hue value to 120 degrees and then I'll click okay and now I have a green note. So obviously, it doesn't make any difference what color your notes are, that's for the sake of grabbing your attention and nothing more. You can enter the name of the author up here in the options bar, which is useful when you're collaborating with coworkers that kind of thing. And then finally, let's say I want to share this file as an exercise file, and I don't want people to see all these notes then I would want to get rid of them either by clicking on this little trashcan icon in the bottom right corner of the notes panel, at which point Photoshop will ask you to confirm so I'll go ahead and click yes. Or you can click on the clear all button anytime the Note Tool is selected. And when you click on clear all you are going to clear out all of the notes, at which point assuming I want to do that I'll go ahead and click okay. And then finally, the thing I should have told you up front how do you find the Note Tool? And you get to it by the way by clicking and holding on the eyedropper tool. So, the eyedropper tool occupies this slot by default if you click and hold on it directly here below the crop tool in the single column toolbox then you will see down here near the bottom of the list the Note Tool at which point just go ahead and select the tool and click at any point inside your image like so, at which point Photoshop will automatically bring up the notes panel inviting you to enter as much text as you like. And that's how you use the Note Tool to document your static modifications as well as any other pertinent information you'd like to keep track of here inside Photoshop. All right, so I hope you found that helpful, next week we're going to get creative again as I introduce you to the art of contour mapping inside Photoshop. In which we take a portrait shot, distill it down into a bright blurry displacement map which we'll use to trace a bunch of horizontal lines across the contours of the person's face. Deke's techniques each and every week. Keep watching.

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