Advanced layer tricks in Adobe Photoshop CC

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Course info

107 lessons / 16 hours 21 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Course Overview

Hi there, my name is  Dan and I am an Adobe Certified Instructor for Photoshop  - this is the Advanced Photoshop course.

This course is not for people new to Photoshop. This is for people who already know the fundamentals. It is for people who have their own ways of doing things but believe there really is a better, faster way to work. 

We will start by learning the best selection techniques available. I promise, by the end of the first section what took you 30mins to mask will now take you 30 seconds. 

What am I going to get from this course?
  • 13+ Hours of content!
  • 10+ Interactive exercises
  • 68 downloadable resources
  • You'll learn the best selection and masking techniques
  • You'll know how to fix images that look 'hard to fix'
  • You'll master advanced levels and curves tricks, specifically with skin, adjusting and enhancing colors
  • You'll learn how to enlarge images without distortion and what to do when things go wrong
  • You'll know how to convincingly remove all kinds of objects from images
  • My favourite: You'll master the ability to distort, bend and reshape images
  • Lets look at how current trending styles are super easy to duplicate
  • You will become a type nerd. We'll use font pairing in Typekit. We'll also use Photoshop's ability to guess fonts
  • Your Artboards skill will be mastered
  • A master of retouching, you will become!
  • You'll learn to edit videos in Photoshop, who'd have thought?
  • We'll also create awesome cinemagraphs, AKA: Moving pictures!
  • You'll learn to master 3D in Photoshop!
  • You'll learn lots about professional, reusable mockups, techniques and shortcuts!

Here's some of the things we'll be doing in this course:
We will correct 'hard to fix' images and learn what to do with blurry images. We will master Advanced Levels & Curves tricks and will work specifically with skin, adjusting and enhancing colours. 

You will learn how to enlarge images without distorting them and also, what to do when things go wrong. 

We will learn how to convincingly remove all kinds of objects from images. My personal favourite section will show you how to distort, bend & reshape images.

We will look at how current trending visual styles are easily created, duotones, glitches and orange/teal colour grading.

We get 'type nerdy' and use font pairing in Typekit. We will use Photoshop to identify the fonts used in an image and learn how to work with hidden glyphs & ligatures as well as variable & open type fonts.

You will master artboards while you are learning how to make easily updatable multiple sized social media & ad banner graphics. 

There is a big section on advanced retouching techniques, advanced healing, advanced cloning & patching. 

You will learn how to edit videos in Photoshop. We will also animate static images creating parallax videos plus the very cool cinemagraphs sometimes called 'living pictures' - great for social media. 

You will learn to master 3D in photoshop. We will finish off the course with professional, reusable mockup techniques & shortcuts. 

This course has a strong focus on workflow. We use real world, practical projects and show you the professional techniques and shortcuts which will save you hours using Photoshop. Throughout the course I have many class exercises for you to use in order to practice your skills. 

Who am I? 
As well as being an Officially Certified Expert by Adobe, I’m photoshop guru and user with 18 years Photoshop experience. I make tutorial videos directly for Adobe and will again this year be presenting a seminar on  Photoshop at Adobe’s 20 thousand attendee strong Max Conference.  

If you can’t remember the last time you sat down and went through the updates in Photoshop, let this course be your one stop professional development and upgrade path.   

Even if you consider yourself a heavy user, I promise there will be things in here that will blow your Photoshop mind. Sign up now!

Course duration 13 hours 45 mins + your study.



Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

Downloads & Exercise files

Download Exercise Files

Transcript

Hi there, this work flow video is going to be all about going fast with layers. We've grouped all the layer things together because for some strange reason this is my favorite video to teach people. Especially advanced people, I'm like, "Man, this is some cool work flow stuff." It's not super complex, it's complex enough, but let's imagine it's bigger. 


I've got a few layers here. We're working on an image we had earlier, obviously this can work on any image, but let's say I want to work on this paint drop in the word Super. It's actually SUPE, and R on its own layer, but the Layers panel here is a little confusing, so what I can do is find R. I'm going to hold down my 'Command' key and click on this paint one here. So got the R, and that selected, plus the SUPE. And then say 'Kind', and click on 'Selected'. It's only going to show me the selected layers ahead. Those two layers, I can turn it off by going back to 'Kind', and turn it back on by going to 'Selected'. Just kind of like tidies everything up nicely. And I can work on these three layers. 


To turn it off, actually an easier way is just this little toggle switch here. You can turn this on and off, and it jumps back into what you had selected. It gets better, so let's turn it on, instead of Selected let's go to 'Kind'. And you've got these little icons here, everyone ignores this, right? You've been using Photoshop for years and you've never clicked on him. It just shows you all the layers that have text on it, just makes it super-- Maybe it's just me. Well, not just Type, you can have Type that also have Drop Shadows. Might be Type and Images, you can have more than one on. So that's not that useful anymore, so let's just turn type off, and just the ones that have pixels, or just my Adjustment layers, please, just show me those. Or just my layers - I'm going to turn that off - just the ones that have Smart Objects on it. 


So I can see all those in one big go. Remember to turn it off though when you're finished. Let's look at a couple of the other ones in here. So 'Kind', we can look at names, and you can do a search. If I want to find ones that are called a banana, it'll just show me those layers. I never used that one, you might be working on some epically big layers, and that might be useful for you. This one's quite good, let's say we've got some Drop Shadows going on, I want to find the effects that have Drop Shadows on it, just those layers. So I can select them all and then go and change them, or go in here and turn them off. 


Another one you might do is under here, under Color Mode. You might say, don't click this one here - there's one over here- and say, I want to find all the layers that have Multiply on them, and undo. You might find that useful. Attributes, what colors, are they Smart Objects? Things that are selected. You might look at Artboards. This one doesn't have any Artboard, so this one does. It can get super confusing, so let's turn that off again. So normally you've got this kind of-- it's never that tidy, if you're working in Artboards, this thing's all over the place, you're like, "Actually I'm just working on this file here, just show me the Skillshare Artboard." 


You can just go up to here, turn it on and it's going to only show me the Skillshare one, not any of the other guys. Click on this one, and it's going to show me just the Udemy one. Super helpful, super quick. And I bet you've been ignoring it there. It's turned Kind 'on', Kind is the default one. Just make sure that little switch is off when you're finished. Shoot back up to this original file. 


Another trick is, we've done this throughout the course already, is that, say I've got my Banana layer, and I want to duplicate it, I just drag it into this new layer icon, and it duplicates it. I'm going to undo that. Another way is, with it selected, hold down, the 'Option' key on a Mac, 'Alt' key on a PC, and drag it just using the Move Tool. It just makes a duplicate while you're dragging. 


Another couple of things, as we looked at in the last video, you can change your thumbnails, but if you-- we know that if you right click the word, you get a bunch of options, but if you actually right click the thumbnail you get a different set. And what might be useful in here is you can adjust the thumbnail size, that's fine. But also, can you see, this right here is the circle, that I'm using to crop this girl here. It's like a small part of a really--


It's showing me the entire document. You can right click it and say, "Actually, just show me the Layer Bounds for all the different layers." So that one here is quite a big image, but the banana takes up the full image now, the circle does. They're all just a little easier to see now, rather than them being a small part, like the banana, and this, watch both of them. Go to clip details for the Document Bound. The banana is kind of showing you, in relation to the larger document, same with this. And this image here, up to you. I have to switch back now because I want everyone's to look the same like me, in the tutorial.


Next up is naming your layers. If I'm honest, I never name my layers, because I'm working with myself, and I'm okay that I'm lazy, but I've been working with a client, definitely. One of the last things I do, I don't do while I'm working, but I've got to send them a file, quick smart, I name all my layers. I'm trying to project a level of professionalism that does not get reflected in my layer names, but let's say I've got to go and do it. 


A cool little trick is, banana's there, but let's say I'm going to be case sensitive. Now instead of double clicking these, going here and typing Blueberries, this is a weird little shortcut, I like it. And double clicking them all. What you can do - I'm going to undo - so I'm finished typing banana, just hit 'Tab' on your keyboard, it goes down to the next one, so you never have to lift your Tab again. Banana. This one here, I can leave as Hue & Saturation. I call this one my Mask. So I'm just tabbing down, just, I find a lot easier, 'Blueberries 2' Cool, huh? Just double clicking one of them, and then tab through them all. 


The last one to do with layers is, let's say we've got the Smoothies layer. I like it, it's got a Drop Shadow that I like, but I want to apply that same Drop Shadow to the banana. So what you can do is right click the word 'Smoothies', and you can go to - we looked at this a little bit before - if I go to 'Copy Layer Style', I select on my 'Banana' now, right click it, and you can paste Layer styles. If you're like me, and try and drag them from one to another, doesn't like duplicate them as you drag it, just kind of moves it, so that's handy. 


I hope you found something useful in there. I don't know why I find it most exciting, but I hope you are sitting there at home or at work, going, "Yeah, that one little thing is going to change my life." Might not change your life, but hopefully it will save you a little bit of time. Let's jump into the next kind of work flow video, see you there.

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