How to update Library items in Adobe CC Libraries

Questions

Course info

15 lessons / 1 hours

Overview

This course is for designers & marketers who already understand the fundamentals of Photoshop but believe there is a more effective, faster way to work. Work through a multi format creative campaign and learn techniques which will ensure hyper-efficiency & consistency.  

Join Adobe certified instructor Daniel Scott to learn:
 • How to maintain a consistent look across social media, print and web touchpoints.
 • Fast and efficient selection & masking techniques.
 • Practical retouching techniques and time saver shortcuts using Photoshop.
 • Workflow hacks for nondestructive design using artboards, Smart Objects & libraries.
 • The many new Photoshop 2020 features   
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.

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Transcript

Hey there. This video, we're gonna show you the, uh, amazing powers  of the library where everything's connected. It means I can go through, change my library item. Bam. I'm gonna invert it. I'm gonna save it.

Look over here. Ready city. Hey, they all update where it's being used. I'm gonna also show you how to break  that if you don't like that feature. Plus we're gonna tidy up the mask, do some select masking. It's a good video.

Hang around. I bet you'll learn something  to speed up your workflow in this one. Alright, first up, we wanna add some of our library items. So we've got this kind of tea thing going on here,  but we've got that latte. So it's kind of this group here. I want to add them to it to add them.

Just click hold, drag, drag, drag and pick an up board. I start with this one here says yes. Oh, don't show again. I have to, let's click. Okay. I can't live with that for this whole class.

Uh, don't worry about it. Just says it's gonna convert it  to smart objects and it's gonna be connected  to the library, which I'll explain. Okay? So don't hold shift, get it to a size you want. Hit enter on your keyboard. Kind of move it down here.

Roughly, same thing. I can move this one in. Okay, I'm gonna drag it down to a more appropriate size. Now, uh, don't hold shift, remember,  'cause that's, uh, a new thing. If that was, if that's driving you bananas  and you're like, man, I can't stop holding shift, just turn  that off and it will remember forever. It's pretty cool.

You used to have to go into preferences. You can still go in there, but now there's  that easy one is turn that off  and it will forever do the squishy thing without holding. Uh, shift down. I'm gonna turn mine back on mainly  'cause I need to be the same as the folks on  with the new versions. Okay? Oh, I gotta lock it.

So what do I want? I want to be locked. Yeah. Cool. So get it to an appropriate size. Hit return, move him down there.

Now you don't have to keep dragging it from this over. You can actually just duplicate it here. What I tend to do is hold down the option key on a Mac alt,  key on a pc and I'm on my latte layer. Okay? And I just drag it from this one to this one. Is this the right size that I need it rather  than have to resize it every time.

Now they're all still connected to the library  and that's what we're gonna do now is just show you how  to update it and get it to connect all of these things. So let's give it a go now to update this, uh, latte here. You can do one of two things. The easiest is to just to double click it in the library. Okay? You can actually double click it in the see this  teeny tiny thumbnail here.

Double click that or double click this. What's gonna happen is it's gonna open up  and it's own, uh, layer panel. Okay? Uh, it is  or tab even it's not connected to that original. You know, we made this mask  and then we dragged it into the library. It's its own like little fresh thing in the library.

Okay? Since I've dragged it out, they should all be connected,  okay, to this guy. Okay, these guys are all  connected, but we're gonna prove it. So, latte, uh, PSD, okay, we are going to just hit command. I just 'cause it's really bright  and obvious we're gonna invert it. So on a pc it's control I and it should just invert it.

You can do anything to it. Now I want you  to go file save, okay? And leave it open. But I want you to go back to this tab. You can see it's open, updated in the library. Are you ready?

Look at that. Look at the connection. Think of all the times saving. Okay, lots of logos or icons  or anything just 'cause they're library items. They're all connected, which is super useful. And if you're like, that's pretty good,  you wait, I got a finale.

That's why I've got illustrator open. Look, illustrator updated without me asking. Just did it. It's all connected. You're like, that is awesome Dan. Uh, but what happens when I don't want it connected?

That's why I hate libraries. And you're like, don't hate libraries. Libraries are good. Um, so what you can do is,  let's say you want one that's not connected. Um, so I'm gonna kind of go back and undo this. Everyone do it.

Go back to latte. Go to undo edit. Undo hit save. So it's back to normal. Looks good. Wait for an update.

Illustrate updated. Cool. Let's say you don't want it connected. So what you do is you, when you're dragging it out,  hold down the option key on a Mac, the old key on a pc. Nothing really changes. I've still got a version.

It looks the same, but,  but if you, if you've held down that key,  the option on a Mac, hold on a PC whilst you've been  clicking and holding and dragging, it won't be connected  and I'll prove it to you in a second. Let's drag a couple more out. Uh, let's drag out one more. Where did he end up the wrong one? Ah, port Z. All right, so you're ready.

Uh,  we're gonna open up my um, library item. Mine's already open but you can double click it  again, it should jump to it. And then you say, all right, now I'm going to do something  with adjustments, hue and saturation  and I'm gonna oversaturate it  and I'm gonna make it a different color. Wow. Okay, let's hit save. And you'll notice some update.

The one original ones we had look updated, updated, updated,  but that guy didn't. Why? Because we held the option key as we drag that out. So if you don't like that connection, okay,  just hold you like using libraries  but you don't want that connection. Just hold down the option key on a Mac. Oh key a pc.

As you drag them out, you can break it afterwards instead  of trying to remember, hold down that key. You can say go to these guys. So this one is connected, right? And it is, where is it? In my library layers panel  and what's this one here you can right click the word  and up here it says, um, it says one of them. It says embed linked.

Okay. And that would just break the connection. It'll still be a smart object. You can kind of see the icon there. Still smart object, but it's not  connected to the library anymore. I'm gonna undo that.

So what are we gonna do? Uh, we're gonna go back, undo that craziness, okay? We're going to save it and we are going to go  and check all of this. I'm going to delete this giant one  that's not connected 'cause that's not what I want. And let's have a look at on delete latte please. Let's go to our illustrator file.

That was the one. Go one. Back to looking tidy. Alright. All right. Um, so we used invert  and then crazy uh, hue saturation to prove a point.

So let's look at it a bit more kind of like  how we would do it in terms of workflow. 'cause basically I wanna sneak in something  called select a mask for you. 'cause it's pretty awesome because when we did remove  background it did okay,  like let's have a little zoom on this one  and you can see the edges are fine. It's not quite, you know, like it's pretty amazing. I'm pretty amazed. Um,  but you might want the edges to tidy up.

So let's look at how to tidy those up. So you kind of made it real rough. Okay? And it's not even that rough remove background. Maybe we did it with this guy, okay? But we wanna fix it up a little bit.

So what we can do is go to our latte. If it's not open, remember you can open it up in your  libraries panel by double clicking it. Let's zoom in together on the kind of top part on the right  and the command plus to zoom in or control plus on a pc. What we wanna do is to fix this edge,  we're gonna click on the actual mask part of the layer. So not the image. You can see the little box around it.

Then we're gonna click on this one  that says Select and mask. If you can't see it, you probably don't  have properties panel open. So just open it up here in the window. All right, so select on that, click on select and mask. And this one here is pretty amazing. So it's gonna show you this thing against  the edge in the background.

It's up to you like up here when it says view, I like  to say, actually let's go, let's see it against  on white or on black. It depends on where yours is going. I think on black gives us a good contrast on white. Now on white gives us a bit contrast  and here you can drag it right up to a hundred percent  to see what it looks like because  that's not really doing anything. It's just showing you your current mask against a solid  white background, which I like. Now what you need to do is just play  around with all these settings.

I'm gonna tell you the ones, the main ones  that give you the main results. But basically every selection is different. Okay? I've worked at the ones that work  for this particular selection,  but it's pretty amazing what this does. It's good general controls for everything. So what I'm gonna do is drag out the radius to exactly uh,  10 because I've already worked it out.

But you're gonna drag it up, drag it back, okay. And work out what works for you. I worked out 10, uh, works for me  and you can see instantly the edge if you're  like, I can't see that. Uh, you can see up here. If I click on that show original that one,  I'm gonna move it over here so that we can zoom in nice  and close and the edit is not trying to move back and forth. Sorry Jason.

All right. So click on that before  after you can see already it's starting  to move the edge radius is kind of like the, instead  of the being this hard edge,  it fuzzies it up a little bit in terms  of looking either side for better ways it can work. Now you can see, see it says P in there. That's really handy. Instead  of going U on U off using the tick,  just tap your peaky on and off. See that cool shortcut.

Okay, so I'm gonna put it back on so make sure  that there's nothing ticked in there. So radius 10 is gonna work good. I find smooth works good for uh,  ragged edge stuff doesn't work  for this one 'cause it's already pretty smooth. I never use feather, but you might love it. Contrast I never use shift edge I use a lot. Okay, so I'm just gonna tick it in a little bit.

You can see if I go far too far it kind of removes a lot  of the plate and that might be perfect for you. If I go too far out, it kind of pushes out that way. So I find just kind of in a little bit  and in this case I just went 20 ish. Okay, so negative 20 kind of just to tuck it in the bend. Maybe the peaky P on be off. Yeah, like a 10-year-old.

Uh, so make sure your P is off  and let's go down to like the magic one. So that's some good stuff. Uh, and often you can get away  with just this I find under output settings. Hidden under here is the magic decontaminate colors. Okay, this thing here is amazing. Let's look at the edges and let's click on it  off on, okay, it looks at the kind of colors over here  and tries to remove them from the object.

So this, I guess it's not super exciting for this, um,  latte cup, but imagine if you've got a project  where you've got, uh, a model in front of a blue background  and you know when you're trying to mask them  or an object, okay, against the blue background, you know  that that blue kind of reaches around to the,  and so you know, reflects around the edges of the subject  and you know, it's really hard to mask. 'cause the blue's wrapping around that is magic, okay? It just turns it off. The thing is, uh, once you've done  that one, uh, what we're gonna do is we're gonna output  to new layer with layer mask. Yeah, that's what we want. Okay?

And let's click Okay and let's turn P on again. P on off pretty sweetheart. Let's click okay or hit enter. Okay, so pretty nice. Uh, let's hit save and let's go and check it again. Say the one, maybe an illustrator  that should have some good contrast.

Can you see what it's done here? Let's have a zoom. I wanna add a drop shadow to it as well,  but I'm not going to for the moment. Okay? You can see the colors kind  of reaching around the edges. It's looking sweet, looking nice.

All right. One thing I wanna show you before we go, just  'cause it weirded me out every time I did it when I was kind  of learning, uh, at least this new feature, um, is  that you ended up with two versions like this one  and then you ended up with this other version. You're like, okay, it's kind of weird, like the original  and then the one after I did my select and mask, okay? Remember I clicked on the mask and went into here,  ended up with two layers. Okay? What is this two layer business?

It's because when I clicked on, uh, the one  that said decontaminate colors,  that did something really strange,  Okay? And I'll show you what it  is. See, with it off,  you can actually just update your mask,  but with it on it forces you  to have a new layer and a new mask. Why? Because if you turn this off, okay,  so I'm gonna disable the layer mask. You ready?

Hideous edge. You can see what it kind of does. That's how it gets its lovely, beautiful edge  by decontaminating the colors, it kind of spills this color  into the background to get this really nice edge. Uh, all you need to know is you haven't done it wrong. You just, that's why they've kept this original,  because this one here is so destructive. This original one here, if I do, uh, right click it,  staple air mask, it's perfect.

There it is. But uh, this other one not so, uh, good. The mask is, the edge is really nice,  but the original image gets a bit destroyed. That's why it does a duplicate. Cool. All right, so I'm gonna save this one.

Make sure it's saved. Close that one down and we're gonna move on to the next, uh,  video.
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