All language subtitles for 1. Useful tips, keyboard shortcuts for retouching

We are starting to work on

our photo in Photoshop, which is the actual retouching stage.

We have the photo developed and opened and we can start retouching it.

At the beginning, I would like to share with you

a few useful functions and tips and

keyboard shortcuts that are worth remembering and just internalizing.

So that's our work can be smooth and efficient.

There won't be many of them.

Just some basic things.

But I think it's worth knowing and remembering them.

Let's start with something simple, like zooming,

and there are several ways to zoom in Photoshop.

One basic way is to click here

in the Navigator

and zoom in and out of the photo.

Another way is to hold the alt key

and scroll the mouse to zoom in and to zoom out.

This is also quite convenient.

You can choose the area to which you want to zoom in,

but actually I believe that the best

and most efficient way to do it is by holding the Z key,

which turns your cursor into a magnifying glass.

And now by clicking on the point

we want to zoom in on and dragging the mouse to the right.

We simply zoom in and by dragging to the left, we zoom out.

We can choose the point as well to which we want to

zoom in, drag the mouse and zoom in and out.

Very simple and convenient.

When we are

close and working on the photo,

we will want to move it around a bit.

For that we use the space key

and when we hold the space key down,

it changes our course or to hand tool

and we can simply click and

drag the photo to the area we want to work on.

Very simple.

Next,

we have a shortcut for zooming to 100%,

which is often very useful to quickly

get to the optimal zoom for working with the screen, for example.

So that's command plus one.

As you can see, common

to this one zooms into 100%

and we zoom out using the Z key.

That's all about zooming.

Another thing we frequently use

is changing the brush size of the tool we are working with,

as well as its hardness or softness.

Currently we have the Brush tool selected,

which we use for drawing,

and we can change its size in many ways as well.

One basic way is to click here in the tool

options panel where we change the size and hardness

with these sliders.

However, it's not very efficient

to do with the mouse or stylus every time.

That's why I recommend

learning the shortcut out,

plus control on the Mac

by holding down these two keys and clicking the mouse or stylus.

We can control
both the brush size and hardness,

so I hold control out.

Click the mouse and we see the size and hardness displayed.

And by dragging to the right,

we can increase the brush size to the left.

We decrease it by dragging upward

as we make the brush softer.

So it's at the 0% of of hardness.

So it's the most soft we can you can get by dragging downwards.

We make it harder up to 100%

as you can see,
this is a brush with hard edges.

We drag upwards to 0% and we have

the brush with with soft edges.

I recommend this shortcut because with just one shortcut,

you have control over both the brush size and hardness, which will be very useful,

especially when working on skin retouching or

dodging burn.

Next,
we have the ability to undo our actions,

which means just undoing one step of our last action.

And we use the shortcut command alt Z for that.

This undoes one step and restores

it when shortcut is pressed again

so we can toggle between the state like before

and after our last stroke or step or whatever

to undo multiple steps.

We can use just common Z one

step back, another one, and so on.

So that's about undoing.

What's next?

I have

to assume that you're familiar with some of the basic Photoshop

functions, such as working with layers instead of directly on the image,

and this allows us to make it its own separate layers.

So if something goes wrong or we want to remove something

we can easily deleted from that specific layer, working directly

on the image would make it difficult to undo or modify our edits later on.

That's why we want to work Nondestructive early

using layers to create a layer.

Click on the icon here at the bottom.

That's just a basic layer

on which we can draw something, etc.

Another type of layer is an adjustment layer located here.

These are photoshop's tools for editing colors,

brightness contrast and so on in the form of layers.

I also have to assume that

you have some basic knowledge about these layers.

We will be using some of these

during our course and I will explain how they work

later on.

Just to quickly demonstrate what we are talking about

here, I enabled the brightness contrast

adjustment layer to show you how it works briefly.

We have settings for adjusting

the brightness

and contrast

so we can make it a lot brighter and darker.

Increase or decrease the contrast.

And that's basically how how adjustment layers work.

You can create another one

with another adjustment and then go back to the previous one,

change uh, change the settings and so on.

We can remove those

for now by default.

The adjustment layers come with the mask

assigned to them, and masks are pretty important.

I will briefly explain them because we will be using them quite a lot.

The mask is like an overlay on the layer,

either in black or white that allows us to determine

which area of the photo will be affected by the adjustment made with that tool.

A white area

on the mask means it is editable,

while a black area

we can switch to black with

common di like invert the colors.

The black area is not affected by the adjustments.

Let's go back to the white mask.

So if the whole mask is white, that means the whole images

is affected by the adjustments of of that adjustment layer.

Let's let's do something,

something drastic with the photo so we can see the result easily.

For example, let's apply a drastic contrast change.

If I select the mask and draw

with black color on the photo,

the blackened area will be excluded from

from the adjustment.

We need to have the black as our main color.

Okay, so we are drawing black on the mask.

You can see the areas that we've

drawn with black.

So these areas won't be affected by the adjustment

like that.

Only the face remained

contrasty as it is white on the mask.

We can also fill the mask entirely with black by using the shortcut command

backspace if black is the background color

and then using the white brush,

we can

reveal the areas on the photo

that we want to be affected by the adjustments.

For example, the face in this case,

you can see that the white area has appeared on the mask

where we paint it, indicating that only that area

is subject to adjustments.

So that's the that's a brief explanation of masks in Photoshop.

Of course, there is much more to learn and

useful techniques to discover, including working with shades of gray.

But we will cover those topics later in the course.

I mentioning this now because I wanted to show you a quick way

to select an area that we want to edit using

an adjustment layer.

For this purpose we have the quick mask mode,

which I frequently use for selective color editing and so on.

Let's remove that adjustment layer for now

and let's take a look at the photo.

Here we have some red areas on the forehead

and on the nose, a little bit on the ear.

And to select those areas, I will use quick mask mode.

It is located here on this.

Under this icon,

you can enable it by clicking on it

or using the shortcut. Q

Press and Q activates the quick mask mode, which allows us to draw

an area that we want to edit using the brush tool and black color.

So let's select the forehead,

nose and a bit of the ear.

We just paint over it with our black color.

The red area means that this area will be selected

after we leave the quick mask mode.

To exit the quick Mask mode, press Q again

and the selection is made from our drawing.

If in your case, everything else is selected

except for what we draw and double click on the Quick Mask icon

and make sure you have the selected areas checked.

Okay,

let's leave.

Let's exit the quick mask mode so we have the selection

and now let's select the adjustments

layer we want to use to fix the redness.

We can use hue saturation, although Photoshop

has a lot more tools for dealing with color.

But for for this example, we can use hue saturation.

As you can see, our selection

has been transferred to the layer mask.

This means that what we drew is now in white on our mask,

indicating that only those areas will be editable

by our adjustment layer.

Now we can work with with the color,

we can change its hue

saturation,

make it lighter or darker.

However, I won't be

going into detail about it at this moment.

Just wanted to show you how this quick selection

using the quick mask mode works.

And that's basically it for now.

So remember, the quick mask mode is activated

by pressing the cue key.

Then you can select areas you want to edit.

When we exit the quick mask mo mode, we have a selection

and we can apply that selection to one of the adjustment layers

and that transfers to a mask of that layer.

We can edit that area and so on.

Zooming in and out with the Z key,

using the spacebar to

to move the image

and using the alt control shortcut

to adjust the brush, brush size and hardness.

These are the main things that are worth remembering and practicing

as they will speed up your work and make it more enjoyable.

I think I will also provide you with a file where these keyboard shortcuts

will be listed so we can review them and practice on this photo.

And now we can move on to skin retouching on our image.