All language subtitles for 3. Making Selections

Now that we've got some ideas to pursue for our poster we've got a photo of the main artist.

It's time to start building up layers.

But before we do any of that we have to start isolating things.

So imagine that this is really truly a let's say it's a four by six photo anything below this layer

is not going to show through.

So this little icon down here next to the trash can is a new layer icon if I click on it.

I've got a new layer to work with.

Clicking back on the photo if I command click and command or control on ABC and I click it'll put the

layer below it.

So just a little quick shortcut here instead of just clicking a new layer and putting at the top.

I want to layer below.

And the reason why I'm going to come up here to my colors and just get a bright green right here I'm

going hit alt delete all delete is the shortcut to fill your foreground color to the canvas command

delete that fills it with whatever is behind here.

So the background color that's white.

So I basically fill this layer with light.

I'll delete it again.

I could go to Edit fill right here or shift a file that's another way to do the same thing.

So one thing you'll discover in Photoshop there's probably 100 different ways to do the same thing.

So these are the shortcuts that I've discovered that I use in my workflow so I'll delete the whole reason

I wanted to show you this as I've just filled this new layer with green.

So if I turn off this photo layer you can see my canvas is green behind it.

Turn it back on.

So this whole white area needs to go away.

Right.

Or something else we can explore our layer styles.

So right here we've got normal but I can play with different layer styles and what a layer style is

it controls how whatever layer you're selecting interacts with the layer below it.

So right now I'm just clicking on it multiplies one you'll probably use a lot and you'll see what it

does multiply hides the lighter tones but keeps the darker tones revealed and then merge that with the

layer below it.

So you know if we change the canvas color lets say two.

In this case a purple add new layer.

I'll just click on it.

So it put it above the other layer and hit Alt Delete to fill in the foreground color so now he looks

purple but maybe I just want my background to be purple or green or texture a photo and I don't want

him to be part of that.

So I'm going to come back over here and you could explore more.

So here's another shortcut Ohad make sure you're moved to a selected game with that selected on the

layer you want.

You can hit the shift and plus or minus keys to cycle through.

Right here as I hold as I hit shift plus I'm basically scrolling through all these options without having

to click on each one one at a time.

So sometimes that's kind of a creative effect right there.

But sometimes you know that's that's how I find something I want to work with.

Hit shift plus and I just cycle through real quick and just see what different layer styles affected

my image in different ways.

In this case I'm going start with normal because I'd like to keep him black and white keep his skin

tone how it is I want to just cut him out.

So this is one of the most critical skills you learn in thought or shot.

There's a lot of different ways to cut images out.

One of the rough ways I hit the letter L and hit my lasso tool and I could literally start to just you

know we'll just do a super rough cut here whatever I trace around I'll get what we call these marching

ants case I've made a selection and there's a lot of different ways to isolate the selection.

I could delete it in this case.

I use a hit command J which jump cuts it up to its own layer.

So if I turn out the original what I've done now is I've brought this lead to the front.

Obviously it's a terrible selection and it's it's not editable or so now smart object it's destructive

editing.

Like I can't ever bring back here where I didn't make a good selection.

So making a selection with the marching ants tool and then just jump cutting it isn't probably the best

way to work a better way to work would be to if you make a selection to add a mask.

So down here next to the effects we've got this little square with circle in it.

This is a mask and when I click on it it remembers what's behind it.

But now we're masking it.

So anything black hides anything it's white reveals and I can click left or right here I click on the

main image.

Now anything I would be doing would be on the actual image.

If I click on this mask now I'm working on the mask.

So for example let's say I want to refine my selection I could get the brush tool I had to literally

get the brush tool and I'm going to go to window down to brush and now I can change different settings

like how hard the brushes I can see right here maybe a softer brush turn my spacing down.

I'll bring my size up a little bit and I've also got some other things going on.

I'm going to check these for right now.

These are things we'll get into a little bit later.

So I've got a soft brush I could actually come in here and if I paint with black so I'm painting with

my foreground color which is black on the mask so black is hiding.

X x is a short cut right here to toggle which is in front.

So if my white chip is in front now I'm painting with white and white reveals.

So you can come back in here and you could really I mean this is one way to work.

You could zoom in and really you know refine your selection exactly like you want it.

OK.

That's one way to work.

I'm going to go ahead and turn off this mask.

I can hold down shift and click which just hides the mouse.

It's still there.

Shift click to bring it back or I can drag you to the trash gain back to the original image here.

Another way to work a newer tool is this magic wand tool which is kind of a combination I'm sign of

the magic wand but the quick selection tool.

It's kind of a combination between a brush and like the Lasso tool.

But in this case it's smart and it detects the color around the edges so I can kind of just drag over

everything here and it's smart enough to know what to include and what to leave.

Now a problem you run into is areas like this is not a lot of contrast.

Technically his shirt is still over here but if I use that tool and a try and you know try and add that

it might work in this case Photoshop is pretty intelligent and it sees but it's not perfect they're

still you know down here it's good having a really hard time.

So but let's say you're just trying to make a quick comp for some of these to see if they even like

it.

You don't want to spend a bunch of time cutting out this image.

You can do a rough cut like this.

Now if I want to add more to this selection right now it's really tough to see but there is a little

tiny plus sign inside of this icon.

If I hold on alt it turns to a minus sign and what that means is now i'm now I'm subtracting from my

selection.

So oops I took too much of a Narraway so I'll zoom in here.

Command an option.

It's a shortcut for my zoom tool.

Or you can click over here and zoom in any time in now I'm hitting spacebar to get my hand to all which

is right here.

So any time you can use your keyboard shortcut it's obviously better you'll be much faster so command

spacebar.

And now it zooms in are command options spacebar and I get up and I get my zoom out to all.

OK so where are we.

Oh yeah we were on our quick selection to hit the alt key.

I'm sorry.

I won't leave it alone because I want to add back to the net here.

There we go.

All right so now I'm going to zoom out a command or I'm sorry spacebar command an alt to zoom out and

let's do the same thing we did last time let's add a little mask.

All right.

So this is better.

A little bit better.

But you can see we still didn't get everything in the shirt.

The selection isn't quite right.

Still so this would be enough though if I wanted to just quickly mock it up and see if I like it.

All right.

So for me the best way to work what I end up doing all the time is using the pen tool.

So we're going to zip through this pretty quick.

It's kind of a complicated tool.

I just want to get the principle to you and then this is something we'll learn more as we go.

But what I'm to do is get the pen tool and I want to make sure path is selected instead of shape.

If it's a shape you can actually draw new shapes and you can change the fill color which is great but

right now all I want to do is I just want to use it to create a path and then cut out that path.

So I'm going to delete that shape later still selected I'll hit delete and it goes away.

I'm going to get my pen tool in on the changes from a shape to a path.

OK.

With the pen tool again is something you need to practice but you can click and drag and then click

again and you'll notice I've got my anchor point right here is where the path starts.

It's going to go towards where this handle is it's going to bend towards that and then get down to here

where this other point is and it's bending up because of this anchor point.

If I hit command I can get my selection tool and grab that anchor point and bend the path.

So again these are just handles to control this busy a curve here.

So we call it.

And what I like about it is you can get really really precise.

So what we're going to do now is we're going to zip through this real quick.

Over here my paths lay over that path that work path I'm just going to delete it and come back to my

layers.

All right so here we go.

I'm just going to go quick so you can see how I would do this.

And then we can practice these skills more later.

So I hit the caps lock key.

Changed my icon from the pen tool to the precise marker here so I've got my caps lock on and zoom in

real close I'm holding down the spacebar command.

All right now we're going to start cutting this guy out here.

Click and then I'll drag a little bit.

Now hold down the Alt key to change to my this tool here.

This is called the convert point tool.

And it just helps you grab these anchor points because otherwise what would happen is if I just hit

my command to ACL grabs that lower curve to and it bends this one well I'm happy with this being here

and I want him on all the key to start bending this around.

All right.

Here we go.

So we're just going to zip along this line real quick.

It's not going to be perfect but it's going to be good enough here to get our poster going.

Let's just zip through this real quick.

So I click and I Drage it a little bit.

And the reason why is that my curves are a little bit softer and they're not.

Let's say you know like if I just click like this or not jagged if I click and drag.

Right.

And it commands.

Now in Photoshop you take command options of your control alt Z to step back multiple otherwise what

happens if you just want to undo commands.

It just toggles back and forth between the last thing you did.

So you want to step forward or step backward by using command options.

OK.

All right.

So let's keep going with my selection here.

Click and drag and what we're going to do now is when we get close to the hair we're going to do a different

selection of method and I'll show you that here in just a second so we're going to keep right along

his shirt like once and then click again and drag my handle this way.

So my curve comes along here I click out and there is one clicking during this race on my handle.

That's really tough to see on this image but so my handle comes this way and that curve which you probably

can't even see oops comes along that neck. Now I'm going to hit the alt key I'll grab that handle arm

and and bring it right around here so far as his neck M.Com up towards his hair.

And now what I meant to do is zoom out real quick and I'm just going to get close.

There's another selection method to get all this hair isolated.

OK I'll come up past the canvas

and we'll come down here and hear a click once and then I'll click again and re click drag down here

click drag to bend that curve.

OK.

And now I just need to close that gap.

So I come down here.

Click click.

And then when I hover over that open point where we started my cursor changes to this icon with the

pen tool and then the little circle next to it meaning we're closing that path.

OK.

So I've got a path over here.

And what I usually do is I double click and I'll call it something I usually call it just cut out and

what it does now it saves this path in this file.

OK.

Now what we're gonna do is I'm going to hit command return or control return to turn this into a selection

.

You could also grab that path again.

Right click and makes you very pencil selected and say make new selection.

Click on that and make a selection.

So again we're just getting those marching ants ok now I'm going to click on my little masked tool and

I've got this nearly perfect selection if I zoom out.

OK.

So the other thing I would do to polishers up a little bit I need to add this little chunk here SLJ

grab my pen tool and I'll start.

Same thing I just cut them out real quick.

OK close enough I command or turn got my selection now because I'll come under this mask and I can fill

it with black.

I remember when I was filling with green and purple I was holding Alt Delete to fill it with black.

Make sure I've got.

You can see the subtle little box I've got selected or am I selection blacks on top.

I hit delete and I've added that to my selection here.

OK.

So now we've got a pretty good selection.

Now we're going to do in the next lesson is we're going to really refine this here.

So go ahead and play this on your image.

Play with that pen tool.

Practice making your selections and then next lesson we're going to learn how to make really really

difficult selections with things like hair