So how do you create your own tools in Photoshop?
Tools which are customized and created for your needs.
Wouldn't that be amazing?
This is not going to be a coding class, unfortunately.
However, I can promise that by the end of the tutorial, you will be able to create your
own set of customized tools which are tailored to your needs.
Those will be the tools that you can click on the tool, use the tool, just click on the
other tool and it will automatically switch back and forth between the tools that you
have created.
Whether it's a crazy tool that creates a line with peanuts or a professional Mask Cleaning
Tool, you can create it all.
So without any further ado, let's get started.
Back in the brilliant world of Photoshop and to create the took kit, we're going to use
one of the most essential features of Photoshop and that is Tool Presets, and I cannot wait
to show you some great examples.
Now before we jump into creating some awesome tools, let us understand what exactly is Tool
Presets with simple examples.
So here we have a photo, and this is one of the photos that I clicked when I was learning
photography from Audrey.
This was during Shutter Fest, she was doing a class, we were all learning from her.
She's an awesome photographer.
Go check out her work.
And also the model is Ella Kelly, show her some love.
Alright, so here we are again.
And let's say you want to sign your work or you want to add some branding to your work,
and for that you have created a brush.
And you can create a tool for just that brush, for a particular size that you determine.
For example, we're going to create a new layer here.
All right.
And you're going to choose the brush, and I'm going to choose the brush which has my
sign.
So, Unmesh Branding, I'm going to choose that brush.
Now as you can see, this brush is huge.
If I paint with it, see how big that is?
You don't want it to be that big by default.
By default, I want it to be let's say 800 pixels big.
Alright, so I'm going to set it to 800.
By default, I want the Blend Mode to be Normal for the brush.
All right.
Opacity and Flow - 100 is fine.
We want no Smoothing.
Everything is great.
Now just to save this particular tool, all you have to do is to go to Window and then
Tool Presets right down at the very bottom.
Now, once we go there, now you will see some default Tool Presets that have been created.
You can delete them if you want to.
But I'm going to create a new Tool Preset by clicking right here.
Now it's going to ask you 'Would you like to create a Brush Preset instead?'
No, I'm just going to create a brand new tool just for that brush.
No.
So you can just name it whatever you want.
I'm going to name it Unmesh Branding Sign.
And do you want to include the color?
In this case I've chosen White as the color, so do you want to include this color as the
default?
Of course yes.
So hit OK.
And there you have it.
You have this tool.
Whenever you want to sign your work, all you have to do is just select that tool and..boom..done.
No matter what tool you're working with.
Let's open up the Tool Presets right there.
You can have it open at the side at all times.
So, let's say you're working with any other tool like the Gradient Tool or the Healing
Tool, whatever you're using.
Anytime you click on this tool, which is Unmesh Branding Sign, you will go back to the same
brush, with the same color, with the same size that you had set before.
Makes sense?
So let's say you had your image open, you were retouching.
You did all the work and at the end, all you have to do is to create a brand new layer
and just inside of the Tool Presets, you can click on that branding sign, and it will automatically
get you to that tool and you can just sign your work.
Control the opacity if you wish to, do whatever you want.
It just gets you to that tool you just created.
Let me show you one more example.
So I create my YouTube thumbnails originally in 4k.
If I have to upload it to YouTube as a thumbnail, YouTube allows for 720p resolution, I can
export it that way.
If I want to post it on Facebook, I can have a higher resolution, so on and so forth.
Maybe you want to post to your website.
But I originally created in 4K.
So I know that the resolution is going to be 3840 x 2160.
We already know that.
Now let's say, we want to add some text.
And that's the same size of text you add in all of your thumbnails or all of your social
media posts.
So first of all, what we're going to do is move it to the side, just like this.
And this is just to show you guys what it's going to be to create that Tool Preset . Select
the top most layer first, and now we want to add some text to it.
Now since the resolution is always going to be 4k, you can choose a perfect size.
Let's go ahead and create a brand new layer, and now select the Text Tool right there.
Now determine the font and the size beforehand.
So the font that I'm always going to use is going to be Gilroy, right there.
You can choose your font by clicking on the drop down right there and then choose the
font of your choice.
And ExtraBold is the one that I'm going for for the heading.
The size is going to be 300 pixels, sharp, alignment is fine.
That's how it's going to be.
The color by default, I want to keep it White.
Once you have set it all right, all you have to do is to open up the Tool Presets right
there.
If you cannot see it, just go to Window and make sure Tool Presets is checked and then
simply click on the New Tool Preset button right there and let's name this PIX HEADING
THUMBNAIL.
Right.
And hit OK.
There you have it.
You have the perfect size, you have everything.
All you have to do, just click and just write whatever you want.
I'm going to write Photoshop because it's about Photoshop.
Anyway.
So anytime you're working with any other tool, no matter if you're working with the Text
Tool and you changed a couple of things - so you changed the size, maybe you changed probably
the font to something else and then you're going to create a brand new layer and you
want to use the same heading format, all you have to do is to choose that tool - PIX HEADING
THUMBNAIL.
It will choose the font for you.
It will choose the size for you, the color will be right there and just you have to click
and keep writing.
That's it.
Simple as that.
So this helps you create specific tools just for your needs to make your workflow faster.
Now, as we witnessed, Photoshop already has a set of default tool presets and it's worth
checking it out.
Just kidding.
So if we open Tool Presets, have a look at this one, the Peanut Dash.
So if you choose that, have look what it does.
It creates peanuts along your path.
I don't know how that is going to be useful, but it's there.
Another one right here is Circular Rainbow.
Check it out.
Right there.
I'm going to click on it.
All it does is that it creates a rainbow along the radius.
So I'm going to click and drag and there you have a circular rainbow, but its destructive.
What if you want to just erase the bottom half of it?
It's just not possible.
Well, you have to create it on a brand new layer.
So let's go back.
Let's create a brand new layer.
Now keep in mind, the Blend Mode of this gradient is screen.
So if you want to have the same effect, you need to change the Blend Mode from Normal
to Screen.
Because it's on a separate layer, it's not going to interact if you just change the gradient
of the Brush Blend Mode to something else.
Alright, so let's go ahead and change it to Screen.
And now you can do the same thing.
Just create a gradient, something like this, you have it.
Now you can erase the bottom half very easily, you can just take an eraser or create a mask.
And then just take a brush, whoops, not my sign brush, soft round brush, and then just
erase it.
There you have it.
You can just control the Opacity if you want to.
All right, so there are some default ones.
You can go ahead and check them out if you want to, at your own expense.
Now let's go ahead and create some useful tool presets.
I'm definitely going to give you two examples.
However, I highly encourage you to look at your own workflow and create your own tool
presets.
So here we have a picture of a man in a blue background.
So let's say you want to change the background is solid gray and make it black & white and
then add some text at the back.
Masking is going to be an issue.
In this case, for masking I'm going to use the Select Color Range feature because the
background is of a certain color which is different from that of the subject.
So simply let's go to Select and then Color Range.
Now, I had already done it so it already comes out pretty good.
However, all you need to do is to decrease the fuzziness first to something below 10
- 9 or 10 is fine.
Make sure select Sampled Colors is checked.
Now select the first eyedropper right there, just change the Selection Preview from White
Matte to None in the beginning.
With the eyedropper selected, just click on the outside of the subject.
Now, click on the plus eyedropper and just click, hold and draw around the subject in
the blue areas.
Simple?
Now in this case, have a look, black are the areas which are not being selected, white
other areas which are being selected.
We want just the opposite of that one.
So just click on Invert.
Now we have it.
Change the Selection Preview from None to probably, Black Matte, so that you can see
how it would look in a black background.
Now we need to zoom in and control the fuzziness.
You see the blue line right there, it's just not perfect.
So I'm just going to increase the fuzziness.
Some of his clothes is also being removed from the selection.
Look, it's going black.
No problem.
We'll fix that later.
Hit OK.
Now click on the Mask button.
Now we can simply put up a Grey background.
Click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose Solid color.
And we're going to choose a Grey color, something like this, and hit OK.
Put it behind the subject, click and drag, put it behind.
Now we also want to make it black & white.
So at the top, we're going to create a gradient.
Click on the Adjustment layer icon and this time choose Gradient Map, not Gradient, sorry
Gradient Map.
And this creates a very dramatic black & white.
Well not this one, but all you have to do is click on the Gradient, choose the gradient
from the Black to White.
And now you can click on any one of these sliders and move the diamond to control the
dynamics of this one.
All right, that looks better.
I'm going to move it a little bit at the left.
Hit OK.
There you have it.
It looks pretty nice.
We also just want the gradient to be applied to the subject, not to the background.
So hold the Alt key or the Option key, click on the line between these two.
Now it's a clipping mask, it's only going to affect the subject.
Now, have a look at the mask.
It's just not right.
If I change the color to red, you'll be able to see what's happening.
See, the background is also inside the subject and the mask is not perfect, right?
So if you hold the Alt or Option and click on the mask.
See, some of the area is inside our black.
It should be absolutely white.
So what we can do is, we can take the brush with white as the foreground color.
We can definitely, you know, paint over here, that's nice.
However, as soon as we try to paint around the corners, it just leaks.
No matter how careful you are, it's going to take a lot of time.
Right?
So, I have a solution for you.
Just take the brush, Flow and Opacity at 100.
You can also decrease the Opacity if you want to.
I'm going to keep it at 40% and then change the Blend Mode from Normal to Overlay.
Now when you change the Blend Mode to Overlay, it will only paint on the colors which are
closer to white.
Not absolutely black, it will never paint on absolutely black areas.
Now when you paint, it will never leak.
See, no matter how much I'm painting, it's just not leaking.
It's covering on the inside, but it's not leaking.
So this is a good brush for mask cleanup.
And this is good for painting in the bright areas.
So you can create a tool preset for this one.
So I'm going to set the size to about, by default, I'm going to set it to about 300
pixels.
Blend mode should be Overlay.
Flow can be 40% or 30%, depending upon your images, the kind of images that you're working
on.
We don't need any smoothing, everything is fine.
Now, click on the Tool Presets, let's open it up and then click on New Tool Preset.
Would you like to create a Brush Preset instead?
No.
I just want to create a brand new tool of it.
Let's name it Mask Cleanup White.
This is for the white.
You can also create a similar one for the dark areas.
Include color?
Of course you want to include the color.
Hit OK.
All right.
So we have that.
No matter what tool you're working on, let's go to the Gradient, let's say you're selecting
something, you're painting something with a different brush and the blend mode is different;
anytime you want to clean up the mask, just click on Mask Cleanup White.
That 300 pixels brush will be selected.
Overlay will be selected.
Everything is fine.
All you have to do is just clean up the mask.
Isn't that amazing?
Now you can just, you know take your time to kind of clean it all up.
And there you have it.
Hold the Alt or Option and click on the mask.
Perfect.
Now, let's change the background color to Grey.
And you can add some text at the back, that's totally upon you.
Back to example number one and if you're into retouching, this tool preset is going to be
very helpful to you.
So let's say you want to remove the blemishes.
First of all, these freckles are absolutely beautiful.
But we want to remove anything which is like temporary, like a bruise or a pimple that
will go away.
So in this case, have a look there is this thing that we need to remove right there,
it's dark.
So what we usually do is, we create a brand new layer and then we choose any of the tools
like the Regular Healing Brush Tool, and then we cover the whole area.
However, there is a way in which it will only cover precisely that blemish.
Precisely.
Very precisely.
And the way you do that is by changing the Blend Mode of this one to Lighten.
All right.
We want to sample Current & Below, okay.
Because if we choose just Current Layer, it's all empty, nothing is going to paint over
there.
We're going to choose Current & Below, Blend Mode - Lighten.
And now when you take a sample, let's say from here and then you paint over it, only
that area will be covered.
No other area, because that area is darker than the area that you just sampled.
If you sample, let's say, a dark area from the eye, just like this, and you try to paint
there, it just won't paint because you cannot brighten anything with a darker color.
Right?
That's why you have chosen Lighten.
Now you want to save this as a preset, click on the Tool Preset button, click on New Tool
Preset, and we can name this Remove Darker Blemishes.
There you go.
You can also create a similar one for removing brighter blemishes, but you get the point
how this can simplify your workflow.
So that's how tool presets can help you make your Photoshop life very, very simple.
You can export your tool presets if you want to.
So you can click on that gear icon.
Once you have created your own set of presets, you can click on this gear icon right there.
Not gear icon, line icon.
No matter what you call it, doesn't matter.
All right, you can just load Tool Presets, you can save Tool Presets.
So let's say you want to create your own Tool Presets and save it and probably sell it or,
you know, send it to somebody else, you can do all of that.
Or maybe you just bought it from somebody, maybe I give you something, you can just load
it from here very easily.
So you can just reset, load, save or replace, do anything you want.
You can have a small list, large list.
Just it's all self explanatory.
Alright.
And now, here's an important thing which you should know.
So let's say you're working with the Brush Tool and you only want to see the presets
for the Brush Tool, you can just check Current Tool Only.
So for the Brush Tool, in this tutorial we had created the Branding Sign and the Mask
Cleanup, only those two are going to show up.
So, let's say for the Gradient, you had created four or five tool presets.
So you can keep it checked and only those four or five presets for the Gradient Tool
is going to show up.
But I always keep it unchecked because that allows me to switch back and forth from different
tools with different settings very easily.
I hope this video helped you.
Just keep in mind, all you need to do is to select the tool, set the settings according
to you and click on the New Tool Preset button and it becomes a preset.
So if this video helped you, make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe
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Thanks so much for all your support.
Thank you for watching.
I'll see you guys in my next one.
Till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.