Hi.
Welcome back to the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
I'm Jesús Ramirez.
In this video, I'm going to show you three secret Photoshop shortcuts
to bring up truly hidden menus.
I know that title sounds like click-bait, but that's sort of the reason why I did it.
I've seen a lot of videos recently with these kinds of titles and the examples that they
show are never really about anything secret or hidden.
It's usually a shortcut that brings up a dialog box that you could have brought up by using
at least one or more menus.
You could have even accidentally opened them up by yourself.
So I gave myself the challenge to come up with truly hidden menus.
Menus that you could only bring up if you know the secret keyboard shortcut.
In other words, you cannot simply stumble upon these menus, someone needs to show you
the secret handshake before you can get in.
Two of these, I learned from Photoshop Engineers, and one from my good friend Bert Monroy.
And now, I'm going to show them to you so that you can have access to them.
By the way, if you're new to the Photoshop Training Channel, then don't forget to click
on the subscribe and notification buttons.
Okay, the first hidden menu that I want to show you deals with masking.
So we need a mask.
I'll quickly create a mask by selecting the Quick Selection Tool and then just clicking
on Select Subject and Adobe Sensei, Adobe's Artificial Intelligence will analyze the image
and select the main subject.
As you can see, the selection is not perfect, but it's good enough to get you started and
it's good enough for this tutorial.
And with the Selection Active you probably know they can click on the Layer Mask icon
to create a layer mask.
And if you want to refine that layer mask, you can click on Select Mask to bring up the
selected mask menu and make adjustments to your mask.
Now, this tutorial is not about the selected mask and how it works.
If you want a tutorial on that, I'll place a link right below in the description with
a tutorial that covers all these features.
But anyway, this selected mask menu is new.
It's been around for about two years and some people prefer the old method of refining masks
in Photoshop.
And that menu is called Refine Edge or Refine Mask.
And a lot of people think that that menu is gone, but it's actually still here, it's hidden
and there's a way of bringing it back by using the secret handshake.
And of course, I'm referring to a keyboard shortcut.
So to bring that old menu back, what you need to do is go into Select, hold Shift, and then
click on Select and Mask, and the old refine mask dialog box comes up and you can use that
instead to refine your mask.
Some people are more used to using the older refine mask and it's better for them because
it's what they're used to.
So you can use that if you like.
I actually have gotten used to the newer way of doing things and I prefer it now, but if
you're someone who still prefers the old method, this is how you can bring it back.
The second secret menu that I'm going to show you in this tutorial deals with filters.
So if you wanted to add a lens flare to this scene, you can go into Filter, Render, Lens
Flare, and you can click and drag on this preview window to place the lens flare.
So if I wanted the lens flare here where the sun is in this area here, I could click and
drag and place it there.
I cannot zoom into this preview window.
So I kind of have to just
estimate where that sun is and place that target accordingly.
Then, of course, I can adjust the brightness
and I can adjust the different types of lens flares.
In this case, we'll just use the default lens flare
and I'll press OK, and it places my lens flare.
Now, the downside of doing it this way is that I work destructively, I created the lens
flare on the background layer.
So if I wanted to work non-destructively, I would have to undo that, create a new layer,
fill it with black, black is my foreground color, so I can press ALT and Backspace, that's
Option Delete on the Mac to fill with black.
And I can simply go into Filter and select the very first option.
The first option is always the last filter use.
So I can click on that and it creates a filter in the same spot, and I can change the Blending
Mode to Screen.
Screen hides the dark pixels and it keeps the bright one, so it keeps the lens flare
and that gives me the flare on that spot non-destructively.
So this sort of the way that most people do it, a hack if you will, to place the lens
flare precisely on an area.
But if you want to be pixel perfect and place that lens flare precisely on an area, let
me zoom in just to show you what I mean.
Maybe we wanted to place the lens flare right here precisely on that area there.
How would you do that?
Remember, you cannot zoom in to the preview window, and you obviously wouldn't be able
to see the guides.
Well, to do so, you can open the info panel by clicking on this icon or going into the
Window menu and selecting Info.
And notice that when you hover over the canvas, you can see the x and y coordinates.
So you can hover directly over that spot and see what the x and y coordinate is.
In this case, it's 632 for x,
and 718 for y.
So just remember those numbers and you can close this panel,
and we can create a new
layer, fill it with black.
Remember, black is our foreground color, so press ALT and Backspace, Option Delete on the Mac.
And then go into Filter, Render, Lens Flare, and I want to precisely place that flare there.
Obviously, I can zoom in, so what you need to do, the secret handshake is to hold ALT
option on the Mac and click and this brings up this Window called the Precise Flare Center.
This is the secret hidden window.
And you can enter your x and y coordinates.
So the x coordinate is 632, and the y coordinateis 718.
Notice how the flare is going to move right to that spot as soon as I enter those coordinates.
I'll press OK and there goes the flare, right on this spot.
So if I press OK, you'll notice that the flare will appear there in the center and I can
change the blending mode to screen, and now we have a lens flare precisely on that spot.
It's a pixel perfect precise flare.
For the third hidden menu in this tutorial, I'm going to show you one that really helps
you when you're working with large files.
So what you need to do with going to File, and Open, and this is the folder where I have
a piece that I worked on for Adobe.
This is a marketing campaign that I did for Adobe about two years ago and it's called
the Make a Masterpiece Campaign.
I was one of five different artists that worked on it, and this is the file, this is the final
file that I used.
And I just want you to see something.
This file is 4.54 gigabytes.
So the file is quite big.
If I open this file, you can see that Photoshop will take a little bit to open it up.
And I'm currently working on my desktop computer, which is pretty powerful.
It has a lot of RAM, a lot of video memory, a fast processor, and as you can see, it's
still taking a while to open up.
If I was trying to open this on my old laptop, this file will take possibly a couple minutes
to open and it will be very, very slow.
So if you have a large file that you're working on, and you want to show it to your client.
Or maybe you want to open it up and save it as something else to maybe email it or share
it on social media.
Then simply opening the file could take a long time, and again, if you're on a slow
laptop, you might not even be able to work on it.
So what do you do?
Let me close this file and I'll show you the secret handshake, the secret menu that's going
to allow you to open it up much faster.
So if you go into File and Open, and this is important, you have to do it through the
File Open menu in Photoshop.
And you select a large file like this one, you can hold Shift and ALT, that's Shift Option
on the Mac, and then click on Open, and this is the secret menu.
It says, read the composite data instead.
OK or Cancel.
If I press OK, notice how the image opens up instantly.
This is because Photoshop did not load all the layers and information in this file.
Instead, it loaded up just a flattened merge version of the document.
So now, I can show it to my client really quickly, or I could save it as something else,
resize it for social media, anything I want.
The only thing I should mention is that if you decide to edit the file like cropping
it for example, be sure not to save it because if I were to save it now, it would override
this original file and I would lose all my layers.
So be careful with that.
So if you resize it or do anything always do a Save As, or do an export, do not save
the PSD file.
And actually just as reference, this is not really a PSD file, this is a PSB, Photoshop Big File.
So I'll show you one thing.
I'll close this for now.
Now you know the secret handshake, and I'll just explain one other thing.
If you go into File and Open, you'll notice that this is not a PSD file because a file
is over two gigabytes.
Photoshop files, PSD files can only be two gigabytes.
So if you have a file that is bigger than two gigabytes, you will have to save it as
a PSB file, Photoshop Big.
So keep that in mind.
That's an extra tip there for you.
And by the way, if you want to learn more about this project, then check out my Behance page.
I'll place a link right below on the description.
This is the largest composite that I've ever made, and I think you'll enjoy seeing how is created.
And I'm going to finalize editorial by showing you an Easter Egg.
This is not really a hidden menu, but it's really cool and it is hidden.
So I figured that it will work great for this tutorial.
So would be three dot icon, you can go into the Edit Toolbar menu and if you hold the
Shift and click the Done button, you'll add a banana onto the toolbar.
The banana doesn't do anything.
It's just an icon, but it's pretty funny and you can use it to play a joke on a friend,
co-worker, or a classmate.
To get rid of the banana, you need to go back into the Edit Toolbar menu, but instead of
holding Shift, you have to hold ALT, that's option on the Mac, and click on Done, and
the banana goes away.
So I hope that you enjoy these three secret hidden menus in Photoshop and the bonus Easter Egg.
And let me know in the comments below if you know of any secret hidden menus that I may
not be aware of.
I would love to know if there's more.
If you enjoy this tutorial, don't forget to click on that like button, share it with a
friend, and of course, click on that subscribe and notification button if you haven't already.
Thank you so much for watching.
I will talk to you again in the next tutorial.