Nine tips and tricks' here we go
When you start a new canvas
There are two important things to consider the pixel dimensions for both width and height as well as this setting which Photoshop calls
Resolution it's the amount of pixels per inch
Commonly, this is shortened to PPI pixels per inch or dpi dots per inch
now the more important of the two here is the pixel dimensions the amount of pixels determines how much data your canvas can hold a
720 by 480 pixel canvas is fairly small by today's standards a
1920 by 1080 pixel image is what you see on most HD screens and an image at
3840 by 2160 is what you're looking at on 4k displays
Okay
If you're making arts for digital viewing only pixels are all you have to worry about the DPI or PPI is irrelevant
Here's a digital painting. Let's go check the pixels and dpi on it
Alright, our pixels are 1,100 width by 879 height and our dpi PPI is 72
Let's do a little experiment
I'm gonna uncheck the resample box which locks the pixels in place
so I can't change them and now I'm gonna change the DPI to something crazy like
3000 now you might think my computer will explode when I hit okay
But nothing happens my computer monitor is only reading those pixels which despite the hike and dpi have not changed
Okay. So what does dpi even do then?
Well dpi matters when you're printing let's say we want to do an 8 inch by 10 inch print first
We need to tell the printer how many dots or pixels it should use to populate each inch of the paper
for the sake of simple math
Let's set our dpi to 100 and here's a little ruler dividing our width into 8 segments because we're printing at 100 dpi
The printer will use 100 pixels from our image to fill each consecutive inch the math here is easy
We're using 100 pixels per inch x 8 inches. This canvas would need to be 800 pixels wide and 4 Heights
It's just 100 pixels per inch times 10 inches
This canvas would need to be a thousand pixels tall Photoshop can do this math for you?
of course if I go to file new
change this over to inches and set my destination print size to 8 by 10 and change my resolution or dpi or PPI to
100 hit OK I get my file and now we'll go back into image size and look at it in pixels
We can see that our math checks out now for professional quality
You'll want to print at 300 dpi so that same 8 inch by 10 inch print at
300 dpi the width is 300 times 8 which equals 20 400 pixels and the height would be 300 times 10 which equals
3000 pixels it's helpful to know how this works to avoid basic pitfalls. For instance if I go to file new
Switch this to inches and I want a 9 by 12 print and I hit OK and then spend hours painting some iron giant
Fan art great now I can get my 9 by 12 print right? Well not so fast
Did you catch the mistake I made when I created that canvas
I accepted the default value of 72 dpi and if I went to image size here
You can see I was actually painting with very few pixels
And if I wanted to print this at 300 dpi, well, I would be getting a pitifully small print now
Let me show you one last thing. I'll switch this back to 72
You can brute force this and have Photoshop give you a 9 by 12 print at 300 dpi
I'll click on the resample button now, I'll change this to 300 dpi hit
OK and Photoshop adds the pixel data necessary to achieve this however, it does so
Indiscriminately and the painting looks soft and fuzzy and pixelated and generally awful and it will print that way too
So I don't recommend doing this
What I do recommend is that you keep your output in mind whenever you make a new canvas a little information goes a long way
Here's a piece I'm working on and I'd like to check my values as I work
my old method was to make a new layer set that layer to color mode and
Then go and grab a pure white color or black
It doesn't matter and fill that in then what I could do is name this layer black and white
Lock it down so I can paint over it
And now I have an instant layer on the top that toggles between black and white and color and that works
but what happens when you have a
lot of layers and you're working on a layer say way down here and you want to see your image in black and white well,
You have to stop painting
Scroll all the way up just to click this on and then maybe all the way back down to see your layers beneath here
So here's a more user-friendly way to do this
It starts with a handy little shortcut push ctrl or command
Y and notice that little readout at the top of your image changes when you do that what Photoshop is doing here is it's
Previewing your image in a different color space and currently that color space is set to the default of CMYK
You access that here view proof set up. And of course CMYK is checked. But if I just go into custom and
Pull down this menu. I can have Photoshop access any of these now
I don't know what most of these do to be honest
But the option that gives you a great black and white preview is this one up here working grey dot gained 20%
Click that click OK and now you can see our readout here has changed accordingly
If I push ctrl Y and disable it it goes back to normal and now we don't need our black and white layer anymore
Let me trash that. So now when I push ctrl Y I get a black and white preview
It's eliminated scrolling and made my workflow more efficient. And there's even one more cool thing you can do
Let me just move my layers over go up to window arrange
And go all the way to the bottom new window for your file name Photoshop makes a new window
But this is not a copy. It's an instance. So let me just quickly rearrange my workspace here
All right
Here's the original painting on the left and our instance on the right when I put a brushstroke down on the original it updates over
Here now. I'll go into the instance and push ctrl Y on it
So it becomes a live updating black-and-white replica of my original
If you have dual monitors throw this guy on that second monitor, so you can see it without obstructing your main interface pretty cool
When you're in the color picker window clicking around and choosing your colors
You may have noticed that when you venture to certain areas this exclamation mark shows up. You know, it's there now
It's not there now. It's there now. What's the deal with that?
This is relevant to printing again when the exclamation icon is there
it means you're out of
gamut for printing that is a printer is not likely able to reproduce that color and the cool thing about this is let's say I'm
Like way off up here and Photoshop is telling me hey the printers not gonna be able to do that
I can simply click on this color and
Photoshop brings me back to the nearest print safe color and while that's a nice feature. It is a bit tedious and non-intuitive
So check this out push ctrl shift
Y and now we have this out of gamut map or a print safe map and you'll notice as I change the color the print
safe map
Changes along with it and that's right certain colors are easier to reproduce in print than others if you're only interested in displaying your work
Digitally, you know monitors phones tablets TVs. This is much less important because most of those devices will be able to display a full pallet
All right, I use layer masks almost every single day let's start with a brief overview
I have a layer with a red circle and a layer above with a blue circle because these are just normal layers
They are 100% opaque with a layer mask. You can assign custom transparency
you create a layer mask with this button here and when I click it you see it created a kind of a layer within a
layer
I'll do the same thing for layer to layer masks operate behind the scenes
separate from the layers
visible content and I can click back and forth and select either the layer mask or the visible layer content itself layer masks are
Grayscale images where white is 100% opaque and black is 100% transparent. So just to show you how it works
I'll click into layer two layer mask
I'll grab an airbrush and I'll just use my tablet pressure to brush this in and you can see what happens
Also notice the layer mask has updated
In fact, if I alt click into the mask, I can see my actual layer mask painting again white being opaque
so we see the blue circle in these areas and gray to black being levels of
Pairen see to get out of this just regular click back in the lair content
alright
I've gone ahead and reset my layer masks here and how I usually work with them is I have a layer on top
That I want to subtly reveal and instead of starting with a hundred percent opacity. I like to build up opacity
So with the layer mask selected, I'll push ctrl I which inverted the image to black making it 100% transparent
So in effect, this layer is doing nothing then I'll go grab a brush and just for the sake of this demonstration
Let's grab this funny brush right here and then switch my color to white and I can begin painting with this cool texture brush
Revealing my blue circle layer, and this is the best part about layer masks. I can use any brush
I have to paint into them layer masks are also
Non-destructive meaning my blue circle data is always there
so no matter where I am in my painting process if I want more of that blue circle I can paint it in if I
Want less of it. I can paint it out and you'll see me using layer masks in some of the upcoming segments in this video
Here's a matte painting that I spent a long time on for a film project
The director likes the landscape, but now wants the color palette to be more like a warm sunset now
I'm obviously not going to repaint this from scratch
So what I've done here is I've loaded up some old paintings of mine and throw them in the layer stack
These are just various paintings. I've done in the past that have different color palettes now with my main painting layer active
I'll go up to image adjustments match color and I get this dialog box
The first thing you want to do is set your source to the PSD file that I have open here
And now we have access to all the layers
Corresponding with my layers in the stack and if I click through these it applies their palettes to my painting
I
Find this one here really does a nice job
With the light areas of the mountains and maybe layer two does a better job in some of the shadow and foreground areas
I also still like some of the properties of my original by the way
You also get some nice sliders here to help you fine-tune the effect
Okay, so I've gone ahead and done the effect a few different times and arranged them here as layers and to combine them
I'll use the layer masks tip from the previous section
I'll give each of these layers a layer mask pushing control eye on each of them to invert them
So these layers don't show through at all and here I'm speeding through the process of painting
- those layer masks and making a composite image in a moment
I'll duplicate my original put it on top just to bring it back in some subtle ways
So you can achieve a dramatic palette change in just a few minutes now, I probably wouldn't use this as a final painting
But it's a great jumpstart. If I wanted to move in this direction, I would flatten my image and just continue on from here
Thanks to photo shops relatively new quick selection tool
Isolating elements of photographs has never been easier to pull a mat from this
I just pressed ctrl J. And it puts the selection on a new layer. That's simple enough
But what happens when we want to isolate something more complex like this plume of water?
Photoshop selection tools as smart as they are simply don't know where that water is
After all that isn't a solid object and it has multiple levels of transparency
So we will need to apply some human intelligence to pull this mat
the first thing I'll do is make a new layer and then I'll go find a brush that might mimic the
Transparency and shape of that water. Maybe this one here and then with that brush on that layer
I'll pick any color. I happen to have this red color selected
I'll go ahead and paint something that approximates both the shape and various transparencies of that water
I'm pushing harder on my stylus for more opacity softer for less
I can layer brushstrokes to build
Opacity and I can use multiple brushes to best mimic this thing the top of this plume looks like it has some motion blur on
it so I could even approximate that by selecting this area feathering it out a touch then going up into motion blur and
Dialing that in once I'm happy with what I've painted
I'll ctrl click the layer which selects the layer transparency and with that information active
I'll go back to my original layer push ctrl J
And bear with me while I hide these layers in order to show you that I have isolated our plume of water pretty effectively
Sometimes the effect is a little soft. You can always duplicate the layer and
Modify its opacity to taste merge it down when you're finished
And if you have some unwanted elements like this little bit here
I can always give it a layer mask grab an airbrush set to black and just paint it away
This is a great technique for photo bashing or matte painting
I also think it's superior to photo shops quick mask mode mainly because of the a dedicated selection layer here
Which you can edit or otherwise go back to at any time
Sometimes you'll be sitting here sketching away and you zoom out and look at your entire image and you notice that your color is a
bit off in this case
The palette is overall reading a bit too red or maybe you're just bored of your colors and need a jolt of inspiration
so one thing I like to do is duplicate the layer and simply go up to image Auto tone and
Photoshop tries to achieve some kind of overall color balance. I suppose now, I like some of that but not all of it
So I'll enlist our old friend the layer mask start by inverting it so nothing shows through
Then using a soft brush set to white I reveal the parts that I like
And comparing the before and after I think this is an improvement
So I'll push ctrl e merge those two layers and keep painting from here
Here's another little trick for adding subtle color varieties
This one works
Especially well on bright scenes like this morning seen here make a new layer fill it with black set it to
Screen mode and then go up to filter render lens flare. Now. Let's do a quick estimate of where the Sun is
it doesn't have to be accurate hit OK and now scale rotate and position it in place now we can press ctrl you and bring
Up hue/saturation and just color correct this so it fits a little bit better in the scene
Now it still looks like a terrible lens flare
But here's where the subtlety comes in go to filter blur motion blur and spend a few seconds dialing this in
Now go ahead and grab that layer mask
Ctrl I to invert and paint it in to your heart's content and there we go
No one will ever know that started as a cheesy lens flare. Except me
We've already discussed how canvases can have different pixel sizes and because this is a digital environment
It makes sense
That brushes act the same way Photoshop indicates the brushes size in pixels with these numbers a brushes resolution is set when it's created
so this brush that I have active here is
261 pixels which means that when used at its full size it will repeat itself every
261 pixels digital brushes are like stamps that get pressed over and over and that's the root of an overall aesthetic challenge
We all face with the digital medium to demonstrate how this impacts your painting
I've got two different sized canvases loaded up here. The first canvas is 700 pixels wide
So the brush only has to repeat a few times to get across it this canvas
However is 3000 pixels wide so that same brush at that
Same size has to repeat many more times to get across and when I look at this one, I can really detect the repetition
Whereas the first one feels more organic to me now
You could simply raise your brush size to a similar size relative to the canvas and paint with that
But the problem now, is that brushes at a much higher?
Resolution than it was designed for and it's prone to looking soft and digital as a result
So the dilemma is this I would like to paint at a lower resolution to benefit my brush work
But I often want my final to be high resolution
So what I like to do is start with a canvas at a fairly moderate size and paint with that for a while
then I go into image size and add some pixels to it and I continue my painting with that and
Simply repeat the process as many times as you'd like
Photoshop actually does a pretty decent job with this
Let's call it iterative uprising and doing this keeps my brushes happy for the most part
It also keeps my CPU happy and that in turn keeps me happy
Okay, last one here's an illustration I did for a recent book project as usual
I painted this in RGB color space
But the publisher needed me to submit it in CMYK color space in a perfect world
You could just click that click don't merge and now my painting is in CMYK, but did you see what happened there?
I'll go before-and-after. Look at all the color changes that happened in the CMYK conversion
This problem can be exacerbated by layers set to things other than normal mode. You see these yellow color-coded layers
This one's on overlay mode. This one's on linear dodge mode
This one's on overlay again. And I have a bunch down here sets a screen and linear dodge
The CMYK color space is a little less accommodating of those which is why I paint in RGB now I could just go layer
Flatten image then convert that to CMYK and it's a pretty good match
But this is no solution because I've lost the layers and the publisher wants those layers intact the solution is to bake our layers
So every layer is on normal mode and then do the conversion. Let's look at these upper layers here
These are all characters and they're affected by this lighting layer set to overlay mode
That's lending a kind of ambient rim light also some subsurface scattering on the mouse's ears there
So what I have to do is apply or bake this layers
Effect to all the layers that it comes in contact with in this case not only all the characters
But also the background if I zoom in and turn this layer on and off you notice
It's also influencing the background. The first thing I'll do is bring up the history window
Click that button and make a copy of my file because I'm about to do some serious surgery to it now
I'll count all the layers that this layer has an impact on 1 2 3
4 5 character layers Plus this character layer is 6 plus a background is 7 so I'll need 7 copies of this layer now
I'll position each of those copies above one of the layers it affects
obviously
All the copies of this layer have magnified the lighting effect the solve for that is take each layer, right?
Click on it and say create clipping mask
You'll get this little arrow icon indicating that this layer only influences the layer beneath it. I'll do the same for every layer
I just copied the background doesn't need one. It's at the bottom now
All I have to do is click on each base layer, like the character in this case push ctrl E
And it consolidates it do that for all these guys and for the background
I'll just click this one and push ctrl he which merges it down
Now if I isolated one of those layers like this mouse, you can see that the subsurface scattering effect
We looked at earlier is now baked into the layer removing the original overlay layer entirely
I went ahead and applied that process to all the appropriate layers and we're left with a nice clean layer stack
This is also beneficial because now the client can't mess with my lighting effects. They're baked right in there
And of course the last step image mode CMYK don't merge and we have our nice ready for print final
Well that wraps up nine tips and tricks. I hope some of them were new to you. There's lots more where that came from
Thanks as always to my generous patrons
You guys are the best if you're new to my channel check my archives for more complete painting lessons
And I'll see you in another video