hi guys welcome or welcome back today we're going to go through photoshop basics and just
kind of get a handle on what earth photoshop is what you use it for what the basic stuff is
so if that's you stick with us and we'll crack on
hi guys if you're new here i'm jess welcome welcome to that photography spot we do all
things portrait photography and other stuff as well i hope that i can enrich your life in some
way shape or form that is my main aim and if you haven't already press the subscribe button
and hit the bell icon i upload every week and sometimes more than that if i feel like it so
today we're sat in the office i'm going to switch over to the mac and we're going to
go through some photoshop basics because you guys have asked for them and therefore
you ask i will deliver usually um i just realized that i am wearing the exact same jumper that
i've worn for a few videos in the last few weeks uh i have washed it i promise and um
yeah my bad without further ado let's go and jump over to the mac and start delving into photoshop
i'm going to open up photoshop but before we get started i just want to cover off some absolute
basics number one photoshop is an image editing platform it's what's called a raster program
and that means it works in pixels so just bear in mind that pixels are little dots that
make up your images and essentially photoshop manipulates the pixels to get a desired result
that's all what we're going to discuss today in this video is basically going to be the basics
of photoshop so once you understand and can use these little bits that we're going to go
through you should be able to go move forwards and do whatever you want to do with your work
i will say right now that photoshop is a learning process it is a curve you cannot learn everything
i don't know everything in photoshop and i've been using photoshop for over a decade
so bear in mind that there is always more to learn and there's always more than one
way to do anything as well so just remember that okay guys so when you open up photoshop you will
come to a screen that looks a little bit like this and this is just kind of where your main
stuff happens so what you want to go ahead and do is just open up an image into photoshop
or just create a new canvas so basically what this does is it just creates a blank space for us
to play with so let's do a photo shop basics and it will just pop in a size there in pixels
i prefer not to use artboards i will just switch it to landscape at the moment and you can set your
color settings here if all of this looks foreign don't worry about it we're just getting started
if you want to copy basically how my photoshop workspace is set out then i have done a video
for that so i will link that above in photoshop you will have your tool panel you will have your
side panels here but one of the main and most important things is your layers panel so we will
go into the layers panel the layer stack loads and loads and loads and that is where basically all of
your image data is kind of kept safe and organized when you open an image up it will always have this
background layer in it and the background layer will just be whatever you've opened up so it might
be your image it could be anything that's your background layer i personally would duplicate
the background layer before starting and edit but we're not going to go through that today
the main thing to know about layers basically is that if you just add a new layer
it adds a blank layer there is no pixel data nothing is on this layer at all nothing's there
but what happens is you see how that's put that on top of the background layer that's because this
layer is higher up in the stack so think of the layer stack basically as like a stack of paper or
a stack of books so whatever's at the bottom is at the bottom of the stack and anything above it is
you're just putting it on top and layering them up that's why they're called layers with this blank
layer that we've got here we can go ahead and grab a brush from our toolbar at the side and we can
make a black brush and we can draw onto our layer okay so you can see that there's now two lines on
this layer but what if we put a new layer on top of that and we filled that layer in with black
so do you see how we still have our line layer the layer with the lines on and we also have this
layer above which is filled with black if we were to fill that with a different color let's say red
you can see now in the layer stack that our filled layer is red
we can move that up or down the layers stack as long as it doesn't go behind the background and
what that does is that will put whatever's on top of it literally over the top so it's very
much like a stack of paper or a stack of books and your order just dictates what's seen through and
what's on top so all you need to worry about with your layers panel is that whatever's on the top
is on top and whatever's on the bottom is on the bottom and as you stack them up the effects happen
from the top down so this layer here that we've got is see-through except for these black lines
do you see so these little cross hatches that go on in the background
don't worry about them they just mean there's no data there there is nothing there so when we look
at just the solid layer that just is red when we look at just the lines that's just the lines
and then together they make a solid online layer i hope this makes sense one thing that is really
useful to know in photoshop and we use it all the time you'll see in nearly all of my videos
is masks and masks really can confuse people genuinely it's normal to be confused with masks
but what you can do is you can put a mask onto a layer so the mask icon is down here
and i can put a mask on this layer with the lines on so what that's done is that's given us another
box next to our layer with the content in and that's currently white white means that it's not
having any effect on what's seen in that layer so it's not having any effect on those lines however
on masks you can paint with black or white so at the moment this mask is white if i paint on
top of that mask with black you'll see what happens so let me grab a brush a black brush
and remember that this mask is affecting the lines so i'm going to make sure the mask is selected
and then i'm going to paint onto the mask so now over here you can see that there is a black blob
in the middle of that mask and that black blob correlates to this layer here and what it's doing
is essentially think of it as punching a hole through it so what it's done is it's punched a
hole that's the black bit through the white sheet of paper and you can see what's underneath it
you can't see what's on that layer anymore right so where you're painting black onto your mask
you are removing what's seen in that layer and that's the same and is true for any layer that
you paint on so let's go ahead and add a mask so this is a white mask nothing's happening
and let's go and punch through so we're going to get a bigger brush and we'll punch through
this layer and what we've done is again we've punched through the paper we've cut it away
and you can see underneath it and underneath it is white because the background is white and that's
basically how masks work you can invert your mask i.e switch white for black and black for
white with one quick shortcut which is command i on a mac or ctrl i on a windows so all that does
is it paints on the mask what's white to black and what's black to white and just inverts it and
that is the inversion of a mask which is again something that we do all the freaking time here
you can invert any mask and it does the exact same thing so it just flips around what you can
or can't see now that's layers and that's masks but there's one more thing i want to discuss with
you guys and those are blend modes image blend modes come in really handy to affect or kind
or cause a look or feel in an image and they are really useful to understand most people don't tend
to understand them particularly well but we'll get up an image example to show you through this
okay so we've got of a picture at the moment of Bryt so you can see Bryt here there's
she's opened up as a background layer and we can go ahead and add a new layer on top
what i'm going to do is i'm going to actually split up the background into three colors which
are going to be black grey and white and i'm going to do that using a gradient so don't worry about
this for a sec but i will see when that's done okay so we can see now we've got white gray and
black so completely black grey and white and this section here is our layer blend mode so these can
be so helpful and if we just pop them open you can see they're kind of split into sections with
little lines between so this top section here you'll rarely use dissolve it just puts it into
kind of little bubbly bits don't worry about that but you can use your other ones to affect
change on the image and you'll see that different sections do different things so starting at the
top this section darkens the things so if you look at the black area black really doesn't change a
lot at all because it's already black and pure white really doesn't change a lot at all because
it's pure white but anything that's between black and white changes and the way it changes is
different depending on the blend mode you select so sometimes you do have to play with them to
work out which one is going to work best for the effect you're applying but that's the darken set
now the lighten set yes you guessed it doesn't have any impact on black and it doesn't really
ever have any impact on white but it does have an impact on anything between so if you look lighten
screen color dodge linear dodge and lighter color all work to lighten what's underneath it
in a different way some of them add more contrast some of them reduce the contrast and you know they
do different things now the next section down is the contrast section so you'll notice on this one
actually what doesn't change is middle grey middle grey apart from for hard mix doesn't change at
all so what this is doing is it's changing the level of contrast in the whites and in the blacks
so if you look at overlay soft light and hard light there's quite a big change now what overlay
is think of overlay as being sandwiched between soft light and hard light because it's kind of
the middle one so this is the gentle version this is the harsher version and then this is the
really harsh version and as you can see it still ignores middle grey vivid light can work really
well with color i think personally and then going down into the bottom here this is kind of your
exceptions that don't fit into any of the other options i'll rarely use these to be honest um
but then you've got hue saturation color and luminosity the only one that will have an
effect on what we're doing today and looking at on this layer is luminosity because what
that's doing is it brings anything underneath it to the same level of brightness and as white
is white everything underneath it is always pure white and as black is black and completely black
it's basically just making everything black but what this section is doing is it's pulling all
of the information on the pixels underneath this layer this one up to the same level of luminosity
aka brightness so that's what it's doing there and those are your blend modes and realistically
once you know that you can do so many fun things because it has different effects on everything
so if this video has been helpful for you please do let me know and drop something in the comments
below and press the subscribe button because i would love to see more of you and if you haven't
already definitely go and check out the photoshop or the editing playlist because it will have so
many new tools that you can expand your horizons with i'll see you all again really really soon