Photoshop MacBook Pro Touch Bar Tutorial
Hey Cafe crew, it's Colin Smith here from PhotoshopCAFE and today I've got something
super exciting for you.
We now have Photoshop support for the touch bar on the MacBook Pro 2016.
So we're going to have a look right now and I'm going to break this into two parts.
Part 1, I'm just going to do just kind of like a workflow, just kind of demo sort of
thing and show you how it works.
Then Part 2, we're going to break it down.
We're going to go under the hood.
We're going to look at all the different options in there as well as how to customize and set
it up how you want to work.
So the first thing we're going to do is a little bit of dodging and burning on this
photograph right here, so let's get started.
So notice when I go into Photoshop, you can see the options there in the touch bar.
So what we want to do is I want to create a new layer, so I'm going to tap on the touch
bar there and you can see we got three different categories.
I'm going to choose Favorites and a new layer.
And we can just click OK to apply a new layer.
Now, I just want to change the Blend Mode in this to Overlay.
Now I can do it this way here just by selecting it in the menu, or I can go back here in the
Layer Properties and we can choose the different blend modes right there as you can see there,
so we can scroll through them and we can choose different blend modes.
All right, the next thing we want to do is hit B for Brush, so now I've selected a brush.
And what I want to do with this brush is set it up.
So we're going to go there, choose the Brush settings and under the Brush settings, we're
going to see our Size so we can make it big or small.
See that?
We're going to hit the Opacity and we're also going to hit our Flow.
So notice, here, we can adjust the flow.
The difference between Opacity and Flow, opacity is how transparent it is, the flow, the longer
you keep pressing on that brush, the more intense it comes, kind of like a paint or
an airbrush would kind of work.
So great!
Now we want to set up the Brush, so we want to choose some colors here, so notice we got
some colors.
Now we can change these colors.
We can simply tap here and we can change these individually--Hue, Saturation and Brightness.
So, in this case, I'm going to make it very dark or I could go very light.
Why don't we go very light?
And we'll do some dodging here.
All right, so what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to begin to paint.
Now don't forget, you know, all our other keys and everything like that still works.
So if we want to lighten this up, we can just kind of paint.
But right now I'm just using a Wacom into this Pro.
And what I'm doing is just adding a little bit of light here onto these front faces.
See that?
And, you know, I'm not going to spend the whole day doing it.
I'm just going to do it very quickly just to give you an idea of different types of
things we can do and how this would apply to our workflow.
All right, awesome.
So now I want to change the Brush maybe to a black brush so I can just tap here and I
can change the darkness, the lightness.
See that?
And let's tap out and change the size.
Now I might just paint a few shadows into this.
All right, so you get a general idea of how we could use this in our workflow here and
how it can be really quite handy, particularly for things that would take a little bit more
digging for a menu.
So let's actually have a look and see we've got in here.
So if we hit the little button here, you'll see we have three categories--Layer Properties,
Brushes and Favorites.
Now bear in mind, you know, this is the first release of this, so over time, there could
be more customization, more features added to them, you know, as Adobe usually does.
But, also, let me tell you how to get the Update.
So to get the update, we're going to go here and we choose Updates, then your Creative
Cloud is going to open.
So here's a little tip for you, though, because sometimes, you see there's an update, then
you go in here you don't see your update and then you're like, "Why don't I have the update?"
Well, you can actually force it to update by going up here and then choose Check for
App Updates.
So, there could be an update you're just not aware of yet.
All right, moving right on, so let's look at the categories here.
So if we tap here we see we got Layer Properties, Brushes and Favorites.
So if we tap on Layer Properties, you can see we have things like we can add a new image
in here, you know, if I want to drop something else on top, which I'm going to place the
same image on top of itself.
Just for fun, we can do that.
We can see, you know, we can change the Opacity of the layer, so we got our unaffected layer
and you know, over the top, so if we want to blend it, of course, the smarter way to
do it is actually to go here and grab that dodging and burning layer, and we could just
dial in the settings we want for that; see that right there?
And, of course, we can hide or show that layer's visibility; so that could be kind of handy.
So let's go back on this one here and what else do we have here?
Well, we have the Blend Modes as we've shown, so we can tap on different blend modes and
we can start to maybe grab this one here and let's look at some of the blend modes and
see how they work together.
We can see that and we can just go through and try the different blend modes, and we
can slide this back and forwards to just grab the different ones, so that's, you know, sort
of handy.
I'm going to be honest with you.
The blend modes is probably not what I'm going to use a lot because I can go up in the blend
modes up here and change it quickly or use the Shift + (plus) or -(minus) key to cycle
through the blend modes.
But for newer users, this is quite useful.
All right, so what else do we have?
Here we have the option to go into Mask.
Select Mask Workspace if you want to get things up, you can do it there, and we can go there,
and this is our History.
This is kind of cool.
So all these different things that we've done here, we can actually drag it out and we can
change our history states, see that?
And we get that little preview on there of what those different history states look like.
So that's kind of nice.
And depending on the kind of work you're doing, you might find that these displays here are
going to work really well for that.
All right, let's get out of there.
And what else do we have?
Well let's have a look at the other categories.
So we have Brush.
Okay, so here we go, we've got our Flow, Opacity, Hardness and Size, and those are just sliders.
So what else do we have?
We have Colors.
So if we choose on here, we have two different options.
The first one here, this shows our color swatches.
And I'll show you how to customize this in a second, or we can tap again and we go into
Hue, Saturation and Brightness.
So Hue and Saturation, hue enables us to dial in a color, maybe a blue.
Okay, so we go into our Saturation here and you can see the saturation shows how much
of that color should be in there.
So it's going to be a very bright blue or is it going to be more faded?
And then, of course, we go to Brightness.
Brightness is just how light or dark is it so we can make it a very dark blue--you can
see the color there on the swatch--or we can make it a very light blue, so you can adjust
that there using the HSB or Hue, Saturation and Brightness, so you can dial on those individual
colors.
Nice, okay.
So let me just show you another thing.
So if we go here in the swathes, you can see those are the colors there, but maybe if you
don't like those colors, how do we change those swatches?
Well, it's quite easy.
We're just going to go up under Window.
Then what we're going to do is just open up our color swatches here.
Now you can make your own custom color swatches or you can just load them in just by clicking
here.
So maybe we're going to load in something different like, maybe, Website Colors.
And, yeah, we're just going to replace it because I haven't changed anything.
Then notice when I do, now, the touch bar shows those new colors.
That's quite bright so it doesn't show well.
Let me try a different one that shows better.
So we can go under here and maybe grab some Pantone colors and notice, now, the touch
bar is going to reflect those new colors.
Now there's another thing we can do in here.
If we click on one of these colors and hold it, notice that we get some variations of
it so we can play around a little bit and just choose a different variation of it.
So that's how the color bar works, so let's get out of here and let's look at the last
setting, which is Favorites.
We can add, you know, a Layer and, you know, we can do different things there.
So let's actually have a look at where the comprehensive list is.
Now the first thing you want to do is make sure you go into the Favorites when you're
customizing it.
Then we're going to go into the View Menu and we're going to go down to Customize Touch
Bar.
And here we are in the Customize Touch Bar and you can see these are the different things.
Now, if we want to try some different things like, maybe, we want to duplicate a layer,
we click it--and this is kind of cool--we drag it into the bar.
See that?
And we can move that around wherever we want to do it.
So you know, maybe we want to step backwards and maybe we want to let's go back up there
and maybe we want to step forwards.
And you can see how we can just put those things right there on the touch bar.
Now the other thing you can do is if you want to reset it, just grab this and drag it, and
that will go back to the factory settings.
So we just click Done when we're finished and now we've customized those options there.
All right guys, so that's the touch bar with Photoshop.
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But let's talk about this for a second.
What do you think about the touch bar?
Do you think it's the most amazing thing to ever happen to computing or is it a complete
gimmick?
Do you think this is something that will speed you up or do you think it's something you
might play around for a little while, then just kind of lose interest in it?
Would the touch bar make you want to buy a MacBook Pro or is it the thing that's holding
you away, obviously, apart from donglegate.
But anyway, let me know your thoughts.
Drop them in the comments underneath.
Let's have a discussion going.
Don't forget, become a subscriber if you're not already, and until next time, I'll see
you at the Cafe.