Image Focus Techniques with Adjustment Layers and Masks in Photoshop

Let's get some more practice using adjustment layers and layer masks. And also when we're doing this,  I want to start getting you to think about what should you change in images? Not just how to, but what should we? And kind of how light can guide the eye in your graphics and your images. When we look at this,  the top of the box here is kind of dark and there's a lot of contrast between the type and the box.

So my eye kind of goes to that as one thing,  but also then also the socks here as well. The background is kind of bright. And so things that are bright or things that are colorful or things that have contrast,  those are things that the eye kind of naturally goes to.

So I think the eye kind of goes between the reds being really bright,  the gold standing out on the contrasty background,  but also this background behind everything is also kind of brighten. In a way distracts from the main subject matter because if we're selling socks here,  we want really people to look at the socks. So what are ways that we could get people to look more at the socks maybe and less at some of the other stuff? Reducing some of the contrast or darkening things so that those are the brighter, more saturated,  more lighter, colorful things might get our eye to be drawn to that subject matter.

So that's kind of the end goal of what we want to do here. Now, also when we're looking at this,  this green is a little bit darker than it is in real life or maybe they're changing the color of the socks. We want to brighten up that green and make it kind of more in line with the other ones.

It's kind of too dark. So that is kind of an object. So the object selection tool will do a really good job at selecting that object.

In fact, a lot of these things are objects. So the object selection tool is gonna do a really good job and actually automatically detects this. Over time, I'm really impressed with how this tool has continued to improve.

When I look at how this worked just a couple of years ago,  it worked not nearly as well as it does now at detecting objects. So it used to be that when I would hover over this box,  for example, it wouldn't get that this other part was part of it. It would only get like the contiguous or touching parts to where I was hovering over.

So I would have to try to select things in multiple pieces. And now it just, it gets it. It just understands.

It's so smart in how it works. And let's say, for example, I want to get the ribbon which it doesn't want to kind of detect. I could drag over the ribbon and it kind of figures out the ribbon.

Now it did get a little other piece. So there are ways that you can add or subtract from things. Like if I want to go in and subtract that,  this can also work, not just as a rectangle,  can also work as a lasso.

If I want to then subtract something like the box,  there are buttons up here that you can use to add or subtract from things. But I normally like to use the keyboard shortcuts. Shift will show up as a plus on your cursor and Option on the Mac or ALT on Windows will show up as a minus on your cursor.

So Shift will add, Option or ALT will subtract. So I could hold Option or ALT, lasso over the area and say, look in that area for things to remove. And it then removes that.

And it did a really good job. So you can often put things together even if it doesn't get it. So you could say, well, hey,  can you select something in this area? And it figures it out.

It's so good. So very impressed with this feature. Now, I'm just gonna deselect because I actually wanted the sock.

So I'm just gonna use my object tool. It senses the sock. I just click on the sock.

Great. Now, I want to adjust this one area. So I'm gonna go make an adjustment.

The idea is I select the thing I wanna change and then I go change it. I wanna change its brightness and contrast. So I'm gonna do a curves because I have the most control in curves.

And here, I wanna just brighten up the mid-tones. I think my lights in the white part are fine. My darks, my blacks are fine.

I think it's really just those middle tones. So I'm gonna go somewhere in the middle here and I'm gonna drag up. And by dragging those middle tones,  so from left to right, I've got my shadows,  my mid-tones and my highlights.

If I drag up, I make them lighter. If I drag down, I make them darker. So I wanna drag up to make them lighter.

Now, if I drag in the lower part,  I'm making the darker parts of the image brighter. If I change the lighter parts here,  which we see we don't notice too much of a change there. There is some, if I zoom in a little bit closer,  you'll notice that there is some in those lighter areas,  but primarily it's dark.

We're gonna see more of a pronounced effect by changing the dark areas. If you do accidentally add a point that you don't want to where you just decide you don't need it anymore,  just simply drag it off outside and the point goes away. And so I'm gonna get this.

So it's kind of a similar brightness to all of the other things. And I think that looks pretty good. I do like to see the before and after by hiding and showing with the eyeball there.

Gives you perspective of,  do you like the change you've made? Name your layers. Because as we do this, we're gonna get numerous layers and having curves one, curves two,  it's not a very good thing. So I'm gonna say brighten green sock.

So I know what that layer does. Okay, good. Now, I also want to brighten the box.

It's just a little bit dark and I wanna brighten it up a bit. So I'm going to use my object selection and it seemingly doesn't work. Why is it not working? It was just working a second ago.

Well, I have not told it what layer to look in. No layer has currently been selected. If I click on my layer,  oh, now it's working again.

Okay. If it doesn't work or if it's not working on the right things,  make sure you have the correct layer selected. So I can look on that layer to make it selections.

I wanna add this and this. So I click on one. That does a good job of selecting that.

I wanna add this one. So I can either choose the add up here or what I normally do is just hold shift and click. And then that added that to my selection.

So both things are selected. Now, when I go to create new layers,  they're going to be created above the currently selected layer. So technically these are two different areas that don't affect each other.

So it doesn't really matter whether this is above or below this adjustment layer. It doesn't really matter,  but whichever one you select,  the new layer will be created on top of that. And I'm gonna go in and do another curves adjustment.

So I can brighten this up a little bit. This is primarily dark. So I'm gonna go to the darker areas.

I don't wanna change the definition of black. I think the black is fine. I just wanna brighten up those darker tones.

You'll notice that the lighter parts,  they do have an effect. In fact, you'll see it on the type there where I can brighten or darken that. If I want a little less contrast,  I could darken that up actually.

And I could brighten this up. I don't wanna do it too much. Now, one thing you could do is you could say,  well, I wanna see kind of a little bit beyond what I want.

And then I could pull down the opacity and not see as much of that. Of course, if you go to zero,  it's like you've done nothing at all. 100% is all of that change.

So one method is to maybe do a little bit more than you need and then you can play with the opacity to reduce that effect. But I think I'm just gonna do the correct amount that I want on this. And I don't wanna brighten it up too much.

I just wanna brighten it up maybe just a little bit so I can see maybe some of that texture. Okay, so I'm gonna call this brighten box. Now, next up, I think the background of being this light is kind of distracting and it's kind of drawing our eye more toward the background than I want.

I wanna push it more towards the foreground that we visually see that foreground standing out. So I wanna darken the backgrounds,  but if you notice,  the bottom part is darker than the top part. So there's a bit of a graduation here,  a bit of a gradient where it goes from darker to a lighter gray.

And I think the bottom is not bad. I just think the top part is too light. So I wanna darken it,  but I wanna darken it in a gradual sense that maybe the bottom doesn't get changed at all and I just wanna darken it as it goes up.

So I'm gonna create a new adjustment layer and initially it's gonna darken the whole image,  but that's okay. I'll come back in and I'll cut out things like the box and stuff so they don't get changed. I'll take care of that in a moment,  but I'm just gonna add my curves adjustment here,  which is gonna be a darkening effect.

And I'm gonna call this darken BG,  which is just short for backgrounds. I don't have to write out the word background. And I'm going to darken this.

So I'm gonna pull down on the mid-tones. Now, right now it's affecting the whole entire image and it's affecting the whole image because the mask is white. When we created selections as we were doing this,  we'd select an area and then we'd make an adjustment layer and it would turn our selection into a mask.

So selections become masks. In this case, I had no selection. So it assumes that I wanna change everything,  but I can go to that mask,  which is simply a black and white image and I can maybe add a gradient that goes from black to white, visible to invisible.

Keep in mind that as we see here with the brightening of the green sock,  where the mask is black,  we do not see that adjustment layer. Where the mask is white, we do see that adjustment layer. So just think of a pitch black room.

You see nothing in a pitch black room. So black hides. When you shine a white flashlight on something,  you illuminate it so you can see it.

So white shows you whatever that adjustment does. So this adjustment is a darkening adjustment. I only want to see it in the top part.

So that means I wanna hide it in the bottom part. So I wanna go from white at the top to black at the bottom to control the visibility. I want it to be a gradual change.

So that means I need a gradient and we have a gradient tool. I'm gonna make sure that I choose my mask. So I'm painting on my mask with my gradient tool and the gradient up here,  which there are lots of gradients,  but in the case of a mask,  I just simply want black to white.

So there is a black to white gradient preset. I can double click on that to choose it. It goes from start to finish, going left to right,  just like we read.

We go from left to right as we read. So it goes from start to finish. So I'm gonna start with black and I'm gonna end with white.

So I'm gonna start with the hiding and go to the revealing. So I'm gonna start at the bottom and drag my way up like so. We can adjust this positioning later on.

The farther the distance, the smoother that change. And here we can see the change that I'm making here. So the end effect is I'm not changing the lower part of the image.

I'm only changing the top part of the image. We can always go back and change it again if I need to adjust. But I think that's looking pretty good there.

If I want more darkening effect,  I can go back and I can change it. You know, maybe I want that to be even darker. So I really notice this more.

Now, the only thing about this is that this is affecting the entire image,  the whole top part, including the box. Notice how the box gets darker,  which I don't really like that the box is getting darker. I'd kind of gotten that good.

So I need to come in here and get rid of the box from this darkening background layer mask. Now, I could just go and reselect the box. I could go back to my object selection tool.

I could just click on it and then delete that from this mask. I could do that. But I want to show you a better technique because what if you make a selection using an object selection tool,  and then maybe you went into things like select and mask and you refined it, you adjusted the edge,  you know, you worked to that mask and you made that mask perfect.

And all of that work you did in making that,  you don't want to have to do that again. So I want you to work smarter rather than harder. Don't repeat your work.

Think about it this way. If a selection turns into a mask,  does not it make sense that you could turn a mask back into a selection? Selections are just really work with this,  don't work outside of it, on or off kind of situation. Masks are show it or don't show it, same kind of idea.

They're all kind of black and white issues. Now, any shade of gray would partially show something,  which is what we see that white fully reveals. Black fully hides.

Gray would partially show. So the brighter it gets, the more you see it. And the darker it gets, the less you see it.

So I want to turn this mask back into a selection. And Photoshop could do that. You can select a mask, you can go to select because you want to generate a selection and you can load it, load that mask as a selection.

And it will use that mask as a selection,  as a new selection. Now it reloaded that. So any work you had done to customize that,  you got it all back.

It's now a selection. I can go to this mask and I can fill that mask with black because I don't want to see this adjustment layer,  this darkening effect in the box area. So I need to go to say, edit, fill with black.

Or if you don't want to have to go to edit fill,  you could, for example,  if you click your default fill button over here,  which is your default foreground and background colors,  that's white and black. If your background is black,  you can hit delete to delete to black. It's like filling with black, but you delete to black,  whichever one is easier.

If you get confused about whether you're filling with your foreground and your background,  if the edit fill is easier conceptually,  so you know what you're going to get and white and black are both in there,  whichever one is easier for you. Let me deselect that. And let me just show you the difference here in the history.

So let's go back to here,  see how now we are no longer darkening that box. Now this background is simply getting darkened just in the background, not in the box area. Now I'd like to see the total before and after of all the work that I've done.

And there's a couple of ways I could do that. Instead of having to click each individual eyeball,  by the way, you could just simply drag across many eyeballs and they all will hide or all will show. I don't know why I didn't think about that earlier.

For many years, I just thought you had to click each and every little eyeball. And then somebody is like,  you could just drag through those. And I'm like, no, I did not know you could drag through those.

Wow, that was a lot of clicks I wasted. So yes, you can drag through all of those. That is one way you can do it.

If you want to see one layer and hide all the rest,  you can also option click on the Mac or on Windows ALT click. So here I'm option clicking on the Mac,  on Windows it would be ALT click. And that will say, hide everything else and just show this one.

And then if you do it again, it says,  okay, show everybody else again. So that's another way. But actually the way that I like to do this is I like to just group all of my changes into one group.

So I click on one layer, hold shift,  click on another layer, and then I group them. And so you could do that with layer, group layers,  which is Command G or on Windows Control G as in group. And now they're all grouped.

I like this because if you want to hide your kind of work from somebody and just show the before and after, you can. You can also open that up and see. I'll call this all of my retouching and color slash contrast.

So this is all my changes. And I like this because you can just one click just hides all the adjustment layers in there. So just one click, hide and show.

And look at the work that we've done in the end here. Before, when you look at this, what does your eye go to? I think afterwards, the thing that shows up the most are the brighter, more saturated things, the socks. Before that background was kind of bright and we've toned that down so that now our eye shifts more towards the main subject.

And we kind of made this less contrasty by bringing it up and making it a little bit more similar to that background. So by removing contrast, your eye doesn't go as much to this and your eye goes more towards this. So hopefully this has shown you not just techniques of how to approach something,  but also a little bit of kind of helping you to think through about maybe what kind of things you would change in your images as well.

So you could try this out yourself in Exercise 4C.