There is a new feature in Photoshop, which is only available in the public beta of Photoshop 2024 at the time of this writing. How to get the Photoshop beta

The adjustment brush basically brings an easier way to paint on your image and do things like brighten the areas you are painting non-destructively.

It will apply an adjustment layer and a mask to your image. This doesn’t offer any new functionality over what you can currently do with an adjustment layer and painting on the adjustment mask with a brush. It just makes it quicker and easier to do. This tool will be popular with less experienced Photoshop users, and also useful for a super quick fix for more experienced users if they choose to use this method.

With that said, let me show you how to use the Adjustment brush on a practical example of  a photo. Then, at the end, I’ll tell you exactly how it works.

How to Use the Adjustment Brush Tool in Photoshop

Click and hold on the brush tool to reveal the adjustment brush.

Click on Adjustments at the top of the interface.

There are 6 different options, we will use Brightness/Contrast

Then you just paint on your image to apply the adjustment wherever you paint. Really simple.

Use the  [ and ] bracket keys to change the size of the brush. You can change the settings of the adjustment in the Properties panel.

Maybe we want to remove the adjustment from the person in the photo.
Switch to the minus brush. (X key)

Its hard to see where you have painted sometimes.

Click the Display mask button in the Floating toolbar. (You will also notice the – and + bush options are there too).

Now you can see the mask

with the – brush, paint away from the person

Now the adjustment is applied just where we want it.

Notice the mask in the layers panel, I’ll explain that in a moment, let’s finish the image first.

Now I want to darken some areas.

You cannot both lighten and darken on the same adjustment, we need to create an additional Brightness/Contrast adjustment.

To add another of the same adjustment we are currently working on, we need to click a different layer first.

As soon as you start to paint, you will get a second Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer

This time, make it darker

Paint on the sky and edges to darken those areas of the photo.

Let’s add a different Adjustment.

When adding a different adjustment, you don’t have to select a different layer.

Choose Vobrance

As soon as you start painting, a new layer will be created automatically.

Paint on the person, to pop their colors.

Make adjustments to control the amount of vibrance.

And here is the photo. If you want, you can change the opacity of the different layers  to reduce the effects of each adjustment if you choose.

If you want to increase the effects, duplicate the layers you want to increase.

If you want to Learn How to use Layer Masks in Photoshop, see this tutorial. 

What does the Adjustment Brush do?

Let me show you what’s happening and how this tool works, along with accessing more settings and options.

As soon as you begin to paint a new adjustment layer will be created in the layers panel with a black mask. The black mask hides the adjustment.

The adjustment brush sets the foreground color to white. When you paint on a black mask with white, it will show the contents of that layer (the brightness adjustment) wherever you paint. This is how the adjustment brush works.

You can change the settings of the adjustment layer in the properties panel, like any adjustment layer.

This will change the brightness of the areas you are painting. (Or other settings, depending on the type of adjustment).

If you have painted too much and want to undo some areas, change the brush to the subtract brush. the – brush.
notice as you change the brush, it changes the foreground color between black and white.

You can also switch between + and – by tapping the X key on the keyboard.

If you want to build up the effects and blend them better, use a lower setting on the flow.

If you choose the brush icon, you can change the brush and use any brush you like,

If you are using a pressure sensitive pen tablet such as a Wacom, Xense labs or Microsoft Surface, you can change the pen pressure settings.

Choose Window>Brush Settings

Here you can change things like opacity and size to be affected by how hard you press with your pen.

Just set the Control to Pen Pressure. Obviously, if you are using a mouse, the Pen Pressure option isn’t available.

I hope you found this tutorial useful. Let me know if you would like to see me create a more in depth tutorial on dodging and burning with the Photoshop  Adjustment Brush. Drop a comment and let me know. We got enough interest, click the link for said tutorial.

As always, if you got any value out of this, please share with your friends and tell them about the cafe, either in Real Life or on social media by clicking the share buttons at the top of this page.

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

PS: Get over $200 worth of valuable Photoshop Add ons, brushes, presets, cheat sheets and ebooks abolulutely free, right here. 

The post New Adjustment Brush in Photoshop appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Many parameters can be changed (hence the name Parametric).  What’s really interesting is the way the filter interact with each other when you apply several on the same layer. They don’t just layer above each other, they combine, to open up a world of possibilities. Even if you aren’t excited about the current list of filters available, the important thing to note is the system and conduit that opens up a world of possibilities going forward.

For an in-depth look, check out the video above. Let’s jump into the features now.

Currently, (Nov 2023) this feature is only in the beta version of Photoshop. If you are reading this later, it may be in the mainline build of Photoshop now.  Here’s how to get the beta.

Launch the creative cloud app at the top of your screen (mac) (bottom on Windows)

When Creative Cloud is launched, click beta Apps.

When you see Photoshop Beta, click install. (You must be a current CC subscriber to see this).

How to use Parametric Filters

Choose Filter>Parametric Filters to open the panel.

Here is the panel. Note, this panel will stay open unless you close it. Its not affecting the image yet.

To apply the filters, choose your layer and click on any of the filters thumbnails.

You will see Photoshop duplicates the layer, makes it a Smart Object and applies the filter.

In the Parametric Properties panel, make adjustments. You can change many settings.

Here are the 2 parts side by side. The filters and Properties panels.

You will see a resolution drop down. By default its Medium. I suggest starting with that and changing to Ultra once you have all the settings where you like them for a better output.

Under the properties, you will see the presets, which are a good place the start with any filter.

Once you have made adjustments, you can click on the plus button by presets to save your settings and use them again on other images.

To change the filter, simply click the thumbnail for a different filter and it will switch out on your image.

If you want to stack or combine filters, hold down the alt/Option key as you click a different filter. It will add this filter, rather than replace the filter.

Using Parametric Filters With Layer masks

You can use the filters with selections and even text layers and it will respect the transparency.

Lets apply to the background.

Choose the selection brush and click on Select Subject

This will select your subject.

Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I to inverse the selection, so the background is selected.

Click a filter to apply

Photoshop will apply a layer mask and apply the filter

Hold Alt/Option and click a second filter, to combine both filters.

Just for fun, hold down alt/Option and click a third filter. See how you can stack multiple filters on a single layer.

Here is a list of all the Parametric Filters currently in Photoshop

In the video at the top, I show you an example of each filter and give my advice on how to best use it and let you know if I think each filter is useful of not.

Here are the time codes so you can go directly to the filters you might be curious about.

05:36 Black and White Vintage

05:52 Chromatic Aberration

06:12 Color

06:33 Distortion Filter

06:45 Duotone

07:06 Emboss

07:12 Glass Filter

07:44 Filter Glitch

07:56 Halftone

08:12 Hologram

08:29 Hologram 2

08:40 Oil Paint

09:11 Pattern Generator

09:45 Pixelate

09:50 Rain Filter

10:12 Scratch Photo

10:55 Snow Filter

11:13 Spherify

11:46 Sticker

12:00 Symmetry

12:33 Vintage Photo

Thanks for checking out this tutorial. See you next week for another new Photoshop Tutorial.

Take care

Colin

The post Parametric Filters in Photoshop Ultimate Guide appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Let’s take a look at the most important new features in Lightroom 16 inside Photoshop 2023. These features work the same in Lightroom.

Check out the more in depth look into each of these here. Point Color, Lens Blur. HDR Output to come, (I have one here, but plan on a newer one soon).

Point Color to enhance colors in a photograph

Here is a photo I captures in Kaui, but it doesn’t show the vibrant colors of the sun rising through the fog like I saw. Let’s fix that.

Choose Point Color, next to Color Mixer

Grab the eyedropper

Click on the color you want to work with

There are 2 parts. The top part of the panel enables you to change the color.

The bottom half (range) enables you to choose which colors you will affect.

Hold down the Alt/Option key to isolate the colors you are selecting. The image will turn black and white except for the colors you are including in the range.

You can select the colors using 3 dimensions.

Hue: The color itself

Saturation: The amount of color

Luminance, lights and darks

Once you have selected your color in the range you can change them in the top part of the panel. (All shown in the video at top)

I increased the saturation and luminance.

After adjusting the rest of the settings in the basic (shown on video) this is the photo, looking more like what I saw when I pressed the shutter.

Feature #2 Blurring backgrounds with Lens Blur

Here’s a photo with a very distracting background.

We can blur the background to keep the emphasis on the model.

Choose Lens blur and click apply. The ai will select the background and blur it.

If you use a photo that includes a depth map such as from a mobile phone shot in portrait mode, Camera Raw will use that depth map.

Adjust the amount of blur. Usually I push it all the way up so I can easily see what I’m working on. We will adjust the blur amount at the end of the workflow for a realistic value.

You can change the focus area by sliding the Focal Range

Here we are putting the background into focus.

Slide it back to put the model in focus.

Lets refine the blur areas

Turn on Visualize Depth.

You will see the Depth Map and lighter areas are close and the darker areas are further back.

See the purple around the hair and arm? Its easy to see the problems when we are in visualize mode with the Depth Map.

Grab th Blur Brush

Turn on Auto Mask to detect the edges

Paint around the purple areas

You may not initially notice much difference.

Slide the Blur Amount. Notice as you do, the painted areas are lightened or darkened. Move the slider until the painted areas match the others in the Depth Map.

Looks like I missed a little on the arm.

As you paint with the blur tool, you will see it instantly changes to match. So easy to see what you are doing now.  (Focus brush, if you are fixing the selection of the sharp area, model).

See how the edges look better.

If you choose the different bokeh types, you’ll see a different kind of blur.  (each type of bokeh explained here)

Finally, roll back the blur amount for a more realistic result.

HDR output

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. I have done many, many tutorials on HDR over the years. So I won’t go into detailed explanations here.

There has been a lot of big developments in resolution over the past few years. Going from VGA to 4k. More Megapixels were all the thing on cameras.

We now have 8k and climbing, and frankly at this point you can’t see the difference unless you have a massive sized screen. Resolution is no longer an issue. It’s resolved (sorry couldn’t resist)

Where we have a challenge is with dynamic range. The sensors and hardware were unable to show a range of tones and colors as realistically as we can see, especially in the highlight regions.

SDR is Standard Dynamic range. Even though SDR has come a long way in deeper blacks and smother gradations, it still has a way to go.

Along comes HDR. HDR is able to display more colors and tones, and extends the brightest part of image to show detail and color, instead of clipping to white. Same thing in the shadows, more detail is shown and backs so rich, it looks as if your screen is off.

For a while now, cameras have been getting better and better dynamic range in RAW.  Some have better sensors and others use computational photography to collect high dynamic range.  We can also bracket photos and make HDRs in Camera RAW and Lightroom from our own photos. 

Most new TV and Monitors are now HDR capable, such as the BenQ monitors I use.

Mobile phones, apple laptops and  ipads can display in HDR (Apple calls it XDR).

So, we have hardware capable of showing HDR, what’s the holdup?

Until now, we never had and end to end HDR workflow in Lightroom and Camera RAW. Sure, we could make HDR images and save them as OpenEXR, Photoshop and DNG, butnone of these are consumption formats.

Now we have the capability to save as jpg XL (jxl) or avif.

Don’t worry, if you don’t understand all this yet.

Ok, lets look at this now.

If you have an HDR capable monitor, you can turn on HDR in your control panel in mac or windows. (Even if you don’t have an HDR monitor, you can still output HDR images for people to enjoy on those devices, or on mobile phones etc.

In the Edit panel in Camera RAW, you will see and HDR button.

Press it and you will notice your histogram changes.

On the left is SDR, or all you could output previously in a jpg.

On the right, notice it says HDR. This is where it can hold more info.

See the additional pixels that would have been cut off and not shown in SDR. These are colors and detail that is brighter than white in SDR, but not in HDR. They can be displayed.

Turn on Visualize HDR and you will see the areas of detail that would be clipped off or lost. Not surprising the ball of the setting sun is very bright, and often just shown as white.

make adjustments, turn off visualize.

Click on Preview for SDR Display

This simulates when the image will look like on an SDR display. Make adjustments until you get it looking its best. (These will be tone-mapped – look at my HDR tuts to understand what tone-mapping is).

Make adjustments

Ok Now we want to output this images into a format that can display true HDR.

choose the output button.

Under format choose a format that can support HDR output such as avif or jpg XL.

Turn on HDR output.

I like to use P3 (it’s widely supported), although Rec. 2020 will also work.

Choose Save and you will export an image that will show as HDR on compatible hardware. You’ll notice a difference especially in the brighter areas where the images will look more lifelike than what you have seen before.

Ok, there’s my round up of the top 3 new features in Camera RAW. I hope you found this useful

Colin

If you use Camera RAW, you will LOVE my course on Camera RAW, check it out here. 

The post New features Adobe Camera RAW 16, Photoshop 2024 appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

When you hit generate in Photoshop Generative Fill, you will see tips. I have assembled all the tips here and will demonstrate each one. I have also thrown in a couple of my own to make it more interesting. Check out the quick video, each tip is a little over 30 seconds on average. Here is my written summary.

I will show each tip and then show you an example.

1. New Languages

It supports over 100 languages now. It will be interesting to see if it generates localized content based on the language. For example, person in Japanese” 人 hito”, might be biased towards generating Japanese people. and localized content, like it does on Mid Journey.

2. Pin Taskbar

Click on the menu and choose pin, for the taskbar to stay in position. It now says put even when you relaunch. To find the taskbar choose Window>Taskbar

3. Selections matter

When you make a selection, remember it will be able to change anything within the selection area, but cannot outside the selection.

If I want to generate a t-shirt, I need to make sure I provide enough room for the shirt, this includes completely selecting what I want to remove as well as providing space for the sleeves, otherwise I’ll get a tank top. At the same time, if I don’t want the hair to change, I shouldn’t include it in the selection.

When we generate, notice the shirt is generated perfectly, but she lost half her hair.

4. The shape of the selection is very important

This one is really important, so much so, I created a whole tutorial on selections and generative fill previously 

Make a wide selection and type hat

We get a wide hat

Make the selection taller

And we get a top hat. Make the selection in the shape you are looking for. In the previous example you will see I made it in the shape of the t-shirt I wanted. This also reduces the amount of “content warnings” you get. But I’ll add another bonus tip on that at the end.

5. Change density of Generation

Changing the density of the selection will make semi transparent generations to make things appear underwater or though glass etc.

Start by double clicking Quick mask in the tool box.

Set the options to Selected areas

Click ok

Press the Q key to go into Quick Mask

Click the foreground color picker on the bottom of the tool box.

Back will give us 100% dense selection. White will make it invisible or no selection. The lighter the gray the more transparent. (It’s clear in the video at the top)

Choose black

Grab a brush and paint the area to select with black, Make it above the water. (shows red because of quick mask)

Change to a light gray and paint under the water as shown.

Press the Q key to change the Quick mask into a selection. The bottom part doesn’t show as a marching ant selection because its less than 50% opacity, but its still selected..

Type in Whale

Looks like we got 2 whales. Notice how the bottom part looks underwater because of the gray we painted into the mask.

6. Moving a generated layer

Here I have generated a truck

We want to change the position. Drag the generated layer to the other side

Notice it doesn’t blend in anymore

Press generate and it will

It now blends but we have a different truck. That’s one of the drawbacks of generative pixels.

7. Keep the same object but move it. (Bonus tip)

This tip isn’t in the Adobe tips, it’s one of my own.

Instead of hitting generate when we move an object, we need to select just the generated area outside the object.

With the truck layer active. Choose the quick selection tool

Press Select Subject

You will see the truck is selected. Refine the selection if you need to.

Choose Select>Save Selection

Name it truck.

Now we need to select all the pixels in the Generative fill layer.

Hold down the Alt/Option Key and click on the Mask in the Layers Panel. You will see the selection loads up.

Now, to remove the truck from the selection.

Choose Select>Load Selection

Choose truck under the channel

Click on Subject from selection.

Click ok

Now we have just the extra generated pixels selected.

Press generate without typing anything into the filed.

And now it blends the image into the background perfectly including shadows.

(You may think, you could just select the truck and choose inverse and generate. If you do that, it replaces the ENTIRE background, so you have to do it the way I just showed you).

8, Generate again

If you don’t like the result, press generate again to get 3 more variations.

(bonus tip) this also works after the fact, you can open the image and choose any generative layer to make more variations.

Click generate and get 3 more options each time.

9. Reduce file size

Each variation contains and image and adds to file file size.

Rollover the unneeded variations and you’ll see a trash can. (Bin for British, Kiwis and Aussies).

Click the trash can to remove the variation

Here we just kept the one we need. You can always generate more, it will remember the prompt on the generative layer.

10 to remove content

Use the lasso tool to make a selection around objects to remove.

Don’t put anything into the text field, just hit generate and it will remove the object, don’t type remove.

bingo

Note, you will often Gert faster results with the remove tool, plus it works in high resolution, doesn’t use generative credits and doesn’t need to be connected to the internet. (see Generative Fill vs Remove tool ai here)

11. Don’t micro manage Gen Fill

When removing objects, some people (too many) think if you type “remove” it will help get a better result.This isn’t the case according to Adobe documentation from day 1.

If you want a boat, just type in “boat” don’t type “add boat” it doesn’t help.

12. Re generate part of a generated image (Bonus tip)

Another of my own tips you don’t find in the Adobe documentation.

The front of this boat looks good, but the back is weird. You don’t have to generate a different boat hoping for a better result.

Just make a selection around the area you don’t like.

Type in boat and get a better back half. Yay! (Why didn’t I think of that? Oh, wait, I did)

13. Negative reinforcement

You can direct Gen Fill by telling it what you don’t want. Say you ask for an old car, and want a run down modern car for a post apocalyptic scene, and not a classic car. Type “Old car, not classic” for example. (I wish I thought of this example instead of the one I used in the video, it’s a better idea.)

Make a selection around the hand. Type Black Glove not velvet. This way I won’t get a velvet glove for our sports theme.

Looks like I got a nice latex, and woolen glove collection in the variations.

We didn’t get back either and we got 6 fingers, perfect for the piano part in the movie Gattica. (Its not perfect, but its getting better all the time)

14. Generative Expand 

We can expand the edges of a canvas by generating pixels in the blank areas. I use this one a lot!

Choose the crop tool

Make sure the option is set to Generative Expand from the top toolbar.

With the crop tool, drag outside the image boundaries.

Press enter and Generative expand will ex[pand the background to match the image.

15. Generate a Different environment

Select your subject, using select subject.

Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I to inverse the selection and select everything but the subject.

Type in something different like beach

Now we get a different background. (BTW this is what would have happened in tip 7 if we simply inverted the selection)

16. Tell Adobe what you think

When you use Generative Fill, you can rate your result and let Adobe know your thoughts.

Click the menu and choose thumbs up or down, or report or delete.

A questionnaire will appear. These are read by real people, so this is your chance to be heard by Adobe.

Here are a few more bonus tips I have for you..

Content Warning

When dealing with people mostly, you might get a false content warning. To get around that, type a period only “.” into the box and generate.

Create in High Resolution

Photoshop generates in 1024 x 1024 blocks at the moment. See my tutorial on how to get High Resolution in Generative fill. Also includes a free action.

Mixing Variations hack

See how to mix variations to get a perfect result

Bonus tip: My new Course on Generative Fill

As you may know, I made a course on Generative fill (the first and as far as I know, the only course) and everything on the course works exactly the same in the final release, except you don’t have to download the beta anymore. If you missed the discount before, I thought it would only be fair to offer it again here if you are now ready to jump in.

I’ll give you a week to use the code GENFILL2 to save 20%.  Grab it here (If you already bought the course, you don’t need to buy again, it’s unchanged, as the features are unchanged)

Check out the ai Art category here at photoshopCAFE for many more tips and tutorials on this topic.

Thanks for checking this out, I hope it helped you! Tell your friends about the CAFE.

Colin

The post Photoshop 2024 Generative Fill Tips – 16 Fast Tips and tricks appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

I recently made a tutorial on all the new features of Photoshop 2024. I got a lot of questions and comments on Youtube and various social medias, so I’ll address the most asked ones here. There is also a video well worth watching above (It’s more in depth).

Is Generative Fill a paid add on?

A lot of talk about this one!

Generative Credits

Adobe is introducing Generative credits. The easy way to understand this is like a phone plan or data plan. An unlimited data plan allows unlimited data, but once you pass a threshold the speed may be throttled during peak time.

If you are a paid subscriber, you will get fast processing credits. Once you pass that limit, you can still generate without extra costs, but the speed may slow down if the servers are busy.

You don’t have to pay for the credits. Each month your meter will refresh.  AKA top off. You can’t accumulate credits and roll them over.

You can see the amount of credits you will receive each month in this chart from Adobe’s website. FAQ here

This doesn’t begin until Nov 1, 2024

Main ones are
Full CC: 1000 Credits per month.
Single app (aka Photoshop) 500 per month,
Photography + Lightroom CC 250 per month. New subs after November 1 will get only 100 per month.

What if you run out of credits?

To be honest, Most people won’t get though 1000 or even 250 credits per month. But if you do, then what? You can continue to use the feature and you may experience slow downs, or even a daily cap  (We don’t know what that means yet, because it hasn’t happened, but my guess is the cap is to stop people abusing the system, like starting a generation farm and selling as stock).

If the speed throttle is bad, you have the option to buy more credits fro $4.99 per month for 100. So basically it gives you priority processing, and you go to the back of the line when you use your monthly credits. They refresh each moth like the minutes on your phone.

Generative credits do not apply to the Remove tool to other ai features in Photoshop, only Generative Fill and Generative expand. Adobe express and Firefly it also applies to Text effects and Text to image.

Is resolution still limited to 1024 x 1024

the generated resolution is 1024 x 1024 px

This means 1024 px on the longest side. If your selection is larger than 1024  high or tall, the generated pixels will be enlarged to fit the selection resulting is a softer looking image. At selections of 2or less, the resolution should match your image.

I have a tutorial here on how to get high resolution fills in your image, see the tutorial here

Where is High Resolution?

Here is my best guess. I don’t know for sure, if Adobe had told me, I won’t be able to talk about it because of NDA, but I don’t, so I’m only speculating.. but it’s an educated guess

On Adobe’s site they say future capabilities may include Higher Resolution, may incur additional Generative Credits or additional cost. Lets examine that

If you compare to Mid journey, you have the ability to generate new images, or to upscale any of the variations.the U1-4 mean create high res on demand.

When you generate high resolution, it costs 1 credit.

My guess is Adobe will allow us to generate in low resolution (like now), but in the future we may be able to choose to redraw a variation in high resolution. This is like the current practice of using Adobe Stock for free in low res with a watermark. When we are happy with the results, we license the image and it’s replaced with a clean, high resolution version.

Maybe that high res generation will cost 1 credit, or even 5 depending on the resolution. We will see.

Is it Photoshop 25 or 2024?

They are the same. Photoshop is at version 25 as an app, but all the apps in Creative Cloud 2024 are called 2024 no matter their individual app versions.

Where are my Presets, plugins etc

When you install a full dot version update, (25 vs 24.7 etc) sometimes preset and plugins might be missing or not working. (I actually had good luck with my plugins this time and they all work)

Your plugins should be in: Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2024\Plug-ins folder

The key is to not replace your old version until you can be sure everything is working.

When you choose update from Creative Cloud, don’t remove old versions.

You can uninstall them later if you like.

Also if you do this, make sure you turn off Auto Update, I strongly encourage this anyway, or it could update you and wipe out your presets without your knowing. It’s happened to me before.

Running the correct version of Photoshop

If you need to reinstall an older version of Photoshop you can. To get back discontinued functionality like 3D.

Click the menu in the Creative Cloud app next to the open button in Photoshop

Click other versions

A menu will appear with other versions. You can install multiple versions at once.

Where are the new tools?

You may have the new version installed. Make sure you are launching the correct version if the new features aren’t there. You might Have added 2024, but still launching 2023. Check the name next to the icon.

Where is the Remove tool?

If you are using a workspace that didn’t include the Remove tool, generative fill or other new features at the time, they will be missing from your toolbar.

Click and hold on the toolbar options, you will see a fly-out menu.

Click Edit Toolbar

Click restore defaults and done and everything should be there now. If you had a custom workspace, update that workspace, or the tool will disappear again the next time you reset the workspace.

Wrong version is opening in Lightroom

When you right-click on an image in Lightroom classic, you can choose to Edit In>Photoshop

Some people are only seeing beta and can’t get it to open in the regular Photoshop

For Mac users, go to preferences>External Editing

Change the Photoshop version

When you right-click you will see the correct version of Photoshop, You can target the beta or other versions if you prefer.

For windows users, you need to First Launch Photoshop and then when you choose Edit in, it will open in Photoshop 2024.

I hope these tips are proving useful for you.

Drop a comment and let me know!

Thanks

Colin

By the way, I heard from some people they were waiting for Generative Fill to come to the main Photoshop because they didn’t want to mess with the beta. Well, it’s here now.

As you may know, I made a course on Generative fill (the first and as far as I know, the only course) and everything on the course works exactly the same in the final release, except you don’t have to download the beta anymore. If you missed the discount before, I thought it would only be fair to offer it again here if you are now ready to jump in.

I’ll give you a week to use the code GENFILL2 to save 20%.  Grab it here (If you already bought the course, you don’t need to buy again, it’s unchanged, as the features are unchanged)

The post Updating to Photoshop 2024, Your Questions Answered appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Adobe released the new update to Photoshop and we will look at the new features. Some of these features have previously been in the Photoshop beta and I’ve already done in depth tutorial in each. Where appropriate, I’ll add links to the other tutorials. This is a overview of everything that is new, in the main shipping version of Photoshop.

First: I have already been asked this question many times: “Can I now uninstall the Beta version and just work in the new update?” The answer is, it’s up to you. Both versions can co-exist on your computer. If you were just using the beta for Generative ai, sure you can get rid of the beta. New features will appear in the Photoshop beta before they make their way to the regular Photoshop, so it’s up to you if you want a steak peek or not. As always, I’ll let you know in our newsletter and make tutorials to make you aware of new features.

The floating taskbar has been tamed.

You may have noticed the taskbar that appears when you do certain things in Photoshop.

This taskbar is loaded with shortcuts to common tasks.

But sometimes it gets in the way and jumps over your image

If you click on the Menu, you can choose Pin Bar position. It will now stay wherever you put it.

I heard a lot of complaints that it didn’t remember this when you restart Photoshop and you have to keep pinning it every new session.

I’m happy to say, the bar stays put now, even when you restart.

Updating Photoshop to v25 aka Photoshop 2024

Sometimes people have trouble finding the update.

Launch your creative Cloud app, from the top taskbar on Mac, or bottom on windows. (Or search “Creative Cloud”)

On the left, click updates

Here is a step, many people miss.

Click on check for updates on the top right.

This will look for the very newest updates, often they aren’t loaded in yet.

You will see Photoshop with update next to it. You can see I already updated mine here.

NOTE: This is a new version and will replace your version 2023 if you choose that option.

Be aware, because it’s a full version update, you will have to reinstall your plugins. If this is an issue for you, keep version 2023 as well and launch that when you want to use your plugins.

Generative Fill in now in the main Photoshop version

Gen fill is now out of beta and available in the main Photoshop. It has 3 main uses. Replace, expand and remove. I’ll cover them briefly here, but choose the ai art and tools category here at PhotoshopCAFE, for lots of detailed free tutorials on these tools. Check out my full course with lesson files to learn even more. Because it’s out of beta, Generative Fill is now approved for commercial purposes.

Lets look at replace using Generative Fill ai.

Make a selection around an object to replace.

Type in what you want. Let’s do hair dryer.

Click generate

You will now see the object you described. This is not stock photography. This image has never existed before. The ai looks at all the images it has been trained on, by looking at millions of photos. It then knows what a hairdryer should look like and generates (or draws) one to match the lighting and angle of the photo. I go more in depth on my topical tutorials. Generative Fill tutorial. 

Notice the the properties panel, you can click on 3 variations.

There is also a new button in the Properties panel that allows you to see larger thumbnails.

If you click, generate again, you get 3 different variations. Generate as often as you like to get more options.

Generative Fill for expanding or outcropping

The 2nd use is to extend a canvas, this is probably the one we will use the most.

Say we want to expand this image into a panorama.

Choose the crop tool

Drag outwards with the crop tool to expand the frame.

This is very extreme, often we will do it just a little bit.

Without entering any text, click generate. (You will notice new tips as the expansion is happening). This happens on the cloud, you will need internet access to use this tool.

You will see that it generated pixels to match the existing image.

The new generated pixels aren’t factual, they are randomly created match the aesthetic. So think of this as an aesthetic way of using it, for things like design and not for location factual uses such as a hotel listings. I’ve covered all the ethics in other tutorials, so we will just stick to the tools in this one.

One of the downsides is the resolution of generated pixels is limited at this time. Here is how to hack higher resolution from Generative Fill.

Adobe has said that high resolution is coming.

Generative Expand

Before getting to the 3rd use of Generative fill, let’s look at a closely related tool. Generative expand.

Generative expand is basically Generative fill, but with fewer steps and the ability to use the sizing presets in the crop tool. I have a separate tutorial on Generative Expend here. 

Choose the crop tool and use an aspect ration preset if you like.

Let’s make a square with 1:1

Drag with the crop tool. Position the image within the frame.

Click generate

The crop tool will crop away the sides and generate pixels at the top and bottom to fill the square.

This is game changing for social media, and changing image aspect ratio. Previously, we had to do a lot of cloning and content aware fill to do the same thing.

Generative Fill for removing object

The 3rd main use for Gen fill, is removing things from a photo.

Make a selection around the car.

Click generate

The car is gone and background has been created to fill the hole.

Generative Fill is amazing, but there are things it can’t so, or do well, and we address that next. First more info about the changes.

Generative Fill as paid add on

Generative Fill is entering a paid phase in its life. Don’t freak out yet though, let me tell you what’s happening.

All this ai stuff takes an incredible amount of super-computing power. The processing is done in large and expensive data centers. So it’s not free for Adobe to run, in fact it’s very expensive. So here is what Adobe has announced:

Starting November 1 2023 there will be a limit on generations. For Full Creative Cloud members, it’s 1000 a month, for Photoshop and photography program, it’s 500 a month. Each generation counts as 1. Honestly, from using a paid mid-journey account for a year, most people won’t get anywhere near the 500 or 1000. But if you do hit that allotment, you will still be able to generate, but it will be slower. You can buy more fast credits if you want.

Credits refresh each month and you can’t accumulate credits, it just restarts. From the lounge on Adobe’s website, it sounds like the higher resolution generation will count as more than 1 credit each. No more is known at this time.

Only Generative Fill and Generative expand count as credits. The remove tool and other ai tools don’t use credits.

Remove tool

If you want to remove things from your photos, the ai powered remove tool is a better option on many cases. I compared the remove tool ai with Generative fill here. 

Choose the remove tool

Paint over the plant.

The plane disappears and is filled with natural background.

New way of using the remove tool

This is a brand new behavior. You can circle the object you want to remove, much like you would with magic eraser on the Google Pixel phone.

And it disappears.

Advantages of the remove tool over Generative fill include:

1. Often faster
2. On device, so no internet needed
3. Works in full resolution
4. No ai Gen credits used

New Gradient tool

The new gradient tool features re editable and non destructive gradients, I made a tutorial here on the new Photoshop gradient tool

For the sake of this example, let’s do lighting on a mask. I made another tut here, and it’s popular!

Start with a wall

Lets make it nigh-time

Add an adjustment layer

Choose color lookup

Click Load 3D LUT on the properties panel

Grab moonlight

Now it’s night.

To add a spotlight, choose black to white as fairground and background

Choose gradient tool (make sure it says Gradient, and not Classic Gradient)

Grab black to white and make it a radial gradient.

Drag to add a spotlight effect

Drag the dot on the side to change the shape.

You can add more than 1 light, see the video at the top

Some people wills, we could do that in Lightroom and Camera RAW. You would be right, but remember, this is a fully functional gradient tool that is capable of so much more, I’m just using it on a mask here to demonstrate.

Ok, that’s a wrap up of the new features in a nutshell. Check out all my other in-depth tutorials to explore there features more.

Thanks

Colin

By the way, I heard from some people they were waiting for Generative Fill to come to the main Photoshop because they didn’t want to mess with the beta. Well, it’s here now.

As you may know, I made a course on Generative fill (the first and as far as I know, the only course) and everything on the course works exactly the same in the final release, except you don’t have to download the beta anymore. If you missed the discount before, I thought it would only be fair to offer it again here if you are now ready to jump in.

I’ll give you a week to use the code GENFILL2 to save 20%.  Grab it here (If you already bought the course, you don’t need to buy again, it’s unchanged, as the features are unchanged)

The post Photoshop 2024 New Features appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Because we are using Generative Fill, it’s only found in the Photoshop beta at the moment.

 Here is a short tutorial on how to get the Photoshop beta.

Most video are horizontal. Sometimes you want to change a horizontal video to vertical or to square for social media such as Instagram reel, Youtube shorts or tie Tok. Or maybe you just want to recompose a video and need to extend the edges. Here is how.

On the left is before, on the right is after. Its generative fill, but this is working on a video in Photoshop.

Choose file>Open and choose your video, it will open in Photoshop and the timeline will appear. (Not all video formats are supported, but .mov H.264 is the most commonly used and supported format.)

For more on Photoshop and video check out this tutorial 

If you look in the layers panel, you will see a video group. Everything in this video group will be on a single layer on the timeline. You will see why you need to know this soon.

Lets extend the canvas.

Choose the crop tool

Drag out the crop to extend the top or bottom. Tip: Find an edge that doesn’t have movement, or shoot a photo that only has movement in the middle. This technique won’t work properly on a video that has edge to edge movement.

Press enter to apply the crop. We have a 1:1 square crop here.

Grab the rectangular marquee selection tool

Drag over the blank area, making sure to overlap the existing pixels a little bit.

Choose Generative fill

Enter text for what you want to fill the blank layer with and then press generate

Because we are in the Video group in the layers panel, you will notice the generated layer (in purple) is added at the end of the timeline, rather than stacked on top of the video

Grab the Generated layer and drag it above the Video group in the Layers panel.

Drag the clip to the beginning of the timeline.

Drag the end of the generated layer in the timeline, so it’s the same duration as the video.

You can see its now extended.

Choose your favorite out of the variations (How to use Generative Fill in Photoshop)

Press the spacebar for the video to play. Notice how convincing this is. We have essentially created a Cinemagraph

Exporting the video

Once you have created this, you can save it as a PSD and everything will be as it was when you reopen the file. To share or distribute the result, it needs to be encoded as a video.

In Photoshop choose File>Export>Render Video

Use the default format or H.264

If you use the high quality preset, the video will render using the current dimensions.

You can choose different options from presets if you want to share the video on a specific platform, as it contains YouTube presets and more.

To learn more about video in Photoshop, I have created 2 courses

Video In Photoshop (Also available as a book from Peachpit press, authored by myself, Colin Smith)

Making Movies In photoshop

Check out the video above to see this in action.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful, browse 100s more here at the CAFE

See ya,

Colin

Also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tik and Twitter.  for shorts and reels.

My new course on Generative Fill in Photoshop: https://photoshopcafe.com/shop/generative-fill-in-photoshop-introduction-course/

The post How to Extend a Video in Photoshop with Generative Fill, ai Cinemagraph appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

In this tutorial, we will look at how Object Selection differs from Select subject. Then we will do a comparison between the two tools and I’ll provide some tips and a workflow to get the best results. Check out the video to get more details.

How Object Finder and Select Subject differ

For either of the tools, you will want to choose the Object Selection Tool first.

At the top, choose the drop down menu and select Cloud. This will always give a better result than Device. (You can permanently change it in preferences).

Click on Select Subject and a Marching Ants selection will appear around the main subject(s).

In this case it selected the three woman.

Ctrl/Cmd+D to deselect.

Let’s try the Object finder. With the Object Selection tool still active, make sure Object Finder is on

As you roll lover selectable objects in the photo, they will appear highlighted.

To select them, click and the selection will be created.

The main difference from Select Subject, is the ability to select different objects individually and isolate them. In the past, the quality of the selection was inferior to the selection quality of the Select subject. As you will see, this is no longer the case.

Using Object Selection, manually

Another function of the Object selection, is the ability to tell Photoshop what objects you want to select, these can be large or tiny, simple or complex.

Turn off Object Finder and use rectangle mode.

Draw a box around the object to select.

The ai will make its best selection around the object.

Combination selections

Make a box around part of an object, the box doesn’t even have to be accurate, just good enough to tell Photoshop what you want to select.

The selection will be made.

To add to a selection, hold down the Shift key and make a box around another object

Both are selected.

What if we want to add the shape in between?

For odd shaped selections, choose the Lasso mode.

Hold down Shift and make a selection

Notice it added to the selection nicely. We need to remove the empty area inside the shape.

Hold down Alt/Option to remove from the selection.

Drag inside the shape to remove the center.

And the ai does it’s thing.

If I add a layer mask, you can see how the selection looks. Not bad, for nat making any modifications.

Select Subject vs Object Finder

Ok, the moment of truth. Let’s compare the quality of selections between the 2 ai powered out selection tools.

We will start with Select subject and a subject that has a lot of hair. Yes, it’s a simple background, but the point here is to compare the two tools and the quality of the edges, not compete in a difficult selection challenge.

Here is the selection. I won’t make any refinements or modifications in this test, just a single click only. At the end of the tutorial, I’ll show how to refine the edges.

Lets click the layer mask button to mask this Select subject.

Onto Object finder.

Make sure Object Finder is on.

Click to select

I added a mask to this too. and put the 2 different selections next to each other for you to look at. We have Object Finder on the left and Select Subject on the right.

We will look at different colored backgrounds. The first thing that struck me, is this tool is now usable, the selection isn’t bad at all. Its not perfect, but remember, we haven’t worked it yet and all selection tools, just give you a starting place.

closer up, you can see things like the eyelash.

Here it is on white

and on black, I notice the Object finder (on the left) seems to do a better job with the fine details on the hair.

Here is a different selection. Select subject is doing better with the smooth details on the back of the skater, however its missing part of the board (all of these are easy fixes).

Object Finder Special features

Lets look at some of the settings

If you click this icon, you can show all selectable objects at once.

Each of the highlighted areas can be clicked on to automatically load the selections.

Click the gear to see the settings (these are all covered in the video)

The main ones are the ability to change the way the overlay is displayed.

Refresh is useful when you are compositing. As you work on the image, Photoshop will constantly analyze and update the overlays. If you choose Manual Refresh, the analysis will stop. Click the rounded arrow to manually update (refresh) when you are ready.

Refine the selection

Whichever tool you use, you will still have to refine the selection for production-level selections. I’ll briefly show you the main steps here. I have many tutorials here at the CAFE that show how to refine the edges of selections and they are all still valid. The ai tools, add more tools to make quick selections, but they don’t replace the other tools, which in many cases, can still yield better results with a little more effort.

5 ways to fix selection edges in Photoshop

Make the selection with Object Finder (or any selection tool).

Click on Select and Mask

Now we enter the select and Mask workspace. (Maybe I should do a deeper tutorial on this tool and explain all the options sometime?)

The main settings are here.

First, move transparency to 100%, so you can clearly see what you are working on.

If you have hard edges that are a little uneven, try these settings.

Radius to 1px.

Tiny amount of feather and contrast. Only use smooth if there are objections jaggies, using smooth makes it almost impossible to get good hair edges, but you could work in 2 passes. Beyond the scope of this tutorial.

His jacket it looking really good, but the hair on his temples are semi-transparent.

grab the refine brush from the left panel.

paint over the hair edges

This is a great tool for hair, fur, smoke and glass.

Choose decontaminate colors to remove edge halos

The best way to output is New Layer with Layer mask.

And the Final Cut out. These are good tools to remove the background in a photo in Photoshop.

I hope you found this tutorial useful. Tune in for a new tutorial each week and browse the hundreds of tutorials here at the CAFE (at least bookmark, as PhotoshopCAFE will be a valuable resource for you, as it is for millions of other users.)

Thanks

Colin

Also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tik, Threads and Twitter.  for shorts and reels.

My new course on Generative Fill in Photoshop: https://photoshopcafe.com/shop/generative-fill-in-photoshop-introduction-course/

The post Object selection tool in Photoshop got an update. How to make quality ai selections appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

In this tutorial, we will focus on the shipping version of Photoshop and conventional features. I have previously covered lots of Generative Fill tutorials, and will do in the future, but not in this tutorial. If you want more on Generative Fill check out this tutorial. 

Adjustment Presets

Adjustment presets are found in the Adjustments panel. They are a combination of Adjustment Layers saved as ready to use recipes.

As you roll over the different thumbnails, you get an on-image preview of what they do.

To apply, simply click on the preset.

A layer group and adjustment layers are added to the Layer panel.

Click on the Adjustment layer to access and change the settings in the Properties panel, just like a regular adjustment layer. Once the preset has been applied, it is a normal adjustment layer.

The advantage of this feature is the ability to quickly apply a number of premade effects on your images. It’s also a good learning tool, because you can examine the layers panel and see how some of these effects are created.

The downsides are a lack of ability to stack effects together properly and also you can’t save your own presets. Check out the video above, where I actually show you how to get around those limitations, as well as 2 different ways to save your own presets with Adjustment layer recipes.

Non Destructive live gradients

This feature is huge to me, or anyone who uses gradients. I may not use colored gradients a ton, but I do use them for blending and lighting effects all the time. Let me demonstrate.

Choose the gradient tool in the toolbar.

Set it to linear and choose the Foreground to transparent option. (Under basics).

Choose the foreground picker and select a warm color.

Create a new layer and change to Soft Light blend mode. (Learn blend modes here)

Drag with the gradient tool on the canvas. Notice it gives a live result and you can change it. At any time, choose the gradient tool and change the direction and length of the blend.

Here I added another on the other side and made it blue.

Making Point Light balls with gradients

This next way to use gradients, gives a point light effect.

Choose white as the foreground color and use the radial option.

You can resize and reposition it right on the image.

This makes this light effect so easy. It took me a little longer to do the photography and compositing though. (Model is Popular Youtube Musician, Taylor Davis).

Seamless Blending of layers (Gradients in masks)

Here are 2 images on separate layers. We want to seamlessly blend them together.

Add a layer mask to the top layer

Choose the gradient. Select the Black to white gradient and Linear.

As you drag across the seam, you can blend these images beautifully. Its so nice to have the modern, non-destructive gradient, so you can tweak the result.

Remove Tool

I’m only going to lightly mention the remove tool here, because I already covered it when it was in Photoshop beta. See the Remove tool tutorial here.  

The big news, it’s finally out of beta and in the regular shipping version of Photoshop.

Choose the remove tool from the tool bar (Under the spot healing brush)

Completely paint over the area to remove.

The remove tool, removes the object and replaces it with the background as if it was never there. It’s like magic. This tool is powered by Adobe Sensei (Photoshop AI).

Contextual Tool Bar

This feature is one you will either love or hate. (You can turn it off if you don’t like it).

When you have an image, selection or text, you can have access to frequently used tools at your fingertips.

This floating toolbar will appear when you are using the fore mentioned tools and makes it easy to perform next-steps.

Some people find this toolbar gets in the way, Fortunately you can click on the menu and choose to pin. When you pin the position, the bar will stay where you drag it to. Unfortunately, you have to re-pin it every time you relaunch Photoshop. Something Adobe changes soon, I hope.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the latest update in Photoshop.

Check out the latest update in Lightroom here.

I also made a tutorial on Generative Fill vs Remove tool here.

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

Also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tik and Twitter.  for shorts and reels.

My new course on Generative Fill in Photoshop: https://photoshopcafe.com/shop/generative-fill-in-photoshop-introduction-course/

The post What’s new In Photoshop June 2023 – 24.6 appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

I have 2 examples here of ways to combine images with Generative Fill. This is just a taste of what you can do with your own photos. All the photos used in this tutorial are my own. And they said photography of dead? Far from it. Long Live Photography.

Lets start with a shot I got of the Moana Surfrider hotel in Waiki Beach, Hawaii (you can see my room from here). Just for fun, we will drop it in as a mountainside villa on diamond Head Crater.

At this time, this feature is only in Photoshop beta. Here is a short tutorial on how to get the Photoshop beta.

Open Both images in Photoshop File>Open

To combine, choose the Move tool (V key).

Drag the first image up into the tab of the second image.

Move your cursoe into the 2nd image and release. You will now see 2 layers in a single document. (The short video above shows this clearly).

Let’s resize the top layer

Press Ctrl+T (Win) Cmd+T (Mac). From now on I will write it Ctrl/Cmd+T etc.

This gives us Free transform and 8 adjustment handles.

Hold down Alt/Option and drag one of the corners to the center. Notice because the Alt/Option is held down, it transforms from the center.

Size the image to suit your tastes. Not to real scale, but if you don’t know what Diamond Head looks like in real life, you wouldn’t know the actual size anyway.

Now we need to make a special type of selection for this to work. Let’s start by selecting the building.

Grab the Quick Selection tool. (Or whatever selection tool you prefer).

Paint over the image to select the building. Tip: if your selection goes too far, hold down alt/Option and drag to remove from selection.

Now we want to create a selection where we are selecting outside the building, but constrained to a rectangle, as shown in Green.

Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I to inverse the selection. Or use Select>Inverse.

Notice the marching ants around the edges of the image. We are now selecting everything BUT the building.

Lets trim the selection

Grab the Rectangle Marquee tool.

Hold down Alt/Option and drag over the top part to remove it from the selection, Notice I left a little overlap. The overlap is important.

Now do the same on the sides and bottom.

Now we have selected a box around the rectangle of the top image. But the Building isn’t selected.

If I quickly paint with red, you can easily visualize which areas are selected.

Undo the red (obviously)

Let’s blend them together.

Click on Generate (Currently only in the Beta version of Photoshop – How to get it here)

Leve the text filed blank and click Generate.

And you can see it merged the building into the side of the cliff. Sure, it’s not perfect, but this is where your Photoshop skills come int play, to retouch it. (See, your skills aren’t obsolete anymore than your camera is).

Just for fun, I added a water fall, you can see it on the short video at the top.

Fusing 2 images together in Photoshop

Let’s look at another completely different example, for a completely different result.

Here I have 2 photos I shot with my drone. One of a beach and the second of a forest from above.

Just like we did with the first example, combine the 2 photos into a single document.

Choose the move tool (V).

Zoom out, so you can see the canvas. (Alt/Option and scroll wheel, or zoom tool).

Drag the top layer down and off the canvas, leaving a gap between the placement of the 2 layers as shown by the red box. Tip: Hold down the Shift key as you drag to constrain the alignment.

Now, you might think I’m going for the crop tool to revel the 2 layers. Nope.

Choose Image>Reveal All (I know you’re here for all the tips)

As you can see, Photoshop resizes the document to show all the pixels.

Now to fix the gap.

Grab the rectangular Marquee tool (M)

Drag over the area to fuse together. Make sure to include lots of overlap.

Click Generative fill, than Generate, like we have earlier in this tutorial.

And here is our final masterpiece. Pretty cool right?

I hope you found this useful.

If you did, it’s a taste of what’s on my new course on Generative Fill in Photoshop, Check it out here.

Also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tik and Twitter.  for shorts and reels.

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Happy Photoshopping

Colin

The post Combine, auto composite your own photos with Generative Fill ai in Adobe Photoshop appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.