Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 Filters & Effects

Hi, everybody--Mike Brown back with you one more time, with another lesson in Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 from Educator.com!0000

We're down to playing around with stuff and showing you some things that are left after learning all of your basic tools and techniques.0007

I'm just creating some cool stuff; some of it that can be done with one button; some that you have to think a little bit; and there are a lot of options for stuff that you can play with, and come up with your own creations by multiplying and putting all sorts of things together.0014

We're going to look at the Filter gallery; we'll look at Effects; and just kind of talk a little bit about manually doing stuff versus one click.0030

Let's start, right away, with the Filter gallery.0038

Let's take this image right here; I have duplicated the background, so that we at least can have the things apply directly to that.0043

Up to the Filter menu: now, here are all of the available filters, under this list.0051

You notice that we have used the High Pass filter many times; blur filters are over here; and all of our artistic brush strokes, distorts, all of these are listed here, but they are also under the Filter gallery.0058

Right now, you can see that we have one that came in right away: here is our image under the Texturization; here is one called Mosaic Tiles; and you can turn it on, and now we can see what we have.0077

We can adjust the tile size--larger or smaller--all sorts of things that you can do.0094

Here are all of the ones available, under here.0101

Again, in the list, we have these with the little...let's see what the Texturizer does here.0104

We have a canvas; let's scale it up a little; let's actually scale it down...see why I'm not getting any...oh, there is our canvas!0110

Scaling and relief; we don't want that much relief; there you go: there is one way to turn your image into a canvas.0119

Let's go from the top right on the lighting, change it a little bit, and let's take a look at that.0129

Let's click OK, and there is your image with a texturized layer.0135

Now, if that is too much, the reason that we duplicated it--take your opacity and just pull it back some, because the one below it doesn't have it; and there you have a canvas for your image--a picture on canvas--kind of cool.0142

Let's go ahead and delete that layer and duplicate a new one; let's go back to the Filter Gallery again and see what we have.0159

Let's try Craquelure, and see what that does, instead.0169

Wow--that is interesting; take the crack depth in; crack brightness, crack spacing...we need brightness to be higher...just giving you the idea of what these are, and that you can play with them as much as you want.0174

That is kind of interesting effect; I like that.0190

It's a little dark, but we could change the exposure.0193

Let's go up to Stylize; that one is only used in sketch--these are all in black and white.0198

We'll turn off the Craquelure right now, and let's go with (by the way, this is always going to work in your foreground color; so the foreground color is black right now) Bas Relief, and see what that does on this image.0204

Turn it on; there we have pretty much a 3-D effect; let's go with smoothness and see if that changes anything; I don't like that; I don't like it; how about top right lighting again, and see what happens here.0221

Now, we're going to show you an interesting thing we can do with this one.0239

Let's back it out; there go; OK.0244

Now, we have that one; let's go ahead and click OK; now we have a layer that has it; you see, it's the underlying one.0249

So, what we can do here: let's see how Blend modes work.0256

We try an overlay; wow, look at that; that has kind of made a slightly offset 3-D effect; let's go with soft light.0260

It offset it a little bit, so if we take our layer and we use the Move tool on that layer (I'm trying to center this pretty much where it was; there we go--that is a little bit better; we would have to crop a little bit); there is one way of a little 3-D effect, right there.0273

Let's can that layer and duplicate it again; let's go back and take a look at the gallery one more time.0308

You get the idea; this can create almost anything that you want--there is a notepaper effect right here; there is photocopy; that is interesting--I want to see what happens if we do the photocopy.0313

This one is kind of cool; all right, I'm going to snap the darkness and contrast as much as we possibly can; we're going to click OK, and let's do a blend on this one to see what happens.0327

Now, here is a trick: I'm going to something--again, these I'm playing with--I'm going to take my Magic Wand tool at a high tolerance, and click white.0343

It got almost everything; that is kind of cool.0359

So, what I want to do is: I'm going to delete the white.0362

Notice, if we turn it off, all we have left here is a black-and-white; so we turn it back on, and it's...0369

What I should have done...let me do that again; I'm going to do Select Similar, so that it gets every bit of the white in there; now I'm going to delete it, and all we have left are the black edges--look at that!0377

Now, if we blend this as an overlay, what it should do is give us a little bit of contrast.0393

That's kind of interesting; let's try darker--we're just playing with Blend modes here, to see what happens.0405

I kind of like the higher light; let's go with overlay.0411

Now, you see, the black edges are in there; but if we drop our opacity back a little bit (there we go), we kind of get this accentuated look.0417

Let's do that; turn it off; turn it on; we got a little bit of contrast out of it, and we can put that back in, even--oh, look at that--it snaps it up to make it kind of a semi-surrealistic image.0428

So, that is another type of look that you can do using the filter gallery.0441

Let's try one more: Command/Control+J; let's go to the Filter Gallery one last time, and there are distorts--let's add glass, just for the fun of it.0448

There you have glass, and the amount of distortion, smoothness...you can go up or down; brush strokes: artistic...all sorts of things you have--options here.0462

OK, so that gives you an idea of what the Filter Gallery does--just play with them, apply them; you can (let's see...ripple...)--one at a time, you can probably make multiple layers with them and play.0474

That is the Filter Gallery.0492

All right, so let's go to...let's see; we've taken a quick look--it really wasn't--it's very simple; you have a few sliders; you bring them in; but the key is, once you bring them in, play with your Blend modes.0494

In fact, I'm just going to go ahead and add a category here--Blend modes--we'll talk about those a little bit right on the fly, right here.0506

Here is a modification I need now to increase my canvas size; I'm going to go down--probably 3.6; take this; put it white; Option, Delete; and now, I have fixed the title up for us.0521

So now we have that; let's look at some Blend modes.0538

Let's take the Long Beach port; let's go with an artistic...let's go to the gallery again.0543

Now, you notice, artistic brush strokes--distort, sketch, stylize, and texture--are in here.0555

But, we also have brush strokes, noise, render, and other; some of the filters are not in the gallery--just mostly the artistic filters.0562

So, if we take--Graphic Pen is kind of cool--I like that; let's do the light/dark and get it up like that; I don't know what this is going to do; we'll click OK.0576

Now, Blend modes: you have all of this list, and it looks rather daunting; but we have one--you notice the lines separating the categories.0591

Darken--this is the first one in the category--darken, the dark color, are all blends that darken the image.0604

Lighten--they all lighten the image.0614

Overlay through Hard Mix all do various levels of contrast; so Darken, Lighten, Contrast...these do some weird things that I have never--wow!0618

How cool is that?--look at that right there; we used a Blend mode on a black-and-white layer; wow, it just shows you--there is a black-and-white layer that we added from (which filter was that that we used? I'm not even sure)...0630

Let's try the Exclusion; I don't like that as well, but the Difference looks pretty cool, and if we take the opacity level down...no, we want to leave that one alone.0646

There is a really interesting effect, right there; these two Blend modes are kind of weird; you can see that--they're just surrealistic.0658

Then, these are color: Hue Saturation, Color, and Luminosity--it's only how the image's color affects the other.0666

They're pretty simple; so you play with--if you like the Darken, play with the other Darkens.0672

That's all you need to do--mess with it.0677

We'll go right back to the normal on that one, and I was going to say, as you drop opacity, I want to see what overlay looks like on this one.0679

There we go--overlay is contrast, and right there is your contrast, too; if we go to 100%, and we back it out so it kind of blends in with the original image--look what we have done; that is kind of cool.0688

Look at that--we have these brush strokes in over the real image in a minor percentage, and we have taken this image and kind of made it into a very cool artistic, surrealistic realist-ing, using another filter and using our Blend modes.0704

Darkens, Lightens, Contrast, weird and different, and color--play with those; it gives you filters; it also gives you the Blend modes.0725

We have looked at the Filter Gallery (let's go on top here with the brushes); we looked at the Filter Gallery (oops, where are we--why am I doing this? size, 100%, normal red brush); we looked at Blend modes; now, let's take a look at some effects.0740

The effects are right next to the layers here; now, we have filters, and here are your filters here again--these are one-click filters.0764

Let's try (oops, I didn't want to try it on there) it on here, and see what happens.0773

Wow, what was that?--Neon Glow--I think the Neon Glow is also up in (let's see if I can find it--artistic...)--there it is, right here.0781

The same one, different choices--better choices: what you have are a series of filters here; let's see which ones they are, by name: Watercolors, under Painting...all of these are one click, so that you don't get the option of playing with it.0794

If you take any of these filters right here--all of your filters--if you take them to the Filter Gallery, you get a choice; if you take them under here, you get one click at whatever they give you.0809

Styles are the things you do--bevels, drop shadows, glass buttons, things for graphics.0823

Effects: here we have several--these are one-click.0829

Let's take this and make a vintage photo out of it, double-click, and there we have (let's see what we have for layers on this--yes)--that turned it into a rather strange-looking image.0834

That is kind of interesting, but here is where the blends come back, and the opacity: if we just take this and pull it back to a specific minimal blend, just so you get some sort of a blend of realism and surrealism--so you play with your blends; play with your opacities...0853

Let's go back to that one; I didn't really like that, so let's dump that out of there.0873

Dump that one; Command+J, go back to the Effects, Vintage Photo, Monotone Color.0878

Well, here is a one-click to turn it into, basically, sepia tones.0886

Remember, however, that we can do that with far more control by taking our layer and going to an adjustment layer with Hue Saturation, Colorize; and you can adjust the hue to whatever you want, and the amount of saturation.0894

That is the better way to do it, because you have 100% control over colorizing your image.0916

Let's go back again; so the Monotone colors--you understand what that is already; an Old Photo versus a Vintage Photo; let's take a look at this and see what it did.0923

It's calculating a little bit here; oh, it put a texture behind it and made it a high-contrast black-and-white.0937

We can do that same thing; here, you have no option, right?0945

So, what we'll do here with this layer is: we're going to take Enhance menu, Convert to Black-and-White, Vivid Landscape, Urban Snapshots, Newspaper...there we go, right there.0950

We can do that; we can go very quickly, and put in Levels, and snap the contrast, and brighten it up; so there you have your high contrast photo.0968

A texture--we'll just add a blank layer; we'll go to the Paint Bucket tool; we'll go to our textures and patterns; let's go with a nature pattern, just for the fun of it.0981

How about...I'm thinking...rock patterns; why not?0995

We'll take this one right here, and we're going to fill at 100%, and we'll just fill the layer up, and we'll do Enhance, Color, Hue Saturation, and change the hue to something more pleasing.1000

Change the Blend mode to overlay and drop the opacity back a little on this layer; drop the opacity back a little on this layer; and you come up with all sorts of effects, which emulate this kind of old-time effect all by itself.1018

So, I'm a purveyor of manual--now that is what we're talking about--manual versus the one-click methodology.1038

If you just want to do something very quickly and come up with something that's different--this is the Pencil Sketch; one click; done; but when we go back over here, it's done; you have no other options.1046

You can do these manually, in the Filter Gallery, as well.1061

We'll undo that back here; let's go up to Miscellaneous Effects--what do we have here?1064

There is your Craquelure again, right there; I can see that; this one here--Fluorescent Shock--hmm...what do we have?--single click--it's interesting.1071

But here, we did it on this layer; let's duplicate the layer and go back to that effect and do it again.1086

Go back to the layers; it flattened our image, so we have no option on dealing with this one.1099

What we could do is this--here is a way to deal with that: Command+A, Command, Copy; so we now have the image on the Clipboard.1105

Now, we can go to the Effects; double-click on that one, and it's (where did it...why didn't it do it?)--there it is.1114

Back to the layer: we have one--now we'll just paste.1132

We have our regular layer on the top; double-click the background layer to make it into a different layer; put that effect on top; drop our opacity down a little bit; and there you got a much more pleasing, dynamic image, by doing a manual methodology.1135

So, you can take the effects, make sure you have a second layer, go back, and blend it--kind of cool, huh?1154

All right, so the background--we'll duplicate that again; go back; you get the point here--just play through what is the frame methodology.1163

Faded Photos--that is our color fade again; oh, I was going to show you how to do a color fade.1172

It's really simple; if we double-click here, we get a fade from black to color, and you notice that it faded that one layer.1179

Well, we can do that a different way ourselves, by taking this layer, turning it into a black-and-white (we'll just pick the Scenic Landscape--that's fine); we have a black-and-white now.1189

We'll add a layer mask--it reveals all; take our Gradient tool; we want to preserve color on the bottom and black-and-white on the top--actually, I would like to go the other way.1202

We have the mask; let's just click and drag from the top to the bottom, and there is exactly the same effect.1216

All it was is a layer mask on the image.1224

Let's go the other way, and we'll let the sky be nice and the rest be black-and-white.1227

There you have another way to do the same, exact thing manually--just realizing that something as simple as that was nothing more than a gradient.1233

Let's show you one more; let's get rid of that; duplicate that one; go back there; and this one is a radial effect.1244

You notice, it's color in the inside and black in the outside; remember (here, we'll go back and get rid of that one; we'll use this one) our gradients?1254

We'll just do it radially; it's that simple.1264

We'll add a layer mask again; reveal all; and we'll click in the center, and go to the outside, and (oh, I know what I did wrong; I wanted to convert this first to a black-and-white--sorry--we'll take it, black-and-white) now with the layer mask, we'll click and drag, and there you have it in the center (or we can actually drag it further and get more of it).1267

Color fading to Black-and-White--that is exactly the same thing as these.1298

So, these are pretty simple, OK?1302

There you have layer effects; back to the title--we have looked at the effects, and some of them are really cool if you want to do just one-button stuff.1305

You have the option of taking the one-button or doing it manually.1317

It's very simple stuff; just remember--layer masks, and blends, and working with Blend modes to adjust them, and manual versus one-click.1323

That is your call; if you like the one-click effect, and it's good enough for you, try it.1332

If not, go back to manual; try to figure out what they did by looking at it, and re-create it yourself, so that you can work with multiple layers and blend them together to get better effects than just the one-click.1338

By the way, let's go quickly over to the Guided Edit, just to finish this off with.1353

I want to show you that there are more photo effects over here: the Old-Fashioned, low-key, lo-mo effect--this one is actually kind of cool.1360

Let's pull up this image right here (why is that so stretched?--interesting), and we'll go ahead and click on the lo-mo effect; click the button to give the lo-mo effect.1370

There you have a change; this is one that is kind of cool, that you might do; and let's go ahead and throw a vignette on it.1393

There you go--now there are a couple of one-button effects that I'm not sure how that was done; so that is really cool.1401

Let's go ahead and take it, and let's go back to the Expert menu and see what we have.1408

That just worked on that one layer alone with a one-button click.1417

So you can see that, with the Guided Edit, there are actually some very cool ones that are in here that are really usable.1420

Between the Filter Gallery and (let's go back to Expert) the Effects tab with all of these options you have here, and even over in the Guided Edit for one (I really like that one--don't you?), you have all sorts of options for creating cool images using filters and effects in Adobe Photoshop Elements 11!1430