Graphic & Photo Design Tips, Tutorials & Techniques

We’ve all seen a stunning sunset. Most of us have probably tried to take a picture of one. If you’re anything like me, you saw the sunset, fell in love with it, took a photo of it and after you looked at the photo, wondered what in the heck happened to it. While sunsets often look wonderful in person, they rarely look that way as a photo.

But wait! What about all those photos of sunsets we see online that look absolutely stellar? Well, I’ll tell you. The owners of those photos edit them in Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom or Photoshop. Perhaps even a combination of all three. You’d probably faint if you saw the “before” shots of these pictures. You’d definitely tell yourself that you can do what they did, if you only knew how.

In today’s post, I’m going to give you a starting point for creating really killer sunset pictures. Of course you’ll need to start off with a picture of a sunset. After that, you’ll do all your editing right inside Adobe Photoshop. It’s really easy too. To alter the entire look of the picture, all you’ll need to do is create a few adjustment layers, make some edits to them and then take advantage of a blending mode. That’s it.

The Demo Sunset Shot

This is the original photo that I’ll be using for this post. It’s of a skate park at dusk. We have a rider at the center of it and the ocean behind everything. The sun is going down and the photo was taken during the “golden hour,” but for some odd reason, there seems to be a blue hue enveloping everything in the scene. I’ll fix that and make the atmosphere pop.

It’s interesting, the more I look at this photo, the more I don’t notice how blue it is. If you aren’t aware, blue isn’t a good color for sunrises and sunsets.

Adding an Adjustment Layer

I already have this photo opened up in Adobe Photoshop. As you can see from the next screenshot, there’s only one layer and that’s the photo itself.

The first thing I’m going to do is to click on the Color Balance icon in the Adjustments panel. This will add the first adjustment layer I’m looking for as well as open the Properties panel for this adjustment.

Making the Adjustments

My goal here is to get rid of the blue that’s in the photo. With that in mind, I’m going to push the top slider in the Properties panel all the way to the right towards the Red position. Then, I’ll push the bottom slider all the way to the left, towards the Yellow position. This will effectively remove all of the Cyan and Blue from the photo and boost the Red and Yellow colors.

Here’s a screenshot of the Properties panel.

And this is the resulting image.

I know, it doesn’t look very good. Don’t worry, I’m not finished.

Applying a Blend Mode

What I forgot to mention above was that I don’t really want to remove “all” of the blue from the photo. I just want to remove most of it. I’d like to neutralize it and add some yellow and red.

Do you remember that time I wrote those awesome posts that talked about blending modes? If you don’t, you can click through to them here:

What are Blending Modes in Adobe Photoshop?

Learning the Difference Between Blending Modes in Adobe Photoshop

In those posts, I explained what blending modes are and what they can do. You should really read them over. If you click the second link and scroll down the accompanying page, you’ll find a section called Soft Light Blending Mode. In that section, I define what that particular blending mode does.

Soft Light – Darkens or lightens the colors, depending on the blend color. The effect is similar to shining a diffused spotlight on the image. If the blend color (light source) is lighter than 50% gray, the image is lightened as if it were dodged. If the blend color is darker than 50% gray, the image is darkened as if it were burned in. Painting with pure black or white produces a distinctly darker or lighter area, but does not result in pure black or white.

Basically, I’m looking for some color contrast in the photo I’m working on and the Soft Light blend mode will give it to me. To apply this blend mode, I’ll first make sure the adjustment layer in the Layers panel is selected and then I’ll click the drop-down at the top of the same panel and then select Soft Light.

Making this change will give me a photo that looks like this:

It’s already looking better.

Applying Another Adjustment Layer

I created a nice base look, but now I want to add another Color Balance adjustment layer to tweak the reds and yellows even more. This time though, I’ll be doing it without any blending mode, so these changes will be more pronounced. As you may have already guessed, I certainly can’t push the top and bottom sliders all the way to the right and left, respectively, this go round. I’ll need to push them just a tad until the photo looks warm enough for my liking.

I think +25 for the top slider and -25 for the bottom slider is fine.

Now, I get a final photo that looks like this:

Let’s take a look at a before and after shot.

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Like I said at the top of this post, this is just the beginning of the possible edits someone can make to a photo like this. If I were to continue on, I’d probably add some blue back to the sky as well as make a few more tweaks. For now, this is good and I think things look pretty great.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

The lasso tools in Adobe Photoshop are truly spectacular. I use them often and don’t know what I’d do without them. From the simplicity of the standard and most basic Lasso Tool to the more nuanced and complex Polygonal Lasso Tool to the thoughtful and intuitive Magnetic Lasso Tool, there’s surely something to help out in almost any situation.

Each of these lasso tools give you the same end result – a selection. The primary difference between the three are how you go about getting that selection. Sometimes, all you need to do is quickly encapsulate an object in a file. That’s fine. The Lasso Tool can help with that. If you’re dealing with straight edges that need to be selected, your best bet would probably be the Polygonal Lasso Tool. This tool is perfect for outlining buildings, streets and anything requiring precision. When you have a graphic or an image with distinct edges, then the Magnetic Lasso Tool can be a real time saver. It acts like static laced plastic wrap and can stick to those edges with ease.

In today’s post, I’d like to look at each of Photoshop’s lasso tool in a bit more detail than I just did above. While I won’t go into tremendous depth with each one, I think I can paint a fairly clear picture for you that can point you in the right direction should the occasion arise when you may need one of these tools.

Accessing the Lasso Tools

Each of the tools I’ll be using today can easily be accessed from the vertical toolbar on the left side of Photoshop. Currently, they are located in the third slot down from the top. If you click on the tool and drag out to the right, you’ll see all three of them.

Once activating one of the three available tools, you’ll see a new options bar up top appear. For the first two tools, the options bar is the same and is very basic. For the third one (the Magnetic Lasso), things become a bit more complex. It’s nothing to worry about, but some explaining will be in order. I’ll cover it all below as I walk through each tool.

The Lasso Tool

The Lasso Tool is the most basic and straightforward of all three tools. It’s sort of like holding a pencil in your hand and drawing with it. If that’s all you want it to do, that’s fine. It can do that. Let me show you what I mean. I have the tool activated and I just drew a circle around the center of the flower.

As I draw, I can see a solid line appear as a path. When I reach the beginning point of my path (close the loop) and let go of my mouse pointer, the lines will connect as an area and a selection will result, marching ants and all. If I don’t draw all the way back to the beginning of where I began and I let go of my mouse, the selected area will still close, but with a straight line that connects the beginning and the end points.

This is great, but what if I wanted to use the Lasso Tool to draw straight lines? Luckily, I can do that. If I wanted to draw a box around the center of the flower instead of a freehand circle, all I would need to do is to first hold down the Alt key on my keyboard and then click once to create a start point. Then, I’d find the next point where I’d like the first line to end and click again. A line will be drawn. Then, I’d continue this process until I was finished. Either I’d close the area by making my way back to the beginning or I would simply let go of the alt key. Once I did that, the area would close and a selection would be formed.

Here’s an example. I first held down the Alt key and then I clicked in the upper right area of the center of the flower. I kept the Alt key held down and I moved my mouse pointer to the upper left area. Once there, I clicked. Then, while still holding the Alt key, I moved to the lower left and followed the same procedure. Finally, I made it to the lower right and then the upper right again. Here’s the result.

To delete a straight segment that I just drew, I’d keep the Alt key pressed and press the Delete key on my keyboard for just a second. This is a very sensitive action. If I press and hold too long, screwy things will happen. If I press it for just one second and then let go and press this key again, the most recent straight segment in my drawing will be deleted.

As with many selection tools, there are a few boxes up in the options bar that need explaining. These are similar with many of these tools. Take a look in at the next screenshot to see what I’m referring to.

Basically, selecting each of these boxes allows you to draw a selection (the first box), add to a selection (the second box), subtract from a selection (the third box) and intersect a selection (the last box). You’ll need to draw a selection first and then add to it, subtract from it or intersect it with something new. I talked about these efforts in a previous post. You can view it by clicking through below. Remember, these options apply to all three lasso tools.

Growing, Shrinking & Transforming a Selection in Adobe Photoshop

The Polygonal Lasso Tool

This next tool is very cool. At first glace, it sort of resembles the previous tool. It has the ability to draw straight lines and to create a selection. Where it differs is in its additional features, which I’ll cover below.

If I were to activate the Polygonal Lasso Tool and then click in each of the four corners, without holding any other keys down, I’d be able to create a selection comprised of straight edges. It’s that easy with this tool. Simply clicking five times gave me this outline.

Which in turn, gave me this selection, with the marching ants and all.

The primary difference between this tool and the previous one is that when you close the area you’re drawing with this one, you’ll see your mouse pointer change into a lasso with a small O next to it, which stands for the closure. The previous tool had no such indicator.

Let’s say I wanted to draw lines in multiples of 45 degree angles. If I hold down the Shift key on my keyboard and then follow the instructions I just gave above, I could. While holding the Shift key down, I can click. I’ll move my mouse pointer to the left and click my mouse button again. I’ll move my mouse down and click again and so on. Every time I move my mouse pointer while holding down the Shift key, I’ll find that I’m only able to create a line that travels in a multiple of 45 degrees. It’s locked like this, which is perfect for creating horizontal, vertical or angled selections. Here’s the path outline of my latest selection.

This feature give editors and graphic designers much more control over their selections.

Next, I’ll use the Shift key to create a nice box around the center of the flower. When I get all the way around and in the area of the upper right corner, I’ll let go of the Shift key and instead, I’ll press and hold down the Alt key. From there, I’ll press and hold down my mouse pointer and begin drawing freehand. Take a look.

So, with this tool, you have the ability to draw precisely or freehand. That’s fantastic.

With the regular Lasso Tool, wherever you stopped drawing and let go of the mouse pointer, your selected area would close automatically. Since this Polygonal Lasso Tool has so much more power and allows you to click multiple times, it doesn’t know when to stop and create the closed selection. You need to tell it when to do that.

To finish drawing and to create a selection, you’ll either need to close the loop yourself and hover your mouse pointer over your start point like I explained earlier, or you could simply stop wherever you are and double click your mouse button. If you choose the latter option, a connecting path will be drawn and your selection will be closed automatically by Photoshop with a straight line.

The Magnetic Lasso Tool

If you’d like to select an object that has distinct and clear edges from a photo, there are fewer tools better equipped to handle that than the Magnetic Lasso Tool. By definition, this tool “…snaps to the edges of defined areas in the image.” It’s very handy and it works best when edges are very visible, as they are in high contrast images. This is actually part of the reason I chose the demo image of the flower I’ve been using. Just for this tool.

After I select this particular tool, I’ll see that the options bar up top changes and is different than it was for the previous two. So, before I go any further, I’d like to discuss three options included in the bar.

If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see the three fields I outlined in red. These fields are titled Width, Contrast and Frequency. I’ll define these below.

Width: When you draw your selection lines, you’ll see your mouse pointer turn into something that looks like a brush. The Width setting sets the size of this brush. Because the Magnetic Lasso Tool finds edges and snaps to them like a magnet, the tool needs to be told what area to look for an edge in. Setting the size of this brush tells Photoshop the diameter of the area it should use. The larger the area, the more distracted the tool will become. There may be many edges around, creating an opportunity for mistakes to be made. Reducing the area will keep the tool focused, but it will also be more difficult to trace the edge because you’ll need to be more precise with your hand movements.

Contrast: This setting controls the tool’s sensitivity to nearby edges. If you lower this setting, many more edges will be kept in the running to have the tool snap a to. If you raise the value of this setting, edges with more contrast between the object and its background will be considered.

Frequency: As you trace an edge, anchor points are laid along the edges. The more anchor points, the more accurate your selection will be. The fewer anchor points, the more spread out they will be, giving you a lower resolution edge, for lack of a better phrase. If you have straight edges, you’d want to lower this value. If you have very detailed edges, you’d want to raise it.

I’m going to go ahead and use this tool to trace around part of the flower petals, just so you can see what it looks like. I’ll keep the options bar settings to something moderate.

As you can see from the screenshot above, there are quite a few anchor points. Now, there are a few methods to close the loop with this tool. You can double click your mouse pointer like I did above. You can press the Enter key on your keyboard or you can simply bring your mouse all the way back to where you began and wait to see that O again. When you do, let go of your mouse pointer if you were holding it down or click once if you weren’t. You can trace an edge by either holding the mouse button or not with this tool.

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You’ll likely need practice with each of these tools to become proficient with them, but what I just shared with you should give you a good start. There is much more information that surrounds these tools and there are quite a few tricks you could take advantage of, but I feel this post was a good source for getting your feet wet. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

There’s an area of working in Photoshop that I find slightly annoying. It has to do with my mouse pointer when I use certain tools. Sometimes, I need to see exactly where the “action source” of the mouse pointer is because I need the utmost precision. The problem is, with many tools in Adobe Photoshop, the mouse pointer has the icon of the tool you’re using hanging out next to it. So, if you’re attempting to use one of the paint bucket tools or a lasso tool, you’re going to have to contend with an unnecessary icon next to the pointer where the marquee or the lasso begins. It’s sort of distracting and because of it, you might screw up whatever it is you’re doing.

To see exactly what I’m referring to, go ahead and launch Photoshop and create a new file. Go through each tool and then bring your mouse pointer into the work area. You’ll see a different and somewhat confusing mouse icon with most of the tools. The Paint Bucket Tool is one of them. The Lasso Tool and the Magnetic Lasso Tool are two more. There are quite a few, so you’ll need to make your way through all of them to see. By and large, any tool that uses a brush will just show a circle to represent the brush. That’s fine. The marquee tools show a crosshair, which I think is the best option for many others. A crosshair is clear, concise and the user knows exactly what they’re doing. There are no two ways about it.

In today’s post, I’m going to show you how to turn many of the more confusing tool mouse pointers into crosshairs inside of Adobe Photoshop. This way, when you want to use a tool and need the most precision as possible, you’ll have the ability to get what you want. The center of the crosshair is where your action will begin.

Accessing the Preferences Panel

To access the area where I need to make the changes, I’ll head up to the Edit > Preferences > Cursors menu item and click.

From there, I’ll see the Cursors preferences menu appear. Let’s take a quick look inside.

Changing the Mouse Cursors in Photoshop

When Photoshop is first installed, there are some default cursor settings for users to take advantage of. Take a look at this next screenshot to see what those settings are.

There are only two areas that need attention at the moment. The first one is called Painting Cursors and the other is called Other Cursors.

Under the Painting Cursors heading, there is only one distinction made. The Normal Brush Tip selection is activated. That’s fine. I’m happy with that. However, if you wanted to change that to something else, you can click through the options and the sample brush tip right above the radio buttons and check boxes will update with whatever option it is you choose. Because I love the crosshair for accuracy, I’ll check the Show Crosshair in Brush Tip box. This will add a crosshair to the center of any brush used in Photoshop. This way, I won’t have to guess where the center of the brush is anymore. I can simply use the crosshair as a guide.

Under Other Cursors, I’ll make the change I was really after since the beginning of this post. I’ll change the Standard selection to Precise. As you can see from the sample tool up above the options, the eyedropper turns into another circle with a crosshair at its center. Take a look.

After I finish making these two changes, I can click the OK button to close the Preferences panel and that’s it. I’m done. If I test out some brush tools, I’ll see the crosshair in the center of the circle that represents the brush and if I toy around with other tools, such as the paint bucket ones or the lasso tools, I’ll see that there are no longer any icons next to the cursors. I’ll have ultra-accurate representations of exactly where I’ll be initiating a change.

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I hope this post clearly explained how to change the cursors in your installation of Adobe Photoshop. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of a big project in Photoshop, you most likely know how important it is to have as many history states available to you as possible. I sure do. I go back and forth through these things all the time.

If you’re not familiar with the phrase “history state,” I’ll tell you what it is. A history state is a place in time, in Adobe Photoshop, before you did something new. Let’s say you open a file in Photoshop and then add an adjustment layer to that file via the Adjustments panel. The action of creating that adjustment layer is one history state. Now, let’s say you add some text to the image. There’s another history state, giving you two in total. Next, let’s say you move the text and change its color. There are two more history states.

The reason I say these things are so important is because they give you the ability to essentially travel back and forth in time, right inside Photoshop. If you feel like you need to go back for some reason, you can do that by simply clicking on the corresponding history state inside of the History panel. If you need to go back all the way to the beginning because you realized you were working on the original image and you wanted to work on a duplicate for safety, you can do that too. It’s all very simple.

To learn more about the history panel in Photoshop, click through this link below.

Need to Undo? Use the History Panel in Photoshop

In today’s post, I’m going to show you two quick tricks that will help you out if you ever find yourself in a jam, similar to the one I just outlined above (saving the original file). I’ll also demonstrate, in Adobe Photoshop, how you can edit your preferences to add more visible history states in the History panel. If you’re a power user, this second tip may be crucial to your editing efficiency.

Making Changes to a File

I already have a demo photograph opened up in Photoshop. It’s just waiting for me to make some changes to it. Let’s take a look at this image before I go any further.

Now, let’s take a look at the current states that are available in the History panel.

Basically, all we have so far is the name of the file and the very first action that occurred. Photoshop calls this action Open. That’s all I’ve done so far. I only opened the file.

At this point, to continue on with this demonstration, I’m going to make a few random changes to the file. The reason I’m going to do this is because I want to add some history states.

Okay, I made some changes. Let’s take a look at the image now.

Basically, I added a Curves adjustment layer and then modified that layer to show more of a medium contrast look on the photo. Then, I added some text, moved, rotated and then moved the text again. I set some character styles related to the text, moved it again and then aligned it with the Rectangular Marquee Tool. I’d say there’s now enough data in the History panel to work with. Check out both the History and the Layers panels.

If you look at just the History panel, you’ll quickly realize there are 15 states inside of it. This is an important number that I’ll use later on, so be sure to remember it.

Going Back to the Beginning

Something that happens all the time, let me repeat that, all the time, is when you’re working on a project while forgetting that you are, in fact, editing the original photo file that should be set off to the side somewhere and not touched. A common practice to get around this type of thing is to first make a duplicate of the file and then edit the duplicate, while keeping the original file safe somewhere. But, as I stated, accidentally working on the original happens all the time. In this section, I’ll give you a quick tip to get around this error and that will allow you to save the original from Photoshop again.

Let’s pretend the picture of the car I’m currently editing in Photoshop is the golden file. It’s the original high resolution file that, if lost, will cost a lot of money in photography services. I already began working on it and as it stands, I have 15 history states. While this isn’t too many, if I had many more, the issue would be even worse. The bottom line is that I neither want to close the file out without saving it because I’ll lose all my work nor save the file the way it is because all the work I already did will pollute the image. And I certainly don’t want to “Save As” the file over the original. That would be the worst. While there are many avenues to take at this moment to remedy the issue, the most straightforward one is to simply click the top-most state in the History panel. This isn’t actually a state at all. It’s more of the actual, untouched, file. Here, take a look.

If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that after clicking the top most state, which is the file name, all the other history states turned gray. Also, if you’ll notice the Layers panel, all the additional layers I created disappeared. It’s as if the file was never touched at all. It’s at this time when I can head over to the File > Save As menu item and save the file out any way I wish, to preserve the original JPEG. It’s that simple. I know, there are many methods for dealing with a situation like this, but I felt this one was appropriate because it uses the History panel and that’s what I’m discussing in this post.

Increasing & Decreasing the Number of Visible History States

In an earlier section of this post, I mentioned that you should remember that I currently had 15 change states recorded in the History panel. I also mentioned that I had hardly made any actual changes. My point with this was to emphasize how quickly history states can accumulate. Basically, the History panel records almost everything you do in Photoshop. Just by adding some text and some effects to that text, I added about ten states. Can you imagine how fast you could surpass 100 states? 200? Or more? I’ll tell you one thing, it doesn’t take long at all when you’re working on a large project and when you’re making many small changes.

If I head up to the Edit > Preferences > Performance menu item, I’ll see that the current default recorded History States is 50.

This setting is in the Preferences dialog box, in the Performance area. Since I just explained how 50 recorded states is rather low, it would be in most editor’s best interest to raise that number to something around 250. The most you can go is currently 1000, but if you set your installation to that, it may use too many resources and that might slow your computer down. A good compromise between not having enough and not slowing your computer down is anywhere between 250 and 400. Since I have a lot of RAM in my computer, I clicked the drop-down box for this setting and moved the slider to 400. That will offer me tons of recourse if I ever need to go back and clean up a lot of mistakes I made while editing a file. Again, if you need to learn the fundamentals surrounding the History panel and learn what it’s good for and how it can help you, I encourage you to read through my previous post on the subject.

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I hope these two quick tips help you out in the future. There are tons and tons of these types of helpful tidbits floating around and I hope to bring many of them to you via this very blog. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

When you begin working with multiple video clips inside of Adobe Photoshop, one of the very first things you’ll likely want to do is to arrange the clips in some sort of sequential order. This is obvious. After all, you edited each individual clip so it had a specific position in the overall movie. Why wouldn’t you want to position those clips so they make sense later on?

In today’s post, I’m going to show you just how easy it is to arrange clips in the Timeline panel and the Layers panel of Photoshop. This post should be brief, because there really ins’t all that much to cover. The material is important though, so be sure to read it all the way through.

Adding Clips to a Group

In this post, I’m going to first open one video file into Photoshop and then I’ll add three additional videos to the group that was initially created. I’ve already gone ahead and done this, but I’ll share the steps I took.

First, I used the File > Open menu item to navigate to one of the clips I wanted to use.

When I found the clips, I either double-clicked on one to open it or I could simply click on the Open button down in the lower right area of the window.

Either way, the clip will open into Photoshop and the Timeline panel will appear. Also, this one clip will be contained in a Group all its own in the Layers panel. You can think of a group as sort of like a folder in the Layers panel. It’s merely something that contains multiple video clips.

To open the remaining clips, I’ll click the “+” symbol at the end (right side) of the existing timeline track.

Once I click that symbol, I can again navigate to the files I’d like to open and follow the same instructions I used for the individual file. Once I’m done with all that, I’ll see that all the clips are now contained in the same group I had initially formed.

Below, you can see the clips lined up in the same track in the Timeline panel as well as the clips contained in the same group in the Layers panel.

Now, I’m sure you’ve seen clips staggered in various tracks in the timeline panel before. That’s a different scenario that I’ll be covering in later posts, so don’t be too concerned with that setup right now.

Changing the Sequence of the Clips

As you may have already guessed, the clips are positioned in the timeline as they’ll play through. The final movie will play left to right, so the leftmost clip will play first, then the second one and so on. Also, the bottom layer of the group in the Layers panel is equivalent to the left-most clip in the Timeline panel. So, clips in the Timeline panel play from left to right and layers in the Layers panel play from bottom to top.

To exemplify how these two areas are related, I can go ahead and click on any blue clip in the Timeline panel and it will become highlighted. The corresponding clip will be highlighted in the Layers panel as well. I could do this backwards too. It doesn’t matter. In the screenshot below. I went ahead and clicked the last clip in the track in the Timeline panel. It’s now highlighted. The same one in the Layers panel is also highlighted.

This relationship between these areas is important because it will give you two different options when it comes to reordering things.

Basically, to reposition any clip in either the Timeline or Layers panel, all you need to do is click and drag it to a new position. One that’s occupied by something else. So, if I wanted to make the currently last clip play first, I could click and drag the blue box that’s all the way to the right on the Timeline panel on top of the left-most clip and drop it there. That would bump the current first one to the second position and make the last one first.

Similarly, I could drag one of the layers in the Layers panel to another position and the same thing would happen. The sequence of the clips would be altered.

And really, that’s it. Reorganizing video clips so they play in a different sequence is a very simple task to execute.

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While this was a short post, I feel it covers an important task. When you know what you can click and drag around Photoshop, you can increase the speed of your workflow, which helps you become more efficient. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

If you have perfectly edited video clips, you can add them right into what’s called a Video Group inside of Adobe Photoshop. Basically, a video group is a collection of clips that line up in one space on the timeline. They butt up against each other; the end of the first clip to the beginning of the second and so on. Inside of Photoshop’s Timeline panel, there’s an option to add a Cross Fade in between these clips, which will give you a nice, smooth transition from one to the next.

Yesterday, I wrote a post where I discussed adding Fade transitions to multiple clips. If you’d like to read that post to get some background on transitions all together, please click through below.

How to Add a Fade Transition to a Video Clip in Adobe Photoshop

For today’s post, I plan on showing you two things. First, I’ll explain how to add one clip to another that’s already opened in the Timeline panel in Photoshop. The second clip I’ll add will be contained in the same group, therefore, its beginning will touch the end of the first. Second, I’ll demonstrate how to go about adding a cross fade transition between the two clips. This tutorial will be just as straightforward as the previous one, so there’s nothing advanced to concern yourself with here.

Creating a Video Group

I already opened up a sample clip and resized it to match the next one I’ll be adding. Due to the resizing, I was forced, by Photoshop, to convert the regular layer to a Smart Object. That’s not a problem, but it did turn the object on the timeline from blue to purple. I just wanted to let you know why there is purple down there in the screenshot below.

If you take a look over at the Layers panel, you’ll see that there is currently only one layer in it.

To add a clip and create a Video Group, I can click on the “+” symbol that sits at the right side of the timeline, in the same row as to where I’d like to add the clip.

When I click that, a window will appear, where I can navigate to the file I’m interested in. I’ll find the file, double-click on it and the clip will be added to the timeline. Doing this will also create a group in the Layers panel that will contain both clips.

Now let’s take a look at the timeline.

That’s perfect. So, like I mentioned above, if I had edited clips and wanted to line them all up like this, one after another, I could easily follow the same actions I just took above to accomplish the task.

Adding a Cross Fade Transition Between the Video Clips

Applying a cross fade transition in this post is just as easy as it was in the post I wrote yesterday. All I have to do is to click on the transition icon in the Timeline panel to open up the Transition panel. From there, I’ll select Cross Fade.

Once I select the proper transition from the panel, I can drag it down to the timeline and drop it right between the two clips. When I roll over this area with the transition, a black outline will appear, telling me where the transition will occur.

When I let go of my mouse button, the transition icon will be attached to the video clip.

Deleting a Transition

I forgot to mention this in yesterday’s post, but if you’d like to delete a transition from the timeline, all you need to do is to click on the transition icon itself and then press the Delete key on your keyboard. That will get rid of it.

Adjusting the Duration of the Transition

To learn how to adjust the duration of the transition, please review my previous post. I cover all the steps necessary, as well as discuss others not mentioned here.

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See? It’s that easy. I hope I clearly explained how to add a cross fade transition to a video timeline in Adobe Photoshop. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

If I had to guess, I’d say that out of all the tasks those of us who want to complete in a video editor, adding a transition between clips would be the highest on the list. Think about it. Sure, you want to import the clip, edit it and then export it. But really, it’s the transitions that folks think of when they’re editing. I’ve worked on a lot of different video with a lot of different people and it’s always the same. They want to know all about the different transitions that are available. Even when I was back in college working in Microsoft Powerpoint. The transitions mattered.

In today’s post, I’m going to give you a really quick tutorial that will cover how to add a transition to a video in Adobe Photoshop. After you read through this post, you’ll wonder how you didn’t already know the steps. You’re going to love it.

Opening the Clips Into Photoshop

If you aren’t already sure how to open a video file into Adobe Photoshop, I encourage you to read through this post:

5 Ways to Open Video Files into Adobe Photoshop

For today’s post, I’m going to open both clips into their own files in Photoshop. Then, I’ll drag one of the clips over into the other tab and I’ll break them out of the video group they’re currently in. In the end, I’ll have two clips that are independent on the timeline. I’ll have no problem adding a fade transition now.

Accessing the Video Transition Panel

Okay, now that everything is set up correctly, I can make sure the clip I’ll be transitioning to (the bottom clip) is overlapping the one that’s being transitioned from (the top clip). Take a look at what I’m referring to here below.

To move a clip, all you need to do is to click on the blue somewhere. After that, just drag it back or forth and let go when you’re finished.

If there was no overlap, the fade I’m going to add would become transparent and then the video would abruptly jump to the second clip. Since both clips now overlap, the top clip can fade out and the bottom one will be there to be faded into.

To access the available transitions, I’ll go ahead and click the Transitions icon that sits towards the beginning of the timeline.

In the screenshot above, you can see how the transitions panel popped up.

Applying a Transition

Applying a transition to a clip is super simple. To do this, I’ll click on the transition I want to add, which, in this case, is the Fade transition. I’ll then drag it down to the clip that I’d like to add it to. Be careful with this step – you can’t just drag the transition down into the blue clip and let go. You have to drop it either at the beginning of the clip or at the end. In my case, I’ll be dropping it at the end, so when I drag the transition, I’ll bring it to the end and drop it after I see a black outline appear.

I had to stretch out the timeline a bit so you could clearly see the black outline. Since the transition was set to be only one second long, the black outline that displayed that length of time was very narrow.

Once I drop the transition on the clip, a small indicator will appear, telling me that I’ve completed the task.

Setting the Length of the Transition

There are a few different ways to change the length of time it takes for the transition to complete transitioning. The first method is to set the time before you drag and drop the transition on the clip. If you take a look at this next screenshot, you’ll see a small drop-down box inside of the transition panel. If I click that drop-down, you’ll see a slider that controls the length of the transition.

The next method for adjusting the length of the transition is to drag one side of the small indicator after it’s been dropped. This is just as simple as the first method, so it’s up to you. Just be aware that when you roll your mouse over the indicator, the pointer will change into something else, so you’ll know when to begin dragging.

Right-Click For More Options

If I right-click on the transition indicator, I’ll see a small panel appear. Inside this panel are the same controls as the initial panel included. The difference is that I can alter an already applied transition through this panel.

So, if I wanted to switch what type of transition I applied, I could do that right through this smaller panel and if I wanted to alter the length of time it takes for the transition to complete, I could do that as well.

Once the transition is applied and set, I can go about finishing up anything else I need to do.

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Applying a transition to a video clip in Adobe Photoshop is easy. I hope I thoroughly and clearly explained the process. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

This is going to be sort of a weird post. I usually write about straightforward topics, but today, I thought I’d give you something that you could “chew on” more than use right away. More of an idea or a concept, if you will.

I recently wrote a few articles that talked about using the Spot Healing Brush Tool and the Healing Brush Tool in Adobe Photoshop. If you’re interested, you can view both of those posts by clicking through the links below.

How To Non-Destructively Use the Spot Healing Brush Tool in Adobe Photoshop

Working With the Healing Brush Tool in Adobe Photoshop

Between these two resources, I talked about how to best take advantage of the basic functions of the tools in question as well as how to go about using them in a non-destructive manner. They were very informative posts, so I highly encourage you to take a quick glance at them, at the very least.

In today’s post, I’d like to move things one step further and offer two tips for how to use the Healing Brush Tool in Adobe Photoshop. The first tips is good for some situations while the second one probably has more opportunity for use under the right circumstances. Please continue reading below because, again, you may remember what I share today and the lesson may serve you well down the road.

The Demo Photo

The reason I chose this photo was two-fold. First, there’s a small window in it. I needed that to explain and discuss my first tip. Also, on the wall, stucco (or something similar) was used, which resulted in a textured pattern. I needed this pattern for the second tip. While I won’t be able to show you exactly what I’m referring to for the second tip with this photo, I’ll use an additional photo to get my point across. I’ll display this additional photo below as well.

This is the first one.

And this is the second one. This tip builds off the idea of using the Healing Brush Tool in a non-destructive manner and the extra layer you’ll nee to do so. It’s a very helpful idea.

Shrinking, Duplicating or Moving an Object

Okay, let’s get going. The first photo is already opened in its own tab inside of Photoshop. I’m going to activate the Healing Brush Tool over in the left vertical toolbar and size it so it fits my project. Then, I’ll create a new layer in the Layers panel so I can work on this photo non-destructively (see more about that here). After that, I’ll take a sample of the wall by holding the Alt key down on my keyboard and by clicking somewhere on the stucco. In the screenshot below, I’ll circle the sample area in red.

After I take the sample, I can begin coloring in the window from the bottom up. I’ll make sure my new layer is active in the Layers panel before I draw.

Take a look at this next screenshot. After drawing some of the area of the window, I clicked and dragged the new layer over to the side, so you could get a clear picture of what happened. You can see that I kept a hard edge on the brush I was using and you can also see the size of the brush as well.

As you can see, the Healing Brush Tool basically clones an area. And since I did this on its own layer, I can use that layer to move the cloned area around. My goal for this first project is to shrink the window. I’ll go ahead and move the cloned area over the bottom of the window, so it’s smaller than it was before.

See? Now the window isn’t as low to the ground as it was originally.

My point with sharing this concept is to convey that the Healing Brush Tool in Photoshop can be used for much more than simply hiding things. It can also be used to clone areas or to even move things around.

If I wanted to relocate the window closer to the door, I could take a different sample from an area to the right of the window. I circled that area in the screenshot below.

Now, if I draw over the entire window and the area to the left of it, I can essentially move the window over to the left. Again, since I did this in a new layer, I can slide the area I drew around at my leisure. I placed it on the door again, so you can see what I did.

If I put the window back to where it was initially drawn, it’ll replace the window’s original location and will blend right into the wall because of the way the Healing Brush Tool works. It not only heals, but it blends with the target background as well. Let’s see the final result with this.

Finally, if I wanted to duplicate the window, I could take my sample from the window itself. My sample area is circled in red below.

Now, if I start drawing to the left of the window, a straight-up duplicate will appear. Again, I moved my drawing over on top of the door, so you can see what I did.

If I move it back to where I initially drew it, it would again blend in with the background texture.

You have to admit, that’s pretty cool. In Photoshop, you can use the Healing Brush Tool for a lot of tasks similar to this. This is why I wanted to make you aware of it. Because of its versatility. You can move people, get rid of trees, duplicate bridges – all sorts of stuff.

Making Minor Adjustments to Healed Areas

Oftentimes, an area that you heal (the target) won’t line exactly up with the area you pulled the healing area from (the source). In this final section, I want to show you a small tip that may help you out in this regard, especially if you’re working with patterns.

Let’s say there’s something I would like to cover up at the center of this next photo. I know there’s nothing there, so we’ll have to use our imaginations.

I’ll go ahead and take a sample from somewhere towards the side of the photo. Then, I’ll draw over the center area, to cover up the object. In this screenshot below, I shifted the drawn area around a bit so you can see what I did. I also encapsulated the drawing in red.

Now, as you can imagine, many patters don’t line up exactly as they are supposed to. There are minute differences in size and distance of areas among the pattern. Because of this, it’s helpful to transform the replicated area to help it line up.

In this example, I’m going to make sure the layer with the healing area is selected in the Layers panel and then I’ll press Ctrl+T to activate the Free Transform function of Photoshop (after moving the area back to where it originated). When I active the Free Transform function, a bounding box will appear.

Sometimes, you can get away with simply enlarging or shrinking the replicated area. Most of the times though, you’ll need to distort it. Since the healed area is on its own layer again, this is very simple.

To distort an active transform bounding box, all you need to do is to hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and click and drag a corner.

If you look closely at the screenshot above, you’ll see that the bounding box has been distorted. While the image I’m using doesn’t call for any correction, you can definitely see how tiny nudges in any direction might help line up, say, a chain link fence. Or a staircase or any repetitive pattern for that matter. I just wanted to throw this out there.

If you’d like to learn more about warping and distorting layers and objects in Adobe Photoshop, please take a look at these posts below.

Using the Transform & Free Transform Tools in Adobe Photoshop

Keyboard Shortcuts for Skew, Distort & Perspective Transform in Adobe Photoshop

How To Warp Objects & Text in Adobe Photoshop

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This is the close of another post. I hope I helped you out by giving you some ideas for how to use the Healing Brush Tool in a few non-conventional ways. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!