From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

727 Adding a forest of trees for your E.T. moon

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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727 Adding a forest of trees for your E.T. moon

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- [Instructor] In this movie, we'll take that big blue moon that we created in the previous movie, and we'll add this kind of forest of evergreens and deciduous trees down here at the bottom, all of which are vector based path outlines. Alright, so I'll go ahead and switch back to the image so far, and then I'll switch over to Adobe Illustrator, in which I have open this hand drawn silhouette of, I guess it's a pine tree. I'm not a horticulturalist, I can't even say it. But notice that we have this insane level of detail. And by the way, this drawing comes to us from the Dreamstime image library, about which you can learn more and get some great deals at dreamstime.com/deke.php. Armed with my black arrow tool, up here at the top of the toolbox, I'll go ahead and click on the tree in order to select it, and then I'll go up to the edit menu and choose the copy command, or you could just press Control + C, or Command + C on the Mac. Now, I'll go ahead and switch back over to Photoshop here, and I'll go up to the edit menu and choose the paste command, or you can just press Control + V, or Command + V on the Mac. And that'll bring up this paste dialog box. You want to go ahead and set paste as to smart object. That way you can transform the shape non-destructively, as well as keep track of your settings, in case you decide to scale or rotate the tree in the future. You also probably want to leave this checkbox turned off, unless indeed you want to add the tree to your library, at which point, go ahead and click okay to paste that tree. Now notice that Photoshop provides you with the opportunity to apply any kinds of transformations you like up here in the options bar, and so let's say I go ahead and link the width and height values together, and then select the width value and change it to 64% like so, and maybe I'd like to rotate the tree as well, and in fact I'll just go ahead and drag outside the bounding box like so, and then I press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, to accept that change. Well, I don't really want my tree to be rotated. That would imply there's something wrong with our forest, which is why it's so great I'm working with a smart object. And so all I need to do to make my tree upright is to go up to the edit menu and choose free transform, or you could just press Control + T, or Command + T on the Mac. And notice I can see that my width and height values are still set to 64%, and that's not something you would see with a shape layer. If I had pasted this tree as a shape layer, things would pretty much work the same, however, I wouldn't be able to easily see what I had done in the future. Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and change this guy to zero degrees, so the tree is nice and upright, and I'm also going to adjust his coordinate positions. So make sure the center point is selected here inside this tiny reference point matrix over on the left side of the options bar, then select the x value, and change it to two, two, two, two, so four twos in a row, that is 2,222 pixels, and then Tab over to the y value, and then change it to 21, not 94, I'm really looking for 2,154 right here. And notice that positions the tree down and right in front of that full moon, at which point I'll accept my change by pressing the Enter key, or the Return key a couple of times in a row. Alright, now I'll go ahead and rename this layer evergreen, because that's what it is, and now I want to make a copy of it by pressing the Control key, which is going to get me the move tool on the fly, that's the Command key on the Mac, and then you want to add the Alt key here on the PC, or the Option key on the Mac, so that you're seeing a double arrowhead cursor. So once again, I've got the Control + Alt keys down on the PC, that's Command + Option on the Mac, then I'll just drag a copy of this guy over like so. And now I want to exactly position it, and so I'll once again invoke the free transform command, this time just by pressing Control + T, or Command + T on the Mac, and I'll click on the little link icon between the width and the height values. And then I'll change either one of those, this time to 42%, so we have a smaller tree, and then I'll back up by pressing Shift + Tab a couple of times, back up to the x value here, and I'll change it to 1,746, and I'll Tab to the y value and change it to 2,412. And you may wonder where I came up with these very exact coordinate positions. Just through trial and error. And the reason I'm having you enter those positions is so that your results and mine are the same. And now I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, a couple of times to apply that change. And now notice if I zoom in that we have some very sharp looking trees. The problem is that the little guy's a repeat of the big guy, and so I think I'll go ahead and flip it, by once again pressing Control + T, or Command + T on the Mac, to enter that free transform mode, at which point I see all those numerical values I entered just a moment ago. And now I'll right-click inside the bounding box, and I'll choose flip horizontal in order to flip that guy like so, so it looks totally different than it did before. Now that messes up my x and y values, so I'll select the x value once again, and I'll change it to 1,746. So not a big change, and I'll just make sure my y value is still set to 2,412 like so, and then I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, to accept that change. Alright now, the E.T. poster, the real thing, actually just contains a bunch of evergreens, but we're going to be mixing in a dinosaur here, and so I want it to have a Jurassic Park flavor with a bunch of deciduous leaves as well. And so I'll go ahead and switch over to the image in progress again, and then I'll switch back to Illustrator and I'll bring up this document which also comes to us from the Dreamstime image library. And I'll just click on this guy with the black arrow tool to select the entire thing, as you can see over here on the far left side of the horizontal control panel, this is a single, albeit very complicated compound path. At which point I'll press Control + C, or Command + C on the Mac, to copy that path, and then I'll switch back to Photoshop and press Control + V, or Command + V on the Mac, to paste it, at which point you should see that same dialog box complete with the last supplied settings, so once again smart object is turned on, add to my current library is turned off, then I'll click okay, and we get this big, huge blob of leaves right here. Now you can move it into any position you like. However, I came up with some coordinates once again just to make it easier to follow along with me. So I'll change the x value to 2,914, and I'll set the y value to 2,666, and again, this is the position of the center of the selected object, as indicated by the fact that the center point is selected inside this reference point matrix. Alright now that I've done that, I'll go ahead and press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac a couple of times to apply that change, and I'll go ahead and rename this guy deciduous, like so. And then I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, to accept that change. Alright now we want to make a bunch of copies of these leaves, and so I'll press Control + Alt here on the PC, Command + Option on the Mac, and I'll drag a copy of these guys over to about here. That's not exactly where I want it, so I'll press Control + T, or Command + T on the Mac, to invoke free transform, I'll change the x value to 1,300, and then I'll change the y value to 3,230, and then I'll press the Enter key, Return key on the Mac a couple of times to apply that change. Now I'll Control + Alt, or Command + Option + drag another copy of it, then I'll press Control + T, or Command + T on the Mac, in order to bring up free transform. And the reason I'm using free transform to move these objects around is because that way you can see the coordinates. Alright now I'll change the x value to 136, so very low, meaning that the center's going to be very tight to the left hand side of the canvas, and then I'll Tab over to the y value and change it 2,666, which is the same y value I assigned to the first blob of leaves, and then I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac a couple of times to apply that change. Alright, you can see that we're doing pretty good here, but I want more, so I'll Control + Alt, or Command + Option + drag that most recent blob to about there let's say, and then I'll press Control + T, or Command + T on the Mac, in order to switch to free transform. I want to flip this guy, so I'll right-click, and choose flip horizontal. And then I'll go up to the scale values, link them together, and notice the W value, width, is now negative. I'm going to leave that guy alone. That just shows me that I've flipped the leaves horizontally. And instead I'm going to change the height value from 100 to 64%, and notice that goes ahead and changes the width value to -64% automatically, which is a great thing. And then I'll select the x value right there, and I'll change it to 930 pixels, Tab over to the y value, change it to 2,450, and then press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac a couple of times to apply that change. Let's go ahead and duplicate this guy one more time just by Control + Alt, or Command + Option + dragging it slightly down, pressing Control + T, or Command + T on the Mac, and then changing the x value to 96, and then changing the y value to 2,850. And then I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, a couple of times to apply that final change. Now those of you very familiar with Photoshop may wonder since I wanted to create so many copies of this guy, why didn't I just press Control + Alt + T, or Command + Option + T, in order to transform a duplicate, and I could've done that for every single one of these leaf blobs, which would've saved some time and effort. Problem is, that particular keyboard shortcut currently does not work with smart objects. Alright now, I'm going to scroll down my list here inside the layers panel, Shift + click on the first evergreen, so that all of my tree layers are selected, and then I'll click on the fly-out menu icon in the top right corner of the layers panel, and choose new group from layers. That'll allow me to name this group as I create it, and I'll just call the group trees, and then click okay. Alright now, I want to create a new layer on top of this one, and that way I can just fill in this region down here with black. And so I'll press Control + Shift + N, or Command + Shift + N on the Mac, to bring up the new layer dialog box, and I'll call this layer blackness because we will be painting with black, and then I'll click okay. And now I'll switch to the brush tool, which you can get by pressing the B key, and then I'll right-click inside the image window, and I'll crank the size value up to 300, it's going to work nicely, and I'll take the hardness value up to 100%. And then I'll just go ahead and zoom into this region right here, and I'll start painting in this stuff. Now you don't want to over-paint, you do want to leave some holes here and there, just for the sake of realism, if you will, even though this is a kind of cartoon silhouette. And then I'll just go ahead and scroll over a little bit more and paint in this region like so. And now I'll press Control + 0, or Command + 0 on the Mac, to zoom out so that I can see the entire composition. And now I'll press Shift + F to switch to the full screen mode, and I'll go ahead and zoom in pretty tightly as well. And that's how you add a forest and silhouette, featuring these evergreens and deciduous leaves in front of your E.T. moon, here inside Photoshop.

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