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

910 Flipping a face to create new identities

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

910 Flipping a face to create new identities

- Hey, gang. This is Deke McClelland. Welcome the Deke's Techniques, the dog days of summer days. Be you a regular viewer or an occasional binge watcher, you may recall that we spent the previous weeks creating a series of precisely overlapping and altogether continuous rainbow faces. Well, this week, we're going to take that same original portrait shot, and we're going to flip and merge it to create two new and symmetrical personalities. The one in the middle, based on the right, and therefore logical half of the face, will become a character that I'm calling Spock. The other, based on the left, and therefore intuitive half of the face, I will call captain James T. Kirk. Wait a sec. That's actually flipped. It's the left half of the brain that's Spock, and the right that's Kirk, but this is a photograph. So what we perceive as the left is actually her right and vice versa. And so it's flipped twice and therefore not at all. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. All right, here's the final version of the composition just as it appears inside Photoshop. we're once again going to be starting with this portrait shot right here, from the Dreamstime image library, about which you can learn more and get some great deals at dreamstime.com/deke. All right, I'll get rid of that URL layer by pressing the Backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac. Then I'll convert this flat background to an independent layer by double-clicking on it. And I'll call this layer portrait, let's say, and press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac. Now I want to jump a copy of this layer and name it in one operation. And so I'll press Ctrl + Alt + J, or Command + Option + J on the Mac, in order to force the display of the new layer dialogue box. And I'll go ahead and call this guy flipped, so let's say, because that's what it's going to be in just a moment. And to flip the image, I'm going to go to the Edit menu, choose Transform, and then choose this guy, Flip Horizontal. All right, now I want to be able to see these two images at the same time. So assuming that you have some kind of selection tool active, such as the Rectangular Marquee, then you can just tap the 5 key to reduce the opacity of this layer to 50%. All right, now you can see that they're a little off from each other where the nose in particular is concerned. And so I'm going to scoot them both closer to each other, first by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Left Arrow twice in a row. That's going to move that flipped layer 20 pixels to the left, and then I'll click on the portrait layer to select it here inside the Layers panel, and I'll press Ctrl + Shift + Right Arrow twice in a row. And by the way, if you're working on the Mac, that's going to be Command along with the Shift key, and that's because the Control key on a PC or the Command key on the Mac gives you temporary access to the Move tool. All right, now I'll go ahead and switch back to the flipped layer, and I'll press the 0 key to restore the opacity of that layer to 100%. All right, and I'll go ahead and zoom out by pressing Ctrl + 0, or Command + 0 on a Mac, and I'm going to create a new guideline right down the center of the image by going to the View menu and choosing the New Guide command. And then you'll want to set the orientation to Vertical and the position to 50%. At which point, go ahead and click OK to create that guide. All right, I'm going to zoom out a click here, just so that I can see the four walls of the canvas. And again, armed with my Rectangular Marquee tool, which you can get by pressing the M key, go ahead and marquee the entire left half of the image, like so. Then over here in the Layers panel, drop down to the Add Layer Mask icon and click on it, and you will go ahead and mask away the right side of the model's face. All right, now I want to take both of these layers and put them in a group. So I'll click on one, Shift + click on the other, and then go to the flyout menu in the top right corner of the Layers panel and choose New Group from Layers. And I'm going to call this group delicate, and then I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac. All right, now I want to jump a couple of copies of this group. So I'll press Ctrl + J, or Command + J on the Mac, twice in a row. And then I'll turn off the top one. We'll come back to it in a moment. Then you want to select this middle delicate group and we're going to move it over to the right 700 pixels. And the best way to make that happen is to go up to the Edit menu and choose Free Transform, or you can press Ctrl + T, or Command + T on the Mac, and now go up to the Options bar and click on that triangle, that represents delta by the way, the Greek letter delta, and that way, your X and Y values will be relative. And so I'll go ahead and select the X value and change it to 700, like so, and then I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, in order to make that change. All right, now select the bottom delicate group right there. And I will once again enter the Free Transform mode by pressing Ctrl + T, or Command + T on the Mac. And this time, you want to select the X value and change it to negative 700. After which point, I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac, in order to move that group. And you may wonder where I came up with these values. It just gives us room to have this central green face. All right, so obviously one of the groups is blocking the other, so go ahead and select that middle delicate group right there. And again, armed with the Rectangular Marquee tool, just go ahead and select the right half of the image all the way from the right edge over to the guideline. So I overshot it. I'll just go ahead and draw it again. I want to snap into alignment with that guide. At which point, drop down to the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and click on it. And you'll end up with this effect here. And I just want you to notice, if I were to hide the guideline, which you can do by pressing Ctrl + ;, or on the Mac, Command + ; instead, you can see that this is an entirely symmetrical image. Here, we're seeing the right half of the model's face, then we're seeing it flipped. Then we're seeing it flipped again, so it's the way it was photographed. And then finally it's flipped horizontal. And as a result, it's like two symmetrical faces in a mirror. What we want to do now is add a different face in front. And so I'll go ahead and turn on that last delicate group, that is to say the topmost in the stack, and then I'll twirl it open, like so, and I'll click on that layer mask right there, that's associated with the topmost of these two layers, just go ahead and click on it to make it active, and then invert the mask by pressing Ctrl + I, or Command + I on the Mac. And when we get a very different looking face, which I am going to call amazon. All right, now I want to be able to see through this group to the groups below. And so I'll tap the 5 key in order to reduce the opacity of the entire group to 50%. And now I'll press Ctrl + ;, that's Command + ; on the Mac, to bring back my guideline right there. In fact, I need another one, so I'll go up to the View menu and choose New Guide. And I'm going to once again enter 50%, but this time, I'll switch the orientation to Horizontal, and I'll click OK. And I'll zoom out a little bit here, and I'll position my cursor at the intersection of those two guidelines, and I will drag outward, like so, while pressing the Alt key, that's the Option key on the Mac. And that'll allow me to draw the selection from the center outward. And notice in the heads up display that I have a width of 704 pixels. I'm also covering the entire height of the canvas, which is 1,960 pixels. At which point I'll go ahead and release, and then I'll press the 0 key to reinstate an opacity of 100%. And with the amazon group active, go ahead and drop down to the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the panel and click on it. And I'm going to go ahead and twirl close this group. And then I want to feather the mask, which you can do by double-clicking on the layer mask thumbnail. And if that doesn't work for you, if that ends up bringing up the Select and Mask workspace, then you can go to the Window menu and choose the Properties command instead. And now I'll go ahead and select the Feather value, and I'll crank it up to 100 pixels so that we have some very soft transitions. And now I'll hide the Properties panel. I'll zoom back into the image, and I'll go ahead and get rid of the guides by going up to the View menu and choosing the Clear Guides command. And that is how you flip a straight on portrait shot in order to create two new identities here inside Photoshop. A while back, a colleague asked me how, after nine years of Deke's Techniques, I keep coming up with new and fresh ideas. Well, the answer is these are visual ideas and there is literally no end to visual ideas. When you and I are not seeing, we are dreaming. And so the problem is not in creating the ideas, but rather in naming them. For example, if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, I have a followup movie called "Hand Painting A Symmetrical Layer Mask". If you're looking forward to next week, I have a movie called "Two Ways to Colorize With Gradients", followed by another called "Two Ways to Mass Gradient Effects". What do these titles mean? Why should you care? And yet you will be. Deke's Techniques each and every week. Keep watching.

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