Recent Work
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So how about trying our hand making a DVD in PS ? I’m not going to go into tweaking each of the elements that make up this tutorial, that will be your job. I’m going to show you how to easily put together a DVD – put one of your images on it if you like – place it differently – anything can be done to each of the layers. You might want to read through this first to get an idea of what is happening. Just shift click or ctrl click on the images to be taken to the larger view. Open a new image in PS 800×600 and choose a darkish colour for the b/ground (you’ll see why later – I want to show you something). Don’t forget to double click on your b/ground layer and click ok on the dialogue box that comes up to make the b/ground layer editable. Create a new layer by clicking on the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, then grab your elliptical marquee tool, and whilst holding down the shift + alt keys draw out a circle – don’t make it too big, we will be distorting it later. Fill this with white. Leave the marching ants showing and duplicate the layer three times by dragging the layer to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. You should have something similar to the image below, ignore my text layers. Deselect the selection. You’ll notice that I have named the layers and that may be a good idea for you to do as well. Turn on (click on) the next layer up the stack, mine is called ‘main’ and I want you to press Ctrl + T on your keyboard to bring up the Transform Tool, or you can go to Edit>Transform>Scale. Holding down your Shift + Alt keys scale down the circle similar to the image below. We are trying to form the outside edge of a DVD as it faces us. You’ll also notice that I’ve highlighted an icon in the layers palette, we’re going to be using that next, so you need to know where it is. Ignore the hole in the dvd, yours will not look like this :-) Still working on the same layer, I want you to click on the ‘Lock Transparency’ icon at the top of the layers palette (refer to the above image to locate it). Go and choose a colour to fill this layer with – alternatively, you could use one of your images. Once you have a colour, and it is set as the f/ground colour use Alt + Backspace on your keyboard to fill it. Make the ‘plastic’ layer active and click on it to make sure you are working on that layer and repeat the previous step with the Transform Tool, making the circle smaller this time – see image below. This is where it gets interesting :-) I want you to select the circle you just scaled down, with the magic wand tool. Now, click back on the ‘edge’ layer (not the b/ground) and press the delete key. Then click on the ‘main’ layer (check my images for the names on my layers) and press the delete key, click back on the ‘plastic’ layer and you can deselect the marching ants. Before we scale down the ‘spindle’ layer, we will have to fill it with a colour other than white so it stands out against the ‘plastic’ layer. Lock the transparency again and fill it with black. Finally, we’re going to scale down the ‘spindle’ layer the same way we have with the other three layers. Follow the instructions above. Make this one smaller – see image below, and we’re going to punch a hole in the spindle layer, / select the black with the magic wand tool, then press the delete key. You should now have something similar to the image below. Now click on the little icon on the b/ground layer to make the layer invisible – might say Layer 0 if you didn’t name it (like me), then go and merge the visible layers, and then you can turn on the background layer again. I’m going to distort the DVD layer with the Transform Tool, press Ctrl + T on the keyboard, or go to Edit>Transform>Scale and, working on the centre square on the bottom line, push the image up about a third or halfway. When you are happy with it press the enter key – see image below. You can rotate or distort the image as well if you want. Next I want you to duplicate the dvd layer by dragging it to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Working on the DVD layer, I want you to lock the transparency again. We’re going to make an edge for our DVD, so go pick a colour – I picked a medium grey. Once you have the colour you want, go ahead and fill the layer. You won’t be able to see any visible change at the moment. Make sure your selection tool is active and I want you to use the down arrow on your keyboard to nudge the the layer down. I tapped my down arrow key 7 times to create the dvd edge in the image below, which in reality would be a little bit too much, but I’ve done that to show you what is going on. Try tapping yours down about 5 or 6 to make it smaller. Before we leave this layer, I want you to make sure that it is the active layer by clicking on it and then I want you to lock the trnsparency of the layer. To make the edge look a little more realistic we are going to throw in a couple of shadows and highlights. With a largish soft brush and with the f/ground colour set to black (refer to below image if I’m not making any sense) throw in a shadow along the left and right edges of the side view and one inside the spindle hole (to the left). Switch your f/ground colour to white and throw a highlight around the centre area of the edge view and inside the spindle hole to the left. If you have used white like have for the edge on the main disc you might like to try a light grey for the highlight. Okay, we’re getting near the end of this now – so deep breath and lets carry on. You’ll probably notice that we still have the white area around the spindle hole (that we named plastic waaaaay up there somewhere) and we need to make that a little bit see through. So I want you to click on the eye icon next to the b/ground layer – layer o, or whatever you named it – the red layer in my case, to make it invisible and then go ahead and use ‘merge visible’ to merge the other layers together. Click on the eye icon again on the b/ground layer to make it visible. Click on the DVD layer and drag it to the create new layer button at the bottom of the layers palette. Click on the top layer to make sure you are working on it and grab your magic wand tool, then click on the white area. If you used white for the outer edge of the main disc like I did, then that is going to select as well – that’s fine, we can fix that. Using the Lasso Tool, or the Rectangular Marquee Tool go to the top menu bar and select the icon that says Subtract From Selection. Now, go and select around any of the marching ants that you don’t want and as soon as you join up the two ends if you are using the Lasso they will disappear. If you use the Rectangular Marquee, just select around the ants that you don’t want and they will disappear. Refer to the image below. Once you are left with just the centre white area selected, I want you to click on the layer below and hit the delete key – not on the b/ground layer. Click back on the top layer, deselct the selection and take the opacity of that layer down to suit – I used 25%. Refer to the image after the one below. Make the b/ground layer invisible by unchecking the little eye icon and ‘merge visible’ so that the 2 DVD layer are one, then drag that layer to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and click on the back layer i.e. not the top one. Should be the middle layer. Go ahead and lock the transparency, then with black as the f/ground colour fill the dvd. This is going to be the cast shadow for the dvd. With your selection tool, drag the shadow layer down to where you want it to be. Still working on the shadow layer uncheck the lock transparency icon at the top of the palette then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and blur the shadow to suit – and below is our completed image. I also reduced the opacity of this layer to 50% So what have we learned …. 1) That I really wasn’t kidding when I said I wasn’t going to refine any of the edges/layers :-) 2) All about Locking Transparency and how it can be helpful to you. 3) How to make an illusion of 3D in a 2D space. 4) And that any steps taken in making the DVD can be used for other things. If you have any questions just ask.
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Define pattern and then make a brick wall in Photoshop Just because you’ve always wanted to make a brick wall :-) You can define a pattern for just about anything in PS, sometimes they need to step and repeat and because of that, we will be using our grid which we will need to adjust in the preferences. So go to Edit>Preferences and choose Guides, Grids, Slices & Count. Viewing the image below, change the highlighted area to the same settings – Gridline every 1 inch – subdivisions 11. Now, go and create a new file 800×600 72dpi. Go to Image>Image Size and make sure the Document Size is set to inches. Create a new blank layer above the background layer by clicking on the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, then go to the top menu bar and select / View>Show>Grid and then zoom on the image to 200%. With your rectangular marquee tool selected go and make a selection similar to the one if the image below 11 squares across and 5 down. Choose a colour for the bricks and making sure it is the f/ground colour, press Alt + Backspace or go to Edit> Fill and choose Foreground. With the selection tool selected, and holding down your Ctrl + Alt keys drag the brick you made and place it as in the image below. You can also use Edit>Copy – Edit>Paste if you like. Then I want you to repeat that process again, and place the third brick the same as in the image below. The gap between the two top bricks is for the grout, we’re going to create the grout to the left side and below when we select the area to ‘Define Pattern’. So lets do that now. With your rectangular marquee tool I want you to select the area of the image that I have highlighted below. Go to View>Show and click on grid to deselect it. Next, I want you to click on the little eye icon next to the background layer so that the pattern has a transparent backgound. Next, go to Edit>Define Pattern and give the pattern a name – use something like bricks :-) Next go to Select>Deselect and then delete all layers except the background layer. click on the ‘create new layer’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette and go to Edit>Fill and choose pattern from the drop down menu, scroll down because your new pattern should be at the bottom. Hover your cursor over the top and it will show the name of the pattern Press OK and you should end up with something similar to below. Now we’re going to change the background colour to something that more resembles grout. Make sure you are working on the background layer by clicking on it and then go and select a colour for the grout. I used R255 G204 B153. Making sure that that it is the foreground colour press Alt + backspace on your keyboard, alternatively you can go to Edit>Fill and choose foregound. Our next job is to add some noise to the background layer. go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and uncheck the Monochromatic box, because in this instance we do want to add a little colour to the noise. You can punch in the same figures as in the image below if you like, or choose some to suit yourself. Now we need to make the little brown rectangles look like bricks. Working on the bricks layer (the one you filled with the pattern) click on the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette, or go to Layer>Layer Style and choose bevel and emboss. You can punch in the same settings as I have in the image below, or choose to suit. Next we’re going to use the texturizer to give the bricks some texture. You can use the numbers that I used in the image below. The image looks uniform, so what you can do at this point is just your dodge and burn tools to randomly darker and lighten the bricks. Set your burn tool to shadows and use about 20% opacity, use a soft edged brush and randomly burn some bricks. Set your dodge tool to shadows and with a soft edged brush and the opacity set to around 20%, randomly highlight the bricks. You can change the opacity on both the burn and dodge process to build up the effect. Another thing you can do, is create a new layer and with a small brush set to black draw some cracks in the bricks. Take the opacity down on the layer if you want as well. One more thing you could do is to grab the eraser tool and gently take away some of the brick edges (use a size 2 brush on this size image) so that the whole wall isn’t so uniform. I haven’t done much dodging & burning on the completed image, that’s your job to go and finish it off to suit your needs :-) Larger Image Lots more you could do to this if you wanted, just use your imagination :-) So we’ve learned how to define a pattern and put it to some use in the real world. If there is something that you don’t understand, or that I have failed to explain properly, just ask. Have fun!
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I am very interested in finding out the different softwares that people use to enhance their photos. Some photos I have been looking at are so insanely stunning. The look and quality are amazing. So, what do you use? I use Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Lightroom. Anything better? / Any tips? / Suggestions? / Comments? / Concerns? / :)
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Hello ladies and gangsters, I have once again written a post on my blog, that I think have a lot to offer for many artists here on the bub. / Both for the seasoned artist and the aspiring beginner. / You will find links to free books by the Illustration Icon Andrew Loomis. / He has written some of the best and mostly used handbooks for artists ever published. / / If you plan to improve your drawing skills, you can not do a better choice than the links I have for you here. / You can download all the books he did, and a few more, just check my blog here POS
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You may want to add some atmosphere to an image in the form of fog/mist and we can do this quite easily in Photoshop. First I’d like to thank MARK GERMAN for letting me use his Silence Lane image in this tutorial. If you don’t have an image to try this tutorial out on, you will have to contact Mark to ask his permission to use it. Here is our start image Our image with one application of fog/mist And I added another layer of fo/mist because I wanted to cover the bottom right of the image a little more. A larger view of the finished image is available HERE So lets get started. Open your image, duplicate and close the original. I want you to click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, or you can go to the top menu bar and go Layer>New>Layer, or press Ctrl+Shift+n. Making sure the new layer is active and that your foreground/background colours are set to the default of black/white (press d on the keyboard if they aren’t, or if white is the f/ground and black the b/ground, press x on the keyboard) go to the filter menu in the top tool bar and choose Render>Clouds. In this tutorial I have applied Render>Clouds once, if you would like some variation on this press Ctrl+f on the keyboard to repeat but you will also notice that the clouds appear differently each time. To get some rather different effects, instead of pressing Ctrl+f – press Ctrl+Alt+f ....... try it and see :-) So now we’re going to give the clouds a little blur. Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and you can set the same amounts as I have in the image below. Most of what you do from now on will vary according to each image, and what it is you are trying to achieve. At the bottom of the layers palette you will see a little icon with FX on it, 2nd from left, I want you to click on that and choose Blending Options from the menu – alternatively you can go to the top menu bar and choose Layer>LayerStyle>Blending Options – and a dialogue box will appear like the one in the image below, I’ve highlighted the part of the dialogue box that we will be using next – ‘Blend If’ Make sure that ‘Blend If’ in the highlighted red area is set to gray. You’ll notice that the sliders have a triangle at each end (black and white) we will be concentrating on the black end, so don’t worry about the white slider. You’ll also notice that the triangle shape has a small white area in the middle of the slider, this is so that we can split the slider, which we are going to do now. Hold down the alt key (option for mac) and put your cursor to the right of the white area then click and drag the slider, it should now have split into a half triangle. Looking at the image below, move this half of the traingle to 125, then come back and move the left part of the half triangle to 25. When you’ve done that, click ok. Now I want you to press Ctrl+t on the keyboard to bring up the Transform tool, or you can go to Edit>Transform>Scale – you will have to decide at this point where you want the fog/mist to be and bring the top down accordingly, as I’ve done in the next image. What you will have to do next is throw in a gradient to take away the harsh transition. Making sure your f/ground and b/ground are set to the default, select the gradient tool and on the top menu bar make sure that black to transparent is selected. You need to do the gradient from the top to the bottom, BUT not from the top of the image, from above the harsh line of the clouds layer. You may have to do this more than once, just keep trying until you get a nice transition. In the image below I did the gradient 4 times till I got it how I wanted it. I then took the opacity of the layer down to 70%. I then duplicated the clouds layer by dragging it to the create a new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and with that layer selected I grabbed my move tool from the side menu bar and moved it up until it was were I wanted it. Now I have a harsh transition at the bottom of this clouds layer, so do the same as above except start at the bottom of the harsh line and work upwards with your gradient. A bit of practice will make this a very simple task. I changed the opacity of this clouds layer to 60%. The image below shows the final work, which btw is different from the image at the top of this tutorial because I couldn’t remember what I had done LOL :-) And the larger image HERE Remember that all of these steps can be used in various ways on different images, not just to create fog/mist and they can be adapted to create the type of fog/mist you want – it is the process that is important.
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Hello fellow bubblers I am afraid it isn’t often you hear from me in this way but to compensate I have some valuable content to offer today. / I also have some exiting news that should interest most of the people here on the bubble. But first to the content / Earlier today I wrote a post on my blog that might contain some items of interest for those of you that draw and paint ore want to start out doing so. / The post is about online reference material and contains a few very good links to different reference resources. Then on to the news: / You see in a few days there will pop up a new group here on the bub with the simple name Napoleon. / What in the world you might think….and you should….absolutely. / You see Muskulare Teeth and I have decided to start up a consept I have carried with me for nearly two years( a very long time in web years…especially web 2.0 years), the group will be the headquarter, news stand and scrapbook for the whole project). We plan to make a graphic novel, ore rather many graphic novels about people in Europe during the times of Napoleon Bonaparte I. / Every episode will be loosely built around an episode of the podcast Napoleon 101 / It was this podcast that inspired me to get the idea in the first place. / But we will not just follow the big shots, but rather make up ordinary people as our heroes and let them take their little part in the big play, and sometimes even have a influence on the big events. / Sometimes they know about it and the consequences, sometimes not. / And all at the same time we keep an eye on the big picture too. The format will be based upon my drawings , but then it will be filmed and narrated. Music will be added, we will mix in other peoples drawings and photos as well. And we will involve writers to write the different episodes. This is where you fellow bubblers come in to the picture. / In order to pull this one off we totally rely on the participation from you people, ore there is no way we can pull it off in a way that guaranty the quality we need without you folks. First and foremost we need writers to start writing episodes for us. So if you feel the call, (if no one does we come and get you so you can just as well jump in to it now and save all of us from the embarrassment :-), just contact me ore muskulare teeth . / Ore you can wait to the group is up and go through there, it will all be fine. So now it is up to you people….please don’t let us down, we look so much forward to this. And just imagine to get a chance to work on a comic video…is that cooooool! ore what?! :-) POS
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Practically all users of Photoshop and other image editing software will be aware of Layers and Blend Modes, and how useful they can be. Some of the most useful blend modes from a photographic point of view are screen, multiply, soft light, overlay, luminosity and hard light. The problem with blend modes is that you have to add a second layer into the mix for them to work – even if you unlock your b/ground layer blend modes are not available to you. So we’re stuck with large file sizes from duplicating layers, slow performance and the chance of a computer crash ….. or are we :-) I do some image restoration and I can tell you that more often than not, the files can start to get rather large if there is a lot of work that needs to be done. Enter Katrin Eismann, a photoshop guru and one of the most well known people in image restoration. She has a little trick that I’m going to show you here that will keep your file sizes within a manageable range, whilst applying all the blend modes that you want. My start image is a 800×600 72dpi file, which you will recognise from the creating rain tutorial. What I want you to notice in the image below, is that after applying 6 adjustment layers my file size has only doubled. So lets get started. Open your image, duplicate the image and close the original. Or use THIS What I want you to do now is go to the bottom of the layers palette and click on the adjustment layer icon and select a curves adjustment layer and when the dialogue box opens click ok without making any adjustments. Go to the top of the layers palette and change the blend mode to screen. You will notice that the image has lightened, but we are only looking for the foreground to be lighter in this case. Make sure the layer mask is selected and choose your gradient tool. With your f/ground, b/ground set to the default black and white, go to the gradient picker in the top menu bar and select black to transparent. Bearing in mind that black will conceal, I want you to start at the top of the image, hold down your left mouse button, drag down to the bottom hold down your shift key if you want a straight line, then release. The sky should have stayed the same as the original, and the f/ground will now be lighter. Go to the adjustment layer icon again and pick a levels adjustment layer this time. When the dialogue opens click ok and change the blend mode of the layer to multiply. Do exactly the same as you did above except reverse the starting point for your gradient because we want to keep the dark sky. See image below for the effect so far. You’ll notice that it didn’t make any difference whether we used a curves or levels adjustment layer because we didn’t make any changes. I’ve gone on and used 2 more adjustment layers with this image, both with the blend mode changed to screen, both with inverted masks – ctrl i on the keyboard to invert the mask (f/ground colour to white, select brush tool), and then I’ve painted back in over the trees on the first mask, and the foreground on the second mask. You can see in the image below that the revealed part of the mask is white i.e the part I wanted to stay lighter. Start Image first, adjusted image second. / Remember that you can take down the opacity of any of the adjustment layers if you feel the effect is too strong.
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Perhaps you want to composite some images together to make a scarey, stormy image. Or maybe you have an image that has storm clouds, is dark and overcast and would benefit with some rain added to it – or maybe some snow for that winters scene. Start and Finish Images Using a couple of filters and a blend mode in PS you can create away to your hearts content. The image I’ve used in the tutorial is 800×600 @ 72 dpi You will have to adjust some of the settings that I am going to use to compensate for a larger image and dpi, but I know you like to play in Photoshop :-) Firstly, open your chosen image, duplicate it and close the original. If you just want an image to practice on, you will find the start file HERE I’m using PS3, so my next step was to use a B&W adjustment layer to convert this particular image to B&W, I then used a Curves adjustment layer and then a Levels adjustment layer. You don’t have to convert to B&W, I just chose to do so because the original image sucks :-) How you want your image to be is fine, it is not going to affect what we are going to do next. So, whatever it is that you have done make sure that the top most layer is selected then I want you to create a new layer above. You can click on the new layer icon in the layers palette, or you can press shift+ctrl+n to bring up the new layer dialogue box and name the new layer. Now I want you to fill the new layer with black. If your f/ground and b/ground colour are set to the default you can press alt+backspace on your keyboard for window users and I’m not sure for mac users LOL probably option backspace. Now is starts to get fun. Making sure that you new black layer is active, I want you to go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise – below are the settings that I have used on this image, so punch in the same settings if you like. Go straight to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and you can apply the settings that I have by punching in the same figures as the image below. If you want the rain to go straight down, or from a different angle altogether, just rotate the little angle wheel around till you get want you want. Next I want you to go to Image>Adjustments>Levels. In the image below you can see what the starting point will be for this particular image. I have made no adjustments as of yet. By bringing in the black slider toward the middle of the bar we start to creat the rain. The rain will be the white lines that you see in the image. You can see in the image below that I have taken the black slider in toward the middle and I have also moved the white slider in toward the middle slightly. How much you move each slider is entirely up to you. It will depend on how much rain you want in the image etc., So that’s the part where you get to play around because each image will require slightly modified settings. Right, so thats a mess LOL But, here comes the great part. Go to the Blending Mode option at the top of the layers palette and I want you to change it to Screen ….. look at that ….. magic! :-) Screen mode knocks out any black pixels and the multiply blend mode is the exact opposite to Screen if you want to knock out white pixels. All that is left to do now is change the opacity slider if you want. I’ve changed the opacity to 50% in the image below. And here is our completed image. View large file HERE
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This process is relevant to any adjustment layer that you use in Photoshop if you want the same effect on a couple of other images. You’ve taken some images and found that they are all similar and will need similar adjustments to them. I’ve started with the images that you see below, and I’ve used a levels adjustment on the first image and from there all we are going to do is drag the adjustment layer to the other two images. Have the other images open that you want to use the adjustment layer on, and simply grab the adjustment layer and drag it to the next image. You should be able to see what I have done in the next image. Continue doing this until all the images have the adjustment layer. You might have to go back in and tweak the adjustment a little bit if you feel that it requires it, simply double click on the adjustment not the mask and tweak away to your heart’s content. This can save time if you have a few images to adjust and it doesn’t matter if the images are various sizes, the drag and drop method will still make the correct adjustment.
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Yet another under used tool in Photoshop, but extremely useful in removing colour casts from images. Eddie Tapp calls this the 90% method, which works 100% of the time, on 90% of images. The first image below is a before and after shot, the original shot on the left, and the colour cast corrected on the right. I happen to know the colour of the top my daughter was wearing in this shot and that she doesn’t have a liver condition – well, not since the transplant …. LOL just kidding. It is also a horrible shot, with fringing going on, blown highlights etc., :-) The next image is the original start image. With the next image I used a levels adjustment layer, and in the dialogue box brought the sliders in to the majority of the information in each of the individuals channels. I think you will agree that it hasn’t removed the colour cast at all and has simply darkened the image. So how can we get the image to look like the one below, with the yellow colour cast removed. First of all open your image, or nick my original image HERE to have a practice on. You are going to have your info window open, which is located with the Histogram and Navigator window or you can just go to window>info and click on it and it will open. While we will be using a levels adjustment layer to edit this image, we will be using the numbers in the info window to make our adjustments, not the numbers in the layers palette. It sounds a little complicated at first, but once you’ve done this a couple of times you will wonder why you thought it was complicated. You are also going to need your Colour Sampler Tool which you can find in the same bundle as the eyedropper tool and you will need to go up to the top toolbar and set the Sample Size to 5×5 Average. So lets check what we have so far. We have an image open, we have the info window visible, we have the colour sampler tool and we have set the sample size to 5×5 average. We’re ready to start. Take a look at the image below to get an idea. The larger image that you may want to reference is HERE You can set up to 4 points with the Colour Sampler Tool, but we are only going to be using 2 in this demonstration. You might want to reference the larger image through the link above, hold down the shift key before you click the link and it will force it to open in a new window so that you don’t have to keep flitting backwards and forwards from RB to flickr. With that image open you should be able to see where I have set the first point, simply by clicking on the image. The first point is always in relation to the white point. You can see the figures that have come up from the point that I set in Bek’s hair, they are the first numbers - R – 214 / G – 208 / B – 184 Go ahead now and select the black point by clicking in one of the dark areas in the image. You can see that I have chosen the strap on the bag, and the numbers are - R – 36 / G – 42 / B – 41 Click on the adjustments layer icon in the bottom of the layers palette and choose levels, the dialogue box will now appear. We will be using the individual channels within the layers dialogue box to make the adjustments, so use the drop down menu to locate them. Because we are going to be adjusting the lights/whites we need to locate the lightest channels, in this case it is the red channel at 214, we do not need to adjust this channel but we do need to adjust the green and blue channels. From the drop down menu select the green channel and with the white slider bring it in until the reading in the info palette is 214. Do not read the numbers from the layers dialogue box, move the slider inwards until the number in the INFO window reads 214. Repeat this with the blue channel. If you can’t get it exactly to match try using your up and down arrow keys, if you still can’t get it, one higher or lower i.e. 213/215 is acceptable. Now look at the second point you made, this is the black point, we need to look at the lowest number here rather than the highest – 0 being black. So the lowest number we have is in the red channel at 36. We need to do a similar process to what we did above, only this time we will be bringing the black slider in until the green and blue channel are at 36. Once you have done this, simply click ok on the levels dialogue box. To remove the colour sampler points from the image – with the colour sampler tool selected look in the top menu bar and you will see a ‘clear’ button, just click on this.
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The High Pass Filter in Photoshop seems to have been around forever, and you can find it located under Filter>Other>High Pass. Think of it as one of The Others and listen to the Twlight Zone music start playing …... First of all lets take a few seconds to see how the sharpening process works in image editing software. All sharpening methods are edge detection processes, wherever an edge is found it is exaggerated by making the darks, darker and the lights, lighter. The trick is to get this just right so as not to produce haloing effects which are the result of over sharpening. Another thing to consider when sharpening, is not just sharpening but perhaps throwing what you don’t want sharp out of focus. Say for instance that you want to use a radius of 10 on an image, why not use a radius of 5 to sharpen and gaussian blur/lens blur with a radius of 5 to throw the rest of the image out of focus. sharpening isn’t always about sharpening. Then we can simply selectively sharpen something in our image, a person, an animal, eyes etc., to draw more attention to that particular part of an image and add more impact. What we’re going to look at today is sharpening with the High Pass Filter. There are a couple of other sharpening processes available in PS, the USM (Unsharp Mask) has been around for quite a while now, and the new Smart Sharpen Filter appeared in CS2 and is terrific. I used to have an old technique for adjusting motion blur with the Emboss Filter, which is yet another way to sharpen in PS. But lets concentrate on one filter at a time. Sharpening is usually the very last thing that you do to an image, so go ahead an do what needs to be done with your chosen image, flatten your image, and then duplicate the layer by dragging it to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, or press ctrl J on the keyboard, cmd J for the mac. If you are working with CS3 you can turn the duplicate layer into a smart filter, which will then make the high pass filter editable. This is my start image, a horrible bird shot :-) So you’ve got your duplicate layer, make sure that it is selected by clicking on it then I want you to change the blend mode to overlay (ignore the fact that the image will look awful at this stage), I also want you to make sure that the image is at 100% and go to Filter>Other>High Pass. An easy way to figure out the radius you will need to use to sharpen is the actual size of your image. My bird shot is less than 1m, but the first image will show that I used a radius of 1. If you have a 10m image, set the radius to 10. You can adjust this with the opacity slider later if you feel that it is a little too much. 5m file use 5, 20m file use 20 etc., What you are looking for is to have a similar look in your preview window as I have in the above image. The next image shows you what you don’t want the preview window to look like. You’ll notice I’ve used a radius of 5. That is the basis of High Pass sharpening really. You can adjust the effect by taking the opacity slider down in the layer palette or if you feel that it isn’t enough you can trash the layer and start again, or you can go to Filter and at the very top of that box will be the name of your last filter, in this case High Pass, just click on that or press ctrl + F to repeat and then use the opacity slider to take the effect down. What you don’t want to see appearing on the image, is haloing. This is where the image starts to get a glow going on … which is a result of over sharpening as seen in the image below. If you want some selective sharpening rather than the entire image to be sharp – go ahead and do the sharpening with High Pass then add a layer mask to that layer by clicking on the mask icon in the layers palette. Make the mask active by clicking on it, then press ctrl i on your keyboard to invert it (should be black). Grab your brush and make sure the f/ground colour is to white, then simply paint back in the area/s that you want to be sharp. In the image below I’ve sharpened the birds head, although I’m not sure that it will be very noticeable with this size image. You can also try the blend mode at soft light or leave it at normal, just play around a little bit because different blend modes will produce different effects and they might just be useful for the image you are working on. If you want to know what your image will look like on the web (computer monitors) view your image at 100%, if you want to get an idea of what it will look like printed, view it at 50%. Have fun :-)
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For some strange reason you’ve found yourself with a B&W image that you want to add some colour back into. Perhaps the bride holding the bouquet would look really nice if the roses were red and the stems were green but the rest of the image was left in B&W. There are several ways that you can go about this in Photoshop but what we’re looking for is the most flexible, one that we can edit later without having to bin a couple of layers because the colours weren’t quite right. You know the scene, spend a few precious hours doing the roses in the bouquet and then you find out that the darn things were pink, not red …... arghh! The question is, is there something within Photoshop that can help us ….. indeed there is. Anyone who has restored some old photos will know all about hand colouring and basically, that is what we are going to do. Open a B&W image, or just desat a colour one, or convert to grayscale (not that you would normally do that) but we’re just going to have a play and we don’t want any colour in the image, we don’t want it in RGB mode. So what adjustment would give us the most flexibilty to change the colour if we chose too. You guessed didn’t you :-) We’re going to be working with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and we’re going to check the colorize box. At this point the whole image is going to be whatever colour you choose, that’s okay, we’re going to fix that. Choose a colour with the Hue slider – Adjust the Saturation slider and the Lightness slider until you are happy with the colour. Now you’ve got this great big mess but we’re gonna fix it. Go down to the little mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette and click on it. You will now have a white box next to the hu/sat adjustment layer – and you’ll notice that you image still looks awful. So lets fix it. Click on the mask (white box) to make sure that it is active and press ctrl i on the keyboard (cmd i for the Mac) The mask should now have turned black, and the image should look exactly like it did when we first started. Grab your brush, and making sure that the f/ground colour is set to white (cos on a black mask, white reveals) and simply paint the area that you want the colour to show through. Change the layer blend mode to soft light, or if you don’t like that try overlay or one of the other blend modes. Don’t forget that you can also use the opacity slider to take down the intensity of the colour. So yeah! how am I going to change the red roses to pink ? – double click on the hue/sat adjustment layer (not the layer mask), and the hue/sat dialogue box will appear. Change the hue/sat/lightness sliders till you get a whole other colour …. magic, you don’t have to trash layers and with them all you’re hard work. You can do this as often as is needed to add various colours back into the image. Do a red adjustment layer for the roses and then a green one for the stems and leaves (example). Heck, do various shades of red and green if you want. It’s flexible and relatively simple to master. Do gradients as well if you like and have that effect on a single rose and another gradient effect on a different rose. Make sure your f/ground and b/ground colours are set to what colours you want to use in your gradient. Click the little adjustment icon at the bottom of the layers palette and click gradient. From the dialogue box pick your f/ground b/ground gradient choose linear (or one of the other gradients available) click okay, add a layer mask, invert the layer mask, grab the brush tool, making sure that it is set to white – and paint in your gradient. This is limited to a certain degree but you can get some really nice effects going on and best of all it is editable. Here are a couple of sample shots. I’m not a flower photographer, so this is about the only image with a flower in it, but it will give you an idea of what you can do. Disclaimer – All spelling mistakes are deliberate :-)
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