Bay FM wants to do an phone interview with a RedBubble artist from southern NSW. If you’re interested drop us an e-mail at earswideopen@...
Bay FM wants to do an phone interview with a RedBubble artist from southern NSW. If you’re interested drop us an e-mail at earswideopen@redbubble.com
I’m very pleased to announce the new group Seascapes I’m looking forward to viewing wat…
I’m very pleased to announce the new group Seascapes I’m looking forward to viewing waterscapes from around the world. I’d like to think that we can upload just our very very best, so please, look through the featured images and see if you can match them! Three photos per member only If you’d like critique, please ask. If you’d like information on how different techniques have been produced, please ask If you think you have a question that I haven’t mentioned, please ask. Thanks for sharing your photos with us! Mel
For some reason, people go a funny shade of green when one starts talking about Dodging and Burning …. nothing to fear at all. I’ve ju…
For some reason, people go a funny shade of green when one starts talking about Dodging and Burning …. nothing to fear at all. I’ve just realised that I haven’t got any little images to insert in this tutorial …. I’ll make them later. Dodging and Burning is not difficult at all, when you realise that 20 low opacity strokes are better than one huge Dodge or Burn stroke. D&B is used to create precise shadow/highlight and can certainly add enormous amounts of lift/punch to an image. Most people would duplicate the layer to do some D&B on, and this is fine until you are working on a 10/15/20mb file and everytime you duplicate the layer the image size doubles. Unless you have a huge amount of RAM, your computer will slow down and sometimes even freeze. Is there a solution …. of course there is, its photoshop. So you’ve been working on an image, and naturally taken snapshots along the way. Now you decide that you would like to do some D&B. Click on the new layer icon on the bottom of the layers palette. Go to Edit>Fill>50%gray>click ok and that’s it LOL, nah, only kidding. Change the blend mode of this layer to soft light. Go grab the Burn tool (example), select whether you want to burn the highlights, midtones or shadows from the top menu and I would suggest quite strongly that you use a very low opacity – around 10% to start out with. I usually use a very soft brush for this and set the size according to what I’m going to be doing. The sheer beauty of using the 50% gray layer set to soft light is that you can simply turn the layer on and off to view your progress – don’t like what you’ve done … trash it and start again. Use exactly the same principle for the Dodge tool. Yet another way to D&B. Click on the new layer icon on the bottom of the layers palette, change the blend mode to soft light (without filling it with 50% gray), select your brush tool and make sure the foreground colour is set to black. Lower your brush opacity in the top menu bar to round about 10% again and start brushing where you want to Burn (darken) the area. Do exactly the same thing, only with white as the foreground colour to do some Dodging (lighten). Yet another interesting take on the above is that you can D&B with colours. Try it … grab your f/ground colour as red (example), check the opacity is down and Dodge or Burn away with that colour. Perhaps even pick a dark red (example) from the image itself to use as the Burn colour. Have fun, and don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. The sheer joy of photoshop is all the fun you can have with it.
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…
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 :-)
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 …
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
Practically all users of Photoshop and other image editing software will be aware of Layers and Blend Modes, and how useful they can be. ...
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.
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 t…
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.
I haven’t done a tutorial in a while and thought this might be something you find handy for replacing a sky, or perhaps selecting fly awa…
I haven’t done a tutorial in a while and thought this might be something you find handy for replacing a sky, or perhaps selecting fly away hair etc., Photoshop has lots of tools for making selections, the magic wand, the highly under / rated quick selection tool in PS3, the lasso, the magnetic lasso, the polygonal, / the pen tool, the extract tool etc., but for some reason when making a selection in / channels is mentioned, folks become a little more nervous. Probably one of the better ways to make accurate selections is in the colour channels, but be warned that it doesn’t always work, so checking the colour channels is one thing that is worth doing straight off the bat. What we will be looking for is the channel with the most contrast, in this case between the sky and the trees. As it happens, the blue channel is the one we will be using, but do check through them on other images you try this on. We’ll be using the paint brush tool and the dodge and burn tools for this exercise, so as long as the program you use has channels, a paint brush, dodge and burn tools you should be able to complete this in programs other than Photoshop. I have uploaded 2 large images to my flickr account, so you can see what you are doing :-) MAIN IMAGE and SKY IMAGE The copyright is mine .. yada, yada … Start Image. Completed Image. I have been building a library of sky images for quite a while, and it is a useful thing / to do. If you find yourself lost for something to take a photo of, start building yourself / a library of skies, textures etc., they can come in very handy. So, we’re going to replace the sky in the first image, with the sky in the 2nd image / because, people often change reasonable blue skies with other blue skies :) Here we go … open the main image and duplicate the layer by dragging it the new layer icon, pressing Ctrl J, or going to Layer>Duplicate Layer in the top toolbar. Next, I want you to click on the channels tab, which should be next to your layers tab. Next, click on the blue channel … you should now see something similar to the image below. I want you to duplicate the blue channel by dragging it to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the palette, and you can go ahead and name this if you like .. I left it as blue copy. You’ll notice that we don’t have access to our adjustment layers from the bottom toolbar like we do in the layers palette, we have to select from the top toolbar. So go to the top toolbar and select Image>Adjustment>Levels and making sure that you are working on the duplicate blue layer (blue layer copy) you can punch in the same settings as I have on the image below. I’ve tried to hide the sand with the dialogue box because we aren’t really interested in that just yet, What you’re looking at is the sky area and the trees and that they are pretty much black and white. You can go and grab your paintbrush now, and with the foreground set to black, paint over the sand at the bottom of the image. Don’t be afraid to zoom in to make sure that it is completely covered. Paint over the bush on the right of the image as well, just be a bit careful as you get nearer the top, remember that we can burn any stray areas with the burn tool. With the foreground set to white, go over the white areas in the sky top left. Stay away from the tree line with the brush tool, we are going to get closer to the trees with the dodge tool in just a second. Don’t forget to zoom in for the sky area as well. You can see in the image below that we are trying to achieve a black and white version of the image for the mask Shall we dodge or burn first ? Lets dodge :-) Select your dodge tool, select highlights from the top menu bar and keep your opacity down to 10%, or perhaps even less. Go along the top tree line .. zoom in for this … and see if there are any stray black pixels, if there is just dodge over them. You can also check around the other white areas, inside the trees for example. When you’re happy with what you have, switch to the burn tool, and choose shadows from the top menu and leave that at about 10% as well. Do the same as you did with the dodge tool, except to the darker areas i.e. burn out any remaining white areas that shouldn’t be there. To Toggle back and forth between your original image click on the RGB channel to check that you have all the areas you want dodged or burned. Like the image below. I went to filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and gave this a blur of 1 – that would obviously be different if you had a higher res image. Before going back to your layers palette by clicking on the layers tab make sure that you click on the RGB layer in the channels palette and then bring in the sky image. Sandwich that between the background and duplicated background layer. Click on the background copy and switch back to the channels palette. Select the blue copy layer (or whatever you called it) and then you can do a couple of things – you can either press the first icon at the bottom of the channels palette which will load the channel as a selection, or you can press Ctrl and then click on the blue copy layer, / and that will load the selection. Click on the RGB channel and then return to the layers palette. Your selection should now show up on your image in the layers palette. Go to Edit>Cut and the new sky image should show through. To further refine the selection, add a mask to the layer and proceed as you normally would to mask away any stray bits that may be left. Select the new sky layer, and use the move tool to position it wherever you want in the image. I know that probably sounds like a lot of messing around, but once you have done it a couple of times you will get the hand of it. And this is one of the easiest ways to select stray hair,fly away hair etc., Taking the time to get a mask as accurate as possible in the colour channels will save you loads of time later on. Hope this has been helpful to you. If you don’t understand any of my ramblings, feel free to ask questions, or BM me.
So lets make some grungy text. You may never need this, but it’s simple to do … so why not! The image below is the only image we ar…
So lets make some grungy text. You may never need this, but it’s simple to do … so why not! The image below is the only image we are going to be using today, but you will need the larger file, so clicky on THIS link. Copyright is mine – yada, yada. Open Photoshop and create a new file 800px X 600px, background set to white. Open the larger image (which you will have saved to your computer) and with your move tool selected and the shift key held down, drag the tree image over to your new file. Holding down the shift key will centre the image for you. Working on the trees layer Go to Image>Adjustments>Threshold and I want you to take the slider to the left until it reaches 80 (see image below). We’re aiming to get a lot of white in the image. Next we’re going to add the type. Select a foreground colour, I used Red. Grab your type tool and select Horizontal type – then go ahead and type something, I used RedBubble. (Arial Black > Regular>100pt>Sharp – for those who may be interested) Move your text to where you would like it to be, you can place it similar to where I placed, but it will need to be over some of the black. Once you’ve played around with this a couple times you’ll get a general idea of where the text should go. Before we go any further, we have to rasterize the text. You can either right click on the text layer and choose rasterize type or go to Layer>Rasterize>Type. Now the fun begins :-) click on the trees layer, the one you did the threshold adjustment on and select your magic wand tool, check that the contiguous box on the top menu bar is unchecked and select some of the black. Because you have the contiguous box unchecked, the magic wand tool will select all of the black areas. Now, hide the trees layer by clicking the little eye icon and click on the type layer, then press the delete key. Go to Select>deselect or press ctrl D on the keyboard. And there you have it, some grungey type text. Use your move tool to position the text wherever you want and you can drag the trees layer to the little garbage bin icon … cos you don’t need it anymore. I’ve cropped my final image. Larger file is HERE Enjoy playing, and if I haven’t made anything clear just ask me.
The smudge tool doesn’t sound like a terribly exciting tool, something that you could have some fun with – but it can be and we’re going …
The smudge tool doesn’t sound like a terribly exciting tool, something that you could have some fun with – but it can be and we’re going to look at one way in this tutorial. This tutorial is going to involve the use of the pen tool, but it will be painless :-) The first thing that you will need to do is create a new document, I have used 800×600 with a black background. Next you will need to create a new layer above the background layer by clicking on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and then select your elliptical marquee tool and draw out a small circle similar to the one below, holding down the alt + shift keys. Before deselecting the marching ants, go to the gradient tool and pick a gradient from the drop down menu, I’ve used the ‘copper’ gradient. Make sure you are using a linear gradient, and hold down your shift key while dragging from the top to the bottom of the circle – you can deselect the marching ants. You can go ahead and duplicate the small circle by selecting your move tool then holding down the Alt + Ctrl keys (this will copy and drop the copy onto a new layer), drag a little way then hold down your shift key as well and this will constrain the down movement. Next you’re going to grab the pen tool, and, starting from the centre of the top most circle, click a point then move across and click and drag another point. You will have to reduce the size of your image for this, but keep the canvas larger because you will have to click the final part of the path outside of the image. Go to your paths palette, which should be default with your layers and channels palette, if it isn’t go to Window>Paths – and at the bottom on that palette click on the ‘create new path’ icon. Go back to your tools palette and choose your pen tool again, click on the centre of the next circle and do something similar to the above, but change the direction a little. Repeat this for the other 2 remaining circles. The original path will be called ‘work path’ and then the rest will be called ‘1, 2, 3’ – you will need to line up the corresponding layer in the layers palette in one of the future steps, but first we have to go and choose a hard edge tip for the smudge tool. Click on the smudge tool and get a size similar to the one in the image below. I’ve made the circles and brush size bigger than I normally would for the sake of visibility. Depending on what you were going to do with this technique, all things can be changed. With the smudge tool selected, click on the first layer in the layers palette, then go to the paths palette and click on the ‘work path’ layer, then right click on this choose ‘stroke path’ from the fly out menu – a small dialogue will appear and ‘smudge’ should already be selected, but if it isn’t choose ‘smudge’ from the drop down menu. Click OK and you should have something similar to the next image. You can go to your paths palette now and drag the path you just stroked to the little bin icon at the bottom of the palette. Go to the next layer up the stack in your layers palette, make sure the smudge tool is still selected (it should be), go to your paths palette and click on the corresponding path in there, then at the bottom of the paths palette click on the small ‘stroke path with brush’ icon (second from the left) Continue to do this until the remaining paths are completed. Depending on the gradient you used and the size of the circles and brush size, your image might look something similar to the one below. Go ahead now and merge the 4 stroked layers in your layers palette to 1 layer. Next, press Ctrl + T on your keyboard to bring up the Transform tool, right click inside this and select ‘distort’. You can do something similar to the image below if you like, but I would suggest that you go to Layer>Matting>Defringe after you distort the selection – I used a 10 pixel radius on this particular image. From here you can go ahead and do a multitude of different things. Change the background and experiment with blend modes. Use the plastic wrap filter, or give the image a drop shadow then place the drop shadow on its own layer and blur it. You don’t even have to use 4 of these pipe effects. On the image below I changed the b/ground to blue with a radial gradient, and changed the blend mode to overlay. I then used the FX to give the pipes an outer glow by changing the glow colour to white, a blend mode of ‘Linear Dodge (Add) with an opacity of 50% Technique set to softer and a spread of 90%. Try out different things and see what you can come up with, but most of all – have fun!
Adjustment layers are a great way to work in Photoshop, they give you the flexibility to go back and alter adjustments on the fly – makin…
Adjustment layers are a great way to work in Photoshop, they give you the flexibility to go back and alter adjustments on the fly – making sure that you don’t have to lose any of the work you have done by undoing steps to correct an error. Another positive about adjustment layers is that they add very little size to your file, which is a bonus if you don’t have 8 gigs of RAM at your disposal :-) I’m going to give you a kind of example here using a Hue Saturation adjustment layer to add colour back into an image. What you need to bear in mind is that it applies to all of the adjustments that are available under adjustment layers. Adjustment layers can also be useful when using blending modes on a single image without having to duplicate the image and add to the file size. Try this one yourself. Open an image, duplicate it of course :-) and close the original – now go to the little ying yang looking symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and click on it to bring up the menu – click on levels for now. When the dialogue box opens, click OK without making any adjustments, then pick a blend mode …. lets say multiply …. your image will now have used itself, to darken itself …. or you could say that you have used the image to darken the image without having to duplicate the background and then apply a blend mode. Take a look at your file size ….. You can also turn the adjustment layer on and off, reduce the opacity, add a mask to darken certain areas, use a gradient to edit the mask or perhaps a brush. There are several ways that you can do just about anything in Photoshop, and bringing back colour into an image is no exception. By default photoshop has the history set at 20 states of undo, so if you reach 21 states any previous work will not be available to go back and edit without losing all of the work you have done. You can change the amount of history states available to you by going to Edit>Preferences>Performance and at the top right hand side you will see History States | Cache Levels – just change the history states to a higher amount if you like. Using adjustment layers, rather than permanent adjustments, will give you much more flexibility in your editing capabilities. Getting into the habit of saving your image as a .psd file right from the outset and then remembering to ‘save’ along the way … press Ctrl + S or go to the top menu bar and press ‘save’, will make sure that you are never disappointed if PS freezes or your computer has a hissy fit and dies. Lets get back to the tut :-) I’m going to add some colour back into an image that I have used a Hue/Sat adjustment layer to desaturate. Why not just go to the top menu bar and use Image>Adjustment>Desaturate you might be asking – because it is a permanent adjustment – one that I may decide that I don’t want there in the future and doing this change with an adjustment layer gives me the option of turning it on and off using the little eye icon, going back in and adding some saturation back into the image etc., If I try to do that 25states later using the permanent adjustment I will lose all of my later work. There are also several ways to add colour back into an image. You can start with your B&W image, place a new layer above that, choose a colour and fill the layer, change the blend mode to colour, soft light etc., add a mask, invert the mask, and then start adding back in the colour – but what if you decide that you don’t like that colour ? You then have to choose another colour, lock the transparent pixels of the layer, then fill with the new colour. You can also create a new blank layer, choose a colour to paint with, change the blend mode of the brush from the top menu bar and paint away – but still, if you decide you don’t like the colour then you will have to go through the process for the first method. What if you could just move a slider to create a different colour ? Now wouldn’t that be a whole lot simpler ? Here is our start image, just click through for the larger image. The first adjustment layer we are going to use is a hue/sat and we are going to desaturate the image. What you’ll notice in the below image is that I forgot to take a screenshot of the desaturated image and had to go back and take one after I had made several adjustments. Its as simple as turning off the adjustment layers. Next you are going to use a hue/sat adjustment layer again, but this time you are going to check the colorize button when the dialogue box comes up. Then go and adjust the sliders till you get a colour that you like. This is probably the most time consuming part of this adjustment until you become familiar with where the colours lie, and using the saturation and lightness adjustments. I chose a blue colour that was similar to the original image, you can choose whatever colour you like. Obviously that isn’t quite what we want to happen here :-) Adjustment layers come with a mask – that’s the little white box on the right hand side of the adjustment box – click on the mask to make it active and then press Ctrl + i on your keyboard to invert the mask to black (hide all) white is reveal all. You could also go to Image>Adjustments>Invert – just make sure that the mask is active. Grab your paintbrush and start painting back in the pants. You should now have something similar to the image below. I haven’t painted back in all of the pants, I’m just showing you how to achieve the adjustments. Just say that you had taken this image in B&W originally, and I pop over to your place and notice what you’re doing and say ….. the pants on that scarecrow weren’t blue :-) The easy way to choose another colour is to double click on the adjustment box itself – not the layer mask – and the dialogue box will open and you can adjust the colour to something new. What I would normally do when re-colouring an image is duplicate the blue layer, turn off the visibility of the original blue layer and then make the adjustment to the copy. This way you will still have the choice of reverting to the blue copy if you decide you want that one instead. In fact, you could make as many different coloured trousers/pants adjustment layers as you wanted. When doing something like this it is wise to get into the habit of naming the adjustment layers. You can do this by double clicking on the text next to the mask and renaming this what you want. You can see in the image below that I have carried on with a few more adjustment layers and named them. I’ve also done 3 different shades of red for the jacket, shoes and pocket on the pants. I would then do a different red for the scarf. I’ve also done the hair and the flowers, both of these more need more refining to make them look realisitic but I would do the refinements on adjustment layers. I’ve highlighted the file size at the bottom of the image. You may also notice as you progress with your design, composite, colourising etc., that the adjustment layers can start to get out of hand. This is where Grouping layers together can come in very handy. Select which adjustment layer you would like grouped together i.e. in this particular image you might group together the clothing as I have done – although I accidently added the hair and shoes to the group and couldn’t be bothered going back and grabbing another screenshot – so just ignore those 2 layers :-) Click on an adjustment layer then hold down your Ctrl key to select the next one etc., If your layers are one above the other you can click on the top one, then shift click on the bottom one to select them. Next go to the little downward triangle near the top right hand side of your layers palette, and from the menu select the option ‘New Group From Layers’ Each of the layers you chose will now be in a folder which you can name, I used Clothing in the example below. All you have to do now is open that folder using the little arrow to the left of the folder to have access to the adjustment layers, but more importantly you can still edit each of those adjustment layers. And that’s it really. Remember to save often while you are working on a file, as I said at the beginning of this.
I have an improved and better formatted version of this tutorial in my wordpress blog....
I have an improved and better formatted version of this tutorial in my wordpress blog. This tutorial will cover the development of my image Milky Way from Apollo Bay using a Canon 350D, a wide angle lens, Adobe Photoshop and an image alignment program called hugin. For this to be repeatable you must be shooting with clear dark skies, free from light pollution. I used settings of Tv: 20 sec, Av: f/4, focal length: 17mm and ISO speed: 1600. A shutter release cable is also a great tool and can keep your camera clicking as it sits on the tripod. The more images taken, the better for the final result, because this will improve the signal to noise ratio that plagues digital sensors during long exposures. A tracking mount is not necessary with a 20 second shutter speed because the rotation of the night sky is undetectable at such a wide angle. Please read the following steps for more information. All images are hyperlinked to larger sizes. 1) Download this zipped folder containing four of my unaligned shots of the Milky Way. 2) Load them into hugin_0.7_beta_4. 3) Manually align images with control points – don’t automatically align. I aligned three images to a common one. Enlarge the screenshot for details. 4) Click Edit – fine tune all points. 5) Click View – preview window. 6) Click Center and Fit buttons to achieve this view. 7) Click Edit – Optimise. 8) Click Stitcher – image format – multiple tiff . Final screen before clicking Stitch Now . 9) If you don’t want to worry about learning how to align the images with hugin, then you can download this zipped folder containing the four prealigned images of the Milky Way. 10) Load each image onto a new layer in photoshop adjusting the blend mode to screen which is good at lightening images without lightening the darkest areas. 11) Add a medium contrast curves layer. 12) Add colour balance layer: shadows (-90,-25,-10), midtones (-15,-5,-20), highlights (0,-5,30). 13) The final result For comparison’s sake, shown below is a typical accompanying jpeg to a raw file I began with for one of the individual images. I used Adobe Camera Raw to extract the jpegs provided in step 1 for processing. In closing, I’d like to point out this is not the only way an image like this can be captured; there is myriads of possibilities. I have developed this simple and inexpensive method by just experimenting with the tools at my disposal. Comments are welcomed. If you haven’t done so already, please check out another tutorial I have written: Layer Masks and Transparency Gradients for The Heart.
Gradient Maps are one of those adjustments in Photoshop that people feel they couldn’t use for any useful purpose with their images. S…
Gradient Maps are one of those adjustments in Photoshop that people feel they couldn’t use for any useful purpose with their images. So what do gradient maps do ….. they allow you to assign different colours to the tonal values of an image. When you open a gradient map adjustment layer, it will default to the colours you have set as your f/ground and b/ground. Go ahead and use the image below to practise on if you like. Set your f/ground to black and your b/ground to white, duplicate the layer and then, using the adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, click on gradient map. You can do a comparison with how the gradient mapped image (now B&W) compares if you had simply desaturated the original image. The gradient mapped image has more contrast and would be a much nicer image to start with if you were looking to produce a B&W image. So what is the gradient map doing ? If you look at the small dialogue box below You will see that the shadows are at the left and the highlights at the right and it has mapped the image with black in the shadows, moving through to white in the highlights. You can choose whatever colours you want. In the image below, of a rather sucky sunrise, I have chosen red as my foreground colour and yellow as the background. Applied the gradient map, changed the blend mode to overlay and taken the opacity down to about 40%. I could probably have used a mask to take away the molten lava look on the rock shelf :-) You can also check the Reverse box to change the way the image is mapped, in this case white is being mapped into the darker parts of the image, and black into the lighter parts. With the gradient dialogue box open, click on the bar to bring up the gradient editor. You will then get the gradient editor dialogue box. You can mess around with the presets to try them, I chose Silver from the Metal/s. You could leave it at Silver if you wanted, but why not go ahead and see what you can create. The image below will give you a visual idea of the process. Click on one of the colour stops – circled on the above image, and that will bring the colour into the colour box – outlined with a rectangle – you can go ahead and choose a new colour. You can see in the image above that all except one stop have been changed to blue – the other is a pink colour. I left the editor like that and clicked OK to accept it. You go ahead and fiddle around to your hearts content. I then changed the blend mode to Colour Burn and took the opacity down to 50%. You can also add additional stops to the gradient if you want. Place your cursor just below the bottom line of the gradient bar (where the stops are) and you should get a little hand that says add colour stop (or add stop …. can’t remember) Also, if you come up with a gradient map that you would like to keep, name your map in the small box that says name … and then click save. See image below. That is all there is to using a Gradient Map adjustment layer. You can do the wild and whacky thing, a B&W conversion, or simply use it enhance the colours in an image like I did with the sunrise image earlier on.
Just what are Displacement Maps ? Displacement maps allow you to warp and distort images by moving pixels / according to the guidelin…
Just what are Displacement Maps ? Displacement maps allow you to warp and distort images by moving pixels / according to the guidelines set out by a predefined “map.” It’s a bit like creating a 3D effect (for want of a better word). How do they work ? A Displacement Map is always a B&W image. Black moves pixels to the right and/or down. White moves pixels left and/or up. Think of them in terms of valleys and peaks – the valleys are black and the peaks are white. Need to know stuff Displacement maps MUST be grayscale. Displacement maps MUST be saved in the native photoshop format – .PSD – or if your software has displacement maps available in their native format. Displacement maps MUST have some kind of blur applied to them. Blurring smooths out the pixels as they wrap around or displace the object. Be warned though, too much blurring will lose the effect you are trying to create. The settings I have used here are for a 800×521@72dpi image, they will be different if you are working on a higher res image. Most tutorials are done on flags …. and this one will be no different :-) So you can either borrow my flag below, or be patriotic and grab your own. Click through for the larger image. You’re going to be do a very simple displacement map here, using the Render>Clouds filter. So lets get started. Open the flag image, in the layers palette double click on it, when the dialogue box appears either accept the default Layer 0 or give it a deep and meaningful name like ….. flag :-) Hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, then click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, this will force the new layer below the flag layer. Making sure that the new layer is active (by clicking on it) go ahead and fill it with white. What we need to do is expand the canvas a little bit. Click on the white layer and go to Image>Canvas Size and you can punch in the same settings that I have in the image below. With the same layer selected go to Edit>Fill and fill with white. You should now have something that looks similar to the image below. You can set that image aside for the moment while we create the Displacement map. Create a new file the same size as the flag image i.e. 800×521@72dpi white b/ground. Make sure that your f/ground and b/ground colours are set to B&W, then go to Filter>Render>Clouds. What you need to do at this point is make the blacks black and the whites white. Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels to bring up the Level dialogue box and you can punch in the same numbers as I have below. Next you are going to make sure that the Move Tool is selected and holding down the shift key, drag the render clouds layer over to the flag image. Place the clouds layer on the top of the layers stack and change the blend mode to multiply and take the opacity down to about 35% (you can adjust this later to suit) You will notice that I have ‘clipped’ the clouds layer with the flag layer. You can do this by making sure the clouds layer is active, right click, then choose ‘Create Clipping Mask’ Go back to the Clouds file and you are going to apply a Gaussian Blur to it. If you are following along, just punch in the numbers that I have below. You might want to try the blur at a lower amount as well on this file. On a larger file you would probably have to crank up the blur to 4 or 5, perhaps more. Now you can go to Image>Mode and click on grayscale, when the little dialogue box comes up click Discard. You are going to save the file now, so go to File>Save As and choose .PSD from the drop down menu. Save the displacement map to a location that you are going to remember :-) I usually just drop mine on the desktop. Return to the flag file and click on the layer with the flag on it. Go to Filter>Distort>Displace and you can use the same settings that I have. Don’t forget to experiment with these settings on different res images. As soon as you click OK in the dialogue box below, you will be presented with another dialogue box to pick the displacement map …. find it and click OK. What you’ll notice right away, is that the edges have pulled in a bit. One way to keep this from happening, is make the displacement map a little smaller than the image you are displacing. You should have something similar to the image below. Lets go and give this some FX. Click on the flag layer to make it active and then click on the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette, then click on Blending Options. Click on Bevel and Emboss and you can punch in the settings I have. Then click on texture and choose Satin … last on the top row, and choose the settings I have below. Lets give it a bit of a drop shadow. You can punch in the same settings as I have below. Now you could use a levels adjustment layer if you like. ““ And here is the final image. It would probably have been useful to start with a better image than this one, but don’t just think flags when you think of Displacement Maps. How about making crumpled paper ? Make your own displacement map using diagonal stripes B&W to make a waving flag. Use one image to displace another image, all you have to remember are these points :- Need to know stuff Displacement maps MUST be grayscale. Displacement maps MUST be saved in the native photoshop format – .PSD – or if your software has displacement maps available in their native format. Displacement maps MUST have some kind of blur applied to them. Blurring smooths out the pixels as they wrap around or displace the object. Be warned though, too much blurring will lose the effect you are trying to create. If there are any questions just ask me.
This is one of the easiest ways to create a different type effect in Photoshop. This may well work with other software programs as well….
This is one of the easiest ways to create a different type effect in Photoshop. This may well work with other software programs as well. I’ve created a new file 500×300 @72dpi with a white b/ground. Go ahead a grab your type tool and type something – My font was Impact – Regular – 88pt – Sharp You are going to use the filter gallery to add an effect to the type, but if you click on the type thumbnail and then go to the filter gallery Photoshop will ask you to rasterize the type ….. and that isn’t what you want to be happening, you still need the type to be editable in case you want to change the text. If you were to change the text, you would have to delete the layer mask and select the transparency again … but you’ll get the idea of how that would work as you read through the tutorial. So here’s one of the easiest ways to have the best of both worlds. Keep in mind that this isn’t limited to type. Holding down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, click on the type thumbnail- your cursor should change to have a small rectangle over the top of it and the marching ants will appear around the type – you have successfully loaded the transparency. You can now add a layer mask to the type layer by clicking on the ‘Add Layer Mask’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette. You should have a similar file to the one below. Now the fun can begin – you can go ahead and try out various things inside the Filter Gallery, I’m just going to run you through what I did to give you an idea of what you can achieve. You have the transparency selected, marching ants showing and you have clicked on the layer mask to make it active – now go to Filter>Filter Gallery to bring up the (rather large) dialogue box. You can copy along with the same settings that I punched in, or go check out all the effects that you can come up by using some of the other effects inside the Filter Gallery. Below is what your image will look like once you click OK to accept the settings you chose in the filter gallery. Go and ahead and add a drop shadow or bevel emboss to the type by using the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Now how simple was that :-) If you have any questions, just ask.
I posted this in the Learning Centre thread over on the main forums, but thought it might be handy to make a journal entry so it doesn’t …
I posted this in the Learning Centre thread over on the main forums, but thought it might be handy to make a journal entry so it doesn’t get lost in the soup. Surprisingly, I have learned more from this man about Photoshop, than anyone else ….. you’ll understand why I said that when you watch the podcast. Just a bit of fun on a Friday evening, all the tips are valid though :-) 101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes And the text from the podcast. 101 Photoshop Tips in Five Minutes / The actual tips from 1 to 106 and back to 101 / by Deke McClelland Time it: Time: 00:00.00 / #1: Wanna copy a layer? I say jump it: Ctrl+J. / You a Mac user? Awesome. / #2: When I say Ctrl, press Cmd, the one with an apple on it. / #3: For a new layer, press Ctrl+Shift+N (Cmd-Shift-N on the Mac). / #4: To delete a layer, get the move tool and press Delete (or Control-Delete). / #5: Every letter selects a tool. / #6: Except F for full-screen, / #7: Q for quick mask, / #8: and D / #9: and X for default and switch colors. / Who knew X stood for “switch”? / #10: Press a number to change the opacity. / #11: Or two numbers for better control. / #12: Press Shift+plus to advance a blend mode; / #13: Shift+minus to back up. / #14: Press Shift and Alt with a letter for a specific mode. / #15: Mac folks, Alt means Option. / #16: Ctrl+plus zooms in. / #17: Ctrl+minus zooms out. / #18: Spacebar gets the hand so you can drag the image around. / #19: There’s also Ctrl+spacebar in / #20: and Alt+spacebar out. / #21: Ctrl+spacebar-drag to zoom way the hell in. / #22: Ctrl+Z undoes. / #23: Ctrl+Alt+Z backsteps. / #24: Ctrl+Shift+Z steps forward. / #25: Ctrl+Shift+F fades an edit. / #26: F12 reverts, / #27: Itself an undoable operation. / You hear that? You can undo a revert? That’s a hell of a tip! / All that pasteboard stuff works too: / #28: Ctrl+X cuts. / #29: Ctrl+C copies. / #30: Ctrl+V pastes. / Dan Gookin of DOS For Dummies fame joked that V stood for “vomit,” as in vomiting up the Clipboard. His publisher refused to print that. They actually refused to print that! Time: 01:15.43 / #31: Photoshop’s most essential command? Image Size: Ctrl+Alt+I. / #32: It’s partner, Canvas Size, Ctrl+Alt+C. / #33: Ctrl+F repeats the last filter. / #34: Ctrl+Alt+F for different settings. / #35: Using a selection tool? Drag to start a new selection / #36: Or move a selection outline. / #37: Shift adds to the selection. / #38: Alt deletes. / #39: Shift and Alt finds the intersection. / #40: Press the spacebar to move the selection on-the-fly. / #41: Ctrl+A selects everything; / #42: Ctrl+D selects nothing. / #43: Ctrl+Shift+I selects what’s not selected and deselects everything else. / #44: Ctrl+Alt+R brings up Refine Edge. / #45: Alt-click with the lasso tool to draw straight-sided selections. / #46: Shift-click with a brush to paint straight lines. / #47: Press Alt with a brush to get the color-lifting eyedropper. / #48: Press Ctrl to get the move tool. / #49: Ctrl+H hides selections and other “extras.” / What’s an extra? Press Ctrl+H and find out? / I gotta quicken the pace. Shit! / #50: Ctrl+1, / #51: 2, / #52: 3 to switch channels. / Hell yeah, I’m counting those as three! / Here’s another one: / #53: Ctrl+tilde for full-color composite. / #54: Ctrl+L for Levels, / #55: Ctrl+M for Curves, / #56: Ctrl+B for Color Balance, / #57: Ctrl+U for Hue/Saturation. / #58: Add Alt to bring up the last settings. / #59: Mash your fist on Ctrl, Shift, and Alt and press B for Black & White. / #60: In Levels and Curves, Alt-drag that white slider triangle to preview the clipped highlights / #61: Or that black one for clipped shadows. / Want to duplicate an image? Don’t choose this [Duplicate]; / #62: Just click here [Create new document from History state]. / #63: Press Ctrl+W to close an image. / #64: Y to save changes, / #65: N to abandon them. / #66: On the Mac, that’s S and D. / #67: Either way, it’s Esc for Cancel. / You know, Esc. C’mon, Esc! Time 02:48.36 / #68: Press Ctrl+T to invoke Free Transform. / #69: Press Enter to apply or Esc to skip it. / #70: Ctrl+Alt+T transforms a copy. / #71: Ctrl+Shift+T repeats the last transformation. / #72: Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T plays a transformation sequence. / #73: Press a bracket key to change the size of a brush. / #74: Press Shift+bracket to change its hardness. / #75: Caps Lock for precise cursors. / #76: Alt switches dodge to burn and burn to dodge. / #77: The comma and period keys cycle through gradients. / See this tool [sharpen]? Worthless. Look at this. You want this? Worthless! / Yes, that’s a tip: Don’t use the tool! / #78: Bang, there’s another one! / #79: Ctrl-click a thumbnail in the Layers, Channels, or Paths palette to load a selection. / #80: Press slash to lock a layer’s transparency. / #81: Press tilde to hide the image while viewing a mask. / #82: Press backslash to view the layer mask. / #83: Ctrl+Backspace fills the background color; / #84: Alt+Backspace: foreground color. / #85: Add Shift to fill just the opaque pixels. / #86: Press Shift+Backspace to get the Fill dialog box. / Hey, look at that! / #87: That’s trans lock’s opposite [Behind mode]. It locks opacity. / What the hell is it doing here? / #88: Ctrl+bracket moves layers forward and back. / #89: Add Shift to go all the way. / #90: Alt+bracket selects layers. / #91: Press Shift to select multiple layers. / Press Ctrl+Shift+A to select all layers. / #92: That’s wrong. It’s Ctrl+Alt+A! / I don’t even know what Ctrl+Shift+A does. / It doesn’t, Adobe, it doesn’t do anything! I don’t think it does anything. / #93: But Ctrl+G, that groups layers in a folder. / #94: Ctrl+E merges selected layers. / #95: Ctrl+Shift+E merges visible layers. / #96: Ctrl+Alt+E stamps a layer onto the one below. / #97: Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E merges everything on a new layer. / #98: Ctrl+Shift+C copies a merged version of the layers. / #99: Ctrl+Shift+V pastes an image in a selection. / #100: Alt-click here [Add layer mask] / #101: Or here [Cancel to Reset] / #102: Or here [trash without warning] / #103: Or here [color ramp to switch background color] / #104: Or here [eyeball to hide all others] / Yeah! / #105: Or here [horizontal line to make clipping mask] / #106: Or here [color swatch to delete]. Time: 05:08.16 / Holy crap, I just went over! 106 tips! No! No, no, no. / [to off-screen director] / You should’ve stopped me, you should’ve let me know. That’s your fault. / [to viewer] / That’s his fault. I do not fail. Remember, I do not fail! / Alt-clicks out. I want them all out. Gimme that time back! Time: 05: 27.92 / [clock rewinds] Time: 04:56.73 / Okay. Nicely done, me. For those wondering why I left out your favorite tips, / #100: Like Tab to hide all palettes / #101: Or Shift+Tab to hide just the right-side palettes. Time: 05:00.00 / I didn’t! Ha ha! I just mentioned ’em. Works for me!
You can make this an etched glass effect, or, by inverting the filter, make it appear as though the shape/type/whatever is moulded in the…
You can make this an etched glass effect, or, by inverting the filter, make it appear as though the shape/type/whatever is moulded in the glass. Because my glass is light, I will be using a black filled shape. If your bottle or glass is dark, the type/shape/whatever, would need to be white. So lets get straight on with it. You can click through on my glass image below to get the larger start image, or you can use one of your own. Just remember that any settings I use are relevant to this file 720 X 1000 @72dpi. Your first step will be to create a new layer above the b/ground layer and then fill it with white … turn off the visibility of the layer by clicking on the little eyeball icon next to the layer. I’ve chosen the ‘Flower Oranment 2’ which is a Photoshop default shape, and I’ve drawn it on the glass …. see image below. Make sure that you are working on the Shape Layer (or type – making sure the spelling is correct) and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, a small dialogue box will appear asking you to rasterize the shape or type, click OK to make that happen and then choose a small amount of blur. I have used 2 pixels on this particular image … which might be a tad too much …. we’ll see. Next you are going to create a flattened copy of the image and save it to your desktop…or somewhere that you will remember, because we are going to be using it shortly. Go to Save As and when the dialogue box appears, make sure that your uncheck ‘layers’ and check ‘copy’ See image below. Now, duplicate the original b/ground layer and turn off the visibility of the shape layer and the layer you filled with white. Working on the duplicate b/ground layer go to Filter>Distort>Glass and the Filter Gallery dialogue box will appear. Look at the right hand side of this box and notice where it says Texture, click on the small arrow and a small box will appear that says load texture, click on this and load the file that you previously saved. As you can see, I called mine Flowerdistort. You can fiddle with the Distortion and Smoothing, but you will have to leave the Scaling as is. You can also check and uncheck the Invert box to see which variation you prefer. Once you have the settings as you like click OK to make it happen. And here is the image with Inverted checked. And that’s it. Fiddle around with the settings a bit till you get what you want, and remember that if the bottle, glass etc., is dark you will need to reverse the colours i.e. the layer will be filled with black and the shape or type would be white.
This is a veru quick and simple way to create water in Photoshop. I’ll probably do a more detailed one using alpha channels and the such…
This is a veru quick and simple way to create water in Photoshop. I’ll probably do a more detailed one using alpha channels and the such at some time in the future. Firstly, grab yourself the start image, click through for the larger version – or you can use one of your own. Create a new blank layer above the background layer, and, using the eyedropper tool, choose a light blue for the f/ground and a dark blue for the b/ground. Fill the new blank layer with the lighter of the 2 blues. Working on the light blue layer, go to Filter>Render>Fibers. You can punch in the settings I have below if you are working on the same image – or you can fiddle around with the settings until you have something you like. Next you need to Transform the fibers so they are going to correct way. Hit Ctrl + T on the keyboard or go to Edit>Transform>Rotate – zoom out a little and then rotate the canvas. Move the water down and then right click inside the box and choose Distort. See image below for what I did Add a mask to the layer and grab the gradient tool. Make sure the f/ground and b/ground are set to the default colours and choose black to Transparent from the gradient picker, use a linear gradient and use it at the top of water where it meets the sand. There is no set way to do this, just fiddle till you get something you like. You can go in and refine that a little bit with a black brush if you like, just make sure you’re working on the mask. Next you need to make a reflection in the water. Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the layer mask, then go to Select>Inverse. Make sure that the background layer is active by clicking on it, now press Ctrl + J on the keyboard to place the selection on its own layer. Move the layer above the water layer, you should have something exactly the same as you set off with. Turn off the water layer and background layer to see what happened. This is what you will be using to create the reflection. Make sure that you are working on the Reflection layer and go to Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical and move the image down. You can use a mask if you want to make it conform to the shoreline and then lower the opacity of the layer a little bit. Use a motion blur to soften it a little bit and I added a 50% grey layer then used a white brush set at about 20% opacity along the water – then black at 20% along the sand at the shoreline. Lastly, I used the sponge tool set to desaturate, an opacity of 50% and soft brush of 80 pixels to slightly desaturate the sand and water at the waters edge. I’m pretty sure that you will take more time with this than I did and you will produce a much better result :-) This certainly isn’t the best way to create water in Photoshop, but it is one of the simplists.
There are many methods of simulating an infrared effect in Photoshop, I think this is one of easiest. You can always rush out and buy …
There are many methods of simulating an infrared effect in Photoshop, I think this is one of easiest. You can always rush out and buy an IR filter if you want as well :-) You’re going to be using a B&W adjustment layer in CS3 and turning a layer into a smart object. So lets get straight into it, you can click through on the image below for the larger version if you want to practise on it. All the settings will be relevant to this particular image 800×600 @72dpi you will need to adjust them for larger images. Using a B&W adjustment layer – click on the adjustment layer in the layers palette and choose B&W – you can punch in the same numbers that I have in the image below. You are looking to boost the greens, and depending on the image, may also have to boost the yellows as well. Click on the background layer to make it active, then right click on the layer and choose ‘Convert to Smart Object’ from the menu. Then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. On this particular image, choose a radius of 5 pixels. See image below. Referencing the image below, double click on the small upward facing arrows next to where it says Gaussian Blur in the Layers Palette. This will bring up a small dialogue box, adjust the opacity to 50% and click OK to accept the change. Click on the b/ground layer to make it active, then hold down the Alt key on the keyboard and click on the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. The New Layer dialogue box will appear – you can name the layer if you want – change the blend mode to Overlay and check the ‘Fill with Overlay Neutral color (50% gray) box. Making sure you are working on the new layer you created (should be gray) go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and on this particular image choose about 5% – Gaussian – Monochromatic. Then lower the opacity of the layer to about 35% Finally, click on the top most layer (B&W adjustment layer) and click on the create new fill or adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, then choose curves from the menu. Create an S curve until you get something that you are happy with. You can punch in the same numbers I have in the image below if you like. And here is the final image. You can change any of the settings to suit your own taste. There is probably a little too much greenery in this image as well :-)
There are so many ways to do a Pop Out effect in Photoshop, I thought I’d show you a really easy way first :-) At some point you are g…
There are so many ways to do a Pop Out effect in Photoshop, I thought I’d show you a really easy way first :-) At some point you are going to have to select that which you want to ‘pop out’, so bear that in mind when you are choosing an image. Also, depending on which parts of the photo you want to pop out will usually determine how much of the image you will have to select. You can start with the image below, or be really sensible and pick something simpler :-) Open the/your image and duplicate by pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard. The Layer will be named Layer 1. Click back on the background layer, then press the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and fill it with white. Click on the top most layer (Layer 1) and select the part/s that you want to pop out of the image. I can’t help you with this part :-) Use your pen tool, magnetic lasso etc., I used quick mask mode and then used the eraser tool to refine it a little bit. I also had another idea originally and that is why you will see the whole bike selected. If you want to do a similar thing to my final piece, you will only have to select the front part of the photo. Once you have your selection, press Ctrl + J on the keyboard and it will put it on a new layer. Go back to Layer 1, clicking on it to make it active and select your rectangular marquee tool. I can’t help you with this part either, cos it will be image dependant. Once you have made your selection, add a layer mask by clicking on the Add Layer Mask at the bottom of the layers palette. You should end up with something similar to the image below. If your selection isn’t how you want it, just go back and make a new selection and try it again. Staying on Layer 1, click on the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Stroke. I chose black and 2 pixels for this particular image. If you need to tidy up your selection at all, click back on Layer 3 and do what needs to be done. Click on Layer 1 and holding down the Ctrl key, click on Layer 3, right click and select merge layers. Staying on the newly merged layer …. click on the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Drop Shadow. You can punch in the same settings as I have if you are using this image …. or choose something else. I cropped some from the right hand side of the image, and left it at that. You could click back on the white layer and change the fill colour, add a texture, or another image if you wanted. As I said at the beginning, there are a few different ways that you can do this effect and as I get the time I will add them. Have fun :-)
I’m all about the easiest way to get from A to B and the process in this tutorial of making the eyes sparkle and shine in a portrait, is …
I’m all about the easiest way to get from A to B and the process in this tutorial of making the eyes sparkle and shine in a portrait, is definately easy. You could use this on animals as well if you wanted. You can download the image below to practise on if you like, just click through for the larger image. Open the image in Photoshop, and click on the little ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette to create a curves adjustment layer. Do not adjust any setting, just click OK, then change the layer blend mode to Screen. Click on the mask, and then press Ctrl + i on your keyboard to invert. Or you can go to Image>Adjustments>Invert. Double click on the writing (Curves 1) to change the name of this layer to Iris. Click on the ying yang symbol again and click on curves, don’t change any settings just click OK. Change the blend mode of this layer to Multiply, click on the mask and hit Ctrl + i on the keyboard to invert the mask. Rename this layer Pupil. You should end up with something similar to the image below. Making sure that the foreground colour is white, that you are working on the ‘pupil’ layer mask, go and grab the pencil tool making sure that you are using a hard edge. You can simply press B on the keyboard to access the brush tool and to further scroll through to select the pencil tool use Shift + B on the keyboard. You’ll probably have to zoom in on this image to about 200%. Place the pencil over the pupil and use the right bracket key on the keyboard to increase (or the left bracket to decrease) the size of the pencil till if is covering the pupil and then click once. Go and do the same thing on the other eye :) Still using the pencil and adjusting the size accordingly, go over the outside band of the iris – the dark bit – I don’t know what they are called :) Look at the image below for an idea of what I am doing. At the moment this will look really dark, but we haven’t finished with it yet. Still on the Pupil Mask go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and perhaps use a radius of 1 on this image ….. it will be different on a larger image of course. Then take the opacity of the layer down to whatever suits you. I used about 25% which I can go back and change at any time because I have used an adjustment layer. Lets work on the Iris Mask now. With your f/ground set to white and a soft edged brush (adjust with the bracket keys to suit) and making sure that you are working on the mask by clicking on it – we’re going to look at the specular highlights first. This image has quite a few and I’ve chosen to leave the largest ones alone, just click once on some of the smaller ones. This is going to look pretty weird when you first do it :-) Just remember that you are working on a mask and by pressing X on the keyboard you can paint out any of the work you want to change – just remember to press X to switch back to white :) Still working on the layer mask, go to the top option bar and reduce the opacity of the brush to 50%. Now zoom in and paint over the Iris, because of the layer stack it won’t make any difference if you paint over the darker adjustments you just did. I took the opacity of the layer down to 50%. You could go ahead now and sharpen the eyes with your favourite method, or you could continue to adjust and enhance the eyes. I went ahead and added a bit of depth to the eyelashes. There is a tutorial on it HERE Once I was happy with the eyelashes I merged the layers … then I decided he might look nice with different coloured eyes :) I used a Selective Colour adjustment layer to turn his eyes green and finally flattened the image, duplicated the b/ground, set the blend mode to overlay used Filter>Other>High Pass to do some sharpening, and took the opacity of the layer down to 50%. And here is the end result – have fun :) EDIT – Here is a comparison image. 1st is the original – 2nd the enhanced – 3rd the colour change.
This technique is an oldie, but a goodie. I think Eddie Tapp was the first person I saw do it and there have been variations, but for a …
This technique is an oldie, but a goodie. I think Eddie Tapp was the first person I saw do it and there have been variations, but for a quick and interesting portrait effect this is terrific. It is not a beauty retouch. The image is brought to us by hamletnc over at Stock Xchange I have the original image as well as one that I tidied up a bit, you can choose which one you work on. I used the Making Eyes Shine Tutorial on the eyes. I also used the Adding Depth To Eyelashes I also did some general tidying up of the image (still needs lots, lots more), removed the earrings (and normally I would have done something with the ear) added a little bit of length to the hair and tidied the edges a bit, and cleaned her teeth You’ll also noticed that I reduced the darkish lines under the young lady’s eyes. I did this in combination with her smile lines, the line on her chin and the lines on her neck on the one layer, then reduced the opacity of the layer to 40%. Don’t make the mistake of only reducing the lines under the eyes (example) because it will unbalance the face. Just another point before we get on with it – in this tutorial we are going to be using the Red Channel, if your image has quite a lot of red in it i.e. dress, b/ground etc., it is going to fade the red. You can of course use the mask to bring it back (as we will in this image), but you might want to try the Green Channel first to see what kind of effect you will get, and it will preserve the red in the image. Click through for the larger images. If you’ve opened the second image, go ahead and duplicate it. Next, go to the channels palette and click on the red channel. Press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select all – press Ctrl + C to copy – click on the RGB channel, switch back to the layers palette, make aure the top layer is active, then press Ctrl + V on the keyboard to the paste the red channel. Change the blend mode of the layer to Luminosity and take the opacity down to about 30%. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and blur the image by about 6 pixels. Try and maintain some texture in the skin. Add a mask to this layer by clicking on the Add Layer Mask Icon at the bottom of the layers palette, make sure the f/ground colour is set to white and go and grab a soft edged brush. You’ll probably have to zoom in a bit for this – paint over the eyeball, the lips and teeth, the eyebrows, the scarf at the bottom of the image, and the hair around the face, leaving the outer edges. Probably go about half way back into the hair. If you want to view the mask at any time hold down the Alt key and click on the mask, to return to a normal view – do the same. Hopefully you’ll be able to see what I’ve done in the image below. We’re going to create a new layer, make sure that you are still working on the layer with the mask, then press Ctrl + Alt and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. A dialogue box will appear, change the blend mode to Soft Light and check the box that says ‘Fill with soft light neutral color (50% gray)’ Make sure the new layer is at the top of the stack and grab your Dodge Tool from the side Toolbar. In the top options bar change the Range to Highlights and use about a 15% opacity, then I want you to go over the highlights in the hair – leave the outer edges of the hair – perhaps don’t go any further out than half way. Once you’ve done want you want to do with the Dodge Tool you can either carry on, on this layer when we use the Burn Tool or create a new one, so you have these on two seperate layers. Grab your Burn Tool, change the Range to Shadows and the opacity to about 15% and burn over some of the darker areas. When you are happy with your work Flatten the image, then duplicate it. Change the blend mode to Overlay, then go to Filter>Other>High Pass and set the pixel radius to about 1.5 Add a layer mask and then press Ctrl + i on the keyboard to invert the mask. Make sure the f/ground colour is white, select a soft edged brush and paint over the same areas as you did before – eyebrows, eyeballs, lips and teeth, hair. Take the opacity of the layer down to suit. You might end up with something similar to the image below. If you think this is a little pale, you can always use a curves adjustment layer to add some contrast to it. And here is a comparison image – original and adjusted. Have fun :-)
I think this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get a nice portrait in Photoshop. Again, it isn’t beauty retouching. Unlike the…
I think this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get a nice portrait in Photoshop. Again, it isn’t beauty retouching. Unlike the Dreamy Glow effect this should :-) be a little more realistic. You can use the image here to start with or use one of your own. Once you have the image open, duplicate it and then you are going to run the Surface Blur filter. If you are working with a version of Photoshop prior to CS2 you are going to have to use the Median filter, this filter isn’t quite as good as the Surface Blur filter but you should still be able to achieve a similar result. I’ve divided my image into two so that you can see what is going on – don’t you do this :-) unless you want to of course. You are looking to keep the lips, teeth, eyes to a certain degree – see image below. If you are working on the same image you can just punch in the same numbers. Still working on the blurred layer, hold down the Alt key and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. This will make the mask black (hide all) which is exactly what we want, because we are going to brush back in the Surface Blur. Make sure your f/ground colour is set to white and you have a comfortable size soft edged brush – start painting back in the face avoiding the eyebrows, eyes, mouth and teeth. If you make a mistake, just switch your f/ground to black by pressing x key on the keybaord, fix it, press x again to switch back to white. If you want to make sure that you have painted back in every bit of blur, Hold down the Alt key and click on the mask this will give you a B&W version – see below – and you can fix it from there. Alt click on the mask to take it back to the normal view. I’ve taken the opacity of the surface blur layer down to 80%, you can choose whatever you want. Normally, this is the time where you would start evening out the skin tones, but you’re not going to do that :-) Before you go any further, rename the layer you just did the surface blur on to ….. hmmm …. Surface Blur. Making sure that layer is active, hold the Alt key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette – a small dialogue box will appear. If you don’t change the mode in the dialogue box, you won’t get the ‘Fill with soft light neutral colour 50% grey’ Now you’re going to pick a colour from the original b/ground to use on the face – so, with a soft edged brush selected hold down the Alt key and the brush will change to the eyedropper tool – once you have the colour selected just release the Alt key to go back to the brush. I used R-192 G-141 B-121. This is going to look terrible when you first brush it on – panic not – just dial the opacity of the layer down to about 40%. You will have to be quite careful with this layer, remember you are not working on a mask. The image below has the opacity at 100% and is not completely covered so that you can see what is happening. Turn the opacity down and complete the skin. The image below shows the completed colour with the opacity at 40% You can try some things now, like reducing the opacity of the surface blur layer … if you are using this image try about 55% and you could stop here if you wanted to – but there is more. Leave the opacity of the surface blur layer at 80% for the moment and the colour layer at 40%. All skin has some texture in it and you are going to replace some of the texture that was wiped out with the surface blur filter. Hold down the Alt key and press on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette – fill out the little dialogue box as you did earlier. Now go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and use 5, Uniform, Monochromatic – press OK to accept. Now go to Filter>Stylize>Emboss and try an angle of -90, height 15, amount 100%. Next go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and on this particular image try a radius of 0.5 pixels. And there you have the texture for the new skin. Once you are happy with the portrait, flatten the image duplicate the layer change the blend mode to overlay and sharpen with the High Pass Filter – Alt click on the layer mask icon to get an inverted mask (black – hide all) and with a soft edged brush, brush back in the areas you want sharp. Try different opacity levels for the surface blur layer and the texture layer. I’ve gone ahead and lowered the opacity of the colour layer to 20%, left the blur and texture layers at 80% then used seperate layers created in the same way as you did before but without clipping them with the previous layer, to burn the eyebrows, eyelashes, eye makeup and hair – then did the same to use some dodge on the eyes and hair. You could also use another layer to slightly sharpen the image overall to give the skin a less blurred look, as I have in the image below.
I didn’t really know what to call this :-) Probably aimed at portraits, but you could try it on other things to see how it turns out. / ...
I didn’t really know what to call this :-) Probably aimed at portraits, but you could try it on other things to see how it turns out. The image is brought to us by Orbán Ferenc over at the Stock Exchange site. All the settings used are relevant to this file 800 X 600@72dpi, they will change if you are using a higher res image …. and the technique probably works better on a higher res. Here we go. Open the start image, or one of your own, and duplicate it then close the original. Duplicate the image by dragging it to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette or press Ctrl + J on the keyboard. Change the blend mode to Overlay and then go to Filter>Other>High Pass. You can see that I have chosen a radius of 4 for this image. You are going to do another High Pass later on, but this should do for now. Remember, if you are working on a higher res image the numbers will have to be larger. Now you are going to add a Gradient Map adjustment layer. Before you do that, check that your f/ground and b/ground colours are set to their defaults i.e. black and white. Once you have the colours to their default, click on the Create New Adjustment Layer at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Gradient Map. Click on the Gradient (see image) to get the dialogue box. You should now have the dialogue box visible and you can start to make some adjustments. Usin the bottom Color Stops drag the black triangle in till the Location reads 15% – drag the white stop in till it reads 95% and move the Color Midpoint till it reads 55%. These are just the settings I chose, you can change them if you like. Once you have it as you like, click OK in the Gradient Editor and then OK in the Gradient Map to accept. Now you are going to do a Stamp Visible. There are several ways that you can do this – making sure that you have the Gradient Adjustment layer active you can hit the Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E keys and the 3 layers will be merged into one. Or you can create a new blank layer above the Gradient Map Layer, hold down the Alt key go to the little downward facing triangle at top of the layers palette and select Merge Visible – don’t let go of the Alt key until it has merged. Change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass and you can punch in the number I have, or choose one of your own. If you hold down the Alt key and click on the eyeball next to the background layer, you can see the changes you have made so far. With the Alt key still held down click on the eyeball again to view all of the layers. You could stop there if you wanted to, but you can also do a couple of other things. Making sure that you are working on the top most layer, go to the new adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Solid Color. I chose a blue colour (see image below) and then change the blend mode to colour and you’ll probably have to take the opacity down as well. I took the opacity down to 15%. To further enhance this, you could then create a new blank layer at the top of the layer stack, grab your Elliptical Marquee Tool, hold down the Shift Key to get a circle shape, go to Select>Inverse and then fill the selection with black (or some other colour). Press Ctrl + D to deselect and then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and give it a really high blur. I did about 60 on this image. Go back to Filter> and choose Gaussian Blur from the top to repeat the filter, or you could press Ctrl + F on the keyboard. I then took the opacity of the layer down to 50% – and here is the final image and then a comparison image.
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