No, this is not sponge cake in a trifle, *this is the art of making one area of a photograph retain it’s original colour whilst the rest …
No, this is not sponge cake in a trifle, this is the art of making one area of a photograph retain it’s original colour whilst the rest is desaturated (converted to greyscale). If that all sounds like gobblygook, it did to me at first. Now it just rolls off the tongue. / And I only taught myself this technique this afternoon (10th Oct 2007) Here are a few images I’ve created so far: They the correct dimensions for printing as a card, laminated or framed image, because I know you’ll want to purchase them ...right?
I am currently working through my third CS3 tutorial and I picking up a ton of useful tips for my photographic workflow. I just HAD to s…
I am currently working through my third CS3 tutorial and I picking up a ton of useful tips for my photographic workflow. I just HAD to share this one with you. Regarding Hue/Saturation. When you overdo this on an adjustment layer in your photos your detail is lost and it looks really blocky. Sometimes you just can’t get the saturation adjustments you need. Here’s how its done – Thank you to Chris Orwig for this one. 1) Open you image and convert it to LAB colour using: Image – Mode – Lab Colour 2) Create a curves adjustment layer 3) In the Curves dialog box ALT-click the grid to get a more detailed display 4) Go to the a – channel 5) Pull the black slider on the bottom of the grid into the right just one grid line (in this example although you can play!) 6) Pull the white slider opposite into the left by the same one grid line 7) Switch to the b channel and repeat. 8) Check out your image. This method actually increases saturation in tones you couldn’t even see that you had. Its excellent for autumn leaves or rivers and waterfalls. 9) When your done exit Curves dialog and convert your image back to RGB (select to Flatten in the pop up prompt) 10) Your all done. This is by far the best tip I’ve discovered so far. I tried it out of interest on a shot from this afternoon and it brought out lovely greens in Autumn leaves and a lovely hazy blue on water and waterfalls. Try it – I think you will like it! :D
Can someone please tell me how to superimpose one photo over another? If I have to read the manual one more time this week, I’ll turn gr…
Can someone please tell me how to superimpose one photo over another? If I have to read the manual one more time this week, I’ll turn green and explode.
I have just learned a really useful little tip for Sharpening images in Photoshop which I thought I should share with you all. Until n…
I have just learned a really useful little tip for Sharpening images in Photoshop which I thought I should share with you all. Until now when I sharpened an image in CS3 with Smart Sharpen I used to sharpen and then leave it at that. As you may well know over sharpening can produce exaggerated noise and produce “halo” effects on your edges which look plain nasty. Here’s a few useful tips to help you improve the quality of your sharpening. – Always sharpen to a NEW LAYER (Merge all to new layer using SHIFT+CTRL+ALT+E on PC’s) – I always convert this layer to a smart object to allow me to modify any applied filter effects. – Always change the blend mode on this layer to LUMINOSITY. This massively reduces the halo effects on your sharpened image. (Try over-sharpening an image and then changing the blend mode to luminosity just to see this in action) – Follow these guidelines for smart sharpening for the best results For STANDARD SHARPENING – Amount 100, Radius <=2 / For SOFT IMAGES – Amount 140, Radius <=1 / For PORTRAITS – Amount <=5 Try these guidelines out and see what you think.
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. Yo…
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.
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.
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 digital blending in Photoshop CS3 using layer masks and transparency gradients. It is aimed at those who are interested in seeking alternatives to HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing. I would consider the usage of these techniques as digital graduated neutral density filters and although it can take some time to implement, I find the benefits to be: Preservation of intended colour and tone Complete control over contrast gradients Elimination of halo effects Elimination of fringing I will use one of my photographs, The Heart, to illustrate the method. 1. Download this zipped folder containing the two images to be used for blending and open IMG_1166 in Photoshop. 2. Press Ctrl+Shift+N and click OK to add a new layer. To place IMG_1164 on this layer go to File > Place and find where you saved it. Click the tick to commit the transform. 3. To create a mask, click the New Layer Mask (grey square with white circle inside) button in the Layers palette. To create a transparency gradient on this mask, first hit G to bring up the gradient toolbar and select a linear gradient. Then click and drag as shown in the following picture. 4. The next layer will be a photo filter so click Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Photo Filter and hit OK. Push the density slider to 100% and select a custom colour with properties as shown in the following picture. 5. Now apply another layer mask and gradient, as done previously, to restrict the photo filter to the sky. Change the blend mode to Linear Burn and opacity to 70% for the following picture. The Linear Burn blend mode is similar to Color Burn, but instead of increasing contrast, it decreases brightness to darken the base color and reflect the blend color. Now add curves layers to the foreground and then the sky. 6. Click Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and hit OK. Then modify each of the RGB channels to reflect something like the following picture. 7. Change the blend mode to soft light and add a layer mask and gradient (this time in reverse) to restrict the curves layer to the foreground. This will produce the following result. The curves layer that targets the sky looks like this. 8. Change the blend mode again to soft light, opacity to 75% and create a layer mask and gradient to achieve the following result. 9. The final step involves adding a levels layer and changing its blend mode to ‘screen’ to boost the lighter areas. An opacity of 90% will achieve the picture shown below. 10. Straightening the horizon and correcting the barrel distortion yields The Heart. If you’ve found this useful please let me know. Feedback and discussion is welcome. If you haven’t done so already, please check out one of my other tutorials Photographing the Milky Way with a standard DSLR camera Cain Doherty
One of the wonderful thing about Adobe Photoshop (and clones) is that you can add layers of textures over the image you are editing and a…
One of the wonderful thing about Adobe Photoshop (and clones) is that you can add layers of textures over the image you are editing and adjust the opacity and blend mode to create wonderful textures, mood and story to your image. / / First convert the images that you wish to use as texture layers to Adobe Photoshop Files (.psd) either by using ‘File: Save As” and saving to your “Program Files>Adobe>Adobe Photoshop CS3>Presets>Textures” folder or move your .jpg images to the same folder and then do a batch conversion using “File>Scripts>Image Processor” and convert to .psd’s, selecting Textures as both the source and destination folder. Your textures can now be accessed using “Filters>Texture>Texturizer” and loading the textures you want by clicking the triangle. Another method is to open the image you wish to edit and then open the texture and copy and paste the image (Edit: select all) and paste it into the image you wish to texturise. Perhaps easier is using the ‘Place’ feature. File>Place and browse to find the layer you wish to place. Once done, you will see the image is a new layer over the old one and you can resize to fit the image as you wish. You can then change the blend mode as needed. For the example below I used Hard Light blend (default is Normal) and 50% opacity. —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-- / Before and after / —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-— Some samples of my work edited with layers of textures by ghostbones / Resources: / Adobe Photoshop CS4 demo Ghostbones textures (now hosted via telzey’s flickr account with permission of ghostbones who has deleted his account Textures for Layers Flickr Pool More tutorials at my site / http://www.vanessapikerussell.com.au
Layered With Texture / A group for artists who love to achieve texure or the textured look by using layers have featured these images ...
Layered With Texture / A group for artists who love to achieve texure or the textured look by using layers have featured these images :Let’s do what we normally do and THANKYOU/so very very pleased
This isn’t going to be a start to finish project, but rather a couple of different ways you could be using selections and adjustment laye…
This isn’t going to be a start to finish project, but rather a couple of different ways you could be using selections and adjustment layers that you may not have thought of. You can borrow my image below to practise on if you like, copyright is mine etc., Lets look at doing dodging and burning with some very loose selections and a bit of mask blurring. Open the image and grab the Lasso tool. You can press L on the keyboard or access it from the side tool bar. Select the road area – see image below – when you get to the straight parts of the image, hold down the shift key to so the Lasso Tool draws a straight line. Hold down the Alt key on the keyboard, then go to the bottom of the layers palette and click on the ying yang symbol (new fill or adjustment layer) and click on Curves. A small dialogue will appear (you can name it burn if you like), change the blend mode to Luminosity and click OK – the Curves dialogue box will then appear. Try to keep part of the road in view, then you can pull the line down to where mine is if you want. See image below. Click OK to accept the change. You can fix up the mask at this stage if it needs a little adjusting. Grab a white brush and paint :) There is an obvious transition line, so it needs fixing. Click on the layer mask to make it active, and then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur I punched in 20 pixels for this image – that will vary of course depending on what size image you are working on. Click OK to accept your blur settings and then you can switch the adjustment layer on and off to see what you have done. If you don’t like it, click on the curves adjustment thumbnail (not the mask) and the Curves adjustment dialogue will appear and you can change the settings to suit. Duplicate the adjustment layer and click on the eyeball of the ‘Burn’ layer to hide it. Double click on the adjustment layers thumbnail and when the Curves Dialogue box reappears hold down the Alt key of the keyboard and you will notice that the cancel button changes to ‘reset’, click on that to reset the line. Reference the image below to see where I have moved the line to and voila – some instant dodging. You would normall do that on 2 different parts of the image and on 2 curves adjustment layers. After you have finished the burn process, grab your Lasso (or any selection tool) and select another area and go through the process again. So this gets the mind moving to think …. how else can we use this to do interesting things to our images. What about some colour ? Lets have a look at doing something like that :) With the same image open, go to View in the top toolbar and make sure that “snap’ is ticked, and then in the view menu go to ‘New Guide’ and in the small dialogue box check either Vertical or Horizontal and in the ‘Position’ box type in 50% – a guide will appear. Do the same again, only make sure that if you checked horizontal the first time, that you check vertical this time. You should end up with something like the image below. Grab the Rectangular Marquee tool and draw around one of the 4 sections in the image. The selection should ‘snap’ to the guides. see image below Hold down the Alt key and click on the ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Solid Colour from the fly out menu. Change the blend mode in the ‘New Layer’ dialogue to soft light and click OK. Now go ahead and choose a colour in the Solid Colour box …. I chose Red. Click OK to accept the colour. Remember that you can change this at any time simply by double clicking on the adjustment layer thumbnail – change the blend mode of the layer if you like, or take the opacity of the layer down. Grab the rectangular marquee tool again and select a different section of the image and run through the whole process again until you have all 4 sections with a different colour. see image below To clear the guides go to View>Clear Guides Whether you do any blurring on those layer masks is entirely up to you. I didn’t on the image above. So can we do something with type in a similar way …. course we can :) Grab the Type Tool from the sidebar, or press T on the keyboard, and type something – I chose ‘A Road’ LOL Hold the Ctrl key on the keyboard and click on the type layer thumbnail, that will load the transparency of the type – grab the type layer and drag it to the little garbage bin at the bottom of the layers, or make sure the layer is highlighted and then click on the little garbage bin at the bottom of the layers palette and then click yes in the dialogue press that comes up or hit enter on the keyboard. You should be able to guess what is going to happen from here :) Hold down the Alt key and click on the ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and choose solid colour from the fly out menu, change the blend mode to soft layer in the new layer dialogue box that appears and then choose a colour. You might end up with something like the image below. What you’ll notice, is that you can see the road texture through the type. You could do a similar thing with a shape layer. Draw out the shape, select the transparency and then delete the shape layer. Continue on with the usual procedure. You can also use this to produce a coloured vignette around the image. Select the Elliptical marquee tool and draw out an oval kind of shape. To position the oval in between drawing it out, hold down the spacebar and move the mouse to drag it where you want. Release the spacebar to continue enlarging it. Go to Select>Modify>Feather and 50 pixels for this particular image. Go to Select>Inverse or Shift + Ctrl + i and then follow the usual procedure – hold down the Alt key and select whatever adjustment you want from the adjustmet layers fly out menu. I chose solid colour and changed the blend mode to Overlay and picked a dark brown colour. I also chose to give it some more blurring, using Gaussian Blur with a radius of 50 pixels. See image below. You can use any of the adjustments on your images, so don’t just stick to the ones I’ve shown you here. I chose a Pattern Fill layer with Green with Fibres at 300% on the image below and changed the blend mode to Darken. Have fun !
For those of you who like to work with textures, I have decided to share a lot of my photos that I use in my composites. Not all of them…
For those of you who like to work with textures, I have decided to share a lot of my photos that I use in my composites. Not all of them, mind you! I worked hard to create some of them, so I will hold on to them jealously for a little while longer. In any case, there are a little more than 50 of them in a special album of my Flickr account, under Creative Commons licence. Most are big images with the larger side at over 3000px. I you use them, I would appreciate if you could give me proper credit and a link back to my Flickr home page as mentioned in the description of each image. Click on the image below to go to my texture album. Please note that only the images from that album are stock resources and free for the taking. All other albums are protected by copyright . Enjoy! Featured in TUTORIALS – Help and Advice Forums on May 7, 2009
I thought I’d share a quick way to blend exposures. / Nothing at all to do with HDR, but more about achieving a more balanced looking imag…
I thought I’d share a quick way to blend exposures. / Nothing at all to do with HDR, but more about achieving a more balanced looking image, exposure wise. First off, you will need to bring into Photoshop 2 images shot at least one stop apart via your camera, or RAW processed will do too. / Then, just drag the lighter of the two images on to the darker one, making sure it is stacked perfectly. / Ok, now just go to the top menu and do / 1. Select>Color Range and select Highlights from the drop-down. / 2. Put a tick in the ‘invert’ box and click ok. / 3. Add a Layer Mask, and then click on the Layer Mask to make it active. / 4. Go up to Filter>Blur> Gaussian Blur 250pxls and click ok. / Choose Flatten from the Layer menu up top. / You’re done. / Adjust Levels/Curves to taste if you want. I haven’t displayed any example because I wanted you to try it out for your self and make up your own mind whether or not you think it may be a useful tool to have up your sleeves for future stuff. / If you decide to give this a go, I’d love to know what you think. Good Luck / Peter
In Creative Cards !http://images-2.redbubble.net/img/art/framecolor:black/framestyle:flat30/mattecolor:black/product:framed-print/si…
In Creative Cards / Turmoil / We Know Nothing In Food for Thought / Lucious Layer Cake with Berries and whipped Cream Thank you so much
Several people have asked me how I create the effect I’ve used with my color Tombstone portraits and photos such as Cochise Stronghold an…
Several people have asked me how I create the effect I’ve used with my color Tombstone portraits and photos such as Cochise Stronghold and Out Of The West. First, I did a search for “free grunge textures” and found a couple of very good websites that allow you to copy the textures for free. Where a choice was available, I used the highest resolution available since my photographs are usually printed fairly large. Among the textures I chose were several “frames.” I use Photoshop Elements for this effect. The technique goes like this: / 1. I open the frame layer, a texture layer and my photograph and minimize the texture layer and the photograph to the palette bin. / 2. I then open the texture layer. / 3. I use the quick selection tool to select the entire texture layer, go to Edit, and copy. I then minimize the texture layer. Next I paste that layer to the frame. If the layer doesn’t fit the frame, use the move tool to make it match. / 4. At this point, I play with the opacity of the texture layer until I have the look I want. Because I’m working with layers, I can always change it later. / 5. Next I open my photograph and using the quick selection tool, I select the entire photograph, go to Edit and copy. After minimizing the photograph, I paste the photograph on the texture layers. At this point you’ll only see the photograph. / 6. The magic happens when you change the blending mode of the photograph to “multiply.” That allows the layers underneath to come through the photograph. You can play with the opacity on this layer, too, if it’s too strong, but I’ve found what works really well to get a very old look is to desaturate the photograph using Hue and Saturation under Enhance. / 7. Different blending modes give different effects so try them all. This is how I learned which blending modes do what. / 8. As I experimented with this effect I found that sometimes the frame is too strong (it’s the background layer remember and you can’t make any opacity changes to a background), I made a copy of the background layer and changed the opacity of that layer. Be sure you turn off the bottom background layer so you can see what you’re doing. / 9. Once you get the overall look the way you want it, flatten the layers. The overall effect really depends on the kind of texture layer you use. Experiment with a bunch of them on the same photo until you come up with the one you like the best. On my “Bisbee Graffiti,” my first attempt at this effect, I used a rust texture. On “Out Of The West” I used an old wrinkled paper texture. The fun of this effect is that you’re only limited to the textures you use. Have fun with this and I hope to see your work on Red Bubble. And, by the way, this works with black and whites and sepias, too. I’m now photographing my own textures. It’ll make people laugh when you walk around taking pictures of sidewalks, rocks and rust! PS One of my RB friends says that putting texture on top of the photos works, too. I’ll have to try that.
Good news for Element users. As you know you can’t directly create and use layer masks in elements – but now you can.. I just disco…
Good news for Element users. As you know you can’t directly create and use layer masks in elements – but now you can.. I just discovered this from a website http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pselements/qt/layermasks.htm They also create a one click function which does the following automatically but its very similar Here’s how you do it: If the layer you want to mask is the background, first convert it to a regular layer, by double-clicking the background layer in the layers palette. Type a name for the layer and click OK, this unlocks it. Or simply duplicate the layer . keeping the background as spare until you’ve done what you want. Add a solid color adjustment layer using any color as the fill. / Drag the color fill layer below the layer you want to mask. in the layer’s palette, select the layer above that you want to mask, and press Ctrl-G to group it with the color fill layer. Now the color fill layer will act as a mask on the layer above. / Paint or fill with black on the mask to erase on the layer mask, white to reveal or any shade of gray to reveal just some of the layer.
I was recently asked to explain how I use layers. So while trying to put my thoughts together, I decided I might as well share it with ev…
I was recently asked to explain how I use layers. So while trying to put my thoughts together, I decided I might as well share it with everyone who’s interested. I’ll show how to do very basic adjustments so you get a feel for how layers work. Once you’re comfortable with that you can move on to using layers to create art effects. Please keep in mind that I’m a Photoshop user... I’m in no way an expert! / This is just my way of working with layers. There are many different ways, & they all work. Why use layers ? : / Our reasons for using layers are many & varied. We might be doing vector-like illustrations, Or composing an intricate fantasy photomanipulation. / It may be a simple matter of applying text over an image. / You may just want to do basic tone & colour adjustments of your photographs. / Whatever your reason, using layers is almost essential. / I say this for one very important reason. If you apply adjustments of any type to your original image, you will be altering it permanently. There’s no going back. Pixels get moved around & destroyed, every brush or keystroke seriously alters the quality of your image. / However, working in layers is non-destructive. The original image sits at the bottom of your stack, untouched, unaltered, safe from damage. / All of your edits are stacked on top of the original, & then “flattened”, usually upon completion, or when you’re ready to move on to the next stage of editing. I’ll use this image of a bunch of people looking a Trojan warplane, to demonstrate the basics of using layers. / I’m using PS CS3, & I’m not sure how similar the layout of PS Elements is, so this will either be helpful to you, or just confusing…. it should be fairly similar though. Let’s get started : 1) Open your image in Photoshop, & save it straight away as a psd (Photoshop file format) I’ve decided to call this one “enter the trojan”. / 2) Now have a good look at the image & decide what needs doing. / Does it needs cropping? Some people choose to crop at the start, but for some strange reason I’ll often wait until I’m somewhere through my editing process. I like to wait to see how the image is evolving…. Does anything need cloning out? / This image has a rather annoying person disappearing out of the left side of the frame, so Ill be getting rid of him, as well as cleaning up a few distracting white spots on the airfield in the background. 3) Look to the right of your screen & you’ll see your layers palette. / At the top right of that you’ll see 3 little horizontal lines stacked on top of each other with an arrow next to them. Left click on this & you’ll get a drop-down box. this is your most important box for using layers. Click on duplicate layer, & rename it as you wish. / I’m calling it “clone”. / / You’ll see the duplicate layer appear above the background layer in your layers palette. / / Make sure the clone layer is selected (it’ll be highlighted in grey), & you’re ready to work on that layer. / Now select your clone tool & go to work. All done? If you’re happy with your work make sure you save. Now, remembering what I said about your background (original) layer remaining untouched, here’s a little demo. / Do you see that little eye beside your “clone” layer? / Click on it…. Hello!! Your cloning has gone! Click on it again….. it’s back!!! / OK, we could have fun with this all day, but do you see how the background image is unchanged? Cool huh? Let’s move on…. I’ve got blown out highlights in my clouds which are a problem & the mid-tones are a bit too dark. / I’ll deal with the clouds first by using a curves adjustment layer. 4) All the way down at the bottom of your layers palette, you’ll see a toolbar. look for the circle that’s half black & half white. / This is the “create new fill or adjustment layer” button. / Click on it & select “curves”. / 5) Grab the little white dot on the line in the top right corner. Now drag it a smidgen down to the right. That should take care of the blown out clouds. / Click OK. / / Do you see you now have a curves layer? / (Because I use CS3, it automatically gives me a layer mask box on this layer. It’s that white box in your curves layer. But we’re not going to get into masks today) Now to fix the mid-tones. For this I’m going to add a Levels layer. / 6) Just like in step 4), click on the “create new fill or adjustment layer” button & this time select “Levels”. / 7) This will open a box with a levels histogram in it. / To lighten your mid-tones slide the grey arrow in the middle of the histogram to the left until you’re happy. / Click OK, & you’ll see your levels layer sitting above the curves layer. Now, what if you wanted to do some dodge & burn? / There’s a number of ways to dodge & burn, so I’ll show you one that I use quite often. 8) Remember those 3 little horizontal lines that you clicked on to duplicate the layer? (step 3) / Click on that again, & this time select “New Layer”. / 9) In the dialogue box, change the name to “dodge & burn”, / click on the “mode” dropdown box, & select “overlay”, / then check the box “Fill with overlay-neutral color (50% gray) / it should look something like this : / / Then click OK. You’ll now see a layer called “dodge & burn” in your layers palette. It should be on the top of the pile. If it isn’t, simply drag it to the top. / Any work you do to the top layer will be carried over to all the layers below. 10) Select your burn tool, set your range to Shadows, & Exposure around 20 (this will depend completely upon the type of image you’re working on), then get to work burning out the areas that you feel need deepening. 11) Then take your dodge tool, set your Exposure to around 20 & work over the areas that you think need a little more highlighting. I’ve decided this image needs a bit more saturation. 12) Go back to the black/white circle (as mentioned in step 4), & this time look for Hue/Saturation. / / Adjust your sliders as you see fit, then click OK. / At this stage I’m happy with my basic adjustments. It’s now at the stage where it’s ready for me to use it as a background image for something a little more creative. 13) If you haven’t been saving until now, you really must do it now. 14) Now we’re going to Flatten the file. / Go to those 3 little horizontal lines with the arrow again (step 3), & this time look for “Flatten Image”. / / Click on it. You’ll see that all your layers have been “flattened into just one layer, & it’s now become your new background layer. If you’re planning to print this, you’ll need to give it some sharpening. / There are so many ways to sharpen, but at the moment I’m a bit partial to using the “high pass” filter. 15) To do this you’ll need to use a duplicate layer (remember step 3?) / I’m re-naming it “High Pass Sharpening”. / 16) Go to your “filter” drop down box on your top tool bar, & select, “other”, “high pass”. / 17) Adjust your radius slider until you see a good amount of line detail while keeping the tones in gray. Click OK. / You’re probably wondering what’s happened to your image. We’ll fix that right now. 18) Look above your “high pass” layer, & you’ll see Opacity set at 100%, to the left of that the word “normal” in a drop-down box. / Click on that drop-down box & select “overlay”. / / Presto! You’ve got your image back, & it’s been sharpened. / Toggle the “eye” off & on to see the effect. 19) If it’s too sharpened for your taste, you can adjust the opacity of that layer. / Find the “opacity” slider above the layer, & adjust it as you like. / I’m setting this one to 50%. / 20) Save this as a new psd file ( I’m calling this one “enter the trojan HP sharp”), & flatten it as before. / 21) Now all you need to do is save it in the Format of choice. / I routinely save all my images as TIFF files, & then save again as JPEG. / Remember to do all you backups now so you don’t forget later. All finished! Now you have an image that is fine as is, or ready for you to get a little creative & do further editing. / The final image : / You might also want to look at Texturing an Image in Photoshop for Absolute Beginners for further editing ideas. [ One last point : I put a lot of time & effort into creating these tutorials. Please don’t disrespect me by claiming them as your own.]
Top Ten Winner in the Beautiful food Challenge in Bits and Pieces !http://images-1.redbubble.net/img/art/framecolor:black/framestyle…
Top Ten Winner in the Beautiful food Challenge in Bits and Pieces / Luscious Layer Cake with Berries and Whipped Cream Top Ten winner in the Painted Ladies Challenge “Best Hair“ / Could This be the Magic Top Ten winner in the Autumn Challenge in Bits and Pieces / Top Ten winner in the Autumn Challenge in Inspired Art / Autumn Other Wins Featured in First Things / 20 Years Later Thank you so much to everyone who made these wins and feature possible
I have been offline for a while due to illness, so it will take me some time to catch up with comments and replies ... *1st Place Wi…
I have been offline for a while due to illness, so it will take me some time to catch up with comments and replies ... 1st Place Winner in the Acrylic painting Challenge “Embrace the Darkness“ / The Stranger Featured in Just Watercolours / Firelight..A Still Life Featured in If It Doesn’t Belong / Delicious Ripe Cherries Featured in Impressionism Cafe / Pears and Lace Featured in First Things / / Writing A Successful Artist is Dissatisfied Thank you so much to the voters who made this win posssible and the moderators who featured my work
Top Ten Winner in Impressionism Cafe Floral Still Life !http://images-2.redbubble.net/img/art/framecolor:black/framestyle:flat30/mat…
Top Ten Winner in Impressionism Cafe Floral Still Life / Spring Fever..Magnolia 1 Top Ten Winner of the Pure White Flower Challenge in the Floral, Watercolour Pastel Group / Peace in the New Year Thank you so much to all the wonderful voters…I appreciate your support
/ www.photographycampu…
/ www.photographycampus.com Hi Guys. / Some of you may know I’ve recently started writing for DESKTOP magazine about all things photography and photography post production. I am ‘soon’ going to launch an on line learning portal (subscription based) called the Photography Campus which will have video tutorials about photography & videography by real live working professionals. Anyway, I promised a few people that I’d put the articles up here once they’d gone to print. So here’s the November issues article: How to use layer blend modes in Photoshop. As creative folk, we have a wonderful knack of ignoring things when they get too technical. / For most of us, our left brain left years ago, tired of the lack of love and relentless mocking from its hyperactive sibling, the right brain. / It’s little wonder then, so many software functions are overlooked due to their, eeky – geeky – speakiness. / Take the layer blending modes in Photoshop. They promise so much with fancy names like multiply, hard light, dissolve and luminosity. Yet a quick look in many Photoshop help files reveal evil words like algorithms, percentages and the arch rival of all creatives..Maths. Urgh. / In fact the layer blend modes are little rippers when it comes to fixing images and creating interesting effects. They’re non destructive, versatile and quite frankly everywhere. (Seriously they breed like rabbits in Photoshop). / And here’s the thing. You don’t actually have to understand all of them to use them. / By in large understanding the theory of only a handful will have you speaking fluent blending modes and impressing your arty-farty-party friends in no time. Now for some maths you’ll really like. Sure there’s 25 layer blend modes listed in the drop down menu of PS CS4, but in reality they fit into 6 sections and truth be told there’s only 3 you really need to understand. Check out this diagram. The three sections you’ll use the most are the darken section, lighten section and the contrast section. In these groups if you understand one mode, you pretty much understand them all. Here’s how do they work. In short blending modes effect the way the top layer blends with the layer below it. Depending on which blend mode you choose, you can make images look lighter, darker, more contrasty, a different colour or a handful of other styles. / The first group in our layer blends diagram we’ve called ‘whatever’ because it’s not really all that interesting. / Normal is well, normal – as in default, as in 100% opaque, as in nothing exciting to see here…move on. / Dissolve is kind of like the annoying guy at the party. He has one trick (reproduces pixels randomly so things look a little pointilized) and pretty much that’s it. It’s probably not something you’ll use much if ever unless you are that annoying guy, in which case, go away. / The ‘dark’ section modes you will use a lot. They ignore white but blend the dark and black pixels, thereby making an image look darker. The Lighten modes ignore black but blend the lighter colours thus the making an image lighter. The contrast modes ignore mid grey but still blend the light and dark pixels and as such / create contrast. / To see it work in practice, here’s an experiment you can do yourself. 1. Create a Photoshop file. / Make sure it has 2 layers. The top layer has a 100% black object, a 50% grey object and a 100% white object. / The bottom layer is green. Your layers should look like this: 2. Choose the top layer and go to the layer blend mode. Choose Multiply…but wait before you do, ask yourself…if multiply comes from the ‘dark’ layer group what will the result be? Yup you guessed it, it will ignore white pixels, so as you see the white object disappears, the 100% black remains the same because you can’t get darker than that and the 50% grey object makes / the pixels below it darker. Therefore the entire image becomes darker. It will look like this: 3. Now choose Lighten. It ignores black so the 100% black disappears, the 100% white remains because you can’t get lighter than that and the everything below the 50% grey goes lighter. As such the entire image gets lighter. The image should look like this: 4. Finally, choose overlay. It ignores 50% grey, so the grey object disappears and the white and black objects remain. Thus the image will show greater contrast. See: By understanding these three modes you effectively have a good idea of how others in their sections work (give or take a few discrepancies…) If you include normal and annoying dissolve that’s 19 out of 25 sorted before you’ve even ordered your second chai latte. / As for the other blends, rather than us explain them, here’s a way to see their effect with a nifty little keyboard shortcut. / Choose your move tool (V). Make sure the top layer is chosen in the layers box. Hold down the shift key and press the – and + tools. This will scroll through every layer blend style and give you an instant preview of what happens with each one. / So now you know the theory how can you use it in practice? / The most obvious use is to fix exposure. / Here we have Jessie the wonder dog posing in an overexposed shot. Because she’s black and white she provides a good test case. / Firstly we create a new layer above our background layer. We can either just press cmd or ctrl j to duplicate the original layer, or if you wish to keep file size down, you can just choose a Levels adjustment layer and leave it untouched. It will ‘inherit’ the information on the bottom layer and allow you to work the blend modes just as effectively. / We want to blend the darker pixels whilst leaving the whites alone. So we activate the top layer and choose multiply. Shazam instant gratification. You can also try out the other modes in the Darken section to see the variations you can achieve. Here’s the before and after: Jess before multiply: Jess after multiply: Ok let’s try an underexposed shot. And this time we’ll use the Linear Dodge mode form out ‘Lighten’ section. Jess before Linear Dodge: After: Finally in the following shot Jess is exposed OK but looks awfully flat. She needs contrast and that means a mode from the contrast section. Try Overlay. Much better. Before Overlay: After Overlay: Once you’ve used a blend mode you can use it immediately again to ‘multiply’ the effect of it. You can also use the most well known blend mode of all – the opacity slider. Say I wanted to lighten the underexposed shot even more, I could go blend > lighten. Then create duplicate layer of that new layer and choose blend > lighten again. If two blends were too much, I could simply dull down the second blend my decreasing its opacity, effectively creating a ‘blend and a half’. / As an example of using multiple blend modes in the same file check out the following shot. The shot on the left (of a hot rock pool at Yellowstone National Park) is the original shot straight out of the camera. The shot on the right was achieved by combining a mix of layer blends just from the 3 main sections we’ve talked / about; darken, lighten and contrast along with the opacity slider. Some blends were used more than once. / In fifteen minutes we had the shot on the right. It could do with more work but it does show you what’s possible in a short period of time. BEFORE (straight out of the camera): AFTER: I did use a couple of quick layer masks in there as well to determine which part of the image the blend mode affected. What are layer masks you ask? Well, that’s for the December issue of DESKTOP. / In the meantime happy shooting and remember, with any program fear not the names of the processes, just experiment with them until you find what works for you. Then gloat. Some keyboard shortcuts relevant to this article: Use the corresponding number on your keyboard to set the opacity level, eg want 80% opacity? Press 8. / 50% press 5 etc. You get the picture (and yes you can have that pun for free). / To duplicate a layer press CTRL + J (WIN) CMD + J (Mac) / To cycle through blend modes: Press the move tool (V). Holding down the shift key and pressing the plus or minus key lets you toggle through the blend modes. If you’ve made it this far congrats! They key is just muck around and have fun :) / Follow my photo tips & news on Twitter @photocampus
TOP TEN WINNERS / In Inspired Art…Challenge “For Old Times Sake“ / !http://images-1.redbubble.net/img/art/framecolor:black/framestyle…
TOP TEN WINNERS / In Inspired Art…Challenge “For Old Times Sake“ / / The Red Door Knob In Impressionism Cafe…Challenge “Still Life Fruit with Pitcher“ / / Red Pears with Ewer In Avante Garde Art…Challenge..”Avante Garde Portrait“ / / The Temptation In Impressionism Cafe..Challenge…”Fruit and Bowl“ / / Homage to Cezanne FEATURES / Inspired By Life / / Edith Two features for this painting…Inspired Art and #1 Artists of Red Bubble / / This Could be the Magic Two features for this painting…The Sisterhood and First Things / / The Visitor Thank you so much to the Group Moderators and all who voted to make these wins possible
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FEATURES / In Live Love Dream / / It’s You Darling In Dimensions / / Tropical Fandango In Black Xmas / / The Bothy In 400 to 499 Viewings / / Transition Time Again In Live Love Dream / / Land and Sea In 400 to 499 Viewings / / Yesterday TOP TEN WINS 400 to 499 Viewings Group…Challenge.Vibrant and Vivid Colour / / Yesterday Food for Thought..challenge…December’s Avatar / / Ripe Cherries Impressionism Cafe…Challenge..Still Life..Fruit and Bowl / / Homage to Cezanne Thank you so much to the group moderators and to all those who voted to make these wins possible
This has also been added to the Photoshop/Elements Tutorial Series...
This has also been added to the Photoshop/Elements Tutorial Series (scroll below the videos on that page) Photoshop Elements Layer Palette, per request The layer palette in use, shown to the right of the PS/E screen This work was the basis for my Alice in Wonderland series. / Don’t Ask Alice / Alice’s Window / Please Ask Alice, and / Alice Still Lives Here / The series is the finished product of the work shown throughout the Photoshop/Element video tutorials. You might want to also check out my personal gallery in Solo Exhibition’s ‘Host Hullabaloo!’, where on the first page, there are some demo screenshots of the layer components and build-up for two finished works, Dream Shaman and Immersion. Studying these and the finished works will help you visualize layer use.
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