Photoshop Journal Entries

342 creative works found

  • The Porcelain Skin Effect in Photoshop
    by Julie Langford

    I have been asked by many people via comments, and directly, how I get the clear skin effect on my *Portraits...

    I have been asked by many people via comments, and directly, how I get the clear skin effect on my Portraits / . So, as I am now a leader in the Photoshop Help group, along with my good buddy Faizan Qureshi – I thought I would kick off my participation with this brief tutorial on how it is done. / / This was done in Photoshop CS2, but as the effect only uses the standard Photoshop tools, most if not all versions of the program will suffice for this tutorial. / / First things first, you will need a file to work on. The settings in this tutorial are based on the low resolution starting image here, and if you use higher resolution images – the settings will be different. / / You may right click and save the starting image below and use it to work through this tutorial to practise – you may also upload your finished work into your portfolio for feedback and to show others how you did – You MUST not, however, place the image for sale, or use it for any other purpose other than this tutorial, without my permission / / So, follow the steps and have some fun with this. / / 1. Save the image below and open it in Photoshop / / Starting Image / / startmodel / / / 2. On the toolbar on the left hand side, click on the healing tool / / healing brush tool / / Use the following settings for the healing brush / / healing brush tool settings / / / 3. Zoom in on the model so that you can see imperfections on the skin. Hold Alt on your keyboard and click on an area of skin close to an imperfection once – release the mouse and the Alt key / / healing brush step 1 / / / 4. Click the mouse again over the imperfection that you want to hide, once / / healing brush step 2 / / / 5. Repeat the last two steps until you have removed all the imperfections, until the image looks similar to the one below. / / model after healing brush applied / / / 6. Down on the right hand corner of the Photoshop workspace – you will find the layer pallette – Have a look – you will notice that there is one layer called background, or Layer 1 in the pallette at the moment. / / The Photoshop layer palette / / / 7. Go to the menu bar running across the top of the workspace – click on the word – Layer, then click on Duplicate Layer. A box will appear, just click OK. Notice that a new layer, called layer 1, or background copy now appears in the layer pallette above the background layer. Make sure that this top layer is highlighted/selected / / 8. Just above the highlighted layer, there is a drop down menu [which probably has the word Normal in it at the moment]. Click that drop down menu and click on multiply. / Multiplying the layer / / / your image will go very dark like the one blow. Model after multiply / / / Still working on this same layer / / 9. On the menu bar running across the top – click on the word Filter, then on Blur, then on Gaussian Blur – a box will appear. Change the settings to that below and click OK to apply the effect. / / Blur settings / Your image will now look like the one below / / model after blur applied / 10. Go to the top menu again, and click on the word Layer, then on New Adjustment Layer, then on Levels – a box will appear. Adjust the settings to that in the image below. / / Levels adjustment settings / / / Your image should now look like the one below / / Model after the levels adjustment / / / Note here that you now have 3 layers in the layer pallette. You will need to be working on the MIDDLE layer [see below] for the next step, so make sure it is selected. / / Selection of the middle layer for the next step / / / 11. On the toolbar on the left, click on the History Brush to select it history brush tool / / / On the top toolbar menu, set your brush to a small soft brush [so that you can fit it into the corner of the eyes], and set the opacity to 25 / / All in one stroke [thats important with low opacity] paint over one eye totally to bring the detail and brightness back out. Repeat for the other eye, and then for the lips. / / The effect is quite subtle here, but it will make a big difference at the end of the tutorial and will give life to your model. / / Your image should now look similar to the one below / / model after history brush / / / 12. Now go to the menu up the top and click on the word Layer, then click on Flatten image – this will result in you having one layer in your layer pallette again. / / Ok – so your model has great skin now, but she is a bit on the bright side. We are going to darken her up a bit, but if we just do it now, she will likely turn orange with the current saturation level. so we need to adjust it a little. / / 13. Go to the menu up the top and click on the word Image, then Adjustment, then Hue/Saturation – a box will appear. change the settings to that below. / / hue/saturation settings / / / The image should now look a better colour model after hue/saturation settings applied / / / Now lets darken her up / / 14. Up to the top menu again – click on the word Image, then Adjustment, then Levels – the levels box will appear. Change the settings to that in the image below. / / Levels adjustment settings / / / Your image should now look much darker / / model after levels adjustment applied / / / Finally – we need to bring out highlights and for this we use the dodge tool. / / 15. Over on the toolbar on the left, click on the dodge tool to select it / / dodge tool / / / Use a soft large brush [about the size of her whole cheek], set the opacity to 18 and work on highlights in the drop down menu [up the top]. Click and drag once across the eye area, then once down the models right cheek to brighten these areas up. / / Your image is now complete and should look something like this / / finished model / / / I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. The settings will be slightly different with other images of different resolutions but the methods will be the same. When adjusting levels blur etc on other images, use the sliders to get similar looking effects to what you used here and the effects will work nicely for you. / / Good luck everyone, Please come back here and let me know how you got on.

  • A short explaination
    by Peter Marin

    Hi Bubblers, / Thanks to all the people that have taken the time to view and comment on my work to date not to mention the kind BubbleMail…

    Hi Bubblers, / Thanks to all the people that have taken the time to view and comment on my work to date not to mention the kind BubbleMails I get from a few of you, it’s really appreciated. / I thought I might submit a short tutorial or guide or whatever you want to call it regarding my last few uploads in the RB galleries, in particular a few of my last ones as I’ve been getting a lot of feedback requesting or asking for tips. First of all, my basic tools consist of PSCS3 (as of last week), Lightroom, CaptureOne and Photomatix. / For that edgey look, I mostly use Lightroom, but since CS3 came along I’ve been able to produce it via Camera Raw. / The settings for Lightroom are as follows. / 1. In the develop Module I make a virtual copy first and work on that instead of the orig. / 2. This next bit always starts off looking ugly so just hang in there with me. / Drag the following sliders to 100% / Recovery, Fill Light, Contrast, Clarity and Vibrance. / 3. Drag Blacks to somewhere between 20 and 40 for now. / 4. Turn down the Saturation, it’s probably screeming like hell about now. / 5. Set Luminance and Colour to the max. / Thats the basis for a lot of the treatments with variations and adjustments made to suit each image as required, they are never all the same but at least this is a starting point, I’ve made this into a Lightroom Preset so I have it when I want it, then tweek each picture from there on. That was for a Jpeg or RAW in Lightroom, for PSCS3 it’s virtually exactly the same if your using a RAW file, the controls are nearly identical except if your starting from a Jpeg, then it gets more time consuming, time isn’t something I have a lot of lately so I tend to go for the “under 30 minute” proceedures, I’m 50 next year and don’t want to spend all my time in front of the computer….......that time is reserved for getting out and about with my camera and trying to make a quid here and there. I digress, / Photomatix, my favorite piece of software to date bar none. Quite aversatile bit of gear in my book. I like to use it when converting single RAW files from LDR to HDR, then opening them up in PS to finish off. Another bit of kit I like to use is LucisArt, it makes very edgey pictures in a snap also. I have the PS plugin version, not the pro one, it’s like 600 bucks….ouch! All this pulling and pushing of colours, lights and shadows can and likely will cause a heck of amount of noise in your finished work, so thats where a good noise filter comes in, one that has some bells and whistles for adjustment…......none of that ‘one size fits all’ canned crap. I want control baby, all the way. Most are really good these days though and can be purchased for under 100 bucks. So there you go, I hope I answered some questions some of you might of had. / Happy New Year Pete

  • Dodging and Burning
    by Alison Johnston

    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.

  • Selective colouring - The cheat method :)
    by Julie Langford

    I have been asked by many how to do selective colouring on images, so here is a quick method for doing it. / / The method I use is a simp…

    I have been asked by many how to do selective colouring on images, so here is a quick method for doing it. / / The method I use is a simple two step process / / Open the image and turn it greyscale – click the word Image [up the top menu] then – mode then greyscale / / Click ok to the message that pops up asking to discard colour channels [Those are the red, green and blue channels that make your image colour] Now – you have a mono image with all the colour discarded – You cannot select colour if its all been discarded – so we need to put it back. / / Go back to image [up top] – mode and hit RGB – the image will stay mono, but is actually a colour image [with no colour] / / Hit the history brush in the toolbar in the left and paint back where you want the colour. Adjust the size of your brush as required. / / For more subtle effects, turn the brush opacity down – but remember when using low opacity – you must paint in one stroke, without releasing the mouse. / / thats it – yep – really simple eh / / A variation on this is for example, where you want to use this method on a forest scene – impossible to paint back in or select to colour by different methods. So after making the image greyscale, turning it back to RGB and selectiing your history brush – set the brush to a very large size with a zero hardness setting. Find a place on the image where you would like to see colour and click the brush there once. The result is a really nice graduated colour effect at the point where you wanted it to appear – awesome. / / Good luck all – have fun with it, and let me know how you get on – perhaps link your images here. / / Jul

  • TIP: A very useful colour adjustment tip
    by Alan Rodmell

    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

  • Create a Fantasy Forest Scene
    by Julie Langford

    A few peopple wanted to know how I created Swingtime, so here’s a walkthrough for you all. / / This was done quite quickly, and without t…

    A few peopple wanted to know how I created Swingtime, so here’s a walkthrough for you all. / / This was done quite quickly, and without the precision used to create the actual art piece, so please forgive the roughness around the edges of some of the screenshots. All was done in Photoshop CS3 but as basic tools only were used, All versions of the program will suffice. / / Base image provided by sxc.hu below / / Download it here and view the user agreement 1. Open the forest image in Photoshop. On top menu click Image – Adjustments – Colour Balance. Add yellow, red and magenta with the sliders, on Highlights and Shadows, until you get a deep rich forest. 2. Model image [taken by me. Model posed seated on a bucket holding hands up]. 3. Open model image in Photoshop. Top menu, click Select – All, then click Edit [again in the top menu] – Copy. Work on the forest image and click Edit – Paste, to paste model as a new layer onto the forest scene. [see image below] 4. User the Eraser tool on the toolbar, set to low hardness and 100% opacity to erase the background from the model layer. [See image below] 5. Erase further parts of the dress, that would not look natural if sitting on a swing. Pay particular attention to the waist area [which will give the impression of leaning back slightly], and the overhang at the back. [See image below] 6. Still working on the model layer, click Edit [top menu] – Free Transform. This will place handles around the model so that you can resize it. Then use the move tool to place the model where you want her in the scene. 7. Still working on model layer, click Image – Adjustments – Levels, and change the settings to make your model glow with colour [suggested settings below] 8. Now for the feet. This image was rendered in Daz studio / / 9. Repeat the process to copy and paste the feet image into your scene as a new layer [step 3] 10. Working on the feet layer, erase the background, then use Edit – Free Transform to resize. In the layer palette in the bottom right hand corner of your workspace – drag and drop this feet layer so that it appears underneath the model layer. Use the move tool to place the feet where you want them in the scene. Adjust the colour as required. [Step 1] Now for the swing Bench image provided from sxc.hu – cristi modoran Download it here and view the user agreement 11. Open bench image in Photoshop and paste into your forest scene [Step 3]. Crop it down to just the part you need and delete the excess. 12. Use the Polygonal Lasoo tool to select an area of the bench to use as a swing seat. 13, Once selected, click Select [Top menu] – Inverse, then hit Delete on the keyboard to remove the part of the bench image that you don’t need. Then use Edit – Free Transform to resize the swing seat, and the move tool to place it over the model in the scene. 14. Working on the model layer, Use the Magic Wand tool to select her dress. With the selection still active, switch to the bench layer and use the eraser to remove the part of the swing which covers the dress. Because the dress area has been selected, you do not need to be precise, as only areas of the seat within the selection will be affected. 15. Repeat step 3 to paste the rope image [link below] onto your scene. Drag the rope layer in the layer palette so that it is underneath the model layer. Use Edit – Free Transform, then Edit – Transform – Rotate to make it vertical. Erase the background and use the move tool to position it to the swing. rope image from Ladyleaf at sxc.hu 16. Working on the model layer, zoom in and erase the part of the hand that should be hidden by the rope. 17. Working on the rope layer – Duplicate it and move it over to the other side of the swing seat. Repeat step 16 on the other hand of the model layer. 18. Merge all layers except the background layer to bring you back to two layers within the layers palette. Use level adjustments on each layer in turn to blend them in well. 19. Finally, use the Burn tool to burn out the edges of the models dress overhang and the areas where the ropes meet the swing to give depth. Use the Dodge tool to make the models hair and dress pop with colour. 20. Flatten image and use White, and a star brush to add sparkles. Save image as jpeg. The end result can be seen Here / / Have fun, and let me know how yo uget on :)

  • Black and White Tutorial
    by Elvina-Mae Farkas

    OK, many people ask me how I get my black and white photos done, and most of the time I try my hardest to explain it all through a reply …

    OK, many people ask me how I get my black and white photos done, and most of the time I try my hardest to explain it all through a reply email. But recently a bubbler bubblemailed me and asked, so THIS time I figured I’d draw one up. So 4 hours later and I think Im done. WARNING: LARGE LARGE LARGE FILE!! WILL TAKE A WHILE TO DOWNLOAD But once downloaded, I suggest that you right-click and SAVE, so you dont have to come back each time. =) And another thing – sorry if there is incorrect spelling, punctuation etc. I didnt read over it! OKIE DOKIE – so for starters, pick a image you would like to turn into black and white. Ive made this tut to suit a portrait photo. You can do it with landscape, etc. Just with some common knowledge of where to edit and put things. Shouldn’t be too hard! So here is my orginal: / This is a photo of my mate Tristan. Pretty plain photo of him sitting in the car, on our way to the races. =) HERE WE GO! WOO-LAH! I also just edit to get rid of his moles, etc. That might be my next tutorial – haha! Hope this helps guys! Feel free to comment if you need help etc. I’ll try and do my best to answer them for you!

  • The Easy Guide to Creating the Orton Effect using Photoshop
    by Peter Hill

    The aim of this Guide is to provide easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions to achieving the Orton Effect without the necessity of bei…

    The aim of this Guide is to provide easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions to achieving the Orton Effect without the necessity of being a Photoshop guru. I still call myself “new to Photoshop” and I have found a lot of tutorials on this topic assume a much higher level of knowledge than I have and are not very intuitive. To achieve the Orton Effect you will be creating Layers, but don’t worry if you haven’t done this before. I hadn’t. The method I am about to describe is the simplest I have found. It’s not my method, but the description is all mine. When I have more time (yeh, right) I will revise this tutorial to include screenshots of the various steps. But for now, you might like to print this Guide and have it next to you while you create your first Orton Effect. I use Photoshop CS2 v9. The method described below originally came from someone using Photoshop Elements, so you can see this is not advanced stuff. The steps described below assume almost zero knowledge of Layering, and ignore other adjustments you might be making to the image, for example Sharpening the image before you start work on it. Step 1 Choose your image. Any image will do, you are just learning at this stage, but if you have that favourite flower shot or portrait – cool. Step 2 Open Photoshop. Open the image you have selected to be your first amazing Orton Effect image. Feel the excitement. This is your Background Layer. Step 3 Look for the Layer toolbox on the right hand side of the Photoshop work area. There should be a rectangular box with a small eye icon, a tiny thumbnail version of your image, and the word Background in italics. Right-click the word Background and select Duplicate Layer. A small box should immediately appear in the middle of your screen. It is asking you to Name the Duplicate Layer. Name this Layer Focus and click Enter. Step 4 There should now be a new rectangular box immediately above the original, and called Focus. (If there isn’t, stop, curse quietly, then try Step 3 again.) Pause now and look at the tiny eye icon. You will see that it is now the Focus layer on your screen, so this is the “copy” you are working on. OK, moving on ….. Right-click the Focus rectangular box and select Duplicate Layer again. This time when the naming box appears just click Enter because we will use the default name for this Layer, being Focus copy. Step 5 Right-click the Focus copy rectangular box and select Blending Options. This will open a new box with lots of options. Ignore them for now. In the top part of this box you will find a window showing the Blending Mode and the default setting of Normal with a pull-down menu (A downwards arrow). Open the menu (left-click) and select Screen. Click Enter to close the box. The Focus copy layer should now have a bit of a washed-out look to it as a result of selecting Screen as the Blending Mode. Step 6 Right-click the Focus copy rectangular box again, only this time select Merge Down (it’s near the bottom of the menu). This will collapse the Focus copy layer onto the Focus layer. Step 7 Right-click the Focus rectangular box again and select Duplicate Layer again. Name this copy Blur. Click Enter to close the box. Step 8 Now, find and open the Filter menu on the Tool bar running across the top of your screen. Select Blur. Another menu should open. Select Gaussian Blur (don’t ask). A new window should open. You will see a Preview of the image with a default blur Radius setting of 15.9. You can play around with the radius later. For now, just click OK to close the window as we will accept the 15.9 (I have found 15.9 to be right for most images anyway). The blur you are to achieve with this step should be enough to discern the shapes without the detail. Step 9 – The Magic Happens! This is the fun part. Right-click the Blur rectangular box and select Blending Options. As described in Step 5, this will open a new box with lots of options. Again, ignore them for now. In the top part of this box you will find a window showing the Blending Mode and the default setting of Normal with a pull-down menu (A downwards arrow). Open the menu (left-click) again and this time select Multiply. Click Enter to close the box. You should now be able to see the Orton Effect! Step 10 If you want to accept the result, right-click the Blur rectangular box one more time and this time select Flatten Image (it’s the last option on the menu). This basically collapses all the layers into one final image and is the last thing you do in Layering. You can now save the image as normal. Does it look something like this? If it looks too dark though, you can adjust the Opacity level with the sliding bar before flattening the image. Look for the tiny Opacity tool in the top right of the Layering toolbox. But if you find you need to go below 90% the Effect is significantly lost and maybe it wasn’t the right image. Have fun! I am. Peter

  • Weird Creatures and Photoshop Transform Tools
    by Julie Langford

    Ok, so here is how I used the Edit transform tools in Photoshop to create / / Wiseman / !http://images-2.redbubble.com/img/art/cropped/...

    Ok, so here is how I used the Edit transform tools in Photoshop to create / / Wiseman / and Fish Monster / / / Have loads of fun and be creative – things just appear right before your eyes using this method. / / 1. Open Photoshop and create a new transparent document 3200 high by 2400 wide [you can post a Tshirt with these dimensions as well as an art piece]. / / 2. Create a new layer and fill the bottom layer with solid black [you will need this dark background to see what you are doing later]. / / / / 3. Working on the top, tranparent layer – draw a random shape using the pen tool [create smooth curves by clicking and dragging, until you get back to your first point to close the path]. / / / / 4. Down on the bottom right click on the Paths tab on the layers palette. At the bottom of the palette, click on the convert to selection icon [shown in red below] – this will convert your path to a selection. / / / / 5. Fill this selection with a multicoloured gradient [or two colours of your choice]. / / / / 6. Click on Edit [up the top], then on Free Transform. This puts a border around your selection so that you can resize it. hit enter when you are happy with the resize to apply it. Then use the move tool in the toolbar on the left to move it to the centre of your canvas. / / / / 7. Back in the bottom right Layers palette, click back onto the layer tab. Duplicate the top layer [right click it and click duplicate]. / / 8. Working on the top layer again, click Edit, Transform, rotate. This puts a border around your image and allows you to drag the corners to rotaate the layer. Rotate it enough so that it moves slightly away from the layer beneath [see below]. Hit enter to apply the rotation. / / / / 9. Repeat the layer duplication and rotate until you have about 6 layers – keep the rotation reasonably uniform. / / / / 10. In the layers palette, click the top layer, hold ctrl on the keyboard and click all the other layers – except the bottom, black layer. This will highlight [select] them all. Once selected, righ click them, and click on merge layers. You will now have two layers in the layers palette again. A black layer [at the bottom], and a new layer with your rotation work above it. / / 11. Working on the top layer, click on Edit, transform and warp. this puts a grid over the image, which you can drag in multiple places and directions to completely change the appearance of your image. Work with this until you have a long warped shape like below. hit enter to aply the warp efect. / / / / 12. Repeat the whole process again, duplicating and rotating the layers until you have something like the image below. / / / / 13. Select all the layers except the black layer again and merge them. [youre now back to two layers again]. / / 14. Duplicate the top layer again, move it away from the other layer on your canvas. Warp it so that it is longer and thinner than the original layer that you duplicated [see below] / / / / 15. Click Edit, Free Transform to resize it. / / / / 16, Rotate it and place it over the other layer on your canvas. In the layer palette, drag the long thin layer to underneath the other layer, so that it appears underneath it in the platte [and on your canvas]. / / / / 17. Select both layers [but not the black layer] and merge them. / / 18. Click on image [up the top], and then on rotate canvas, then on 90 degrees CW. Duplicate the top layer, then click on Edit, Transform, then flip horozontally. Now move this new layer over until it lies side by side to the other layer. Select both layers [but not the black layer], and merge them. / / 19. Working on the top layer, click layer up the top, and then New, and then Layer. Draw an oval selection using the circular marquee tool in the eye area, and fill it with white. / / / / 20. Duplicate this layer and drag it over using the move tool to cover the other eye with a white oval. / / 21. Create another new layer, and use the paintbrush and black, and click once on each eye white to create pupils. Ctrl click all the eye layers in the layer pallette and merge them. / / 22. Working on this eye layer, click the word Layer [up the top], then Layer style, then Inner shadow. Apply the settings below to give your eyes life. / / / / 23. Click on the black layer in the layer palette, then click on Layer, new layer up the top to create a new layer above the black layer. / / 24. Use the Polygonal Lasso tool and draw a shape within your image for a beak [see below]. / / / / 25. Fill this selection shape with a dark grey to yellow gradient [top to bottom]. / / 26. Still working on this beak layer, click on Layer [up the top], layer style, Inner Shadow, and use similar settings to when you did the eyes to give depth the the beak. / / 27. Crtl click all the layers except the black layer and merge layers. You are now back to two layers – one black, and one with your image above it. It will look something like the image below. / / / / To save your image to post as art on a black background, go to file, save as, and save as a jpeg. This will merge and flatten the work. / / To save your work to post as a Tshirt, first, click the eye icon next to the black layer in the layer palette to make it disappear – your black background will become invisible. Now go to file, save as, and save as a png file. / / Voila – you have created a critter using transform tools in Photoshop. / / You can also use this method with parts of photographs, like I did with Fish monster. Try all sorts of things to get neat effects – a spoon, as nail, a scewdriver even. / / Most importantly, transform, transform, duplicate and transform some more – the more you use, the better your results will be. / / Have fun! /

  • Post Processing Tutorial
    by Hougaard Malan

    Post Processing 2 Sooooo…..It’s been about 3 months (I think) since my first tutorial and I’ve learnt a lot from photoshop in the mean…

    Post Processing 2 Sooooo…..It’s been about 3 months (I think) since my first tutorial and I’ve learnt a lot from photoshop in the mean time! So this is the improvement on my first tut and I’ll be going a bit more into using layers and levels to achieve better and more dynamic color range in your photos. Firstly, my disclaimer to all you critics out there. I have split landscape photography into 2 main genres. The first group show you nature as it is, they do very little processing and their photos always have a very clean, natural look. .The second group have a more artistic approach to their photography. They use a variety of cokin or lee creative filters, IR filters, strong ND filters and my favorite, Photoshop to make their photos more interesting and ‘artistic’. Now, no one can criticize the methods I am about to explain on making your photos more ‘interesting’ !!:) Secondly, to use this tutorial you must be able to shoot in RAW, because many times different parts of the images need slightly different exposures and you can achieve this with the RAW tool, with minimal loss of quality. I recommend you read my previous tut before reading this one. Here it is http://news.deviantart.com/article/35712/ Thirdly, Photoshop CS3. If you have CS2 then you’ll need to download the RAW tool plug-in which you can find at www.adobe.com . / / I’m not gonna explain how to open images or crap like that. This is not a tutorial for morons. So let’s get started! 1.Open the image your going to process, If it’s a RAW file and you have the PS RAW tool then it should open in the RAW tool. There is never any correct amount, it’s all personal opinion and what looks right to you. So whenever I say adjust something, you decide how much. You will learn what is the right amount over time. Adjust the following as much as(and IF) necessary. / White balance / Exposure / Blacks / Contrast / Vibrance The following Isn’t necessary, it can just add a little touch of vibrance or color to you photos. .Above all the sliders you’ll see a row of tabs that you can click on for other adjustments. I only ever use one, and that’s the one that looks like a coil: HSL/grayscale. That’s a confusing synonym for ‘messing around with the color’. Play around with the hue until your happy, but never adjust too much. Now at the top of the sliders there’s another sub-row of tabs. LEAVE SATURATION OUT. Go to luminance, play around, not too much though. 1a.In the case of a panorama, open all images to be stitched. Top left, click ‘select all’. Make the adjustments, save as PSD’s (doesn’t lose quality when saving, JPEG does). Merge them, layerflatten image. Crop the image, save the merged, cropped pano as a PSD and delete the PSD’s you just merged it from(they take a LOT of space). Now close it and open the merged pano PSD you just saved in the last step. This is so you can use the history brush. You’re now finished with the RAW tool, open image. The problem you now face with most images is that you want to enhance certain areas of the photo in certain ways. How do you do this? Layers…what is a layer exactly? Don’t be an idiot. It’s a layer! And layers are probably photoshop’s nr.1 key to success. You can put 500 layers on top of each other, and in the case of a photo it will always be copies of the same photo on top of each other. 2.Open the layer window. If you really don’t know how….press F7 and I will magically open it for you. 3.So decide how many parts of the image you want to edit separately and press ctrl+J to make copy layers, as many as you need + an extra one for last minute corrections. Now I’m going to guide you through the processing of my most recent image because it required the sky, ground and branch to have separate editing so it’s a good example. http://hougaard.deviantart.com/art/Shadow-of-the-Dead-76081703 Firstly the most recent one, which is a pano. I did everything as explained in step 1a. then step 2 and then step 3, to create four layers. one for the sky, one for the ground, one for the branch and one for any ‘oopsies’. 4.Edit the sky using the levels tool (ctrl+L), Do the RGB, then click the tab to select the levels of each color and then edit each color separately to get the color, tone and exposure that looks ideal to you. Make any other adjustments (curves, selective color etc.) to this layer. 5. Now that you can differ between the top layer (the one your looking at) and the one beneath it you can apply your first gradient mask. / At the bottom of the layers window you’ll see a rectangle with a circle in it. click it. you’ll see that a blank rectangle appeared next to the top layer. That’s your layer mask. 6.Now select the gradient tool by pressing G. You’ll get to know gradients as you use them more but to start click a short distance above the horizon and drag it a short distance below the horizon. See the result? You now revealed the bottom half of your top layer and what you now see is the layer below it.(to undo and try again simply press ctrl+alt+Z) You can reveal the top half simply by dragging the gradient the other way. You can create the gradient in any direction, opacity etc. Play around with the settings above the window! 7. Now in the levels window, select the 2nd layer. Edit it for the ground as in step 4. 8.If there is anything in the area of the horizon like a tree that’s sticking into the sky but but must have the same editing as the ground then you can either erase part of the mask(remember to select the mask in the layers tool) or you can use the history brush. If you have a simple photo in which only the ground and sky needed separate editing then you’re finished now. If you don’t want to lose you work, Save as a PSD at full resolution(if you don’t, you always regret it). 9.If your photo has another subject that needs it own editing then you’ve still got some work to do. Click on the top layer in the layer window and press ctrl+E to merge the 2 top layers. In my case, the branch still needed editing, I wanted to give it a reddish color to bring some more color to the photo. 2 ways to go about this. 9a. One is to select the branch with whatever lasso tool you prefer(3rd tool from the top, right click to select a specific one). Select the object. Now you’ll see, above the image there’s a tab that says ‘refine edge’. Click it and play around with the setting to well….refine the edge. Now you can just erase the object without a worry from your top layer to reveal the object from the layer beneath. 9b. The other way is to just erase it carefully, select the fine edged brush and start with a big brush, erase the center, select a smaller brush and move closer to the edge and so forth and so forth…. Both take time and patience. Effectiveness varies depending on the subject. If the object is well defined and isolated then I advise you use the first way. 10. Now that you’ve erased the object from the top layer and you see the object from the layer beneath it you can select that layer in the levels window and do the necessary editing to your object. And at the end of all that my photo was finished. The original was 70003500 pixels and when you do your processing at that scale and you upload something like a 1200700 to DA then most rough edges are unvisible and disappear. If you know that someone’s gonna buy a huge print then you better be more careful! 11. I Then pressed ctrl+E again to merge the top 2 layers and I still had one beneath the top layer(which is now the merged top 3). This bottom layer still has nothing done to it except the RAW adjustments. If you’re top layer has anything that went wrong in the editing like a rough edge, blown highlight, a shadow that’s too dark. Whatever. Eraser or history brush can usually fix it. Always save a full resolution PSD of your completed work because for certain photos this can take an hour or even more. And go through my previous tut http://news.deviantart.com/article/35712/ because it covers smaller useful things in PS and some steps that I don’t properly explain in this one. Some useful things about photoshop…. Practice makes perfect! Don’t stick to what you know, experiment! Photoshop is like maths, there’s a hundred ways to get to the same result!

  • Tutorial: Layer Masks and Transparency Gradients for "The Heart"
    by Cain Doherty

    This tutorial will cover my development of The Heart with Photoshop CS3…

    This tutorial will cover my development of The Heart with Photoshop CS3. The source images can be downloaded by clicking on the thumbnails for a larger version and right clicking to save to your computer. / IMG_1164 & IMG_1166 A key part of processing The Heart is making use of layer masks. This enables modification of selected regions of the photograph created in this case with the gradient tool. 1. To begin, open IMG_1166. 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. My previous tutorial Photographing the Milky Way with a standard DSLR camera has attracted five hundred views so I figured it was worthwhile to write another. Cain Doherty

  • Grunge Text/Type
    by Alison Johnston

    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.

  • Selective Coloring Time To Share
    by Jeff Burns

    I had the honor of doing a collaboration with Jo O’Brien / Please also check out her portf…

    I had the honor of doing a collaboration with Jo O’Brien / Please also check out her portfolio it is amazing!! / I have also had lots of questions how I do this. / She had an image that we worked on together and I did some post processing using selective coloring. Its a technique that I would suggest everyone try or learn. Go Here / if you have not yet seen it. There are several ways to achieve this. / I use photoshop elements and find it the easiest to use for doing this. / - Trace the images that I want to leave color using the lasso tool (Can take a long / time but its worth it) / - After you have traced everything you want to leave color goto select and click inverse. / - By clicking inverse you are now on the outside of the images that you traced. / - Click on enhance and adjust color then adjust hue/saturation. / - Turn the saturation all the way off to achieve the black and white. / - Then you can go to enhance and click on adjust lighting then goto shadows and / highlights to adjust your black and with levels. / - Click on select then click deselect and you image should be finished. From there you can go in and play with the saturations to bring out more color or whatever you want to do. Its a technique that you would be surprised can save any image you take if you are creative. So if you like go check out the Image and leave a comment of what you think. / I am here if anyone has any questions I would be happy to help anyone out if I can.

  • A new Blue Moon Photo Competition
    by Deri Dority

    Announcing a new Photo Competition. The theme is “Once in a Blue Moon” / Deadline February 28, 2008 You don’t need to have a blue moon i…

    Announcing a new Photo Competition. The theme is “Once in a Blue Moon” / Deadline February 28, 2008 You don’t need to have a blue moon in your entry. I am looking more at the phrase “Once in a Blue Moon”, meaning something that doesn’t happen very often (if ever). For example, pigs flying, snow in Los Angeles etc. This is wide open for your imagination. / Requirements: The entries must have been worked on in Photoshop only. No other editing or specialty programs are allowed. See the rules below. / The artwork must be brand new artwork. The purpose of this competition is to encourage people to go out and create something new and different in Photoshop. / Snowdog (winner of last years Blue Moon Photo Comp) and Deon de Waal have graciously volunteered to help me judge this contest. Thanks guys. / Prizes are: / 1st: Red Bubble Gift certificate for $100.00 USD / 2nd: Red Bubble Gift certificate for $ 50.00 USD / 3rd: Red Bubble Gift certificate for $ 25.00 USD / I am working on some additional goodies for the winners (TBA) 2 Honorary awards will each receive a $10.00 Red Bubble Gift certificate (USD) The rules must be strictly adhered to. Failure to do so will mean elimination from the contest. 1. One entry per person. More than one entry means disqualification. 2. Put “oncebluecomp” in your tag line. If you don’t have it in your tagline, you are not entered. 3. Artwork must be completed in 2008 (brand new artwork). 4. Photoshop only. No other editing or specialty program can be used. Photoshop plug-ins from different vendors are allowed. 5. If you use any stock photos in your artwork, you must give the photographer or stock photo company, credit. 6. Collaborations are allowed. I can split the gift certificates if need be. 7. You can change or alter your entry up until Feb. 28, 2008 as long as you stick to the 1 entry per person rule. Here is a link to last years winners. 2007 Winners

  • The Patch Tool, a major time saver.
    by Deri Dority

    The patch tool is often a very underutilized tool in Photoshop. Hidden under the Spot healing brush and 2 other tools, the Patch tool i…

    The patch tool is often a very underutilized tool in Photoshop. Hidden under the Spot healing brush and 2 other tools, the Patch tool is similar to a combination of the lasso tool and the healing tool. You select an area, click the appropriate button (source or destination- mine is usually on source) and then drag the selection to another area that has characteristics that fit your needs. For example, in one of my photos, “Fall in the Hills”, the photo was dotted with houses and roads that didn’t add to the composition. I simply drew around the houses and roads with the patch tool and drug them into an area with trees. The result is no more houses/roads, that simple. The patch tool is often superior and easier to use than the clone tool, especially for large areas, achieving better results. Another example, if someone has black rings under the eyes, you trace around the area that needs work on, select “source” in the Tools Option Bar right above the Tools Palette), and drag it to an another area of skin that has a more likely color. Make sure that the area you are dragging to is blemish free, as you will pick up any blemishes that are in the destination area. The best way to see how this tool works is to practice with it. Easy to use, you can cut your work time way down by using this over the clone tool. I rarely use the spot healing tools any more as well, finding this faster and easier. For most general use, it is easy to use. It takes a little more practice to use when there are lines in the area that needs to be fixed. You must drag it to a destination that has the lines at the exact same angle. / The patch tool goes all the way back to Photoshop 7, and has been improved on in the newer versions of Photoshop.

  • Etched Glass Effect in Photoshop
    by Alison Johnston

    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.

  • PhotoShop: Less is More
    by Paul Hamilton

    Photoshop: Less Is More When I bought PhotoShop for the first time some years ago I was blown away by its power and potential. I’d he…

    Photoshop: Less Is More When I bought PhotoShop for the first time some years ago I was blown away by its power and potential. I’d heard about this magic software but didn’t realise that with such power comes much responsibility. The first images I used with PhotoShop looked terrible. Clumsy lighting effects splashed with a pinch or wind effect. / As I experimented with the software I realised that to enhance my macro shots I needed a greater knowledge of Photoshop and some simple techniques that would allow my images to shine not become mutilated. These are some simple tools I have found extremely effective. / 1. Use Curves to illuminate your image without putting that haze over the image. Originally I played around with the lighting tool but found the Curves tool so much more effective. You can find Curves but going to IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>CURVES / 2. Make subtle changes to the colour of your image using the colour balance tool. Experiment with the Shadows, Midtones and Highlight. Be careful not to go to extremes. Over colouring can make the water red in a beach landscape shot. You can find the colour balance tool by going to IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>COLOUR BALANCE / 3. Experiment with the Crop tool. Look to erase meaningless space and colour that takes away from the focus of the photograph. Once again don’t go overboard. Some space around the main focal point of the photo will frame it beautifully. The Crop tool is found on the tool bar. / With these 3 tools do everything in moderation. These 3 tools work best with a great photo to start with. Whatever you’ve heard Photoshop will not create a great photo all by itself but can be used to great effect to make a good photo a great one. Kind Regards Paul

  • actions for cs3
    by kellyjomitchell

    i am soooo excited to finally have photoshop cs3, and i am wondering if anyone has purchased any cool actions that they would recommend?

    i am soooo excited to finally have photoshop cs3, and i am wondering if anyone has purchased any cool actions that they would recommend?

  • The Smudge Tool
    by Alison Johnston

    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!

  • 4 Features in 4 Days!
    by Randy Monteith

    Hi everyone Thanks to the following groups and Hosts for kindly featuring my artwork! The Art of Books...

    Hi everyone Thanks to the following groups and Hosts for kindly featuring my artwork! The Art of Books Gothic OZ Live, Love, Dream The Story in Her Eyes Altered by Design The Ice Queen My Darkside

  • Using The Pattern Stamp Tool In Photoshop
    by Alison Johnston

    This is a really easy way to get an effect in Photoshop. It can save you using layer masks and/or making selections. I’m not going to…

    This is a really easy way to get an effect in Photoshop. It can save you using layer masks and/or making selections. I’m not going to do anything fancy with the effect in this, you just go ahead and experiment with that aspect of it. This image is 800×600 @72dpi. You can go ahead and use it to practise on if you like, copyright is mine blah, blah. Go ahead and unlock the background layer by double clicking on it and from the dialogue box just choose the default name. Go to Edit>Define Pattern and when the dialogue box appears, either give it a deep and meaningful name or leave it at the name it is. Next, duplicate the background by pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard. What you do now is pretty much up to you, but making sure that the duplicate is active go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Sat and choose colorize from the dialogue box. You can pick any colour you want really, or you can punch in the numbers I have below. Don’t panic if you don’t get the colour right, you can always go back and add a Hue/Sat adjustment layer to this layer later on. Still working on the Hue/Sat layer, go to Filter>Blur>Radial Blur and you can punch in the same settings I have. Notice in the second image that I have moved the central point of the blur to the top left hand corner. If you find that you have given it a little too much radial blur, before you do anything else, go to Edit>Fade Radial Blur and back off a little bit. Create a new blank layer at the top of the layer stack and go to the Tools bar and choose the Pattern Stamp Tool – you’ll find it nestled with the Clone Stamp Tool. Now go to the top menu bar and from the drop down menu pick the image as the pattern – make sure that Aligned is checked as well. / / At this point, you may want to drop the opacity of the blurred layer so you can see where you have to paint. Make sure that you are working on the blank layer, then start painting back in the bike and rider. Don’t panic if you make any drastic mistake, just add a layer mask and fix it, then go back to the Pattern Tool and carry on painting. I went ahead and added a layer mask to the newly created bike rider and used a Linear Gradient to blend the bottom part of the bike into the red radial blur. There wasn’t really a lot going on in the background of this image, but if you wanted to highlight a flower from a whole lot of flowers the blur would probably have a much better impact and you wouldn’t have to colorize the layer. Alernatively, you could have simply desaturated the layer. Here is the final image. Have fun and if you have any questions, just ask.

  • How I created Guardians
    by Julie Langford

    Ok – First I want to pay credit to both Susan Davies , who provided the base image of Castell…

    Ok – First I want to pay credit to both Susan Davies , who provided the base image of Castell Coch and to Rose Moxon , who kindly created the 3D dragons that I used in this composition. Thank you both – I could’nt have created this without you guys. / / I used Photoshop CS2 to create this image / / I started with Susan’s image below / / / / I used a duplicate layer [made the background invisible with the eye icon in the layer palette], and used a medium hardness eraser to erase all of the backgroung behind the castle to produce the image below. / / / / Then, I had to remove all those trees from the image, that were covereing the castle. For this I used various sized, soft clone brushes and fine paintbrushes to paint back in detail that was lost due to the cloning process – Very time consuming, but also very rewarding at the end of it. The image then looked like the one below. / / / / I then wanted to place the castle onto a rock tower, so I used a shot that I took at a local beach in the summer of 2007. This rock is only about 12 ft high. / / / / I pasted this rock image onto my composition as a new layer behind the castle, then again used the eraser to remove the parts that I didnt want, until I reached the result below. / / / / I then merged these two layers and used the edit transform perspective tool to change to perspective of the image – I wanted the image to look as if I were looking up at the caste slightly and I wanted the rocks to appear large and towering. The result is below. / / / / Now for the sky – I used an image that I took of a sunset in Cameroon in November 2006 / / / / I placed this sky image behind the castle – rock layer to produce the image below. / / / / Next I worked on the sky and castle layer in turn and adjusted the colour, using edit adjustments colour balance, until I created a nice tone for each layer, which both balanced with each other. I also adjusted the exposure slightly on the sky layer to give it a bit more kick. The image now looked like the one below. / / / / I wasn’t happy with the shadows and highlights on the castle in relation to the sky, so next I worked on both layers in turn and used dodge to add highlights and burn to add dark shadows and gloomy clouds. / / / I then adjusted the levels to make the castle layer a bit darker so it blended in with the sky – the result then became my base image which you can see below. / / / / I now wanted to add atmosphere to the image, so I created a new fill layer and used a very soft brush to paint in a light green fill at about 30% opacity, covering the whole layer in one go. I added a litttle noise and changed the blend of this layer to Colour Burn. The result was a deep rich feel that you can see below. / / / / I then flattened the image and just went over it to add any final highlights and shadows with the dodge and burn tools. / / I then used two dragon images that Rose kindly created for me – you can see them below. / / / / / / I placed these images onto the composition, using edit, free transform to resize them and then added a new layer to create some foggy mist around them. For this I used a lasoo tool, with feathering set to 30 to select the area that I wanted to have mist and filled it with white at about 30% opacity. I then added noise and added a box blur. I then added a glowing edge with a high spread to this layer by adding a layer style. The last step was to erase any mist that had covered the dragons with a fine eraser and using the dodge tool once more to bring out highlights on the creatures, before flattening and saving the image as Guardians / / To see the finished piece, click Here /

  • Working Smarter Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop
    by Alison Johnston

    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.

  • Making a selection using the colour channels in Photoshop.
    by Alison Johnston

    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.

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