Photoshop Fast Track
Photoshop Fast Track
Photoshop
By Team Digit
Credits
The People Behind This Book
EDITORIAL Deepak Ajwani Editor Robert Sovereign-Smith Writer, Copy Editor Ram Mohan Rao Copy Editor Jyotsna Rege Copy Editor Nimish Chandiramani Writer Kailash Shastry Writer Ahmed shaikh Writer DESIGN AND LAYOUT Vijay Padaya Layout Designer Sivalal S Cover Design Harsho Mohan Chattoraj Illustrator
Jasubhai Digital Media Published by Maulik Jasubhai on behalf of Jasubhai Digital Media. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. May 2006 Free with Digit. Not to be sold separately. If you have paid separately for this book, please e-mail the editor at [email protected] along with details of location of purchase, for appropriate action.
Introduction
PHOTOSHOP
Contents
Chapter 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Chapter 2 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Chapter 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Chapter 4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Chapter 5 5.1 5.2 5.3 Chapter 6 6.1 6.2 6.3 The First Days With Photoshop Photoshops Curriculum Vitae Getting Started Getting Around Photoshop Oft-Used Tools Editing Basics Basic Operations Reducing File Size Changing Resolution / Pixels (Physical Image Size) Cropping Images Adjusting Brightness And Contrast Colour BalancingHue/Saturation Adjustments The Dodge And Burn Tool The Basics Of Filters Workshops Working With Selections The Marquee Tools The Lasso Tools Even More Selection Tools Tweaking Selections Lots More About Selections Workshop: Working With The Extract Filter The Layer Funda Layers Adding And Deleting Layers Naming And Arrangement Grouping Layers Basic Effects Advanced Effects Layer Styles Filters Painting Repairing / Retouching Images The Clone Stamp Tool The Pattern Stamp Tool More Retouching Tools 8 9 10 13 21 27 28 29 31 35 36 38 40 41 43 51 52 53 56 58 60 61 65 67 67 68 70 72 77 78 84 90 97 98 100 103
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Chapter 7 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Chapter 8 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 Chapter 9 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 Chapter 10 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Chapter 11 11.1 11.2 11.3 Chapter 12 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 12.8
Vectors, Text, And Shapes How Vector Graphics Work Show me the Path The Written Word Shapes Workshop: Customising Type Donning The Mask Masks And Alpha Channels Getting Started With Masks Workshop: Putting Text Behind An Object Workshop: Cutouts and the Vector Mask Workshop: Cleaning Up Photographs Image Formats The JPEG Format The GIF Format The PNG Format Uncompressed FormatsTIFF Saving For The WebUsing Web Colours Saving For The WebSlicing Saving For Future Editing Getting Ready With ImageReady Getting Around Optimising Images For The Web Animating With ImageReady Slashing File Size With Slices Rollovers In ImageReady Colour Management Why Colour Management? Getting Consistent Colour Proofing Images Grubby PawsCool Effects In Photoshop Workshop: The Vista Aero Glass Effect Workshop: Night Vision in Three Easy Steps Workshop: The Interlaced Monitor Effect Workshop: Enter The Matrix Workshop: Your Own Oil-on-Canvas Workshop: Postage Stamp Edges Workshop: Write Your Name In Water Workshop: Text Go Boom Notes:
107 108 110 114 116 117 121 122 123 127 129 130 133 134 136 137 138 139 139 140 141 142 147 150 155 157 159 160 161 165 167 168 171 174 177 180 184 187 190 192
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he first step is usually the hardest. Even with Photoshops simple interface, most people shy away from it just because they dont know what to do with it. Welcome to Digits guided tour of everything Photoshop.
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Preferences
Before you begin anything in Photoshop, its a good thing to tweak a few options that will make it work better for you. To get to the Preferences dialog, go to Edit > Preferences > General, or hit [Ctrl]+[K].
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In the General Preferences, you will notice the text box that says History States. Photoshops History tracks the changes made to an image, letting you revert to any state. While it does sound like a glorified undo stack, theres a lot The Preferences Dialog more to the History than that, as well see later. Photoshop saves 20 History states by default, but you can go as high as 1,000. The History states occupy precious memory and disk space, though, so use it with caution. The next thing you need to look at is how your tools are going to look inside Photoshop. From the drop-down list on the top left, select Display & Cursors. Under Painting Cursors, choose Full Size Brush Tipthis way, when youre using any of the paintbrushes, you get an accurate idea of the shape and size of the brush, letting you paint with greater ease. Under Other Cursors, choose Precise, so that drawing selections and colour picking becomes much more, well, precise. The next thing you need to guide Photoshop to is Scratch Disks. When Photoshop runs out of RAM, it uses your hard disk as temporary storage, much like virtual memory. By default, the primary scratch disk is the one where Windows is installedyou should change that in a hurry. Ideally, your primary scratch disk should be on a separate hard disk altogether, and should: 1. Have loads of free space 2.Be your fastest disk 3.Be defragmented often
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Finally, you need to specify your Memory settings so that Photoshop can make the most of your system memory. In the Preferences dialog, use the dropdown list on the top left and Choosing Scratch Disks choose Memory & Image Cache. Photoshop tunes its memory usage according to the machine it sits on, but if you have a lot of system RAM and arent going to be running any memory-intensive a p p l i c a t i o n s Choosing how much memory Photoshop will use along with Photoshop, you can pull this slider to a higher memory limit.
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Photoshops interface is quite easy to use, and has become a model that nearly all image-editing programs followso even if you do switch to a different program, you arent going to be lost. The interface is organised into the top toolbar (called the Option Bar), and the many palettes at the sides. You can show or hide any of these palettes in the Window Menu.
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1.3.1 The Tools Palette The Tools Palette (sometimes called the Toolbox) is where all the Photoshop magic happens. Select a tool from here to perform the corresponding action on your image. Some tools have a black arrow at the bottom right cornerthis means there are more tools in that category. Click and hold on the tool to bring up the full list
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of tools. Additional options for each tool will appear on the toolbar at the top. 1.3.2 The Layers Palette The heart of Photoshops image editing funda is the Layer. The name is quite self-explanatorymuch like a collage, you can edit your image in parts, and then stick the entire lot onto a common background to create your final image. Think of this: you have a bunch of transparent plastic sheets. On one, you draw the sun, on another, clouds, a river on yet another, and so on. When you put these sheets on top of each other, you will see a complete scenery. If you are dissatisfied with the way you drew the sun, you can just pick up that sheet and change it as you see fit. Youve probably got it by nowthis is how Layers work. The Layers palette lets The Layers Palette you view and select the layers youre going to edit. The Layers palette is the most important part of your workspace, so if you dont see it, enable it by selecting Window > Layers, or by hitting [F7].
Layer visibility on and off by clicking on the eye icon next to it Club layers into groups by clicking on the Folder icon at the bottom Link layers with each other so that they can be worked on at the
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same timehold down [Ctrl] and select the layers you want to link, and click on the chain-link icon at the bottom Set layer opacity Lock properties of a layer such as position and transparency Create layer masks, adjustment layers and layer effects If any of this confuses you, pay no heed to it for nowyou will become more than familiar with these features as we go along. At the top right corner of the Layers palette, you will find a small arrow iconclick on it to bring up the Layers Palette Menu, which gives you a list of commands youll often need when working with layers. By default, Photoshop shows you a little thumbnail for each layer in the Layers palette, but if you are working at a lower resolution such as 1024 x 768, you can turn off these thumbnails to save some screen space. This wont seem like much at first, but its going to make a huge difference if you have fifteen or so layers in the image. To choose the size of the layer thumbnails, bring up the Layer Palette menu and select Palette Options. Choose the size of the layer thumbnail from here. 1.3.3 The Channels Palette The colours we see all around us are a mixture of the three primary coloursRed, Green and Blue (RGB). In a digital image, each pixel is defined by the intensity of each of these colours, in effect, making it The Channels Palette the sum of the Red, Green and Blue channels. The Channels palette shows you the intensity of the primary colours as greyscale images. For example, white areas in the Red channel indicate a 100% intensity of Red in the area, while black areas indicate the complete absence of any Red.
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If youre working on a graphic for printing, you will be using the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) channelswhile RGB represents the primary colours of light, CMYK represents the primary colours of ink pigments. For the most part, you can do to a channel what you can do to layerspaint, apply filters, tweak brightness and contrast, and so on. Heres what you can do with the Channels Palette: Select individual channels for editing Turn channel visibility on and off using the eye icon next to it Create a new Alpha Channel that will define the transparent parts of the image (refer to Chapters 3 and 5 for more on Alpha Channels) Turn selections into channels by clicking on the Save Selection As Channel button Turn channels into selections by clicking on the Load Channel As Selection button for example, you could select all the blue areas of the image, even the partially blue ones, by loading the blue channel as a selection Again, you will get more comfortable with channels as you read on. 1.3.4 The Paths Palette When you reach Chapter 7, you will begin working with Paths, which let you create shapes that can be resized infinitely without any distortion. The Paths palette is (obviously) going to play a role here.
Heres what you can do with the Paths Palette: Create and delete paths Convert paths to selections and vice versa Fill the path with the foreground colour Stroke the paththat is, paint on its edge using different tools such as brushes and erasers
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1.3.5. The History Palette Right up to its fourth version, Photoshop frustrated its users with just one undo level. Thats rightif you made more than one mistake in a row, you had to start editing your image from scratch. This problem was more than rectified with the introduction of the History Palette. At first sight, all it looks like is an exaggerated Multiple Undo, but theres a lot more you can do with the History Palette:
Take snapshots of what your image looked like at a particular stage of editing, and get back to that state at any time Start new images from different history states Paint History States onto other History States using the History Brushchoose the history state to paint by clicking in the empty box next to it, and select the state to paint on by clicking its name. You can now use the history brush to start painting 1.3.6 Colours and Swatches The Colours palette lets you create new colours by adjusting the mix of the RGB (or CMYK) amount. You can change the colour by either using the slider that represents each channel, or by selecting it from the bar at the bottom. Swatches are a set of preset colours that you can choose as your foreground or background. You can even add your own presets, as well as create your own custom set of swatches. To save your set, bring
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up the Swatch palette menu by clicking on the small arrow on the top-right corner, and select Save Swatches. At the bottom of the Swatch palette menu, you will see a lot of names like PANTONE Metallic Coated and so on. These are preset swatch sets that Photoshop comes bundled withclick on any of these to load them into the Swatches palette. 1.3.7 The Palette Well At the top right of the Workspace, you will see the Palette Well, which, by default, houses the Brushes, Tool Presets and Layer Comps palettes. The Palette Well can save you a lot of spaceby putting palettes in the Palette Well, you can have them on hand all the time, and yet not have them occupy any area in the workspace. Palettes only appear when you click on them.
To send a palette to the Palette Well, bring up its menu by clicking on the arrow on the top right corner and select Dock to Palette Well. 1.3.8 The Brushes Palette When you use any brushbased tool (the brush, eraser, Dodge tool, burn tool and so on), youre going to need this palette. It lets you choose from a set of preset brushes, customise your current brush, and edit its behaviour. Well be going deeper into brushes in chapter 5, where well squeeze the most out of this palette.
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brush icon [small image], which sprays the paint onto the images gradually. The Pencil Tool is better for hard-edged drawings. The Colour replacement tool, as the name suggests, is a brush that paints over a particular colour in the image rather than the whole thing.
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Grouped with: Burn Tool [small image], Sponge Tool [small image] Use the Dodge tool to make parts of the image appear as if they were overexposed when it was shot. The Burn Tool burns the colour black onto the image, and the Sponge Tool can be used to increase or decrease the colour intensity. 1.4.3 The Type Tool Shortcut: [T]; [Shift] + [T] to cycle through other tools in the group Grouped With: Vertical Type Tool [small image], Type Mask Tool [small image], Vertical Type Mask Tool [small image] You can create horizontal or vertical type (text) in Photoshop, either by using the respective tool or by clicking the Change Type Direction button [small image] on the option bar. 1.4.4 The Move Tool Shortcut: [V] Use this to move layers around in the image. To select which layer youre going to move, you can either choose it from the layers palette, or hold down [Ctrl] and click the layer you want to move. To select multiple layers, hold down [Ctrl] + [Shift] and click on all the layers you want to move. In the option bar, you can set the tool to automatically select the layer when you click on the image. 1.4.5 The Crop Tool Shortcut: [C] Use the Crop tool to draw a rectangular selection around the part of the image that you want to keep. Once youve drawn the selection, you can still change its size and rotate itthe selection is finalised only if you click on the tick [small image] in the option bar, or hit [Enter] on the numeric keypad.
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any time, you can hold down [Alt] and use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the image. To pan the image (if its too big to fit in the main window or if youve zoomed into it a lot), hold down the spacebar, click, and drag. Hit [Tab] to hide all the palettes if you want to view only your image. Hit [Tab] again to make them reappear. If you want to work full-screen, use [F] to cycle among the various full-screen modes. Now that youve armed yourselves with this preliminary knowledge, lets take a joyous nosedive into the world of Photoshop.
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Editing Basics
ictures, pictures and more pictures. They are everywherefrom blogs to news sites to personal digital albums. If a picture says a thousand words, youd certainly want to make sure those words are what you mean, by making the image look just like you want it! This chapter covers the basics of image editing. Read on
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the file size of the image, measured in KB or MB. This is done by compressing the image. Change the size of the image by increasing or decreasing the resolution. The resolution is measured in terms of horizontal pixels by vertical pixels. Common dimensions are 800 x 600, 1024x768, and 1280 x 1024. Crop images so that only a desired portion of the image is retained. Change the brightness, contrast and gamma of the image. If a photo is taken in dull light, you can actually brighten them; most photos can be made richer just by moving certain sliders. Remove red or blue tinges using Hue/Saturation correction. Many of the operations that will be discussed here will be immediately applicable to images you have taken from digital cameras. For example, if you set the shooting mode to Fluorescent (referring to the lighting) and take the shot in Sunlight or vice versa, you will see tinges of blue or red in the photo. Defects such as these can be easi-
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ly corrected using Photoshop. Nothing should prevent you from trying out these editing tools on any image to change its appeal or tweak it to your liking as well. Now lets get started without further ado. To do any operation on an image, you first need to open it: Photoshop can open several files at onceyou can select more than one file in the Open dialog box. Like in most Windows applications, you can click and drag the Selecting multiple files at once to open in CS2 mouse over multiple files to highlight them at once. Pressing [Ctrl] while using the mouse to click or hover on the file (depending on single/double-click configuration) will toggle the file between Select and Deselect. Use File > Open to open your file(s).
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Once your image is open in the File menu, click on Save As. Choose the directory you want to save it in, and the extension it will have. By default, the save as type will be the same as that of the original image if you havent made changes to it such as adding layers or masks. Select the JPEG type if its not already selected by The JPEG saving options in Photoshop default, and click Save. Now a JPEG options box will pop up, giving you a quality vs. file size setting. You can move the slider to the left (smaller file size) to choose a lower quality. Alternatively, you can enter a numeric value between 1 and 12. The file size corresponding to any particular setting is displayed at the bottom of the box. The Format Options allows you three choicesBaseline (standard), Baseline (optimized) and Progressive. Baseline Optimized can reduce file sizes better than Standard, but certain image reading software and browsers were not compatible with thishence the option. However, for your purposes of sharing images today, you can safely choose Baseline Optimized. Now, we come to Progressive JPEG: have you observed certain images on the Web appearing initially blurred and then gradually getting clearer in three to five passes? The details appear progressivelyhence the name. If you are not saving the image for the Web, you can ignore this option. The extent to which you can reduce the file size of your images is something you have to decide based on the quality thats acceptable to you for your purposes. The distortion that the quality loss
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will produce also depends on the image itself. For example, an image that is already pixelated will look very bad even if its file size is reduced by a small amount, while a photo from a good digital camera can be reduced to up to 60% of its original file size with no or hardly any visible loss in quality. However, assuming a similar quality of the original images, a rule of thumb is that those that have high detailthat is, considerable variation of colours across the imagemust not be reduced much (say, less than 80%), while images that have uniform spreading of a single colour can be reduced to about 40% or lesser of their original size.
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dren along the rows and columns can be thought of as the resolution. Hence, the greater the number of pixels, the greater is the image resolution. Resolution simply defines the number of pixels per line horizontally, called Width, and the number of pixels vertically, called Height. For Example, a resolution of 800x600 means there are 800 pixels row-wise and 600 pixels column-wise. In the illustration below, we have a resolution of 28 x 21. Note that the ratio is 4:3. In the darkened area, you will find 5 x 5 pixels. Assuming that this area is 1 inch x 1 inch, the dpi will be 5 x 5 = 25. In an actual image, the numbers will be much larger, but the concept remains the same.
5 x 5 = 25 pixles in a unit area 28 Pixels horizontally (the resolution is 28 x 21 = 588 ) The concept of resolution and pixels
21 Pixels vertically
2.2.1 DPI (Dots Per Inch) When we say there are 800 pixels making up a line horizontally, it is only an absolute value of pixels. But it does not define how big the image physically is (in terms of inches or centimetres). If you wish to print an image, the resolution by itself does not tell you how big or small your print is going to be. The physical size is calculated from the resolution using another value called the dpi or dots per inch (it can also be dots per centimetre or anything else.) As the name suggests, it defines the number of dots that compose a
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given areaan inch in this case. For practical purposes, pixels per inch and dots per inch can be considered to be the same. Going back to the analogy of the children with hats, if we were to say five children stand in one square metre (1m length x 1m height), the children per metre would be 5. If we know this number, and the total number of children, we can easily compute the area on the field that is occupied by the children. Similarly, knowing the dpi and the resolution, we can calculate the print size (that is, the actual physical size) of the image: Resolution / dpi = size in inches. Our screen is usually set at about 72 dpi, but good-quality prints need about 300 dpi. Photoshop saves at 72 dpi by default, but you can specify your own values. For high-quality prints, images should be at least at 200 dpi. Photoshop allows you to change the resolution, and thereby the image size (if the dpi is kept same); it also allows you to change the dpi (and correspondingly the resolution, without changing the physical size)or simply increase the size of the image. You can increase or decrease the The Image Size options in Photoshop size of the image by specifying either the resolution or the actual physical size. Photoshop will do the corresponding calculation for the other values. You can scale up or down by specifying values or percentages of original. These options are all available in a single window called Image Size, under the Image menu.
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You can either specify the new image size in terms of the size in inches or centimetres, or you simply specify the new resolution. Note that an increase in resolution will increase the document size and vice versa (for the same dpi). When you only specify a new dpi, the resolution increases, but the document size does not change. After setting a new dpi, you can change the image size by altering the image resolution separately, or by changing the document size. 2.2.2 Resampling Algorithms When increasing the resolution, pixels need to be created. A resampling algorithm (or logic) determines the basis on which the new pixels are calculated and used. Generally, a new pixel is introduced between existing pixels by performing some calculation on the existing ones in order to determine (or predict) the value of the new pixel. Photoshop provides you with several resampling options: Nearest Neighbour, Bilinear, Bicubic, Bicubic Smoothen and Bicubic Sharpen. Of these, the most efficient is the Bicubic algorithm, which looks at the adjacent pixels and computes the value of the pixel that needs to be added. The Nearest Neighbour method is best avoided in most casesit simply copies the value of the nearest pixel onto the new pixel. Bilinear is somewhat betterit averages the values of the surrounding pixels rather than simply copying them. But it is still not as effective as the Bicubic method. In Photoshop CS, two new algorithms were introducedBicubic Smoothen and Bicubic Sharpen. You can try these and see what works best for your image. However, smoothening and sharpening can be done by separate filters as well.
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Before Cropping
After Cropping
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vate it and select the region of the image you wish to retain. Dont try too hard to align it perfectly, because you can easily move the selection area later on. Once a rectangle is formed on the image, the selected area will appear lighter, and bordered Using the Crop Tool by a dashed line that appears like it is moving. You will find tiny squares called selection handles, which can be used to change the area of selection. If you move the mouse out of the selection, you will see that the pointer changes to a two-sided arrow. You can now rotate the selection as desired. After rotating it to include the desired parts, you can finetune it by using the handles again. Once you are sure of the selection, just press Enter or use Image > Crop.
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You can access the brightness/contrast tool from Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. The new values can be entered numerically (prefixed by a - sign for reducing the levels) or by moving the slider to the left to decrease or right to increase.
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You will notice that part of the slider is darker than its border the darker area in the centre is the colour or the colour range that is selected, while the lighter band includes the partially selected (meaning they will be only partially modified). This is to ensure that the colour change becomes gradual. You can manually specify the width (range of colours) of the fully-selected area and the partially selected area by moving the delimiters using the mouse as required. When you move the Hue slider to the left or right, the colour changes according to the indication shown by the two colour lines. Just move the slider around a couple of times and see how the changes occur. You will soon be able to correlate this to the indication in colour lines that you see at the bottom. For example, say you selected the red channel for modification. By sliding the Hue slider to the left, the reds will turn purple, and by sliding it to the right, the reds will turn orange first and then yellow. Once you have made the desired colour replacements, you can strengthen or subdue the change by increasing or decreasing the saturation. Lightness, as weve mentioned, adds a white tone to the changes to simulate a lighting effect. If you do not wish to make hue changes to the whole image, you can select part of the image using either the Rectangular Marquee Tool or the Lasso Tool. You can check and uncheck the preview box to compare the modified and original image as and when you wish. In this way, you can selectively replace colours and fine-tune the changes to make the picture look exactly like you want to. The possibilities are endlessmake a red shirt appear offred or even a totally different colour, remove bluish (or other) tinges that digital cameras sometimes produce, make lights appear brighter, and so on.
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the image. For example, you may want to show a picture of a group of people without individual faces being discernable. Here, you can use the Diffuse or Blur or other filters to blur out specific details while retaining the overall shapes in the image to denote a group of people. Let us look at the two correcting filters we mentioned above Blur and Sharpen. Their uses are quite apparent from their names. Lets say youve shot a picture in low light, and the resulting image appears with dots all over. One way you can reduce this effect is by applying the Blur filter. While the Blur filter will reduce pixelation, it will also make parts (or even all) of the image look smudgedit is up to you to strike a balance between removing the unwanted dots and introducing the smudge effect. The Sharpen filter is used for the opposite purpose. If your camera shook while you clicked your shot, the resulting image will look blurred. Or, lets say you want your image to have precise and well-defined edges. These are cases where you can use the Sharpen tool. This filter literally sharpens the imageit looks more well-defined, and the effect is something like the opposite of blurring. The downside is that if your image was originally low in quality, pixelation will occur. You can experiment with other filters that will change your image in some particular way. Many of the filters require you to enter number values to determine by what extent the image will be changed. Just changing these values will sometimes produce variations that will surprise you! Further, you can use two or more filters, or apply these filters in a different order. So let the creativity out!
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2.8 Workshops
Here, we will briefly take you through the actual process of making changes to images by taking examples. The images for these workshops can be found in the root on the CD under \Fast Track Workshops\Chapter2. Or if you go through the CD interface then its under the Digtal Tools/ FT Workshops. 2.8.1 Correcting a photograph Open Hills_Original.jpg from the Correcting a Photograph folder. This is an example of a typical low light and/or low shutter speed image. Its dull and rather unexciting, so let us see how we can make this image vivid and give it life.
Stage 1:
The greenery appears all dark, with hardly any detail visible. It would immediately strike you that you can use the Brightness/ Contrast tool. You can try it, but you will notice that the clouds turn white and lose their variation. So, we will have to do something else to bring out the greens while not losing other colour variations.
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Pick the Dodge tool and select the Midtones range (see previous page). Set the brush size initially to about 150. The exposure has to be set to a low valueabout 12 to 15%. Now move the brush over the lower part of the Strengthen colours using the Hue/Saturation Tool image where the greenery is. You will see that depending on the exposure level you have chosen, the greens gradually begin to appear. Continue this until the dark areas emerge with hitherto hidden details. Be careful not to overdo this, as bands with a whitish tinge will appear and spoil the image. Also note that there can be shadows, which must not be removed using this tool. You can move the brush over the same area to increase the effect of Dodge tool, much like actually using a brush over paper. Keep your movements in rhythmhorizontal or vertical or diagonal; dont throw the brush around at random. After using the Dodge tool over the original dark area, the image will look as seen in After Midtone Dodge.jpg Stage 2 Open the Hue/Saturation box, select the Green channel, and use the eyedropper tool to pick the colour in the greenery. You will notice that Photoshop recognizes it as a Yellow1 or Yellow2 channel (depending on where you pick the colour). You can set the values similar to what you see in Strenghtening greens.jpg. Now shift the chosen colour from the greenery more toward the purer green by moving the Hue slider to the right by 12 units. Increase the Saturation by 10 units.
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Similarly, choose the Blue channel and increase its saturation by 15 units. This will enrich the clouds in the background. Do you see the pinkish flowers to the bottom right of the image? How about making them more visible? Open the Hue/Saturation box again and pick the colour of the flower using the eyedropper tool. Increase the saturation for this colour by 50 units. You have now obtained a good contrast between the flower and the surrounding scenery. Stage 3 Last, let us increase the overall contrast and brightness of the image. Open the Brightness/Contrast box and set the values as shown in Setting brightness contrast.jpg. What appears now is a colourful and wallpaper worthy image, which was lying hidden in the seemingly dull original image. The resultant image is final.jpg. 2.8.2 Hue/Saturation adjustments to replace individual colours Open the 00_Original Image.JPG in the Hue_Saturation folder. The parrots in the original image have three dominant coloursRed, Blue and Yellow. Lets say we wish to make the parrots look yellowish, and remove (or rather reduce) the striking reds and blues. Why yellow, you may ask. Well, this is just an example to show to you the ease of colour manipulation in Photoshop using
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the Hue/Saturation tool. By using this as a reference, you can try out similar changes with your own images. Let us proceed in steps to make our parrots yellow. First change the reds to a shade of yellow and remove some saturation as well. Increase the Lightness such that its level gels with that of the other colours. Your image will now look as in 02_After First Change.jpg. Similarly, in the next step, tone down the blues in the The original image (on the CD) image. After this change, the image will look as in 04_After Second Change.jpg. Our final image now has parrots with a dominant yellow instead of the original Red, Blue, Yellow mix. This can be seen in 06_Final Image.jpg. We have chosen this image particularly because of the dominant Red, Blue and Yellow channels that are present, which makes it easier to see colour changes. 2.8.3 Filters Explaining each of the filters with their various options would require a entire book by itself! Here are three simple filter operations that you can try and get results in a jiffy.
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2.8.3.1 The Motion Blur Filter Open the 00_Original.jpg file in the Filters/Motion_Blur folder. This is an image of a drag race. The Motion Blur filter makes the image look like it was shot while you were moving.
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2.8.3.2 The Ripple Filter Open the 00_Original Image.jpg file in the Filters/Ripple folder. Here, Artistic or Distort family of filters can be used when you want to use the image as a background and not steal focus from the subject.
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2.8.3.3 The Poster Edge Filter By distorting edges, you can add an eerie feel to any image, especially buildings. You can take a normal-looking image and turn it into a hazy oneuseful if you are working with cartoons and
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want to try different styles with a single base sketch. Open 01_Ripple Filter applied.jpg in the Filters/Poster_edge folder. You can apply the Poster Edge filter from the Filters > Artistic menu. Apply this filter with the default settings, and your image turns into a hazy one as in 01_Poster Edge Filter applied.jpg.
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hotoshop's extremely powerful selection tools let you make exceptionally accurate selections from your image, giving you full control over what areas of the image are altered, the way you want them. Lets take a look at what they do and how they do it...
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To draw a perfect square or circle, hold down [Shift] before starting your selection with the rectangular or elliptical marquee respectively. If youd like to move the selection boundaries around while youre drawing it, hold down the spacebarthe selection will temporarily stop drawing, and moving the mouse will now change the position of the selection till you let go of the spacebar. If youve already made a selection and want to add to it, hold down [Shift] and then select the area you want to add. On the other hand, use [Alt] to subtract areas from your existing selection.
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You can also Feather the selection from the option barby feathering the selection, you will blur its edges so they wont appear so sharp when you make changes within the selection. Smaller pixel values will cause the edges to become smoother without losing any detail from your selection, while larger values will make the edges extremely fuzzy. For more control over the selection, you can change the Style from the default Normal to either Fixed Aspect Ratiowhere you can decide the ratio of the length to width of the selectionor Fixed Size, where you will use the mouse only to place the selection once youve set its size.
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cursor; it isnt usually advisable, but does save a little effort for the lazy ones. To make straight-edged selections, you can use the Polygonal Lasso tool. While you click away at The Selection on the top was drawn using the different points in Freehand Lasso; the one below was drawn with the Ploygonal Lasso your image, the Polygonal Lasso will create an irregular polygon that will then become the selection. If you want to delete a few line segments, use either the [Backspace] or [Delete] keys to delete the preceding line segments and start again. To close the selections boundary, you can either bring the polygon back to the point where you started, or doubleclick where you want to stopthe selection boundary will close by joining the first point to the point where you double-clicked. To make perfect-edged selections with the Polygonal Lasso, hold down [Shift]. The angles of the selection lines will now follow 45-degree increments.
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To start your selection, you need to define an Anchor Pointthis is where the selection will begin. You can now release the mouse button and move the mouse around the edges you want to select watch as the selection automatically forms around the edges. As you move around making the selection, the Magnetic Lasso will add fastening points to the selection. As the name suggests, these are basically anchors that latch on to the strong edges in the image. If you find that a fastening point has been created in a wrong place, use the [Delete] or [Backspace] The Magnetic Lasso sticks the selection to keys to remove the point. high-contrast edges You can now add your own fastening point by clicking in the appropriate place. To end the selection, work your way to the starting point and click on it. Alternatively, you could double-click to draw a straight line that ends at the selections starting point.
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it how far away from the mouse cursor it should look for an edge. For example, a setting of 10px will make the Magnetic Lasso look for edges that are in a range of 10 pixels around the mouse cursor, while a setting of 50 will make it look in a range of 50 pixels. The Edge Contrast setting tells the lasso how much contrast there should be between two areas for it to define an edge. A lower setting will cause the selection to form even when the contrast on either side of the edge is low; a higher setting will be more sensitive to contrast and works well for well-defined edges. The Frequency setting defines how frequently fastening points will be madea higher setting will cause more points to be created, anchoring the selection quicker. If you are working with a graphics tablet, the Stylus Pressure button enables the edge width to be adjusted according to the pen pressure that you apply.
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higher tolerance is more lenient, letting you select a wider range of colour, while a lower tolerance is much more specific. The Anti-Alias option, which is on by default, prevents jagged edges when you make alterations to a selection. When the Contiguous option is on, only connected areas are selected; if you turn it off, then all areas of the image with similar colours are selected. The Sample All Layers option tells the wand to make the selection based on all layers of the image rather than just the active layer, which it uses by default.
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You can now de-select the area, apply whatever modifications you want to the image, and using Select > Load Selection, bring back the original selection outline. In the Load Selection dialog box, you can choose which channel to load the selection from.
Loading the selection
You can also load layers as selections. Suppose you have a layer thats all text. Its an awfully tedious task to draw around this text to turn it into a selection. Instead, by holding down [Ctrl] and clicking on the layers thumbnail in the Layers palette, you can instantly load a selection that is the same shape as the layer itself!
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Completely paint over the thinner branches; only paint the edges of the trunk
When you are in the Extract dialog, use the Highlighter Tool to draw an outline around the area you want to extract. The outline need not be exact; the only requirement is that the highlight should cover some part of the foreground you want to extract as well as the background. In this case, well just highlight all those spindly branches, lending a somewhat caulifloweresque look to the highlighted area. Finally, well draw an actual outline around the trunk of the tree, and use the Fill tool to fill in this little gap. By using the Fill tool, weve just told Photoshop what to consider as the foreground we want to extract. Click on the Preview button to see what the final extraction will look likeyou will notice that the tree is almost perfectly removed from its background! When you click OK, youll be presented with the extracted image. Remember, extracting deletes the background completely, so if
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you want to retain it for later use, you should use the Extract filter on a duplicated layer. If the image you are using has a strongly-textured background or foreground, you should enable the Textured Image checkbox and adjust the Smoothing to get the extraction rightkeep using the Preview button to check what the result will look like. If your image is especially intricate or made up of different shades of the same colour, check the Force Foreground option to set which area will be extracted. Use the eyedropper tool to select which colour will be treated as the foreground and then proceed to highlight the area you want to extract.
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ayers in Photoshop help by keeping separate the many different elements that go into making a composite image, so you can easily edit different elements and hide them when theyre not in use.
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The layers concept and the control you get from using them is one of the best features of Photoshop. The most common use for layers is when you want to add text to an image, and want to give the text some character by colouring it or adding some effects to it. If you didnt have layers, you would have to decide and finalise on the placement of your text in the image and then set all your effects; with layers, you can make changes to only the text layer and later move it about as you please. Lets take a look at layers in the Photoshop interface to better understand how to use them.
Heres an anti-smoking and anti-extreme sports ad campaignall ready in under five minutes
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4.1 Layers
Using layers, you can combine multiple images, or cut out parts of images and place them in different layers. Lets take an example: Now what we do is use the Lasso tool to cut out the parts we need, place them all on different layers in a new document, and voila! Here, we used five layers: the background (chimney), a cut-out of the guy whos pointing, another of the parachuting skydiver, the text layer (of course), and a little more complex cut-out of the part of the skydiver thats entered the smoke. We got that effect by reducing the opacity of the fifth layer that contains the complex cut-out of the skydiver! This may seem hard, but after youre done with this book youll understand how easy what we just did is. Making a composite image using layers, as in this case, should take you no more than a few minutesit took us just four minutes to make this image!
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Similarly, if youve copied an image or part of an image onto the clipboard, all you have to do is press [Ctrl] + [V] to paste the contents of the clipboard into your canvas, which is automatically added to a new layer above the currently selected layer. Another way of adding a layer, especially when you want the contents of an existing layer to be copied, is to right-click on a layer and choose the Duplicate Layer option. This will create an identical new layer just above the one you selected. The standard way of going about creating new layers, however, is via the menu bar by going to Layer > New > Layer, or by pressing [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [N]. The only thing you need to get used to, however, is to select the correct layer before trying to edit or move content around. Very often, beginners find themselves trying to move or edit an element in the image and cant seem to be able to, while everything else seems to be moving about: this is a sure sign that youve not selected the correct layer!
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Photoshop shows the entire canvas in the thumbnail view. In order to view only the contents of the layer, right-click on any layers thumbnail and select the Clip Thumbnails to Layer Bounds option. This will show you only the layer contents, instead of the whole canvas. You can also change the thumbnail size using the same method and choosing between Small, Medium and Large Thumbnails. The real problems arise when you have similar-looking images, placed about your canvas in different positions. This is the tricky bit, and you should name your layers according to what your image contains and where its placed. For example, in an image with, say, a lot of apples, you can name the apple on the top left Apple Top Left, or something else descriptive. Remember, theres no correct naming convention, because each image is different, as are the people editing them, so whats descriptive to you might make no sense to anyone else. But thats OK, because all that matters is that you know at a glance which layer is which element! Another important thing to remember is that you should place
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layers as you would place images drawn on butter paper! The one on top is the one thats always visible, and each layer below will appear behind the one on top. So make sure your background is always the layer thats at the bottom, and then pile on the layers from there. You can change the order in which the layers are placed simply by holding down the left mouse button on a layer and dragging it up or down, depending on how you want to place it. Alternatively, you can just use the following keyboard shortcuts: Action Shortcut Bring Forward (move layer up) [Ctrl] + ] Bring To Front (move layer on top) [Ctrl] + [Shift] + ] Send Backward (move layer down) [Ctrl] + [ Send To Back (move layer to bottom) [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [ Here [ is the square bracket open key, and ] is the square bracket close key.
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The Group option under the Layer menu is your saviour! Kneel and worship it for a few minutes if you have to, and then head on to Layer > New > Group. You will have to name the group, just as you do when you create a new layer, and then you will see a layer added to the Layer palette. Instead of a blank thumbnail, this new layer will have a folder icon with an arrowthis denotes a group of layers. If you create a new layer while this layer group is selected, the new layer will be added under the group. You can also add layers to this group just by dragging them on to the group. What you need to remember is to group your layers smartly, with, say, all text layers under a group called text, all images of apples under a group called apples, and so on. If you follow this practice, it will save you heaps of time later on when your image editing skills improve and you start working on complex images.
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In Windows Explorer, you have little [+] marks next to folders that have more folders inside them, which upon clicking become [-] signs, and drop down all the folders contained inside the first folder. Well, Photoshop replaces the little [+] and [-] signs with an arrow that points to the right (for the [+] sign) and an arrow that points down (for the [-] sign), when working with layer groups. In order to show or hide (depending on the current state) all layers contained within a layer group, click on this arrow!
The Recipe:
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Leave the rest of the skydiver as is, on simmer for a few minutes
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Add text as garnishing, and you have a delicious image that your friends will be lapping up and praising. Time taken? Five minutes! Thank you Photoshop, because of you I now have friends!
Well, fun stuff aside, you will also be able to get a lot of serious work done once youve mastered the whole layers thing in Photoshop. Apart from just Opacity and Fill, there are loads of things you can do with layers, all of which will be covered in the chapters that follow.
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Advanced Effects
ow that you've learnt the basics, and know your way around Photoshop, it's time to get a little deeper under the surface and take a look at some of the cool effects and filters that Photoshop has on offer
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5.1.1 Shadows
Drop Shadow Mostly used with text, and when Tip working with cut-outs, a drop shadow is meant to do away You can also use drop shadows with the whole Photoshopped if you want a certain coloured look of elements in your picture. text to be easily visible on a Yes theres even a term called background that does not offer Photoshopped, thats used by very good contrast! many design artists to describe when an image or element of an image does not look natural! Basically, you can add a shadow to the contents of a layer, so as to add depth and also to match lighting sources of all elements in an image. The simplest example is text: we often want to give text a 3D look, and thats where drop shadows are important. In the images alongside, you will see that the first image has just plain text, while the second has the same text with a Drop Shadow effect applied to it. The difference is that the second is noticeably better! In order to apply a drop shadow, just check the option in the Layer Style dialog box we told you about, play with the different settings and then click OK. Remember, trust only your eyes,
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because what you see is what others will as wellso make sure to keep the little Preview checkbox ticked, so you can see whats happening in your actual image before you click OK! However, what do you do if youre working with a dark background?
As you can see here, the text was being hidden by a non-contrasting background. Not anymore!
Inner Shadow When working with dark backgrounds, its obviously not going to be possible to give a layer an outer (drop) shadow, simply because it will not be seen. In such cases you should use the Inner Shadow option. This creates the shadow inside the selected layer, and thus gives it the effect of being cut into the background instead of being placed upon it, as with the Drop Shadow effect. With both shadow effects, you can select various parameters of the effect, such as the opacity of the layer, its shadow, the height / depth of the layer castThe Inner Shadow is used for dark ing the shadow, etc. As backgrounds where the Drop Shadow effect we mentioned earlier, would not be visible
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dont be afraid to play with all the settings, but use the Preview option and rely only on your eyes to get a satisfactory result.
5.1.2Glows
Outer Glow This effect produces a glow outside the edges of the selected layer. Sort of like a halo effect, this is very useful to highlight an element (a particular layer) of an image. In the Layer Style box, check the Outer Glow option and then tweak the settings around till you get the desired effect. You can
The Outer Glow Layer Style can help you focus attention on a particular layer or part of an image
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get various results just by tweaking the Contour settingsyou can make a layer look like a neon sign, or end up with something like the image below. Inner Glow If your layer is on top of a light background, an outer glow will not be of much use. Also, if youre using a cut-out of an image, and are not sure whether you want to place it on a dark or light background, thats where the inner glow comes in. Choose between the Center and the Edge options for the source of the glow, then set the Contour and click OK.
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Bevel and Emboss styles will help give boring text that 3D look you want
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Left to Right: the Satin style, and the Gradient and Pattern Overlay effects
Overlays
A colour overlay is used to give a layer a tint of a particular colour. Unfortunately, this book being black and white, we cannot show you too much in terms of images for this, but just go ahead and use it, and youll quickly understand it. Make sure to use the Opacity setting carefully and preview the image when using this layer style. A Gradient Overlay can be used to bring about some really cool effects. This effect will allow you to apply a colour overlay that changes the tint of the layer gradually from one colour to another. A Pattern Overlay will allow you to give a texture to the layer youre editing. You can use it, as we have, to apply a cool shadow effect to a picture. You can also give text or images some character and depth by using the pattern overlay.
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5.2 Filters
Filters are slightly more advanced effects in Photoshop that are used to do everything from sharpening images to making images or selections look like stained glass windows! Unlike layer effects, which are Use the Filter Gallery to preview Filter effects applied to entire layers, filters can be applied to an entire image or even just a selection in a layer. However, in order to apply filters to text, Photoshop will rasterise the typed words into an imageyou need to remember this because once rasterised, the text will not be editable! Here well list out all the filters and a general description of what they do. In order to get a better understanding of the nuances of each filter effect, its best to use each one on a wide variety of images. All the filters are stored under the Filter menu, and are conveniently arranged according to a few categories. Instead of listing out each and every filter, well look at the broader categories and show you a few cool effects in each one.
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Colored Pencil converts your image into something that looks like its been drawn by colouring pencils
The Palette Knife makes an image that looks like it was drawn using a blunt instrumentless details of the image and more of the canvas
The Plastic Wrap filter makes the subject in your image look like its wrapped in cling filmdetails on the surface are more visible
The Watercolor filter converts your image into something thats been drawn using water-based paint and a medium-thickness brush
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Artistic
The artistic filters consist of effects that render your image or selection into something that looks hand painted or drawn. With effects such as Coloured Pencil, Paint Daubs and Watercolor, these effects can add some really cool effects into your imaging.
The Dark Strokes filter converts your image into a painting that has been drawn with short, tight, dark strokes for dark areas, and long, white strokes for lighter areas.
The Spatter effect makes it look like the image has been spray-painted onto a canvas
The Glass filter offers you the really cool option of making your image look like it is being viewed from behind a block of glasswith options to change the type of glass
The Ocean Ripple effect makes your image look like its being viewed as a reflection on choppy waters, or an image thats underwater
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Brush Strokes
The next set of filters are the Brush Stroke filters, which, as the name suggests, are filters that convert your images into what
Caption: The Note Paper filter can make some cool backgrounds for personalised snail mail
The Photocopy filter will let you see what your image would look like if you photocopied it
Distort
The Distort filters, as the name suggests, geometrically distort an image to give it a 3D or liquidised Reticulation will give you a really effect.
nice grainy look
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Sketch
The Sketch Filter effects are all black-and-white effects that convert your image into something that looks like a pencil sketch.
Stylize
Here you have only one good psychedelic effectGlowing Edges! This effect puts a neon-like glow on every edge thats visible in your image to give it a weird neon-painted look.
Texture
The Texture Filter set has six filters that include Craquelure, Mosaic Tiles and Stained Glass. These filters are pretty self-explanatory, and you can see the results of applying the filters below: This covers a few of the effects that are available to you through the Filter Gallery. However, under the filter menu, you will find more filter effects, such as Blur, Noise, Render, etc. Lets take a look at some more Filters:
Mosaic Tiles show you what it would look like if your image were painted onto tiles and put on a wall or the floor
The Stained Glass look converts an image into small cells that take on the predominant foreground colour of the image behind it
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5.2.2Other Effects
Blur The Blur filter is generally used to smoothen out and image that is very noisy. Here you have various options, such as Average, which finds the average colour of a selected area and fills the area with it. The Gaussian Blur works at a pixel level, depending on the This Blur effect works at the pixel radius of the blur you select. level to bring smoothness and
remove noise
The Motion Blur is also another important filter you might find use for. This filter can be used to create the illusion of great speed, even in a photo that has nothing in motion! Noise Sometimes images can look a little too crisp to be real. In such cases, you can always add a little noise using the Filter > Noise effect.
Heres an example of how you can get an image to display something like your old TV that receives images via a broken cable
Sharpen The opposite of Blur, the Sharpen effects make an image crisper, and add a little noise to make the image seem more sharply in focus.
5.2.3 Liquefy
This effect gets a special mention of its own because of how cool an effect it is. Liquefy basically turns your image into silly putty, and lets you mould it and change it as you see fit. This effect is particularly useful for those who like to make cartoonish-looking people by morphing photographs.
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You can even improve the quality of out-of-focus images with smart use of the Sharpen filter
You can make your friends a lot funnier-looking using the Liquefy filter
5.3 Painting
Imaging began with painters who captured living beauty on canvasses! Even today, nothing beats the skill of a brush, and Photoshop provides you with all the brushes youll ever need to create your own masterpieces. The painting tools in Photoshop change the pixels of an image that youre painting on to.
5.3.1 Brushes
The Brushes palette in Photoshop allows you to select from preset brushes or design your own custom brushes. Just as you would when actually painting, the brush you choose determines the characteristics of the resulting stroke. When in Photoshop, select the Brush Tool by pressing [B], and then press [F5] to bring up the Brushes palette. Here you will see all the different brushes available to you, and all the settings associated with them. Well just walk you through each setting for the Brush tool so that you know what settings to choose for what purpose.
Shape Dynamics
The first option you will see in the Brush palette is the Shape Dynamics preset.
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The Size Jitter setting defines the randomness of the stroke. So a setting of 0 per cent will make a stroke thats perfectly symmetrical and solid, and at 100 per cent, you will get strokes with the largest amount of randomness. In order to make your painting more realistic, you will definitely need to use a decent amount of Size Jitter.
Heres an example of how you can get an image to display something like your old TV that receives images via a broken cable
Pen Pressure defines how hard you want the brush to press down on the canvas. The Angle Jitter settings defines how you would change a brush angle about when actually painting. The Roundness Jitter defines how smooth the tip of the brush or pen is. The minimum roundness will let you control the minimum solid thickness of the stroke. Thankfully, theres a good preview of the resulting stroke, so you know exactly what youre The Shape Dynamics settings for the brush getting when you change a settingeven before you actually start using the brush. Hereafter, remember that all Jitter settings define the randomness of the stroke, and a zero jitter setting will produce a very smooth and unrealistic stroke!
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Decrease/increase brush size Decrease/increase brush softness/hardness by 25% Select previous/next brush size Select first/last brush Display precise crosshair for brushes Toggle airbrush option
[ or ] [Shift] + ([) or (]) [,] or [.] [Shift] + [,] or [.] [Caps Lock] [Shift] + [Alt] + [P]
Scattering
This brush setting will determine the way the stroke will scatter about both the X and Y axes. This will give a realistic splatter and scatter to your stroke, just as a real brush would.
Texture
This, quite simply, makes each brush stroke paint a texture, instead of just colour. Use the settings shown to tweak the size and intensity of the Use the Scattering option to texture being painted. If you have the make your brush strokes scatter more like a real paintbrush patience, you can create your own oil canvas textures in different colours, so that when you paint you can use these textures to get a perfect canvas feel to your image. Apart from this, you can also give some depth to your painting, especially if you are skilful at using layers and transparencies!
Dual Brush
The Dual Brush setting uses two different brush tips simultaneously to paint your strokes, so as to give the effect of touching up a
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stroke with another using a different brush. This setting gives you some realistic-looking strokes, with just the right amount of cracks and gaps in each stroke, just as you would get when using thick paint on a canvas. The wide variety of brushes that can be used in the Dual Brush mode also means that there are literally hundreds of different combinations you can try so as to get a completely unique-looking brush stroke. With thousands of different brushes available for free download, made by Photoshop and art enthusiasts, the possible combinations available for use increases in orders of magnitude! Note: You will first need to select the primary brush shape from the Brush Tip Shape option right at the top of the Brush Palette first, then select the shape of the second brush you want to combine into your stroke. The Color Dynamics and Other Dynamics settings change the way the brightness of colours, flow and opacity of a stroke are handled. Use them to better understand what they do. Below these settings, you will find these options: Noise, Wet Edges, Airbrush, Smoothing, and Protect Texture. These are better understood by using them, and are quite easy to understand using the preview window. For example, Use the Dual Brush to get some Noise simply adds a lot of distortion really unique stroke effect to your stroke, and the Airbrush combinations adds the strokes lightly, making you go over and over a few times before you get the same stroke that you would with the normal brushperhaps a little like how artists sketch, by making light, repeated strokes. The Airbrush is great for sketches! If you use the Smoothing option, the strokes will have smoother curves, so that you dont end up with jagged edges in case you slip up with the mouse or stylus!
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More Brushes
Youve probably used all the settings and familiarised yourself with the different brush options you have at hand. However, if you still cannot find that brush stroke you wanted, its probably because you havent reached the best part yet: all these settings change the stroke of every individual brush tip, and what you see in your Brush Tip Shape options are just the default set of brushes! Heres the good news: you can now select from a whole range of brush sets, including Calligraphic, Drop Shadow, Dry Media, Faux Finish, Natural, Special Effect, Square, Thick and Wet brushes! Of course, you can also go online and download some of the freely available custom-made brushes that enthusiasts have madewe found over a thousand brush sets available for download, though most people are happy with what Adobe provides.
History Brush
The history brush, along with the History Panel, help you step backwards when editing or creating an image. The History Panel, as previously explained, will help you step back incrementally in time, retracing every step and effect you applied. How many different types of brushes do you This means that if you think youd need? Photoshop added a few hundred more used a normal brush to paint over the existing image, and step back in time using the History Panel, you undo all the changes you made in your last action. In contrast, the History Brush tool helps you undo only a portion of an image or a stroke that you made. What it does is
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revert the areas you stroke with the History Brush to the last saved image state. If youre someone who saves often (which you should do), and also make many changes in a single steplike painting over half the image in a single stepthe History Brush will help you revert small parts of an image to the last saved state. Lets explain this in more detail by using images (as we should): Step 1: The original image.
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Step 3: Now we want to remove this filter only from the knife in this picture, but not from the fruit.
Using the History Tool, we were able to restore just the knife to its original splendour.
Its as simple as that! Just run the History Brush over the desired area to get the last saved image back!
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espite its power as an image creation software, the most common use for Photoshop is simple retouching or repairing of images. Most of us just fire up Photoshop when we want to make an existing image look better. You could use simpler software such as IrfanView to do the same, but Photoshop usually does a better job of it
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Lets take a look at how most of you will be using Photoshop. In order to show you how to retouch or repair images, we need some images. Shown alongside are the images we will use throughout this chapter to illustrate each tool and method of retouching your images.
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Select the Clone Stamp tool, keep [Alt] pressed, and then leftclick on an area you want to sample. Now, let go of [Alt] and then just begin painting. This tool is a godsent for those of us who have wrinkles or no hair. You can use the Clone Stamp to hide your wrinkles or bald spotsdigitally, though. This still beats all the fitness diets, wrinkle creams and advice from elders! Lets look at the image of the old lady. As you can see, shes got a lot of wrinkles, which she may or may not be happy about, but were going to soften them anywayand try and make her look a few years younger, using just the Clone Stamp tool. You can create a new layer by right-clicking on the background layer and selecting Duplicate Layer. Now work on the new layer youve created. It takes a little patience and deft mouse work, but you can achieve decent results. You might have to use the History palette quite often, especially when you accidentally sample the wrong area with the Clone Stamp, and end up with a big unsightly pink or black patch in the middle of the face. The trick is to sample the smoother skin thats close to the wrinkles, and then paint it over the wrinkles. The reason why you choose skin close to the wrinkles is because you need the same, or at least similar, lighting and skin tone to make it look credible. Now, were using the layer on top of the actual background because the Clone Stamp tool flattens the image, and is not particularly good when it comes to skinits better used on areas of solid colours. So once youre done stamping out the wrinkles, you might feel that the image looks too plastic and flat, and that all the details of the face have been wiped clean. This is where the original image in the background layer comes in. Play with the Opacity and Fill values of the top layer to let some of the details of the background layer come through. This will give you the missing details, and also show lighter wrinkles instead of the no wrinkle look (which looks plastic) on the face.
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The final result, after Clone Stamping and setting the Opacity of the upper layers
Take a look at the Before, Stamped, and After images below to better understand what were talking about:
The first step is to create a new duplicate layer of the background, and then choose a suitable pattern from the presets provided. Now use a decent- sized brush tip, and paint over every part
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of the old ladys skin. The pattern looks really funny, but dont worrythat will soon be fixed. You should take care not to paint a pattern over anything that shouldnt have freckles, such as the eyes, the lips and the nostrils. Once youve finished painting the pattern over the entire face you will end up with something that looks like the image alongside. Now, this is where you have to rely on your eyes, and judge what you want your final image to look like. Adjust the Opacity and Fill of the layer you just pattern-stamped, and you should end up with something like the image alongside. You can also choose to just add freckles to the cheeks and nose, or whatever you want to do. You can also create your own freckle pattern, or even make some really cool metallic-looking patterns to get the whole android look!
We know, this looks ridiculous right now, but it gets better, we promise!
Another thing you can do is change the texture of clothes. In this second example, we have taken an Now heres an old lady who has a lot of freckles! image of three little girls. We decided that the two on the right needed some texture in their shirts. The first thing we did, as usual, was to create a duplicate layer of the background. Then, using two different patterns, we covered their shirts. Then, again, using the Opacity and the Fill settings, we blended the two layers to form the final image. Its not a professional job, because we didnt sit down and make special cloth patternsbut you could always do that yourself. We were content with using two of Photoshops default patterns for the job.
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and voila!, theyre now wearing the same design of shirts, but of a different material (also a slightly different colour, but if you make your own pattern, you could avoid changing the colour as well) Here are some more images to show you the pattern changes of all the images we used, in close-up
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only the skin. So we healed most of the face using the Spot Healing tool, and did our touch-ups using the Healing tool. We also used the Clone Stamp tool in very few areas, because we wanted to flatten the skin texture, and also because both the Healing and Spot Healing tools were not giving us the desired results. Once we were done, we set the Opacity and the Fill to 85 per cent each so as to get some of the original texture and lines back from the background image, and then flattened the image. You can see the results below: We now come to the Patch tool, which is very useful for some specific purposes. A lot of us have digital cameras, and weve all started clicking a lot of photographs. In fact, with the coming of megapixel camera phones, theres millions of budding photographers out there. However, the one thing most of us forget to do is to turn off the date stamp in the photographs. As a result, we get this irritating little orange-coloured date and time stamp at the bottom right of the image. In order to remove this, you can use the Clone Stamp tool or even just cut a patch and paste it over the date, but the easiest way to do this is by using the Patch tool.
Heres the final result when we brought back some of the textures and lines from the original image by decreasing the Opacity and Fill
Heres the final result from using only the Clone Stamp tool, so that you can compare the beauty of using only the Clone Stamp tool as compared to using all the retouching tools in unison
You can just select a patch, then drag it and drop it on the area you want to hide. Instead of just pasting the patch, like a copy-
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paste of the selected area would do, the Patch tool handles the patch like a healing tool, and matches the colours, luminosity, texture and shading to make the patch blend into the rest of the image. You could also use the patch tool to heal a complete image, but the Healing tool is much more handy for that purpose. Finally, we come to what is perhaps the tool you will be using the most. The Red Eye Tool is for the most common error in the images we click. Because not all of us are professional photographers, we very often use the wrong flash settings, or end up using the flash on our camera phones, which causes red eye. In order to remove red eye errors, just select the Red Eye Tool, and click on the eyes of the subject. Voilared eye gone! Yes, it really is that simple!
Heres a poor poochie that looks like the devil because of the evil red eye
A click on each eye later, heres good old poochie captured just as he was meant to be
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ouve probably seen Flash presentations on the Web that adamantly refuse to distort no matter how much you zoom into them. This magical effect happens thanks to a brilliant concept called Vector Graphics. In this chapter, well learn more about these and how to work with them in Photoshop.
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Armed with this information and a few mathematical calculations, the image editing program can calculate the size of the image in pixelsbecause ultimately, everything that is displayed on your screen is going to be translated into pixels. Obviously, this is a lot less information to store. Suppose you want the circle bigger. For the raster, you will need to add more and more pixels, each of which comes with a baggage of three bytes (one each for the Red, Green and Blue levels) to add to the file size. On the other hand, to change the size of the vector graphic, youre just going to change the value of the radiussomething that is going to make a marginal, if any, difference to the file size.
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The image only contains the information for 640*480 = 307,200 pixels, but we want to turn it into an image that contains 1024*768 = 786,432 pixels! Where are we going to get the information for all those extra The Circle on the left is a vector; the one on the pixels? The image editing right is raster program will now try to guess these pixels based on the information it already has, and this is when things are apt to go horribly wrong. The image is going to pixelate, and the circles edges are going to end up jagged. In a vector graphic, as we discussed earlier, the final size of the circle is calculated on-the-fly, so no matter how much you resize a vector graphic, its going to have perfect, well-defined edges.
Vectors in Photoshop
In all fairness, Photoshop is hardly a program you would associate with vector graphicsfor that, there are programs like Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW, both dedicated to the cause of vector art. However, Photoshop is quite capable in this department as wellit not only lets you easily create vector graphics, but also uses the principles of vectors to take its own raster editing capabilities one step ahead. There are three aspects of Photoshop that use vector graphics:
Pathsthe
most direct way of creating and manipulating vectors in Photoshop. Paths are curves that are defined by key points, called control points, which can be manipulated at any time to change the shape of the curve. Typestarting with version 5.0, Photoshop treats text as a vector graphic, allowing you to resize and manipulate it for as long as you want before converting it into a raster. Shapesto save the time it would take you to draw them using paths, Photoshop lets you draw basic shapes like rectangles, ellipses and polygons as vector images.
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nect segments at a sharp corner. The more anchor points a path has, the more control you are going to have over its shape, but too much of a good thing can be badmany unnecessary anchor points are going to make the path difficult to edit. Enough talk; lets begin creating our paths.
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By default, all anchor points are smooth points. However, with a few handy keyboard shortcuts, you can customise your path as you draw it:
To create a corner point, hold down the [Alt] key, then click and drag to create the corner point. The direction lines for smooth points are always in the same line. To create a corner with different direction lines for the incoming and outgoing curves, Click, Drag and hold down [Alt] before you release the mouse button. You can now change the direction line of the curve leaving the anchor point. Its a little tricky, so it will take a couple of trials before you get it right.
You can edit your path while you are drawing it as well: To add an anchor point on a segment that youve already drawn, just move the mouse cursor over the path. A small + sign will appear next to the cursor, meaning that you can add an anchor Hold down [Alt] to create corner points point there. To delete an anchor point, click on it (a small - sign will appear next to the cursor before you do this) To delete your last anchor point, hit [Delete] or [Backspace]. This might cause the path to get confirmedthe next time you click, a new path Fiddling with direction lines
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will begin. To resume drawing the path, click on the last anchor point you created (a small / will appear next to the cursor before you do this) To convert a smooth point to a corner point, hold down [Alt] and click on it To convert a corner point to a smooth point, hold down [Alt], click on it and drag the mouse to set the direction lines To move anchor points or adjust the direction lines, hold down [Ctrl] and click on the point. To prevent both direction lines from moving together, hold down [Ctrl] and [Alt] and then move the direction line.
Click on the arrow at the top-right corner to bring up the Paths palette menu. From here, you can choose to save the path, delete it, fill it with colour, or stroke it. Stroking a path means that the tool you select from the Stroke Path dialog will be used along the path. For example, if you draw a path in the shape of an S, stroking it with a paintbrush means that the Brush tool will be used to draw the same S shape. You can also use paths for greater control over selections. If youve drawn a selection using any of the standard selection tools, editing its shape can be quite troublesome. Instead, you can use the pen tool to draw a path around the area you want to select, tweak it as much as you like, and finally use the Convert Path to
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Alternatively, you could first make the selection, convert it to a path by using the Convert Selection to Path button [small image], tweak it using the path tools, and then convert it back to a selection.
Create Paragraph type by clicking and dragging the mouse to draw a box to which your text will be confined. This is recommended if you have more than three words of text, or if you need to work within a limited space (you can switch between Point Type and Paragraph Type in the layers menuLayer > Type > Convert to Point (or
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Paragraph) Text, or by choosing the Type tool and right-clicking on the text).
Create type on a path. When you bring the type tool over a path youve drawn, the cursor changes, meaning that you can now create type that will always follow that path. Moreover, you can still edit the path and the type whenever you like.
When you create type, Photoshop creates a new layer on your imagethis lets you alter the type as much as you want without ever disturbing the rest of the image. Moreover, unless you explicitly rasterize the type layer, you can edit your text no matter how many effects youve applied to it. What you can do with a Open the Character Palette from the type layer without having to option bar to edit the properties of your type rasterize it:
Transform it using the Transform Tool ([Ctrl] + [T]) (Except Perspective and Distort) Apply layer styles (youve read about these in Chapter 5) Warp the text using the Create Warped Text button on the option bar Switch between horizontal and vertical text using the Change Text Direction button
You will only need to rasterize type if you want to apply filters to it or paint on it. Turn to Chapter 12 to check out a few cool effects that you can create with type.
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7.4 Shapes
Try drawing a perfect circle using the Pen tool. Exasperating, isnt it? This was a painful flaw in Photoshop before version 5.5. Thankfully, now you can create simple vector shapes like circles, rectangles and polygons using the Shape Tool (U) . When you select the Shape tool, you can choose to create Shape Layers, paths or raster shapes from the option bar. Your best bet is the Shape Layerit creates a new layer filled with the A New Shape Layer is created for foreground colour, and a path each shape that you can edit later on as well. You can also combine shapes in the same shape layer by choosing the Add to Path Area button in the option bar. Drawing shapes on your image is just like drawing a selection with the marquee tooleven the keyboard shortcuts that we mentioned in Chapter 3 apply here. Just like type layers, you can transform and add layer styles to shape layers without having to rasterize them. And just like type layers, you will have to rasterize them to paint or apply filters to them. To change the colour of the Shape layer, double-click on its thumbnail in the Layers Palettethe colour picker will come up, and you can choose the colour you want.
Select Custom Shape from the option bar to choose from a variety of cool shapes
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Why should we limit ourselves to the plain old fonts that are installed on our machines? Using the Path tools we just learnt about, you can teach an old font some new tricks! Start with a new document (we chose 640x480), and start creating a new type layer.
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Once youre satisfied with the text, accept it by hitting the [Enter] key on the numeric keypad. Now, right-click on the type layer and select Convert to Shape.
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Finally, select a style of your choice from the Styles palette (Window > Styles if you dont see it at the top-right of the workspace), and youre done!
Experiment with the Pen tool a little more to come up with your own zany text effects
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ust as we use masks in real life to hide, show or protect parts of our faces, so must we use them in Photoshop to give our images the same privileges. Much like selections, masks define which parts of the image will be affected by our tinkering and which parts wont. They also determine which parts of a layer will be shown and which remain hidden.
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Why Masks?
A good deal of what can be accomplished by using masks is also possible with a few wellmade selections here and there, so why use them? Well, for one thing, masks are treated just the same as any other layerany effect you can apply to a layer can also be applied to the mask, giving you the ability to create some incredible effects that would take days to accomplish with just selections. Moreover, masks allow for completely non- The black part in the layer mask lets destructive editingthat is, you the underlying image show through
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dont need to make any alterations to the layer youre working on, and getting back to where you started is as simple as shutting off or deleting the mask.
Creating a mask
To create a mask for a layer, click on the Create Layer Mask button ( ) at the bottom of the Layers Palette. By default, Photoshop creates a Reveal All mask, which is filled with white. The name is quite suggestivethe Reveal All mask lets the layer appear as is, and it is only after you paint on black The Reveal All mask is filled with White areas in the mask that the underlying layer shows through. To create the exact opposite, use the Hide All mask, holding down [Alt] before clicking on the Create Layer Mask button. You will now see a mask that is filled with black instead of white. Alternatively, you could go to Layer > Add Layer Mask > Reveal All or Hide All to create a new layer mask.
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If youd like to move or transform the layer and mask independently of each other, you can unlink them by clicking on the chain-link icon.
The chain-link icon in the middle tells us that the Layer and Mask are linked
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will appear on the masks thumbnail and the effect of the mask will now vanish from the layer. To get it back, [Shift] + left-click the thumbnail once again.
Weve discussed how layer masks create new Alpha channels for the imageyou can see this new channel in the Channels palette. By default, the channels visibility is turned off (there is no eye icon next to the thumbnail). However, it sometimes becomes a little annoying to have to edit masks and judge the outcome based on the corresponding layer. To see the mask itself in the document window, turn on the visibility of the channel in the Channels palette. The mask will now appear in the main document window as a 50% transparent red layer. You can change this appearance if you want by right-clicking on the masks thumbnail and selecting Layer Mask Options.
Gradient masks
Like we said before, the great thing about masks is that they can be treated like normal layers, and this means that we can even apply gradients to them. When you apply a gradient to a mask, you end up with a very interesting fade-out effect for the layerthe white part is completely opaque, the black part is completely transparent, and the intermediate areas fade according to the intensity of white or black.
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Creating a gradient mask is as simple as using the gradient tooljust configure it as you would do so for any other purpose, and instead of filling the layer with the gradient, just fill the mask.
Clipping masks
You will often encounter this terma clipping mask is when you use one layer as a mask for another. Clipping masks dont pay attention to greyscalethe image is either there or not. When you create a clipping mask for a layer, the layer below it becomes the mask. Where the lower layer has image data (this could be a brush stroke, a shape, anything), the layer shows through, otherwise it doesnt. To create a clipping mask, go to Layer > Create Clipping Mask or hold down [Alt] and click on the dividing line between the two layers. You will notice that the cursor shape changes before you click the divider.
The brighter picture on top shows
Unlike layer masks, clipping through only inside the shape below it masks arent linked to the layer they are maskingyou will have to do this yourself if you intend for the two layers to move together. All this talk about masks isnt going to get us anywhere till we sit down and do something with them, so here are a couple of workshops to get you going.
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With a few brushstrokes, we will bring the fruit back where it should bethe foreground
Were going to start our journey with masks with a simple tutorialmaking it look like text is behind an object, when it really isnt. We will start with fruit-06.jpg, located in the Workshops\Chapter 5 directory on the CD. It looks quite basic, but using masks in this situation gives us some very significant advantages. First, of course, is the fact that neither the original background layer nor the type layer will be affected in any serious way. If you were to try this effect without using masks (its quite easy to do so, too) you would have
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to rasterise the text layer, making the text un-editable (more on text and rasterisation later). So if you wanted to change the text, youd have to erase the unwanted part all over again. With the masks method, Use a soft-edged brush to get a smoother effect you can continue to edit the text and it will still look like its behind the fruit. Try it!
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Step I: Beginning
Well use the same fruit image as we did for the previous workshop. Duplicate the Background layer in the Layers palette and apply a filter to itany filter will do; were just using it to verify the effectiveness of the mask. We chose the Fresco effect from the Artistic filters (Filter > Artistic > Fresco). We will start by creating a new hide-all vector mask from the Layer menu: Layer > Vector Mask > Hide All.
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Its going to take some getting used to, so you will require some patience. While you are drawing, hold down the spacebar to pan the image when you reach the edge of the document. To get a nice, clean cutout, stay just a tiny bit What your Layers palette will look like inside the edge of the fruit. As you draw, you should start seeing the Fresco-ed fruit appear inside the region. Once youve made it all the way around, close the path by clicking on the first control point. You can now adjust the shape of the vector mask whenever you want by using the Direct Selection Tool ([A]) .
Step I: Deception
To start with, duplicate the Background Layer. Well first apply a Gaussian blur to soften the skin. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the radius to a low valuedepending on what youre working on, it should be between 1 and 3 pixels for a good balance between too little and too much detail. Keep an eye on the skin to see what you like bestwell sort out the remaining later. We used a radius of 1.6 pixels for this.
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Now that weve decided what we want the skin to look like, its time to bring the mask into the picture. Create a new Hide All mask by Alt-Clicking on the Create Layer Mask button.
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Finally, if the image looks too plastic, turn down the opacity of the blurred layer to about 65-70% to let some of the original detail show through.
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Image formats
hen you do a ~Save As~ in Photoshop, you will find a long list of different image formats in which you can save your image. Just what do these formats mean? Or, why do we even need them? Is there any benefit in saving certain images in certain formats? Or is there on best format that can be used for all applications? We will answer these questions in this chapter.
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Image Formats
You would have seen movie files with different extensions - .avi, .mpg, .rm, etc.; document files in .doc, .rtf, or sxw. These are different types of files, meaning data is stored in the file in different ways. Similarly with images we have several formats with different kinds of optimisation and features for different purposes. It is difficult to say just which format is the absolute best - but what we can do is list out the advantages and disadvantages of some common formats so that you know what to use when. All formats can be classified under two headings, lossless and lossy. While lossless formats store all of the image information and are great for photo editing work, their downside is the huge file sizes that make it impractical for web applications or for embedding images inside documents or presentations. TIFF is an example of a lossless format, as is Photoshop's native PSD. Lossy formats compromise some detail from the images in order to reduce file sizes to more manageable levels. The amount of detail that is removed can be set in the image editing software. Sacrificing detail will not make any apparent change to the image at moderate compression levels, but if you are going to work further on the image, the loss of detail will affect the final image quality. A commonly used lossy format is the JPEG format.
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Photographic Experts Group (official site: www.jpeg.org). Most of the natural images found on the net are JPEGs (small banners and line diagrams are usually .gif; we'll come to that later). This is because JPEG is designed keeping in mind the limitations of the human eye. The details that the human eye cannot make out are removed in a jpeg image. For example, we cannot distinguish between minute colour changes, so regions of the image where there are only minute variations in colour will be made into a single colour. However, if the image is to be analysed by a computer, (like an Optical Character Reader system) the losses may become noticeable. The ability to set the amount of detail to be removed gives great flexibility to the image maker to choose between quality and file size. The image readers can choose between a ~fast~ decompression with some loss of clarity or a ~slower~ decompression with better clarity. JPEG uses 24 bits per pixel to store colour information. This means 224 = 16 million different colours can be represented in JPEG. This works great for ~real~ images, like photographs. In greyscale mode, JPEG uses 8 bits to store one pixel's information 256 shades of grey. After all this theory, you will be asking 'When should I save as JPEG and when should I choose other formats'? Here is your answer: JPEG works great with photos or scenery. If you do not wish to edit the file in future, you can safely save the image as a jpeg. Saving images for the web can be done in JPEG format (images displayed in your website or a photo sharing site). JPEG does not work well with drawings, especially straight line drawings or block diagrams where every line is well defined. For these kinds of images, it is best to choose a .gif Images that have a large area of a single colour benefit more from gif than from jpg. If you have a single coloured background and the subject is not very detailed or very colourful, you should prefer GIF.
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If you are saving images for print, do not save in a .jpg format. Remember, jpeg is meant for the human eye, but devices can be affected by the losses. If you are going to be editing the file later on as well, they shouldn't be JPEGs, especially not highly compressed ones. ~Setting quality levels and saving jpegs in Photoshop is discussed in Chapter 2.1~
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important but small size for quicker loading is the criteria. GIF is a no-no for print purposes or for further editing.
9.2.1 Setting transparency in GIF using Photoshop You can make the background of a gif transparent such that only the selected portion of the gif will be visible while the remaining parts show the background on which the GIF is placed. This makes it very easy to place images on web pages without the page itself losing its look and feel. If the web page has a Grey background, just image how it would look if small images with a Reddish background Setting the GIF Transparency are placed all over it! Using the Magic Wand or Lasso tool, select the area of the image you want transparent and delete them by pressing [Del]. Now choose to save the image as a GIF and click on Save. You will then be prompted to choose palate options. In this box, check the option that says ~Transparency~ and say ~OK~. Now you can use this image on any background and have only the subject of the GIF visible with its background transparent.
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Add to that there is no royalty or fee for using the PNG. Recently, CompuServe (the developer of GIF) announced that it would charge a fee on the usage of its GIF format. You can try to save your images as PNG in place of GIF or JPEG - see if the quality vs file size is acceptable and take your own call!
Dabba
Saving for Print If you wish to print your image on another machine which may not have Photoshop installed, you can save the image in a TIFF format (uncompressed). Try as much as possible not to use any compression unless you are hard pressed for space.
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If you are saving the document for printing using Photoshop itself, you can simply save your work as a .psd, which is Photoshop's native format. Set your dpi to 300 or more depending on your printer's dpi ability. This has been covered in chapter 2.
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n oft-ignored tool that piggybacks on Photoshop, Adobe ImageReady brings to the Web the same ridiculously powerful features that Photoshop brings to print or the desktop. Not only can ImageReady serve as a mini-Photoshop on its own, it packs in many more goodies that keep Web graphics looking their best without being bandwidth hogs.
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You will find the shortcut to ImageReady in Start > Programs, right next to Photoshop. The first thing youre going to notice about ImageReady is that it looks suspiciously like Photoshopand to be fair, it is. Youll find old friends like the toolbox (albeit altered a tad), the Layers, History, Actions, Colours and Swatches palettes among others, and a few new palettes well deal with in subsequent pages.
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serves to show you what youve been up tonot nearly as powerful as the one in Photoshop. Youll also see a few new palettes, notably the Optimize palette at the top right. This lets you choose the optimiThe Optimize Palette sation settings for your imagewell do that in detail in just a bit. Below the Optimize palette is the Web Content palette, which shows you the Slices, Image Maps and Rollovers in your image (well be coming to these later as well). The toolbox, too, has changed a little, and in ImageReady, you can drag out all the hidden tools to make it a floating toolbox as The Web Content Palette well. Just click and hold a button to bring up the complete list of tools, and without lifting your finger off the mouse button, drag the cursor to the small arrow at the bottom of the list. The entire set of tools will now become a floating box until you close it.
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This isnt usually visible on ImageReadys first load, so go to Window > Animation to enable it. The name explains itselfthis is where you will be creating and controlling your animated GIFs.
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The button at the bottom left corner lets you decide whether the animation will run only once or loop forever; you can also specify how many times you want it to run. Well get into the nitty-grittys of animation later in this chapter.
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Colour Table
No. 1 2 and so on. Colour R=10, G=15, B=55 R=0, G=100, B=20
The Image
Pixel No. 1 2 3 and so on. Index Number 2 2 1
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Dithering uses the colours in the colour table to build the closest possible colour to the original one. Greater values for dithering will lead to greater file sizes, so keep this as low as possible. Converting to GIF is nearly always going to wreak havoc with any transparent or semi-transparent areas that you have in your image; turn on Transparency to build a separate colour table for transparent colours. If you turn it off, transparent areas will be filled with the Matte colour or White if you havent selected one. Finally, you can choose whether or not the GIF will be interlaced. Being interlaced means it will download in passes rather than all in one shot. You could also decide to use a Unified Colour Table, which applies the same colour table to all frames of the animation and all rollover states (well be coming to these soon). The Add Metadata option lets you add data about the image in the header of the image. You can mix and match optimisation settings within the same image as well using slices, discussed later in this chapter.
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In the Animation Box (if you cant see this at the bottom left, go to Window > Animation to enable it), click on the Duplicate Current Frame button to create a new frame for the Start with simple text animation. Select the second frame in the box, and in the Layers palette, turn off the visibility of the type layer by clicking on the eye icon next to it. Click on the Play button in the Animation box to Choose a frame delay preview the animationits ready! Of course, its blinking too fast, so change the frame delay by clicking on the little arrow below the frames thumbnail in the Animation box. Here you can choose how long the animation will pause at each frame.
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Previewing the animation right now is likely to cause considerable bitternessits quite the disappointment. What we should have done is create more frames and nudged the screen a little bit in each one of themthat would have really conveyed the graph-drawing-itself effect. Fortunately for our The Empty Document lazy selves, we can do that in a snap, thanks to a handy concept called tweening. Tweening between (that, incidentally, is how the name comestween is the poetic truncation of between) two frames of an animation means that intermediate frames will be added so that the transition between them appears The Graph magically appears! smoother. In our case, we will tween to introduce a few more frames so that the screen actually appears to move rather than just disappear. Keep the second frame selected, and click on the Tween button in the animation box. In the Tweening dialog that pops up, you can choose whether you want to use the previous frame as a reference or the first one. You can also decide how many frames will be inserted into the animation, as well as what will be tweenedlayer position, opacity, or layer effects. If, for instance, you had Frame 1 where Layer 1 is visible, and Frame 2 where Layer 1 is now hidden, turning on the Opacity option will create intermediate frames with Layer 1 fading out. If you turn off the option,
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ImageReady wont look at layer opacity at all. Well just accept the defaults for now. Now that the animation has grown from two frames to seven, preview it againthe effect is much more convincing now, isnt it? If you want to ensure that the graph is The Tweening Options drawn only from corner to corner, select the individual frames and nudge the Screen layer to where you want it for that frame.
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you created. Use the Slice Select tool ([O]) to select the individual slices. In the Optimize palette, you will now be able to apply different optimisation settings to each slice.
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state will appear when the mouse cursor moves outside the slice or image map. Upthe state will appear when you release the mouse button. To preview the rollover, click on the Preview Document button in the toolbox or hit [Y] to switch between the Preview and Edit modes.
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Colour Management
olour is colour is colour, right? Sadly, unbeknownst to us, the devices we use each look at colour differentlywhat may be deep blue to our monitors might be an indigo to a printer, and so on. Thankfully, Photoshop can play interpreter and help all your devices talk colour in the same language
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work with, and Monitor profiles tell your OS how to display colours on the monitor.
sure your monitor has been on for about a half hour or so. You need to let the CRT warm up to a point where it displays consistent results.
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Make
sure youve selected 24-bit colour from the Display Settings in the Control Panel. monitor should be in a neutral lighting environment: there shouldnt be lights shining directly on the screen, and there shouldnt be lights shining directly into your eye, either.
Your
If you arent a colour geek (which most of us arent, anyway), choose the step-by-step Wizard when you start Adobe Gamma. When you click Next, it will ask you to give a name to the colour profile youre going to create. Do so and click Next. You will first set up the brightness and contrast for your monitorstarting with zero brightness and 100 per cent contrast. This setting results in excellent reproduction of colour, but can be quite uncomfortable, especially on CRT monitors. The next step is choosing your monitor phosphorsthe materials that are used in monitor tubes to show you the picture which we will trust Adobe on and go with the default. The steps that follow are quite straightforward too, and the tool gives you more than adequate guidance through the procedure, right to the point where you have to choose the colour temperature, or White Point. Use the Measure button to set the Hardware White Point to check what colour temperature your monitor operates at. Once you are through here, you can use software to adjust the colour temperature to your own preferences. Selecting a colour temperature is important, because this is Choosing a colour temperature
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going to vary across purposes. Many monitors and graphics cards come with a colour temperature set to 9300K, which gives a bluish tint to everything. Use this when you need to see maximum colour contrasts. The 5000K setting simulates the lighting in an art gallery and gives whites a slightly sickly-yellow characteristic. If your work is going to hang in typical bulb-light, select this temperature. When in doubt, select 6500Kit accurately represents normal daylight conditions. Once you are done with Adobe Gamma, you must save this profile so that Photoshop can use it to manage colour for your monitor. Stage II: Photoshop To begin setting up colour management in Photoshop, select Edit > Colour Settings or hit [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [K]. The default setting North America General Purpose 2should suffice for anyone, but you should really try out a few variations to see Photoshops Colour Settings dialog which one you like. Under Working Spaces, you can select the colour space that you will be working with. sRGB profiles are often quite restrictive, but on the bright side, they are quite printer friendlyyou wont have to worry about colours that wont be handled by your printer. The Adobe RGB colour space allows for a larger range of colours, but increases the risk of printer foul-ups.
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The Colour Management policies let you decide whether to use your own colour profile or profiles that may come embedded with images. The remaining settings are a good bit beyond the scope of this book theyre more the domain of hardened print and colour professionals. Stage III: The Printer You should be able to obtain the colour profiles for your printer from the manufacturer. If not, they should be available for download on the Internettheres probably some kindly soul out there who has The Print with Preview dialog used his own professional profiling equipment to build a profile and put it up on the Net. Copy the profile to WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color to install it. To use this profile, go to File > Print with Preview. At the bottom of the dialog, you will find Colour Handling under Options. You could let the printer decide its own printing profile, or you could select Let Photoshop Determine Colours and choose the printer profile you installed.
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Under Device to Simulate, you can choose from various colour space profiles that you can preview your image in. The following are available to you under Rendering Intent:
Perceptual: with this option turned on, Photoshop will try to preserve the relationships between colours to preserve the way the image looks to the human eye.
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Saturation:
turn on this option to tell Photoshop to output rich, vivid colours. You might lose some colour accuracy, though. Colorimetric: the default option, this uses the white of the current colour space as a reference, and alters the remaining colour values (if necessary) to suit this colour space. Out-ofgamut colours are replaced by the colours closest to them, but within the colour space.
Relative
Absolute Colorimetric: this only affects the out-of-gamut colours, replacing them with their closest neighbouring colours.
To see colours in the image that might be out of your printers gamut, turn on the Gamut Warning from the View menu, or hit [Shift] + [Ctrl] + [Y]. Colour management, as you have seen by now, is one of the most perplexing aspects of image editing, and it doesnt help that we arent physicists with intimate knowledge of colours and pigments. Youre going to need to experiment a lot with colour management before you have a stable, consistent solution in place. And remember, it all hinges on your monitor, so make sure you calibrate it well.
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ll right, so weve told you plenty about Photoshop and what its capable of. To satisfy your urge to tinker, heres a few cool effects you can create in Photoshop. You can find the source images for these in the \Fast Track Workshops\Chapter 12 folder on the CD. Theyre all royalty-free, so use them as you like!
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Ever since the first preview, Vistas Aero Glass Effect has made countless people worldwide go Ooooh...pretty! In this workshop, well learn how to create an Aero-esque panel on our images.
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turn it back on when we need it. On top of the Background layer, create a new layer and use the Shape Tool [U] with the Fill Pixels option to draw a rounded rectangle on it. Were using a shape, but the effect will work on anythingeven a few brushstrokes. More importantly, it will work on anything more that you add to this layer as well. Drag the shape layer between the Background and Background Copy layers. Hold down [Alt] and click on the line dividing the Background Copy and shape layers to create a Clipping Maskthis means that the content of the layer on top (the Background Copy) will only show where there is content on the lower layer (the shape). Try painting on the shape layer you will now notice that as you paint, more of the distortion effect shows through. When
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Notice the blurred image showing through only where the rounded rectangle was
you move the layer around, you will see that the shape is now your window to the distorted background.
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the histogramkeep an eye on the image as you do sowe dont want too intense shadows either.
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default settings, too much detail is being lost in the greens. To correct this, move the middle (green) slider in the gradient editor towards the right (youll notice the value in the Location box at the bottom gradually increasing). Stop at around 60%. Do the same for the colour midpoint (the little diamond between the green and black sliders). Once youre satisfied, enter a name for the gradient and click New.
Adding Noise
Ta-da!
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Stage I: Setting Up
Use the Type Tool [T] to create a new type layer; type in the default DOS promptC:\>. Choose a fluorescent green colour, and a very system-looking font like Fixedsys or OCRA Extended. For the blinking cursor, well just create another type layer with the same colour and font, with the underscore (_) character.
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Create a new document, 20 pixels wide and 2 pixels high. Zoom into it to about 1200 per cent. Click and hold down on the Marquee tools in the toolbox and choose the Single Row Marquee. Click within the image to select one of the rows, Defining the pattern and fill it with black ([Alt] + [Delete] with black as your foreground colour). You should be looking at one black and one white row. To set this as a pattern, go to Edit > Define Pattern. You will notice that unlike Photoshop, ImageReady doesnt let you save your own library of patternsjust one at a time. If youre trying this effect in Photoshop, you can save this pattern as Interlace to use it later. Create a new layer in the document, go to Edit > Fill, and choose Pattern. Click on OK, and youll now see the top layer filled with lines. Change the Blending Mode to Multiply, and the effect is complete! Remember, if youre working with a larger image, it might be a good idea to play with the thickness of the patterninstead of a 2-pixel high pattern, consider turning it into a 4-pixel patterntwo black and two white.
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This is the simplest part. In the Animation Palette (Window > Animation), drag the first frame onto the New Frame button to duplicate it. In the second frame, turn off the visibility for the underscore layer. Set the delay for each frame to 0.5 seconds, and set the animation to loop forever. Play the animation to watch your new retro DOS prompt. Save this animation by going to File > Save Optimized as and choosing GIF.
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In about fifteen minutes, you will have created your own Matrix Code wallpaper, thanks to good old Notepad and some judicious use of masks.
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Choose a convincing code font such as Fixedsys. Alternatively, you could choose a symbol font such as Wingdings or We b d i n g s . Change the font colour to a fluorescent green and the font size to 18 pt (assuming youve selected 1024 x 768 as your document sizeyou should experiment with your own values to see which you prefer). Paste the text you copied into this type layer. Open the Character palette by clicking on the icon in the option bar. With all the text selected, change the character leading to 30 to space the lines out better.
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mask selected in the Layers palette, go to Filter > Render > Clouds to create some clouds in the mask (remember to hit [D] before you do this to restore the foreground and background colours to black and white). Things seem to be looking up now, but the text still looks a little drab. Spice this up by adding an outer glow thats the same colour as the font.
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If you want your images to have that hand-painted look, youd probably turn to one of the Artistic Filters like Fresco or Paint Daubs. Of course, you cant control the effect as much as youd like, and worseanyone whos ever used Photoshop will be able to tell in a heartbeat, so youll never be able to fool anyone into believing that you can actually paint. The way out? Paint! And with the Art History Brush, you dont need much talent, either.
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loose styles let the strokes run wild (within reason, of course). The Area parameter lets you decide the area within which strokes will be madea larger value will cause the brush strokes to be spread over a larger area. To get a rough, painted Pick a rough-looking brush effect, choose one of the splatter brushes from the Brushes palette in the palette dock at the top-right. Use the Tight Long style for the brushthis will give us long, flowing strokes. Set the area to 40 px to keep the strokes in check. Now start painting, preferably in the same way that you would have painted the scene on a drawing paperone thing at a time, stroking in the same direction. Keep the brush size small if you want to preserve smaller details, or increase it for a splotchier look. Youll also need to keep switching styles to get the best results. Keep going till youve filled the layer (turn off the background layer to spot any areas youve missed).
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with 50% grey. Go to Filter > Texture > Texturizer and pick a Canvas texture with 70% Scaling, a Relief of 5, and light from the Bottom-Left. Set the blending mode for this layer to Overlay and the opacity to 50%, and you now have your very own painting!
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Postage stamp-style perforated edges make for unique photo frames as well as a cool effect for large text, and are deceptively easy to achieve.
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down [Ctrl] and click on the layers thumbnail in the Layers palette to load it as a selection. Go to the Paths palette, click on the arrow on the right and select Make Work Path. The outline of the shape is now a path. Well use this to perforate the edges of the shape.
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comes up, select Eraser and click OK. And youre done! Remember, the same brush setting wont work for all image and shape sizes, so youll need to experiment with size and spacing to get what suits your purposes best.
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You can use the little known Displace filter to convincingly slap text on to any surfacewater, rock, you name it. Here, well make our text appear as if it was just under the waters surface.
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document. Right-click on the channel and select Duplicate Channel. In the dialog that comes up, select New under Destination. A new file will be createdsave this as displace.psd on your hard disk.
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Armed with a trusty lasso and a couple of blur tools, we can carry out a few demolition operations of our own! Watch and learn! Start with a new image (the same old 640 x 480) and fill the background with black. You can do this with white as well, but black just looks cooler.
Create a new type layeruse a thick font and a red or orangebased colour. Right-click on the layer in the Layers Palette and rasterise it.
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Whip out the Lasso tool [L] and select a small part of the image at random. Hold down [Ctrl] and drag the selection a little away from the original
Duplicate the type layer once and use Filter > Blur > Radial Blur. Set the blur type to zoom, the amount to 100% and the quality to draft for that grungy blown-up effect
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