Basics of adobe photshop: Unlock the photoshop guru in you

In the following tutorial you will learn about the overall scope of Adobe Photoshop CS3. This program is used mostly to manipulate images. People that do web development, graphic design, and photography will probably prefer the use of this program to edit their images. Once you have grasped this basic knowledge of the software, you will be able to dive into Adobe Photoshop and quite possibly Adobe Fireworks, which works in a similar way. Adobe Fireworks is just a little simpler and has less features. Adobe Fireworks was originated as Macromedia Fireworks. Enough of the chit-chat, lets get down to business!

When you first enter the Adobe Photoshop environment you will see a plethora of features and plug-ins to mess with. Fortunately, with a little training from me you won't have to be confused by these things. Go to the top left of the screen and select file/new.

Now you should see the picture above. This is the basic variables that you are able to change when you start a new file. You can change the name of Photoshop document to whatever you please. This is best suited when you are trying to organize stuff during your Adobe Photoshop training sessions on the web. The preset window lets you select what type of paper size, resolution, and color mode that you would like to have to start out with. Of course most will just go with custom so that they can personalize their specific project. Most of the time, the project you are working on won't fit into a category. Adobe has specifically put custom as the first on the list because of this fact. For today session, let's change the preset to Web.

Following these steps will present you with a black window with the name of the file, percent of the resolution it is viewing at, and the color mode you have chosen at the top of the window.

From here we can learn about what some of the things you see on the left and right of the screen are. We will start on the left side of the screen because this is the first thing you should learn when you starting to make and edit images in Adobe Photoshop. I am using Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, which has some extra features. I will go over these briefly to educate you. The first on the top left is the "move tool" It is an icon that has a cursor and crosshair on it. You can use this tool to move objects on the screen around to your liking.

The next tool is the rectangular Marquee tool. You can also just use this tool to make squares around areas in an image to cut them out easily. You can use that feature to cut out a piece of a picture and paste it somewhere else. I personally use this image a lot when I am working on images for my website or editing my digital photos.

This tool has four variations to it. Two of them are relatively new and you may know them or not. The second variation is the Elliptical Marquee tool that allows you to trace circles. The third is the Single Row Marquee tool. The fourth is the Single Column Marquee tool. These are great when you want to slice out the image of an excel spreadsheet and only post that specific data too an audience. It is most likely it will end up looking like an "L" shape and you will be able to write information around the image within a website. This is very useful for website designers with the proper knowledge of Adobe software products.

Next up is the Lasso tool. This tool allows you to highlight an image that you have made in an image or an image you have opened in Adobe Photoshop. This marquee tool likes to have smooth hard edges to follow. If you a photograph that doesn't have a easy to follow edge around objects you will find it hard to use this tool. You have probably seen this when people cut their heads out of a picture and paste it onto somebody else's body. It is a very funny feature and this is the tool that does it!

The lasso tool has three different variations. The second version is the Polygonal Lasso tool. This tool can make different shapes and curves when tracing around or cutting out a piece of an image. The third variation is the Magnetic Lasso tool that only works on images that have defined edges. The tool will clamp onto an edge and give it anchor points to shape the corners. This is good when you don't have that steady hand you used to have back in high school. I use this myself because I am not the man I used to be!

The next up is the crop tool. This feature does exactly what is says. It is like a marquee tool except it is made specifically for cutting square pieces out of images. That is pretty much all it does. However, this simple feature is used quite often to developed website images.

The next up is the Slice tool. This tool allows you to slice an image into smaller pieces. This is usually used in web design with the use of tables to display formatting on a webpage.

The next in line is a list of four tools that provide ways for the user to fix problems in images. The Spot Healing Brush tool first appeared in Adobe Elements 3. It was implemented into Adobe Photoshop CS2 after that. This tool allows you to fix areas of an image by replacing or blending the colors in an area so that it is like growing a new piece of skin over a bad rash. The Healing Brush tool allows you to fix problems in the image by sampling the surrounding area around the problem and trying to replicate the pattern in the area that is problematic. The patch tool is pretty much a mix of the Healing Brush and the Lasso tool. It is allows you to highlight the area that is scratched or empty and sample the surrounding area to fix the problem. Lastly, the Redeye tool allows you to select the common problem of red eyes and correct them with sampling a piece of the black pupil area and replacing the red eye with the natural pupil color. This is a widely used tool by many consumers.

The next tools are made for painting on the canvas freestyle. The first one of them is the Brush tool. The Brush tool is an old favorite for people that want to free hand draw things like they had a brush which they can decrease and increase the size of the contact point. You can also change the hardness of the stroke as well. This will show differences in contrast. The Pencil tool is just like a real pencil with some added tricks. The modes can give you complete freedom or help you make straight lines when you are trying to make objects. The last one is the Color Replacement tool. This handy tool allows you to select a color scheme on an image and replace it with something else. Unlike the bucket tool that will cover the complete area, this tool will allow you to draw in the replacement by hand as if you had a brush. Let's say if you had a blue cup in a picture. You can sample the blue color and decide to make it green. Then you just draw over the area of the cup and anything that is of the sampled color will turn green!

The stamp tools are a very nice addition to the Adobe Photoshop regime for photographers. Specifically it is great for editors that write tabloids and want to doctor the pictures. With the Clone Stamp tool they will be able to edit out an area of a picture and make it look like it was never there. They can do this by sampling the area around the object they want to not be there and adding it into the portion of the picture they want it too be in. The Pattern Stamp tool allows you to stamp a specific pattern at your desired brush hardness onto an image to make something unique. Like you can take a brick wall patter and make a complete building.

The History brush tool and the Art History brush tool are unique and sometimes overlooked. You can use the History Brush tool to restore the original image in only just section or part of an image. It is usually used when you take a color picture to black and white and then convert a part of it back to color. It's kind of like finding a dusty painting and then wiping it off to see the beauty that it holds underneath. It is a true treasure for the graphic designer or photographer that uses Adobe software product regularly. The Art History Brush tool allows you to copy the texture of an image through the use of art specific styles. Unlike the History Brush tool the Art History Brush tool takes the data from the image and creates something new out of it. It allows you to put a different style of art to an image without it losing its originality.

The next feature is the three types of Eraser tools. The most basic is the Eraser tool itself. You can change the size of the area that the eraser returns to the original background. The Background Eraser Tool does exactly what it states. It is able to erase the background without any use of changing layers. Once you have done this you can add in colors to make a new background at will. The Magic Eraser tool acts like the Magic Wand tool. It will erase an area based how it is clicked and verified.

The next up on the list is the Gradient tool and the Paint Bucket tool. These are old favorites from the long line of Adobe Photoshop releases. However, for all the new Adobe Photoshop CS users out there these items are something that may not be so familiar after searching through the web for image editing software. The Gradient tool provides the user the ability to make colors stretch in all directions from high to low in intensity. It is similar to the way you would view the sunset as the colors transition from light to dark. You can also use this feature to apply to certain types of patterns and textures. These features are also available Macromedia and Adobe Fireworks. The Paint Bucket tool is capable of filling in a space or a space inside of the Magic Wand tool to a certain color, patter, texture, or stamp. This is used as a quick way to change colors in a predefined area.

The following set of tools previously were found in another section of Adobe Photoshop, but are now offered conveniently on the left side of the menu. All three of these do pretty much what they say they do. I will still give you a brief explanation of their capabilities though. The first of them is the Blur tool. The Blur tool blurs the area where you paint. The Sharpen tool increases the contrast in the areas you paint. The Smudge tool blends the pixels where you paint. This is similar to when you drag something through wet paint that has various colors.

Oddly enough, three more features that were previously hidden to the human eye are now available for you to view on the left menu. This time though the names have almost nothing to do with what they do. First up is the Dodge tool. This tool lightens an area on the image. The Burn tool darkens an area on the image and the Sponge tool changes the level of saturation on an area in the image. These all have their special purposes that you will come to find out about. Burn and Dodge are usually used for making shadows or erasing shadows.

The next feature has a wide array of variations to it. This feature is the Pen tool. The pen tool allows users to create paths, curves, and anchor points to move lines around in weird shapes without the use of freehand drawing. Ironically enough, this leads to the rest of the tools. The next is the Freeform Pen tool. Unlike the pen tool that automatically makes anchor points where you draw, the Freeform Pen tool lets you draw as if you really had a pen. After you have used either of the tools you can use the next feature, which is the Add Anchor Point tool to create anchor points for new lines or freeform drawing. This helps when you want to attach a line to another line that has already been drawing without overlapping incorrectly. The Delete Anchor Point tool gives you the ability to delete an anchor point that you are not satisfied with. The Convert Point tool changes vector shape masks and paths. This allows different types of anchor points to connect to each other even if they are composed of different types of corners.

The next tools are the Type tools. They specifically describe the Horizontal Type tool and the Vertical Type tool. These pertain to the angle that you are able to write in (Horizontal or Vertical). Unfortunately, when you use this you must turn it into a bitmap and that makes it non-editable after you are finished. The Horizontal and Vertical Type Mask tool allows you to write with text that is filled with a patter or an image as the font color. It can be a nice addition if you are writing against an odd background.

The Path Selection tool and the Direct Selection tool are both used for paths. The Path Selection tool will allow you to select a path component even if it is surrounded by many different paths. The Direct Selection tool will only select a segment of a path. This is a way to reshape a segment to a different path after it has been created and saved.

The following tools are some of my personal favorites. I have started one too many images with these objects. If you look at my website you can see almost exactly where I started when I created it. The first of these is the Rectangle tool that makes a rectangle of various sizes. The Rounded Rectangle tool makes rectangles that are rounded. I used to use this exclusively in Macromedia Fireworks before I purchased the Adobe CS series. The Ellipse tool allows you to make seemingly perfect circles. The Polygon tool allows you to make polygons. The Line tool makes lines with anchor points at the end so that they can be managed by the Pen tool if you want to get fancy.

Below these more popular features are some cool features that you may or may not find interesting. I believe these have been in all the Adobe CS releases, but I am not sure about the Macromedia MX series. The first up is the Notes tool that allows you to add small notes to your images in the background. Also there is an Audio Annotation tool that allows you to add verbal notes to an image.

The tools described below are a set of useful features that you may find useful in addition to some of the other options. I believe some of these tools are used in conjunction with the other tools. However, this makes it a little simpler if you want to do it the old fashioned way. First is the Eyedropper tool that helps sample color from an area. The is pretty basic though. The Color Sampler tool has a few more features that allow you to gather the color data from any layer without calling that layer. You can see levels of gradient or replace colors and shapes back to an image. The Ruler tool helps you measure things inside of an image if you are trying to be precise about how you do things. This helps if you are a web developer and you are trying to make every symmetrical and in order. I personally try to do this sometimes and have to slap myself. I like to be organized myself, but I don't want my websites to look so fine tuned that they would be passed up as not being original. The Count tool helps you count.

The Hand tool is used to move objects that are in a layer in anyway that you would like that is 2d in fashion.

The Zoom tool helps you zoom in on a picture or object so you can do fine tuning.

The Default Foreground and Background Colors tool lets you return back to black and white when you have gone totally out of whack with you colors you are thinking you are in the 1960s!

The Switch Foreground and Background Color tool lets you switch the colors you using at will. It is almost like have a painters tablet to hold your saved colors on.

How to create a 3D pop out image in adobe photoshop?

This Adobe Photoshop CS3 tutorial will demonstrate how you can make a figure in an image pop-up from the background and the image border itself. It is a very cool effect if you do it correctly. It also works better if you have a better image to work with than the one you see below. However, this should be good enough to demonstrate what is possible. I hope that you find a better use for it than I have. I have found this useful to use in newsletters when you send out pictures of people and it makes the scene come to life and everybody feels really good about themselves. Enough of the chit-chat though. Let's continue with the tutorial.

First, let's open up the picture we want an object to jump out of!

Image #1

Now we must change the name of the picture layer from background to something else and then copy it. You must also create a new layer and drag it to the bottom of the layer list.

Image #2

Now we will change the background color of the image to white.

Image #3

Now you can see the new white background layer.

Image #4

The next thing you want to do is select the layer that is on top of the list.

Image #5

Then select the Quick Selection Tool.

Image #6

Use the Quick Selection tool to trace the object that you want to pop-out of the image.

Image #7

Now you want to right-click on that area and select (inverse). This will select the outside area of what you have selected. Then you can press the delete button or right-click and delete and that area will be erased. That is when you will see the white background from the bottom most level.

Image #8

Now select the layer that is in the second position.

Image #9

Now we will take a section of the picture that we want to retain inside of the picture frame. Anything outside of this region will either disappear or become part of the pop-out effect.

Image #10

Now will select the "Mask Button" that is below the layers. You can see my cursor pointing to it.

Image #11

Now you have a finished project. A little weak in its effect and maybe not appealing, but it works none the less.

Image #12

I am sure you will have much better ideas of what to do with this knowledge and how to use it. Now that I think about it I think that I could use it in some places right now that would help me out a little. I think I will get to work on that. The 3d pop-up effect will be great for making pictures of your family and friends come alive right before your eyes. If a picture is worth a 1000 words then a pop-out picture is worth 5,000! Have fun exploring Adobe CS3 and always strive to learn more!

Another simple way to create ghosting effects in adobe photoshop

Although I have already posted a tutorial on how to create ghosting effects in photoshop, I feel like adding one more easy way to do that.

As you guys are already aware that photoshop is the graphic designer’s dream come true. Difficult images that used to take special training and hours to complete are suddenly a just a few keystrokes away. One of the many effects you can create in Adobe Photoshop software is a “ghosting” effect - a transparent, seemingly glowing effect you can use on objects to either make them look like real ghosts, or simple make them stand out. It is not difficult to get this effect - you simply need to create a ghosting shader.

To create this ghosting shader, you will need to use two things - the Sampler Info Utility mode and a Ramp texture - so first; you will need to create these tools. Get started by going into your Hypershade mode and follow the software prompts to create three tools - the Sampler Info Utility mode, the Ramp texture, and Lambert Surface Material. Make sure the shading group is turned on in the Lambert Surface Material.

Once you have these tools ready, you will need to connect the V chord of the Ramp texture to the facing ratio function of the Sampler Info Utility. Familiarize yourself with the parameters of the facing ratio so you are sure to get the effect you want. The value it produces ranges between 0 and 1 and depends on where the surface is in relation to the camera eye. Now, connect the Sampler Info Utility and the Ramp texture by opening the Hypershade function and dragging the Sampler Info Utility on top of the Ramp texture. A dialogue box should open to guide you through the connection, and the Connections Editor will open. Make sure Sampler Info Utility is in the output box and Ramp texture in the input box. Look for UV chord under Ramp texture, and expand it. Now choose the Facing Ratio from the output column and expand it, then click V chord. The Sampler Info Utility and the Ramp texture V chord should now be connected.

Now, it’s time to go back to the Lambert Surface Material. Double click on that, and your Attribute Editor box should open. Here, you can pick your ghost’s color. Light greens, blues, or grays work well. You also need to hook up your Ramp texture with the transparency tool in the Attribute Editor. To do this, use your MMB to drag the Ramp texture on top of the transparency slider (in the Lambert Shading Group).

Once the Ramp texture and transparency tool are joined, double click the Ramp texture to re-open the Attribute Editor. This time set the colors to white and dark gray and set the Interpolation tool to “smooth.” Now open the material mode Incandescence tool and set it to dark blue. Go to the Special Effects menu, select “glow” and set the glow to at least .6. You may want to play around with the glow tool to get the exact effect you had in mind.

After completing these steps, you will have created a shading tool you can use to create a “ghosting” effect for a number of applications. Of course, you can use this effect to “draw” a ghost, or you can simply apply to images to make them eye catching. Playing around with this tool will allow you to find its most useful applications for you. Many people use this tool to create the effect of looking through glass or coloring in glass jars. Adding more diffusion will let you use this tool to create a cloudy effect. With a little trial and error, you’ll soon be using your ghosting effect in a wide variety of ways!

how to change skin color in a picture?

A lot of common issues that I see with photos are that the skin color always seems to be off a little. In the photos that I see, the reds seem to take over the skin color areas of the person that is being photographed. In this tutorial you are going to learn how to get the skin color back to normal without affecting the entire image.

To begin with, you are going to need some basic Photoshop knowledge to accomplish this fix. The only things that we are going to be dealing with to fix the skin color in a picture are the new adjustment layers and layer masks. That is all that is needed to do this simple, yet effective fix.

The first thing that you need to do is to choose a picture that you want to fix the skin color on and open in Photoshop. I do want to warn you that this will not totally fix photos that the skin color is off really bad. You only want to use the fix for photos that have a slight to moderate problem.

The next step is to make a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer on top of your original picture. You can do this by clicking on the icon below the layers that looks like a half colored in circle, and clicking on Hue/Saturation. This will bring up the Hue/Saturation window and make it on its own new layer.

Next, with the Hue/Saturation window still open, you want to determine which color is overriding your skin color. Like I said previously, I seem to have the problem with the reds, so I am going to choose the reds for my picture. You can choose the color that you need to in order to fix the skin color in your picture. You can choose the color using the drop down menu in the Hue/Saturation window.

Next, take the Saturation slider and slide it to the left until the skin color looks pretty good, or the best that you can get it without looking fake. Don’t worry about the other parts of the picture right now. Just concentrate on the skin color. We will fix the background colors next.

Once you are satisfied with your skin color, click OK to close out of the Hue/Saturation window, and you will see your new layer above your original picture. If you notice though, the adjustment that you made affected the entire image. To get that back restored to normal, click on the layer mask part of the new layer, and grab your brush tool. Make sure that your foreground color is set to black, and you have a large enough brush so that you are not brushing the background back a long time.

Now, using black, brush in the parts of the photo that you want to restore back to normal. I usually brush in the whole picture except the skin areas that I wanted to fix. This gives me the most realistic look. You are now done with the Photoshop tutorial on how to fix skin color in a picture.

Adobe Photoshop: Color Management and the Digital Darkroom

Preface

In order to understand color management, it is important to get your hands around some of the workflow. It is also important to understand a little bit about the ICC itself. The ICC or "International Color Consortium" was created in 1993 by a number major corporations with the goal of assisting end users in creating consistent color throughout the entire reproduction process. ICC profiles are a means by which one device can translate the same color information to another. This process is applied in graphics programs like Adobe Photoshop, and created in color management systems like X-rite’s Pulse or ColorVision’s Spyder software.

How is a profile created?

In order to have a fully color controlled environment you must have all devices displaying or printing color, profiled. How is this accomplished? Color management software (CMS) takes readings from your specific devices and compares their color with reference files of what color “should be” as defined by the ICC. For example, to profile a scanner you would scan in what is called an IT8 target. This scan is then compared with a reference file by the CMS. The differences between what the reference file says the color should be, and what the color your device actually output is meat of the profile. Basically, a profile says what’s not perfect about your particular device. If your scanner always seems to scan things in a little green, or your printer always seems to print things with a magenta cast-these are the things that are taken into account when color profiling your devices. To complicate matters a little further, this process also takes into account the differences in color between various paper and ink combinations.

Understanding Your Environment.

Color Model: When you hear the term color model we are referring to the method from which we define or classify the color we are to work with. Examples of such are RGB, LAB, CMYK, etc. Color Space: A color space is simply a variation of your color model. For instance, within your RGB framework some common variations are, sRGB, Adobe RGB, and so on. Some of these spaces are better for display e.g. sRGB and Wide Gamut RGB while other color spaces are more suited to printing e.g. ColorMatch RGB and Adobe RGB.

Now, it is important to note that every device in our workflow utilizes it's own unique color space. Meaning, while your monitor, scanner, and printer will base their color spaces basically on what we can see their actual gamut (range of colors) will differ. This is where we lose our consistency across devices. This is the problem we must attend to.

Color Management Using Adobe Photoshop: Step-by-Step

Okay, so now we’re ready for the whole process-it’s a big one, so keep with me. In this section I will describe how color management works with entry-level CMS’s like Monaco EZ Color or ColorVision’s Spyder2-programs like these >b>utilize actual hardware colorimeters for monitor calibration and a reflective target for scanner calibration. Scanning the printed target with your home scanner creates the printer profile. Entry-level programs like these generally retail between $150 and $500.

Step One: The Monitor

This step is quite easy and is generally conducted entirely in the CMS program of your choice. The CMS will guide you through the process of adjusting you monitor brightness and contrast to its proper settings and then, with the hardware colorimeter, take readings of the colors your monitor can produce. Your CMS should also set this profile as your default profile for your operating system. Take note if your CMS doesn’t already explain it, you should remove Adobe Gamma Loader.exe from your Startup folder after creating a new monitor profile. AGL is a very minimal monitor correction tool and will conflict with your newly created profile.

Step Two: The Scanner

For the scanner profile you will be using an IT8 target. This is a printed color reference of approx. 250 color patches. These targets are manufactured under strict controls and are measured by ICC approved methods to produce accurate reference files. Kodak, Coloraid, and Fuji are the major manufacturers of IT8 targets and should be included with your CMS package but may be a required separate purchase. There are two forms of IT8 targets: reflective and transparent. Reflective targets create a generally consistent profile for scanning reflective images. Transparent IT8 targets are printed on to the specific film to be profiled and therefore cannot be used as globally as reflective targets.

Profiling of the scanner involves scanning the IT8 target under the same conditions that will be used to scan originals. This has to be taken to the nth degree, as every setting in your scanner software needs to be exactly the same for scanning the target as it is for every other original that you will scan. Turning all hue/saturation/brightness/contrast controls off in your scanner software generates the most effective profile. Any auto correction adjustments need to be turned off so the same conditions the profile gets generated under will apply to each consecutive scan.

At this point you will scan in the IT8 target, most likely at 200 dpi, and save the file. Some CMS’s will have you scan the IT8 target out of their own interface, but I would recommend scanning the target with the same application that you will be using in the future-if possible. When scanning into an application like Photoshop, remember to save the image without any profile attached (in Photoshop when saving you will see a checkbox under Save Options>Color that is labeled ICC Profile-make sure this is not checked). Now load this image into your CMS, it will take this image and calculate the differences between what your scanner sees compared to what the colors of the IT8 “really” are.

Step Three: The Printer

Now, the last piece to the puzzle, printer targets. Like transparent IT8 targets, printer targets are more complex. Similar to film, different papers or media can produce incredibly different color results. This has to be taken into account in the profiling stage. When creating a printer profile, you are essentially creating a description of the differences between what is ideal color and what is the result of the specific paper/ink/quality setting you choose. A profile created for a professional glossy photo paper will generally not produce good results if used to print on a matte heavy weight paper. The same holds true for differences in ink or quality/speed settings.

In your CMS you should be given the option to save your printer target for printing within your chosen graphic app. If asked choose not to apply a profile when opening. In Photoshop choose File>Print with Preview. Change the Output dropdown to Color Management. Under Source Space choose Document. Under Print Space choose Profile: Same as Source. You are now set up in Photoshop to print your profile target. You aren’t done yet! Now go into your printer driver software and set any color options to none, or zero, or whatever shuts off any color changes by the driver. Now print your target.

This is where professional level CMS’s and entry level ones differ. At this point with the entry level you will scan in the printed target and the CMS will actually use the before generated scanner profile to correct the scan, so it can the correct your printed target. A professional level CMS will have a separate hardware device designed specifically for reading printed media targets.

Step Four: Utilizing the Profiles

Okay, now that we’ve created all of the profiles, time to implement them. You monitor profile should be getting applied upon startup by your operating system, so let’s move on to your scanner. Scan in an image-once again using the exact same settings that were used to create the profile (other than resolution). In Photoshop choose Image Menu>Assign Profile. Then choose Profile: Your Scanner Profile. Having done all of the previous steps in Photoshop correctly, you should now be amazed at how your image colors changes to appear incredibly like the original that you’ve just scanned in.

From here go to Image Menu>Convert to Profile and choose working RGB from the profile selections. This will convert your document to the native RGB working space of Photoshop. When printing you will apply the printer profile by once again choosing File>Print with Preview, select Document as your Source Space (which this time should be your Working RGB space) and in your Print Space choose Profile: Your Printer Profile. Remember once again to disable any color options in your printer driver. Finally, Print!

Other Notes on Profiling

I would recommend using Relative Colorimetric as your Rendering Intent when doing the Convert to Profile step and when printing with Print with Preview out of Photoshop. Rendering intents control how the profile is applied to either the scanner or printed image. Relative Colorimetric has proven to be the best in my testing. Read the documentation that came with your CMS in order to learn more about the other available rendering intents.

Profiles are only as accurate as the CMS that generates them and the size of the targets that are used to generate them. Packages in the $150-$500 price range generally have around 75-250 patches, while $2000 and up gets you 729 patches or more. Also, the more expensive packages rely on physical hardware devices to generate printer profiles, while the less expensive packages use your scanner as the print colorimeter. In addition, the more expensive packages have numerous options for the edition of the profiles you create.

How to add text on a textured surface?

With this tutorial I am going to show you a technique which is when anyone wants to add text on a textured surface.

First of all open the photo with the textured surface that you want to place your text on. For this tutorial I am going to use a stock photo of a wall.

We are going to duplicate our photo. Go to Image -> Duplicate

A new window will come up asking you to give the duplicate image a name, choose a name that you will remember (I named it wall copy)

Now save the duplicate image as the-name-you-gave-it.psd. Make sure that you don't save it in .jpg or any other format, it needs to be saved as a .psd. (File -> Save as) You can now close the duplicate image. Back at our original Image. Select the text tool and type your text.

The next step is to rasterize the text layer. Right click on the text layer at the layers palette and choose "Rasterize Layer".

This is the basic step of this technique. Go to Filter->Distort->Displace You can experiment with the settings to find the ones that better suit you needs.

A window will come up asking you to select a displacement map. Find and select the duplicate image that you created at the start of the tutorial (Mine was "wall copy.psd") and press open.

We are almost done, we just need to do one more thing, change the text's layer blending mode. For this tutorial I used "Linear Burn". However, when using different colors for the text or the color of the background layer is different than the one I used for this tutorial, other blending modes may work as well. For example, "Overlay" works well for black text on light color surfaces.

You can see that the text now blends nicely with the textured background.

How to create E-Book Cover in adobe photoshop?

E-Book covers are images containing a perspective-based (i.e. looks as if 3D) representation of a book, folder, binder, report or other document. They are very popular with authors, publishers and marketers of E-Books and you will often seem used on web sites, in advertising materials, and in some cases even in the product itself (for example, many E-Book authors like to put a copy of their E-Book cover on the introductory page of their E-Book).

E-Book cover graphics are most frequently prepared as PNG or JPEG files, as this generally allows the highest quality images to be displayed - as both formats allow 24 bit color (allowing over 16 million shades of colorto appear in a single image). A really good E-Book cover design can look truly beautiful, and the best ones could almost (but not quite)be mistaken for a photograph.

There are at least four different ways that these graphics can be prepared. These are:

1. You can try and draw the image by hand in an ordinary painting or graphics program (e.g. the Paint accessory that comes with Windows, Corel Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop, etc. However, unless you are incredibly skilled, producing good quality covers this way may prove difficult if not impossible. Additionally, even if you are a wonderful artist, this approach can be incredibly time consuming.

2. There are web sites offering backgrounds or templates of E-Book covers. These are generally images of blank covers to which you are expected to add your own text or graphics using a painting or graphics program. The trouble with this approach, is that it can be very difficult to add text or graphics in a way that matches the perspective of the background (the same skew, the same orientation and the same shrinking with distance) - and if you don't match the perspective of the background it will completely ruin the effect. To avoid this problem, some backgrounds/templates have the covers in a "flat" orientation so you can just add your own text on horizontally - unfortunately these kind of backgrounds/templates often don't really 3D at all.

3. You can get scripts to use with Adobe Photoshop. Basically you design a flat 2D front cover, and then use these scripts. The scripts transform your front cover image and place it as part of a 3D design. These scripts can work very well, but the biggest downside is that you do need a copy of Adobe Photoshop - which at the time of writing costs several hundred dollars. The other issue with these scripts, is that some of them can be quite inflexible - they will only produce E-Book covers in specific preset orientations and sizes.

4. E-Book cover software is standalone software for creating these types of images - you don't need Photoshop or other graphics packages. A good quality package is massively cheaper than Adobe Photoshop (even before you add the cost of cover scripts), and many people also find this type of software easier and quicker to use than the other alternatives. The best E-Book cover software will offer you great flexibility in the types of covers that you create, their orientations and sizes, and will even allow you to import existing graphics or clip art as part of your design.

Erase backgraound of your picture easily with adobe photoshop CS3

This tutorial will go over a simple tool that is capable of erasing backgrounds. It is not the most complete tool, but it is very smart if you do it correctly. My tutorial will show you how it can be correctly used to make areas of your photos disappear. From there you will be able to do whatever you want with the space! As you know I am doing this in Adobe Photoshop CS3 if you see any difference in your version of Adobe Photoshop. Let's begin the tutorial.

You will want to start by opening up the image you want to work with. The one below is my truck and boat just after a fishing trip. It sure was fun!

Image #1

Now you will select the Quick Selection Tool. This tool is like the magic wand but not as automatic. It lets you take sections at a time by dragging. It basically works on a color redundancy equation to guess what an object is.

Image #2

As you can see that I have selected the area that I want to erase the background in. Now you can do the same with your image.

Image #3

Now you can select the Background Eraser Tool to begin the process of erasing the background.

Image #4

From the picture below you can see that I drag the icon around in the area that that I marked off. What you don't know is that I pulled the cursor over the area that wasn't marked off as well. The background eraser tool only works within the confined areas that you give it. If you select an area inside an image, it will only be able to erase the background in that area. That is why it is such a cool feature.

Image #5

Now you can see that I have pretty much completely erased the whole area. It would have been a lot easier if I had increased the cursor size though. You can do this by going to the top of the program when the Background Eraser Tool is selected and changing the brush size from the default 13 to something higher.

Image #6

Now we can go about filling in the area with something else. The area will still be outlined during this process. I am going to just fill in the background with a color just to show you it is possible. You can add any kind of image in that section of you please. To fill in the area just navigate to Edit/Fill.

Image #7

Now you will select a color for the background.

Image #8

Now you will change the blending mode if you desire or the opacity of the color you are filling the area with.

Image #9

Now you have the finished project.

Image #10

This tutorial is fairly easy, but many people are not aware of this great tool. So took a little time to make a demonstration and post it as a tutorial for your enjoyment. Hopefully, it will be easier to find than it is right now. Of course this tool is great for other things as well. I will let your imagination run wild with those thoughts though.

What are alternatives to adobe photoshop?

While Photoshop is far and away the industry standard, it is also very expensive. Adobe has introduced the cheaper Photoshop Elements for people who don’t want to shell out for the full package, but its functionality is limited. While they’re not generally suitable for very high-end work, there are a few Photoshop alternatives that you might be interested in.

The most popular free (open source) program for replacing Photoshop is known as the GIMP – not the most politically-correct of names, but then it was never really intended for the mass market. Originally a Linux application, it has been ported to Windows. While it performs most of Photoshop’s functions effectively, the interface is awkward at best.

To solve this problem, some people set about taking the GIMP and adjusting its interface to make it into a virtual Photoshop clone. The result is called Gimpshop, and works quite well – if you’re looking for a free Photoshop, this is pretty much your best option.

Apart from that, you could try Paint.net. Originally intended as a replacement for Paint, the simple drawing program that comes with Windows, Paint.net has quite quickly turned into something more on the scale of Photoshop. Developed by university students from the ground up, it is a project to watch, and runs much faster than Photoshop does with an arguably more intuitive interface.

Of course, if you’re just after a simple program for converting file formats, rotating pictures and removing red eye, then all of this is complete overkill – even something like Paint Shop Pro is really too advanced for these simple tasks. Instead, you should be looking at programs like Microsoft’s Digital Image, IfranView and Google’s Picasa. At heart, these are simple photo management programs with only the functions that you’re likely to need for digital photo adjustment, avoiding all the distractions that high-end tools like Photoshop can bring.

How to Resize a picture Using Adobe Photoshop?

Photoshop is a wonderful tool for graphic design, web development and any other form of digital media creation. In this article, we discuss resizing an image using the program.

Photoshop has many uses and is a very powerful program with many different capabilities and functions. Photoshop can have a high learning curve and may be a little overwhelming at first because of all the different tools and options available to use, but I am sure you thought the same thing about learning to read. Now look at you, you are a pro.

As with any thing in life practice is the key to becoming better at things you don’t know or think are too difficult. Try not to become intimidated and don’t be afraid to try new things and experiment. Someone famous once said that learning from failure is the key to success.

While Photoshop may be a lot more program than you need to resize an image, it is an important function to learn because it is a common technique in digital media development. Why would you want to resize an image in the first place? There are numerous reasons, but the most common is to make photos fit on web pages or print material.

Ok, as for the actual steps involved in resizing an image here they are:

1. Open Adobe Photoshop and the photo you wish to resize.

2. Once you have your photo open navigate your mouse to the tool bar that runs along the top of the screen and click on “Image”.

3. Once you click on “Image” from the tool bar, a drop down menu will appear. Select “Image Size” from the drop down menu. A window should popup with the images properties.

4. Initially, for our intents and purposes we only want to pay attention to “Pixel Dimensions” in the popup window. You will see that you can control the width and height values of the image in the popup window. You should also see a drop down menu for selecting “pixels” or “percent”. Make sure pixels is the unit selected in both the width and height fields. Pixels are tiny dots of color that make up the photo. If you ever look at printed material under a magnifying glass you will notice that the image is made up of tiny dots of color. These tiny dots of color are analogous to what pixels are in a digital image.

5. Okay. Let’s pretend that the image you opened up at the start of this tutorial is very large, something like 2000 pixels wide by 1500 pixels in height and we want to resize the image to fit on a web page. Most web pages are somewhere around 800 pixels wide by some arbitrary height. The reason height is arbitrary is because it is determined by how much content appears on the page. Let’s say that we want the image to take up about half the width of the web page. To accomplish this we would change the pixel width value from 2000 to 400 pixels (which is half of 800 pixels, the width of the web page). Make sure that the “Constrain Proportions” option is checked so that the ratio between width and height is preserved and the image does not become distorted.

6. Click “OK” and save the newly resized version of your image. YOU’RE DONE!

You just resized your first photo using Photoshop and are now 100 times more advanced. Congratulations you are on your way to becoming a Photoshop master.

How to remove cracks and creases from old photos?

A common problem with old photos is that they often have un-desirable cracks and creases.

These can be removed quite easily using the Clone, Healing and Patch tools found in Adobe Photoshop.

The problem is that this can become a very time consuming activity if the photo in question is severely damaged.

This article describes a correction method using a free Action for Adobe Photoshop that can take less than five minutes to correct the majority of cracks and creases in an old photo

For several months now I have been using a Photoshop Action called de-crack, developed by Tim J. Edwards, with very effective results.

The original example image (Image 1) on our web-site page is typical of the sort of damaged photos we encounter on a daily basis.

As mentioned, correcting these flaws in Photoshop is actually not difficult but can take a lot of time.

Using Tim's excellent de-crack Photoshop Action will not necessarily result in a perfect "de-cracked" photo.

Having said that, it certainly eliminates the more obvious cracks and creases resulting in you then needing to "tidy up" the outstanding cracks and creases manually with the Clone, Healing and Patch tools.

Now before we get started, you will need to get a hold of a copy of Tim's de-crack Photoshop Action which you can download for free from the RetouchPRO web-site by searching for "de-crack" at the following link:-

"http://www.retouchpro.com/pages/search.html"

You will have to download a very small .ZIP file which will contain the single Photoshop .ATN action file.

After you uncompress the de-crack.zip file you will need to save decrack.atn in Photoshop's "Photoshop Actions" folder and then "load" the de-crack action into your current action list.

You're now ready to give it a try ...

Step – 1

Open up your damaged image in Photoshop

Step – 2

Run the De-crack Action with a high-pass value of 0.3.
Run the De-crack Action with a high-pass value of 0.3 again.
Run the De-crack Action with a high-pass value of 1.5.

Each steps takes only a few seconds and should result in three new layers which collectively mask out the majority of image damage.

Step – 3

The end result is the elimination of most of the cracking damage, which will then allow you time to spend on the remaining cracks and creases, which are usually quite easy to correct manually.

If you find that the de-crack action has in-advertently lost some of the detail of parts of the image, you can easily go to the offending “de-crack” layer in question and erase the de-crack effect selectively using the eraser tool, bringing back wanted detail.

And there you have it!!

Less than five minutes of digital image manipulation to remove cracks and creases from old photos.

Digital photography Tips for Photo Editing

Digital photography has a lot of advantages over film photography in many areas, but one of the most useful is the final output of the image itself. With film cameras you had to rely on the processing lab to make any general adjustments needed to your photos to make them appear their best, but with digital photos you as the photographer have all the tools you need to enhance and edit your own photos right at home.

Of course, how much editing you do to your photos before printing is entirely up to you and there are all kinds of preferences on photo editing from those that do almost no editing at all, to those who like to make major adjustments to almost every photo that they take. And there is plenty of middle ground in between those two extremes as well.

Quite often, many basic editing tasks can be done in the camera itself after the picture is taken including some simple cropping, removing red eye from flash photos, and rotation from landscape to portrait and vice versa. For many people, this is about all that they require anyway before printing out their snapshots, and this keeps things very easy and simple.

But to start to realize the potential that digital photography puts in the hands of the average person, a photo editing software program will be needed where you upload your photos from the camera to your computer and then open them in the program. You can then begin to perform all kinds of editing tasks including more advanced cropping, change the file size or format, adjust color saturation, contrast and brightness, and apply special effects.

There are several good free digital photo editing software programs available for download that can fit the bill for most common photo editing needs. All you have to do is perform a search for "free photo editing software" and you should have plenty of results to choose from.

But there are two programs for sale that seem to meet the needs of most average photographers whether novices or even serious hobbyists, and they are Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Paint Shop Pro 9. Both of these programs are very highly rated in most independent and consumer reviews as being very easy to learn and use, while also handling most any editing task that the average photographer could need.

For even more high end photo editing the full Adobe PhotoShop program will provide enough editing power to meet the needs and expectations of even the most discriminating photographers, but expect to pay quite a bit more for the added power and capability.

It should be clear then that regardless of the amount and scope of photo editing that you intend to do, there is a program that will let you do exactly what you want.