Posted February 8th, 2009
by David Peters
by David Peters
The spot healing brush made its debut in Photoshop Elements 3, but now an enhanced version of it is available in Photoshop CS2. The spot healing tool is different from the existing patch and healing tools in that it does not require you to make a selection or define a source point before using it.
CROPPING. Select the “Crop” tool icon from your Tools bar, then drag it downward diagonally from the upper left corner to the bottom right corner. Release the mouse and then use it to manipulate the image size with the crop “handles.” Hit “Enter” or “Return.” RESIZING. Go to “Image” in your top menu, then choose “Image Size.” Enter the dimensions you need and hit OK. (You can radically change the outer shape of the image by unclicking “Constrain Proportions” at the bottom of the page and entering different dimensions, then clicking OK.)
You can also add new colour stops to an existing gradient by clicking anywhere along the bottom edge of the preview bar. As well as editing colour stops for the gradient to blend between, you can also add different opacity settings to make it fade from solid to transparency. Strike a balance The Gradient Editor automatically places a midpoint between each colour stop to create a smooth linear blend between colours.
Become the king of the keyboard by discovering more new shortcuts. Taking advantages of keyboard shortcuts to rapidly access tools in the toolbox. Locating Keyboard Shortcuts. Photoshop is more than happy to give up its secrets A good place to start hunting down keyboard shortcuts is within the Photoshop interface itself. Open the main menu, and take look at a few of the commands. Next to each one you’ll find the relevant keyboard shortcut listed if one is available. Another comprehensive list of shortcuts can be found in the Photoshop Help files. Killer keyboard shortcuts Mac users should treat the [Alt] key as the [Option] key and the [Control] key as the [Command] key
Photoshop offers blending options unsurpassed in the design industry in your “Layer Style” dialog box, you will first find “General Blending” options, which are often enough for any task. Experiment with the Blend Modes and their opacity to see just how incredibly flexible the normal Blending Options can be. To find your advanced blending options in Photoshop, double-click a layer or click the “Add a Layer Style” icon at the bottom left of your Layers palette, and then choose “Blending Options.” Your “Layer Style” dialog box will appear. At the bottom of the Layer Style box, you will find, under “Advanced Blending,” something called the “Blend If” tool. What is the Photoshop “Blend If” tool, exactly? Blend If is a “smart” blending tool. You can use it to blend images or create a more transparent image with almost infinite precision. This one tool is so flexible and handy it behooves any serios Photoshop designer to learn to use it, and use it well.
Like Microsoft, Adobe’s business is built largely around packaged software, installed locally on users’ PCs. Likewise, Adobe’s plans to diversify its business with online services mirrors a large-scale effort at Microsoft to introduce a combination of software and services. As online applications become more functional, Adobe is seeking out areas where Web services can fill out its product portfolio, Chizen said. The company intends to offer entirely hosted applications, as well as “hybrids,” in which Adobe uses the Web to introduce features to desktop products, such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. We recognize there is a customer there–we recognize they are not going to pay us, necessarily, directly. But we could use ad revenue as a model. Google has demonstrated that it works pretty well for certain types of applications.
Just knowing the basics can do wonders. Start with your “Auto Color” command. (Click “Image,” “Adjustments,” then “Auto Color” from the top menu.) Photoshop has configured the Auto Color tool to transform photos to preset values, affecting the overall tone and levels of the photograph. After that you will probably want to enhance your photo further. Photoshop gives you a cornucopia of options for endlessly fiddling with your pictures. Try your “Levels” button (click “Image,” “Adjustments,” then “Levels”). A dialog box pops up labeled Levels. In it you can use the top slider bar to control the brightness of shadows, midtones and highlights. The bottom slider bar affects your overall output levels. You should get your levels the way you want them before you move on to directly transform colors. You can also correct your brightness levels using “Curves,” in the same menu. Experiment with it and you’ll see how it works.
Tags: free downloadable adobe photoshop, free photoshop 6, free photoshop download, free photoshop downloads, learn photoshop, learn photoshop cs3, learning photoshop, Photography, photoshop 6 download free, photoshop cs3 learn, photoshop guides Posted in Photography
Posted February 2nd, 2009
by David Peters
by David Peters
If you are not quite familiar with Photoshop, this program has these wonderful little features called Actions. These Actions have many different uses from creating remarkable effects to maximizing your productivity and of course they can always be counted on to handle the common and tiresome tasks that are nothing more than time consuming.
I recently had the pleasure of a little thing called Batch Processing. I’m a dedicated designer, but there was no way I was going sit in front of my computer for hours changing the Hue/Saturation for every single image for my forum. What is Batch Processing, you say? Well, it’s something that processes a batch,and I’m going to show you how to do it.
When you’re creating an action you need it to do one thing: Something. In my case, I needed to change the Hue/Saturation for 75+ images from blue to my “trademark” teal. Maybe you need an action for a different purpose, but humor me and tell yourself, “Hey, I need to make my image the same color as hers!” Next, you’ll need something to work on. Get a small image, like an icon, preferably the one I’m using for this tutorial.
Next go to Windows – Actions, making sure it is checked. If checked, you should see a tab in the Layers Palette appropriately labeled Actions.
Click on the arrow button to enter the Actions menu and then “new Set.” This will create a folder for your newly created action (the folder is not mandatory, but it does help with organization.)
Go back to the Actions menu and select “New Action.” I’ll give you three guesses as to what this does. Now, before recording an action you need to figure out the steps you’ll need to take and the order in which you’ll need to take them. Since this is a pretty simple action you can do this is your sleep eventually.
Now for the recording part. There will be a small circle icon between the square and the triangle at the bottom of the palette that you will need to click. Now Photoshop will record everything you do until the end of the Action. If you have an error, simply stop the Action by pushing the square icon and go back to your last step taken.
For my action, the first thing I need to do is change the Mode of the image to RGB, since .gif files are saved in Index mode which don’t take too kindly to colorization. So with the action recording, go to Image – Mode – RGB. Now take a look at your Actions palette, it should look like this:
Next, strip the image of the current color in order to apply our own color easier by going to Image – Adjustment – Desaturate.
Now that we have a naked grey image, we need to add some color. Make sure your action is still recording and go to Image – Adjustments – Hue/Saturation. I have the settings for my teal color saved in a .ahu (Hue/Saturation) file already so all I have to do is click Load and select Teal.ahu, but since you don’t have that you’ll have to use the sliders. Use these settings for my color:
Our final step is to save it for the web. Make sure your action still recording and go to File – Save For the Web and set your file type and optimization settings. I use the standard GIF settings. Select your destination directory and save.
Stop recording and say “Yay, I made an action!” because you’re finished. Now to put your newly born action into… ahem… action, we’ll do a Batch Process. What this will do is take all the images in a specified directory and apply whatever changes were recorded in the action. Just for the sake of the tutorial, create a directory and drop some images into it, or just duplicate one that you already have.
Go to File – Automate – Batch and make sure the name of the Action Set you just created is in the first dropdown list and the name of the Action is in the second. Set the third dropdown box (next to Source) to Folder and use the Choose button to find your duplicated or created folder of images. For destination, you can either leave it set to it’s default “None” to have the action applied and saved in the source folder, or save the “actionized” images into a separate folder. Once you have everything configured to your liking, click OK.
The hard part of the job is now done for you! All that is left is to relax and watch your pictures color themselves thanks to Actions and Batch Processing.
Tags: adobe photoshop, editing photos using photoshop, get photoshop, hobbies, internet, learn photoshop fast, Learn Photoshop now, learning photoshop, Photography, Photoshop, photoshop guide, photoshop tutorials, software help Posted in Photography
Posted January 11th, 2009
by David Peters
by David Peters
I came across an in-depth article that details a lot of information regarding Adobe CS4, mostly things about Photoshop CS4, Bridge CS4 and the launch date of the latest version of Adobe’s Creative Suite.
First of all, the launch is predicted to be around the time of Adobe Max, which takes place November 16th-19th in San Francisco. Typically Adobe Creative Suite product cycles are 18 months and since Adobe CS3 was released on April 16th, 2007 Adobe Max would mean 19 months since the last product release. Let’s look at some features that may or may not be included in Adobe CS4.
Adobe Photoshop CS4: Codename: Adobe Stonehenge CS4 Extended. Stonehenge is the splash screen. 1. The User-Interface is similar to CS3 however there are some minor polishes that complete the look. 2. Support for “Extensions” is listed under the “Window” menu 3. The extension manager is in every CS4 application 3. “Kuler” which is an Intranet color pallet collaboration tool for sharing color swatches with others on your team. 4. Support for Flash (more on this later)
Adobe Panel Configurator 1.0 (Alpha Version): 1. It’s a way to create Photoshop toolboxes. 2. Choose from over 860+ commands, tools and application features and create your own toolboxes that work in any CS4 application 3. Supports Actions and Scripts too 4. Drag and drop text fields into these toolboxes 5. Support for SWF and Quicktime video files in toolboxes (not sure why) 6. Export the toolbar file and open it in any CS4 application.
CS4 Suite New Features: 1. Flash SWF support across all applications 2. You can play SWF files in any app 3. A tool is being developed for creating flash content without any coding experience
Adobe Bridge CS4: 1. New User-Interface 2. Sidebar and search tool location similar to Mac OS Leopard 3. Navigation in folders similar to Windows Vista Explorer 4. Labels and star ratings are easier to access. 5. Filtered searches are now much faster even across thousands of images 6. List View in Bridge 7. Auto Photo Downloader to download photos from your camera is now easier and better than Bridge CS3 8. Improved slideshows using your spacebar 9. From Slideshow, press “r” and Adobe Camera Raw opens automatically. 10. Review Mode: (full screen review of photos) a. Just like a full screen version of Apple coverflow b. Loopt tool built in c. The ability to open all, review, and drop photos out of view that you don’t want and others stay full screen d. When leaving review mode the photos you kept are now selected in bridge. Ones you dropped are still there but not selected. e. You now have the ability to create photo-collections from within review mode 11. Collections are just like Playlists in iTunes. You have the ability to group photos. The location where photos are stored is not changed. 12. More sharing options a. Upload directly to FTP within Bridge b. Web gallery templates are easy and use the same templates available in Lightroom 2 c. Ability to create flash galleries with a few clicks and upload instantly d. Uses the Opera engine to render galleries within Bridge e. Photoshop Web Gallery is going away and being replaced by Bridge Web Gallery 13. Bridge CS4 Menus (in order left to right) File – Edit – View – Sttacks – Label – Tools – Window – Help
Adobe CS4 Applications are exactly the same as CS3 but the text in the icons is black instead of white.
Tags: adobe photoshop, editing photos using photoshop, get photoshop, hobbies, internet, learn photoshop fast, Learn Photoshop now, learning photoshop, Photography, photogrpahy, Photoshop, photoshop guide, photoshop tutorials, software help Posted in Photography
Posted December 27th, 2008
by David Peters
by David Peters
I came across an in-depth article that details a lot of information regarding Adobe CS4, mostly things about Photoshop CS4, Bridge CS4 and the launch date of the latest version of Adobe’s Creative Suite.
First of all, the launch is predicted to be around the time of Adobe Max, which takes place November 16th-19th in San Francisco. Typically Adobe Creative Suite product cycles are 18 months and since Adobe CS3 was released on April 16th, 2007 Adobe Max would mean 19 months since the last product release. Let’s look at some features that may or may not be included in Adobe CS4.
Adobe Photoshop CS4: Codename: Adobe Stonehenge CS4 Extended. Stonehenge is the splash screen. 1. The User-Interface is similar to CS3 however there are some minor polishes 2. Support for “Extensions” is listed under the “Window” menu 3. The extension manager is in every CS4 application 3. “Kuler” which is an Intranet color pallet collaboration tool for sharing color swatches with others on your team. 4. Support for Flash (more on this later)
Adobe Panel Configurator 1.0 (Alpha Version): 1. Allows you to create your own Photoshop toolboxes. 2. You can choose from over 860+ commands, tools and application features and from there create your own toolboxes that work in any CS4 application 3. Supports Actions and Scripts 4. Drag and drop text fields into toolboxes 5. Support for SWF and Quicktime video files in toolboxes 6. You can export the toolbar file and re-open it in any CS4 application.
CS4 Suite New Features: 1. Flash SWF support across all applications 2. You can play SWF files in any app 3. A tool is being developed for creating flash content without any coding experience
Adobe Bridge CS4: 1. New Interface (cleaner, more like Apple’s Leopard Finder) 2. Sidebar and search tool location are just like Mac OS Leopard 3. Folder navigation just like Windows Vista Explorer 4. Labels and star ratings are easier to access. 5. Filtered searches are now much faster even across thousands of images 6. List View in Bridge 7. Auto Photo Downloader to download photos from your camera is now easier and better than Bridge CS3 8. Improved slideshows. Spacebar starts slideshow (like quickview in leopard) 9. From Slideshow, just hit “r” and Adobe Camera Raw opens automatically. 10. Review Mode: (full screen review of photos) a. Just like a full screen version of Apple coverflow b. Loopt tool built in c. Open all photos and review photos and drop photos out of view that you don’t want and other stay in full screen d. Upon leaving review mode, photos you kept are now selected in bridge. Ones you dropped are still there but not selected. e. Ability to create photocollections from within review mode 11. Collections are just like Playlists in iTunes. Ability to group photos. Location of photo is not changed. 12. More sharing options a. Upload directly to FTP within Bridge b. Web gallery templates are easy and uses the same templates available in Lightroom 2 c. Ability to create flash galleries with a few clicks and upload instantly d. Uses the Opera engine to render galleries within Bridge e. Photoshop Web Gallery is going away and being replaced by Bridge Web Gallery 13. Bridge CS4 Menus (in order left to right) File – Edit – View – Sttacks – Label – Tools – Window – Help
Adobe CS4 Applications are exactly the same as CS3 but the text in the icons is black instead of white.
Tags: adobe photoshop, editing photos using photoshop, get photoshop, hobbies, internet, learn photoshop fast, Learn Photoshop now, learning photoshop, Photography, photogrpahy, Photoshop, photoshop guide, photoshop tutorials, software help Posted in Photography
