PHOTO EDITING

Steps To Remove Adobe Photoshop Virus - How To Remove Adobe Photoshop Virus The Easy Way

2011-05-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

Newly released Adobe Photoshop Virus is a fake anti-malware software that shows false scan results in order to scare customers into purchasing their rogue Adobe Photoshop Virus program. This fake Adobe Photoshop Virus software is displayed through fake online scanners that tells your computer is infected with virus. It may be also promoted on p2p networks. Once installed, Adobe Photoshop Virus will start a system scan and report numerous false security threats.

Adobe Photoshop Virus rogue program uses scare tactics to convince users that their computers are infected. Security alerts and pop-ups add to the alarm and inform the users that they need to purchase the "Registered" version of Adobe Photoshop Virus in order to remove all the "detected" computer threats. Adobe Photoshop Virus is a malicious scam. So please do not purchase Adobe Photoshop Virus.

Once installed, Adobe Photoshop Virus will be configured to start automatically when you start Windows. Once started, the Adobe Photoshop Virus will perform a scan, and when done, will list a variety of legitimate or nonexistent files as infections that cannot be removed unless you first purchase the Adobe Photoshop Virus.

When running, Adobe Photoshop Virus will display fake alerts and pop-ups to make the whole scan look more realistic, so you should ignore those fake alerts just like the false scan results. Also note that the Adobe Photoshop Virus rogue program may block antivirus and antispyware programs that why you will have to ends its processes before installing any removal tool. If you find that your computer is infected with Adobe Photoshop Virus virus, please follow the removal instructions below to remove Adobe Photoshop Virus from your computer either manually or with an automatic Adobe Photoshop Virus removal tool. If you have already purchased this bogus Adobe Photoshop Virus program then you should contact your credit card company and dispute the charges.

How To Remove Adobe Photoshop Virus

You can safely remove Adobe Photoshop Virus using a Spyware Remover software. There are many removal tools available online. Run atleast two malware scanners sequentially and then delete all the infections found. This will make sure all the Adobe Photoshop Virus infections are removed from your computer.

Learn The Different Image Editing Tips and Tricks Through Basic Section of Adobe Photoshop Tutorials - Learn Photoshop Like A Pro

2011-05-15T21:59:00.001-07:00

This is unlike anything you've ever seen before. It's a totally unique step-by-step video training system, designed to make any newbie user completely confident with Photoshop in record time. Just 2 hours from now you'll be able to produce your own graphics quickly, easily and completely stress free! When looking at editing software, you might ask yourself what is the difference between Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator? Both programs are made by the same company and many say that the differences are small. The difference lies in the building blocks, Adobe Illustrator actually takes key elements of Adobe Photoshop and builds upon them taking them to the next level.

Adobe's Photoshop is perhaps one of the most widely recognized and used programs by digital photographers today. This program has plenty of tips and tutorials available making it an easy program to learn and use. Photoshop can transform any image into a polished and professional looking photograph. You can add borders and enhance pictures to a level that no digital camera could capture. With Photoshop you can make almost anything possible to do with a photograph, reality.

Adobe's Illustrator by definition is a completely different program altogether. A vector based program, Illustrator enables you to create your own unique graphics. These graphics can be used in almost any medium, from print, to online, video and even your cell phone. Adobe Illustrator can do what Photoshop cannot do alone.

Both programs are vastly talked about on the web. You will find a huge array of photoshop tutorials and illustrator tutorials, illustrator and photoshop tips. Forums, chat rooms, and discussion groups that focus on both programs are also abundant on the web. Once you start looking, you'll find more and more information on adobe photoshop and adobe illustrator.

Drawing and vector art tools can be found on Photoshop, but these tools and their capabilities are nothing in comparison to those on Adobe Illustrator. A wide variety of templates are offered to help you get a project started and a number of different drawing tools are at hand to help you create your own personal artworks and graphics with Illustrator. While you can create unique graphics with Photoshop, you must start with a base image and your tools to work with are limited in comparison to Adobe Illustrator. For those in the professional field such as graphic design, the best choice would be Adobe Illustrator. However, for those with smaller drawing needs, Photoshop will work just as well.

Many Photoshop tutorials do not cover Photoshop drawing in great detail, so look for those tutorials specific to drawing for the best information. The same goes for Photoshop tip pages. It is seldom that you will find large amounts of information on drawing and vector art tools. But to make your digital images perfect, Photoshop is the program for you with plenty of information available. With the abundance of info on the subject, you won't be able to stop form touching up every photo you take.

Adobe Illustrator is a different program. Whereas Photoshop adds a new look to an existing image, Illustrator can create a brand new unique image. Adobe Illustrator is one of the best and user friendly programs you can use for graphic design. The software is relatively easy and with the large number of tips and tutorials to be found online, Illustrator is extremely popular.

Nothing says that you can't work with both programs to create a polished version of an existing image or a brand new image itself. With both programs sharing some basic features, by learning one you are a step ahead on the other automatically. Both Photoshop and Illustrator will produce stunning, quality and professional images that have never been seen before. If you have need for both programs, become familiar with both to cover every need. Opt for Photoshop for your digital imaging needs and Illustrator for your graphic design needs. With the differences between the two programs, you may realistically find the need for both.

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are sure to make great additions to your software collection. Both the graphic designer and the digital photographer will find many uses within these programs and no matter the project, both can deliver the most sophisticated images. Mastering these programs is easy thanks to all of the tips and tutorials found online for both Photoshop and Illustrator. The more you learn and experiment with these programs and their capabilities, the more you will expand on your own creativity.

Digital Photo Editing - 3 Simple Ways to Enhance Your Digital Photos

2011-05-11T22:08:00.000-07:00

Back in the day there was no such thing as digital photo editing. If you wanted to enhance your photos there simply weren't any options. You just had to hope that your photos came out decent. Recent technology though, allows us to edit and enhance our digital photos after they've already been taken! Here are 3 simple ways that you can enhance your photos with digital photo editing software.

Digital Photo Editing Tip #1 - Cropping

Digital photo editing makes it easy to correct a digital photo that may not have been lined up very well. You always want to make sure that the focus of your photo, whether it be a person or an object, is in the middle of your frame. If it is not then you can use the crop feature to edit the photo so that the important parts of the photo are highlighted or centered. You can also crop a photo in order to clean up unnecessary background activity or to reduce the size of an image so that it can be more easily shared over the internet.

Digital Photo Editing Tip #2 - Red Eye Removal

One thing that can ruin a photo fast is red eye. Red eye is caused by the reflection of light off of the retina in the eye. The red color actually comes from the blood vessels that are nourishing the eye. Most digital photo editing software programs offer a red eye removal tool. If the digital photo editing program that you are using does not have a red eye removal tool then just simply zoom in to each eye and paint over the red reflection. I personally use Photo Editor X because it allows me to remove red eye with the click of a button. For more information on Photo Editor X Click Here

Digital Photo Editing Tip #3 - Sharpening

Sometimes a photo can come out a bit soft. If this is the case with your photo then try out the sharpen tool in your digital photo editing software. The sharpen tool, if overused, can lead to jagged edges in your photo, but if used moderately it can really enhance your digital photos. It's difficult to describe in words exactly how the sharpen tool can improve your photos. The best thing to do is to open up your digital photo editing software and tinker with it. Most digital photo editing programs allow you to see the outcome of the sharpen effect without actually having to commit to the edits. Give it a try and see what happens.

Adobe Photoshop Program Various Images - The Succeeding Version of Adobe Photoshop that add Sound and Animation to Photographs

2011-05-10T22:04:00.000-07:00

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.
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.

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.

For those who do not know, Adobe Photoshop is a program designed to let people edit various images on their computers. Its primary purpose is to let people perform touch ups on pictures before printing them. Of course, each succeeding version of Adobe Photoshop included more and more tools which let people add effects and do various other things to their photographs. The Adobe Photoshop of today actually allows people to add sound and animation to their photographs for sharing on the internet. In the past, people who took bad pictures were stuck with them. A lot of things can go wrong in a picture. There's the usual red-eye, skewed angles, shaky focus and others. Adobe Photoshop was the tool that made all of these things disappear. With Adobe Photoshop, people can take pictures like amateurs and still produce images like pros!

If the convenience is hard to find, there are other ways on how you could get a tutorial for using the Photoshop CS. You could decide to have your own pacing, meaning, you could speed up the process or take it slowly. There are many self-help books published and distributed through the bookstores that would tutor you on how to use the Photoshop CS on procedural narrative formats. All you have to do is to absorb and understand by heart the content and instructions contained in such reading materials. If the printed books are not convenient, there are online and downloadable versions. Such e-books, as they are called nowadays, can be accessed online within minutes. They are actually like the book versions, only that they are soft copies and are faster to retrieve and access.

Customize menus and workspaces. Photoshop CS2 lets you highlight commonly used menu items, and set up custom menus and workspaces. Now all the power of Photoshop is (literally) at your command, and can be tailored to your requirements. See what each font looks like before you use it. Finally! Photoshop gets a WYSIWYG font drop-down menu. Now you don't have to keep text highlighted while you cycle through all the fonts until you get to the right one! Manipulate images with Image Warp. Image Warp allows you to bend, peel, and stretch images the same way as type. Now you can put an image on a mug or soda can with ease. See what video graphics will look like, while you're doing them. If you're a video professional like me, you'll know how frustrating it can be: You make a graphic that looks fantastic on a flat computer monitor, but when you import the .psd file into your Avid timeline, and look at it on the TV screen, it's not quite what you had in mind. You then have to go back into Photoshop and make your artwork look "wrong", so it will look right on a video monitor. With Photoshop CS2 you can preview your images on a video monitor directly from the software, and see exactly how they're going to look in your video, even if your editing software is on a different computer.

PhotoshopSecrets Special FX: This tutorial video contains 19 lessons packed in approximately 2 hours of fast-loading CD-ROM. If 'cool!' is the one word that you want to hear to feel validated for your Photoshop efforts, this video tutorial will teach you exactly how to use special effects like the pros. Learn about 3D lathing, liquid splashes, CS branding, pixel stretching, thermal vision, toxic waste and lots more. These are cutting-edge effects, the kind you find in more advanced Photoshop users' works so you might want to try it out for yourself. Photoshopsupport.com. This site features some of the best and latest Photoshop tutorials, including those in video. Use Photoshop confidently in no time with the free video tutorials. You can even click on the links provided to find out about Photoshop products for more detailed tutorials. If you're using Photoshop to come up with a cooler, meaner website, you'll like the short tutorials on SiteGrinder 2, an Adobe Photoshop Plugin. Learn Photoshop Now...Getting The Most Out Of Adobe Photoshop
Be Amazed At What You Can Learn About Photoshop

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You Can Easily Upgrade to Photoshop CS2 from any Previous Photoshop Version - Advanced Photoshop Layering

2011-04-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

Everything you want to learn about Photoshop is grouped into sections that are easy to identify and access. Tutorials are continually being made simpler and clearer so that everyone is included. If however, you think that the tutorials are not enough there are DVD Rom tutorials that you can purchase and have to access anytime that you forget how to do something and need to refresh your memory. This DVDROM has 120mins (yup, 2 hours) of tutorials that will help you know how to use Photoshop even in your sleep. If you already have more than a basic knowledge of using Photoshop you can take a look at the Photoshop Secrets Special FX. It's a tutorial CDROM with 19 lessons that are packed into 2 hours that will teach you exactly how to use the special cutting edge effects that the advance Photoshop users' use.
Photoshop training is one of the best investments you can make in your professional career. Whatever field you're working in, Photoshop training can help you reach your full potential. Anyone who works with digital images and graphics knows that the Adobe Photoshop line of software is the tool of choice for graphic designers and professional photographers around the world. The Photoshop interface hasn't changed a great deal since the earliest versions, so users can easily upgrade to Photoshop CS2 from any previous version. Photoshop CS2 has powerful new features that will aid designers in all fields. You can literally use Photoshop CS2 to create any visual effect that you can image-if you can dream it, you can create it with Photoshop. Like previous versions of Photoshop, CS2 is available for both Macintosh and Windows. And the best thing about the new version is the price: Photoshop CS2 costs less than previous versions of Photoshop.

RESOLUTION. The "Auto" resolution button on the right of your Image Size dialog box will resize your image to small, medium and larger sizes. Under "Document Size" in your Image Size box, you'll see a place to enter the desired resolution. For the Web, normal resolutions will be 72 pixels per inch. For print work, the resolution should be at least 300 ppi. When you increase the resolution, you increase the image size, and may need to resize it, but the resolution will stay the same. COLOR CASTS. Go into your Image > Adjustments menu and try using the automatic presets there: Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Color and/or Variations. This last option is especially fast and flexible, offering fine-tuning for shadows, midtones and highlights as well as saturation. Click Image, then Levels in your top menu. You will see a Channel box on top with a pull-down arrow that exposes options for red, green or blue. You can affect the color cast of an image inside this level box by clicking on that color and moving the slider bars. Watch the image as you make the changes.

You can modify a gradient by changing the colour of the stops - simply click on one and choose a new colour from the Color Picker. Alternatively, click on an image and sample a colour for your customised gradient using the Eyedropper Tool. 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.

To experiment with advanced Photoshop layering, you'll need something to work on. So first bring up a photo inside Photoshop, then create another layer with something on it. On the bottom of your Layer Style box, you will find the "Blend If" settings. Choose either gray, red, green or blue inside the drop-down Blend If menu, then use your slider bars to control the opacity of the layer you highlighted or the layer underneath. Dragging the "white" slider left will diminish the whites or highlights, and the layer underneath will show through.You will quickly see how blending each color affects the image. You can use this versatile feature, for example, to replace a washed-out sky with a nice blue sky, blending the transparency to a gnat's eyebrow.

Like Adobe Remix, the hosted Photoshop service is set to be free and marketed as an entry-level version of Adobe's more sophisticated image-editing tools, including Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Chizen envisions revenue from the Photoshop service coming from online advertising."That is new (for Adobe). It's something we are sensitive to because we are watching folks like Google do it in different categories, and we want to make sure that we are there before they are, in areas of our franchises," Chizen said.Chizen described the introduction of Adobe Remix and the forthcoming hosted Photoshop as part of a larger move toward integrating hosted services into the company's product mix.Bruce Chizen 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 you may already know, undoing steps is not difficult. You use the [Ctrl]/[Command]+[Z] and can move back through stored history using [Shift]+[Ctrl]+[Z].You can also use adjustment layers to do this and you will also be able to have instant access to the original file in its untouched state. Adjustment layers give you the opportunity to make changes to a single layer without changing any of the pixels on the layer itself. This is such a great way to work because you don't have to be concerned about altering the image permanently. When you find that you want to undo an adjustment layer you can simply drag it to the trash can that is located in the Layer palette. Another way to undo an adjustment layer is to turn it off using the eye icon.
Be Amazed At What You Can Learn About Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop photographs Enhancement Basics - The Use of Adobe Photoshop to Edit Some Awesome Photos

2011-04-01T22:01:00.000-07:00

Never before in the history of photography have more people been able to create such exciting and professional effects on their own. Using your computer you can purchase software affordably which is used by veteran graphic designers and photographers around the world. While there is a large pool of programs to choose from, no programs can come close to Photoshop. The term 'to Photoshop' has been taken into everyday use to mean enhancing photographs, showing its popularity and celebrity reputation.
You can 'Photoshop' any image to include people and places you've never met or been to. An image of you on a beach playing volleyball with Elvis and The Beatles would be hard to produce before Photoshop, but now pictures like this are almost commonplace. Anything you can think of, Photoshop can render realistically.

Photoshop is also useful for taking things out of the picture that you don't want. Glaring physical flaws like skin blemishes can be removed to improve the image, and it is even possible to remove entire objects or figures that you want out of the image. Photoshop is so refined that it will be impossible to tell if your images have been enhanced at all.

Photoshop is the industry standard for photography editing. This means that it is essential to learn how to use this application, but don't worry if you think it will be difficult. Like all good programs, it is easy to use and hard to master. The interface is accessible to the user, so that starting out is not complicated. If you feel you need help, ask any college students you know to teach you as they will probably be familiar with Photoshop.

In 1989 Thomas and John Knoll developed a basic program which was to eventually become Photoshop. They were using this program for their own projects, but they soon realised they could make money by selling the program as it added real value to anyone wanting to edit photography. They quickly formed the company Adobe and began marketing the product.

Adobe's achievement is difficult to put in perspective. This small company has designed programs that are on almost every computer in the world. The Adobe Reader, a free PDF reader, is used by everyone to read PDFs due to its simplicity and reliability. The PDF format is just another example of how Adobe has taken over a format, creating software related to it that becomes the world-wide standard.

To become familiar with Photoshop, the best thing to do is to find a copy to experiment with. Chances are a friend of yours has it, so play around with the program until you get used to the interface. If your friend knows how to use Photoshop, he or she can show you and teach you faster than most online tutorials can. Take care though, because once you see the amazing things Photoshop can do, you will become a fan forever.

Once you gain some experience with Photoshop, you should get a copy of your own. Trial versions are available for download, but they do not have all the features. The best way to avoid frustration is to buy the full version. Photoshop is used everywhere, so spending the money on this program is a good decision. When you've bought Photoshop, you may now explore it to your heart's content. It should be noted that you will learn the fundamentals of Photoshop faster and better if you take a course on Photoshop. The tutors will take time to teach you what you need to know to be more efficient and effective in your use of Photoshop, without worrying about each individual effect.

After you are used to Photoshop there is nothing stopping you from creating whatever images you want. There are infinite possibilities for what you can make. Experiment and remember to have fun!

Learn How To Use Adobe Photoshop To Quickly And Easily Edit Your Digital Photos Like The Professionals. This covers the more advanced content of adobe photoshop and you will learn so much, so easily and such a short time. You will be amazed at the things you can actually do with Adobe Photoshop and edit some awesome photos.

The Basics of Photoshop that Every Photoshop Beginner Should Know - Showcases of Easy to Follow Tutorials on Photoshop

2011-03-03T21:58:00.000-08:00

Photoshop is a very useful program that you can use for photo touch ups, restorations, and the likes. A lot of people today enjoy adding effects to their photos, removing red eye, and so on, thanks to Photoshop. If you want breathtaking photos, you should learn how to use Photoshop.

The following are the basics of Photoshop that every Photoshop beginner should know:

1. Know your image details first.

The very first step you have to learn from a photo editing tutorial is how you can check on the details of your photo. To know your image's details in Photoshop, take advantage of the following photo shop tools: the Info Palette, the Eyedropper, and the Histogram.

Taking classes on how to use Photoshop will tell you that the Eyedropper is the one to check if you want to know the colors present in your photo and if you need to correct any color that appears dominant in the picture. The Histogram, on the other hand, displays information on your photo's exposure e.g. is it over exposed or underexposed? The said tool also gives you data on your photo's tonal range. Photoshop's Info Palette is responsible for giving you numerical data that helps you achieve whatever photo retouching or editing goal you have when using other Photo Shop tools.

2. Learn Image Straightening in Photoshop.

Another topic you'll have to be aware of that is included in resources on how to use Photoshop is image straightening. There are times when photos feature images that appear tilted for some reason.

A Photoshop photo editing tutorial will explain that image straightening can be done easily through the so called Ruler tool. The said tool will give information as to the tilted image's angle, and once you have that data, you can use the Rotate tool to straighten the direction of the image.

3. Find out how to crop photos.

The basics of Photoshop also include learning how to crop images. Cropping means taking out images, or things which you consider unimportant, that are found at the picture's edges. When photos are developed, most of the time, there are unnecessary images included which you have to remove to enhance your pictures. You can use the Photoshop Crop tool for this task. The Crop tool may also be used to reduce your photo's file size which can free up some memory on your computer.

4. Understand how to get rid of photo blemishes, dust marks, and
the likes.

Learning how to use Photoshop also means knowing about how you can improve on your images by eliminating blemishes and dust marks on them. Photo shop tools you can use are the following: the Clone Stamp tool and the Photo shop Healing Brush. The Healing Brush tool works well on images with smooth color e.g. clouds, ocean waves, etc. For images that are not 'healed' well by the Healing Brush, use the Clone Stamp tool.

5. Find out how to revise your photo's tone and exposure, if needed.

Sometimes, a photo comes out too light or too dark. To correct the problem, part of a photo editing tutorial is to explain how to use the Levels function in Photoshop. As mentioned previously, you use the Histogram tool to check for exposure and tonal problems. Once you see the problem, you can proceed to utilizing Photoshop's Levels function to make your picture perfect in terms of tone and exposure.

6. Learn how you can remove the so called color cast in your images.

A color cast is the term for dominant colors in pictures which may decrease photo quality. You can correct this in Photoshop, however, through the Color Balance command.

Learn the Basics, Techniques and Tools, Photoshop CS Tutorials Options - Significance of Taking Lessons on Photoshop Program for Free

2011-02-02T21:56:00.000-08:00

Photoshop CS can be a bit overwhelming for people to take on. This leads to many people only using a few features of this program that they are comfortable with without ever realizing the full potential of this software. Taking lessons and tutorials are a great way to expand your knowledge of Photoshop CS and give you some hands on experience.

Photoshop CS Tutorials

There are many things to learn with your Photoshop CS. You can explore them and utilize each for your own use. Here are some of the aspects you can look forward to from basic Photoshop CS tutorials.

Learn the Basics

The basics of Photoshop CS tutorials will build the foundation from which all of the features and operations will come from. These building blocks include screen areas, layers and styles, droplets, actions and even the development of new images. This will also give you an introduction in understanding images. This should show you how to experiment with the blend modes and determine the vector from the bitmap graphics.

Techniques and Tools

Now that you have your foundation, you will start building upward. The tutorial can lead you through selections on painting, drawing, and creating shapes. It will also address techniques such as filling, cropping, cloning, sampling, annotation and retouching. By understanding these concepts, Photoshop CS will help you to appreciate more how Internet web sites and the web in general are designed. You will see how graphics and animation basically operate.

Optimization and Download

You can learn about browsers, JavasScript, platforms, backgrounds, positioning, monitor resolution and interpolation at the next level. This will be particularly beneficial should you plan to expand on your web page. Any task you take on with Photoshop will rely heavily on colors. At this point in the tutorial you will learn to determine the best color selections for your web page. You will also learn how to best manage the colors by exploring their modes and how to use them correctly. If you find yourself lost at this point and unfamiliar with many of these terms, a Photoshop CS tutorial is even more important for you to take in order to make the most of this program.

Photoshop CS Tutorials Options

Now that you have seen the significance of taking lessons on your Photoshop program, then you can start exploring the many options for you to learn. Here are some of them:

1. Web Page Tutorials: You can access web sites that will teach you how to operate Photoshop. For a fee, you can explore the site and get everything you need to learn.

2. Demo Version: Many demo versions for Photoshop tutorials are available for download free. These will many times have limited information or contain only a few basic chapters. This is helpful in that you can assess the offers of a certain site before you invest in the entire package.

3. CD Version: You can also purchase the CD so you can learn everything about Photoshop even if you are not online.

4. PDF Files: Some web tutorials offer tutorials in the PDF format. This is a good choice for people who want a printout for their lessons.

5. Video Tutorials: Photoshop CS video tutorials are good also for people who need to be guided in every step of the way. This will demonstrate to you exactly what you need to see and click.

Conclusion

Photoshop CS tutorials available online offer the best opportunities for people to make the most of their Photoshop program and their Photoshop skills. With these tools, you can become more efficient and creative in your endeavors with this program. Check out what is offered and you will Learn the Basics, Techniques and Tools, Photoshop CS Tutorials Options.

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Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Real Advantages Of Using Adobe Software To Edit Digital photos And Images - Tutorial For Adobe Photoshop CS5/CS4/CS3/CS2

2011-01-02T21:50:00.000-08:00

This tutorial for Adobe Photoshop is ideal for anybody looking at the real advantages of using this Adobe software in order to edit your digital photos and images. If you are looking for a variety of tutorials for Adobe Photoshop, you way get overwhelmed by the millions of pages offered by Google search results. If you want a more defined Google search results for any tutorial for Adobe Photoshop, then use "" – for example "Tutorial For Adobe Photoshop CS5/CS4/CS3/CS2" etc. This way you will find what you are looking for a lot easier and a lot quicker.

Photoshop is an amazing piece of computer software that allows its users to manipulate and create images. The use of Photoshop is pervasive throughout the professional worlds of photography and graphic design. The first version of Photoshop hit the market in 1990 as a Macintosh product; it is now on its eleventh release and compatible with any system. Why should you use Photoshop?

Photoshop gives you an enormous advantage over designing with a paper and pen. You can easily fix your mistakes without any messy erasing. There are a variety of templates for the less artistically inclined to choose from. Also, a finished Photoshop product invariably looks more professional than a hand-drawn product.

Once you have decided to invest in image editing software, you may notice that Photoshop is a very costly product. Current versions of Photoshop CS4 run between $500 and $600. It is possible to find much cheaper image editing software and some computers even come with a factory-installed program. However, there are four broad reasons why you should use Photoshop over other cheaper or free image editing software. These four reasons are: versatility, a user-friendly interface, easy access to training, and a variety of functions.

Versatility: There is very little that Photoshop is not able to accomplish for you. It doesn't matter if you're an amateur photographer who wants to do some simple cropping to family snapshots. Conversely, top photographers and graphic design professionals use Photoshop for image creation and editing.

User-friendly interface: Photoshop was designed with the consumer in mind. No specialized programming skills are needed and its drawing canvas, where images are created, is WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get. Many elements of Photoshop are similar to other computer programs. For example, the menu bar has the same file, edit, view, and help options as Microsoft Word. The tools in the toolbox modify your pointer so that you will remember what tool you are using.

Easy access to training: Because Photoshop is an immensely popular software tool, there are a plethora of books, online tutorials, and college courses available to train the new user in the workings of Photoshop. You can not only find information suitable for a beginner, but also a detailed description of some of Photoshop's most advanced tools.

Variety of functions: Photoshop is able to perform an almost endless variety of image edit and creation functions.

Photo manipulation - take a downloaded or scanned photo and reduce red-eye and other imperfections, crop the photo, or change the sharpness or contrast of the image

Painting and drawing - use the drawing canvas and toolbox to create new images

Graphic design - take scanned artwork or artwork created in Photoshop itself and add layers, gradients, and much more to create graphic art that sells.

Typography and page layout - Photoshop allows you to manipulate both text and image on the same drawing canvas but in different layers. This allows you to create presentations and other projects that require a juxtaposition of text and image.

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How to Sell Your Photos

2010-12-02T22:02:00.000-08:00

By: Jason Kay

Stories of ordinary people becoming millionaires overnight with the help of some wonderful programs are flooding us from all directions and even though many of these stories are exaggerated at best and total lies at worst, there are many ways in which you can make money, even if you are not a unique talent. Well, I don't mean that photography does not require talent, but even beginner photographers can make money by selling their photos. Most likely you will not make your first million selling photos, but this is a viable way to earn some extra cash. Photos are a product and as with all products, you need to know what to offer and where to sell it.

What You Can Sell

For those people, who have no idea about photography, a photo is just a photo, but for people who are familiar with photography and arts in general, there are separate distinct groups of photos. The most obvious distinction of photos is based on their content, but for the purposes of selling photos, this distinction is not as important as what the photo can be used for.

The two major uses of photos are for the Web and in print. Web photos tend to be low resolution and lower quality is acceptable for them, while print photos generally are high resolution and low quality is unacceptable. As a beginner photographer, you will most likely target the Web market first because the entry barrier there is not as high as with the printing market. Additionally, if your camera is not a high-end one, your skills in photo processing will hardly be able to compensate for this, so in this case, print photos are not an option for you because of technical reasons. This shouldn't discourage you because the Web market is vast and there is a lot of space for beginners.

The main buyers on the Web market are Web designers, who make sites for their clients. For many Web designers it is much easier and cheaper to buy ready-made photos than to take the pictures themselves. A solo Web designer can make 10 or even more middle-sized sites a month, which means that he or she will need at least 200-300 photos and illustrations. This does not mean that you will be able to sell 200-300 photos a month to each Web designer you contact, but even if you manage to sell him or her 10-20 photos a month, or more realistically a batch of several hundred photos for him or her to use in the next year, then you can make a lot of money.

Similar to other arts, photography also has genres. Not surprisingly, photos of people, nature and cities sell best. Another category, which is especially popular with designers, is objects of different kinds. You can shoot a light bulb, a pen, some pills, or whatever object you choose, and this may be enough. Add some unobtrusive background to it and you get a cool photo for a Web site. But be careful with copyrights because not all manufacturers will be happy if you shoot their products and make money from this. Try shooting generic products, which have no visible branding.

Similar copyright issues apply to people. If you want to shoot people and you want to be on the safe side, ask them to sign a model contract, which clarifies all the issues in regard to copyrights and sales. Very often you won't have to hire professional models and you can shoot your friends and relatives instead. Your models don't have to be extremely beautiful because pictures of ordinary people also sell well. Shooting friends and relatives has one more advantage - they work cheaply or free.

Nature and urban photos are always in demand, but avoid photos which look as if they were taken by tourists because they simply look too unprofessional to be sold. Abstractions are also popular, so if you are creative with PhotoShop or another image processing program you can wake up the Picasso in you.

Where You Can Sell

The type of photos you have is one of the major factors in choosing your sales channels. Basically, the options to sell your photos are the following:

1. Stock photo sites. Stock photo sites are the most popular sales channel. Stock photos are photos you have already taken, i.e. you have in stock. You open an account with a stock photo site, upload your images and every time somebody downloads your photo, you earn a commission. Different sites have different policies, but it's not unusual to earn $40 per photo each time it is downloaded.

If your photos are popular, it is not impossible to reach dozens of downloads per week. One of the prerequisites for success is to submit sought after photos and to use the right keywords in the descriptions of your photos. The best stock photo site I have found is Shutterpoint. They provide photographers an e-commerce store-front for selling photos, handle advertising and promotion, handle all purchase transactions, provide customer service, and securely deliver images to buyers. All of these features are provided for a very reasonable fee, and in addition, other members often provide valuable feedback on your photos. This is a great way to begin your career as a professional photographer.

2. Stock agencies. Stock agencies are similar to stock photo sites, but in addition to listing your photos, they consult buyers and handle all the legal and logistical matters. Stock agencies usually deal with professional photographers mainly but there are stock agencies, which are beginner-friendly. As with stock photo sites, you usually have to decide (if you have the choice of course) whether you want to sell exclusive rights or only per use rights.

3. Sell directly to newspapers and magazines. Although this is hardly the easiest way to sell your photographs, it is worth trying. Newspapers and magazines are a very tough market to get into but can be a very high paying one. For a start, you can try your local or community media.

4. eBay and similar auctions. Auction sites, such as eBay, are one more sales outlet you can try. Yes you really can earn decent income from selling photos on eBay. This is a good alternative if you sell other products in addition to photos, but even if photos are the only thing you sell, eBay and the other auction sites can do a lot for you. Make sure to avoid small and dark photos. Listings should be created which are descriptive and include realistic prices. Check the Completed Listings option when searching to see examples of photos which have sold.

5. Freelance sites. Unlike the other options listed up to here, freelance sites are generally a place for work for hire projects. This means that usually a buyer comes and asks you to make some photos especially for him or her, but very often there are buyers who offer to purchase your already made (or stock) photos as well.

6. Your own website. Even if the other options work great for you, having your own website is a valuable sales channel. You can offer everything you like - i.e. low resolution mockups for free, paid downloads, etc. The downside is that you need to market your site, otherwise you will hardly get much traffic and, respectively, sales. Search engine optimization is a must and if you are really serious about selling your photos via your website, you can even consider starting an affiliate program.

7. Free samples. These days advertisements are something one can hardly sell without. Instead of launching an expensive campaign, you can give photos away for free but keep your logo on them. This is a kind of advertisement and it will bring you new customers.

Adobe To Release Earnings at 4:00 PM EST (NASDAQ: ADBE)

2010-08-02T22:27:00.001-07:00

By: World Market Media

Adobe Photoshop was invented by Thomas Knoll, a University of Michigan PhD student. During his stay at the University, he wrote a program for his Macintosh Plus to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. His brother, John later encouraged him to take a brief respite from school and write a full-fledged image editing program. Thus, Photoshop was born and was presented in Silicon Valley by John Knoll to both Apple and Adobe. Adobe decided to purchase the program in September of 1998. Photoshop 1.0 was released in 1990 exclusively for the Macintosh subsequently, 13 new versions of Adobe Photoshop have been released over the past 20 years. Version 2.5 was available was the first available for windows, and the newest version CS5 was released on May25th 2010.

The company has established itself as the best in breed in digital image editing, becoming synonymous with the action itself. Just as Kleenex is to tissues, Photoshop is to digital editing. When people see an unreal photo, the expression is "That's Photoshopped."

Adobe is also the proprietary owner of Flash, bought from Macromedia, Adobe Flash utilizes vector and raster graphics to provide animation, video and interactivity to web pages. Flash has also become a staple on the internet, providing a language for developers to create popular games and creative web pages. In a recent press debacle, Flash has come under fire by rockstar CEO Steve Jobs after many complained of incompatibility between Apple and Adobe products. On Apple's official website, Mr. Jobs wrote an open letter noting the defects of flash and why they are not supported by the company's iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. He writes of the language's draining battery demands, limited multi-touch operations and faulty security.

The reason for my focus on Adobe today is their earnings release, scheduled for 4:00 PM EST today and
Conference call scheduled for 5:00 PM EST. The company's outcome will be a good metric for the state of the software sector and a decent bar for how the remainder of competing software companies could perform in the future. In the past year, ADBE has been underperforming, gaining 15%, 5% behind the S&P. Analysts are also stating that the company's profit margins were slipping slightly, and that its customers were having trouble paying their bills, marked by a discrepancy between accounts receivable and revenue growth (Kapitall)

Currently ADBE is trading down .05 points or .15%, investors appear to be trading timidly going into the last few hours of trading before the earnings release. According to Kapitall, "The smart money seems to be running away from Adobe, with insiders and institutions selling the stock over the last 3 months: Insiders, who currently own 0.4% of the company, reduced their holdings by 26.6% over the last 3 months, while institutional investors, who currently own 84.92%, cut their holdings by 2.81%." (Source: Finviz)

To view this article at World Market Media click on the link below: http://www.worldmarketmedia.com/779/section.aspx/1913/post/adobe-to-release-earnings-at-400-pm-est-nasdaq-adbe

Disclosure: no positions

About the Author

About World Market Media:
WorldMarketMedia.com (The Global Online Investment Community) is a high traffic stock market, news data website providing cutting edge new media products and services to publicly traded companies worldwide. Our Editor's Desk authors insightful real-time coverage on the economy, the capital markets and their listed companies.

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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - Adobe To Release Earnings at 4:00 PM EST (NASDAQ: ADBE)

Photoshop Training Courses Teach The Amazing Things You Can Do With Photoshop

2010-08-02T22:26:00.002-07:00

By: David Peters

Adobe Photoshop is the market leader in photo editing software for the simple fact that it can do some truly incredible things with digital images. It includes a variety of tools which allow you to turn any ordinary photo into a professional quality image. One of the greatest things about the program is that you will have so much fun using the tools and features that the tasks you set before yourself will be completed before you know it and time will have flown by.

The smudge tool is one of the most popular features of this program. The smudge tool allows you to quickly and easily erase wrinkles, pimples, scars, zits. etc. Photoshop has found the fountain of youth and the people in your photos will look years younger thanks to your skills. Easily remove the shine from oily faces, improve skin tone, and remove additional weight, turning everyone into super models.

\"Red eye\" is one of the most common problems with photos and regardless of how advanced your camera is, or how great your skill as a photographer, it is difficult to avoid this problem. Red eye is caused by light reflecting back from the pupil of the subjects eye once the flash is reflected. Some of the more expensive digital cameras have advanced flash settings that claims to conquer the red eye occurrence; however, there is really no 100 percent guarantee to remove it. Photoshop has a red eye tool and with a click of the mouse you can easily and quickly rid yourself of one of the most common reasons photos are discarded. In fact, you can even remove the red eyes even those on your favorite four-legged friend.

Along with the smudge tool and red-eye reduction feature there are a variety of other tools that help you clean up your photos, including fixing lighting problems. The brightness and contrast tool, color enhancing tools, and sharpening and blurring tool make the process of editing photos quick and easy. Shadows can often cover your subjects faces, again ruining your photos. Photoshop will help you brighten up the photos simply by using the sliders on the brightness and contrast tool. Also, it can bring out the vibrant colors of a particular photo. Shaking hands can create blurred images however with a few clicks using the sharpening tools you can easily straighten items out and give you amazing results.

Another, often unavoidable, problem that can occur with your photos is the appearance of strangers or other objects in the background that distract from the subject. Often, when looking at the printed photo, you will find that a stranger has actually posed for the photo but don\'t realize it until its too late and you can\'t retake the picture. With the tools available in Photoshop you can crop elements out of the picture. Regardless of whether it\'s a stray dog, an airplane going across the sky, or a complete stranger ruining the great moment, you can easily cut them out of the picture and fix the portion where you edited out the element as if nothing was there before.

Feeling creative? Using Adobe Photoshop you can give in to your artistic desires. Change colored photos to black and white or make them look as if they were taken 60 years ago by applying a sepia effect. Turn a photo into a water color or pencil sketch. All that is takes is a good imagination.

Take your skills to the next level and swap out your background. Always wanted to be in Paris? Paste a photo of yourself onto a layer that has an image of the Eiffel Tower on it.

These are only a few things you can do with this program. Regardless of your photography skills you easily create professional quality images with this powerful program.

Photoshop training courses are in great demand due to the complexity of the Adobe Photoshop software. It is a bit of a slap in the face from Adobe, that anxious customers want to get started with their new costly software.

Well, I am afraid to say that Adobe restrict themselves to giving explanations rather than anything creative to show exactly how to do things step by step. That is why you are virtually forced to make a further investment in obtaining beneficial Photoshop training.

David Peters is without a doubt the very best Photoshop coach there is, and you can find out more about the David Peters Photoshop Training Courses on his official web site

The Photoshop video tutorials are excellent quality, and you will begin to learn different Photoshop techniques in no time at all.

So even though Adobe virtually force you to find Photoshop training courses, it is just as well that David Peters takes care of the situation with his well illustrate Photoshop video tutorials.

When it comes to Photoshop Training Courses, don\'t think twice. Head over to the David Peters web site, and find out more ...

Adobe Photoshop Edit Tricks For Beginners

2010-08-02T22:26:00.001-07:00

By: David Peters

AdobePhotoshopis a wonderfulcomputer applicationto learn. Thisis basica;lly;an imageediting;softwareprogramthatwillallow you to edit, alter, and enhanceimages;, suchas photographs.By knowingabout the basictoolsusedin AdobePhotoshop,you willbe wellon yourway in becomingan expert on the programand even makesomemoneyout of it.

WithAdobePhotoshop,you can makeyourphotographs look professionaland becomea freelance photographeror you can even becomea photographydoctor,where you editand enhancephotographs.

However,before you start dreaming of makingmoneyout of AdobePhotoshop,you needto remember thatthereare stillquite a lot of thingsthatyou needto learnabout AdobePhotoshop.As a beginner, here are sometricks;thatwillmakework a lot morefun for you and alsoa lot easier.

The first trickis by turningany colorin to the foreground color. To do this,you needto pressI to activate the eyedroppertool.Then,click on the coloron the image. Thiswillautomaticallyturnthatcolorin to the foreground color. To turnthatin to the backgroundcolor, all you needto do is pressthe ALT key and click on the colorin the image.

Changing the sizeof the brushis alsoan essential part of Photoshop.It is a fact thatchanging the brushsizewillrequireyou stop working, click on the brushtip sizeand reduce or increase the sizeaccordingto yourpreferences.Thisis time consuming.One trickis to simplypressthe rightbracketkey "]" to increase the sizeof the brushtip and the leftbracketkey "[" to decrease it. That\'s how simpleit is.

Also,by knowinghow to activate the movetool withyourkeyboardcan save you a lot of time.To do this,all you needto do is pressletter "V" on yourkeyboard. You can alsouse the keyboardarrowkeysto push the layer or the selectionby 1 pixelincrements.To speedthingsup, just pressthe shiftkey along withthe arrowkey to nudge in 10 pixelincrements.ThisAdobePhotoshoptrickwillhelp you save a lot of time when workingwithPhotoshopespeciallywhen you are workingwithlayers.

Pressingthe TAB buttonon yourkeyboardwillhideall yourpalettes. PressingTAB again willbring them back.Pressingshiftand TAB willhideeverything except the toolbar. Thisis one trickthatwillmakeworkingwithPhotoshopa lot moreconvenient.

Tozoomin and out,you willusually click on the tool and click the mouse.To makeit easier, the keyboardshortcuttrickis to pressCTRLand the plus signon the keyboardto zoomin and CTRLand the minussignto zoomout.

There are quite a lot moreshortcuts;and tricks;in AdobePhotoshop.These are just someof the basictricks;thatwillmakeworkingwithPhotoshopa lot easier.By mastering the tricks;in Photoshop,you willsee thatworkingwiththe softwarewillbe a lot faster and a lot moreconvenient.

Try to read the tutorialsincludedin the Photoshopas this willteachyou about the different tricks;and shortcuts;withAdobePhotoshop.By knowinghow to applythe shortcuts;and tricks;, you can be surethatyou willfindit easier and lessfrustrating when workingwithAdobePhotoshop.

Video Tutorials – a Fast and Efficient Way to Learn Adobe Photoshop

2010-08-02T22:24:00.001-07:00

By: Groshan Fabiola

What are the advantages and disadvantages of learning about multimedia software applications with the help of video based training?

Let us start with the advantages. First of all, there is no time constraint, because self study video tutorials can be used at any time you want, in the privacy of your home or elsewhere, they allow accessible learning. You do not have to interrupt any of your activities just to get to class in time. Unlike the traditional way of studying, which is the class format - such as at school or university - video tutorials are available with no time or place limitations. Secondly, unlike teaching yourself by reading a thick textbook, which can be quite confusing at times, you have the opportunity to watch other people perform tasks and put them into practice yourself. Moreover, learning with video tutorials is very time-efficient, and we all know the famous English saying ‘Time is money’. Some people need to improve their technical skills and standards in a timely manner, and what better way to do so than by using the affordable, efficient and fast option that e-learning provides?

As far as the disadvantages of virtual training as far as video tutorials are concerned is the only notable fact that you cannot ask extra questions about a problem or an aspect that you are still not familiar with, which you would be able to do if you were in class, following the presentation of an instructor . However, video tutorials are developed by specialists in the field, and the chances that they may have omitted an important aspect or an answer to your possible questions are very slim. When you feel that you are not completely clear about something, all you have to do is play the tutorials again and look carefully for your answer, which has to be there somewhere.

When you need to learn Adobe Photoshop, or any of the Adobe products really fast, video tutorials are the answer. There are many learning formats available and many virtual training company specialists, but once again video training has turned out to be the best acquisition.

The Adobe Photoshop training videos address beginners and expert users alike. Each of these training videos provides you with timesaving techniques and step-by-step training, which will definitely be useful for graphic designers and video artists who want to use Adobe Photoshop efficiently. Not only do these videos provide Photoshop training, but they also come with inspirational ideas for professional style graphics.

The Adobe Photoshop training videos guide you through each design, from the very first blank canvas all the way to the work of art that you can create. The videos may contain image files so that you can work along with the instructor as you are being taught timesaving and creative techniques. These techniques include adjustment layers, layer sets, alpha channel masking, brush and text techniques, gradient overlay, shearing, and many more.

All in all, it is safe to say that video tutorials in general and Adobe Photoshop training videos in particular are a good combination of minimum effort and maximum impact, as well as a very good choice for those who wish to learn these multimedia applications in a fast and effective manner.

For more resources about adobe photoshop training videos or even about video tutorials please review this page http://www.mediaroots.co.uk

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For more resources about adobe photoshop training videos or even about video tutorials please review this page http://www.mediaroots.co.uk

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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - Video Tutorials – a Fast and Efficient Way to Learn Adobe Photoshop

10 Most Prominent Photo Shops in the US and UK

2010-08-02T22:02:00.001-07:00

By: Jayesh Bagde

Photo shops play an integral part in assisting people capture, process, and print photos. With today's technology, preserving, beautifying, and editing photos are made possible.

Photo shops have a lot to offer starting from photo framing, film processes, and instant kiosk prints, along with canvas prints, slide film processing, and black and white images. This also goes with film processing, 35mm film processing, enlargements and reprinting. Thus, many photo shops offer the perfect setting for the whole family in order to have their own portrait.

Listed below are some of the photo shops that are located in the USA.

Don's Photo: This shop's main goal is to print digital pictures and traditional 35mm pictures. It also has online printing services. Many branches of these photo shops are there around the USA that continues to offer the best quality products in the photo industry.

Photo Repair Shop: It has the ability to remove an object or objects, a person or person and add a person or a lot of people in an image. The Photo Repair Shop is expert on photo retouching and changing the resolution of images. It also offers photocopying or Xerox, printing images, enlarging images and images that are uploaded to FTTP server.

Reed Photo Management: This photo shop has studio services for family portraits, special events, weddings, and albums. This management is able to change the graphic and color design of images as well as formatting and printing. It also has a huge selection of camera brands such as Minolta, Olympus, Canon, Tamron, and camera accessories. This store is located at #4 Amagansett Square, USA.

Shutterbug Photo Shop: The photo shop offers a large selection of digital cameras with brands such as Olympus and Canon. It has a full variety of black and white printing and developing services. It also offers changing the machine print into sepia toned, hand colored image and hand printed. Shutterbug photo shops have 50 up to 70 percent discounts for every camera the customer buys. This photo shop can be found at 24002 Fabricante Suite, USA. Their work starts on Monday and ends on Friday from 9:30 am up to 7: 00 pm.

Photorama Photo shop: This shop is famous for using the wiregrass spot in order to develop images. This photo shop offers photo restoration, photo repair video service, photo gift, custom framing, graphic design, and yearbook ads. It can also change any photo into artworks, slides, and movies. This shop is located at #329 Westgate Parkway, Dothan.

Tanagalooma Photo shop: The photo shop has a lot of landscape photos to sell. This photo shop also sells camera accessories and brand new digital cameras for professionals as well as ordinary photo-lovers. It also repairs cameras, frames pictures, and has photographer services. It is situated at Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort in Moreton Island. This shop is open from 8:30 am up to 4:30 pm daily.

Elite Photo Shop Design: This photo shop can bring back the life and the sparkle of all the fading images. This photo shop is able to restore photos, thus creating fresh memories. It also edits the graphic design, changes the background and colorization of the photo, glamorizes the photographs and duplicate photos of the restored photographs.

Big Photo Shop: This photo shop is an expert on large digital printing, creating attractive digital prints and framed prints or canvas. The customers bring the materials they use. It also offers a free delivery as well as richness of colors in every photograph, wide variety of incredible frames and diamond polished sides. This shop is located at Unit 10 Minafon Park, United States.

Steve's Photo Shop: This shop uses photographic lights tents, fluorescent studio lights, digital tabletop lights, and photo lights cubes. The entire photo frame is faster to sell. Steve's photo shop allows the customers to capture themselves. It also offers different light tents for different people and stuffed toys such as 120cm light cube for small photography, 80cm light cube for food, ceramic photography, and 50 cm light cube for die-cast model and toy photography.

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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - 10 Most Prominent Photo Shops in the US and UK

From ordinary photos to extraordinary canvas art

2010-08-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

By: Photos On Canvas

First, take a look through all your candid shots. Posed shots are great, but you want a picture that someone will walk into your living room, see the picture to canvas on your wall, and automatically ooh! and ahh! A special “moment in time” shot, such as your kids playing on their jungle gym or the dog with his favorite chew toy will bring new personality to your room. After all, anyone can have a posed portrait of their family, but that particular shot is all yours!

Another great idea is to use older photos, such as a wedding picture taken of your parents or grandparents in sepia tone or black and white. Printing these to canvas will make your one-of-a-kind photo last for a hundred years. Even better, these original gift ideas make fantastic anniversary gifts.

Is your child particularly proud of a picture he or she took? A great art project for your budding photographer is to take a favorite picture and turn this into a photo on canvas. Many kids love to shoot pictures, and making their favorite into a keepsake will be a great conversation piece now and in the future. WWW.PhotoArtPeople.com even offers 2-for-1 specials, so get a copy for yourself as well as your little Ansel Adams!

Hobby pictures are also great for printing on canvas. Are you into cars? Why not take a picture of yourself shining that Mustang you’ve been working on in the garage? Into fly fishing? Someone who loves to ski would look great against the mountains with trees in the background on a photo to canvas. Just look for a picture that you love, and you’ll have a canvas that becomes more than just a snapshot, it will become a keepsake.

There are only two technical issues you’ll want to keep in mind while choosing which photograph to print: focus and eyes. If your original picture is out of focus, there is no way for www.PhotoArtPeople.com to make your shot clear. Remember, if your picture is blurry when it’s small, the blurriness will increase as the photo is blown up bigger. So you’ll want to start with a picture that’s crystal clear. The other issue is eyes; if the eyes are shut in the photograph, there’s no way for the graphic artists to make them open, and they will be closed on your canvas.

Our artists can make your colors brighter, remove scratches and red-eye, increase contrast and fix most typical problems. We’re so sure you’ll love our work we offer a 110% money-back guarantee if you’re not thrilled. So send us your favorite picture; we’ll give you art in return!

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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - From ordinary photos to extraordinary canvas art

Top 6 most popular photos printed on canvas

2010-08-02T21:36:00.000-07:00

By: Photos On Canvas

Based on the 3 years PhotoArtPeople (www.PhotoArtPeople.com) has been printing our customers’ photos on canvas, we have learned a lot about what types of photos people prefer to have enlarged and printed on canvas. For those of you not familiar with what a photo-canvas is, let me explain.

Photos to canvas are a relatively new way to display your favorite photographs. Unlike a standard photo enlargement that is matted and framed, canvas photos are actually printed directly on canvas and stretched over an internal wood frame, ready to hang. At PhotoArt People our artists take your photo and enhance it to make it “canvas-worthy”. The image is then printed on museum quality canvas using a special printer, and sprayed with a protective laminate to make it last 100 years. Finally the canvas is stretched by hand over a wood frame “gallery-wrap” style, meaning the imaged canvas covers the edges to provide a nice finished look. Photo canvas prints make great gifts and are a great way to show off your favorite photos. “Out of the photo album and onto the wall” is what we say.

So what are the most popular types of photos people choose?

Wedding photos – This is the single most popular type of photo we get. Most are professionally posed but we also see informal shots of the happy couple. Great wedding gift idea.
Children – Photos of kids is a close second. These can be portraits or simple snapshots. The snapshots usually make the best canvas prints because they catch the child doing something spontaneous. And the grandparents love to get these as gifts.
Group family photos – This is also a popular type photo, and is usually printed in the larger sizes. Most people like these over the fireplace or in a prominent spot in the living room.
Special events – Graduation, anniversaries, special awards, family reunions – all make great opportunities for canvas prints. People like to memorialize these milestone events with a special photo to capture it for posterity.
Pets - We get a lot of pet photos as well. These make particularly great digital paintings (BrushTouch) because the fur provides a beautiful texture for the artists to work with.
Vacation/Travel – We have received photos taken all over the world. One of my favorites was one taken at Machu Picchu in Peru with a llama in the foreground. Vacation photo-canvases are a great way to rekindle memories from past adventures.

The fact of the matter is that any photo can be transformed into a photo canvas. The most important thing is that it be special to you in some way. At PhotoArt People we can fix most imperfections, but you need to come up with that special photo.

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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - Top 6 most popular photos printed on canvas

Adobe Photoshop Elements v.7.0 & Adobe Premiere Elements v.7.0 – Simple but powerful!

2010-07-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

By: Lacy

Online photo sharing with sites like ‘flckr’ and ‘facebook’ are very popular these days. But are you one of those people who haven’t unraveled the mysteries of organizing, editing, and sharing images? Let me help you out. Photoshop helps you tell interesting stories with your photos and videos. Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and Adobe Premiere Elements 7 software combines the number 1 selling consumer photo- and video-editing software products.

The software was introduced as an alternative to Photoshop CS4. Complete with new tools, such as Smart Brushes, Scene Clean, and Play Actions, and offered at a lower price, it’s a steal. Through this software, you can showcase your photos with a wide range of artwork and templates, clean your image of unwanted elements and more. The 2-in-1 Smart Brush performs the selection and edit in one step. You will not lose your treasured memories. Keep your photos safe with automatic online backup.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is more powerful than the older version and use-friendly. Elements 7 is arranged in four main components.

1. Organizer- Organizer helps you locate, mark, and sort your images.

2. Fix- Fix component gives you access to the most common adjustments you will make to your images.

3. Create- In the Create panel, you will find slide shows, calendars, templates for scrapbooking, and more.

4. Share - Web albums, email, CD/DVD copying, and other similar outputs are available in this component.

Apart from the standard tagging options and the album system at its core, the Organizer program has a new text search feature that searches metadata and keywords.

Finally, what are the system requirements for the software? For Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, you will need a processor that is 2GHZ or faster as well as Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or 3 or Windows Vista. In addition to a hard disc of 1.5 GB and a memory space of 1 GB, you will require a color monitor with 16-bit color video card.

For Adobe Premiere Elements 7, you require a processor with 1.8 GHZ with SSE2 support. The operating system required is almost similar to that of Adobe Photoshop Elements. A hard disc capacity of 4.5 GB is required, while the memory space needed depends on the operating system used. It is 512 MB RAM for Windows XP and 1 GB for Windows Vista.

So, with Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and Adobe Premiere Elements 7, you can relive and share memories with your family and friends.

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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - Adobe Photoshop Elements v.7.0 & Adobe Premiere Elements v.7.0 – Simple but powerful!

How to Choose the Best Photo Editing Software

2010-06-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

By: Anderson White

Finding the best photo editing software is crucially important, as much as capturing the photos. In deciding the best-fit, you will have to take into consideration several factors like the ease and convenience of downloading, the features offered by the software, necessity of training, and the price.

Assess your requirements correctly

The first and foremost thing is to know the exact type of photo editing software you require for your purpose. Thus, your requirement guides your search. Many photographers have different photographing requirements; however, getting the best software can help you broaden your requirements for better results.

For special effects you may require some complex gadget, while for routine day to day work, simple software would do quite well. For instance, Photoshop is a good choice for the professionals but as we know they are pretty expensive for novice. On the other hand for routine users the Frame Photo Editing Software could be the better choice. They enhance your digital photographs giving them a completely new look. The best part of it is that such editors have the capabilities for adding flowers, cartoons, and pretty frames on the photos.

Selecting your photo editing software

Apart from the nature of the task you wish to accomplish with the photo editing software, you will also have to take care of the price tag, because many patented software have very high costs and this may be burdensome for you. The length of time for which you require the editor to perform your task is another important criterion for determination of the brand or type you need.

If you are going for the professional photo editing software, you will require some training. Remember, professional software will cost you money and you need to learn the tricks of using them perfectly before using them. Without sufficient knowledge, you may be wasting your money on high priced software. On the other hand the general photo editing software having good features are available now and can be handled comfortably even by the novice, as it does not require any special training.

Software qualities to consider

Always try to choose a photo editing software that starts with a demo. Using the demo version you can judge the utilities of the full version. Of course the demo version should carry a good introduction to the full version. If you have multiple computers, you can have the full version on one and demos on others. But always go for paid versions instead of free versions if you desire best editing effects. Remember, the free versions may be misleading.

If you are a beginner, try software that you can handle with a few mouse clicks or key strokes and add features to your photographs as desired. Easy downloading facility is another factor to be taken into consideration. Convenient software should permit easy resizing, cropping and correction of photographs. It should also be able to paint, draw, and airbrush images creating stunning logos and designs.

Compatibility resolution

Even experts face problems of non-compatibility at times. It would be better if your photo editing software supports all types of images like the jpg, Psd, bmp, png, gif and PS. Customizing your photos as per your needs is another feature you should look for in any software.

In brief, your photo editing software should be an economical one that can guarantee faster editing of your captured snaps. So, opt for the software that enhances your photographic performance with ease and accuracy!

About the Author

Photo GIMP Pro is one of the most powerful and user-friendly Photo Editing Software available in the market that enables you to edit, resize, paint draw and manipulate your photos in multiple ways. The best part of the Photo Editing Software is its availability at whooping discounted prices. To know more, please spare few minutes to visit http://www.photo-editor-pro.com/.

(ArticlesBase SC #695968)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - How to Choose the Best Photo Editing Software

Free Photo Editing Software - What Features Should I Look For?

2010-05-02T22:21:00.000-07:00

By: Susan Schlenger

There is lots of free photo editing software available. Many are excellent for most editing needs, and some even have advanced tools.

So, what are some of the things to look for when you are choosing a program to edit your photos with?Here some features that I feel are important.

Let's assume that most photo software today offers the basic editing tools, such as saturation, sharpen, brightness and contrast, hue, crop, and red eye removal. Other than these, more advanced features are a plus....if you are going to use them.

For example, there is something called Curves. This is a more advanced edit which allows you to control lightness, highlights and so on in the same editing tool. If you feel it would be advantageous to you, then that would be something to look for in photo editing software. However, there is no point looking for a tool such as this if you know it is not for you.

One feature that I find extremely useful is being able to look at your original photo and the one you are editing (a duplicate) on the same screen. This saves you the time of re-opening the original to see if you like the changes you made. Looking at both images together allows you to see if you have saturated too much, if the crop is acceptable, if it has become to light or too dark, etc.

Types of Sharpening

There are many different kinds of sharpening methods in photo software. Most free software offers simple sharpening. For example, Picasa 3 provides a slider with which you can increase or decrease the amount of sharpening. If you use Irfanview, you must click to sharpen the image, and then click again to sharpen it more. If you feel you need more sophisticated methods, you might consider paying for more advanced photo software.

So, Where Are Those Tools?

I always find it important for editing software to be user friendly. I don't know about you, but I hate to have to search for the tool I want to use. As far as I am concerned, I like it when they are easily found, not hidden away. Of course, if you use the software and particular tools regularly, you do get used to it.

Easy But Effecting Image Resizing

You should have options for resizing both the physical size and the file size of your image, and it should be easy to do so. Adjusting the physical size will change how you see the image on the screen (or in print), while changing the file size will make it smaller, making it faster to upload. It will also then take up less space on your computer. I like to have some choices and be able to see what the resized image looks like with various file sizes.

Can You View and Locate Your Images Easily?

Some editing programs are also great image viewers. For example, you might be able to change thumbnail sizes. Are there options for viewing your photo layouts? With some, you can edit in batches (such as re-sizing or changing image file extensions) or even sync with online web albums.

Can You Have It All For Free?

Probably not. However, the goal is to find free photo editing software that will do what is most important to you. Maybe batch editing is not something you would use. Or maybe you don't mind opening up the original image to compare to the edited one, if it's easy to do so.

It's not difficult to download a few and try them out. See which you like working with the best. After all...they are free.

Some that I recommend are Paint.net, FastStone Image Viewer, Irfanview, Web Resizer, and Picasa 3. I have written reviews of these programs on my website.

About the Author

Susan Schlenger is a professional landscape designer and has been working with digital photography online for 10 years. You can visit her website Digital Photos Online to read more about working with photos online. To read her reviews of some free editing software programs, visit her page, Photo Editing Programs.

(ArticlesBase SC #760167)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - Free Photo Editing Software - What Features Should I Look For?

Photo Editing Software Feature Review - Top 3 Photo Editing Software Programs - Become a Pro

2010-04-02T22:21:00.000-07:00

By: Richard Seng

What are the Features and Advantages of using Photo Editing Software?Photo editing software brings the photo finishing lab to your computer desktop for a minuscule of the cost. Never again will you have to worry about capturing just the right angle with just the right amount of light.You will be able to upload from a digital camera, a removable storage device (CD, or zip flash drive), scanner or digital camcorder to easily edit your images. Photo editing software allows one to import and export using several different files and methods.Share your photos with anyone in the world. Because once you have used your software to make the necessary changes to your photos they will be ready for emails, prints, online galleries, slideshows not to mention the many other options that are available.Top 3 Photo Editing Software Programs Paint Shop ProImportant features to shop for when purchasing photo editing software include:Ease of Use: Start with your list of exactly what you personally want to do to your photos. After you have decided what characteristics of photo editing software are important to you, the next step is finding a user friendly program. These types of programs cover a broad spectrum from very simple to quite complicated. Look for programs that provide tutorials and “Wizards” to fix the most common problems with photos such as poor lightning, crooked images, red eyes etc.Formats for Exporting and Importing: There are quite a few formats the software program you choose should support, JPG, GIF,TIF,PICT, EPS, PDF, BMP are considered the most common ones. File formats are continually changing so the more the better.Editing: Choose a Photo editing program that will enable you to improve poor lighting, remove red eyes, add texts, special effects and so on.Photo Sharing Capabilities: Look for tools that give you the ability to optimize your photos for the type of sharing method you wish to use. So keep in mind file size, resolution, and image size. There are a variety of different methods for sharing your photos such as cell phones, online galleries, emails, PDA’s and print just to list a few.Output Features: A good photo editing program will allow you to store images in several versatile ways so they can be used in a number of environments such as printing, online photo galleries, emails, cell, phones, slideshows etc.Organizing: Shop for photo organizing capabilities. Can you easily review thumbnails of your photos? How does the software search for images? Does it use keywords, or ratings? Are you able to view EXIF (digital camera data)? Does this software allow you to store your pictures in a permanent album? Can you archive your images? These are important features to search for.Documentation, support and help: Is the documentation provided explanatory and useful? Does the program offer technical support in the form of FAQ’s, phone and email? What, if any, tutorials are available to explain difficult features and or options?Documenting your life with family and friends with photo editing software is what is referred to as high tech fun!

The Photo Editing Software That is Available Today

2010-02-02T22:20:00.000-08:00

The Photo Editing Software That is Available Today

By: Muna wa Wanjiru

With such a range of different photo editing software out on the market today, it can be very difficult indeed to choose the right one for you. I spent hours and even days debating which photo editing software I should go with before finally settling on one.

In my case it should have been a very straightforward decision really, money dictated what I could get and since I didn’t have much of it, it really should have been a no-brainer. Unfortunately, just like I drool over the latest in digital cameras every time I pass by a store front stocked with these, those days I also drooled over, and still do in fact, the various mouthwatering array of photo editing software available, most of which was beyond my budget.

That didn’t stop me craving after such photo editing software programs like Adobe Photoshop however. Although all it did was to delay the inevitable and to prolong my pangs of misery at being unable to get what I really wanted. However, I went with a generic relatively inexpensive photo editing software program and have that it’s not half bad really.

But just for the fun of it, I have made a short reference of some of the photo editing software that’s available now, just for you to get a general idea. Since I haven’t used most of these, I can’t comment on whether or not they’re any good, but it is a place for you to start from. These are; the Adobe Photoshop, JASC Paint Shop, Ulead Photo Impact, Corel Photo Paint, Corel Painter and ACDSee

About the Author

Muna wa Wanjiru is a Web Administrator and has been Researching and Reporting on Digital Photography for years. For more information on Photo Editing Software, visit his site at PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE

(ArticlesBase SC #303220)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - The Photo Editing Software That is Available Today

Real Estate Photo Editing - Increase Your Chances of Selling Your Home

2010-01-02T22:19:00.000-08:00

By: Adolph Paul

Whoever said that the first impression is the last impression got it right. The first visual impressions of prospective real estate buyers can either make or break a deal.

Getting the most attractive photos of your property on your online listing is very important. Hard as one may try, not every photo is perfect. There are some solutions that make it possible to rectify some of the worst pictures and to enhance those that have passed the test. Most problems with photos have simple solutions.

The current housing market is seeing limited buyers for the multitude of homes that are available. The first step towards making a sale is to get a prospective buyer to come visit one’s home. Considering that over 80% of today's buyers do their research online before narrowing down their choice to the few properties that interest them, good photos provide that winning edge to attracting a prospective buyer to a for-sale property. Many companies now provide convenient, online and easy to use professional photo services which provide custom photo editing and enhancement by experienced professionals to help Real Estate sellers.

Photo enhancement service providers can now provide a range of editing services that include under or over exposure correction, reduction or removal of shadows where possible, correction of wide angles, fish eye lens, wide-angle rectilinear lens perspective distortion or making an overcast or grey sky into a blue sky. In addition it is also possible to digitally mow the lawn, remove trashcans, dirty dishes in the sink or any other custom request. All these make a for-sale listing more attractive to buyers and bring out the best features in a property. Such services in the real estate realm are specially designed for enhancing the attractiveness of properties that are put up for sale and showcasing them for better effect.

Most agents have learnt the bitter truth that if the pictures look shoddy or unprofessional, not only are buyers going to find the property unappealing, they’re going to associate the seller with being shoddy and unprofessional, something that is going to make the property less attractive. Online listings can be given a facelift thanks to some great online professional photo editing and enhancement services designed with the real estate seller in mind.

Free Photo Editing Glossary

2009-12-02T22:19:00.000-08:00

By: MJ Johnston

Learning to use new technology is always a confusing experience. They are often full of complex jargon and you may feel lost without some kind of reference. If you're interested in trying your hand at editing photos in order to share them online, then read on for some definitions of common terms you might find.

Cloning Tool

A cloning tool is a basic copying tool that allows you to copy a part of an image to essentially create a "brush." Once you've copied the part of the image that you want, you can just use your mouse to paint that same like you would draw a line in a basic paint program. This is most useful when you have a specific texture that somehow ended up with some sort of blemish. You can simply paint over the blemish and, if done correctly, it will look like the natural texture. Some software programs have a feature that can automatically do this for you.

Fill-Flash

Fill-flash is sometimes referred to as a highlight or shadow adjustment tool. This tool can help you fix a photo in which the background is too dark, or the subject of the photo is too light (or vice versa). As with the cloning tool, many software programs have an option to perform this automatically for your convenience.

Adjustment Layers

Adjustment layers are a fairly advanced feature that allows you to edit a photo with affects without actually altering the photo itself. That is, instead of making changes to the picture itself, you create additional layers that are superimposed on top of the standard picture. You can edit the main photo or any of the additional layers at any point, or even delete the extra layers without affecting the main picture. Depending on what software you're using, you may even be able to adjust the transparency of the extra layers to whatever level you desire.

Type Effects

This term refers to effects that can be placed on text entered on your image. Depending on the type of software you're using, you may have to use a text tool to input your text, or you may be able to add text directly onto the image. In either case, type effects allow you to add effects like shadows, 3D effects, warped text, and many more.

Selection Tools

Selection tools are the tools that you use to select a part of an image that you want to manipulate. For instance, basic selection tools might commonly come in shapes like squares or circles. However, there are also advanced selection tools that allow for more unique interactions with the image you're editing. For instance, one type of selection tool might allow you to select all parts of an image that have the same color. Or, for maximum flexibility, you can use a lasso type tool to select exactly which parts of the image you want to work with.

Obviously the world of photo editing is very complex and these are just a few basic terms. If you run across other terms that you don't understand, you should just make a backup of your picture and experiment to find out what they do. You may be able to really improve the quality of some pictures and make your online photo sharing experience all the better.

Brushed Metal Effects

2009-11-12T00:36:00.000-08:00

By Matt Doyle. Level: Intermediate. Published on 16 August 2001 in Photoshop.

Learn how to create cool metallic logos and shapes with this Photoshop 5.5/6 tutorial.

In this tutorial we'll look at using some of Photoshop's tools to produce realistic brushed-metal effects. You can easily apply these effects to text or to other objects such as geometric shapes and interface bars.

Get selected

The first thing we need is a selection to work on. The shape of the selection will determine the shape of our final metallic "object". You can use a selection created from a path, a selection based on a mask, or any other selection you can dream up! In this example, we're going to use a text selection to create some brushed metal text.

To create the text selection in Photoshop 5.5, click and hold on the Type tool icon in the Tools palette until the little palette pops up, then select the dotted T (also known as the Type Mask tool):

To create that selection in Photoshop 6, select the Type option in the Tools palette. You'll see that the Options bar at the top of your screen changes to reflect the type options. Towards the left of the bar, select the "dotted T" option ("create a mask or selection").

Then create a new blank document, and create a new layer for the text. Next, click with the mouse in the document where you'd like your text to appear, and type the text in a suitable font (how about a nice chunky one!):

Click the OK button, and you'll see your text appear as a selection in the document:

Adding the metal effect

Now that we have a selection to work with, let's turn it into metal! First we need a solid block of colour to work from, so with your new layer highlighted and the text selection still active, select the Fill option from the Edit menu and fill the selection with 50% gray:

Next we'll add some noise to our text, which will be the basis of the "streaks" in the brushed metal effect. Select Filter > Noise > Add Noise... and choose an amount of around 200. Make sure you select Gaussian distribution, and check the Monochromatic box to create black and white noise:

Now we'll turn those dots into streaks! Select Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Pick a distance of around 80 pixels. You can vary the angle from the default of 0 to create the streaks in the direction you prefer:

You should now have a "brushed" effect to your object as follows:

You've probably noticed that the text has turned slightly transparent - we can see the background showing through. This is caused by the Motion Blur filter. But we want our object to be solid metal, not see-through! Let's fix this.

Select Edit > Fill again, but this time, choose Behind from the Mode drop-down list. As before, select 50% Gray:

This will "fill in" the transparent areas in our layer as follows:

Time to chunkify!

Our object is looking quite metallic now, but to really give it a 3-D "lump of metal" feel, we need some bevelling and outlining. We can easily add these effects in Photoshop 5.5 using Effects (in Photoshop 6 and later you can achieve the same results using Layer Styles).

To apply the appropriate effects to our object, first remove our selection (we no longer need it) by pressing Control+D. Then, if you're using Photoshop 5.5, select Layer > Effects > Bevel and Emboss.... We want quite a chunky effect, so whack up both Opacity values to 100% and choose a Depth of 6 pixels and a Blur of 5 pixels.

In Photoshop 6, go to Layer > Layer Styles > Bevel and Emboss. For these purposes, you probably want the Depth set to around 100%, the Size set at around 5 pixels and the Soften control set to zero. You can leave all the shading controls at default values, but have a play if you like!

To give the edges of our object a bit more definition, let's add a black outline. We can do this using the Outer Glow effect. In Photoshop 5.5, select Layer > Effects > Outer Glow, choose black for the glow colour (by clicking on the colour box and entering 000000 in the # box at the bottom), choose Normal for the Mode, and set Blur to 1 pixel and Intensity to about 50%.

In Photoshop 6, go to Layer > Layer Styles > Outer Glow. Within "Structure", set the Blend Mode to Normal, Opacity to around 65%, Noise to zero and the colour to black (the gradient should be black to transparent). Within "Elements", set the Technique to Softer, Spread to around 5%, and the Size to around 3 pixels. Experiment with this to your heart's content! You can leave Quality alone.

Finally, add a drop shadow to the object to give it more depth. In Photoshop 5.5, select Layer > Effects > Drop Shadow... (the default values will probably do fine). In Photoshop 6 use Layer > Layer Styles > Drop Shadow and try these settings: Blend mode: Normal, Opacity: 75%, Distance: 5 pixels, Spread at zero and Size: 5 pixels. Again you can leave Quality alone. We've now got a nice metallic-looking object!

To add more interest, try experimenting with a lens flare or two (Filter > Render > Lens Flare...). This example used a "105mm Prime" lens type:

You could also have a go at adjusting the tint using Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation (check the Colorize box), and use Image > Adjust > Curves to bring out the highlights and contrast in the object, as we've done in the example at the top of the page. Have fun!

The End

New Features in Photoshop CS3

2009-11-12T00:35:00.000-08:00

By Matt Doyle. Published on 3 April 2007 in Photoshop.

What new goodies await us in Photoshop CS3? Matt reviews the features and enhancements that Adobe have added to this industry-standard image editor. Is it worth the upgrade? Read on and find out!

If you're a professional Web designer, chances are that you've used Photoshop at least once in your life. This impressive application, nearly 20 years old, is very much the industry standard for image editing and photo retouching, and is often the software of choice for the Web designer too.

The latest incarnation - Photoshop 10, or CS3 - is just around the corner; Adobe officially launched it last week, and it's currently available for pre-order at the time of writing.

We've been playing with the CS3 beta for the last few months, and it's certainly an impressive beast. Let's take a look at the new, fun stuff that Adobe have added to their latest release, as well as areas that they've improved over CS2 and earlier versions.

New features

Although the new feature list for CS3 isn't quite as lengthy as CS2 was, there are quite a few radical changes in there - a redesigned interface, the wonderful Auto-Align Layers command, and the clamoured-for Smart Filters, to name but a few. Let's explore all these new features.

Brand new streamlined interface

The first thing you notice when firing up CS3 is the new user interface. For one thing, the toolbox has been slimmed down to a single column of buttons, rather than the pre-CS3 two-column design. This allows you to keep the toolbox out of the way on the side of your screen - great for freeing up horizontal space. You can easily flip back to the two-column version by clicking the double arrow at the top of the toolbox window.

Speaking of slimming down, Adobe have really gone to town with the palettes. The new collapsible palette docks let you reduce all your palettes down to tiny icons when you're not using them - see the screenshot on the right - which is a wonderful space saver. It takes a while to memorise the icons, but once you do you'll be flipping between palettes in no time. You can keep your commonly-used palettes, such as the Layers palette, open all the time, and collapse the rest to icons until you need them, freeing up more space to work on your images. However, if you prefer the old style interface, you can always drag your palettes out of the dock, and have them floating free again.

There's also a new Maximized Screen Mode - available by clicking the icon at the bottom of the toolbox, or by pressing F - that expands the document window to fill the available screen space between your toolbox and palette docks.

Universal Mac application and speed improvements

At last, with the release of CS3, Photoshop becomes a Universal Mac application, allowing it to run at native speeds on the new(ish) Intel Macs. In fact CS3 is generally zippier than CS2 was, with brushes and filters feeling that much more responsive than in CS2; the application is much quicker to launch too. It's nice to know that more features don't always mean more code bloat!

Smart filters

This has to be Photoshop's number one requested feature: "live" filters that you can go back and edit on the fly. These types of filters have been available for a long time in other image editing software, and it's great to see them make their Photoshop début in CS3.

They're a tad clunky to use, it must be said - you have to convert your layer to a smart object before you can apply a smart filter to it - but it's a welcome addition nonetheless. In use, smart filters behave much like layer effects in the Layers palette, as you can see in the screenshot. You can reorder the filters by dragging them in the Layers palette; this lets you control the order that the filters are applied in.

You can also set a blending mode for each filter, which is a really powerful feature.

Quick Selection tool

CS3's new, super-easy Quick Selection tool is like the Magic Wand tool on steroids. Rather than carefully clicking areas of your image to select them, like you do with the Magic Wand, you just casually "paint" around the edges of your selection using a brush size of your choosing. Photoshop then automatically selects the object you're "painting" on as it goes.

It's incredibly quick to use, and Photoshop often gets the selection border spot-on. If it gets a bit carried away, you can of course paint with Alt/Option held down to remove areas of the selection, or use the fabulous Refine Edge command. Speaking of which...

Refine Edge command

Refine Edge groups most of the commands available under Select>Modify, such as Smooth, Feather and Expand/Contract, into one handy dialog. This is great, because you can now fine-tune your selection all in one place and preview the results as you go. It works with any selection, whether made with a selection tool, or created via the Quick Mask.

Auto-Align and Auto-Blend Layers

The wonderful new Auto-Align Layers command automatically lines up several different photos of the same scene, even if the photos were taken from different angles. It's almost like a non-panoramic version of the Photomerge command.

For example, say you've taken three photos of the same scene, but with different people in. Simply stack the three photo layers on top of each other, select them, then run Auto-Align Layers. Photoshop rotates, squeezes and distorts the photos so that they all line up with each other. You can then copy and paste the people from the different photos into the one final image.

This is a pretty powerful feature, and it nearly always does a great job at aligning the images. It works best if your photos were taken at nearly the same angle though, and even then it sometimes gets it wrong. If in doubt, use a tripod!

Auto-Blend Layers, the perfect complement to Auto-Align Layers, adjusts the brightness levels of the aligned layers so that they're consistent, and also creates layer masks for the layers to mask off the ragged edges, leaving you with a nice square finished photo. Of course, because the layers stay as layers, you can still edit the individual photos if you wish.

Speaking of Photomerge, this stitching command - first built into Photoshop CS - has seen a major overhaul in CS3. The Auto-Align Layers technology is now integrated, which produces a much better result than in previous versions. It's even a fully automatic process now, though you can still go in and tweak the panorama manually if you like.

Black & White adjustment

Another oft-requested feature, the new Black & White adjustment command - also available as a new adjustment layer - lets you produce great black & white conversions of colour photos.

Although you've always been able to convert a photo to black & white simply by choosing Image > Mode > Grayscale or Image > Adjustments > Desaturate, these commands do a pretty poor job of it. This is because they don't give you any control over the conversion process.

For years, photographers have got around this by using various tricks, such as gradient maps, multiple hue/saturation adjustment layers and all sorts of other voodoo. The Channel Mixer adjustment has arguably been the most useful of the bunch; enable the Monochrome option and you can control the amount of red, green and blue that goes into the final black & white image.

The new Black & White adjustment builds on this by giving you six sliders: Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues and Magentas. This gives you much greater control over the mix of colours that makes it into the final image. It's also more forgiving than the Channel Mixer; the values don't have to add up to 100%, and it's much harder to clip your shadows or highlights. (Speaking of which, Adobe have thrown in a Total display in the Channel Mixer dialog, so you can check that your channels add up to 100% without getting your calculator out.)

It's an improvement in other ways, too. There's an Auto button that sets the six sliders to produce the best mix (from Photoshop's point of view, of course), and there's also a range of built-in presets to simulate various lens filters. Finally, you can add a tint - for example, a sepia tone - to the end result. This seems to produce a much nicer effect than messing around with a Hue/Saturation adjustment after the fact.

Exposure adjustment layer

It's a small change, but worth mentioning anyway: If you're a fan of using the Exposure adjustment command to correct in-camera exposure problems, you'll be cheered to know that Exposure is now also available as a non-destructive adjustment layer in CS3.

New blending modes

Another minor change in CS3 is the addition of two new blending modes: Lighter Color and Darker Color. They're simply composite versions of the existing Lighten and Darken modes.

In English, this means that they work by comparing the overall brightness levels of the two layers, rather than working on a per-colour-channel basis. Their effect, as you might imagine, is similar to Lighten and Darken but, because they don't affect the colour channels separately, they preserve the original colours in the layers.

Device Central

Device Central is a new satellite program that ships with CS3. It's designed to help you create content for mobile devices, such as phones and PDAs. You choose the device you want to create for, then Photoshop gives you a template document to use that's the right size for the device's screen. You can then preview your work on a virtual version of the device, by clicking the Device Central button in the Save for Web & Devices dialog (see below). You can also create and preview Flash, video and Web content.

It's very much beta at this stage though - it only contains generic devices rather than specific makes and models - but it'll be interesting to see how this looks in the final release.

Export to Zoomify

CS2 featured an option to export large megapixel images to a Web viewer called Viewpoint ZoomView, which lets you quickly zoom in and out of large images and pan around, Google Maps-style.

With the advent of CS3, Adobe have eschewed ZoomView in favour of Zoomify, which basically does the same thing, albeit without some of the advanced features of ZoomView. However, Zoomify works with the standard Flash browser plugin, so it doesn't need a separate plugin like ZoomView does. A big plus.

Improvements to current features

As if all those new CS3 features weren't enough, those clever-clogs at Adobe have been working hard to improve existing Photoshop functionality too.

Save for Web

The trusty Save for Web command now has the tongue-twisting name of Save for Web & Devices. It's very similar to the CS2 Save for Web, but the Edit in ImageReady button in the bottom corner of the dialog has been replaced with the Device Central button for previewing your image on an emulated device.

So why no ImageReady button? Simple: ImageReady is no more! It's gone to software heaven. The more useful ImageReady features - animation, slices and so on - have been absorbed into Photoshop itself; other features, such as image maps, have been dropped. Personally I think this is a great thing - it was always a bit cumbersome constantly flipping between Photoshop and ImageReady to do stuff like animated GIFs (which, let's face it, aren't as popular as they used to be anyway).

The dialog also contains controls for previewing an animated GIF and choosing repeat options. You now create the actual animation directly in Photoshop, using the Animation palette (Window > Animation, shown to the right). The old ImageReady features are all there, such as setting frame delays and adding tweened frames.

Cunning cloning

Many of the cloning tools, such as the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools, now let you preview what you're doing before you do it. To do this, hold down Shift+Alt (Win) or Shift+Option (Mac); an overlay appears, showing you what's directly under the mouse cursor. This is wonderful for avoiding those cloning accidents - I'm forever cloning a feature of the image that I didn't want to clone!

You can also now sample from the current layer combined with all layers below, rather than simply all layers, by choosing Current & Below for the Sample option in the options bar. You can also choose to ignore the effects of any adjustment layers when sampling - to do this, click the appropriate icon in the options bar.

Finally, there's a new Clone Source palette available (Window > Clone Source) that lets you store up to five different sample sources - from different images if you like - as well as scale and rotate the sampled pixels before cloning them. This is fantastic if you have a perfect area of the image to clone from, but it's at the wrong angle or size. You can also control the preview overlay from this dialog, including its opacity and blending mode.

Eyedropper tool

The Eyedropper tool, used for sampling colours from a document, has had a small update: you can now sample bigger ranges than 5 by 5. Much more useful in the day of 20 megapixel images!

Vanishing Point

Adobe have improved the incredibly handy Vanishing Point command, first introduced in CS2, with a couple of great new features.

Firstly, you can now Alt/Option+drag a resize handle on a plane to rotate that plane about any angle relative to its neighbour. In other words, you're no longer restricted to creating planes that are perpendicular to one another. This gives you a lot more flexibility and control over the types of perspective shapes you can create.

Secondly, whereas the CS2 Vanishing Point limited you to moving your selection over one plane at a time, in CS3 you can stretch your selected image over multiple planes; the image hugs the contours of each plane, twisting and turning as it goes. Perfect for making package mock-ups and so on.

Curves

The Curves adjustment dialog has had a bit of an overhaul. If you modify the curves of individual colour channels - great for correcting colour casts - you can now see the individual channel curves superimposed on top of the composite curve. This means you can see the whole adjustment on the one graph, which is handy.

Adobe have also added a histogram, as well as black and white point sliders below the graph, meaning that you can now easily do Levels-type adjustments within the Curves dialog.

Other useful additions include some great built-in presets for various colour correction scenarios, and a more obvious way of switching between brightness levels and ink levels. You can also view which parts of your image you're clipping, much like Alt/Option-dragging the sliders in Levels dialog. Finally, there's no longer a button to expand the size of the dialog - it's permanently "expanded" now. This seems like a good move; the old smaller Curves dialog always felt a bit cramped anyway.

Brightness/Contrast

Let's face it - the Brightness/Contrast adjustment has never exactly been the professional's tool of choice. With its somewhat "rough and ready" approach, and its enthusiasm for clipping images, posterising and destroying shadows and highlights, it's generally been relegated to the "special effects" department.

Adobe have addressed this with the new Brightness/Contrast; it's now much tamer. Brightness now adjusts the spread of the brightness levels across the shadows, midtones and highlights; it's a bit like using the gray point slider in Levels. Contrast adjusts the contrast across the midrange - the equivalent of using an S-curve or inverted S-curve in the Curves dialog. It's much harder to clip your image now. If you're really keen to muck up your image though, you can always check the Use Legacy option in the dialog to return to the old-school method.

Camera Raw

The Adobe Camera Raw plugin lets you open raw, unprocessed image files from many digital cameras - they're the digital equivalent of a film negative, in many ways - then process them, adjusting white balance, exposure, sharpening and so on, before opening them in Photoshop proper.

In CS3, Camera Raw has seen some major improvements. The most significant is probably that you can now open regular JPEG and TIFF files and process them in Camera Raw. Other welcome additions are the Recovery slider - for clawing back blown highlights created by dragging the Exposure slider - and the wonderful Fill Light slider, which is just great for adding punch to the lower midtones of an image.

Adobe have also overhauled the user interface, with more intuitive grouping of the sliders, and introduced a couple of new tabs, such as the HSL/Grayscale tab, which lets you control hue, saturation and luminance across eight colour ranges, as well as perform a black and white conversion right in the dialog. There's also the Split Toning tab, for adding a touch of colour to your shadows or highlights.

If you want to perform really precise, detailed adjustments to your images - whether they're raw files, JPEGs or TIFFs - the new Camera Raw is definitely the way to go.

Slightly better HDR support

High Dynamic Range, or HDR images contain a much wider range of brightness levels than standard images, allowing you to capture both your dark shadows and bright highlights without clipping. Usually this is done by taking multiple photos at different exposure settings - known as bracketing - then using Photoshop's Merge to HDR command (File > Automate > Merge to HDR) to merge the photos together into one HDR image.

CS3 features some minor improvements on the HDR front. Its Merge to HDR command lets you load and save camera response curves for later use, and it also uses the new alignment function from Auto-Align Layers to better align the photos. Having said that, it did a pretty bad alignment job when I tried it on a test image (shown here). It aligned the clouds in the image fine, but - presumably because the clouds moved between shots - the rest of the image was all out of alignment. CS2 was actually better in this regard! Hopefully things will improve in CS3 final.

In addition, more functions within Photoshop now support 32-bit HDR images, such as the Levels and Hue/Saturation adjustments, and the Emboss filter. It's still quite a limited range, though - hopefully HDR support will improve in future versions of Photoshop.

Better PDF handling

Adobe have made a small enhancement to the way Photoshop opens PDF files: You can now specify an exact width and height when importing a PDF page, rather than just specifying the resolution.

Improved printing

Printing from CS3 is now much simpler, with a single Print dialog handling both previewing and printing itself. The print preview window is also bigger, and Photoshop now integrates more tightly with certain printers.

Adobe Bridge

Adobe's Bridge software, bundled with Photoshop, lets you view, manage and organize your images, Photoshop documents and other graphics files. The latest version sports a new, snazzy-looking dark grey look - you can change the colour if it doesn't appeal - and various other improvements to the interface. For example, there's a wider range of views to change from, including a vertical filmstrip, and a Light Table view.

The new Bridge also features a Filter pane, letting you filter by an impressive range of criteria, including landscape or portrait orientation, and even aspect ratio. Another nice touch is the ability to group selected images together in a stack, for easier organisation. The new slideshow view is quite snazzy too, with Ken Burns-style sliding of images - though frankly it made me a bit queasy after a while!

So is it worth the upgrade?

CS3 offers some pretty nice improvements over CS2. Smart filters are a long-awaited feature and, while they're not the smoothest of things to use, the fact that we finally have non-destructive filters in Photoshop is a big plus. The Quick Selection tool is wonderful and really speeds up that initial selection process, while Auto-Align Layers will doubtless open up a whole new world of possibilities for photographers.

Speaking of photographers, this group will also appreciate the greater processing flexibility that the new Camera Raw offers, as well as the new Black & White adjustment.

From a Web designer's point of view, it's nice to see ImageReady-like features finally being incorporated into Photoshop, although this will no doubt infuriate the photo-manipulation purists.

It would have been nice to see bigger improvements in some areas - particularly HDR image handling - but overall this seems like a worthwhile upgrade across the board. And of course, if you run an Intel Mac like me, the upgrade's a no-brainer!

http://www.elated.com/articles/new-features-in-photoshop-cs3/

Groovy 3D Lighting Effects

2009-11-12T00:34:00.000-08:00

By Matt Doyle. Level: Intermediate. Published on 1 January 1998 in Photoshop.

Here we take you through the process of creating some cool 3D graphic effects in Photoshop using the "Lighting Effects" filter.

The Photoshop Lighting Effects filter is one of the most powerful filters built into Photoshop. With it you can create fantastic 3D detail in your images. In this tip we're going to show you various 3D effects applied to a simple button, using just the Lighting Effects filter and channels.

A lot of these effects can be achieved using the "Effects" options in Photoshop 5 or the "Layer Styles" options in Photoshop 6, but it's still worth knowing the theory behind them, and this tutorial has lots of other goodies in too, so read on!

Lighting Effects - a primer

If you are fairly familiar with the Lighting Effects filter, you might want to skip this section.

Here we see the default Lighting Effects dialog (get there by selecting Filter > Render > Lighting Effects):

On the left hand side you can see a preview of your image with the current Lighting Effect applied to it. The dot in the centre is a light, and the ellipse around it marks the area affected by that light. You can drag that light to where you want it using the mouse. Drag a second light onto the scene by dragging the light bulb icon at the bottom. Remove a light by dragging it to the trashcan.

On the right hand side are all the settings for the filter. These are described below.

Style: This is a list of preset settings. Click a preset to bring the settings up in the dialog. You can save your own settings to a new preset by clicking the Save button and typing a name. The presets are stored in Adobe\Photoshop\Plugins\Filters\LtStyles\.

Light type: There are three types of lights you can place in the scene. Directional is parallel light, as if from a far away source such as the sun. This gives a completely even lighting effect. Omni gives the effect of the light being directly overhead, creating a circular beam, while a Spotlight comes in from the side, casting an elliptical beam.

Intensity: The brightness of the light.

Focus: Controls how wide or narrow the beam is (spotlights only!).

Gloss: How much light is reflected by the "surface" of your image. Matte produces low reflections; Shiny produces maximum reflections.

Material: How much reflected light comes from the colour of the light source, and how much from the colour of the "surface". Plastic reflects all the light's colour, while Metallic reflects all the "surface" colour.

Exposure: The overall brightness of the effect.

Ambience: How much ambient light contributes to the scene. -100 means all ambient light (no light sources); +100 means no ambient light (just the light sources).

Texture Channel: This is where all the fun is. Here you can define a texture map (sometimes called a bump map) to create a 3D lighting effect. To do this, you create a channel with your bump map, then select that channel from this box. You can swap the high and low points (hills and valleys) in your bump map by toggling the White is high box, and vary the heights of the hills and valleys using the Height slider. Simple!

Light Colours: By clicking in the white squares on the right of the dialog, you can choose the colours for each of your lights (top) and for the ambient light (bottom).

Let the fun begin!

Now that you know how to use Lighting Effects, let's start making some 3D buttons! Make a new image and fill the background with a colour - or just grab this example JPEG and open it in Photoshop:

Make a new layer and draw a circular selection from the centre of the image (hold down Shift and Alt (Option) to draw a circle from the centre). Fill the circle with your favourite colour!

Now we'll make a channel based on this circle, which we will use as a texture map in the Lighting Effects filter. Ctrl+click the layer in the Layers palette to select the circle (if not already selected). Now to soften the 3D effect, feather the selection a bit. Go to Select > Feather... and enter a radius of 3 pixels. Now we make this selection into a channel. Go to Select > Save Selection... and click OK in the Save Selection dialog (make sure New Channel is selected). Now deselect with Ctrl+D.

Open the Lighting Effects dialog (Filter > Render > Lighting Effects). Make sure the DEFAULT style is selected. From the Texture Channel box select the last item - if this is the first channel you've made, it will probably say "#4":

Take a peek at the preview on the left. Wow, your button is now 3D! Experiment with different positions and orientations of the light, and different settings, till you get the effect you want. To add to the 3D effect we've placed a drop shadow under the button:

3D text!

Let's try some 3D lettering on the button. Ctrl+click your new layer in the Layers palette to reselect the circle. Fill it again with your favourite colour.

Choose Select > Save Selection... and click OK in the "Save Selection" dialog (make sure New Channel is selected). Now deselect with Ctrl+D.

This should make a new channel - probably called "#5". We didn't feather the selection this time, but that's OK, as we're going to blur the channel later to soften the Lighting Effect.

Click on the Channels tab in the Layers palette to get to the Channels palette. There's your new channel at the bottom. Click on it and it will appear in the document window as a white circle on black.

Now use the Text tool to place some black text on the channel (make sure the foreground colour is black beforehand!). Press Ctrl+D when you've finished to deselect:

Now we blur the channel to make the Lighting Effect smoother. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... and select a radius of 2 pixels. Click OK.

Great! Now click on the RGB channel, then on the Layers tab, to return to normal editing mode. Go to the Lighting Effects filter and pick your new channel (probably called "#5") from the Texture Channel box. Now your button has 3D text carved into it!

More 3D Fun!

Of course, you can use your new channel as a texture map for anything, not just your button! Here the Lighting Effects filter is applied to the background, using the same texture map:

You can use all sorts of images as bump maps. Just select your image, copy it, make a new channel in the Channels palette, and paste your image into it (it will appear as greyscale, of course). Here we see the Clouds filter used to make a channel, which is then used to apply Lighting Effects to our background for a "lunar landscape" effect:

And here we have the Hands.jpg sample file that came with Photoshop, turned into a bump map - spooky!

Fading One Image into Another

2009-11-12T00:33:00.000-08:00

By Matt Doyle. Level: Intermediate. Published on 2 January 2003 in Photoshop.

In this tutorial you'll learn how to use layer masks to create the effect of one image gradually fading into another.

Have you ever wanted to create an image that depicts two separate images fading into each other?

This is a nice professional effect that's easy to create using Photoshop's Layer Masks. This tutorial shows you how it's done.

Open the two images in Photoshop

We're going to use the following two images from our ImageKits in this tutorial:

Open these two images in Photoshop. They'll appear as two separate documents.

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Put the images into one document

So that we can do the fade between the images, we'll need them both in the same document. The easiest way to do this is to shift+click on the "Background" layer in the "books" document, and drag the layer on top of the "clouds" document:

(Holding down the shift key ensures that the "books" image will appear in the centre of the "clouds" document.)

You should then have both your image layers in the "clouds" document, as follows:

Add a layer mask

We'll now create a layer mask on the "books" layer. A layer mask behaves just like a regular mask, but it is attached to a specific layer. As with a normal mask, dark areas of the mask hide the underlying layer, while light areas of the mask reveal the underlying layer.

To create the layer mask, make sure the "books" layer ("Layer 1") is selected in the Layers palette, then select Layer > Add Layer Mask > Reveal All:

You can see that the layer now has a layer mask attached to it (the white thumbnail to the right of the layer thumbnail). Also, note that the mask is highlighted with a white rectangle around it - this means that you are now working on the mask, rather than the layer image. (You can click on the layer thumbnail and mask thumbnail to switch between the two.)

Fill the layer mask with a gradient

We're now going to fill the layer mask with a gradient fill, going from white in the top left corner to black in the bottom right corner. Remember that white areas allow the layer to show through, and black areas hide the layer, making the underlying layer visible. This is how we will achieve our fade effect!

With Layer 1's layer mask still selected in the Layers palette, select the Gradient tool:

Select the "Linear" gradient type and, from the drop-down colour box, choose the "Black, White" swatch:

Now, click and drag in the document window from the bottom right of the image to the top left, to create the gradient fill:

You should now see the finished effect, with one image smoothly fading into the other!

Tweaking the fade effect

If you're not happy with the fade effect, you can play with the layer mask to achieve the desired result. Remember that the layer mask can be edited and drawn upon, just like a regular bitmap image!

For example, to produce a sharper transition, increase the contrast of the layer mask (Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast...):

You might also like to try playing with the various blending modes for Layer 1, or applying different filters to the layer mask, until you get the effect you're after.

Enjoy! :)

http://www.elated.com/articles/fading-one-image-into-another/

Free Photo Editing Software - Five Recommended Programs For Image Editing

2009-10-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

By: Susan Schlenger

If you have read my article, Free Photo Editing Software - What Features Should I Look For, then you will have some ideas of tools that are available. Although there are many editing programs available, I have used quite a few. These below are ones that I would recommend. They are all free.

Paint.net

This software is pretty straight forward and easy to use. It also offers some advanced features, such as layers and curves. It's resizing screen showing your image only appears after you do a save. This is not bad, as long as you are aware of it.

Irfanview

Know mostly as an image viewer, Irfanview is an editor also. It has a multitude of features, such as batch resize and being able to change thumbnail sizes when viewing your images. It also offers a huge amount of image file types if you want to change the extension of a photo.

That being said, I find this program to be the most confusing to use. I do not use it regularly. I would assume that if I did, I would get used to it. It does, however, have a lot to offer.

FastStone Image Viewer

Again, great as an image viewer with some very useful features. I like that you can view both images, the original and a duplicate for editing, together. Once you have enlarged a photo to take up the full screen, various options are available by moving your mouse to the top, bottom, left or right parts of the screen.

For example, go to the top of the screen and a thumbnail strip of all of your images in that folder will appear. You can click on any image and it will then be the full screen photo. This is a useful tool, allowing you to work with a full screen image and easily see your other pics in the folder.

Web Resizer

This is actually a website. It's strong feature is how it resizes pictures, but you can also do some simple edits. It is very easy to use. It clearly shows what your image will look like by comparing different file sizes for the same picture. Upload a photo to work with it, and then download it to save it on your computer.

Picasa 3

Picasa 3 is photo editing software, but it also offers some other things. As an editor, it has a wide range of tools, divided into three categories. It's other features are that it is an image viewer and organizer. You can also send your digital photos to an online printer. If you choose to use Picasa Web Albums as an online photo sharing site (and for storage), you can sync it with Picasa 3 so that edits and changes made in Picas 3 will automatically be made in Picasa Web Albums.

You can download any of these free programs and try them out. Although none does everything, you will most likely find one that meets most of your needs.

Which Photo Editing Software is Best for You?

2009-09-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

By: James Kara Murat

Oddly enough, there are a very few top notch photo editing software being offered to the market today. There are many packages offered, but a vast majority is not really worth the dollar regardless of how little they are selling for. Generally $50-99.99 is a rule of thumb to find the best photo editing.

Photo software capabilities

As of July 2007, the top ten photo software packages cover the spectrum of capabilities that an advanced or beginning editor might need. Considering the myriad of capabilities available it would be difficult to address each but, generally, the categories that define these capabilities include:

• Importing

• Editing

• Sharing

• Organizing

• Editing

• Support

• Configurations

While indicating which software package has the best photo editing would be difficult, because all offer the same capability to a degree, it is safe to say that they all do the job adequately. The issue just comes down to which package has the right “feel” for your needs.

Organization

The one area where your particular tastes may warrant a closer look is the organizing function. The temptation in digital picture taking is that the photographer snaps a picture of anything that moves, or does not move for that matter. Organization becomes important in this case. Fortunately, all software packages have a browser function so there is some familiarity there, but having a system that works along the way you think is best. Knowing how your mind files items is the key, and each software package offers varying forms. Since each photo editing software package is so similar the issue may just come down to photo paper.

Photo paper

Here again, there are only a few suppliers and each does a good job of producing quality photo paper. The consumer world has a fairly good idea of all the photo paper options available. The consumer also understands that, in the marketplace, they are really just being offered HP photo paper and Epson photo paper. All paper being offered does a fairly good job, although some may fade or turn an unappealing shade of yellow.

Paper options

Regardless of whether an hp photo paper or an Epson photo paper is chosen, paper type is the real choice for the consumer. There are two finish types; glossy or matt. Matt will give a glare resistance factor to the image while a glossy photo finish will see an image “pop” off the paper. Photo paper manufacturers have developed systems that will yield fantastic images and one’s that deal with the past issues of thumb prints and wet ink.

Paper size

Far be it to neglect the consumer that just wants a photo paper 4X6, manufacturers supply both types of paper; glossy and matt for the average photographer. The glossy photo paper is most often chosen for more advanced photo takers while those that just want to hand pictures of the kids around repeatedly will take the matt paper option.

The same but different

Software or pictures, printing has become about as easy as it can get. Each software package is about the same as is the paper. Think simple at the beginning because all the fancy stuff is likely already there and waiting you to get the nerve up to give it a try. The thing is, it’s not all that difficult so pick the one that feels right and go with it.

3 Fireproof Ways Of Protecting Your Family Photos

2009-08-02T22:12:00.000-07:00

By: Greg Gillespie

It is probably one of our greatest fears of loss, to be standing amidst the burnt out remains of what used to the place where our family home once stood. The absolute devastation of not know where to start in putting the pieces all back together, personal keepsakes, important documents, your clothes, insurance papers, financial information and your photos all lost.

Devastating.

Okay so you are glad to be alive, to have gotten your family and pets out safely, you can be thankful to God for this, but this is a situation that you never thought you would find yourself in. Doesn't this just happen to other people?

Yes this does happen to other people, in the wake of the recent tragic Australian bus fires that swept through Victoria and at a pace so ferocious that caused the destruction of over 700 homes and claimed almost 200 lives. It is something that is happening more and more as our planet's temperature continues to rise.

Listening to some of the survivors stories, you hear over and over again how many of them lost their treasured family memories, that were taken away in the flash of the flames. Pictures of ancestors from past generations, those dear sweet photos of the grand children and the precious moments when your own children were young, your own wedding day - all gone.

One thing that stood out as a major contributing factor in the high numbers of lives lost in these fires was the speed at which properties and people were caught by the flames rapid onset. Being able to get everyone out including the last dash back to the house to get the photos albums was not a privilege afford by many, in fact some reports indicate that this one act may have contributed to the loss of some peoples lives.

Tragic.

So How Do We Get Better Prepared For Such Events?

3 Ways to Protect Your Family Treasures

Method One - Back Up Your Photos To CD or DVD

The first way to ensure that your family photos are safe in the event of a fire or hurricane, or tornado is to have them backed up and stored off site.

You can have your photos scanned on to your home computer if they are original prints, then saved to a CD or DVD and stored with a relative.

This method is fairly inexpensive to do but the downside is you need to be vigilant in remembering to do the scan or save to your computer from your digital camera and then on to the removable media CD or DVD for storage.

This method is the most time consuming.

The Second Way Photo Backup the Free Method

The second method is to use a free photo sharing service such as Flickr or Picasaweb to store your photos online. The advantage with using such a service you can get into the habit of uploading all your photos to online web albums that you can easily with friends and relatives.

Your friends are able to download your photos and have prints made for themselves, which in itself is another level of extra insurance that your photos are going to survive come what may.

The only downside to the free method of online photo backup is that you can never be sure that your photos will not be removed or lost from their servers. In fact many stories can be found of people who have used free photo back up or sharing sites as their only source of their photos, and had all their memories swiped.

Some of us may be familiar with the process here, when we are uploading our photos from our cameras memory we are asked if we want to delete the originals or keep them. Don't know about you but I always click to delete. Now this method is okay if you them stored on your home computer as well as your photo sharing back up website service but some people for want of space saving have deleted their home copies.

Another problem associated with most things free on the web these days is advertising. If you don't want your photos sharing their web space along side of annoying advertising then you may need to consider my suggestion of the third way of ensuring your photos survive.

The last and perhaps the most prevalent and offensive an issue you will no doubt come up against on the free photo sharing sites is the presence of pornographic images and advertisements that people upload. In fact when doing my research for this article I was confronted by an overwhelming amount of sexually explicit materials both video and still images, that left my stomach churning with disgust.

As they say, like all things in life, "you get what you pay for" and in this case not paying you get more than you bargained for. And it stands to reason that these free sites just don't have the staff or resource to ensure the porn is kept out as they only make money from their ads.

The Third Way To Safe Back Up Photos - Paid Photo Storage

It may come as no surprise that the third way to achieve safe, secure and guaranteed backup of your treasured family photos is to use a photo storage website that charges a small fee, of around $40 per year is the same as about .10c a day. Not bad insurance for your life most treasured memories.

All the advantages of online easy to upload storage that in some cases is unlimited, as the free websites usually limit your photos storage amounts so you eventually run out, but not on the paid service websites, it is usually all you upload you can store.

Of course there are no annoying advertisements, the pornography is strictly excluded by the vigilant staff, so you can rest assured that the photos of your daughters 5 birthday party you send to your aunt in Sassquandicha are not going to be presented alongside an ad for an adult xxxx rated website.

There are many of the paid services to choose from but from my research the very best at this point in time would have to be Smug Mug. They have the best and easiest to use service I have found. They even come with a free 14 day trial that allows you to upload a few photos to test them out and see if they are as good as they claim to be.

I don't' know about you but if you are anything like me you are pretty tired of paying for things on the Internet that don't work out. I know I am so the fact of being able to safely test the service before I pay, is paramount to me trying anything these days.

Free Trial and No Credit Card Required

Another good thing with the free trial is you don't need to give any credit card details, just sign up and upload your photos.

So if safe, secure photo back up Is what will help you sleep better at night is what you are after then I can thoroughly recommend you check out the paid online photo sites for total peace of mind.

Photo canvas art is the best source for delivering new generation art work

2009-07-02T22:11:00.000-07:00

By: yourwovenphotos

In this modern era, individuals are looking for different alternatives in photo printing arena to transform their photos taken from digital camera into personalized photo gifts. So, best alternative that suits and safe guards your photo is through photo canvas art. The process of transforming new generation artwork from your favorite photo by printing them on to high quality canvas is nothing but photo printing on canvas. Many customers prefer photo canvas because of its combination of enhanced technology and artistry used in delivering the quality photo to canvas products which can easily fit for any occasion.

Apart from photo gifts, there are people who have passion of decorating their homes and office with new generation art work, so for them photo prints on canvas acts as decorative tool to display breathtaking artwork of wall hanging to be displayed in waiting room of your home and office. Photo printed on canvas creates positive impression on the person who view at it and with unique touch on picture can win you a lot of appreciation.

So, while choosing a company for delivering photo on canvas prints and to provide justification for your photo, there are few things that should be given attention in order to create prints that last for lifetime:

1) First of all your photograph should be analyzed to guess the feasibility of the print, it always preferred to choose images taken from digital camera to expect quality canvas print before placing an order to the company.

2) The best in the industry can only deliver quality photo canvas products to customer. So, while choosing you need to review the track record of the company and also check whether they are implementing the latest technologies such as dye sublimation deeply blend ink and quality canvas for delivering the end product to the customer.

Photo canvas prints have become best source for generating revenue and can help to make mark in the photo printing industry.It has become easier for printing photos on canvas through online option provided by printing companies, as it provides the option of uploading your favorite photo to the website. After which skilled artists analyze your photo and transform them into personalized masterpiece through their artistic touch given to it and then it is send to final stage of canvas printing. The final end product will be your photo transformed into a canvas print. Additional advantage of photo canvas print is that it can be stretch on to wooden frames and used as wall hangings.

Make Money With Adobe Photoshop

2009-06-30T00:13:00.000-07:00

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular imaging software packages around, but it's expensive! Here are five ways you can earn money using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements -- either as a business enterprise, for some extra money, or just to recoup your investment.

1. Offer a Photo Restoration Service. I'm sure just about everyone has a photo or two that hasn't stood the test of time all that well, especially really old ones. Using the Healing Brush, Spot Healing Brush, and Patch tools, you can make old or damaged photos look like new again.

2. Become a Photograph Doctor. Whether it's "red eye", "pet eye", poor exposure, or "finger over the lens syndrome" Photoshop can transform a ruined image into a pristine one. You can also use Photoshop to make a colour photograph look like a black and white one, or colour tint a black and white one to make it colour. Not everyone is a good photographer, so you need never be short of "patients".

3. Design Greetings Cards. With the photo enhancement and graphic design qualities of Photoshop, designing greetings cards has never been easier. You can enhance photos, make them into drawings or paintings, combine photos for humorous cards, the possibilities are endless. Birthday cards, get well soon cards, condolence cards, Christmas cards or cards for other holidays like Mothers' Day, the list goes on and on. You can easily find card blanks and envelopes from specialist suppliers.

4. Design T-shirts. Ever seen something and thought "that would look great on a T-shirt"? Well, you're not the only one! With Photoshop you can make it a reality. You can get transfers from stationery shops, and plain, cotton T-shirts can be purchased from low cost suppliers and even some supermarkets.

5. Web Design. Whether it's a full website, or just a few buttons or banners, web design is a skill that's in demand right now. You could take commissions, or design some generic "boilerplate" designs that people can download from a website and customise themselves.

Of course, you may need to get some extra equipment -- like a colour printer, scanner, and digital camera -- but you can usually pick this type of equipment up inexpensively on eBay or other websites. A DVD of royalty free images is also a must -- although check the terms and conditions to make sure you're allowed to sell products derived from them.

Word of mouth is always the best form of advertising, so ask friends, relatives, work colleagues, and other acquaintances if the need (or know anyone who needs) your products or services. You could also approach retailers with a portfolio of your work, and offer them commissions on any work they send your way.

How to Print Images With Photoshop

2009-06-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

If you use Photoshop then you must be aware of its fine printing capabilities. People create images with Photoshop mostly for web design or printing purposes. Let's discuss how you can print an image through the Photoshop interface the right way.

When printing through Photoshop there's one thing you need to be aware of, the dots per inch (dpi). This refers to how many dots per inch of paper, your printer can print. If you want a clearer image then you want more dots per inch. The more dots a printer can print in an inch of paper the better the quality. Printers are clarified according to the dots per inch they print. A printer which prints more dots per inch is generally better and more expensive.

The most commonly used dpi value for image printing is 300 dpi. Meaning that the printer will print 300 dots per inch of paper. That is, if your printer can actually print in that resolution which is very likely, unless you own a really old printer.

You can set the dpi of an image through the Photoshop menu:

Image > Image Size.. > Resolution

In the Resolution input box enter the value you want for your image. Your version of Photoshop might not mention dots per inch but pixels per inch, which is the same thing.

Now let's talk about the quality of ink for your image. This depends on your printer type. Inkjet printers for example can be cheap and they use jets of ink that they spray on paper. Ink quality is medium. Dye printers are more expensive than Inkjet printers and use a system to melt dots of dye that can generate over 16 million of colors. Ink quality is medium to high. Laser printers are very popular these days and they print in good quality. Ink quality is high. Last but not least there are the Thermal Wax printers that use blocks of wax that melt on the paper.

Now let's say you want to print an image through Photoshop. Before doing anything else go to:

File > Print with Preview

A dialog opens. Through that dialog you can set all kinds of properties for your image. For example you can define the position of the image on the piece of paper. You can specify the space you want to be left blank from top or bottom or you can let Photoshop center the image by ticking the "Center Image" check box.

Then you can define the scale of the image, it's height and width. I use the "Scale to Fit Media" check box a lot, since it lets Photoshop automatically adjust the printable size of the image.

Depending on your image you might want to print on portrait or landscape. You can change that through the "Page Setup..." button on the right of the dialog. A new dialog will appear that also allows you to choose the type and the size of paper you will use for printing.

Well, that's about it. All you have to do now is click the "Print..." button. Depending on your printer, a dialog will appear that will let you customize printer properties. For example you might want to print three copies of the image or tell the printer to use more or less ink. It's really easy to print images through Photoshop. I use this software all the time mostly for the "Scale to Fit Media" check box I mentioned above.

Five New Features in Photoshop CS4

2009-06-30T00:10:00.000-07:00

On the 23 September 2008 Adobe Systems announced the release of the highly anticipated latest version of Photoshop, Photoshop CS4.

Photoshop has long been the industry standard professional digital image manipulation program. It fact it would be hard to get a job as a graphic designer if you didn't have experience using Photoshop.

So lets explore the new features in Photoshop CS4 and then decide whether for $199 it's worth upgrading from CS3 to CS4. If you are still working on an older version of Photoshop such as CS2 or CS then I would definitely recommend upgrading. This article is going to focus on the top 5 new features in Photoshop CS4.

1. Smoother panning and zooming and fluid canvas rotation

Working with bitmap images often involves editing pixel by pixel. The smoother zooming feature will give you much more control as you zoom in and out of your bitmaps. Plus the new rotation feature is very cool and is a huge improvement on the somewhat clumsy rotate image handles. I give these new features 9 out of 10.

2. New Adjustments Panel

This panel contains some of the most commonly used color and tone correction tools. Tools, which Photoshop users use every day such as Levels, Curves and Hue & Saturation are now all located on this single panel. Photoshop allows you to edit in a non-destructive mode using an Adjustments layer. Even though this feature is not new per se, this new Adjustment panel makes it easier to work with many of these stable Photoshop tools. I give this new feature 5 out of 10.

3. New Masks Panel

This is a very cool new feature. The new Masks Panel is really powerful and it gives you full control over both pixels and vector masks. You can adjust mask density and feathering, easily select non contiguous objects, and much more.

You can still create layer masks in the old fashioned way but this new panel is much more powerful and will make learning masking easier for new users of Photoshop. I give this new feature 8 out of 10.

4. Content-Aware Scaling

This is my favorite new feature in Photoshop CS4. This new and revolutionary Content-Aware Scaling feature is used when re-sizing images. Users can select an area of an image that you do not want to lose when resizing and Photoshop will protect it, by removing other areas first.

Content-Aware Scaling automatically recognizes skin tones to keep people from being squeezed when you resize an image. So as you resize an image, people in the picture may move closer together or further apart, but they will remain properly proportioned whilst the background changes. I would have to give this feature a 10 out of 10.

5. Many enhancements

My final new feature is really just a whole bunch of cool improvements to existing features in Photoshop CS3. These include:
1. Improved color correction with re-engineered Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools
2. Improved auto-blending of images.
3. New preview feature on the Clone Tool.
4. Better raw image processing. I give these new features a 7 out of 10.

So in conclusion, Photoshop CS4 introduces some very new and exciting features such as fluid canvas rotation and content-aware scaling, a few new panels such as Mask Panel and Adjustments panel which help to improve your workflow, and a whole bunch of enhancements to existing features.

Overall I would have to say that $199 investment to upgrade is a no-brainer. Enjoy!

The first step - making the bar

2009-06-27T03:06:00.000-07:00

This is quite easy. First, make a new document with a width of 400 pixels and a height of 60 pixels.

Create a new layer with the icon in the Layers palette. Select the rectangular selection tool and drag out a selection in the centre of the image, 330 x 35 pixels in size. (To make this process easier, select Options in the Navigator, Info, Options palette, select the Options tab, for Style: select Fixed Size and enter 330 for Width and 35 for Height. Then drag in the image window. Don't forget to switch the Style back to Normal afterwards!)

Using the Fill command from the Edit menu, fill this rectangle with 50% gray.

Now for the rounded ends. Create a new layer. Select the Elliptical Marquee selection tool and position the pointer right in the centre of the left-hand edge of the rectangle. Holding down Shift+Alt (Windows) or Shift+Option (Mac), drag out a circle until the top and bottom edges of the circle lie exactly on the top and bottom edges of the rectangle (it may help if you zoom in a bit first). Fill this circle with 50% gray also.

Now drag this layer ("Layer 2") down to the New Layer icon in the palette to duplicate it. Hold down the Control key and, in the image window, drag this duplicate circle to the right of the rectangle, until it half-protrudes from the right-hand edge. Again, zoom in to position the circle exactly. Now hit Control+E three times (or select Layer > Merge Down three times), so that you end up with one layer ("Layer 1") containing our rounded menu bar:

Double-click on the layer in the Layers palette and rename it "Menu Bar". Hit OK.

Now's a good time to save your image! Call it something like menubar.psd.

Making the text options

Now to make the text buttons along the bar. Select the Text tool (the big T!) and choose your favourite font. Type in the menu options you would like, with each option separated by 4 or 5 spaces. Click OK to place the text on your image, then move the layer about until the text is centred nicely on the bar:

Rename this new layer "Menu Text", by right-clicking on the layer in the Layers Palette and choosing Layer Options....

Getting that sandstone effect

Let's make our menu bar nice and bumpy, like it was made from sandstone. Select the Menu Bar layer and Control+click on the layer in the Layers palette to select all the opaque pixels (this will stop the effect "leaking out" the edges of the bar). Select Filter > Noise > Add Noise... and enter an Amount of 35. Make sure Gaussian and Monochromatic are selected (we want sandstone, not confetti!). Click OK.

Now to smooth the texture out a bit. Select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... and enter a Radius of 0.5 pixels. Keep the selection around the bar.

Making it 3-D

Now comes the fun part. We're going to use the wonderful Lighting Effects filter to turn our 2-D bar into a 3-D one!

We want two things to be bevelled - the bar itself, and the areas around the text links, so that the text looks "indented" into the bar. We use the selection tool to tell the Lighting Effects filter which bits to bevel. We've already selected the bar (if you've kept the selection as mentioned above!), but now we want to subtract the areas around the text from the selection.

Becuase our text is all on one layer, this is really easy. Hold down Control+Alt (Win) or Control+Option (Mac) and click on the Menu Text layer in the Layers palette. Hey presto! Our new selection has had the opaque areas of the text layer cut out of it.

Now to make the bevel nice and smooth, go to Select > Feather... and enter a Feather Radius of 1 pixel. Now save this selection as a new channel, so that we can use it in Lighting Effects. Choose Select > Save Selection... and make sure New Channel is highlighted. Click OK. You can now hit Control+D to deselect.

Go to Filter > Render > Lighting Effects. With the DEFAULT style selected, select your new channel from the bottom of the Texture Channel drop-down list (it will probably be called "#4"). Experiment with different light positions and settings until you get a nice 3-D bevelled effect - these settings worked well for me:

Hit OK and take a look. If you're not happy with the results, hit Control+Z (Undo) and go back and have another go. In the end you should end up with something like this:

Making it even more 3-D

We can enhance our 3-D effect further with a drop shadow. Drag the Menu Bar layer to the New Layer icon to duplicate it, double click on the layer in the palette, and name it "Drop Shadow". Hit OK then select Edit > Fill, pick Black from the Use drop-down box and make sure Preserve Transparency is checked. Click OK.

Drag the Drop Shadow layer below the Menu Bar layer in the palette. Hold Control and press the Right arrow and Down arrow> keys twice each to shift the shadow down and to the right a bit. Select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... and enter 3.5 for the Radius. Hit OK.

Kind of blue (great album!)

Say I'm listening to Miles Davis while I'm making this bar, and I'd like to give it a touch of the blues to make it more refined and interesting. Make sure the Menu Bar layer is highlighted in the palette, then choose Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation.... Select Colorize and enter values of -160 for Hue and 10 for Saturation. Hit OK.

Making the highlights

We want our options to highlight in red as the mouse is moved over them, so let's make a new layer containing the highlights. First Control+click on the Menu Text layer in the palette to select its pixels, then click on the New Layer icon to create a new layer on top. Choose Select -> Modify -> Expand... and enter a value of 2 pixels. Now pick a nice bright red (e.g. 255,0,0 or the first swatch in the default Swatches palette) and select Edit > Stroke. Enter a Width of 2 pixels, select Center for Location, set Opacity to 100% and Mode to Normal, and turn Preserve Transparency off. This will make a solid red border around the text on our new layer.

Rename this layer "Highlights".

This effect is a bit harsh, so let's soften it and make it more realistic by changing the blending mode. With the Highlights layer still selected in the palette, pick Screen from the blending mode drop-down box (the one which currently says Normal). To mellow the effect a bit more, choose 80% on the Opacity slider to the right of the blending mode box.

Saving space

Our menu has some unnecessary white space around it, so let's crop the image a bit. Using the rectangular selection tool, drag out a rectangle that covers all of our image, including the drop shadow (if in doubt, allow extra space around the drop shadow, as it can be difficult to see where the shadow stops). A selection of 380 x 55 pixels should do the trick. Then select Image > Crop:

Cutting it up

Now for the clever part. We need to make 10 separate images from our main image - 4 for each of the text options unhighlighted, another 4 for the highlighted (rollover) versions, and two for the round end stubs of the menu bar. Luckily, Photoshop has the Guides feature, which makes this process a lot easier.

Turn on the Rulers using Control+R or select View > Show Rulers. Click in the ruler along the left-hand edge and, with the mouse button held down, drag to the right. That vertical blue line is a guide, and it will help us with selecting the bits of our image to chop up. Drag it so that it is mid-way between "home" and "about me" and release the button. If you got it a bit wrong, hold down the Control key and drag the guide around until you get it right.

(You may find as you drag that the guides "snap" to the edges of the pixels on the current layer. This is handy for aligning guides right on the edge, but it can be a bit of a pain in this case. To avoid this happening, select the Background layer in the Layers palette, as there's nothing on that layer for Photoshop to snap to.)

Repeat this process for the other two gaps between the menu options, then place two extra guides, one to the left of "home" and one to the right of "links". Remember - to create a new vertical guide, simply click in the left-hand ruler and drag to the right. You should end up with something like this:

Now that we've marked out where to chop up our image, the rest is easy. Choose the rectangular selection tool. Make sure Snap To Guides is highlighted in the View menu. To make this task easier, drag out the image window so that there's some grey around the image, or else zoom in a bit. Working from left to right, cut out each of the sections between the blue guide lines as follows:

Drag out a rectangle that extends from the top left corner of the section to the bottom right. Make sure all of the section is selected. The Snap To Guides option makes this easier by snapping the left and right edges of your selection to the guides.
Press Shift+Control+C (Copy Merged) to copy all of the layers under the selection as one layer. Press Control+N and hit OK to accept the default settings. Press Control+V to paste our merged selection into this new image:

Now choose File > Export > GIF89a Export and save the image. Call them whatever you like, but we recommend: left.gif, home_on.gif, about_on.gif, cat_on.gif, links_on.gif and right.gif.

That's six of our 10 images done. The other four will be the non-highlighted, or "off" versions of our menu options. Turn off the eye icon next to the Highlights layer in the Layers palette, and repeat the above process for the four menu option images. Call them home_off.gif, about_off.gif, cat_off.gif and links_off.gif.

Your images should look like these: (If you screwed any of them up, you can always cheat and grab them from here!)

Shake it, baby!

Now we want to make that menu move. It will help you a lot if you read our JavaScript tutorial on rollover buttons first, as this menu uses the same principle.

First, place the images in a row in your web page. Provided you use style="border: none;" the images should sit snugly up against one another, forming a seamless menu bar. Give each image a name with the name attribute, and place tags around each image, including the onmouseover and onmouseout JavaScript event handlers.

Of course, you don't need the stuff for the two end pieces!

Here's the code for the "home" button to get you going. Have a look at the source of this page if you want to see the rest.



onmouseout="button_off('home');"
onmouseover="button_on('home');">
style="border: none;" width="72" height="55" name="home"/ />

Next, we need to create our JavaScript image objects at the start of the Web page, and point each object to the GIF files for the image (both the on and off versions). It's a good idea to include the image width and height in pixels when creating image objects - you can find this out by dragging your GIFs one by one into Photoshop, then Alt+clicking (PC) or Option+clicking (Mac) on the status bar where it says "Doc:".

Again, here's the example for the "home" button:


home_on = new Image ( 72, 55 );
home_off = new Image ( 72, 55 );
home_on.src = "images/menubar/home_on.gif";
home_off.src = "images/menubar/home_off.gif";

Finally, we make our two JavaScript functions, button_on() and button_off(), add the sniffer code and the tags around the JavaScript, and we're cookin'! Take a look at the source code for this page, which should be fairly self-explanatory.

You should now be able to take these techniques and create wonderful menu bars for your own websites! If this tutorial has helped you make a groovy menu, please tell us - we'd love to see it!

Using the linear gradient tool

2009-06-27T03:05:00.000-07:00

The linear gradient tool is the shaded rectangle icon, just below the text tool ( ). The Tools palette will change to show the Gradient tool options:

Let's run through the features of this tool. The Normal drop-down box allows you to select a blending mode for your gradient; the default, Normal, replaces whatever was underneath with the new gradient, but try playing with different options for different effects. The Opacity slider determines how much of the original image will show through the gradient after it is applied.

The Gradient box contains a list of 16 preset gradients, and you can add your own gradients to the list.

Mask controls whether the transparency mask for the gradient will be used. Some gradients are partially transparent (e.g. the Transparent Rainbow and Transparent Stripes presets), but deselecting Mask will make those gradients completely opaque.

Dither creates a smoother gradient effect by dithering the gradient to reduce colour banding (noticeable on big images with low colour depths).

Reverse swaps round the start and end colours of the gradient. This isn't reflected in the gradient in the dialog, but it takes effect when you actually apply the gradient.

Filling with a gradient

So how do you actually use a gradient? Simple. After selecting your options from the palette above, simply drag in a document window to mark the start and end points of your gradient. When you release the mouse button, the gradient will be drawn onto the current layer:

Drag...

and let go

Here we used the Transparent Rainbow gradient, which means that the edges of the gradient are transparent. If you use most of the other gradients, you will notice that they fill the whole layer. You can prevent this by making a selection first; then the gradient will only fill the selection.

Making a new gradient

Let's create a new gradient. Click on the Edit... button in the "Gradient Tool Options" palette to bring up the Gradient Editor. From the list at the top select the Red, Green gradient:

Let's make a copy of this gradient and modify it to include the colour blue as well. Select Duplicate and enter Red, Green, Blue in the Gradient Name box.

See the green square, just below the red/green gradient strip, on the right? It has a triangle above it, pointing up towards the gradient strip. Drag this square to the centre of the strip - the triangle turns black to show that this colour is being edited:

Now click below the strip on the right hand side, where the green square was before you dragged it. Another green square appears! You can have up to 32 of these colour stops on the strip. The gradient will move smoothly from one colour stop to the next.

Drag this new square to the right until the Location box below it says 100%. Then click on the green rectangle to the left of Location and pick a blue colour (e.g. R=0, G=0, B=255).

Congratulations! You've made a new gradient. Try playing with the other settings in the Gradient Editor. The F and B buttons turn the current colour stop into the current foreground or background colour. This means that the gradients will depend on the user's current colour settings. Also, the diamonds above the colour strip mark the midpoints between pairs of colour stops. You can drag these midpoints around to ease in or ease out the gradient flow between the stops.

Finally, as we mentioned previously, you can make parts of the gradient transparent. Click on the Transparency radio button next to Adjust: to modify the transparency settings. Here you have colour stops exactly as before, but each stop has an opacity rather than a colour. This way you can make gradients of transparency which allow parts of the original image to show through.

3D fun with gradients!

Now that you know the basics of the Gradient tool, let's look at a couple of practical uses.

Let's make a very easy 3D button. Drag out a rectangle with the selection tool, pick a gradient (e.g. Black, White), and drag out a linear gradient from the bottom-right to the top-left:

Now contract the selection by 4 pixels ( Select > Modify > Contract...) and feather it with a radius of 2 pixels ( Select > Feather... ). Finally, drag a new gradient from the top-left to the bottom-right:

There we have it - a quick and easy 3D button. Nice! :)

Now let's make a 3D sphere.

Create a new document, make a new layer, and drag out a circle with the Ellipse selection tool (hold down the Shift key to constrain the selection to a circle). Then click on the Default Colours icon ( ), or press Shift+D, to reset your colours to black and white. Flip the colours using the icon, so that your foreground colour is white and your background colour is black.

Click and hold the mouse on the Linear Gradient tool icon in the Tools palette, and a row of alternative gradient styles will pop up. Select the icon to the right of Linear Gradient. This is the Radial Gradient tool.

Select the Foreground to Background gradient in the Gradient tool options palette. Now drag a gradient in your circular selection. Start it from near the top-left of the circle, and drag it down to the bottom right at a 45 degree angle (you can use the Shift key to constrain the line to 45 degree angles). Voilà - an instant sphere!

You'll probably want to add a drop-shadow to make the sphere stand out from the background:

Bullseye!

Here's a really simple way to make a target using gradients. Create a new image and make a new layer on it. Select the Radial Gradient tool and choose the Transparent Stripes gradient. Pick a suitable foreground colour (e.g. red). Now drag in your new layer to make a target!

Captivating chrome

The built-in "Chrome" gradient is great for making that chrome-object-in-a-desert look.

Let's try making a chrome sphere. Make a circular selection like you did for the sphere above, then fill it with a linear Chrome gradient. Start near the top of the circle and drag below the bottom, so that the "horizon" is below the centre of the sphere:

Now use the Spherize filter (Filter > Distort > Spherize...) a couple of times to bend the "horizon" into a spherical shape:

You can add a highlight to this "sphere" by creating a layer above it, making a sphere in that layer using the Black, White radial gradient like we did earlier, and selecting a blending mode of Lighten for that layer. A drop shadow completes the effect:

New features

2009-06-27T03:00:00.000-07:00

Brand new streamlined interface

Universal Mac application and speed improvements

Smart filters

You can also set a blending mode for each filter, which is a really powerful feature.

Quick Selection tool

Refine Edge command

Auto-Align and Auto-Blend Layers

Black & White adjustment

Another oft-requested feature, the new Black & White adjustment command - also available as a new adjustment layer - lets you produce great black & white conversions of colour photos.

Exposure adjustment layer

New blending modes

Another minor change in CS3 is the addition of two new blending modes: Lighter Color and Darker Color. They're simply composite versions of the existing Lighten and Darken modes.

Device Central

It's very much beta at this stage though - it only contains generic devices rather than specific makes and models - but it'll be interesting to see how this looks in the final release.

Export to Zoomify

CS2 featured an option to export large megapixel images to a Web viewer called Viewpoint ZoomView, which lets you quickly zoom in and out of large images and pan around, Google Maps-style.

Improvements to current features

As if all those new CS3 features weren't enough, those clever-clogs at Adobe have been working hard to improve existing Photoshop functionality too.

Save for Web

Cunning cloning

Eyedropper tool

The Eyedropper tool, used for sampling colours from a document, has had a small update: you can now sample bigger ranges than 5 by 5. Much more useful in the day of 20 megapixel images!

Vanishing Point

Adobe have improved the incredibly handy Vanishing Point command, first introduced in CS2, with a couple of great new features.

Curves

Adobe have also added a histogram, as well as black and white point sliders below the graph, meaning that you can now easily do Levels-type adjustments within the Curves dialog.

Brightness/Contrast

Camera Raw

If you want to perform really precise, detailed adjustments to your images - whether they're raw files, JPEGs or TIFFs - the new Camera Raw is definitely the way to go.

Slightly better HDR support

Better PDF handling

Adobe have made a small enhancement to the way Photoshop opens PDF files: You can now specify an exact width and height when importing a PDF page, rather than just specifying the resolution.

Improved printing

Adobe Bridge

Why You Need a Duplicate Photo Finder

2009-06-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

By: Maxim Smirnov

While you might think a digital camera gives you better photographs, there is one problem with having the ability to take as many pictures as you life - you can end up with many files on your computer. And when you have thousands of photos, you will have a difficult time hunting through the photos to find what you might need. With a software program that acts as a duplicate photo finder, you can begin to get control of your photo collection again. Though you might not have boxes of photos sitting around, you can't maximize your photos until you know what you have and what duplicates are present. Here are some other reasons why you need duplicate photo finding help.

To Organize Your Photos

The biggest frustration of digital photography is that you have a tendency to forget to label your photos. When this happens, you can forget where certain photos are - especially when they are duplicate photos. With a duplicate photo finder, you can easily navigate your photo collection and then start to group similar photos together so that you aren't just looking at file names that mean nothing to you. When you organize your photos, you can also begin to create a system that will help you not only now, but in the future as well. When you have a system, you can begin to take even more photos, knowing they will never be 'lost' on your computer.

To Find Photos Quickly

If you take photos for work or for certain purposes, you don't have to spend hours looking through your file folders when you have a duplicate photo finder. You can simply indicate which photo you are looking to find and then have the duplicate photos collected for you. When you're under a deadline, this can make a big difference in your stress levels and in your ability to complete the project you have been assigned. No longer will you be staying up all night to complete a project, you can spend just a few minutes on the computer to get the image you need.

To Help You Create Photo Albums

When you want to create photo albums, a duplicate photo finder is crucial. This way, you can organize the duplicate photos and prevent yourself from adding too many of the same photo to an album. Conversely, if you want to create a photo album of one image, you can then collect duplicate photos and create that sort of photo album. Sometimes having numerous similar photos can create a stronger impact than images which are completely different, after all.

When you have a duplicate photo finder, you can make sure any project you have before you goes more smoothly and more easily. You have enough to do in your life. You just don't have the time to go through all the photo files you have - especially when there is software that can do the work for you without a single complaint.

Create a DVD Photo album for party using PowerPoint

2009-05-02T22:09:00.000-07:00

By: ItAngelet

Troubled by how to arrange the photos in an apple-pie order, or how to share it in a convenient way? Use the photo album feature of PowerPoint 2007 to resolve it.

Use the photo album feature of PowerPoint 2007. Just four mouse clicks to burn the PPT to DVD. Create a memorable DVD Photo album for party using PowerPoint.

Create a DVD photo album for party
Learn how to create your own DVD photo album using PowerPoint

Dozens of memorable photographs come from Birthday Party, Christmas Party, Wedding Party and etc. We touched by the memories. But troubled by how to create a photo album arranging the photos in an apple-pie order, or how to share the photo album in a convenient way?

From now on, with the powerful function of widespread PowerPoint, we easily archive hundreds of our favorite high-resolution photos to create a photo album. After convert PPT to DVD, we throw ourselves in a sofa. Let memorable yesterdays flow out from the big screen TV with a remote in our hand. The bride can send DVD photo album to each of the party goers with a thank you note. The mother can memorialize your baby's first birthday
permanently. Between the food, the guests, and the entertainment, a DVD photo album makes it never to end!

All these can be done in a few minutes. Just use the photo album feature of Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007. Just four mouse clicks to burn the PPT to DVD. Let's start to create a memorable DVD Photo album.
1. On the Insert menu, click Photo Album. And in the drop-down list, click New Photo Album option.

2. Click on the 'File/Disk…' option and choose the photos. Importing multiple pictures at a time is available. You can preview each photo by clicking it in the Picture in album list. Below the preview window, there is a photo editing area. You can use these buttons to adjust the rotation, contrast and brightness of each picture.

3. In the drop-down list of Picture layout, you can choose the layout format you like. And in the drop-down list of Frame Shape, you can choose the frame you want to add to your photos. Click the Browse button. Locate the template in the Choose Theme box that allows you to navigate to the folder where we have stored the downloaded templates. Or you can use the operating system's own theme templates.

4. Clicked Create button. If necessary, click the title placeholder, and then type the title for your photos.

5. If you want to give your album captions, click the Photo Album arrow on the Insert tab. And then click Edit Photo Album. Select Captions below All pictures box, then click Update.

That's how your own PowerPoint photo album got out. Isn't this easy?

Want to store the photo album permanently? Want to share the photo album efficiently? Want to create DVD menus to play on TV with a DVD remote control?

So, let’s convert our valuable photo album to DVD. Try to Google"PPT2DVD" to start the process of burning PPT to DVD easily.

Imagine that you and your family watch the photo album on TV after years, you all bring back the good old days. Imagine that your friends view the photo album DVD disc when you are separated by distance. So, when are you going to create your next DVD photo album? Very soon, I presume, like this happy person--“I love PPT2DVD, I created a Family Reunion album viewed on our TV's for a BBQ we had with several generations of the family. It's fantastic! Work on a bigger one for Christmas this year!”

Create a Horror Face in Photoshop

2009-04-06T01:46:00.000-07:00

Tagged Under : Blend modes, Zombie Face

Its not quite Halloween but I wanted to write a tutorial on turning a photo of a face into a Zombie or Horror face. Lets start by opening a photo that is a somewhat closeup of someones face. You can use the one I’m using by downloading it here: [Face] . Here is the dried mud texture I’m using for the face: [Dried mud].

Ok, with the picture loaded up in Photoshop, double click the background layer in the layers palette to activate the alpha channel and name it Background. FYI - If your not sure where the layers palette is, go to Window>Layers and select it to open the layers palette, you’ll see that the picture you loaded will be the background layer. Select the pen tool and set it to path in the above tool bar. Zoom in on the face to about 300% and trace around the face with the pen tool.

After you’ve traced the face with the pen tool hit Ctrl +Enter to create a selection of the face.

The next four steps in order:

1. hit Ctrl +c to copy the selection into the clipboard

2. hit Ctrl +Shift +i to invert the selection

3. Apply a layer mask to the background layer to mask out the face (layer mask icon is at the bottom of the layers palette).

4. Create a new layer above the background layer, name it face and hit Ctrl +V to copy the face into the face layer.

Then you’ll probably have to reposition the face and line it up correctly. If all goes well your picture should look exactly like the original photo except you have an additional layer of just the face.

With the face layer selected hit Shift +Ctrl +U to desaturate.

Now you can bring in the dried mud texture. Open the texture in Photoshop and drag it into your face document (it should be on top of all other layers). If your using the texture I supplied, its pretty big so you have to size it down. Temporarily lower the opacity of the mud texture so you can see what area of the mud you want over the face then hit Ctrl +T to bring up the transform tool, Scale an position the dried mud where you want it.

When you get it where you want, hit enter to apply and raise the opacity of the dried mud back up to 100%.

With the mud layer selected in the layers palette, Ctrl +click the “thumbnail” of the face layer in the layers palette to create a selection. Apply a layer mask to the mud layer by clicking on the icon an the bottom of the layer palette and set the blend mode to Color Burn.

Select the “layer mask Thumbnail” of the dried mud layer and take the blur tool from the tools palette and soften the edges a little around the face. Then take the Sponge tool and paint/scrub on the neck to bring in a little texture.

Select the Face layer and take the burn tool from the tools palette and darken a little around the Eye and the corner of the mouth.

Then select the background layer and use the burn tool again to darken the hair and neck area ( use a soft brush at about 80px.

Next, Select the “Layer mask Thumbnail” of the dried mud layer. Select the paint brush and make sure your forground is set to black and paint around the pupil and iris to reveal the original eye. You can easily give the eye some color by creating a colored circle around the iris and changing the blend mode to overlay. I like the darkish gray look so I won’t do that in this tutorial.

In this last step we’ll add just a touch of the levels adjustment to make the face just a little more erie looking. Select the face layer and go to Image>Adjustments>levels and just move the black and gray values slightly or just play around with the values to get it how you want. Here’s what I used.

In an optional step, add another layer above the rest, set the forground color to red and background to black and fill it with the clouds filter filter>render>clouds and then mask it to the shape of the face the same way did the Dried Mud layer, set the blend mode to overlay and opacity to about 50%.

Here’s my Final:

101 Hidden Tips & Secrets For Photoshop

2009-04-06T00:50:00.000-07:00

1. Press Tab will hide tool bar and palette, Shift+Tab will hide only palette.

2. Hold Shift + click the top blue bar for toolbar and palette will move them to the nearest edge.

3. Double click the top blue bar, on any palette window, to minimize it.

4. Double click the gray background will bring up open file option, Hold Shift+double click will open up the browser.

5. Sick of the default gray background around your image? Select paint bucket, hold shift and click on the gray background, it will change to whatever color you have in your foreground color box.

6. In Photoshop, all "Cancel" buttons in a window can be changed to a "Reset" button by holding Alt.

7. Caps lock will switch your cursor for accuracy.

8. Press F button, it will switch between 3 different screen modes and give you more working area.

9. To draw a straight line, click then move to the end point and hold shift + click.

10. Hold Ctrl will temporary make any tool into move tool until you release Ctrl.

11. Ctrl + Alt and click drag the image, it will make a duplication of the current image over lay on top.

12. Hold Space bar, it will make any tool into "Hand Tool" until you release Space bar.

13. While in Zoom Tool, Ctrl+space = zoom in, alt+space = zoom out.

14. Hold Ctrl and press "+" or "-" it will change the % for image in navigator window.

15. When Using eyedropper tool to capture foreground color, hold Alt and click, it will instantly capture the color for background.

16. With Measure Tool, draw a line then hold Alt and draw another line from the end of the first line, it will measure the angle.

17. Ctrl+Alt+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z will go back and forth in the history.

18. Alt+Backspace and Ctrl+Backspace will fill in the whole screen with foreground color or background color, Shift+backspace will bring up option window, Alt+Shift+Backspace and Ctrl+Shift+Backspace, will fill the image with foreground or background color but will leave the alpha transparent area alone.

19. When free transforming with Ctrl+T, hold Alt to keep the original image and then to transform a duplicated layer of it. Ctrl+Shift+T to repeat whatever you did in the last transform.

20. To make sure your Crop is on the edge of the image, hold Ctrl while cropping.

21. Ctrl+J will duplicate the current layer.

22. Ctrl+Shift+E will merge all visible layers to one layer, Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E will make a copy of the original and merge all visible layers.

23. While using Marquee Tools, hold Alt it will make the starting point as a center of the selection.

24. Ctrl + D to deselect, Ctrl+Shift+D to reselect what you deselected.

25. While selecting with Marquee tool, pressing the space bar can allow you to move the selection.

26. Hold Shift and press "+" or "-" it will switch between the layer mode:

N = Normal
I = Dissolve
M = Multiply
S = Screen
O = Overlay
F = Soft Light
H = Hard Light
D = Color Dodge
B = Color Burn
K = Darken
G = Lighten
E = Difference
X = Exclusion
U = Hue
T = Saturation
C = Color
Y = Luminosity
Q = Behind 1
L = Threshold 2
R = Clear 3
W = Shadow 4
V = Midtones 4
Z = Highlights 4

***The shortcut works even for following situation:

***Alpha turned off, Indexed Mode, Line tool, Bucket Tools, Dodge and Burn Tools

27. While using Brush or any other tools, change the opacity by typing the number.

*** type one number for % of it's ten times [4=40%]

***type two number for exact % [press 7 then 2 will get 72%]

28. Hold Alt while clicking on the eye icon beside the layer, it will hide all other layers.

29. Hold Alt while clicking the pen icon beside the layer, it will unchain this layer from all layers.

30. Select a layer, hold Alt and click the top edge of another layer, it will group them.

31. Hold Alt and click the button "Create a new layer", it will create a new adjustment layer.

32. Select a layer and hold Alt, then click on the garbage can button. It will instantly delete the layer, marquee where you want alpha and Ctrl+click the "Create new channel" button, it will create an alpha only on the area you marquee.

33. File> Automate > Contact Sheet: this can create a small thumbnail for every file, this can save you some time from searching.

34. When Move Tool is selected, toolbox on top can be useful from time to time, these are "Auto select layer" and "Show bounding box".

35. While Move Tool is selected, hold Shift (Alt+Shift+Right click) and allow whether or not to make a current layer chain with your upper layer.

36. With grid on, click the top left corner of the grid and drag to anywhere on the image to set the pivot, double clicking on the icon again reset the pivot.

37. After, draw a path on the image with pen tool, Ctrl+shift+H can hide/show it.

38. Control Navigator with keyboard sometimes can be more time efficient than mouse.

***

Home = move to top left corner
End = move to right bottom corner
PageUp = move up one page
PageDown = move down one page
Ctrl+PageUp = move left one page
Ctrl+PageDown = move right one page
Shift+PageUp = move up 10 pixel
Shift+PageDown = move down 10 pixel
Ctrl+Shift+PageUp = move left 10 pixel
Ctrl+Shift+PageDown = move right 10 pixel

39. Ctrl+Tab allows you to switch between different image files you are working on.

40. F12 = Revert to how the file was the last time you saved it.

41. Shortcuts for Channel: RGB, CMYK, indexed color...

***

Ctrl+"~" = RGB
Ctrl+1 = red
Ctrl+2 = green
Ctrl+3 = blue
Ctrl+4 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path
Ctrl+"~" = CMYK
Ctrl+1 = light green
Ctrl+2 = pink red
Ctrl+3 = yellow
Ctrl+4 = black
Ctrl+5 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path
Ctrl+1 = Indexed
Ctrl+2 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path

42. hold Ctrl then you can draw a red box in the Navigator thumbnail for viewing.

43. Hold Alt and click on any of the history steps, that step will be copied and become the most recent one.

44. Alt drag a step from a serial action can copy it to another action.

45. Alt-click the flare preview thumb, and you can fill in numerical co-ordinates for lens flare.

46. Holding Shift + Alt while transforming an object will do it proportionally, from the center.

47. If you have the move tool selected and you want something duplicated just hold the alt key and move the image, holding the Shift + Alt while doing this, it will move it along one axis.

48. If you want to straighten an image that is crooked (maybe from scanning), click on the eyedropper tool or hit the I key 3 times to get the ruler. Click on the left side of the straight edge, then the right side of the straight (but crooked) edge. The choose Image> Rotate Canvas> Arbitrary, Photoshop will give you the degrees of rotation you just click ok.

49. If you create something in Illustrator, copy and paste it in Photoshop, it will ask you if you want this to be a pixel, path, or shape layer.

50. If you have a mask on a layer and you want to place a image in there and keep the mask. Simply open the image, say copy, and then Ctrl click on the layer to select the mask and use Shift + Ctrl + V to paste it into the mask which will also put it on a new layer as well.

51. To center an image, Ctrl + A , Ctrl + X, Ctrl + V, I think it also puts that image on a new layer.

52. Ctrl+E will merge the highlighted layer down to the next

53. When you have a brush selected, using [ or ] will scroll up or down that brush list.

54. Double clicking the zoom tool will make the image 100%, double clicking the hand tool will fit the image to your screen resolution.
55. Typing Content:

Ctrl + H will hide the highlight on your selected type.

If you click once while your type is selected on the font list, you can use your arrows to scroll up and down and see the fonts change on the fly!

Alt + Left or Right arrows will change your tracking in increments of 10
Ctrl + Alt + Left or Right arrows will change your tracking in increments of 100
Ctrl + Alt + Up or Down arrows will change your leading in increments of 10 pts
Shift + Ctrl with <> will change your font size in increments of 2 pts

56. Ctrl + Alt + T to make a copy of the layer in which you want to transform.

57. Ctrl + Alt + Right arrow. duplicates the layer you are on.

58. Change the active layer : Alt + [ or ].

59. Move the active layer up and down : Ctrl + [ or ].

60. Link 2 layers: with move tool click in the first layer hold Shift and click in the second one.

61. Ctrl+[plus key] will let you zoom in on an image anytime while Ctrl+[minus key] zooms out. Ctrl+Alt+[plus key] will zoom in AND RESIZE the window to fit the image size... same for Ctrl+Alt+[minus key] as well.

62. When using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, click backspace to undo a lasso step.

63. Pressing X will switch the selected foreground and background colors.

64. Pressing D will reset the foreground and backgrounds colors to black and white.

65. If your image has multiple layers, create a Marquee selection and press Ctrl+Shift+Cit won't work if you selected a hidden layer) will copy the image into memory as if they were flattened! Paste it on a new document to see the result.

66. Ctrl+Alt+Z will do multiple undo, versus just one.

67. Ctrl+click a layer thumbnail to select the layer transparency

68. To see what your layer mask looks like (and edit it), Alt+click its thumbnail in the layers palette

69. Press and hold Ctrl+Alt and click the Help bar with your mouse, drag it down and highlight "About Photoshop" and let go of the left mouse button for a different About Photoshop splash/screen.

70. When using Polygon lasso tool hold Shift to make a perfect line, it goes every 30 degrees

71.Photoshop CS2: Group many layers by clicking the layers you want to group by clicking it while holding the Shift key down, and then press Ctrl+G to group them into a folder for means of better organization.

72. Ctrl+Shift+N creates a new layer with a dialog box; Ctrl+Shift+Alt+N gets you a new layer without the hassle.

73. Back to brush, [ and ] will increase/decrease your brush size, Shift + [ or ] will soften or harden your brush edge.

74. Still in [ and ], Ctrl + [ or ] will move your currently selected layer up and down the hierarchy and Shift + [ or ] will select upper layer or lower layer.

75. Stamp Tool (s) is used to copy an area of image (defined by alt+clicking and area) and paint it somewhere else (cloning). It also works when you have multiple images open at the same time. Alt click an area of any opened file image and paint it anywhere else.

76. After you created a text you can click on font type tab and tap "down" key over and over to scroll through the font list and see the changes in (relatively) real time. A feature that I am tired of waiting to happen in illustrator.

77. Still in text mode, a trick from Microsoft word to apply hi-light to your text hit Ctrl+Shift+ <> to resize your text, to your preferred font size. Pressing Ctrl key while you are typing also gives you a free transform box temporarily and will go if you release it. Resizing text also works by pressing Ctrl+T (on selected layer, not when you are typing). It still retains as an editable text layer after.

78. And remember, pressing enter when you type will take you to a new line just like typing a letter but pressing Ctrl+Enter or Enter on numeric key will finish what you type.

79. You can drag a layer on to any other opened images in Photoshop and it will copy it as a layer (better than copy and paste image). Holding down Shift while moving it will snap the image right on the center of the other opened image

80. If you are working with sets....

Click on the set, in the blending mode it shows pass through by default... if you have an adjustment layer within a set and you want that adjustment layer to effect those layers underneath it within the set only, set the blending mode of the set to "normal" instead.

CODE

Mentioned before with more explanation:

- Pressed F to switch to 3 different viewing mode... when I first try it I said "wtf? what it's for?" Well, if you are sick of painting your image on the corners just to find yourself resizing your current image window, with F you can pan way outside your image. Happy corner painting!!

- Create a new file, 500x500 px, create a new layer, get a standard brush and paint a dot on the top center of your image (like the number 12 position on a clock). Press Ctrl+Alt+T, it will duplicate your original layer and free transform the new one. Move the pivot point (the circle with little dot in it found when you are free transforming something) to the center of your image, rotate your image 30 degrees to the right and hit OK to confirm the transform

now.........

Be excited..........

Hit Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T 10 times and see what happens!

81. When using the "move tool" you can select any layer by holding down the CTL key(CMD on a Mac) and clicking on the part of the layer on the canvas with your mouse. This way you won't have to go to the Layers palette every time and you don't have to keep checking on or off the auto select options for the move tool.

82. You can link up layers without going into the layers palette, by selecting the layer (how I just mentioned above) and holding down CTL + Shift(CMD + SHIT on a Mac) for each additional layer you want to link up. You can unlink them by clicking on the layer again.

83. You can delete more than one layer at a time.......by linking up all the layer you want to delete, and holding down CTL(CMD on a Mac) while you click on the garbage icon to delete the layer.

84. When using the type tool you can ok it by pressing CTL + Enter(CMD + Enter on a Mac) instead of clicking on the check mark on the options.

85. If you have more than one type layer, and want to make any of the following changes color/font/size/alignment/initializing to all of the type layers at the same time.....All you have to do is link up the type layer, hold down the Shift key and in the options for the type tool make your change i.e. color, size, etc.

86. You can use your number pad to change opacity for a layer.... I.e. type 5 and the opacity will be 50; type 55 and the opacity will be 55. You can use the number pad for any tool that uses opacity...like the airbrush tool, stamp tool, brush, gradient, etc.

87. Pressing Tab key will hide the Tools palette and any other palette that you have on the stage. Pressing "F" will change between Full Screen modes. Using these two tips you can view your work Full Screen without any palettes.(You can press CTL+Alt+0 to fit your work to the screen, or you can press CTL+0 to zoom to 100%)

88. Pressing the "+" and "-" keys while holding down CTL+Alt will resize the whole document window, not just the work area.

89. You can delete a layer by holding down the "Alt" key and pressing "L" twice......actually now with Photoshop 7 you got to press "L" three times. It's not actually a keyboard shortcut, but it's a quick way to do it....don't know if it works on a MAC.

90. Pan documents with the space bar.

91. Ctrl+click a layer (in layers palette) to select it's transparency.

92. Ctrl+Alt+click between 2 layers in the palette to group them.

93. Alt + click in “add layer mask” button to add a black layer mask (instead of a white one).

94. When you select something, pressing Ctrl+J will copy the selected area and add another layer with the copied area - opposing copying the layer, making a new layer, and pasting it.

95. To glue the palettes together (all palettes combined into one strip), you just drag & drop a palette onto the end of another palette (watch the rectangle that indicates where the palette will get attached to).

96. Hold down Alt while Burning to Dodge instead, and vice versa.

97. Ctrl-click a layer to select an objects; alternatively, you may select more than one object/s in more than 1 layer by holding Shift while using the method just mentioned (Ctrl-click). To deselect, just press Ctrl+D.

98. If you have a mini scroll on your mouse, you may use that to zoom in (scroll up) or zoom out (scroll down).

99. Need to locate a layer quick? Use the Move Tool (V) and right click on the area the object lays. There should now be a “cursor-menu” with all the layers that is in that particular area. Now take a good guess and see which one of them fits the shoe; select a layer and Ctrl-Click the layer in the Layer Palette - see if the selection traces the object you desired to edit/find. Useful for those messy people (i.e. me!).

100. Need to get rid of a background quick? Assuming you at least know how to crop around an object, do so. Now press Ctrl+I or Shift+Ctrl+I for Inverse Selection. Press Ctrl+X to %@#!* that part out, and you should be left with the object!

101. Want to save the time from loading All your Photoshop brushes, when your Photoshop accidentally forgets to load them up (happens to me sometimes)? Select the brush tool, and click the little arrow pointing right (located at the top toolbar), next to the Master Diameter tick. Go down to Preset Manager and now there should be a menu of all the brushes currently loaded. Click on the first brush (top left) and scroll down to the bottom. Now hold Shift and click the last brush (bottom right). This should highlight all the brushes. See the “Save Set” to the right in the menu? Click that and name your brush set whatever you want, for this matter I just name it All (so I remember that this brush set contains all the brushes I currently have loaded, and is located near the top when loading the brushes up).

Last update: 2007-03-22 07:13
Author: Gary Logsdon
Revision: 1.0

Making "Colored Ball" in Photoshop

2009-04-06T00:49:00.000-07:00

In this simple, easy to follow tutorial, you will learn how to accomplish these simple yet amazing feats of Photoshop artistry:

Create a perfect circle
Create a custom gradient
Save a custom gradient
Use Layer Effects to create a drop shadow
Learn how to change color with two clicks!
Download the Photoshop Source file

1. Open a small file in Photoshop - say 40 pixels by 40 pixels, by selecting from the Photoshop menu bar File > New.

Create a new layer by clicking the new layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. (If the Layers palette is not open, select Window/Layers)

2. Use the marquee tool to draw a circle. Click and hold on the marquee tool to reveal the elliptical Marquee tool.

Double check the Options bar to make sure that the Elliptical Marquee Tool is set to anti-aliased.

You can constrain the marquee to a perfect circle by holding down the SHIFT tool as you drag the marquee tool. Make the circle a little smaller than the file (so that you'll have room for a drop shadow).

3. Select the Gradient Tool from the toolbar, by clicking and holding the Paint Bucket Tool to reveal the Gradient Tool.

Next, click on the Gradient Editor in the Options Bar.

You'll be creating a new gradient. To add a new color to the gradient, click just below the gradient preview.

click to enlarge

Next, click on the color stop to change the color to whatever color you'd like. For the colored ball, create a gradient that goes from white to red to black. To save the gradient in the Gradient Editor dialog, click the New button and then the Save button to save your current set of gradients.

click to enlarge

4. In order to apply the gradient, change the gradient type to radial in the Photoshop options bar.

Next, drag the gradient tool from the upper left corner of the document to the lower right corner.

click to enlarge

Congratulations! You've created a new gradient and a ball with dimension. The next step is learning how to add a drop shadow to your image.

5. Make sure you have the layer with the colored ball on it selected. Click the Layer Effects button at the bottom of the Layers Palette. The Layers Effect dialog will open. Click Drop Shadow on the left side of the dialog box and change these settings: Opacity: 50%; Distance: 3px; Size: 2pixels.

click to enlarge

Voila! There you have it ! A simple colored ball icon. Want to shrink it? Select Image/Image Size and change the pixel value to a smaller number. You never want to size something larger because you'll end up with a poor quality image.

One last tip - you can create consistent images with different colors in 2 simple steps. First, duplicate the layer with the colored ball on it by right-clicking on the red colored ball layer and selecting Duplicate Layer. Next, Select Image/Adjust/Hue-Saturation (or use Ctrl+U on Windows, Command+U on the Mac). Drag the Hue slider until you find a new color you like. Go wild!

click to enlarge

Create the World in a minutes

2009-04-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

1.From the menu bar, select File/New, and make the file size about 200 pixels by 200 pixels. Make sure that the file is in RGB mode.

2.Select a light blue for the foreground color, (I used #cff8fc) and a darker blue for the background color (I used #010d62). Of course, you can select any colors that you prefer, but for best results select two colors that have a high constrast.

3.Select Filters > Render > Clouds.

4.Behold! The heavens appear within your file. The clouds filter uses the foreground and background colors you have chosen to create the clouds in your file. If you don't like the first effect you get with this filter, hit Ctrl + F on Windows, Command + F on the mac, which will reapply the filter and give a slightly different result each time.

5. Return to the Filter menu. Select Render > Lighting Effects.

6. In the Light Effects menu, change the shape of the ellipse to a circle that is centered within your file. Use the Default Spotlight setting, but change the Narrow setting to 39.

Voila! You have created the world in six easy steps.

Sharing your Photos - Using Sharing Sites and Email

2009-04-02T22:08:00.000-07:00

By: Ziv Haparnas

The photos we take are all about experiences – photos from our last trip, photos of friends and family and of places we visited. We also want to share those photos with our family and close friends and by that to share our experiences. In this article we will go over a few options for doing just that.

There are a few methods for sharing photos. Before the digital era sharing was done by printing photos and arranging them in photo albums. Then when family or friends gather they could go over those albums viewing each photo and talking about their experiences. Another way to share photos with people that were physically far away was via mail. Printed photos were put in an envelope and mailed.

The digital era made sharing photos and experiences much easier and almost instant. For example with digital photography you can share a photo at the instance it was taken with anyone in the world.

There are a few ways to sharing digital photos:

Sharing by email: Photos are computer files and like any other file they can be sent as an email attachment to any number of email recipients. To share a photo over email simply create a new email, enter the email addresses of the people you want to share the photo with, write a small description in the email body and then attach the photo files.

There are a few things to consider when sharing photos by email. Most ISPs and free email services limit the size of the attachments that can be sent. Many limit those to just a few megabytes. Some providers also limit the size of the email mailbox and thus sending a large number of big photo files can clog the recipient's mailbox.

It is not considered ‘ok' to email large attachments unless you personally know the recipient and he or she expects to receive such an email. It is highly recommended that you resize the photos before sending them by email. In most cases the recipient will only use the files to view the photo on the computer screen. For that purpose a photo resolution of 640X480 or 800X600 is more than enough and the reduced resolution files will be much smaller. If the recipient needs to print the photo then a high resolution version should be emailed.

Sharing using online sharing services: There are many online services that offer photo sharing for free. Using the service you can either share photos with a private group of people or share photos with the public. Sites such as www.flickr.com or www.shutterfly.com are very popular sharing sites. In addition to photo sharing they offer many other services such as photo printing. Using these services is simple: create an account with one of the services and start uploading your photos. When you're done simply send the site's link to whoever you want to share your photos with.

Sharing photos this way is very easy and efficient. You only need to upload the photos once and whoever you share the photos with can at their own time login to the site and view the albums. Most sites will resize the photo and reduce their resolution for faster viewing. However they will not allow the viewers to download the original full resolution file. In most cases this is not a problem as users can order prints directly from the sharing site. If they do need the original high resolution file you can always separately send it to them by email.

Sharing by FTP or other file transfer utilities: In this method the photos are just uploaded to an FTP server. The people you want to share the photos with will login to the FTP server and download the photos. This can also be done using online storage services that allow users to upload any file and then other users to download them. Similar to photo sharing services these services allow the sharing of files. They do not limit the users in downloading the full resolution photo files but they also lack the advantages of easily browsing through photo albums and quickly previewing low resolution version of the photos. Usually FTP servers are used by professionals or companies that need to share a large amount of data between them. Also professional printing services will sometime host an FPT server and have users upload full resolution photo files to this server for printing.

Sharing by burning CD/DVDs: This method is similar to the old fashion method of mailing printed photos. Instead of printing paper prints and mailing them you burn all the images for sharing on a CD (or DVD if more space is needed) and mail the CD/DVD to the people you want to share it with. This method is slow and used usually only when the amount of photos to share is very big and transferring so much data online is a hassle. An example for using this method is sending a large number of high resolution photos for a printing service

In conclusion there are many ways to share photos. For most users who simply want to share photos for viewing on the computer screen and maybe print a few photos using the online photo sharing and printing services is the best. These free services provide all the functionality most users need. Occasionally when you need to share a high resolution photo for printing you can easily send it by email.

Adobe Photoshop interface basics

2009-03-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

The Importance of quick keys

To increase your overall efficiency while using Adobe Photoshop, it is critical to apply some effort in learning 'quick-keys'.

A quick-key is in effect a keyboard short-cut. When pressed in combination with another key, a quick key will send a command to Adobe Photoshop to perform a certain action. A good example of this can be found when holding down the 'CTRL' key and pressing the 'N'. This will cause the 'New' dialogue box to appear.

There are 100's of quick-keys to learn about in Adobe Photoshop. Most of them can be found next to commands within the menu system.

It would be an unrealistic objective to try and learn all quick-keys at this point. Indeed, you might not need to know all of them, just the ones that prove to be most useful to you. If you are applying a certain action or command on a regular basis in your work flow, rather than depending upon the menu system, take time in trying to learn its related quick-key.

Do I really need to use quick keys?

If you were to measure the time it takes to perform a certain command or action or change your current tool, and strike a comparison to how long it takes to summon that same procedure while using a quick-key, you would definitely opt for the later.

Experiment

Try the following experiment for yourself to help demonstrate the importance of using quick-keys.

Create a new canvas (CTRL + N) and set the size at 1000 by 1000 pixels (you may need to change the unit of measurement by clicking on the small drop-down boxes next to the Height and Width boxes).

Zoom %1600 in to your canvas.

Starting from the far left hand-side, using the brush tool 'B' (with a small brush, i.e. size '1') start to draw a line across your canvas.

Now change tool. Use the hand tool 'H' to move your canvas along a little to the to reveal more canvas on the right. If you wish you might want to repeat this experiment later and use the scroll-bars instead of the hand tool.

Now change tool again. Choose the brush tool and continue repeat from step 3 until you reach the far right of your canvas. If you zoom out, you should now see a line stretching from left to right.

Now repeat the same experiment, this time using the 'space-bar' to move you from left to right across your canvas. Notice how you don't even have to change tools, you can keep on using the brush tool - the space-bar (for as long as the key is pressed) will momentary become the hand tool.

If you were to time this experiment, this first method should take about 45 seconds to complete. The second method - 5 seconds.

Using a well rehearsed quick-key will take a fraction of a second to apply, saving you time and giving you more time to spend perfecting your artwork. Such a simple philosophy - and it works!

Quick Key Map

The Following table is a useful listing of commonly used quick keys.
Note: You will need to hold the 'Shift' key to cycle though obscured tools with the tool palette.

Tool palette quick keys

- M
- M
- M
- M
- V
- L
- L
- L
- W
- C
- K
- K
- J
- J

- B
- B
- S
- S
- Y
- Y
- E
- E
- E
- G
- G
- R
- R
- R

- O
- O
- O
- A
- A
- T
- T
- T
- T
- P
- P
- P
- P
- P

- U
- U
- U
- U
- U
- U
- N
- N
- I
- I
- I
- H
- Z

Viewing & Image Navigation

100% Magnify - Alt+CTRL+0 (zero)
Zoom in/out - CTRL + or CTRL
Fit image in window - CTRL+0 (zero)
Actual Pixels - CTRL+Alt+0 (zero)
Move around canvas - Space-bar
Scroll up/down - Page Up or Page Down
Go to top left hand corner - Home
Go to Bottom right hand corner - End

Painting Within Photoshop

Fill Dialogue box - Shft+Backspace
Fill layer or select with foreground colour - Alt+Backspace
Fill layer or select with background colour - CTRL+Backspace
Paint in straight lines - Shft+left click
Set flow - Shft+Numeric key (0=100%, 1=10%, 2=20%, etc)
Set Opacity - Numeric key (0=100%, 1=10%, 2=20%, etc)
Select colour from image - Alt+left click
Select Background colour from image - Shft+Alt+left click

Selecting & Moving

Move Layer - CTRL
Constrain Marquee Proportions - Shft
Draw new Marquee from Centre - Alt+left click and drag
Moves selection 1 pixel - Arrow keys
Moves selection 10 pixels - Shft+Arrow keys
Move non-selected layer - CTRL+Arrow keys
Accept changes to Transform - Enter or double left click on object
Accept Crop - Enter or double left click on object

Selections

Select All - CTRL+A
De-select - CTRL+D
Reselect - CTRL+Shift+D
Hide/Show Selection - CTRL+H
Close Polygonal Selection - Enter
Discontinue Polygonal Selection - Escape (Esc)
Invert Selection - Shift+CTRL+Alt+I
Feathering - CTRL+Alt+D

Colouring & Correcting Colour

Levels - CTRL+L
Auto Levels - CTRL+Shift+L
Auto Contrast - CTRL+Shift+Alt+L
Auto Colour - CTRL+Shift+B
De-saturate - CTRL+Shift+U
Curves - CTRL+M
Hue & Saturation - CTRL+U
Colour Balance - CTRL+B

Various Photoshop Functions

Undo - CTRL+Z
Redo - CTRL+Shift+Z
Undo Multiple - CTRL+Alt+Z
Redo Multiple - CTRL+Shift+Z
Copy - CTRL+C
Cut - CTRL+X
Paste - CTRL+V
Apply Last Filter - CTRL+F
Extract - CTRL+Alt+X
Liquify - CTRL+Shift+X
Pattern Maker - CTRL+Shift+Alt+X
Free Transform - CTRL+T
Transform Again - CTRL+Shift+T
Photoshop Preferences - CTRL+K
Colour Setup - CTRL+Shift+K
Show Grid - CTRL+@
Show Ruler - CTRL+R
Snap - CTRL+Shift+;
Lock Guides - CTRL+Alt+;
Help - f1

Photoshop File Management

Open Image - CTRL+O
Close Image - CTRL+W
Close All Images - CTRL+Shift+W
Browse - CTRL+Shift+O
New Image - CTRL+N
Save Image - CTRL+S
Save As - CTRL+Shift+S
Save For Web - CTRL+Shift+Alt+S
Page Setup - CTRL+Shift+P
Print with Preview - CTRL+P
Print - CTRL+Alt+P
Print one Copy - CTRL+Alt+P
Exit Photoshop - CTRL+Q

Layer Management

New Layer - CTRL+Shift+N
Layer Via Copy - CTRL+J
Layer Via Cut - CTRL+Shift+J
Group with Previous - CTRL+G
Un-group - CTRL+Shift+G
Merge Down - CTRL+E
Merge Linked - CTRL+Shift+E

Adobe Photoshop interface basics

2009-03-25T21:25:00.002-07:00

Image Navigation

It is crucial that you develop a firm knowledge in image navigation if you harbour the desire to become a Adobe Photoshop professional.

To get the most out of this tutorial, I recommend you make a start by opening up an image file.

Click on the 'File' menu and choose 'Open' from the drop down list. If you wish to look through your collection of images choose 'Browse' instead of 'Open'. In both instances use the file explorer dialogue box to navigate to the location of your image file and then double-click on it to open it into the Adobe Photoshop work area.

Zooming

In order to acquire a professional result when restoring or manipulating an image, it is highly important that you 'get in close' to your subject. Try to work with a zoom factor of between 100% to 200% in most instances. Doing so will increase your control and attention to detail as well as giving you the advantage of being able to spot any blemishes and imperfections before your image goes to print.

How to identify your current zoom factor

There are two good methods for identifying your current zoom factor:

Along the top of you image, you will find the zoom factor listed as well as file name, type and colour mode.

You can also alter your current images zoom settings by typing over the percentage figure on the status bar. Please note: If you are using an Apple Mac or CS3 on any platform, the status bar can be found along the bottom edge of an image.

The Zoom Tool

The Zoom Tool gives you the ability to zoom in and out of your image.

Choose the Zoom Tool from the Tool Palette (A).

Zoom in: Select 'Zoom in' mode on the contextual option bar.

Left-click over the area of an image that you wish to zoom into. This will incrementally, click-by-click take you further in to your image.

Zoom out: Select 'Zoom out' mode on the contextual option bar.

left-click over an image to zoom out. This will take you further out from your image.

Many experienced Adobe Photoshop addicts utilise this particular tool. However, in the interest of establishing a good foundation in navigation, it would be better to abandon this method altogether in favour for an easier, quicker and more practical approach.

Zoom using 'Quick-keys'

Using a quick-key alternate instead of the zoom tool will massively enhance your productivity. Eventually, with practical application, you will be able to change your zoom factor as a reflex without even having to think about it.

Try this...

Zoom in: Hold down the 'Ctrl' key and press '+'

Zoom out: Hold down the 'Ctrl' key and press '-'

Moving around your Canvas

Once you have zoomed into your image, you'll find that much of it becomes obscured by the boundaries and limitations of its surrounding window. To see a little more of your photograph, you could try expanding the edge of its window by clicking and dragging over the 'sticky-tab' (bottom right corner).

More of the workable area of your image, or the Canvas can be revealed by using the scrollbars located along the right-hand and bottom edges of its window. This, however is a clumsy method and really should not be used with any regularity.

It is important to point out that while employing a method to navigate around a canvas, the canvas itself is not being displaced. Only your position with relation to what you can see will be effected.

The Hand Tool

The Hand Tool provides the ability to 'move' about your canvas.

Select the Hand Tool from the Tool Palette (H).

Left-click and drag to move. In order to appreciate the use of this tool, your image must be 'zoomed-in' to the point that much of the canvas is obscured by the window boundaries.

The Navigation Palette

A reasonable level of navigation can be attained by using the 'Navigator' floating palette. With this tool, you can alter your zoom factor as well as point and click to the area of the canvas that you would like to look at.

Hand tool using 'Quick-keys'

Again, as we discovered earlier with the zoom tool, there are far easier methods for travelling around an image.

Try this...

Move about canvas: Hold down the 'space-bar' and left-click + drag.

Important: It would be advantageous to abandon all other methods in favour of this one. Using the space-bar will massively free-up time to concentrate on other things and, quite oddly, will reduce the stress factor when working with an image.

Conclusion:

To efficiently zoom in and out of your canvas:

'Ctrl +' and 'Ctrl -'

To efficiently move about your canvas:

'space-bar'

Tip: The 'Zoom' tool does have one excellent use. You can quickly zoom into a specific area of the canvas by left-click + dragging with the zoom tool.

Adobe Photoshop interface basics

2009-03-25T21:25:00.001-07:00

Image Navigation

It is crucial that you develop a firm knowledge in image navigation if you harbour the desire to become a Adobe Photoshop professional.

To get the most out of this tutorial, I recommend you make a start by opening up an image file.

Zooming

How to identify your current zoom factor

There are two good methods for identifying your current zoom factor:

Along the top of you image, you will find the zoom factor listed as well as file name, type and colour mode.

You can also alter your current images zoom settings by typing over the percentage figure on the status bar. Please note: If you are using an Apple Mac or CS3 on any platform, the status bar can be found along the bottom edge of an image.

The Zoom Tool

The Zoom Tool gives you the ability to zoom in and out of your image.

Choose the Zoom Tool from the Tool Palette (A).

Zoom in: Select 'Zoom in' mode on the contextual option bar.

Left-click over the area of an image that you wish to zoom into. This will incrementally, click-by-click take you further in to your image.

Zoom out: Select 'Zoom out' mode on the contextual option bar.

left-click over an image to zoom out. This will take you further out from your image.

Zoom using 'Quick-keys'

Try this...

Zoom in: Hold down the 'Ctrl' key and press '+'

Zoom out: Hold down the 'Ctrl' key and press '-'

Moving around your Canvas

The Hand Tool

The Hand Tool provides the ability to 'move' about your canvas.

Select the Hand Tool from the Tool Palette (H).

Left-click and drag to move. In order to appreciate the use of this tool, your image must be 'zoomed-in' to the point that much of the canvas is obscured by the window boundaries.

The Navigation Palette

Hand tool using 'Quick-keys'

Again, as we discovered earlier with the zoom tool, there are far easier methods for travelling around an image.

Try this...

Move about canvas: Hold down the 'space-bar' and left-click + drag.

Conclusion:

To efficiently zoom in and out of your canvas:

'Ctrl +' and 'Ctrl -'

To efficiently move about your canvas:

'space-bar'

Tip: The 'Zoom' tool does have one excellent use. You can quickly zoom into a specific area of the canvas by left-click + dragging with the zoom tool.

Adobe Photoshop interface basics

2009-03-25T21:23:00.002-07:00

The Option Toolbar

The Option Toolbar interface can be found directly beneath the Adobe Photoshop menu system.

The Option Toolbar, often referred to as the Contextual Option Bar contains tools and settings to control and fine-tune each item within the tool palette. Option controls and other function will be displayed in context with any selected tool.

Adobe Photoshop interface basics

2009-03-25T21:23:00.001-07:00

The Menu System

The Adobe Photoshop's menu system isn't that dissimilar to others you may have encountered in the past.

Browsing across the menu bar, you will discover familiar titles such as 'File', 'Select', 'View', 'Window' and 'Help'. To view the content of these 'drop-down' menus, simply click each heading to allow the relevant listing to unfold.

Some items within certain drop-down menus are denoted with black arrows to the right as you can see in the above screen shot. If you click on such a listing, a further sub-menu will expand out, displaying additional options.

Note: The menu system within Adobe Photoshop is suitably organised. For instance; should you need to 'open' or 'save' an image file then all of the relevant options will be available within the 'File' menu. Likewise, if you need to perform a special action on a selection, you will need to refer to the 'Select' menu, and so on.

Tip: As you navigate through the menu system, you will observe that many items have codes next next to them. These are 'quick-key' or 'short-cut' functions.

Try to memorise the quick-keys of procedures that you use on a regular basis. If a curtain function does not have a quick-key associated with it, then a quick-key may not exists for that particular action.

How to use a quick-key
Alt+Shft+Ctrl+S = Press and continue to hold down the 'Alt' key + 'Shift' key + 'Ctrl' key and then press the 's' key to execute that function.

Adobe product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Adobe Systems Incorporated .

Adobe Photoshop interface basics

2009-03-25T21:16:00.000-07:00

Floating Palettes

On the right hand side of the Adobe Photoshop interface, you'll observe a series of window-like 'palettes' stacked one on top of another. These are commonly known as 'Floating Palettes' and can be used for a whole variety of tasks.

Moving floating palettes

After becoming accustomed to the basics of Adobe Photoshop, you might want to start modifying the arrangements of your floating palettes. You can easily relocate them about the interface window by left clicking on the blue bar along the top of each palette and 'dragging' them to the desired location.

Group/un-group a Floating Palette

You will notice that most palettes contain tabs, i.e. Channel/Paths/Layers. These tabs are separate palettes that have been grouped together. To up-group a palette, click and drag the relevant tab away from the group. To rejoin a palette to a group, simply drag the tab on to a tab within the group you wish it to associate it with.

Closing & Opening Floating Palettes

Your screen can easily become littered with floating palettes. To close a palette, simple click on the icon at the top right hand corner of the palette bar. If, later point, you wish to re-open a palette, visit the 'Window' menu and select it from the drop down list.

Tip: You will notice a button at the top right hand corner of each palette, just below the close button. This is an extended menu.

Left-click to open. A menu will drop down listing tasks unique to that particular palette. Make a point of familiarising yourself with these menus. There are plenty of powerful commands that will increase functionality.

Available Floating Palettes:

Styles

Contains various graphic effects for vector shapes and layers.

Swatches

Selection of colour systems.

Colour

Colour palette for choosing and mixing colours.

History

A log of recent actions and the facility to undo to a previous history states.

Actions (Button Mode)

'Quick' buttons for executing prerecorded procedures.

Actions

Programmable buttons for creating action procedures.

Tool Presets

Change, organise and save tool behaviours.

Layers

Helps you to organise and manage layers within your image.

Channels

Organise, view, create, mix and delete channels of colour information.

Paths

Organise, view, update, create and delete vector paths.

Info

Display colour information and position within your image.

Navigator

Navigate around image and control zoom factor.

Paragraph

Format paragraphs of selected type within an image.

Character

Control the typographic appearance and behaviour of selected type.

Adobe Photoshop interface basics

2009-03-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

The Tool Palette

Think of the 'Tool Palette' as a box in which you keep a collection creative tools. It contains all of the necessary utensils you will need for any image restoration or manipulation project.

At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking that there are only 22 or so at your disposal. However many other excellent tools are hidden beneath others.

Wherever you encounter a small black arrow to the bottom right of a tool, there will be others beneath it. To reveal hidden tools, simply 'right click' (PC Only) or click and hold down your primary mouse button over a marked icon. Other items will now appear within an expanded menu. Left-click on the desired item to select it.

Please note: You will find that all tools will have a letter of the alphabet beside it's title. This signifies the quick-key reference for that tool. In many cases a group of tools may share the same allocated letter of the alphabet. Hold down the shift-key and press and repeat the associated character to scroll through each tool within that group.

The following interactive illustration is a complete break-down of all items within the Tool Palette (Adobe Photoshop Ver.7). To reveal the name of any tool, allow your cursor to rest over it. Click on each icon for a brief description.

Tips for Successful Freelance Design

2009-03-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

Author: Robert Cubbon

Rob Cubbon writes

Meeting the client

Spend a little money on your clothes and briefcase or portfolio-type bag to create a good impression. People may deny it but they will always think: expensive clothes, lots of money, doing well, good designer. Dress smartish, but not trendy - no one likes trendy designers.

When you meet the client, I would always advise you to smile at the first moment and look them directly in the eye. Of course, some studios and work places can be serious and aggressive and it is probably not a good idea walking around them with an inane grin.

But first impressions count and I have always found it best to try to be disarmingly friendly first. Don't go over-the-top but try to give this impression "I was happy before this moment, I'm happy now and I'd be happy working with you in the future".

Taking the brief

This can be the moment where everything goes wrong so pay attention.

A brief is where someone who knows a subject very well explains it to someone who knows nothing about it. For this reason it is staggeringly common that the briefer will omit something very important or, just as common, spend ages talking about past events that are totally irrelevant to the job in hand. But keep listening.

One has to maintain the eye contact, look interested and, where possible "mirror" your client's posture and movements. By this I mean if your client is sitting up straight, sit up straight. If your client is nodding, nod with them. If they smile, smile. If they look serious, look serious. If your client is poor at maintaining eye contact then be careful not to look at him/her too closely.

Be on a level and equal to your client in every way. So try to make sure your eyes are level with his. Do not "tower above" or "cower below" the client. And keep listening.

And all this time your brain in the background is churning away thinking. You need to know the parameters and if the client has omitted to tell you anything it will be about the extent of them. You also need to know the target audience and, of course, what it's trying to achieve.

So think, size - can I decide the size or format? Colours - can I decide the colours or do I use the corporate ones? Fonts? Corporate fonts or can I choose them? Illustration? What sort of graphic device can I use to illustrate the piece? What style of photography, illustration, montage, etc? Message? What is the hero? What have I to communicate?

If the brief is written you have no excuses: read it again and again, read it in the middle of the project and read it towards the end. It's amazing how many times people miss the simple things in a brief.

Never, during any stage of the design process, forget the brief.

Don't jump into the job

So you've got the brief and you understand what the client wants you to communicate. Now what? Sit down and think about something else.

The problem with the creative mind is it rarely works when it is supposed to. You find you either get your best idea immediately or suddenly days later during an idle moment it'll hit you like a meteorite ... The Most Amazingly Good Idea.

So don't think about the subject ... think around the subject.

Use the internet to aid lateral thinking

Creatives are paid fortunes to think laterally, to come up with a word or an image that no one else has thought of. But now we have the most amazing lateral thinking resource at our fingertips - the internet.

You have dictionaries and thesauruses to help you with words. There are directories of English idioms and expressions which are particularly helpful with advertising copy. But, my personal favourite internet aid to lateral thinking is image searching.

One of the most difficult but potentially the most creative and fun thing can be illustrating abstract notions. Try putting an abstract term that complies with your brief (maybe empty, separation, togetherness, contrast, love, hate, anger, comfort) into a stock photography site's search engine and see if it gives you any ideas. Don't forget normal search engine's images searches like Google or Yahoo! They are getting better and better and give you a different option to the staid stock image.

Computers don't have the associations with words that we do. They just dispassionately match the word we type in. Think of all the times you've had a search fail. It's these "failures" that can spark an un-thought-of angle that could really make a campaign.

Logo design

Type the client's name into a font application program like Suitcase and you will immediately see it in many different typefaces. Try all the different combinations of upper and lower case.

When scribbling on your pad remember to use all sorts of different writing materials to give you an idea. Pens, pencils, markers, felt tip, charcoal, whatever you can get your hands on. If you are right-handed write the logo name with your left hand a few times. Get colleagues to write it down as other people's handwriting may give you an idea.

Use the abstract image search idea above to give you angles for icon or symbol ideas.

Illustration

The style of photography and/or illustration may be covered in the brief or may be up to you but either way try to push the boundaries a bit.

We all have our favorite stock photo libraries but try others - and don't forget the internet image search. Try to pick anything but the obvious image.

Remember the CS versions of Adobe Illustrator have a live trace tool which can re-draw any image in vector form which you can present as a quick fix illustration negating the need to commission.

Don't forget that illustration and photography can be combined.

And think simple. Simple and iconic always sells.

Whilst designing

It's important not to fall in love with one of your designs. It can be very easy to be wedded to an idea or a design and convince yourself of its brilliance, especially if you are working in isolation.

All feedback is good feedback. So ask anyone, your other half, the kids, the janitor, your opponent what they think. It may be you've spent ages perfecting a headline that's spelt wrong!

Presentation

Here comes the moment where it all counts. You are going to present your ideas.

Present your work as well as you possibly can. Get the nicest printouts and mount them onto boards of equal size.

If your presenting on screen do so on the largest one available and in a way that covers the whole screen not with an untidy desktop in the background.

If you are presenting a website, maximise the browser window. If you are presenting in Photoshop hit the tab button to get rid of all the ugly palettes and hit the F key to get rid of the desktop.

If sending ideas as a PDF, set the initial view in the Document Properties to Fit Page or Open in Full Screen mode. First impressions count.

Always present your ideas one-by-one. Never lay them all on the table at once.

Start with your weakest idea first and end with the strongest. Always keep something up your sleeve if the client doesn't like an idea.

Pretend you are the manager of the swankiest boutique in the world showing a billionaire the most flawless diamond ever.

Rob Cubbon

About the Author:

I am a freelance creative artworker and graphic designer, based in London, with over 11 years experience.Born in Kent, England, 30 May 1968.

Educated in local schools until 18 where left to complete a Bachelor of Arts degree in University of East London. Started working in publishing 1989, involved in writing, photography and design for various magazines and newspapers. Worked abroad as English teacher.

Freelance designer for print and web since 1995.

www.robcubbon.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/communication-articles/tips-for-successful-freelance-design-87097.html

10 Tips for Taking Better Pictures

2009-03-25T00:16:00.000-07:00

Author: Ryan Dube

Many people think they have to have an expensive, top of the line digital camera to take great photographs, but the secret to a great picture is not the camera, it is the photographer. If you try these simple tips when using your digital camera you will reap the rewards of better photographs no matter what your subject matter is.

1. Position your subject

Use the Rule of Thirds to make your photographs more interesting. Imagine the scene divided into three sections, like tic- tac- toe, horizontally and vertically. Positioning your subject at the intersection of those lines will break up symmetry and result in a compelling photo. If you don’t get the perfect shot, you can crop it with Photoshop. You should be able to get a free download for Photoshop at the Adobe website.

2. Choose the Right Backgrounds for your Subject

Simple backgrounds are best for subjects with busy patterns. You can also adjust the depth of field to focus on objects closer to you while blurring objects far away. Simple subjects look best against a more detailed background. Be sure the background doesn’t interfere and take attention away from your subject.

3. Create Distance and Dimension

A photo of a distant subject can seem static and one-dimensional. Including subjects nearer to you in your photos gives a sense of distance. Blurring the background focuses attention on your subject.

4. Choose an Orientation that Suits your Subject

Your camera produces a rectangular image which gives you two orientations to work with-vertical or horizontal. Your subject will lend itself to one or the other. One sure way to find out is simply to take your photo both ways and decide which is best.

5. Use a Unique Point of View/ Get in Close to your Subject

Break the habit of shooting everything from eye level. Experiment with kneeling down to capture subjects from near the ground, or photographing subjects above you. Get in close to your subject -- close-up photography adds intimacy to your photos and helps capture all the hidden details and moments you might not ever see. Learn Photoshop so you can edit, crop and enhance your digital photos.

6. Use your surroundings to Frame Your Subject

Position your subject in front of an interesting doorway, window, scene, etc. to frame your subjects, keeping the Rule of Thirds in mind.

7. Avoid Underexposed Pictures

Indoors - move near a window or bring a lamp into the room. Move closer to your subject. Manually adjust the shutter speed on your camera. Change exposure settings. For lighter photos, adjust exposure up; for darker photos, adjust down. You are able to see what your image will look like as you adjust this setting

8. Avoid Overexposed pictures

On sunny days, find a shady spot to photograph your subjects and use the flash which will cast an even light over your subject. Take advantage of overcast days to avoid shadows. When indoors, provide as much natural light as possible to avoid using the flash which may wash out colors and cast harsh shadows. Avoid the midday sun, early morning and late evenings are better times for photography.

9. Avoid Red Eye

Turn off your camera's flash or if it's too dark to go without a flash, ask your subject to look toward the camera, but not directly at the lens. By taking daytime photos, you may eliminate the need for a flash. Bring in additional light sources if needed. Try stand further away from your subject. If you try all this and still have red eye, try using Photoshop to edit your photograph.

10. Avoid Blurry Photos

Avoid shutter lag by pressing the button halfway down before you shoot your photo. When you are ready to take the shot, press all the way down to instantly capture the desired photograph. Use a tripod or brace yourself against a stationary object to hold the camera still. If your subject is moving, use the Action mode on your camera. The Action setting automatically optimizes the shutter speed to capture the action.

The best way to learn to take good digital photos is to takes lots and lots of pictures. You can just delete those you don’t want. Learn Photoshop so you can to make corrections, enhance your pictures, and use special effects to make your digital photographs look like a pro’s.

For more Photoshop Tips and Tricks, visit: http://www.PhotoshopDemos.com

About the Author:

Ryan Dube has worked in the IT industry for over 12 years and is an Electrical Engineer by training. Ryan is a freelance journalist and author and has been published in several publications both online and offline over the past five years. View his writer's site at

www.invisible-inc-writers.com.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/photography-articles/10-tips-for-taking-better-pictures-432041.html

Making Hair Selection a Lot More Easier in Photoshop

2009-03-24T23:48:00.000-07:00

Author: Daniy

It’s a common question asked with many Photoshop users: How can I make the hair selection from an image with accuracy? This question mostly asked by Photoshop beginners which usually tend to choose their own photo as the object of their exercise. They started to make selection around the body, and as the selection is done, they erase the outer parts of the selection so changing the background images would be a lot easier. But the hardest part came when they reach the hair area which usually blended with the background.

Forcing to close the selection with manual hair-by-hair tracing would almost make the selection result became jagged and the hair look would become unnatural. Some users then apply the fastest way by applying “feather” to smoothen the selection, so there would be a soft transition between the object and the background. This might work in some cases, but sometimes not. The picture gets the bad collage effect that the picture couldn’t balance with the new background, whether it’s blended or contrasted.

So what is needed to be done to have the perfect hair selection as it would possible to combine with any backgrounds? The answer still gets around the selection techniques, but it’s more than just using tools and how to apply them. You should combine the following items in your preference.

Selection tool; undoubtedly there are many tools to do the selection from lasso, magic wand, marquee, and pen tool [if you feel more comfortable to deal with it].

Channel palette; this palette contains information from each of your separated colors based on the active color mode. RGB color mode consists of Red, Green, and Blue channels which usually proofed on screen media, such as monitors or LCD projectors. Otherwise the CMYK color mode is made up from 4 separated channels which are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. This color mode usually applied on printed media such as papers.

Remember, that every channel provides certain values which represented on a monotone-colored look. By using it, you can make a selection based on certain channel which provides more detail selection range.

Layer Blending Modes; this palette applies the behavior of certain layer against the layer below it. Spanning from multiply, lighten, screen, overlay and up to 23 modes you can experience to get various blending effect throughout your image. You can maximize the feature of these blending modes to enhance the quality of your hair selection.

Defringe; the final way to enhance your selected image to get blended with the new background. It will automatically remove the tiny edge pixel which usually occurs on every selection. You can have it from the Layer - Matting menu, and select Defringe. When a dialog box of certain number appears, I usually left it with 1 pixel amount and let them do the best work.

So, what’s the step?

The first step is use the selection tool to manually select your image area. But, this I usually do: separate the image between the body and the head. Why is that? Since hair selection is the hardest part, I can easily select the body part and left the head for the main task. By separating the head, it also means that you are working on less area which requires less resource from your machine.

After separating the head section and put it on a new separated layer, you can start using the help of channel palette. I usually work within the RGB color mode and choose the green channel since it contains the contrast value of an image. The shortcut to load from channel is by holding the Ctrl [Mac: Command] key and clicking on the corresponding channel. You should have a more detailed hair selection by now and erase the outer part of your selection.

Using the Layer Blending modes is the next step to enhance your selection quality. You can have those blending modes right at the top of your layer palette. I usually choose the screen mode to do the work and the image will automatically blended with the new background. But if try to experiment with another mode, maybe you’ll find a more interesting result.

The last key is defringing your selection to wipe those white pixels around your selection. I think you have a better result for your hair selection right now.

And, if you want to make yourself inside a movie poster, maybe you'll be interested on my other photoshop tips here.

About the Author:

Daniy is a graphic designer, photoshop user, and a blogger who write and share his thoughts and ideas around the web

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/software-articles/making-hair-selection-a-lot-more-easier-in-photoshop-342399.html

It’s Time to Get Started in Photoshop

2009-03-14T03:49:00.003-07:00

Author: photoshopium

Adobe Photoshop is the best image editing program that you need. It is very comprehensive software; it can meet all your needs and solve all your problems that you face with the images. Photoshop offers professional photo editing features, digital imaging, as well as non destructive editing. The software offers increased productivity as well as flexibility.

For all its complexity, Photoshop's basics can be mastered quite quickly. It allows even a novice the ability to create wonderful and impressive effects without much knowledge of this program.

Are you concerned that Photoshop is too complicated or difficult to learn? Don’t be. Most operations in Adobe Photoshop can be carried out successfully using any of three or four different tools. For all its complexity, Photoshop's basics can be mastered quite quickly.

After following two or three tutorials you could see the power and possibilities of this program. Start with some basic effects, such as red eye reduction, changing eye or hair color, photo sharpening, changing background, applying realistic suntan, old movie effects, creating your own CD cover, car repainting, breast improving or simple animation such as winking picture. Do not try to make some complicated effects; it will take some time to learn advanced techniques. But soon you will definitely be able to create masterpieces and impress your family and friends. It is a hands on software where the more you use it the more you will learn.

So you want to learn Adobe Photoshop. There are plenty of resources you can use: online tutorials, forums, books, magazines, conferences, DVDs and CDs. It's up to you which one to use.

Using online tutorials is one of the best ways to learn Adobe Photoshop. It’s free and convenient. There are thousands of great tutorials out there.

Forums give you ability to join Photoshop communities. You can communicate with professionals in real time and ask any question regarding Photoshop software.

So this is your chance to get your hands on Photoshop. If you don't have the software buy one, or download free trial but fully functional version at official adobe.com website.

Then go online and visit some Photoshop tutorial sites for beginners or search google or yahoo for Photoshop tutorials, tips and tricks. It’s time to get started!

About the Author:

This article was written by Mike Shakin, the creator of Photoshop tutorials for beginners. This resource offers free photoshop tutorials that were written specially for beginners. To visit his site go to http://photoshopium.com.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/e-learning-articles/its-time-to-get-started-in-photoshop-241484.html

Photoshop Tutorials Exclusive for Photoshop Fans

2009-03-14T03:49:00.001-07:00

Author: Groshan Fabiola

Photoshop is worldly recognized as the brand name of graphic design used by web visitors all around the world for graphics and digital design. Photoshop tutorials is a specially designed online program meant to help web users to highly benefit from the tools provided by Photoshop. Free Photoshop tutorials also teach tips and tricks of how to become a real professional in the field by creating amazing effects.

All web design, graphic design and print layouts require a small kernel of inspiration from time to time; and there’s nothing wrong with it as it cam improve your style and make you a better online designer. Such inspiration can come by visiting other web sites on the Internet or by appealing to the Photoshop tutorials where you can find anything you need.

When accessing a Photoshop tutorial, make sure you know what you are looking for. You will be able to choose from a multitude of offers of fresh added innovative ideas and useful software. Also Photoshop tutorials are organized in your best interest to spare you from getting lost between the unlimited variants of available stuff, they are being leveled according to required quality, level of promotion: beginners, medium and advanced features.

If visiting a Photoshop tutorial web page, you are surely looking for an option to improve your web image. You may look for advises on how to adjust a layer, how to merge two separate photos, recreate a film or commercial logo, create animated room light, different layouts, image effects and many more.

Free Photoshop tutorials are Adobe intelligent resources specially designed to help web users achieve the highest potential for their work. All tutorials are weekly and sometimes daily updated and renewed so the time you used to look for on the Internet is over in your interest.

A multitude of categories usable in tutorials are available: text effects, special effects, image effects, web graphics, tips and basic knowledge, textures and patterns, layouts and interfaces, colors, photo manipulation, drawing and painting and even 3D software.

Photoshop free tutorials offer online training courses, e-books, expert tips. Most uploaded subcategories of Free Photoshop tutorials are basics, Photography, Special fix, texturing and web design. The only for Photoshop fans section is a part of the “ business” dealing with passionate fans, a community organizing contests, awards and exhibiting web design and more art. Anyone who is a real committed fan of Photoshop can join the fan communities and learn more as well as share impressions with other users. It can be real fun!

Only for Photoshop fans section gives the opportunity of chatting with other web designs and photography beginners or specialists and ask for tips, advises and other types of help for creating best quality digital photography, layouts, design, special effects and amazing modifications to pictures.

Free Photoshop tutorials can result in being really helpful especially to Photoshop fans and for the ones committed to this type of work. On these web sites you can practically find anything you are looking for. And of course, for free and with the guaranty of quality promising a full success.

Looking for free photoshop tutorials? Find the best only for photoshop fans tutorials at http://www.psfanatic.com

About the Author:

Looking for free photoshop tutorials? Find the best only for photoshop fans tutorials at http://www.psfanatic.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/photoshop-tutorials-exclusive-for-photoshop-fans-354006.html

Photography’s Digital Possibilities - Special Effects Using Photoshop

2009-03-14T03:48:00.005-07:00

Author: Morten Svenningsen

Before you apply any of these special effects, it can be useful to apply a masking on your photo to select which areas you want to change and which you want to keep unchanged. You can easily get a nice soft fade between the effect and no-effect areas. This is called masking and there’s many ways of doing it. The one method I almost always use now (it took years before I discovered it) is the ‘quick mask mode’. It is very easy to use and usually gives acceptable results.

Quick masking

In Adobe Photoshop find the button called ‘edit in quick mask mode’. It’s located near the bottom of the main tool bar and looks like a circle in a rectangle. There’s also a short-cut key: Q. Once in quick mask mode, you can select and deselect areas simply by painting them with white and black respectively, using the standard brush tool. Zoom to 100 or 200 % for best accuracy. You might want to use a soft-edged brush to avoid hard edges. Alternatively, when you’re done, exit the masking mode and go to ‘Select > Feather’ and set the feather radius to 5-10 pixels or so. A nice option is that you can set the opacity to anywhere between 0 and 100%, allowing you to apply the effect stronger or weaker in one part of the image that another.

Layer masking

Slightly more complicated, you can add a layer mask. This allows you to apply any effect gradually from any point in your photo. Follow these steps in Photoshop:

1. Select ’Windows > Layers’.

2. Right click on your layer and select ’Duplicate layer’.

3. Click on the little icon in the bottom of the layer box called ‘Add layer mask’.

4. Select the ‘Gradient tool’ on the main tool box.

5. Choose a gradient style from the top ‘Options’ bar (linear, radial etc.).

6. Now click on your image on the point you don’t want to change, then drag the mouse away to the point where you want the full effect to take place. The effect will be applied gradually more and more along this line you’ve now create.

7. Finally, go back onto your original background layer and apply any effect you want. This will apply the effect in a soft, gradual way. Use opacity to turn the effect down to less than full strength if you want.

Lens-like effects

Using the layer masking described above, you can apply ‘Gaussian blur’ which will make the selected areas appear soft-focused, a bit like if you had used a large-aperture lens. With ‘Curves’ you can make your corners darker than the center, replicating the lens effect called vignetting. Technically, vignetting is considered a lens dysfunction, but subjectively it can add an extra feeling to your photo, a kind of frame that will have a ‘sucking’ effect, bringing more attention into the centre of your photo. You can also just lower the contrast and/or colour-saturation around your main subject, helping to separate it from the background clutter. There’s many other options, be creative!

Soft glow effect

Great for creating a ‘romantic’ look for portraits. Here’s what you have to do:

1. Duplicate layer.

2. Apply ‘Gaussian blur’ to the new (top) layer. Make it blurry, but leave a little detail.

3. Play around with the blend modes and opacity till you get what you want:

‘Darken’ or ‘Multiply’ blends darkens image details while also softening features and adding a halo. Good for soft, expressive shadows.

‘Lighten’ or ‘Screen’ blends lightens the image instead. Nice for adding high key or highlight glows.

‘Soft Light’ and ‘Overlay’ adds contrast and saturation. Especially useful for landscapes and still life photos.

Black-and-white-ish

A cool metallic black-and-white’ish look, in my opinion very suitable for documentary work and subdued portraits, is easily obtained by setting the contrast high (curves) and colour saturation low. Do it with Photoshop’s ‘layers’ to be able to tweak your exact settings it in place.

Colour grading

You know how some movies have a ’special look’, golden brown, sick yellow-greenish, cool blue etc.? You can get the same effect in your photos if you want. The simple way is to go to ‘Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation’, click ‘Colourize’ and use the slide bars to select your preferred grading. If you are going for a well-defined colour, it’s better to use the ‘Edit > Fill’ function. Simply select the colour you want and set the ‘Blending mode’ to ‘Colour’. Either way, it’s good first to duplicate your layer before you start. This will allow you to preserve some of the original colours by turning the colour grading down. Use the ‘Opacity’ slider in the layer box to do this. If you want a duotone image, simply make 2 duplicate layers and give them different colour gradings. Mix them together, again with the ‘Opacity’ slider and the different ‘Layer blending mode’ options in the layer box.

One example: To give your image a warm golden-brown colour tone, first make two duplicate layers. Use ‘Edit > Fill’ to make the first one brown (#963A12) and the second one yellow (#EDC715). Set opacities to 30 and 60% respectively and select the ‘Multiply’ blending mode for the top (yellow) layer. Tweak it in place to get it exactly like you want. Also try adding a soft glow, as described above.

Micro contrast

This is a really neat trick to enhance your contrast and draw out texture details in your photos. You can even use it when your overall contrast is already maxed out, using all tonal ranges from pure black to pure white. The procedure is similar to the normal ‘Unsharpen Mask’, but with some special settings. Go to ‘Filter > Sharpen > Unsharpen Mask’ and set the ‘Amount’ to around 20-30%, the ‘Radius’ to 50-100 pixels and zero on the ‘Threshold’. You will get a subtle contrast enhancement that, for some pictures at least, works really well.

Using any of the above mentioned effects can improve your photos and make them really eye-catching. However, learning when to use them and when not to use them is just as important as learning how to use them. When to use special effects in your photos is a matter of personal taste and judgement. Use it, but don’t overdo it. Often, less is more.

About the Author:

The author, Morten Svenningsen, is an award-winning Danish photographer and journalist based in Asia. Visit his web site www.mortensvenningsen.com to see examples of his work. It's now even possible to order his photos as fine art prints and posters!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/visual-art-articles/photographys-digital-possibilities-special-effects-using-photoshop-457657.html