Photoshop

Photoshop Liquid Metal Tutorial

2009-03-01T00:03:00.001-08:00

Photoshop Liquid Metal Tutorial

Step {I} Create a new image and fill it with black. Select the lense flare filter , and create two lense flares with with above settings.

Step {II} Go in the plastic wrap filter and use the above settings.

Step {III} Go into the ZigZag Filter and use the above settings.

Step {IV} Duplicate Your Layer. Double click your new layer and use the above blending settings.

Final Product

Make a sand blast text effect image

2009-02-18T01:34:00.000-08:00

Title: Make a sand blast text effect image

Description: Lets create a blasted sand text effect using photoshop features.

Sand Blast photoshop text effect tutorial

{I} Take a new file of 500 pixels, 300 pixels of resolution 72 dpi in the RGB mode.

{II} Now take the Text Tool and create your text, with any color.

{III} Now go to layer pallete right click on your text layer select the Rasterize layer.

{IV} Now select the Lasoo Tool select a portion of the type.

{V} Now select the the move tooldrag the selected piece away from the rest.

{VI} Repeat step 4 and 5 lots of time you should get something which look like this.

{VII} Now make the copy of text layer and still selected the orignal text layer.

{VIII} Then go to Filter>Blur>Radial Blur use these settings.

{IX} Your image should be look like this.

{X} Now make the 2 morecopy blur layer see in the next image.

{XI} Now select this layer and change the Blending Mode Dissolve see in the next

{XII} Your image should be look like this.

{XIII} Then press Cntl+U, to add some color apply the following settings.

{XIV} Your image should be look like this.

{XV} Now select this layer Blast copy 3 change the Blending Mode Linear Dodge.

{XVI} Your final Blast Test should be look like this.

Cool Blue POPCORN Text

2009-02-06T15:52:00.000-08:00

Title: Cool Blue POPCORN Text effect photoshop tutorials How to draw a cracked text effect

Description: Great photoshop tutorial for web designers to learn new techniques and design new logos using popcorn or cracked text effect.Break, broken, fractured or split text effect.

How to make Cracked text in photoshop.

[I] First of all I have taken a new file of height = 400 pixels, width = 400 pixels
and resoulation of 72 dpi in the RGB mode.

[II] Fill the new document with color black.

[III] Now type any word you like, make sure the font color is white.

[IV] Now go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur Apply the following setting.

[V] Your image will look like this.

[VI] Press Ctrl+Click on the layer menu, located with the 'layers' windo wthis will get you the outline of the text layer, now using a gradient tool (change the plate to white and black)
now with the gradient tool drop and drug its like shown below.

[VII] Your image will look like this.

[VIII] Click Filter>Render>Lighting Effect and enter these values.

[IX] Your image will look like this.

[X] Now click Layer>Layer Style> Blending Option, Bevel and Emboss Structure apply the following setting.

[XI] Now click Layer>Layer Style> Blending Option Texture Elements apply the following setting.

[XII] Your image will look like this.

[XIII] Lets add some color, click Image Adjustments Hue/Saturation Apply the following setting.

[XIV] Your final image will be as attractive as mine as showing below.

Learn to Mix two photographs

2009-02-05T04:57:00.000-08:00

Learn to Mix two photographs

Title: Learn to Mix two photographs

Description: Great photoshop tutorial for web designers to learn new techniques and design new images.Photoshop move tool tutorial – how to superimpose images on one another.

Free photoshop tutorial how to merge two images and create one image.

I- First of all Take two images and combine both image into one image with the help of the Move tool. As shown below

II- Combine image as shown below

III- Now click on this icon 'Add layer mask'.

IV- Now layer window will be look like this

V- Now press the "D" key on your key board. Select the Linear Gradient tool

VI- Use the Gradient tool. As shown below

VII- Your image should look like this. Final Image.

Photoshop Monster

2009-01-27T03:53:00.001-08:00

Title: Make a sketch or drawing of a motor cycle photograph.

Description: I will give you some simple steps to create a hand drawn sketch or drawing for a motorbike.

Adobe photoshop tutorial to create a drawing or sketch of a motorcycle from a photo.

[I] Take a new file of 500 pixels 400 pixels
of resolution 72 dpi in the RBG mode.

[II] First you can take any picture.

[III] Now make the copy of
Layer 0 hide the layer see
in the next image.

[IV] Now go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate.

[V] Your image will be look like this.

[VI] Now go to Image>Adjustments>Invert, (Short cut key is Cntl+I)
your image will be look like this.

[VII] And now change the
Blending Mode Color Dodge.

[IX] Now go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur
use these settings.

[X]-Final Result.

Working With Photoshop Blending Modes Opacity Photoshop Tutorial

2009-01-26T21:20:00.000-08:00

Working With Photoshop Blending Modes & Opacity - Photoshop Tutorial

In this tutorial, I'm taking a brief look at opacity and blending modes in Photoshop and how you can create different image effects by using them. I'm not going to look at each of the blending modes – there are 23 of them – but more an overview of how they work.

When you blend layers you are changing the way pixels on the different layers mix with each other and this gives us some cool (and unusual) results. Blending modes can be a great way to compose multiple-image artwork.

I'm using a Photoshop file that has two layers. One layer contains an image of an old building with an orange coloured wall and the other layer contains a staircase on the outside of an apartment block. When you're trying this out yourself, just use any Photoshop image with two different layers, with something on each layer.

It's always a good idea to give your layers a descriptive name. Don't just leave each layer with it's default of Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3 and so on. When you're dealing with an image with 20 layers this becomes very tiresome when you're trying to figure out what's on each layer.

Step I: To rename a layer, double-click the layer name in the Layers palette. A bounding box will appear around the words Layer 1 . Type a new name and Press Return or Enter .

Note: Make sure you click directly on the layer name, otherwise you will open the Layer Style dialog box and you won't be able to rename the layer.

Step II: When I click on the eye icon on the newly-named Stairs layers. The image of stairs appears in the image and the Orange Wall is hidden.

Step III: With the Stairs layer selected in the Layers palette, click on the arrow beside the opacity field and drag the slider to 40%. Notice that everything on this layer - the stairs and the wall they are attached to becomes less opaque (more see-through).

Step IV:Lowering the opacity of a layer makes the artwork on that layer more translucent, so that the layers beneath it show through.

Step V: Drag the opacity slider back to 100% so that you can see the Stairs normally.

Step VI: On the layers palette, click on the down arrow beside the field that says “ Normal”. By default, layer appear with a blending mode of Normal.

Step VII: From the drop down menu that appears, choose Hard Mix.

Step VIII: The image changes quite dramatically.

Take a few minutes to try out different blending modes and see how the image is affect. Below you can see Overlay and Multiply modes.

Step IX: The Multiply mode is probably one of the most often used blending modes. It blends layers to produce a darker colour, except where there are white pixels. The white pixels will disappear.

When you have found a blending mode that produces an effect you like, click on the Stairs palette to select it. Click on the “Create a New Layer” button at the bottom of the Layers palette.

Step X: A new empty layer appears in the Layers palette just above the Stairs layer, but nothing has changed on your image in the document window. When you add a new layer, by default the layer is empty and transparent. You're now going to use this new layer to draw a border around the image you've been working on. The benefit to drawing on this layer, as opposed to drawing on any of the other layers, is that it can be isolated on its own - turned on or off, transparency adjusted and other adjustments applied to the layer.

Step XI: Make sure that the new empty layer is selected. Select the Brush tool from the Toolbox (or hit B on the keyboard). On the tool options bar, click on the Brush Preset Picker and select a rough looking brush. (I picked a Dry Brush Light Flow) and set the master diameter to about 100 pixels. On the toolbox, set the foreground colour to black by hitting “D” on the keyboard – this sets the foreground and background colours to their default – black and white. Start drawing around the edge of the image to create a rough border.

Rename the layer as “B order”. (Yes, I know I'm nagging about the naming of layers but it's good practice!)

Step XII:The benefit to drawing on this new empty layer is if you don't like your work you can turn it off without affecting your entire image. You could also reduce the opacity to see how that looks.

Take some time to try adding another layer to your image and draw some more. Pick different brushes and colours and choose some blending modes.

So that's it for an intro to blending modes and opacity. The best way to find out how they work is, of course to experiment and check out all the different effects you can achieve.

Making Vortex Effect

2009-01-25T00:42:00.000-08:00

Making Vortex Effect

PartI:

Start with a new document (white background), around 640 x 480.

On the background layer, with a brush (around 17 pixels) draw some lines like shown...

PartII:

Apply Filter > Blur > Radial Blur. Amount 100%, Type - Zoom, Quality - Best.

PartIII:

Apply Filter > Stlize > Find Edges and repeat Step 2.

Now Image > Adjustments > Invert and draw a white star or an X in the middle.

Part IV:

Then, repeat Step 3 again. With this done, goto Image > Adjustments > Color Balance and play around with those bars until you find a colour you like.

PartV:

Now try Filter > Distort > Twirl and set that at about 90 degrees.

Making of Fire Dragon

2009-01-24T04:46:00.000-08:00

Well the process of designing Fire Dragon wallpaper is not full of interesting tips and tricks. It was actually 24 hours of drawing with brushes of different sizes and colors.

As always, to start, we need background. Set foreground to dark red, background to black. Select Gradient tool, choose Radial type, fill the document dragging the mouse from bottom to top of image.

The mountains in the background are very easy to do - they are simply black shapes made with Pen tool. So, take a Pen tool and make a shape :-)

Create new layer, take soft brush tool, set color to lighter red, and make strokes as shown here, touching the edge of mountain

Create clipping mask (from Layers menu). The mountain is ready.

The same way, create as many mountains as you'd like.

The dragon itself consists of 2 parts: soft brushes and hard brushes (outlines). Without many comments, let me show you soft brushes, layer by layer. Start with dark red very large soft brush (you can apply Gaussian Blur as well), and with each new layer, make brush smaller, make color lighter and move it from red to yellow.

Next layer...
Next layer...
Next layer...
Next layer...
Next layer...

Making of Fire Dragon

2009-01-23T23:02:00.000-08:00

Finally, here goes real Photoshop trick! The soft brushes are good for background colors, and hard brushes are good for outlines, but neither are good enough to draw fire. I tried using my tablet pressing hard brush gently, but I ended up with dragon made of fur, not fire :-) So I started playing with changing settings of default Photoshop brushes. Finally, I achieved something that satisfied me (I realize it is not perfect but drawing fire takes a lot of skills, I am only starting my way to it). You can download tool preset and try this brush yourself

Using this brush, make some strokes around the edges of dragon... (on this image, I show only this layer on black background, so you can better see how this brush looks)

And then set layer mode to Overlay, and duplicate layer. This is the result, shown with all layers visible.
Next trick is usually used in tutorials like Make your own Aqua OSX wallpaper! But I found I wanted this effect here too. Set color to grey (HEX 808080). With pen tool, create a shape of dragon.

Set layer mode to Overlay. Because layer is grey, it will become invisible - do not worry! :-) Create new layer, and with black and white large soft brushes, put some dots here and there.

Then, Create clipping mask (from layer menu). Magically, the brush is masked by vector layer, and inherited overlay!
You can repeat the same steps to create additional curve inside wings.

And, use the same technique to make dragon head (or, unlike me, you could do it on previous step! That would be wiser :-)

This is how the head looks when I set shape layer mode to Overlay, then add black and white brush dots, and create clipping mask.

Use Pen tool to add white eye, then set its layer mode to Overlay too.

Making of Fire Dragon

2009-01-23T22:38:00.000-08:00

Here goes most fun and time-consuming part: outlines. For next steps below, I made outlines with small hard white brush, then set layer mode to Overlay.

This is how it looks with layer mode = overlay...

next layer... hitting my tablet with pen a lot :-)

setting layer mode to overlay...

next layer...
setting layer mode to overlay...

Next step - volcano. As with previous mountains, set color to black, and use Pen tool to make a shape of a mountain.

In new layer, use large soft brushes (from dark red to gold) to fill mountain with color. Create clipping mask (from layer menu). Apply gaussian blur if needed.

Add lava in the same way as with dragon wings - with small white hard brush.

You guessed it right! set layer mode to overlay :-)

Making of Fire Dragon

2009-01-23T22:22:00.000-08:00

The final touch is clouds above the volcano (to tell the truth, I added clouds to hide transition between volcano and dragon :-) I was not happy with it). Create new document, with width twice more than height. set foreground to white and background to black. Then apply Clouds filter (Filters menu - Render).

select central part of image, as shown here. Transform (Ctrl-T), holding Alt key, and stretch selection to fill entire document

(like this)

Enable Quick Mask (Q key), apply Clouds filter again, disable Quick Mask (Q key again). You should get selection similar to this.

Fill selection with black color (simply hit Ctrl-Backspace for that). Then, set Auto Levels (Ctrl-Shift-L).

Do that again - enable quick mask, apply Clouds filter, disable quick mask, fill selection with black, set auto levels (or, in shortcuts - Q, Ctrl-F, Q, Ctrl-Backspace, Ctrl-Shift-F).

Now we need to remove black from this image. To do so, select all (Ctrl-A), copy (Ctrl-C), enable quick mask (Q), paste (Ctrl-V), disabled quick mask (Q). Note how white parts are selected.

Invert selection (Ctrl-Shift-I) and delete (Del). Then open Hue/Saturation window (Ctrl-U), and set lightness to 100. You should get white clouds on transparent background.

Making of Fire Dragon

2009-01-23T21:36:00.000-08:00

Copy and paste clouds into our artwork.

switch to Eraser tool (E). select very large soft brush, and erase edges of clouds layer, so that clouds start to actually look like clouds.

Open Hue/Saturation window again (Ctrl-U). set lightness to -40 .. -50, saturation to 80..90. Then play with Hue to get vivid red clouds.

Repeat all steps to create another layer with clouds (only, do not make them red this time)

Then add another layer with clouds, and another one :-) That's all! Thanks for reading!

Preview

PhotoShop - Realistic Blood

2009-01-23T21:03:00.001-08:00

PhotoShop - Realistic Blood

Well here you will be taught how add realistic blood to a pic.

1) Open the picture that you want to blood to. This is the one i used

2) Next pick the lasso tool and make a outline of where you want it to be. MAKE SURE it is on a seperate layer then your picture. Now fill in with a red color. Make it fairly dark, but not too dark. Now set this new layer as color burn.

3) Now go to ur tool bar and pick the color burn tool (left pic) and the smudge tool (right pic).
Well we be using these alot.

4) Ok now with the smudge too, pick a brush size that is about 1/4 the width of your blood spot.
Now start smudging. Try to make the blood like as though its dripping. Keep doing this until your
satisfied with what you have. This is what i have so far.

5) Ok now use the burn tool to darken the blood where the cut runs deeper. Heres what Idid.

6) Now to get a look as though the blood is on her face we well texturize the blood. Go to
FILTER > TEXTURE > TEXTURIZE and this box will pop up. Use the setting i have here.

7) And now your done. here is what my final result looks like

Creating Flame Swirls in Photoshop

2008-11-23T00:49:00.000-08:00

Creating Flame Swirls in Photoshop
Photoshop CS3 | Beginner

In this tutorial you are going to learn how to create the rich flaming swirls you see below through following easy steps using Motion Blur and Shear Distort Filter as well as some Crosshatch brushing. The swirls are colored using the Indexed Black Body color table to give you a similar final result as the one below.

We are going to start off by creating the swirls in black and white and then we will color them using the Color Table.

Creating the Swirls
Start off by creating a new 640x480 document in Photoshop. The Background Contents do not really matter since we are going to fill the background with the color black.

Hit the D key on your keyboard to reset your Color Boxes to its default white and black and then hit the X key to invert the colors locations. Now your Foreground Color should be set to #FFFFFF White and Background Color is set to #000000 Black. Press Ctrl + Backspace to fill the canvas with black. Create a New Layer by going through Layer>New>Layer. Grab the Brush Tool from the Tool Panel on the left to get started with drawing our flame swirls. Right click anywhere on the canvas to open up the Brush Options panel. Click on the arrow that is on the top right corner of the panel and select Assorted Brushes, and then click on the 48px Crosshatch brush type as shown in the screenshot below.

Draw a couple of strokes using the Crosshatch 4 brush you just selected as shown below on a New Layer. Make sure that your strokes are a little bit far away from the edges of the canvas.

We are going to apply a Motion Blur to these strokes. Go through Filter>Blur>Motion Blur, give it an Angle of 45 degrees and a Distance of 150 px.

You should get something similar to the image below.

Our set of lines is now complete, it's time to swirl them. Go through Filters>Distort>Shear and apply the following area coordinates.
The swirls should now look like the image below.

Our swirls are almost ready, before proceeding onto coloring them, we are going to make the flames look more rich in color and more vivid, this is done by duplicating the swirls layer twice to have a result of three layers. You can do that by going to Layer>Duplicate Layer. Perform the duplication process twice only. You should now end up with something similar to the image below:

Flaming Up The Swirls

We are done with the process of creating the swirled shapes and now it is time color them up. This is the same technique we used in our other Blazing Flame tutorial. Go through Image>Mode>Grayscale and proceed when asked to flatten image and discard color information. Now go through Image>Mode>Indexed Color. When that is done, go through Image>Mode>Color Table and choose Black Body from the Table drop down menu.

By applying the Black Body color table your final flaming swirls should look similar to the image shown below.

PhotoShop Metallic Type Text Effect

2008-11-20T03:37:00.000-08:00

PhotoShop Metallic Type Text Effect

I am going to show you a quick and easy variation on metallic text effect.

Step 1: To begin, create a new image with the following attributes.

Step 2: Create a new layer and then select the Type Mask tool. I Chose Stencil Std font with 90 pts in size.

Step 3: Open the Layer Styles for the filled type layer. First, select Inner Glow and apply the following settings:Step 4: Now select Bevel and Emboss with the following settings:

Step 5: Set Gradient Overlay:

Step 6: Inner Shadow:

Step 6: Go back to Bevel and Emboss. Click on the Contour window and create a contour like the one seen below.

Click Ok.

Blood in Photoshop

2008-11-20T03:16:00.000-08:00

Blood in Photoshop

Step 1

Use Pen Tool to draw shape for blood.

Step 2

When finish drawing, click right buton of your mouse and select Make Selection.

Step 3

Open new layer.

Step 4

Select color.

Step 5

Color your shape with Paint Bucket Tool.

Step 6

This is shape and color what you get.

Step 7

Go to Property box>Layers>Layer Style>Bevel and Emboss. Use This layer style like in picture. If you have open smaller or bigger format, you can change this options.

Step 8

Go to Property box>Layers>Layer Style>Gradient Overlay. Use This layer style like in picture.

Step 9

Finish

Blohotosphe

PhotoShop Dark dreamy photo effect

2008-11-20T02:56:00.000-08:00

Dark dreamy photo effect

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial we will learn how to correct the photos colors, change the eyes color, work with the layers, applying ready brushes and designs, create your own design and to picture the stars.

Fairy Night Photo Effect

This task we'll learn how to correct the photos' colors, change the eyes color, work with the layers, applying ready brushes and designs, create your own design and to picture the stars.

Let's start. Open image:
Apply Image // Adjustments // Curves (ctrl+m) to correct the colors.

That is what we've got:

To change the eye's color we have to picture on a new layer several circles, using Ellipse Tool. (Use the fast button on the Layers window to create a new layer).

Apply to this layer Filter // Blur // Gaussian Blur.

Change the layer's type on Overlay.

Tutorials - 101 Hidden Tips and Secrets For Photoshop

2008-11-19T08:49:00.000-08:00

Tutorials - 101 Hidden Tips and Secrets For Photoshop

101 Hidden Tips and Secrets For Photoshop

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, C**K, indexed color…

***

Ctrl+”~” = RGB
Ctrl+1 = red
Ctrl+2 = green
Ctrl+3 = blue
Ctrl+4 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path
Ctrl+”~” = C**K
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, 500×500 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).

Photo Shop Creating Swirls Effect

2008-11-13T18:04:00.000-08:00

Photo Shop Creating Swirls Effect
step:1
Create a new canvas. On a new layer, use the to make a circle and fill it with white.
Hold the CTRL Key and click on the Circle Layer. Then choose Select > Modify > Contract. Choose 20 pixels and delete the inside.

step2
Next, distort the ring by choosing Edit > Transform > Distort. It doesn't have to look exactly like the one shown at the left.

Then, Hold the CTRL Key and click on the Ring (Circle) layer. Choose Select > Modify > Contract and choose 1 pixel. After which, Choose Select > Modify > Feather and choose 10 pixels.

step3
Next it to Delete the selected area. Simply press the Delete key twice.

step4
duplicate the ring layer several times and simply varying it by scaling, rotating, adding a few filters (like blurs) and changing the opacities of each duplicate.
next, merge all the ring layers. Then used the gradient tool

Photo Shop Blue-Orb Effect

2008-11-13T17:38:00.000-08:00

Photo Shop Blue-Orb Effect

Step 1

Open up a new document with 300×250 pixels, transparent background. Fill the background up with black, #000000. We’ll be starting off with the orb base color next, from darkest blue to white. Click on the foreground color and replace the current color to #000066. Create a new layer named “Orb Base” and select the brush tool

Select a brighter blue, #3399ff for the foreground color and click your mouse once on top of the previous 2 base colors.Adjust the diameter by right clicking on your canvas and turn the hardness all the way down to 0%. We’ll be using 120 pixels for the master diamter in this tutorial. Go ahead and left click the mouse once on the canvas.

Click on your forgound color and select a lighter blue, #0000cc using the color picker. Tune down the master diameter a little bit smaller. Click your mouse once on top of the previous base color.

Select a much brighter blue, #99ccff for the foreground color using the color picker and click your mouse once again on top of the previous 3 base colors.

Click on your forgound color and select white, #ffffff. Tune down the master diameter a little bit smaller and click your mouse once on top of all the previous base color. The following result is shown with the optional step added in.

Step 2

Select the smudge tool and turn your master diameter up to around 39 pixels for this tutorial.

The next step require some practice supposedly this is your first time using the smudge tool. Click and hold the left button inside the orb base colors while moving your mouse to drag out the tail.Then,click and hold the left button on the inner tail while dragging your mouse to increase the length of the tail. Repeat and play around until you get the desired tail.Good Luck

See-Thru Text

2008-11-12T23:00:00.000-08:00

See-Thru Text

Software Used: Photoshop 5.5

Note: If you have Photoshop 6 or higher, you'll want to use the Otherwise, scroll down to begin

1.) Open the background image you wish to use, or create a new file and fill it with a background pattern. This effect works best with a fairly pale background.

2.) Set the foreground color to white. Select the type tool and type your text.

3.) In the layers palette, select the SeeThru layer, right-click, and choose duplicate layer. (If you typed something other than "SeeThru" your layer name will be different.)

4.) On the SeeThru copy layer, right click, choose effects, and apply the drop shadow effect.

5.) With the SeeThru copy layer selected, go to Layer -> Effects-> Create Layer. This separates the drop shadow from the text.

6.) Ctrl-click on the SeeThru layer, switch to the drop shadow layer, and hit delete. This trims away the portions of the drop shadow that don't extend beyond the text. Hide the other layers by clicking the eye icon on the layers palette to see the results, it should look like the image below. Deselect.
7.) Now right-click the SeeThru copy layer in the layers palette. Choose Effects, and apply an inner shadow.

8.) Again go to Layer -> Effects-> Create Layer to separate the inner shadow effect from the text.

9.) Click the SeeThru copy layer and set the blend mode to "multiply".

10.) Now adjust the opacity of the drop shadow and inner shadow layers to tweak the effect. You should still have your original SeeThru layer hidden; if desired, make it visible and drop the opacity down to about 20% to give the text a frosted look. My opacity settings for each layer are shown below in red. You may need to vary them depending on your background.

11.) Here's the final image and a couple of variations.

See-Thru Text with Layer Styles

2008-11-12T19:32:00.000-08:00

See-Thru Text with Layer Styles
Software Used: Photoshop 6.0 or 7.0

Using layer styles in Photoshop 6 or 7 we can create a very quick and easy transparent or see-through type effect. By saving the style, you can apply the effect with one click. Here's how

1.) Create a new document.

2.) Click the "Create new fill or adjustment layer" button on the layers palette. Then choose "Pattern" from the menu.

3.) Pick a pattern from those offered in the pattern fill dialog and click ok to create a new fill layer.

4.) Type D to set the foreground color to white.

5.) Select type tool and add some text to your document. Don't apply a layer style to the type.

6.) Use the move tool to position and size your type.

7.) Double-click a blank spot in the layer palette for the type layer you just added. This is will bring up the Layer Style dialog.

8.) Click on "Blending Options" and change the Blend Mode to Multiply. (The type will temporarily disappear.)

9.) Click on "Drop Shadow" and adjust the settings to your liking.

10.) Click on "Bevel and Emboss" and adjust the settings to your liking.

11.) Optional: Click the "New Style" button if you want to save this style for future use. In the new style dialog, give the style a name and make sure "Include Layer Effects" and "Include Layer Blending Options" are both checked. The saved style will appear at the end of the Style palette. When you use the layer style in the future, remember you'll need to use white as the type color.

12.) Click OK to accept the layer styles you just applied.

Note that the type and effects remain completely editable. You can double click the T in the layer palette to select the text and type a different word or phrase. You can also modify the bevel and shadow effects if you decide they need to be changed

Improve a photo from a mobile phone

2008-11-11T18:22:00.000-08:00

Improve a photo from a mobile phone

Today I will show as from anything actually to make though something normally perceived by an eye, this full achievement of an ideal shot but though something is better than a source code is final not
Lesson for version CS 2 and above

I prefer to do each new transformation on a new layer, duplicating that already is (Ctrl-J) so be not frightened if on sreens you see a heap of layers

1. At us is photo which should be retouched, in my understanding this the worst that could make with shape of the person light and camera expansion:

2. First, we will get rid of a noise considerable quantity:
At us a lot of colour noise so it is better to make take off noise on all colour channels (Red, Dark blue, Green who not in a course) we will pass in editing of channels here, for example, so looks:

3. Now the filter is by turns applied to channels
Filter – Noise - Reduse Noise (the Filter – Noise - to Clean Noise)
I have applied everyone some times it has not turned out to clean yet all stains, but left as you can see here so, but granularity, undoubtedly, was gone. A kind of the same red channel after the filter applied two times:

The image after taking off noise on channels looks so

4. Further it is necessary to clean, the remained lacks. Accurately we wash away sites on which there was a noise. We take the tool degradation (Such droplet on a toolbar) For it in the menu of options of the tool which usually under the main menu we expose Property force

Strength – Force
It is less, than by default than 100 %, I for example usually take 30-35 %. Remember, the retouch is as mejk-ap better two times to take in one place on small force of a shading, than once ??????? how many it is necessary, as here as well as there not all sites need identical quantity to become comprehensible.
After that the step should achieve approximately here such result, do not wash away strongly sharp transitions of colour, then clearness to direct is hard.

5. On this step starts to correct colour scale of the image.
By means of levels we will correct a few brightness:

Further we will clean all those reflected lights green which is in a photo.
Let’s choose the tool a brush (to choose round with dim edges better) and in mode Color (Colour)
Just as for degradation in the top panel tools we will choose
mode-Color (Mode-colour) Opasity (transparency) of 15-20

Let’s choose normal colour for a skin, from a site where it more or is less similar on natural, I have chosen from area near to an ear, there is painfully ruddy on other sites somehow (pipette)

And gradually we paint over spending a brush twice on places where it is necessary, and even it is more. And so a face at this stage:

6. Further we edit a shirt and hair, for a shirt colour blue too from a site near to edited as in a shade white sees as blue is taken, and for hair colour is taken from other photo (to me so easier, than a trial and error method to select a natural shade for a shading). And eyes a little too should be edited, Where fibers.
Further already, I think, to improve difficult enough business so I suggest to stop on this step and in general to go and teach a retouch of photos, but it, notice, where it is better than the original. Well unless very accurately to make clearness.

I not undertake to say that this is ideal result, but it already is a quite good basis for the further retouch if the person though something understands it.

Pencil drawing

2008-11-11T17:56:00.000-08:00

Pencil drawing

Open a photo in Photoshop.

Duplicate a layer — Layers> Duplicate layers (Ctrl+J)

Transform a photo in black-and-white colours — Image> Adjustments> Desaturate (Shift+Ctrl+U)

Dublicate black-and-white layer (Ctrl+J)

Duplicated layer we Invert the image (Ctrl+I)
Put mixing Mode - Color Dodge

All was gone, ??!! It is not panicked)

Go to filters — Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur, the radius is exposed 2-3 pixels. We press ??, we rejoice)

Photoshop Water Reflection

2008-11-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

Photoshop Water Reflection

In this Photoshop photo effects tutorial, we’re going to learn how to easily add a realistic water reflection to any photo. It’s a very easy effect to create and you can add it to any photo you like, although it tends to work best with images that don’t already contain water in them.

We’ll be using a simple filter and a displacement map to create the water ripple effect, and a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to give our water a little color.

Here’s the photo that I’ll be working with throughout this tutorial:

And here’s what our image is going to look like after adding the water reflection :

Let’s get started.
Step 1: Duplicate The Background Layer

With our image newly opened inside Photoshop, we can see in the Layers palette that we currently have one layer, the Background layer, which contains our image:

The original image on the Background layer in the Layers palette.

We need to duplicate the Background layer, and we can do that using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac). Now when I look in my Layers palette now, I can see that I now have two layers - my original Background layer on the bottom and a new layer, “Layer 1″, above it which is my duplicate:

Press “Ctrl+J” (Win) / “Command+J” (Mac) to duplicate the Background layer.

Step 2: Add More Canvas Space To The Bottom Of The Document

We’re going to add our water reflection below the image, so let’s add some canvas space to the bottom of our document to make room for our reflection. To do that, go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen and choose Canvas Size. This will bring up Photoshop’s “Canvas Size” dialog box. The easiest thing to do here is to add twice as much canvas space as what we currently have, but we only want it to appear at the bottom of the document, not above it or on either side, so we need to tell Photoshop exactly where we want this extra canvas space to go.

First, enter 100 for the Height and set the measurement to percent, as circled in red below. Leave the Width option set to 0. Then make sure the Relative option is checked, which tells Photoshop to give us 100% more canvas space than what we already have. Below the “Relative” option is a 3×3 grid of squares. This is where we tell Photoshop where we want to place our additional canvas space. Click inside the square in the middle of the top row (again as circled below). This tells Photoshop not to place any of the extra canvas space above the document and instead to place all of it at the bottom:

Add more canvas space using the “Canvas Size” dialog box.

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box, and Photoshop will add the extra canvas space to the bottom of the image:
Step 3: Flip The Top Layer Vertically

In order to create our reflection, we need to flip our image upside down, so let’s do that.

With the top layer selected in the Layers palette, go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen, choose Transform, and then choose Flip Vertical.

Photoshop will flip the image upside down in the document:

Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical to flip the image on the top layer upside down.

Step 4: Drag The Flipped Image To The Bottom Of The Document

We need the flipped image to be at the bottom of the document, so grab your Move Tool from the Tools palette, or press V on your keyboard for the shortcut:

Select the Move Tool.

Then, with the Move Tool selected, click inside the document and drag the flipped image down to the bottom until the top of it is lined up with the bottom of the original image above it. Hold down Shift as you drag to make sure you drag down in a straight line:

Drag the flipped image down below the original.

Step 5: Add A New Blank Layer

Now that we have our flipped image in place, we can begin to create our water ripple effect. First, we need to add a new blank layer at the top of the Layers palette, so with “Layer 1″ still selected, click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Add a new blank layer to the document.

Step 6: Fill The New Layer With White

We’re going to fill our new blank layer with white. If white is not currently your Background color, press D on your keyboard, which will reset Photoshop’s Foreground and Background colors, making black your Foreground color and white your Background color. Then use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Backspace (Win) / Command+Delete (Mac) to fill the new layer with the Background color (white). Your document will be filled with solid white.

The entire image is now filled with white.

Step 7: Apply The “Halftone Pattern” Filter To Create Black And White Horizontal Lines

Go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Sketch, and then choose Halftone Pattern. This brings up Photoshop’s Filter Gallery (in Photoshop CS and higher) set to the “Halftone Pattern” filter options on the right, with a large preview of the effect on the left. We’re going to use this filter to add a series of black and white horizontal lines to the image. These lines are going to become our water ripples . The more lines we have, the more ripples we’ll have. First, we want to make sure we’re creating lines and not dots or circles, so set the Pattern Type option to Lines. We control the number of lines by adjusting the Size option. Lower values give us more lines, since we’re lowering the size of each line, and higher values give us fewer but thicker lines. I’m going to set my Size value to 7, which I think works best for my image. You may want to experiment with this value on your own. The Contrast option below it determines how sharp the edges of the lines are. Lower values give you softer lines, white higher values give you hard edge lines. Set this value all the way to 50 to give your lines sharp edges. We’re going to soften them ourselves with the Gaussian Blur filter in a moment:

Adjust the Halftone Pattern filter options to create a series of black and white lines through the image.

Click OK when you’re done to exit out of the dialog box, and Photoshop will fill the image from top to bottom with your black and white lines:

Step 8: Apply The “Gaussian Blur” Filter To The Lines

Before we can use our black and white lines as water ripples , we need to smooth them out and create nice, smooth transitions between them. To do that, go up to the Filter menu once again, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur, which brings up the “Gaussian Blur” dialog box. Keep an eye on your image and drag the slider at the bottom of the dialog box to increase the Radius value until the lines have a very soft edge to them. I’m using a small image for this tutorial, so for me, a Radius value of about 4 pixels works well. If you’re using a larger, high resolution image, you’ll need to set yours to a higher value:

Use the Gaussian Blur filter to smooth out the edges of the lines.

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box and apply the blur to the lines.
Step 9: Duplicate The Lines Layer As A New Document

We’re going to create a brand new document out of our lines layer, which we’ll then use as our displacement map for our water ripples . With the lines layer selected, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and select Duplicate Layer, which brings up the “Duplicate Layer” dialog box. In the “Destination” options, click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the Document option and set it to New, which will create a new Photoshop document out of our layer:

Set the “Document” option in the “Duplicate Layer” dialog box to “New”.

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box, and your layer will open up in a new document on the screen.
Step 10: Save The New Document And Close Out Of It

This new document that we’ve created is going to become our displacement map, but before we can use it, we need to save it. We’re also going to close out of it after we’ve saved it, since we won’t need it open anymore, and the easiest way to accomplish both of those tasks is to simply close out of the document. When you try to close out of it, Photoshop will as you if you want to save the document before closing it. Click Yes:

Choose “Yes” when Photoshop asks if you want to save the document before closing it.

Photoshop will bring up the Save As dialog box. You can name your new document anything you like. I’m going to name mine “water-ripples”. Make sure you save it as a Photoshop .PSD file, since those are the only files that Photoshop can use as a displacement map. You’ll probably want to save the document to your Desktop, since we’ll need to find it again in a moment.

Step 11: Delete The Lines Layer

Now that we’ve used our black and white lines to create the file we’ll be using as our displacement map, we can get rid of it. To do that, simply click on it and drag it down onto the Trash Bin icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Click and drag the lines layer (”Layer 2″) onto the Trash Bin at the bottom of the Layers palette to delete it.

Step 12: Merge The Two Layers Onto A New Layer

Before we can add use our displacement map, we need to merge our two image layers onto a new layer above them. To do that, with “Layer 1″ selected, use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E (Win) / Shift+Command+Option+E (Mac). Nothing will appear to have happened in the document, but if we look in the Layers palette, we can see that both layers have been merged onto a new layer at the top:

Step 13: Use The “Displace” Filter To Create The Water Ripples

We’re ready to create our water ripples using the displacement map we just created. With the new merged layer selected in the Layers palette, go back up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Distort and then choose Displace .

This brings up Photoshop’s “Displace” filter dialog box. This is where we determine the strength of our ripple effect, and we do that with the Horizontal Scale option at the top. I’m going to set mine to a value of 4, which will give me a realistic ripple effect. You may want to experiment with this value with your own image. Setting it too high though will create too much of a horizontal distortion and you’ll lose the realism.

We don’t need any vertical distortion to create our effect, so set the Vertical Scale option to 0. Also, make sure that Stretch To Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels are selected:

Go to Filter > Distort > Displace to bring up the Displace dialog box.

Click OK in the top right corner of the dialog box, and Photoshop will ask you which file you want to use as your displacement map. Choose the file that you just saved a moment ago, which I saved to my Desktop as “water-ripples.PSD”, and then click Open. Photoshop will then apply the displacement map to the entire image, creating our water ripples :

The image after applying our displacement map with the “Displace” filter.

Step 14: Hide The Ripples On Top With A Layer Mask

Of course, we have a slight problem at the moment. We’ve added our water ripple effect to the entire image, and we only wanted it in the bottom half. We can fix that easily though using a layer mask. First, Ctrl-click (Win) / Command-click (Mac) directly on the thumbnail for “Layer 1″ in the Layers palette to place a selection around the flipped image at the bottom of the document:

“Right-click” (Win) / “Control-click” (Mac) directly on Layer 1’s thumbnail in the Layers palette to place a selection around the flipped image.

You’ll see a selection appear around the bottom half of the image in your document. Now, with the merged layer still selected, click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Click on the “Layer Mask” icon to add a layer mask to the merged layer at the top of the Layers palette.

Photoshop will add a layer mask to the merged layer, and because we had a selection around the bottom half of our document when we added the layer mask, only the bottom half of the merged layer remains visible. The top half becomes hidden from view, removing the unwanted water ripples from that part of the image:

The ripple effect is now hidden from the top half of the image after applying the layer mask.

We’re almost done. Let’s finish things off by adding a hint of color to the water, which we’ll do next.
Step 15: Apply The “Gaussian Blur” Filter To The Layer Mask

Before we add our finishing touch by colorizing the water , let’s soften the edge of the layer mask a little so there isn’t such a harsh dividing line between the image on top and the water below. We’ll use the Gaussian Blur filter for that, and since we want to apply it to the layer mask, we’ll need to first select the mask. We can do that by clicking on the layer mask thumbnail in the Layers palette:

Click on the layer mask thumbnail in the Layers palette to select the layer mask.

You can tell that the layer mask is now selected by the white highlight box around its thumbnail. We’re going to apply the Gaussian Blur filter to the mask, so go back up to the Filter menu, select Blur once again, and then select Gaussian Blur. When the dialog box appears, simply click OK to apply the same Radius value we used previously.

Step 16: Colorize The Water With A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer

Let’s finish things off now by adding just a hint of blue to our water, and we’ll use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer for that. We want the adjustment layer to only affect the bottom half of the image where the water ripples are, so hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key, click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, then select Hue/Saturation from the list of adjustment layers:

Hold down “Alt” (Win) / “Option” (Mac), click on the “New Adjustment Layer” icon, then drag your mouse to “Hue/Saturation” to select it.

By holding down “Alt/Option”, this tells Photoshop to bring up the New Layer dialog box before adding the adjustment layer. Select the Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask option by clicking inside the checkbox to the left of it:

Select the “Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask” option in the “New Layer” dialog box.

This option tells Photoshop that we want the adjustment layer to affect only the layer directly below it in the Layers palette, and since the layer below it is the layer containing our water ripples , only the water ripples will be colorized, which is what we want. Click OK to exit out of the dialog box.

This will bring up the Hue/Saturation dialog box. We want to colorize our water, so the first thing we want to do here is select the Colorize option in the bottom right corner. Then select the color you want your water to be by dragging the Hue slider at the top. I’m going to drag my slider to the right to a value of about 218, which I think is a good color for my water :

Use the Hue/Saturation dialog box to colorize the water .

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box , and you’ll see that your water on the bottom has now been colorized, but the color is much too strong at the moment.

Step 17: Lower The Opacity Of The Hue/Saturation Layer

To reduce the intensity of the color we just added to the water , all we need to do is go up to the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette and lower the opacity value. I’m going to lower mine all the way down to about 25%, which adds a much more realistic amount of color to the water :

Lower the opacity of the adjustment layer until the water has only a hint of color to it.

Once you’ve lowered the opacity of the adjustment layer to reduce the color intensity of the water , you’re done!

Here once again is my original image for comparison:

The original image once again.

And here is my final “water reflection” result:

Mastering Photoshop's Clone Stamp Tool

2008-11-10T06:50:00.000-08:00

Photoshop Tutorials -- Mastering Photoshop's Clone Stamp Tool

Mastering Photoshop's Clone Stamp Tool

Photoshop's Clone Stamp Tool is one of Photoshop's most powerful tools. At its most basic, it simply copies (or "clones") one area of an image over another. Using this relatively simple concept, though, you can actually cover a lot of ground when it comes to editing or repairing your digital photographs.

NOTE: Although this Adobe Photoshop tutorial was written using Photoshop CS2, the Clone Stamp tool has been around since before version 3. No matter what version of Photoshop you're using, you'll find that the Clone Stamp tool behaves in pretty much the same manner as outlined in this Photoshop lesson.

Clone Stamp - The Basics
Even as of Photoshop CS2 (and even Photoshop CS3), I still believe that the Clone Stamp tool is one of the most powerful Photoshop tools available. Although it uses a fairly simple concept of copying one area in an image over another you'll quickly find that the Clone Stamp tool can be very useful in many photo editing and photo repair situations.

Some of the things that you'll find the Clone Stamp tool useful for are:

* Removing small blemishes in photographs (small scars or pimples in portraits, for example)
* Removing objects, such as telephone wires (or even people), from photos
* Repairing tears in scanned images of old photographs
* Removing braces from a smile in portraits
* Fixing stains in scans of older photographs
* ...and tons more

I'm sure that once you've got some hands-on experience with the Clone Stamp tool, you'll find tons of things that it can be used for.

Getting Started with the Clone Stamp

The Clone Stamp tool (see figure 28.1) may seem a bit mysterious in the beginning as far as novice Photoshop users are concerned.

I imagine the trouble, at least partly, is that the tool can be a little intimidating. In fact, if you simply select the Clone Stamp tool and click anywhere within your image, you'll be presented with an error message dialog box such as the one seen in figure 28.2.

NOTE: When using Photoshop CS2 or Photoshop CS3, you may sometimes get an even less informative error dialog box that simply states that there is a program error.

Let's take a look at the error message... the message says, "Could not use the clone stamp because the area to clone has not been defined (Alt-click to define a source point)."

What this message is trying to tell you is that you have not yet selected an area that the tool should use to copy from, and to do so, you should Alt-click the area that you wish to use. That sounds simply enough. Let's take a look at how that's done, and then get in a little practice using the Clone Stamp. I'll be using the image that you see in figure 28.3.

Figure 28.3 is a photograph of my Boxer puppy when she was quite young... you can easily see the potential for puppy mischief in her eyes :) The problem with this particular photograph is that the pup appears to have a leash growing out of the top of her head. This particular photo would certainly be more attractive without the leash, and the best Photoshop tool to help get rid of the leash is the Clone Stamp tool.

Using the Clone Stamp tool it will be possible to cover the leash using some of the surrounding grassy lawn. Figure 28.4 gives you an idea of what the finished image looks like once the leash has been "removed" with the Clone Stamp tool.

Although working with a high-res image is best, you can work along with the image of the Boxer pup if you'd like. If you already have Photoshop open, you can simply drag-n-drop the image from the web page into Photoshop. Alternatively, you can right-click the image and save it somewhere so that you can then open it in Photoshop.

With the image open that you want to work on, zoom-in to the area that needs attention...

NOTE: To zoom-in, select the Zoom tool near the bottom-right of the toolbar (you can press the 'Z' key to do so) and then click-and-drag around the area that you what to work on. You can see if figure 28.5 that I've zoomed-in on the area with the leash.

Author's picks: Here's a list of 5 of my favorite Photoshop CS2 books, available at Amazon.com.

* Photoshop CS / CS2 Wow! Book, The, 1/e (WOW!)
* Photoshop Artistry: For Photographers Using Photoshop CS2 and Beyond (Voices That Matter)
* Adobe Photoshop CS2 Classroom in a Book
* Photoshop CS2 Killer Tips
* Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-Click Wow! (2nd Edition) (WOW!)

Select the Clone Stamp tool (in Photoshop CS2 it's the fifth icon down on the left in the toolbar).

NOTE: The Clone Stamp tool shares its toolbar place with the Pattern Stamp tool. The Pattern Stamp tool uses a pattern as its source. To see both tools, click and hold down the stamp tool icon and choose the Clone Stamp tool from the flyout menu.

With the Clone Stamp tool selected, take a look at the available options. The options (see figure 28.6) can be found just below the main menu.

The first icon from the left enables access to any previously stored presets. Next you'll find an icon that enables you to select a brush size and hardness. You can also set the Mode, the Opacity, and the Flow. Finally, you can set the "Aligned" and "Sample All Layers" options. Between the Flow and Aligned options, you can also set the brush so that it behaves like an airbrush.

For now, we'll only be concerned with setting the brush. To follow along, though, make sure that the Aligned option has a checkmark next to it, that the Mode is set to Normal, and that the Opacity and Flow are both set to 100%.

Click the Brush icon and set the size (Master Diameter) of the brush so that it approximates the size of the object (in this case the leash) that you want to clone over. You can see, in figure 28.7, that I've set the brush to about 80 pixels and the hardness to about 50%. You can also see the size of the cursor (it's visible near the buckle of the leash) in the image, and how I've made it a little bigger than the width of the leash.

With the brush set, it's time to begin. Position the mouse near the leash, but not touching it, and hold down the ALT key. Doing so will change the appearance of the cursor as seen in figure 28.8.

Click the mouse to set the "source" area. The source area is where the image data will be copied from, i.e. where you click will be the starting point for the source.

Move the cursor over the leash and click-and-drag to copy some of the grass over the leash (see figure 28.9).

In figure 28.9 you can see that the Clone Stamp tool displays two cursors. The first starts out where you ALT-clicked and the second shows up where you start to click-and-drag. You can see that I've dragged down a little with the tool. As I did so the tool (indicated by the circular cursor) covered the leash with a copy, or "clone" of the grass to the right (from under the crosshair cursor).

Wrapping Up (for now)
There're a couple of things to note here... Firstly, I set the brush to a medium softness. The reason I did so is because the grass in the photograph is a little soft due to the focus being on the pup and not the lawn. If you set the brush too hard in a situation like this, you'll get weird edges where you use the tool. Not good as the best use of the tool leaves no trace of it having been used. Secondly, I set the brush to a size that would cover the leash with one stroke... This works well in this particular situation, and would do so as well if you were covering something like telephone lines. You may have to set a smaller brush and use multiple strokes to cover the object in other situations, though. And lastly, It may be difficult to remove the leash as you get nearer the top of the puppy's head. In this case it would be wise to make a selection around the area so that the brush only covers the leash and not the surrounding head.

I'll cover how you can do that and a whole lot more in the next lesson where we'll explore the settings not covered in this basic lesson. As well, I'll show you some of my favorite tips and techniques for using Photoshop's Clone Stamp tool.

That's it for now... Be sure to check out some of our other remember kids, only use your grafX powers for good and not evil :)

Photoshop Tutorials -- Raised Text (Label Gun Text)

2008-11-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

Creating Raised Text (Label Gun Text) with Photoshop

This tutorial shows the steps required to create text that looks as though it was created with one of those label guns.

Open a new file at 400x200 pixels with the dpi set at 72 and the mode set to RGB.

Create a new layer and call it "Text". Choose a bright plastic-looking color and fill the layer.

figure 5.1

TIP: You can easily fill the current layer with the current forground color by pressing the ALT-BACKSPACE key combination.

Select the "Channels" palette and create a new channel. Leave it set to the default name of #4.

Fill the channel with white. Set the foreground color to black and enter some text. I used the "Modern" font at 150 pixels.

TIP: You can quickly and easily center the text by using CTRL-X (cut) CTRL-V (paste).

figure 5.2

De-select the text, choose FILTERS, BLUR, GAUSSIAN BLUR, and blur the image with a setting of 3.0.

figure 5.3

Use the Magic Wand tool set at a tolerance of 40 to select the white areas of the graphic. Make sure that you select the areas in the center of the letters like "e" and "o" etc. This can be done by holding down the SHIFT key while making the selections.

Choose SELECTIONS, NVERT. The Blurred text should now be selected. figure 5.4

Select the Layers palette to go back to the "Text" layer. (Your colored rectangle should appear.)

Choose FILTERS, RENDER, LIGHTING EFFECTS and use the following settings:

* Style: 2AMSPOT
* Light Type: SPOTLIGHT
* Intensity: 24
* Focus: 34
* Gloss: 0
* Material: -46
* Exposure: 0
* Ambience: 4
* Texture Channel: #4
* White is High: Checked
* Height: 50

Manipulate the light so that it comes in from the bottom-right, and be sure that all of the selected letters are bright. This can be done by drawing the light closer to the letters and widening the oval to a circular shape.

figure 5.5

De-select the selection by choosing SELECTIONS, NONE.

figure 5.6

Photoshop Tutorials -- EZ GoldText

2008-11-08T04:32:00.000-08:00

Creating Reflective Gold Text with Photoshop

This tutorial shows the steps required to create reflective gold text.
Open a new file at 400x200 pixels with the dpi set at 72 and the mode set to RGB. I'll show the images at 200x100 to save loading time.
Set the foreground color to R: 242, G: 248, B: 60 and the background color to R: 160, G: 107, B: 10.
Use the linear gradient tool with the "foreground to background" option set and fill the image from top to bottom

figure 6.1

Switch to the default colors. This can be done by clicking on the small black and white squares in the lower left-hand corner of the color swatch:

figure 6.2

Swap the foreground and background colors by clicking on the small curved arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the color swatch. The foreground choice should be white and the background choice should be black.

Create a new layer by clicking on the rectangle icon with the bent up corner in the layers palette.

Enter some text using the text tool. I used the Modern font at 150 points with bold and anti-aliased checked. Center the text by pressing Ctrl-X and then Ctrl-V. (Cut and Paste).

figure 6.3

Make the background layer current by clicking on its entry in the layer palette.

Use SELECT, INVERSE to invert the selection and press the delete key.

Delete layer1 by dragging its icon (in the layers palette) down to the small trash can icon. This will leave the selected gold text on a black background.

figure 6.4

Make a copy of the background layer by clicking on the layer in the layer palette and dragging it down to the new layer icon (the rectangle with the bent up corner).

Make the background layer current again by clicking on its icon in the layer palette. Choose SELECT, ALL and press the delete key. Choose SELECT, NONE.

At this point you should have a solid black rectangle for the background layer and the gold gradient text in the layer above.

Click on the channel tab in the layer palette to bring up the channel palette and create a new channel. (This is done by clicking on the rectangle icon with the bent corner, the same as creating a new layer in the layer palette.)

On the new channel enter the same text and center it. Change the foreground color to a mid-gray by clicking on the white foreground color square in the color swatch and choosing a gray color from the left side of the color picker area in the dialog box that pops up. (I used RGB = 121, 121, 121.)

Use EDIT, STROKE with "4 pixels" and "e;inside" as the options. This will outline the white text with gray.

figure 6.5

Choose FILTER, BLUR, GAUSSIAN BLUR set at 3.0. Choose SELECT, NONE and run the gaussian blur again, this time with the setting at 1.0. This will help kill some of the jaggies that might be created.

figure 6.6

Click the layers tab to go back to the layers palette. Make the text (background copy) layer the current layer. Use the magic wand tool to select all of the black background. Any areas inside of the letters can be added to the selection by clicking the mouse in those areas while holding down the shift key.

Once all of the background is selected choose SELECT, INVERSE to select the text.

Choose FILTERS, RENDER, LIGHTING EFFECTS and use the following settings:

* Style: 2AMSPOT
* Light Type: SPOTLIGHT
* Intensity: 17
* Focus: 34
* Gloss: 50
* Material: 50
* Exposure: 0
* Ambience: 4
* Texture Channel: #4
* White is High: Checked
* Height: 50

Manipulate the light so that it comes in from the top-left, and be sure that all of the selected letters are bright. This can be done by drawing the light closer to the letters and widening the oval to a circular shape.

figure 6.7

De-select the selection by choosing SELECTIONS, NONE.

figure 6.8

Photoshop Tutorials - RunnyText

2008-11-08T04:03:00.000-08:00

Creating Runny Text with Photoshop

This tutorial shows the steps required to create runny text.

Open a new file at 500x200 pixels with the dpi set at 72 and the mode set to RGB. I'll show the images at a smaller width and height to save loading time.

Set the foreground color to a bright red and add some text. (I used the Fujiyama font, that came with Corel DRAW! 3.0, at 120 points with bold selected.)

Flatten the text layer and the white background layer. figure 7.1

Choose Image, Rotate Canvas, 90 CW.

Choose Filter, Stylize, Wind. Set the method to Blast and the Direction to From the Right. Run the wind filter again with Filter, Wind or by pressing CTRL-F.

Choose Image, Rotate Canvas, 90 CCW to set the image back to horizontal.

figure 7.2

Choose Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to 2.0 pixels.

figure 7.3

Choose Image, Adjust, Levels and enter 176 1.00 and 221 for the input levels.

figure 7.4

NOTE: you can play with these numbers a little but changing them to much will cause either color shifts or aliasing. If you've used a different color for the text and notice a color shift you may want to change the levels, especially the rightmost triangle.

Choose Image, Adjust, Levels again and enter 167 1.00 and 235 for the input levels.

NOTE: Again you may want to play with these settings.

That's it!

VARIATION:
As a variation you might try running Alien Skin's Inner Bevel on the text. Select the white background with the magic wand tool, choose Select, Similar and then Select, Inverse to select the red text. Apply the Inner Bevel filter with Filter, Eye Candy (or Alien Skin), Inner Bevel. I used the "rounded" preset but raised the bevel width to 29 and the highlight brightness to 51.

Metal Textures

2008-11-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

Creating Metal Textures with Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to create original metal textures. I used PhotoShop 4.01 for Windows. Some things may be done differently with other versions.

Start off by opening a new 200x100 RGB file.

Choose Window, Show Channels to open the Channels palette.

Click on the Create new channel icon. This will create a new channel named #4. Your image will turn black as the new channel is made visible.

Choose Filter, Noise, Add Noise, set the Amount to 630 or so and choose Gaussian Distribution. Click OK.

You should have something like figure 9.1.

Figure 9.1

Choose Window, Show Layers and click on the background layer to make it active. You should get your original image back.

Choose Filter, Render, Lighting Effects. This will bring up the Lighting Effects dialog box (see figure 9.2).

Figure 9.2
In the dialog box make sure that the Texture Channel is set to #4 (the new channel we created). Play around with the position of the light and the different settings 'til you get a look you like and click OK. You should end up with something like figire 9.3.

Figure 9.3

Variation 1:
Before switching back to the Layers palette and applying the Lighting Effects choose Filter, Blur, Motion Blur (you'll be blurring the noise that you placed in the #4 channel) and set the Angle to -33 and the distance to 21.

This will leave the channel looking like figure 9.4.

Figure 9.4

Now when you apply the Lighting filter you'll get something like figure 9.5.

Figure 9.5

Variation 2:
Now apply the Bas Relief filter (Filter, Sketch, Bas Relief) and you'll have another variation (see figure 9.6).

Figure 9.6

With the application of Eye Candy's Inner Bevel and some stamped in text you'll have a rather unique button (see figure 9.7).

Figure 9.7

Photoshop Paint Bucket Tool

2008-10-26T23:12:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Paint Bucket Tool

The paint bucket tool fills an area of an image based on color similarity. Click anywhere in the image and the paint bucket will fill an area around the pixel you clicked.

The exact area filled is determined by how similar each adjoining pixel is to the pixel you clicked on. You can adjust this setting in the options toolbar by changing the tolerance value (make sure the paint bucket tool is selected first). A low tolerance means only very similar colors will be affected, a high tolerance means more pixels will be affected. The range is 0 (exact color matches only) to 255 (all colors).

The example below shows how a simple gradient is filled with green when the center of the image is clicked. The first fill uses a tolerance of 16, the second uses a tolerance of 64:

Other settings in the options bar include:

* Fill: Foreground color (i.e. the currently selected color) or Pattern. If you select pattern, the next drop-menu becomes active and you can choose a pattern to use.
* Mode: The same "blending modes" found in many other tools, including normal, dissolve, lighten, darken, etc.
* Opacity: Set lower to make the underlying image partially visible.
* Anti-alias: Make smoother edges by blending gradually with adjoining pixels.
* Contiguous: (see below).
* All layers: When using multiple layers, all layers are used to create the fill (otherwise only the selected layer is used).

Contiguous Fill

When the contiguous checkbox is selected, only pixels that are connected to the original pixel are filled. The example below shows how this works. The image is clicked near the left hand side—first with contiguous on and then with it off:

Photoshop History Brush

2008-10-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

Photoshop History Brush

The history brush uses a previous state or snapshot of an image. The tool makes a copy of the image as it was in a previous state, then uses the content of this copy to paint with.

History Palette

Example

The example on the right shows the history palette of an image. Three things have happened (i.e. there have been three states):
1. The image was opened.
2. The levels were adjusted.
3. A glowing edges filter was applied.

In the left column of this palette there is a selection box next to each state. Click a box to select that state. By default, the selected state is the point where the file was opened or created.

Painting with the history brush tool will add content from the earlier state like so:

Painting Tool: Brush / Pencil

2008-10-26T21:59:00.000-07:00

Painting Tools: Brush / Pencil

Photoshop provides two tools for drawing (painting) directly to the image: The brush tool and the pencil tool. Both tools work basically the same way — you left-click and drag your mouse in the image to draw. Painting uses the currently selected foreground colour.

The Brush Tool

The brush tool paints with smooth edges. The options bar looks like this:

Settings:* Brush: The size of the brush.
* Mode: The blending mode. For most work Normal will be the best option. Experiment with other modes to see what they do.
* Opacity: Anything less than 100% will allow the underlying image to be seen.
* Flow: Determines how quickly paint is applied. Lower setting produces lighter strokes.

The Airbrush Tool

The airbrush option allows you to apply gradual tones to an image, like a traditional airbrush.

The Pencil Tool

The pencil tool behaves much like the brush except that it has hard edges. The pencil tool options are the same as the brush tool, except:

* There is no airbrush option.
* There is an Auto Erase option. This paints the background colour over areas containing the foreground colour.

Note: To draw a straight line, click a starting point in the image, then hold down the Shift key and click an ending point.

Photoshop Slice Tool

2008-10-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Slice Tool

Photoshop Slice ToolSlice IconThe Slice tool allows you to divide an image into smaller sections which fit together like a jigsaw (but with straight edges). The slice tool is located in the
top section of the Photoshop Toolbox.

There are two tools: Slice (which creates the slices) and Slice Select (which enables you to select and modify existing slices).

Sliced images are commonly used for web design work, which sometimes requires images to be broken up in this way.

Using the Slice and Slice Select Tools

* Select the slice tool in the toolbox.
* Click and drag over the area you wish to make into a slice.
* Release the mouse button - Photoshop automatically creates the necessary number of slices, with the active slice highlighted.
* Using the slice select tool, you can move and resize slices by dragging inside a slice, or by dragging the handles.

Note:To export the separate images, choose File > Save for Web from the Photoshop menu. When you save the file you will have the option to save the images and/or a new HTML page to contain the images.

Photoshop Magic Wand Tool

2008-10-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Magic Wand Tool

The Magic Wand tool allows you to select an area of an image based on its colour. The tool is located near the top of the Photoshop Toolbox.

When you click an area in an image with the magic wand, all areas which are a similar colour are selected. You can specify various options to determine the exact selection.

* Select the magic wand tool in the toolbox.
* In the options bar, select a Tolerance value (0 to 255). This determines how closely to match colours - higher tolerance means a larger selection.
* Check Anti-aliased to define a smooth edge to the selection.
* Check Contiguous to select only areas which are joined together.
* Check Use All Layers to select areas from all layers.
* Click the image in an area which you want to select.

Note: You can add and subtract to the selection by using your Shift and Alt keys, or clicking the selection buttons in the options bar.

Photo Shop Move Tool

2008-10-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

Photo Shop Move Tool

The move tool allows you to move a selection or entire layer by dragging it with your mouse or using your keyboard arrows keys. The move tool is located at the top right of the Photoshop Toolbox.

When the move tool is selected, click and drag anywhere in the image. By default, if an area is selected the selection will be moved, otherwise the whole layer will be moved. See the options bar for more options.

Alternatively, use your arrow keys to move the selection or layer in small increments. Hold down the Shift key to move in larger increments.

Note: You can activate the move tool when another tool is selected by holding down the Ctrl key (Windows) or Command key (Mac OS).

Photo Shop Foreground and background colours

2008-10-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

Foreground and background colours

Foreground and background colours. This shows you the current foreground and background colours that you have selected. You can flip between these using the arrow on there, or revert back to default colours using the little black and white boxes on there.

Photoshop uses the foreground color to paint, fill, and stroke selections and the background color to make gradient fills and fill in the erased areas of an image. The foreground and background colors are also used by some special effects filters.

You can designate a new foreground or background color using the eyedropper tool, the Color palette, the Swatches palette, or the Adobe Color Picker.

The default foreground color is black, and the default background color is white. (In an alpha channel, the default foreground is white, and the background is black.)

Photo Shop Hand Tool

2008-10-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

Photo Shop Hand Tool

Hand tool. This allows the image to be move around very easily. This is great to maneuver yourself around the image from corner to corner or top to bottom.

Navigator Palette and Hand Tool

Now that you've gotten familiar with the Photoshop interface, I'm sure you're eager to get started working with documents. Let's get right to it. In lesson one, we learned several ways to zoom in and out of documents. Now let's look at the Navigator palette and hand tool for even more ways of navigating a document. (Continued below...)

Adobe Photoshop Basics
• Read This First!
• Course Outline
• Navigator Palette & Hand Tool
• New View & Duplicate
• Image Size & Resolution
• Image Size Dialog Box

Interactive Classroom
Visit the forum to post your questions and comments.
-Get Help with Lesson 2
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First, the Navigator palette. If yours is not showing, display it now using any of the methods you learned previously.

Navigator palette

You'll also need to open a document. In the center of the Navigator palette, you'll see a small thumbnail representation of your image, surrounded by a red outline representing the visible area of your document. If your entire image is visible, the outline surrounds the entire thumbnail. If you look at the palette menu, you can choose palette options to change the color of the outline.

Below the thumbnail, we find even more controls for zooming. The text entry field lets you type in any magnification number, and the slider lets you adjust magnification up and down, and the two buttons on either side of the slider allow you to zoom in and out by set intervals.

If you move the slider all the way to the right, you'll see the maximum zoom level is 1600%. Move the slider back and forth a few times slowly and observe the red outline in the Navigator preview. As you can see, it gives you a visual clue as to what part of your image you are viewing. Click anywhere in the Navigator preview to move the focus to that area of the image. Click and drag in the preview to pan around your document. Remember, you can drag the edges of the navigator palette to change its size. The preview will increase as you increase the palette size.

Another way to pan around a document is with the Hand tool. When the hand tool is selected you can just click and drag in your document to pan the visible area. Try it now. Okay, now that you've tried it... make that the last time you ever use the Hand tool because I am going to tell you the one keyboard shortcut you will find yourself using all the time: Spacebar = Hand tool.

No matter which tool is active, the spacebar always temporarily activates the hand tool. Learn it; use it; and never look at the hand tool again. I'm not even going to bother telling you the shortcut and modifiers for the Hand tool; if you're curious, you know by now how to find that out.

At any time while working, when you need the most accurate representation of what you're working on, you should set the magnification to 100%. At any other magnification, there is going to be some level of distortion. Remember the current magnification level will always be displayed in the status bar, the navigator palette, or in the title bar of the document window.

Photoshop Notes tool

2008-10-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Notes tool

Notes tool. With this you can add your own written or audio notes. Its a good idea to use this so you can remember to do certain tasks if you you have a bad memory like me! Just select and click on the area where you want your note to be.

Like post-it notes, but digital. You can use this tool to add small little note boxes to your image. These are useful if you’re very forgetful or if you’re sharing your Photoshop file with someone else. I’m pretty sure it only works with .PSD files.

Photoshop Pen tool.

2008-10-26T03:36:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Pen tool.

Pen tool. This is an awesome very under used tool - think of it like the lasso tool, but much more smoother and less pixely. You can use it to make good selections of wheel arches and make smooth non jaggedly edges for airbrushed body kits. Other tools in this set are used to add and remove anchor points.

Written By Steve Patterson

When it comes to making selections in Photoshop, there's really two types of people - those who know how to use the Pen Tool, and those who struggle.

Most people put off learning how to use the Pen Tool for as long as possible, while others never get around to learning it, believing it's just too confusing, too complicated, and just plain unnatural. Ultimately, their work in Photoshop suffers for it, since they're stuck relying on the Lasso Tool for just about everything they can't select with the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee Tools. In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we're going to put an end to the suffering. We're going to learn just how easy it really is to make selections with the Pen Tool.

Now, when I say "easy", I don't mean you're going to read this tutorial and be instantly transformed into a Pen Master. Learning how to use the Pen Tool is a lot like learning how to ride a bike. Once you've learned, it will seem completely natural and you'll wonder how anyone could possibly not know how to use something so simple. But getting to that point requires a little practice and effort, and while reading every book there is on how to ride a bike may teach you the fundamentals of how the pedals, gears and brakes work, it's not until you're on the bike struggling to keep your balance that the real learning begins.

One of the great things about the Pen Tool is that it's not something that's exclusive to Photoshop. Far from it! Virtually every popular photo editing, graphics and page layout program uses the Pen Tool in one form or another , so once you've learned how to use it in Photoshop, you'll already have a good understanding of how to use it in lots of other programs as well!

Photoshop Path selection tool

2008-10-26T03:14:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Path selection tool

Path selection tool. Used to make shapes and selections showing anchor points and direction lines etc.

To see the layer styles available to you, either pull down the Layer menu and select Layer Style, or click the small button located at the bottom of the Layers palette. In either case, you will be presented with a menu. Selecting a style will apply it to whichever layer is currently selected. After you have made your selection, the Layer Style dialog box will appear:

This dialog lets you modify specific settings, or characteristics, for the selected style. The options available in the dialog box vary depending up on which style was chosen.

Once the Layer Style dialog box is open, you can add additional styles to the same layer by checking them on the left.

To make changes to the default settings for a style, click the style name on the left and the settings for that style will appear on the right. You can then make modifications as you wish. Click OK when you are finished.

Looking at the Layers palette, you can now see that the selected styles appear attached to the layer they affect:

If you want to make changes to the style later, just double click its name in the Layers palette and the Layers Style dialog box will appear.
Click on a style to the left to see the options available for each style, and to see an example of the selected layer style when applied to a text layer.

The final example below shows how you can combine layer styles on a single layer to create a unique effect. The text layer below has the Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Stroke, and Bevel and Emboss styles applied:

It is impossible to describe all of the different features and combinations of layer styles. At this point you should practice applying some yourself! Don’t forget to try some of the special settings for each style. Experimenting is the best way to begin to really understand the possibilities of layer styles.

Photoshop Smudge, Blur and Sharpen tools.

2008-10-26T02:57:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Smudge, Blur and Sharpen tools.

Smudge, Blur and Sharpen tools. Smudge tool is pretty useful for distorting and dragging around part of the image. The blur tool is great for blurring sharp edges and taking away any detail, this is useful for making nice smooth edges on body kits, or airbrushed body parts. The exact opposite to this is the Sharpen tool, this makes blurred edges more sharp and increases detail.

With the Blur Tool, you can soften portions of an image. This tool can cause areas of an image to appear as if they were out of focus. The Sharpen Tool is the exact opposite of the Blur Tool. The Sharpen Tool lets you sharpen the edges in portions of an image. The Smudge Tool is like the Blur Tool, but this tool will slide the colors of an image around and blend them together.

In the following example, we used the Blur Tool to soften the braches of the tree and the Sharpen Tool to accent the rooftops. After the adjustments were made, the rooftops became the new focal point of this image, even though the tree is in the foreground. With the Smudge Tool, we distorted the roof support to show an example of how the Smudge Tool might be used.

Photoshop Eraser Tool

2008-10-26T02:44:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Eraser Tool

Eraser tools. Think of this as an eraser in real life, you can basically rub out sections from your layer. This is useful for smoothing in new bumpers into the original bodywork. The Background Eraser erases to a background colour rather than simply to the layer behind. The Magic Eraser tool erases pixels similar to the ones selected

Eraser tool Photoshop's eraser tool can be found in the second group of icons in the toolbox. It has three variations: Eraser, Background Eraser and Magic Eraser.

The eraser is basically a brush which erases pixels as you drag it across the image. Pixels are erased to transparency, or the background colour if the layer is locked.

When you select the eraser tool, you have various options available in the toolbar:

Brush: Options include the size of the eraser, hardness of edges and various styles. Brush options are not available in block mode.

Mode: There are three options: brush (soft edges), pencil (hard edges) and block (square brush size).

Opacity: 100% opacity erases pixels completely, 0% does not erase at all. 50% is semi-transparent (or coloured). Opacity is not available in block mode.

Flow: Determines how quickly the erasure is applied by the brush. Lower settings produce a more subtle effect. Only available in brush mode.
Airbrush: Use the eraser as an airbrush. Only available in brush mode.

Erase to History: Erases to a saved state or snapshot of the image. To use this feature, click the left column in the history palette next to the desired state.

Background Eraser Tool

The background eraser tool allows you to remove the background colour from an image or layer. When you click the image, the eraser samples the colour at the centre of the brush and erases this colour as you drag. Options in the toolbar allow you to specify the type of erasure, colour tolerance and sampling method.

Magic Eraser Tool

The magic eraser tool erases all colours within a set tolerance. This is essentially the same as using the magic wand and hitting Delete. Using this tool you don't need to drag — just click once.

Photoshop Clone Stamp Tool

2008-10-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Clone Stamp Tool

Clone Stamps. This allows part of an image to be cloned somewhere else on it. You again use ALT click as a reference point. The more you paint, and the wider the area you brush, the more of you reference point will be brushed on.. This is useful for removing door handles and generally smoothing bodywork! Pretty much like the Clone stamp is the Pattern stamp, however it paints a pattern which can be chosen from the in-program patterns, or if your brave you can make your own

Photoshop's clone stamp tool allows you to duplicate part of an image.

The process involves setting a sampling point in the image which will be used as a reference to create a new cloned area.

Select the Clone Stamp tool Clone Stamp tool , then check the settings in the options bar. Make sure you have a brush size appropriate for the job. The following settings are fairly typical:

Notes:

1. Aligned: If this option is selected, the new cloned image will be drawn continuously even if you release the mouse button while drawing. If it is deselected, the clone will begin drawing from the sampling point each time you release the mouse and resume painting.
2. Use All Layers: If this option is selected, information will be used from all visible layers. Otherwise only the active layer will be used.

Example

Hold down the Alt key — the cursor will change to a target. Click the point you wish to use as a sampling point. This will be used as the reference point for cloning.

Click and draw where you want the cloned image to appear. As you draw, a cross will appear on the original image while a corresponding circle appears where you are drawing.

With a little practice it becomes quite clear how this process works and how to achieve the best results.

Photoshop Healing Brush

2008-10-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Healing Brush

Healing tools. The healing tool is much like the Clone tool, and, like it says on the tin it heals parts of your image that are damaged looking. For example, a small blip on a bodywork can be removed by this. First you need a reference part of the bodywork, you do this by holding ALT and then clicking on it. You then just rub over the imperfection and Photoshop automatically fixes it and adjusts the balance etc to make it all look spot on! The Patch tool, within this tool set is also the same but works with patterns.

Healing Brush IconThe Healing Brush tool allows you to fix image imperfections such as scratches, blemishes, etc. By sampling the surrounding area or using a predefined pattern you can blend the imperfections into the rest of the image.

The healing brush tool is located in the Photoshop Toolbox, on the left side.
Using the Healing Brush Tool

* Select the healing brush in the toolbox.
* Check the settings in the options bar and adjust if necessary. Options include:
- Brush size
- Blending mode
- Source (Sampled from the image or pre-defined pattern)
- Aligned
* If you're using sampled mode, Alt-click an area near the imperfection to define the starting point.
* Click and drag over the imperfection. If aligned is selected, the healing brush will remember the starting point between mouse clicks.

Photoshop Crop tool

2008-10-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Crop tool

Crop tool. This cuts away any unwanted parts of the image. Basically select the area you want to keep, and then press enter. Cutting away unwanted background allows people to focus more on the car, and also cuts down on file size.

Photoshop Crop ToolThe Crop tool allows you to select an area of an image and discard everything outside this area. The tool is located third from the top in the Photoshop Toolbox, on the left side.

Although cropping reduces the dimensions of an image, it is not the same as resizing. Whereas resizing reduces or enlarges the entire image and everything in it, cropping does not alter the size of the image content at all.

Using the Crop Tool

* Select the crop tool in the toolbox.
* Select an area of the image to retain (just the same as making a normal selection).
* When you release the mouse button, the area to be retained is highlighted. This is what the new image will look like.
* You can move or transform the crop area by dragging the selection or the selection handles.
* Hit your Enter key to perform the crop.

The result of the example above looks like this:Cropped Photo

Notes:

* You can combine cropping and resizing in the same operation, using the options in the options bar.
* Instead of using the crop tool, you can use the marquee tool to make a selection, then choose Image > Crop from the Photoshop menu.

For more information about cropping and resizing, see How to Resize an Image.

Photoshop Lasso Tools

2008-10-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Lasso Tools

Lasso tools. This tool is much like the Marquee tool above, but the lasso version is ideal for making more freehand selections rather than a set circle or rectangle. There are three tools in this group. The normal lasso tool is a basic click down and drag. The selections are wavy, so you really to need a steady hand. The more recommended lasso tool is the Polygon one. Your selections are made up of a series of lines, which are ended by a click in different areas. This makes long straight selections much easier. Wheel arches are normally selected by making many small straight lines. The final lasso tool is the magnetic one, this is pretty damn hit and miss, but is good if you are lazy (hey we all are).. It automatically clings onto different areas, making easy selections with very little concentration.

The lasso tools allow you to select precise areas of an image by drawing or tracing the selection outline. There are three lasso tools available:
Lasso Tool

This is a freehand selection tool. Click and hold your left mouse button on the image and draw your selection.
Polygonal Lasso Tool

Similar to the lasso tool, except that instead of holding your mouse button down to draw, left-click on various points to create a selection with a series of straight edges.

You can also hold down the Alt key (Windows) or Option key (Mac OS) to draw freehand sections.
Magnetic Lasso Tool

This is a very handy tool for selecting areas which have reasonably well-defined edges. Left-click at the starting point of your selection and simply move the mouse along the edge.

"Fastening points" are automatically made at various points along the edges. Left-click at any time to add a fastening point manually.
To Complete a Selection

To finish drawing a selection, either click on the selection starting point or double-click anywhere.

Photoshop Marquee tools

2008-10-25T07:29:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Marquee tools

Marquee tools. This allows selections to be made - in the form of rectangles, ellipses, single rows or single columns. We only mainly use rectangle and ellipses. Ellipses are a good way of selecting wheels to get nice round smooth edges. The selections made by this tool can be altered in size or skewed easily by using the Select > Transform Selection feature

The marquee tools are selection tools which allow you to select rectangles, ellipses and 1-pixel rows and columns.

The marquee tools are located at the top left of the Photoshop Toolbox. Click and hold your mouse over the marquee tool to see the four options:

Rectangle Marquee

Make a rectangular selection. Hold the shift key down to constrain the selection to a square.

Note: ImageReady also allows rounded corners in rectangles.

Elliptical Marquee

Make an elliptical selection. Hold the shift key down to constrain the selection to a circle.

Single Row Marquee

Make a horizontal selection 1 pixel high.

Single Column Marquee

Make a vertical selection 1 pixel wide.

Marquee Options

When you select any marquee tool, related options appear in the Tool Options bar (just below the main menu). This allows you to set the type of selection, feathering, etc. Options are slightly different for each marquee tool.

Creating a Text Effect With Cigarettes

2008-08-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Start by creating a rectangle using rectangular shape tool.

Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply layer style with the settings shown.

Create a rectangle almost one-third in height of the first rectangle using rectangular shape tool.

Change the layer mode to linear burn.

Create a yellow thin rectangle for the golden band over the filter. Change the layer mode to linear burn.

Create two very thin ellipses and place on the top and bottom of cigarette.

Create some lines using line tool.

Change layer mode to luminosity and opacity to 5%.

Create a random ash shape on top of the cigarette using brush tool.

Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply layer style with the settings shown.

Create a few patches of red and orange color using brush tool.

Type your text using your favorite font. Select and merge all cigarette parts.

Duplicate layer. Press Ctrl+T. Right click the layer and select warp. Try to warp the cigarette on the alphabet by dragging various handles in different angles.

Similarly warp another instance of cigarette layer in shape of other alphabet.

Press Q to enable quick mask. From filter menu select render>>difference clouds.

Press Q to disable quick mask. Create a new layer and fill it with white color.

Press Ctrl+T. Right click the layer and select warp. Adjust nodes to get the shape as if the smoke coming out of the cigarette.

You can also use it as a logo by typing details below the text.

Creating cactus style text effect

2008-08-17T05:35:00.000-07:00

Start by typing an alphabet.Press Q to enable quick mask. From filter menu select distort>>glass. Apply settings as shown.

Press Q again to disable quick mask. Hide the original text layer.

Create a new layer and fill it with a solid green color.

Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply layer style with the settings shown.

Select burn tool . From the main top bar adjust the settings as shown. Apply the tool to create dark patches over the filled text layer.

From select menu click color range. Using eyedropper tool click on the area to create a selection.

Press Ctrl+J to copy paste the selection in a new layer. Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply layer style with the settings shown.

Create a tiny ellipse using elliptical shape tool.

Using pen tool create a shape as shown.

Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply layer style with the settings shown.

Similarly create more duplicates of the thorn layer and place as shown.

Apply the same technique to more alphabets.
Duplicate all layers. Select and merge duplicates layers. Enable lock transparent pixels from layer palette. Fill it with black color. Press Ctrl+T. Right click the layer and select distort. Adjust nodes to create a perspective shadow. Reduce the opacity.

Fill the background with a gradient.

Tree Style Text Effect

2008-08-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

Start by typing your text

Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply layer style with the settings shown.
.

From layer menu select layer style>>create layers. Merge both the layers. Select smudge tool from the main tool bar with the settings shown.

Drag the mouse over the edges of the alphabets to create random shaped roots.

Using smudge tool again create some helping roots surrounding the alphabet.

Using brush tool create some hanging lines with branches.

Press F5 to open brush settings. Select leaf brush from the custom brushes. Apply settings as shown.

Apply the brush over the alphabets and hanging lines in a new layer.

Repeat the steps for other alphabets.