25 Essential Photoshop Moves

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GARY CRILLEY

NEW! from the Electric Artist!



225 Essen al Photoshop Moves – Learn the day-to-day skills, techniques, tools and ps of the experts



3Gary Crilley – The Electric Ar st: www.theelectricar st.com




© 2008. All rights reserved.

25 Essen al Photoshop Moves

This book is copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmi ed, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without theprior wri en permission of Apix Publica ons Limited.

The content of this book is furnished for informa onal use only, is subject to change without no ce,and should not be construed as a commitment by the Author or Apix Publica ons Limited. NeitherAuthor or Apix Publica ons Limited assume any responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuraciesthat may appear in the informa onal content contained in this book.

Manuscript and artwork in this publica on is protected by copyright and may not be reproducedin any form without permission of the publisher. No part of this publica on may be reproduced ortransmi ed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recordingor any other informa on storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in wri ng from thepublisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in review. All artwork in this book iscopyright. All photographs used were taken by the author, or are used with the prior consent of thephotographer, or are royalty free images (exis ng rights of the copyright owners are protected).

The informa on, techniques, advice, opinions, reviews and comments in this book are given on an ‘AsIs’ basis, and Apix Publica ons Limited does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy or completenessof any informa on given and is not responsible for any errors or omissions or the results obtainedfrom the use of such informa on. While every precau on has been taken in the prepara on of thisbook, neither the author nor Apix Publica ons Limited. shall have any liability to any person or en tywith respect to any liability, loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by theinstruc ons contained in this book or by the so ware or hardware products described herein.

Please remember that if following the tutorials in this book, any exis ng artwork or images that you maywant to include in your project may be protected under copyright law. The unauthorized incorpora onof such material into your new work could be a viola on of the rights of the copyright owner. Please besure to obtain any permission required from the copyright owner.

Adobe, Illustrator, InDesign, PageMaker, Photoshop and PostScript are either registered trademarks ortrademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.

Apple, Mac, and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. registered in the U.S. and othercountries. Microso , Windows, and Vista are trademarks of Microso Corpora on registered in the U.Sand/or other countries. CorelDraw is a registered trademark of Corel Corpora on. All other trademarksare the property of their respec ve owners.

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CIntroduc on ............................................................................. 7

The ‘Assistant’ .......................................................................... 8

Prepress ................................................................................... 8

Chess ....................................................................................... 9

Big so ware .......................................................................... 10

The teacher learns ................................................................. 11

The average user ................................................................... 12

Which version? ...................................................................... 13

Which pla orm? .................................................................... 14

How the book is ordered ....................................................... 14Move 1: Rulers, guidelines and units ..................................... 16

Move 2: Gradient Map ......................................................... 18

Move 3: Web Photo Gallery .................................................. 22

Move 4: Simple Ac ons and customizable keys .................... 28

Move 5: Canvas Size to add bleed to document ................... 30

Move 6: QUICK MASK is more than brushes ......................... 32

GALLERY ................................................................................ 39

Move 7: CROP to size ............................................................ 40

GALLERY ................................................................................ 43

Move 8: Straighten photographs .......................................... 44

GALLERY ................................................................................ 49

Move 9: Screenshots ............................................................. 50

Move 10: Brushes ................................................................. 58

GALLERY ................................................................................ 63

Move 11: MEDIAN Filter ....................................................... 64

Move 12: SAVE and LOAD Selec ons .................................... 68

Move 13: DISTORT and WARP .............................................. 78




GALLERY ................................................................................ 85

Move 14: LIQUIFY for realism ............................................... 86

Move 15: DODGE and BURN and SPONGE ........................... 92

GALLERY .............................................................................. 101Move 16: Simple Textures ................................................... 102

GALLERY .............................................................................. 107

Move 17: Gradients in QUICK MASK .................................... 108

GALLERY .............................................................................. 113

Move 18: Manual Ma ng .................................................. 114

Move 19: Quick LAYER MASK selec ons.............................. 118

Move 20: Alpha Channel selec ons ..................................... 122

Move 21: Layering Strokes .................................................. 132

GALLERY .............................................................................. 137

Move 22: Subtle accents ...................................................... 138

Move 23: Manual shadows ................................................. 146

Move 24: Clean up sky ......................................................... 152

GALLERY .............................................................................. 159

Move 25: Text Edi ng in scanned documents ...................... 160

Move 26: Bringing layers into Photoshop ............................ 170

GALLERY .............................................................................. 173

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ..................................................... 174




IThis book won’t teach you how to use Photoshop. It’s nota manual designed to give you a tool-by-tool introduc onto the most popular image edi ng program on the planet.Nor will it come close to showing you ALL there is toknow about Photoshop – or even go halfway to turning

you into a Photoshop guru.

But it will give you a large helping of the most important,most helpful, and just plain most interes ng skills,techniques, tools and ps that a Photoshop user shouldpossess.

Having been a Photoshop user since the days when‘layers’ were no more than a pipedream and the Internetwas a conspiracy theorist’s rumor, I can give you my

wholehearted assurance that the informa on in this bookstems directly from day-to-day usage of this valuabletool. These are the things I do every day in my numerous jobs, and do so without a thought as to how I do them.Graphic design, web design, illustra on, produc on andprepress, all at the sharp end of digital graphics.

In fact, these are the skills and tools and techniques thatI once thought everybody knew. It wasn’t un l I beganteaching that I learnt that some Photoshop ‘professionals’

were ba ling through their working lives without knowingmany of what I considered to be the basics .

25 ESSENTIAL

P p M v




T ‘A ’If I was to one day break both my arms in a skateboarding‘incident’, I’d need to hire an assistant to do my workfor me. If this assistant, whom I’ll call ‘Je ’, came to medescribed as ‘knowing Photoshop’, there are certaintasks that I’d expect him to be able to complete withoutinstruc on from me.

I might, for example, ask him to ‘clean up that sky’. Or ‘puta shadow on that dog’. If Je indeed knew Photoshop,these tasks would be simple for him and I wouldn’t expectto have to explain to him how to do them.

But it’s my experience that even among regular usersthere are some basic tasks that have either never beentaught, or have never arisen in their job to date. If Igave this book to a class of twenty average Photoshopusers and asked them how many of these ‘MOVES’ theyalready know, I’d expect most would pick out between 15and 20 of them. These MOVES would be the ones theyalready knew. But the ve to ten that they don’t knowwon’t be the same MOVES for all of them. In fact, frommy experience and by the law of averages, every MOVEwill be known by at least one person, yet no one willknow them all.

These are day-to-day MOVES, including things like makinga dull sky blue and sor ng out scanned text. Or using ahandy tool that saves hours of work.

P p

A lot of this knowledge is prepress and not design orillustra on. I make no apologies for this; in my twenty-plus years as a designer I have unfortunately had toperform far too much prepress. Not all design is ‘start-from-scratch’ logo development or glossy ad campaigns




for billion dollar mul na onals. Some mes the weight of your brochure output depends upon a single photographsupplied by the client – and it’s crap. Or the only logo thatthey can supply is a faded business card.

Many of these MOVES, however, are simple produc vitytools. Things to make your job progress a li le faster.Some save seconds, others hours. And of course we havea few MOVES that highlight a li le-u lized tool or featureof Photoshop. The kind of thing that makes you go ‘Oooh,I didn’t know you could do that! ’

CSomeone once asked me to ‘teach them Photoshop’, andadded “how long do you think it will take?”

I thought about it for a bit, and came up with the chessanalogy. I can teach you to play chess in half an hour, butit will take you a life me to master it. The same goes withPhotoshop – except that the ini al ‘teaching’ stage willtake a lot longer than half an hour.

The point here is that NOBODY can learn all of it. There areso-called experts who have used Photoshop for decadesand who know more tricks than you and I put together.

But even they don’t know it all.

Back in the mid-nine es I was at a graphics seminar andwas lucky enough to speak to a well known Photoshopguru (who shall remain nameless). We talked of a fewthings and in general conversa on I let slip a technique

that I regularly used to get around a tricky problem. Tomy shock (and eternal pleasure) this ‘guru’ was keen toknow more, as he’d never thought of doing it that way.




I guess it’s like the 13-year-old prodigy blind-siding theworld chess champion with a brand new move that willul mately be named a er her.

Once you grasp the concept that there will always bestu in the program that you don’t know – names in thedrop-down menus that you never click – you’re on yourway to u lizing this amazing tool to its best poten al.

Just don’t sweat the small stu .

B g wAdobe’s Photoshop was ini ally created to do exactlywhat it says; shop photos. It’s tools were few, butsimulated those used in a darkroom to enhance or alterphotographs. Dodge, Burn, Sponge and Airbrush toolsteamed up with color correc on scales and histogramsto provide the budding photographer with all theenhancements he or she might need to re ne theirscanned photographs for print.

And that was about it.

To be honest, in the ini al stages of my career I preferred aprogram from Aldus (creators of Pagemaker and Freehand)called Photostyler. One handy tool that this product hadthat was superior to Photoshop was the ability to purgeyour RAM and free it up for more processing – somethingthat proved vital when only working with 4 megabytes!

It proved so vital, in fact, that when Adobe acquiredAldus, and Photostyler was absorbed into Photoshop,

this feature was one of the tools that was retained.

That’s the nature of Photoshop. And why it’s so good(not to men on complex). The developers listen to the




end-users, and they also watch the market. If ar sts anddesigners are purchasing another product rather thantheirs, they see what it is about that product that isa rac ng the buyers and develop their own version. Or

buy the company.

The Adobe team will also listen to complaints orsugges ons and a empt to incorporate them into the nextversion. In a way it’s almost like open-source so ware;designed by the users to ful ll their every requirement.

But the end result of this development is that Photoshopis BIG. No longer the photographer’s enhancement tool,it has become an illustrator’s brush, a web graphics

factory, an animator’s tool and an essen al adjunct toevery person or business involved in every computergraphics enterprise there is.

I haven’t counted them up but I suspect there are inexcess of several thousand tools, adjustments, tweaksand modi ca ons lurking somewhere within the latest500mb installa on.

I also suspect that the number of people on the planet

who know them ALL either work for Adobe or are somekind of savant.

T In the course of my teaching career I have regularly foundmyself in front of a class full of professionals who usePhotoshop every day. In this situa on, it’s common thatwhen I introduce a technique or a ‘trick’ half the class will

nod sagely, thus le ng me know that I wasn’t showingthem anything new.

But with each new piece of informa on that I imparted(o en preceded by “you probably know this one” to




protect myself from embarrassment), there will alwaysbe at least one ‘Oooh’ from the audience. More o enthan not a third of the class would write something intheir notes or ask for clari ca on of some minor point –

good indicators that they were seeing something new.

Even the most basic of techniques would elicit a reac onfrom someone!

However that’s not all that would happen. It’s just as likelythat during the course of the seminar one of my ‘students’would show me something that I had never seen beforemyself. Then it would be me wri ng something down.

Photoshop users come from all quarters, and manyare experts – in their elds. A web graphics designerknows a lot about making web graphics, but probablynot a lot about photographic enhancements. Whereas aphotographer will know more. And a prepress expert willknow other tools that the rst two have never heard of.

T v g Which brings us to you. And me. The average user willuse some of the grand total of skills available, but theywill lean towards what it is that they do most.

A desktop publisher will need to know about xingthe substandard photographs that are sent in to thepublica on from contributors. A printer will need toknow how to remove some of the excess color from animage so that the ink limits aren’t exceeded. And a webdesigner will want to be able to create speci cally sized

graphics with pixel accuracy.

But all of these are BASIC skills, and all three of the aboveusers would do well to know what it is that the othersdeal with on a day-to-day basis.

Photoshop in Crea veSuite 3 (CS3) is

e ec vely Photoshop10, and comes in two

versions. I use thePhotoshop Extended

version, but I’msure there’s nothing

in this book that’snot available in the

Standard version.




I es mate that the ‘basic’ skills, knowledge, techniquesand tricks required by the average Photoshop useramount to around 200. That’s signi cantly down on theseveral thousand available. But it’s s ll a lot to learn.

I have selected 25 for this book, as well as a few smallsnippets of informa on that will aid your produc onspeed and maybe clear up a few mysteries that havebeen bugging you.

W v ?I am currently up-to-date and have the latest Photoshop

version – CS3, or Crea ve Suite 3. But not everybody is soquick to upgrade, and why bother when the Photoshopof a decade ago was s ll a fabulous tool?

To that end the tools, techniques, ps and tokens in thisbook are almost all relevant to versions da ng back tolast century. Because I am in the latest, however, theloca on of some of the assets may have changed.

Be assured that while most of the basic keyboard shortcuts,

pale es and menu loca ons remain unchanged throughthe mists of me, those that have migrated haven’t gonefar.

Use your HELP. For example if I say to use the SNAP underthe VIEW menu, and your version is missing its SNAP,search for SNAP in the program’s HELP. My memory isn’tso astounding that I can recall every shi and altera onover the ten versions of Photoshop with which I have hada rela onship.

The easiest way tocontact me is throughmy website www.theelectricar st.com ,or you can visit myblog at wordpress/

electricar st.com








W p ?I am wri ng this book on both a Toshiba laptop runningWindows Vista and an older desktop running WindowsXP Professional. These just happen to be the computersmost convenient to me. I don’t currently have access to aMacintosh computer capable of running CS3.

I have, however, used both Apple Macs and PCs over theyears, and although once-upon-a- me Photoshop ranfaster on a Mac than an equivalent PC (fact, not opinion – check out RISC chips vs CISC chips), the latest Macs useIntel chips and that means there is no speed advantage.

In fact, there is no di erence whatsoever between the twopla orms – apart from the swapping of the COMMANDkey for the CONTROL key in most shortcuts. That can beconfusing if you’re swapping back and forth like I used todo – the CTRL key is pressed with the li le nger or oneof the middle ngers, while the CMMD key is generallycontrolled by the thumb.

Other than that the Photoshop you use on a Mac isiden cal to the Photoshop you use on a PC, and the lesare interchangeable too. The only other di erence is (andremains) fonts.

If you have text layers intact and want to open a .PSD lecreated in one pla orm on the other, you will probablyget font messages and may have to choose an alterna vetypeface.

H w b Quite simply it’s not. It’s a small book and the informa onisn’t overwhelming, so it should be read quickly. The orderis therefore random, with no structure or chronologicalor signi cance-based preference.




I have, however, generally introduced tools in theprMove of rst use, and when the same tool is used in laterMoves, I’ve foregone the introduc on,

Just read it. When you learn something, try it. When youlike it, learn it. When you learn it, use it.

Then contact me with your thoughts.




I once caught a student using a ruler held up againstthe screen to work out where to put a center line on aPhotoshop image le. When I showed him the page rulerand the units of measurement he was oored. It was sucha basic piece of knowledge that I had thought everyoneknew it.

Click on the ruler and DRAG down or to the right toproduce a guideline that elements in the image willSNAP to.

Double-Click on the ruler to bring up the units of measurement box, or RIGHT/OPTION-CLICK for the unitsonly. Most common will be distance measurementsfor print les (inches or millimeters) and pixels for webgraphics.

But a very handy measurement is PERCENTAGE. Thisenables you to place a guideline at the 50% point, forexample, on both axes, giving you the center of the page.Or to place guidelines at the thirds or quarters in order todivide the page evenly.

SNAP under the VIEW menu is the one-command- ts-allse ng for causing elements to line up with guidelines,page edges or even layer edges. Be aware also that SNAPalso allows the geographic center of a layer to line up –

say with the center of the page.

The SNAP TO command below it will allow you to turn onor o individual elements of the SNAP command.

<<Show Rulers>> isCtrl/Cmmd–R

Move 1:

R , g




RIGHT or OPTION-CLICK on the ruler to bring up the units of

measurement.

Using the PERCENTAGE op on it’s easy to nd the center of theimage and to posi on elements using the SNAP command.




A popular e ect in prin ng is the crea on of DUOTONESor TRITONES, which is when two or three di erent coloredinks are used to create a photograph.

But this e ect only works when SPOT COLORS are used forthe print job. If the document calls for CMYK (Four Coloror Process Color) inks, then the addi onal spot colors willeither add considerably to the price of prin ng, or theycannot be used.

An o -neglected tool in Photoshop is the GRADIENT MAP,which renders a photograph into a kind of Duotone cloneusing two colors chosen by the user.

The Gradient Map (IMAGES/ADJUSTMENTS/GRADIENTMAP) can also be used to simulate sepia or alter the hueof a par cular graphic.

This is something that should be experimented with.Have a play and see what you can come up with.

DUOTONES can befound under IMAGE/

MODE, but only whenthe image is grayscale

We start with a color image of a monarch bu er y.

Move 2:

G M p




GRADIENT MAP is under IMAGE/ADJUSTMENTS.

With GREEN and WHITE as the FOREGROUND and BACKGROUND

colors, we get a green MONOTONE.

Any two colors canbe used to create a

GRADIENT MAP, but itworks best if they arenot only contras nghues, but also if one islight and one is dark.




By choosing GREEN and YELLOW we can see a dis nc ve color to

the image emerge.

And by customizing the GRADIENT for the image, there’s no end tothe special e ects we can come up with.




Of course you might choose di erent colors, but these ones were

selected to show the poten al e ects of the tool. Below is a sepia

bu er y.




A li le used feature of Photoshop is its ability to createan en re linked website for images, including naviga on,thumbnails and full-sized images. Later versions eveninclude Flash components.

Found under FILE/AUTOMATE/WEB PHOTO GALLERYthis li le applet is amazing. Like with a lot of these toolsI have discovered people crea ng galleries of images orproduct thumbnails the long way, when Photoshop can

save them heaps of me.

To give you some idea of what we’re talking about here, Ionce created a catalogue and gallery setup for a websiteusing WEB PHOTO GALLERY and calculated the mesaved. To do this conven onally, resizing and op mizingall the graphics, crea ng thumbnails, se ng up the webpages and naviga on, I es mated that the job wouldhave taken me 5 to 6 hours. With Photoshop it wasabout ten clicks of the mouse and three minutes of

processing me!

Wow.

Once again this tool is best learned by experimenta on.Of course, if the nished result is not exactly what youwant, and you know HTML, you can tweak the code inDreamweaver or another HTML editor. You can evenalter the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and completely re-design the pages.

Move 3:

W b P G

Check out the otherbrilliant tools under theAUTOMATE command.

BATCH processingand DROPLETS are

invaluable once youlearn to use them, and

CONTACT SHEET issomething I don’t know

if I could live without.




FILE/AUTOMATE/WEB PHOTO GALLERY

Here’s a folder of holiday snaps that I want to put on a website.

They’re varying sizes and can be any shape or le type that

Photoshop can open.




The processing me willdepend on the size of

the original photos andyour computer’s speed

Specify a folder of images to process and specify a des na on.

Then choose your op ons. It pays to experiment as there are many

op ons, but the thumbnails are small, so it’s a li le pot luck to see

what you get.

Here’s the result of my rst a empt. Thumbnails down the side and

larger images in the main window.




Here’s another one, this me with Flash transi ons from one imageto the next and an op on for a slideshow.




This op on shows thumbnails only, but a click on the thumbnail

brings up a new page.




As you can see on this Dreamweaver screenshot, the HTML is fully

editable and the CSS is in it’s own le.




ACTIONS have been around forever and I think it’s fairto say that most regular users know of their existence, if not what they do. But few users ever actually raise thecourage to make their own.

Yet ACTIONS are as easy as… ACTIONS.

Se ng up an Ac on doesn’t have to be a complicatedprocess. Some people think that Ac ons can only be usedfor long, arduous func ons, and of course they can be.But simple Ac ons are cool too.

Back in the days before customizable keyboard shortcuts,I used to assign an Ac on to F7 that simply rotated animage 90 degrees. I dealt with a lot of scans back thenand they weren’t always right-way-up, so a press of theF7 key rotated the image 90 degrees. Two presses made

180 degrees and three presses was the equivalent of rota ng in the reverse direc on – but was far simplerthan assigning another Ac on.

Now I can customize the keyboard without having torecord an Ac on. But that doesn’t spoil all my fun.

Here’s an ac on that works really well.

Before you begin, SHOW RULERS (CTRL/CMMD–R) and

change the measurements to PERCENT.

On the ACTIONS Pale e (now called Panels in CS3), pressRECORD.

Move 4:

S p A z b

If you save your

ACTIONS in a speci cfolder, you can easilyback them up, or move

them from computerto computer. When you

upgrade or reinstallPhotoshop, the

ACTIONS should importdirectly.




Start by dragging a guideline o the le hand ruler to the50 Percent mark and then drag another one down fromthe top ruler to 50%.

Press STOP. Assign the Ac on a key, such as CTRL/CMMDor SHIFT F8 ( just a sugges on) and call it FIND CENTER.

Now whenever you press SHIFT F8 (or whatever) twoguidelines appear and give you the dead center of theimage, no ma er the size or shape of the le, or what theruler increments are set to.

Easy. And handy.

The controls at the bo om of the ACTIONS

pale e control your RECORDING. The red circle

means you are recording KEYSTROKES and

other commands. Just press the Gray square to

STOP recording.




As a print designer I’m forever crea ng backgroundimages or illustra ons for set page sizes, and invariablythese pages require bleed.

One way to do it is to create a new page by calcula ngthe page size plus 6mm (3mm each side) added to thedimensions. Then you have to zoom in and drag bleedguidelines 3mm in from each of the four sides. Thatshould give an indica on of the nal trimmed page, whileallowing the illustra on or montage to ‘bleed o ’ theedges of the page.

But there’s a much quicker way to do this. Especiallysince Photoshop introduced standard page sizes in theNEW dialogue box.

Let’s say we’re going to create an A4 page with 3mmbleed. Start with FILE/NEW and choose A4 as the pagesize (at the appropriate resolu on and color space). Next(ensuring that SNAP is on) zoom out so that the page issmaller than the window and drag guidelines to the pageedges. This should be a snap (pun intended).

Now open up IMAGE/CANVAS SIZE, set the backgroundto white and alter the page size by adding 6mm to eachof the two measurements.

Presto. The guidelines remain at the A4 page size butthe page grows to include bleed. It’s not much, but it’seasier than the other way and you don’t need to knowthe dimensions of the page to begin with.

Move 5:

C v S z b

Obviously you can usethis technique for any

paper size and it willbecome second nature

a er a few uses.




A very quick way toincrease the CANVASsize of a document isto drag a layer half o the edge of the pageand go to EDIT/REVEALALL. The document will

increase in size to tthe layer that extendso the edge.




Whenever I have taught Photoshop to newcomers I havealways kept the QUICK MASK ll last when demonstra ngselec on techniques. The reason for this was that if Ishowed this tool rst, no one would be listening when Ishowed them the MAGIC WAND or the COLOR SELECT orany of the other techniques for selec on.

The QUICK MASK is THAT good.

Being able to brush on a mask and zoom in or out andchange the brush size is an incredibly handy way in whichto make a complex selec on.

But many people forget that the QUICK MASK is justanother CHANNEL. In addi on to brushes, the QUICKMASK can be lled with a Gradient, it can be blurred orsharpened, and you can even use shaped brushes on it.If there is transparency or an -aliasing (see sidebar) youcan contract or expand it using the LEVELS command.

How good is that?

Yet no ma er how many people use the QUICK MASK, Ihave discovered very few know you are able to changeits color. Yes, that’s right. If you’re a emp ng to pick outgreen leaves on a green background, a green mask isn’tappropriate is it? So change it to purple. Or when dealingwith human skin, change it to bilious green. And playwith the opacity too.

I will note here that I rarely paint on an en re mask.There are too many other ways in which to make large

Move 6:

QUICK MASK b

QUICK MASK is one of those tools that was

available in rival imageedi ng programs (such

as PICTURE PUBLISHER)before it was added

to Photoshop, and forme it was one of the

reasons to keep thosealterna ves around.




selec ons, including but not limited to Photoshop’sEXTRACT command. The QUICK MASK is more a toolfor ne tuning, for cleaning up and nishing o theselec on.

Make your ini al selec on with the easiest method available. In

this case selec ng the background would qualify. No ce that a

por on of the model’s back has also been included and the hair is

a bit of a mess.




You turn on the QUICK MASK with the bu on at the bo om of the

TOOLBAR. The EXCLUDED areas will now show as a shade of color.

Double-clicking on the bu on will bring up the dialogue box that

enables you to choose a color and the opacity of the mask.

In earlier versions of Photoshop (prior to

CS3) there were twobu ons here; one for

turning the QM on andone for turning it o .




In QUICK MASK mode you can now brush on the mask (or by

changing your brush color to WHITE brush it o ). I’m a li le old-

fashioned, so I prefer to be brushing color onto the object I wish to

isolate, which tends to be a li le opposite, but I don’t care. I can

always invert the selec on later.

CTRL/CMMD–I willinvert the selec on,but not while in QUICKMASK mode. You willhave to turn the QM o

rst.




No ce that the edge of the MAGIC WAND selec on is extremely

rough. This is common to that tool and needs to be addressed.

But it’s not only brushes that can be used in QUICK MASK mode.

Select the BLUR tool from the toolbox.




Now you can brush on a blur to so en the edges of the selec on

to match the level of blur in the photograph. A context-sensi ve

toolbar at the top of the screen will allow you to dial in the amount

of blur required. Or you can apply a GAUSSIAN BLUR to the en re

mask if required.




By switching to QUICK MASK mode and zooming in, and then using

brushes, blur and other tools, it should be possible to make a pre y

good selec on.




Above is an illustra on created for a ta oo fes val campaign.

GALLERY




Let’s say you’re making a web page and all the imageshave to be the same size – for example 430 pixels by 300pixels.

The images supplied are all di erent sizes, and some areportrait, some landscape, many with spurious elementsthat will need to be cropped out.

The quickest – and as it happens the most crea ve –

method for sizing all these images is to set the size of thecrop.

When the CROP tool is selected, the context sensi vemenu across the top of the screen shows boxes for widthand height. Type 430px (px for pixels) in the width and300px in the height. Then set the resolu on at 72dpi.

Now open your images, as many as you want at a me.Whenever you use the CROP tool on one, it will be

restrained to a certain shape (which just happens to tthe boxes on your web page). You can see exactly howthe image will be cropped to t, and can use this momentto ar s cally crop each image as well as resize it.

Move 7:

CROP z

There is no real quickway to crop a whole lotof photographs to t a

template. You can resizethem, but any cropping

would have to use theexact same start– and

end–point on thesame sized documents.Scripts could be wri en

to take the crop fromthe center, for example,

but nothing beats thehuman eye for choosing

where and when tocrop.







By se ng a size to the CROP tool, you not only resample your

images to an appropriate resolu on, but you also conform to a set

size and crop the unwanted elements at the same me.




Without this technique, the graphics for the website (above) would

have taken a lot longer to create. Each one was cropped to a speci c

visual loca on, but the whole job was very quick.

GALLERY




A simple strategy for straightening photographs is touse the ROTATE arrows at the corners of the CROP boxwhen cropping. Draw a crop box with the CROP tool inthe center of the image. Now nd a horizontal or ver calelement in the image – the horizon is always best.

Line up one of the sides of the CROP box with the horizon(or another known straight element) by rota ng the box.Then expand the sides out to the extremes of the image,or where you would want to crop it anyway.

NOTE: if no horizon or obvious horizontal or ver calelement is visible, it’s probably not essen al that youstraighten the photograph. The most obvious skewedimages are those with a well-de ned horizon or an Ei elTower that is no ceably crooked.

In a similar manner to MOVE 7, an o forgo en addi onto the CROP tool in later versions of Photoshop is thePERSPECTIVE bu on. This allows you to straighten and‘square-o ’ images that have been taken at an angle orwith lens parallax.

As before, with the PERSPECTIVE bu on cked, lineup each of the four sides with an obvious horizontal orver cal element and when sa s ed, expand the sidesout to the extremes of the image.

Move 8:

S gp g p

Every me youperform an edit on

a photograph likerota on (straightening

is rota on), you cause aresampling of all pixels.

Do this sparingly, and

of the end result is tobe very high quality, get

your photographer totake a straight picture in

the rst place.




Line up one edge of the crop box to the

horizon by rota ng the box. Then drag the

edges of the box out to the limits of theimage, or the desired CROP loca on.




The nal photograph (below) with a straight horizon.




Turn this sign into a scaled and square le with the PERSPECTIVE

op on in the CROP menu.




Once the sign is ‘squared up’, turn o the CONSTRAIN

PROPORTIONS and set the dimensions to mul ples of the actual

sign measurements.




Who said you could only

distort to ‘straighten’

elements or ‘ dy’ things up?

(More in MOVE 13)

GALLERY




Never underes mate the power of screenshots. I usethem all the me, especially for page layout.

First the mechanics;

On a Mac you can capture the en re screen with CMMD/SHIFT-3. A le will be saved automa cally to your desktop.CMMD/SHIFT-4 will capture the current window only. Youcan do this as o en as you like.

On a PC the PRINTSCREEN bu on on the keyboard (PRT/SCN) will save the en re screen to the CLIPBOARD.Holding down ALT while pressing PRT/SCN will capturethe current window only. But the capture will only remainun l you make another one – or CUT or COPY somethingelse to the clipboard.

With Windows you must PASTE the screenshot intoPhotoshop before you lose it.

Okay, so now you have a screenshot. But what will youuse it for?

Here are some of my uses;

Let’s say I’m designing a brochure using InDesign and Iwant an image of a bird to sit in one column but spread awing across the page. Rather than taking measurementsor calcula ons and performing some trial and error, I will

take a screenshot of the page layout in InDesign. Pastedinto Photoshop, I’ll crop it to the page size at the pageresolu on (see MOVE 7) and that will serve as my starterpage. I’ll reduce the opacity of the layer to 50% and lock it.

Move 9:

SIf you’re serious aboutscreenshots there are

several good programsavailable for performing

the func on. Theserange from Corel

CAPTURE (free witholder versions of

CorelDRAW Suite) to

SnagIt, from Techsmith – which was used to‘snag’ the screenshots

in this book.




Now I can bring on my seagull, resize it, rotate it, adjustit and otherwise prepare it for the page all with the pageitself showing me how it will look when nished.

I will also use screenshots in order to bring in graphics orelements from programs that have no direct export orsave facili es for Photoshop.

One major example of this is the WORDART feature of Microso O ce. Dontcha just hate it when you’re pu ngtogether a poster for a major event and the sponsorseach send you their logos for the bo om, but someonesends you a WordArt logo on a Word page!

The solu on is to zoom in un l the logo lls the screen(bigger screens are be er – I have two, a 21 inch CRT with1600 x 1200 resolu on and a 22 inch LCD with 1680 x 1050resolu on) and capture the image. In most applica ons a1600 pixel wide image will give 300dpi at logo level. If itdoesn’t, I’ll zoom even further in and capture it in two orthree pieces, s tching it together in Photoshop.

Screenshots – o en forgo en by professionals, buttremendously helpful.

Screenshots are greatfor capturing a webpage, perhaps to sizean image or a header,or to sample colors.The colors in yourscreenshot are theexact colors used by theweb designer on thatpage – the advantageof using the RGB colorspace.




Here’s a screenshot of a page layout in InDesign. In this

demonstra on what I want to do is bring on an odd shaped imagethat will interact with the page.

I can do this by measuring up all the elements and pre-planning the

whole page. But as a designer I o en work by eye, and just as o en

discover that my ini al concept doesn’t work as well as I thought it

might. That means going back into Photoshop and re-crea ng the

graphic concerned.

By using this method, however, I can change my mind on the y and

generally get away with just the one image crea on.




A er pas ng the screenshot in Photoshop, I crop it to the actual

page of the layout, using the CROP-TO-SIZE op on we explored in

Move 7. Then reduce the opacity of this layout layer and LOCK IT.




Bring on the image to be included and roughly size it. Edit the image

to the shape you want, removing the unwanted por ons

This technique works just as well whenmaking images or

graphics for exis ng

web pages. Take ascreenshot of the pageand work at 72dpi. The

nal graphic is ready-made for dropping into

the page.




If we turn o the background layer for a moment we can see how

the image will look against the paper background. The blue of the

sky is visible in the blurred edges of the wing, and that needs some

a en on.

Use a LAYER MASK and a fuzzy brush to carefully remove the blue

from the image. Alterna vely you could brush white onto the image,

so long as the paper color will be white.




Next, crop the image to the outer limits of the parts that you want

and delete the screenshot layer. Then PLACE the image into your

InDesign page.

An alterna ve todele ng the unwanted

layer or layers is toFLATTEN the image with

those layers invisible.




The nal step is to create a TEXT WRAP around the element of

the image that needs to stand out. In this case the blue of thebackground could have been a at color and the bird a simple cut-

out, but the slight gradient and the perfect edges of the bird on its

own sky, I believe, are be er. Also, I was able to see exactly where

that limits of the wing stretched on my layout.




There was a me when you were able to set the sizeof your brush, and its fuzziness – from pencil hard toairbrush so . And that was about it.

Boy are those mes long gone.

Few Photoshop users ever explore the full strength of their brushes and what can be achieved with a li leexperimenta on.

Just about anything can be saved as a brush, and usedin every possible manner that you can think of. I havea complex tutorial using Photoshop brushes to createa landscape (available at h p://www.theelectricar st.com) that gives some of the breadth of the brush panel.The tutorial is an hour long, but that’s with explana ons.The rst me I did it, the whole image took less than half an hour.

I think rather than try to explain the unexplainable, I’ll just include some examples in this MOVE and ask thatyou explore the brush op ons yourself.

Move 10:

B




This is the BRUSHES panel and it comes pre-loaded with heaps of

brushes already. But we’ll make one of our own for demonstra on

purposes.

Start with a square blank page of about 128 pixels on a side. Then

draw your brush. In this case we’re making a ower simply by using

the ELLIPTICAL SELECTION tool and pressing DELETE with black as

the background color, followed by white for the center.

When the image is nished, go to EDIT/DEFINE BRUSH and give

your brush a name.

Any size will do, as thebrush is scalable in theBRUSH PANEL. But if your brush is too bigand too detailed, it kind

of defeats the purposeof using the graphic as abrush – not to men onthe drain on resourcesthat ensues.




Your brush will onlybe GRAYSCALE, so

no colors can beused. In this case the

image is RGB, but itwill be converted to

GRAYSCALE when thebrush is created.




This is just a small selec on of the controls available to you when

crea ng a brush. In these boxes we’re sca ering the owers in a

random pa ern and changing their ANGLE and ROUNDNESS, which

give them a more realis c randomness.




Note that the HUE JITTER is set to 100%, which means that the

brush will paint in all colors. The result is below.




This illustra on was created in half an hour using brushes in

Photoshop (including the crea on of the brushes). There is a detailed

tutorial for this illustra on available at www.theelectricar st.com

GALLERY






A lot of users know of the ADD NOISE func on under theFILTERS/NOISE menu. This lter adds… noise to a layer orselec on.

But did you know that the MEDIAN lter under the samemenu REMOVES noise? Yessiree Bob it does. In a similarmanner to DUST AND SCRATCHES, but with a more subtletouch, the MEDIAN lter can clean up a blotchy digitalcamera shot or remove blemishes from your model’s

million-dollar skin.

But best of all, this is the lter I use to clean up JPEGar facts.

JPEG is a lossy le format that destroys some of theimage quality every me it is used. When compression islow and the image quality high, there are few problems.But when a contributor sends you a photograph that hasbeen severely compressed, and there is no choice but to

use that photograph, you will have some JPEG ar factsto clean it up.

Blue sky is especially a ected by ar facts, but luckily forus, it is also one of the easiest to x – using the MEDIAN

lter. Simply select all the sky using the MAGIC WAND,then turn on the QUICK MASK and zoom in.

The rst thing I do a er a MAGIC WAND selec on is toapply a very subtle blur to the mask to add an -aliasing.

(Use the BLUR tool to clean up speci c edges if required).Then use a brush to remove any spill and include anyareas not picked up with the MAGIC WAND.

Move 11:

MEDIAN F




With the sky selected, apply a MEDIAN lter and seewhat you can do.

The MEDIAN FILTER automa cally removes small

ar facts from the image without compromising

the sharpness or detail too much.

Always work in as higha resolu on as youcan. If o ered twoimages – one at webresolu on and one atprint – choose the printversion for edi ng.Filters like MEDIAN andDUST & SCRATCHEShave considerably more

exibility with morepixels to work with.




In this image the ar facts are quite pronounced, but a MEDIAN

FILTER applica on blurs a lot of the detail. However a quick

applica on of the UNSHARP MASK together with a lightening and color correc on soon has it looking good.







Making complex selec ons is an art form, and I havelong said that the di erence between an expert and a journeyman is o en li le more than their ability to select.

Photoshop supplies us with a gazillion ways to makeselec ons. But it would be fair to say that none of themare perfect. How could they be, when nobody knows

what you want to select but you?

However, for every selec on problem there is a Photoshopsolu on lurking somewhere.

For example to pick out a clearly de ned color area,there’s the MAGIC WAND. To pick an area of high contrastfrom its neighbor there is the MAGNETIC LASSO and topick hair or grass or leaves o a background there is theCOLOR SELECT.

But how can you combine these methods into one forselec ng an area that includes all these features?

By making the selec ons individually and saving them,that’s how.

At the bo om of the SELECT menu there is LOADSELECTION and SAVE SELECTION. Start by choosing theselec on method for a speci c por on of your image and

making the selec on. Then SAVE it. Now move on to thenext part, using the best method for that and SAVE thatone. And so on.

Move 12:

SAVE LOADS




Once you have several selec ons saved, go to LOADSELECTION and choose one (any one, it doesn’t ma er).That selec on will appear on your image. But when yougo to LOAD SELECTION again, you will be given the choice

of whether to ADD this next selection to the current,SUBTRACT or INTERSECT. Build up your selection inthis way.

When you get really adventurous, you can make aselec on of something in the background and thenSUBTRACT it from you growing selec on.

NOTE: the latest versionof Photoshop (CS3)has a new tool calledREFINE SELECTION thais really, really cool, andmakes a lot of this stu redundant. But therewill s ll be a me whenyou will want to buildup a complex selec onusing this method.

This is quite a unique photograph (courtesy of iStockphoto.com) but the biggest challenge is to select the character, with all the di erent

shades in her hair, out of the mul -colored background.

No EXTRACT or simple brush selec on will get the results we want.




We start with a COLOR SELECT for the bulk of the hair. Note that

this method s ll captures some of the background and misses some

of the hair.

Go to SELECT/SAVE SELECTION and save the selec on as a NEW

CHANNEL. Give it a descrip ve name.




Choose another shade in the hair, maybe one of the red shades

and make another COLOR SELECT. This me when you save the

selec on, choose ADD TO CHANNEL. Do this un l you’re sure all the

hair has been selected. At this stage don’t worry about what else

you’ve got.

You can also add toyour selec on in theCOLOR SELECT panelby clicking on theeyedropper with a‘+’ next to it. But theFUZZINESS control onlyworks across all of yourselected hues. Doing itthis way enables you tovary the FUZZINESS foreach hue selec on.




If you wish you can also make a few selec ons of the things you

DON’T want, such as the red circles in the wallpaper, keeping

your FUZZINESS se ng low. To capture more, try EXPANDING the

selec on. Then save with a name. Do the same for the dark green.




Next, change to QUICK MASK mode and paint on the areas you

de nitely want, keeping well away from the edges of the hair. Get

close and personal with the easy edges, such as the skin and the

arms. Save this selec on.




Use the MAGIC WAND to select the green of the background and

hold down your SHIFT key to keep adding the selec on un l all of

the background green is selected. Don’t worry about the holes for

the red and dark greed areas. And ignore also the places where the

wand has crossed into the esh of the model.

One op on available to you is to

take your background selec on

into QUICK MASK and brush

out the extraneous colors and

elements. Just be sure to stay well

away from the hair. The important

thing is that this selec on has

captured all of the green.




It’s me to assemble our selec on. Start by LOADING the hair

selec on. With the hair loaded, you will also see that you have

brought up much of the background, especially where the red

hues coincide with the red in the model’s hair.

Go to LOAD SELECTION again and choose your background

selec on, only this me choose SUBTRACT FROM SELECTION.

When you have done this, ADD TO SELECTION the body and main

elements selec on that you made with the QM brush.




If you do a COPY/PASTE and turn o the background layer you

should come up with something like this. Note that the hair is

selected, but there are s ll some of the dots from the wallpaper

stuck in her hair. Zoom in, create a LAYER MASK and gently brush

out the extra pieces.

CMMD/CTRL–C/V willalways turn a selec on

into a new layer. Thisbecomes second nature

a er a while.




This result was rushed somewhat for the purposes of pu ng

this book together. But I’m sure you can see that using a higher

resolu on image and taking great care to select all the hair will

result in a great ‘extrac on’.




All Photoshop users know about FREE TRANSFORM(CTRL/CMMD-T). This gives you handles for moving,resizing and rota ng layers in an image. (If you don’tknow it, you should!)

But there are other forms of transforma on hiddenunder the EDIT menu. In par cular there is DISTORT(EDIT/TRANSFORM/DISTORT).

The DISTORT func on allows you to apply perspec ve, lenscorrec on and special e ects to a layer all in one move.Need to put a picture in a frame? Use DISTORT. Need toapply text to the side of a building? Use DISTORT.

But new to the later versions of Photoshop is the addi onof the WARP tool to the menu. This is far more powerfuland is valuable when attempting to match layers toone another or to apply special effects that aren’tstraight lines.

This is one more tool that requires you to experiment,and the less words from me, the be er.

Move 13:

DISTORT WARP

In this example what we want to do is put some signwri ng on this

car (although why, I cannot imagine!).

We start by typing the text at approximately the correct size. You

can see that the text doesn’t look real for several reasons, not the

lest of which is the lack of perspec ve.

In the EDIT/TRANSFORM menu is

also a PERSPECTIVEtool. But DISTORT

gives a lot moreexibility. If you like,

try PERSPECTIVE rst,if that is all that is

required. But you’remore than likely

going to end up using

DISTORT.






First RASTERIZE the text, so that it is now a layer of pixels.

Then go to EDIT/TRANSFORM/DISTORT.

NOTE: once you haverasterized the type it is

no longer editable astext, so ensure that it

is spelled correctly and

that the font you choseis correct. To change

either of these willrequire star ng from

scratch.




DISTORT gives you full control over the perspec ve in all direc ons.

Line up the text to the distance perspec ve of the car and to the

size you want.




For the door cracks, use the MAGIC WAND on the car layer to select

the darkness of the crack, then blur the selec on slightly in QUICK

MASK mode. On the text layer, press DELETE.

To nalize the job, duplicate the text layer and play with BLENDING

MODES to see give it reality. This is MULTIPLY and HARD LIGHT, with

varying amounts of opacity.




DISTORT allows the bending and shaping of layers in any direc on,

but only in straight lines. If you want to bend something around acorner, you have to use WARP.

NOTE that WARP hasonly been availablein recent versions of Photoshop.

One more reason toupgrade.




Shape the text to t the bodywork beneath. The nal touch in this

case was to apply a slight LAYER MASK to the top of the text to

simulate re ec on o the paintwork.




This book illustra on was created for the website before the book

was actually printed. It consists of a photograph of a ‘similar’ book

with rasterized PDF pages from the ‘real’ book WARPED into place.

GALLERY




Most Photoshop users have had a play with the LIQUIFYlter, you know, to reshape someone’s face or enlarge a

cat’s eyes.

But this lter has considerably more talents than toentertain.

Like the new WARP func on, LIQUIFY can be used toshape a layer onto its background, or to adjust or reshape

a layer in precise increments.

LIQUIFY’s new (recent) ability to see the underlying layersis where this tool comes into its own. Now you can shapean image while seeing exactly what it will look like on thelayers beneath it.

Once again, experiment. There is always the UNDOcommand.

Move 14:

LIQUIFY




Start by DISTORTING the text into roughly the right shape using the

DISTORT tool. Then it’s me for LIQUIFY.

Of course LIQUIFY isalso a brilliant toolto remove the bumpin a model’s nose orthe parts of the bodythat bulge over abikini strap. There’s

probably few modelsor celebri es who havenever been under theLIQUIFY and MEDIAN

lters at one me oranother.




You can see that with the background layer visible, it’s very easy to

manipulate the text layer so that it undulates over the shape of the

horse beneath.

Add drips and other distor ons as you see t. Whenever you want

to see your result, just turn o the background layer.

There is anothertechnique that gives

a more complexcompliance to an

underlying shape, calleda DISPLACEMENT MAP.But that’s probably for

another me.




I’ve given my ‘blood text’ a bit of a LAYER STYLE. A slight gradient

ll to darken the blood at the bo om and a very subtle BEVEL &

EMBOSS to put a li le highlight on the top of the wet blood.

The quickest method for merging the LAYER STYLE into the layer is

to create a new blank layer and merge the two layers.




Duplicate the text layer and make the bo om one MULTIPLY, the

top one HARD LIGHT. Then give the bo om one a slight GAUSSIAN

BLUR. Adjust the opacity to suit. This gives the text a bit of depth

in the fur.







Okay, so these are probably the oldest tools in Photoshop,present in Version 1. Yet perhaps because of their age,many new users are unfamiliar with their use.

Ini ally designed to increase highlights or darken shadows(or the opposite), DODGE and BURN (DODGE lightens,BURN darkens) brushes are extremely useful to apply

nishing touches to illustra ons as well as photographs.

The SPONGE tool was tradi onally designed to removecolor intensity (desaturate), but with its so wareintroduc on, the opposite is also possible. With SPONGEset to saturate, it’s possible to carefully highlight areasof strong color in an image, such as the brilliant red of roses, or the blue of eyes. When set on desaturate, theSPONGE will reduce a model’s blush or subdue the greenof background trees in order to set o the foregroundsubject.

Photographers will all be familiar with these tools, andindeed it is di cult to teach some photographers thatPhotoshop is more than DODGE, BURN and SPONGE!But other users need to discover the power of thesebrushes.

Move 15:

DODGE BURN SPONGE

For this exercise we’ll use this disgus ng photograph of the author

(over page) and resist the urge to brush out wrinkles, re-color the

gray and ll out the muscles(!). The photograph was shot through

a dirty mirror and lacks dynamic range and de ni on. First thing to

do is remove the background.







But before we go too far, we’ll also have a go at evening up the

range with the use of LEVELS. You can see, however, that this also

brings up the blemishes on the mirror (not to men on the model).




HINT: it is be erto set the intensity(EXPOSURE) quite lowand brush repeatedly,rather than try to hit itall at once.

Now it’s into it with the DODGE tool. This lightens areas and you

can choose between HIGHLIGHTS, MIDTONES and SHADOWS in thecontext-sensi ve menu at the top of the screen.

My rst task would be to add some de ni on to the hat. I like this

hat and I want it looking good. I’ve also added highlights to the

outside of my le arm (as we face it, and in reality too, cos it’s in a

mirror) as well as other light areas.

I’ll then switch to the BURN tool (which darkens) and increase the

shadow under the hat brim as well as add de ni on to the arm and

other places.




I’ve given up on the black singlet top though, so I’ll isolate it with a

selec on and darken the whole thing. This will also serve to swamp

some of the dirty marks from the mirror. Now we’re star ng to get

somewhere.




I’m quite proud of my ta oo, though, and it seems a bit lost. So a

check on the SHADOWS op on and a few brushes with the BURN

and it comes up nicely.




Just a quick addi on here to show that Photoshop isn’t just about

enhancing ugly people. I have a typical snapshot here, of someone

who is de nitely not ugly, but which needs a few minor adjustments.

Note that this isn’t a full photo enhancement exercise, just a few

brushes to clean up a nice image.

Here’s the original, which shows a few ‘glows’ from the camera ash,

and we know what some people think about ‘glowing’, right?

With the BURN tool set really low, and manipula ng the brush size

from large and fuzzy down to small and fuzzy, I just dab on the

glowing bits. Don’t brush at all, or you’ll see the lines.




While we’re here we’ll SPONGE the lips to SATURATE the red ali le, and we may as well whiten the teeth slightly with a li le

DODGING.




And we might as well select the eye color and saturate that with

the SPONGE tool. Also you can INVERT the selec on and BURN the

pupils slightly, as well as DODGE the whites. Just don’t overdo it.




GALLERY

This illustra on is a vector image that has been taken into Photoshop

and had textures applied, and then DODGE and BURN brushes have

been used to create the shadows and highlights.




You can search for textures on the Internet, you canbuy textures – online or on a CD – and you can use thetextures that come with Photoshop.

But there is a fourth op on… you can make your own.

Using a mixture of several simple Photoshop lters it’spossible to make about a million textures out of nothing.

Some mes it’s these ‘homemade’ textures that make orbreak a project.

ADD NOISE, RENDER CLOUDS and the various BLUR ltersare all that are needed. Of course you can add othertextures to your base if you wish. The main thing is to doit yourself – and write down the recipe! There’s nothingworse than crea ng a great texture for one project andthen never being able to replicate it because you forgothow to do it!

Here’s some ps on texture making.

ADD NOISE and then MOTION BLUR will give a goodmetallic look. Di ering amounts of noise and blur (andthe direc on of the blur) will create di erent textures.

RENDER CLOUDS works on the resolu on and size of theimage, or in other words the amount of pixels available tothe rendering engine. If you want a ne texture of clouds,

rst make a large blank canvas to render on, then resize itdown to the nished size.

LAYER BLENDING MODES can allow textures to be builtup layer by layer.

Move 16:

S p T x




Try using the LEVELS command on rendered clouds andsee what it does.

For a real blotchy look, ADD NOISE to a very small image

– say 128px X 128px – and resample it up to the size of your image. Use LEVELS to alter it one way or another.

Once you have your base texture, use the TEXTURIZER togive it a SANDSTONE or other nish.

This is a real simple two-step texture. ADD NOISE, then MOTION

BLUR. Finally you should CROP the result to lose the edges where

the blur hasn’t taken properly. Instant metallic texture.




Later versions of Photoshop contain

a neat tool calledPATTERN MAKER, whichtakes a sample from any

image and turns it intoa repea ng (seamless)

pa ern. It’s certainlyworth a look.




Here’s a succession of texture elements

in which you can stop anywhere. Start

by rendering some clouds, then add

noise. You can add a SANDSTONE

texture if you wish.




Or add a GAUSSIAN BLUR for that nebulous look.

Finally, I have taken the one below into LIQUIFY and plied it

with a brush. Does that get your imagina on cooking?




GALLERY

This is the result of crea ng a texture and saving it as a PATTERN

ll, then using it in a LAYER STYLE.

A full tutorial is available at www.theelectricar st.com






Move 17:

G QUICK MASK

I touched on this subject in MOVE 6, but it is worthy of afeature all of its own.

QUICK MASK is a grayscale image that can be brushed,erased and blurred. But few users understand the powerof using a GRADIENT FILL in QUICK MASK mode.

A gradient creates a mask that increases (or decreases) inintensity across a set direc on. The uses for this gradualapplica on of a mask are too numerous to list.

But I’ll try;

You could apply a lter progressively to a layer –1.for example GAUSSIAN BLUR

You can apply a darkening (or lightening) to a2.sec on of the image

Using a RADIAL GRADIENT you can apply a3.circular highlight – or remove one

You can x a page crease from a scanned opened4.book or magazine,

And much more.5.

There are also many special e ects possible using agradient mask.

To be honest I’ve used gradients in QUICK MASK for solong and so o en that I no longer think about it. Onceyou begin to use this amazingly simple technique, you’ll

nd more and more uses for it.




A nice photo, this, but the sky is a bit anemic. A gradient in the

QUICK MASK can x that.




CURVES will intensify the top of the sky, giving it a polarized look.

Then we can do the same to the bo om of the image and apply a

lens blur, bringing focus back to the subject herself.

As a rule, once I haveturned the QUICK MASK

o , I will also hide theselec on (the marching

ants), so that I can seethe e ect of whatever itis I’m doing unimpeded

by clu er. To hide and

show again; CMMD/CTRL–:.




Using the texture we created in MOVE 16, we can apply

a special gradient mask – with WHITE in the middle

– and give it some realism. With the center isolated,

lighten the midtones with CURVES. Then INVERT the

selec on and darken the corners.







GALLERY

The shadow on this pumpkin was manipulated using a gradient

mask, to both darken it nearer the object and increase the blur the

further away it goes.

Note too that the shading was created using DODGE & BURN.




Regular Photoshop users who have cut out images andmoved them onto other images as layers will be familiarwith the MATTING/DEFRINGE tool. This removes a ‘fringe’of pixels from around the outside of the cut-out layer tohelp it blend with its new background.

But the tool is a li le clumsy and has no adjustments orse ngs, other than the amount of pixels you wish to takeremove.

Enter the Manual version of MATTING/DEFRINGE.

Step One: CTRL/CMMD-Click the target layer to select thepixels only. CONTRACT the selec on by approximatelyhow many pixels you think will need to be removed(around most of the layer). Then apply a FEATHER to theselec on – not much, probably only a pixel or two. Note:the amount of CONTRACT and FEATHER will depend onthe resolu on of the image and the amount of edgypixels that need to be removed.

Step Two: INVERT the selec on (SHIFT-CTRL/SHIFT-CMMD – I or SELECT/INVERSE).

Step Three: A pressing of the DELETE key now will removea feathered edge from the outside of the layer, but this is just as clunky as using MATTING/DEFRINGE. Instead, turnon QUICK MASK and inspect the edge of the layer. Usinga small feathered brush you can ne tune the amountof the layer that is to be removed. Then turn o QUICK

MASK.

Step Four: Press DELETE.

Move 18:

M M g




To give this toddler a di erent background

color, when we select using the MAGIC WAND,

we leave a ‘ring’ of ugly light pixels that spoil

the image.

CTRL/CMMD–click on the layer thumbnail.

CONTRACT the selec on slightly, FEATHER it

slightly and INVERT the selec on. Then press

DELETE. A thin border around the layer will

disappear and an an -aliased edge will clean

up its appearance.







If there are any tricky areas or

pieces that need extra a en on,

turn on the QUICK MASK and use a

brush to clean up.




If you’re in a hurry or the nal result isn’t cri cal, try thisfor super fast selec ons.

First run a LASSO around the object to be cut out. Makesure you include EVERYTHING you might want, becausethere’s no going back for more. With the MOVE Tool(arrow), drag the selected area to the receiving image ora new le.

You now have the object you wanted, and have it withinseconds. BUT you also have the mother of all rough edgesthat no amount of MATTING/DEFRINGE will deal to.

Give the layer a LAYER MASK (LAYER/LAYER MASK/REVEAL ALL or press the bu on at the bo om of theLAYER panel). Now with a brush, paint out the extrapixels around the layer.

This is where the speed versus accuracy element comesin. A large fuzzy brush can blend your object roughly inseconds, while if a bit more accuracy is required, zoom inand choose a smaller brush.

One advantage of doing it this way is that you can seeexactly what the nished job will look like as you’re doingit. In addi on, if you accidentally remove too much fromthe target layer, selec ng WHITE for the brush will paintit back on.

Move 19:

Q LAYER MASK




You can even experiment with di erent opaci es for thebrush, such as when dealing with hair, and change thebrush size and edge to match the edge and texture of the layer.

Quick, easy and as accurate as you want it.




To join these two images, rst make a rough selec on of the

sunbathers and drag them onto the iceberg. Use FREE TRANSFORM

to size them and put them onto posi on. Then add a LAYER MASK

and brush out the unwanted bits.

This technique is greatfor crea ng quick

and easy montagesof several di erentphotographs, witheach one blending

seemlessly into theothers.







While on the subject of selec ons, we might as well takea look at the ul mate in selec on knowledge.

First o , did you know that a selec on is no more thanan extra CHANNEL added to the exis ng ones? A fourthto RGB or a h to CMYK? If you did, ne. You’re in theminority though. This snippet of informa on usuallycomes as a shock to many regular Photoshop users.

When you save a selec on it adds a CHANNEL to the list – known as an ALPHA CHANNEL. Likewise when you useQUICK MASK or add a LAYER MASK. All CHANNELS. Nomagic or mystery. Sorry.

But the real beauty of ALPHA CHANNELS is their exibility.Once you grasp the concept that any and all selec onsexist in the CHANNELS pale e, and can be edited,brushed upon, lightened, darkened, had lters appliedto them, and all manner of altera ons, you’re on yourway to selec on utopia. Not to men on the start of manycrea ve e ects.

The rst thing I do whenever I have a complicated selec onto make is take a look at the individual channels, whetherRed, Green & Blue, or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black.

If one of the channels shows my target object in strong

contrast to its background, I will duplicate the channeland use LEVELS and/or CURVES and/or CONTRAST/BRIGHTNESS to isolate my object. You really have to trythis yourself.

Move 20:

A p C

While the di erentchannels of a le are

generally known as‘channels’, any channel

that you CREATE or ADDis generally referred to

as an ALPHA CHANNEL.




At the very least this method will give you a star ng pointupon which to re ne your selec on.

Another use of ALPHA CHANNELS is to remove noise from

a selec on. Once again, a brush or the LEVELS commandcan perform this trick.

ALPHA CHANNELS are especially helpful in cleaning up theresults of the COLOR SELECT tool. This generally resultsin poorly de ned selec ons that don’t fully capture theparts you want, while including elements and noise fromthe areas you don’t want.

But a quick look at the ALPHA CHANNEL will show what

needs to be done, and o en it’s as simple as using LEVELSto be er de ne the edge.

Finally here’s one last major use for ALPHA CHANNELS. If you PASTE a grayscale image into a NEW CHANNEL, thatimage becomes a selec on. This has mul ple uses, notthe least of which is enabling watermark-type lters tobe applied to an image.

But one area in which I use it intensely is to pick out the

black in a black & white image, such as text on paper.

First select all (CTRL/CMMD-A) in the image and copy itto the clipboard. Create a NEW CHANNEL and PASTE yourimage into that channel. Then IMAGE/ADJUSTMENTS/INVERT, or CTRL/CMMD-I to turn the image into anega ve.

Flick back to the main channels view and SELECT/LOADSELECTION, choosing the new ALPHA CHANNEL. This will

give you a selec on the EXACTLY matches the black andgrayscale pixels in the image. If the text is a li le blurry,for example, you can use LEVELS on the ALPHA CHANNELto sharpen the edges and clean up the text. Or if you




need to change the color, brush over the selec on. (Orfor quicker results, change the BACKGROUND COLOR tothe desired color and press DELETE.)

The image at le is actually made up of three CHANNELS, one

each for RED (top), GREEN (middle) and BLUE (above). As you

can see the BLUE channel gives us the most contrast.

RED

GREEN

BLUE




Duplicate the BLUE CHANNEL. Remembering that CHANNELS are

no more than grayscale images, it’s then possible to open the

LEVELS command and increase the contrast considerably. Do this

by dragging the ends of the slider towards each other. Where they

meet on the scale determines how light or dark the resultant imageis. Some mes you might have to do this twice.

You can see in the image below that the sunbathers are almost all

black, while the background has been turned mostly white.




Complete the job by using a brush to brush away all the unwanted

elements. Brush black on the spots or blemishes on the shape you’re

picking out, and white on the background.

Then, with all channels switched on, load the new channel as a

selec on. SELECT/LOAD SELECTION, choose the BLUE COPY. Open

a QUICK MASK on your new selec on to clean up any anomalies

and there you have it – quick and easy without arduously shaping

around images or elements.







Going back to the image we used in MOVE 12, let’s see how ALPHA

SELECTIONS can help us to select her hair, with its many hues and

shades. First thing we see is that the RED CHANNEL holds the most

contrast.




A heavy a ack of the LEVELS gives us a lot of the hair, with only a

few areas missing out. The brush can ll in the hair parts and clean

up the background.




In this case you can zoom right in and see the obvious anomalies

where the circles in that annoying wallpaper interfere with our

selec on. Then brush them out.




The CHANNEL loaded as a selec on, INVERTED(!) and copied to a

new layer sees the hair isolated. A er that it’s up to the imagina on

what you might want to do with it.




Move 21:

L g SLAYER STYLES are a major feature of Photoshop. I haveto admit that when they were rst introduced I resistedthe urge to use them as I thought them contrary to thephilosophy of original design. When I was teaching, Iactually marked students down for using the ubiquitousBEVEL-AND-EMBOSS in a design.

But that was just being silly. The tremendous scope foradjustment and the ease with which LAYER STYLES canmake my day quickly altered my thinking forever.

One feature of LAYER STYLES, however, that is o enoverlooked is the ability to lose the original layer en rely,leaving only the applied Style. This is great for crea ngembossing on textured backgrounds, for example.

But one use I avail myself of regularly is to create mul plestrokes or edge e ects.

If you have a layer with a thick stroke on it set to CENTER,you can duplicate the layer, set a thinner stroke set toCENTRE and remove the layer contents to see bothstrokes.

To do this, open the LAYER STYLES pale e and click onthe very top se ng on the le ; BLENDING OPTIONS. Firstcheck the BLEND INTERIOR EFFECTS AS GROUP op on.Now if you slide the FILL OPACITY slider, your layer willbecome transparent, and eventually disappear en rely.Note that this doesn’t a ect the Layer Styles you haveapplied to that layer.

Experiment with this and have fun.




In this case we’ll add text to our sunbathers. Using the LAYER

STYLES, rst go to the top-most se ng and slide the FILL OPACITY

down to zero on the GETAWAY word. Then add a STROKE and DROP

SHADOW.







You can see the e ect on the le .

Next, on the EXTREME text, add the LAYER STYLE you think might

suit the text. In this case I’ve used the metallic texture in Move 16

as well as a thick blue STROKE and a GRADIENT FILL.

Duplicate the EXTREME layer and take the FILL OPACITY back to

zero. Now create a thinner STROKE with a di erent color.




If I move the layer to one side you can see exactly what I’ve done.

Many people useIllustrator to createe ects like this, and

bring them intoPhotoshop as a SmartObject, or pixels. But

this method allowsyou to skip that step

altogether.




GALLERY

The front cover of this book demonstrates the method of layeringLAYER STYLES perfectly.




While on the LAYER STYLES topic, let’s look at using thistool to feature small elements or text.

Many people make the mistake of crea ng giant orobvious drop shadows or highlights to make a layerstand out. But o en all that’s required is a very slightenhancement or accent to do the job.

For example when small white text is running across abackground that’s not as dark as you’d like, or across animage or texture, an extremely subtle drop shadow cancause the legibility of the text to increase signi cantly.Yet from normal reading distance, you probably won’teven no ce that the shadow is there.

Likewise for dark text with insu cient contrast behindit, a very slight OUTER GLOW will add enough visualdis nc on to restore the text’s legibility without goingoverboard.

You can also use this technique in photographs. It’s ali le like how photographers used DODGE and BURN inthe dark ages to pick out the subject of a photograph.

If your photograph’s main subject tends to blend into thebackground, select the subject and bring it onto its ownlayer. A really large, but near transparent DROP SHADOWbehind the subject (or OUTER GLOW) can have the e ectof bringing it out from its surroundings.

Depending on the subject ma er you might also like toincrease the satura on of the subject while decreasingthe background.

Move 22:

S b




The key to all this, though, is BE SUBTLE. I’m not talkingabout chucking drop shadows and people and crea ngspecial e ects. Just playing a few visual tricks.

This image is ne, but the subject tends to get lost a li le against

the background. Especially if she is the topic of the story.




First job is to isolate the subject by

selec ng it and making it a layer.

Next add an OUTER GLOW LAYER STYLE.

Do it severe at rst, so as to see whereand how far it stretches. Then dial it back

un l it’s almost invisible (but not quite).

This sort of digital

subtlety occurs inmovies all the me,

and o en the viewer iscompletely unaware it

is happening.







The text on this variegated background (above le ) is not clear for

easy reading. One remedy is to give it a drop shadow (above right),

but some mes that is either not in keeping with the overall design,or can seem a li le gauche.




A more subtle approach, which has the text just as legible, is to add

a slight shadow all around the text. With the DISTANCE set to none

and the opacity reduced, the shadow is barely no ceable, yet the

text legibility is increased.




Finally, a QUICK MASK gradient to the bo om of the image and a

slight darkening of the MIDTONES will create more contrast for the

white text without a ec ng the image.




An alterna ve would be to use the mask we created to

highlight the subject and lighten the en re image – apart

from the subject. Then black text could be used. But

note that the above text, while legible, does not leap

o the page. The text on the right, however, has had a

very subtly OUTER GLOW applied to it. Not enough to

no ce, but enough to cause the text legibility to increase

considerably.




With the advent of LAYER STYLES, many Photoshopusers forgot that we used to make our shadows by hand,painstakingly cra ing them from scratch – well, maybenot so painstakingly, but each shadow had to be builtregardless.

But while the automated shadows of LAYER STYLES ispowerful and useful, there are s ll a lot of tricks it hasyet to learn. Tricks that can only be performed by manualshadows.

First of all, for all those users who were introduced toPhotoshop post-LAYER STYLES, a quick instruc on onmaking manual shadows;

Duplicate the layer or object (to have the shadow). OpenCURVES and drag a corner of the curve to another corner.I can’t tell you which one because it varies according towhether the le is RGB or CMYK. Experiment. The result

should be that the layer goes black – pure black.

In the Layers pale e, drag the black layer behind itsparent.

The rest is ar s c and up to you, dependent on howyou want the shadow. Apply a GAUSSIAN BLUR to theshadow layer and move it to where you want the shadowto lay. Set the BLENDING MODE to MULTIPLY and adjustthe OPACITY of the shadow un l the desired result is

achieved.

That’s it. A manual shadow.

BUT WAIT! There’s more…

Move 23:

M w




Unlike using a LAYER STYLE, this shadow of yours can nowbe manipulated.

For example you can apply a SKEW to it, or PERSPECTIVE

or DISTORT. You can ll it with a gradient that goes fromblack to mid-grey, thus allowing it to ‘fade’ with distance.You can even apply a gradient mask to it (see Move 16)and hit it with a GAUSSIAN BLUR that spreads the shadowmore the further it is from the subject.

And much more.

I have tutorials for these techniques on my site atwww.theelectricar st.com






This dog has been brought into this desert photo, but it looks alien –

mainly because it has no shadow. First duplicate the dog layer, then

open CURVES and drag the top right corner down to the bo om

right (for RGB, it’s di erent for CMYK).




Use TRANSFORM/DISTORT to reshape the shadow un l it matches

the direc on and length of the tyre shadow.

Drag the shadow over to the tyre to match the level of blur and

apply a GAUSSIAN BLUR. You can be a li le more aggressive than

the tyre because this dog is in the air.








One of the most common edits to a photograph is toclean up a sky, or turn a dull day into a sunny one. Thisis a pre y simple process, but it can elicit a pre y he y‘Ooooh!’ from the person making the request.

The rst job is to select the sky. This can take severalmethods, and I’ve already outlined them in severalMoves already.

The important thing is to ensure that the edge of thesky – where it touches the horizon – is blurred like thephotograph. The fact is that ALL horizons are blurred andnothing destroys a good sky-to-earth blend that a sharpedge.

With all the sky selected (and nothing that you don’t wantto lose, such as a bird, a plane or Superman), INVERT theselec on (CTRL/CMMD-I) and make the ‘land’ a layer(COPY-PASTE).

If there are blue pieces in the sky, sample the lightestblue near the horizon with the EYEDROPPER, swap theForeground color for the Background color and samplethe deepest blue near the top of the picture.

Then on the Background layer (remember, the land isnow oa ng), run a GRADIENT ll from horizon to top of the picture.

You might need to zoom in and use a LAYER MASK orthe BLUR Tool on the foreground layer to ensure a goodtransi on.

Move 24:

C p




If the sky contains no blue, or the photograph’s not brightenough, open a separate photo which contains the sortof blue sky you want and sample that.

Another hint; some mes, especially if there are trees onthe horizon and their selec on wasn’t perfect, I’ll usethe sky background from the horizon as the lower color,then blend it to deep blue. Skies are o en white at thehorizon.

For this exercise we’ll use the same desert scene that we used for

the dog and its shadow. This sky’s okay, but we want a deep blue

vault more be ng a desert.






Fill the background layer with a GRADIENT with the colors matching

the original. If the blue isn’t deep enough, open an image with the

sort of blue that you want and sample that for the top blue. Don’t

change the bo om color; just redo the GRADIENT with the new

blue color.




Now we can bring on the dog an its shadow!




First make a new layer. Then set up a GRADIENT using the top blue

of the previous image sliding to transparent. Run the gradient down

the sky on the new layer. Then select the elements in the background

that are a ected by the gradient - in this case only the gable end

of the house, which is a simple selec on. Then DELETE it from the

layer. In the nal image I have lightened and color-corrected the

rest of the image.

Here’s a technique for a real quick enhancement of a dull sky.






GALLERY

Here is a before-and-a er of what was a bland photograph, now

turned into something worthy of publica on. This was a case of the

supplied photograph being our only choice.




This is another common request.

Imagine that for some reason or another you have adocument that only exists as a raster image. It could bethat the PDF caused Postscript errors and was rasterized(turned into a bitmap), or your computer doesn’t containthe fonts in the PDF and so you cannot ‘open’ it withAdobe Illustrator for edi ng.

It could just be that you have a scanned le er that has togo into a document.

However the situa on comes about, suddenly youhave to edit this document, but you can’t do it in theconven onal sense.

What you have to do is similar to a kidnapper making hisransom le er – cut and paste.

If it’s a few le ers, such as a spelling mistake or a changeof phone number, nd an example of the text you needin another part of the document, select it with theRECTANGULAR MARQUEE and COPY/PASTE it to make alayer. Posi on it over the text to be replaced and cleanup any white areas that obscure the background with aLAYER MASK.

Some mes, like if you’re replacing an ‘i’ with a ‘w’, youwill need to select the rest of the line and move it to theright in order to accommodate the wider le er.

If it’s an en re paragraph to be replaced or inserted,however, things can get a li le tricky. This is how I do it;

Move 25:

T x E g




First assess the font used in the document. If you don’tknow exactly, get as close as you can. If it’s a serifed romantype, choose Times or Caslon to begin with. Assess thetype size as well, although that’s not too essen al.

Go to the paragraph that is being replaced, or anyparagraph will in fact do, and start typing over top of thetext underneath. Type EXACTLY what is already there. Doat least two lines of text.

Now it’s your job to match that text to the type underneath.If the font is di erent (the ‘w’s don’t match for example)keep trying di erent fonts un l you get the right one – orone that is so similar you don’t think a reader will tell the

di erence.

Next scale the new text to sit exactly over top of the old.Use FREE TRANSFORM (CTRL/CMMD-T) but ensure youhold down the SHIFT key to retain propor onality.

With the top line si ng directly over the original andmatching in both font and size, adjust the leading (spacebetween the lines) un l the next line is also in place.

Now you have a template for the way the text sits inthe document. Type in the new paragraph, using thesame paragraph width, and when you’re happy, go toLAYER/RASTERIZE/TYPE and turn your new text to pixels.Warning: make sure it’s spelled correctly and proofread

rst.

Either lose the text to be replaced (select it and pressDELETE) or create the gap for the new paragraph (moveeverything below it down).

Note: if the ‘paper’ is not pure white, sample the colorrst and make it your background color before pressing

DELETE.

It’s not only text thatcan need edi ng or

xing in scanneddocuments or PDFs.Logos some mesrequire upda ng (orremoving altogether),images can be replaced

or enhanced, andeven such mundaneelements as pagenumbers can either beadded or altered.




Then match the new text to the ‘feeling’ of the exis ng.By that I mean if it looks crisp and clear when the exis ngtext is a li le blurred, blur your new text. If it’s black, whenthe exis ng is dark grey, sample the old text and paint

the new text in that color (with the Layer TransparencyLOCKED).

Finally a en the image.

It’s a lot of work, but it can make for some happy clientsand I’ve built a reputa on for being an accomplisheddocument ‘forger’ in this manner.

The same process can be used to update logos, add logos,

change signatures etc.

With Photoshop, not only do photographs never tell thetruth, but neither do documents.




For this exercise we’re going to use the PDF of the Photoshop

CS3 User Guide as our subject, rasterized in Photoshop to form

a ‘scanned’ text image. There’s nothing wrong with it, but we’ll

pretend that we want to put a ‘u’ into the spelling of ‘color’ for theEnglish market.




Select the le er you want to add from another example in the text

– in this case a ‘u’. COPY and PASTE to make it a layer and drag it to

the inser on point. I have put a shadow on it here so that you can

see what’s happening.




Because there’s no room for the ‘u’, the rest of the line must be

selected. Note that I have zoomed in and, in QUICK MASK, have

made sure that I don’t touch the text that stays behind. Modern

propor onal type means that you will have to be very careful with

character-level selec ons.




Shi the remainder of the line to the right, place the ‘u’ and when

all is aligned, a en the image. Presto; spell checking in scanned

documents.




Some mes in a small document the le er you want doesn’t exist. In

that case, use your imagina on. If we needed a ‘v’ and only had a

‘w’, let’s sculpt ourselves a ‘v’.




In this example we need to change more than one le er. Some mes

en re paragraphs need to be altered. The rst thing we do is type

some text to match a phrase in the exis ng text. Next, try to match

the font.The font doesn’t always

have to be EXACTLYthe same. Few peoplecan tell the di erence

between Adobe Caslonand Times at a glance.




I change the color of my text and place it over the exis ng un l I

pre y much cover it all. That gives me the size and the font. Then I

edit the text to the new version while in place. I’ve kept the colored

version here to show what the new text will be. Finally select the

‘old’ text underneath and delete it. The result is new text that is

indis nguishable from the old.

If mul ple lines arebeing replaced, yoursample should be morethan one line too, sothat you can adjustthe leading to matchexis ng.

Once you have asample of the font, sizeand leading, keep thedetails and use them forany other edits requiredin the document.




A b …

In more recent mes (like, this century) vector applica onslike Illustrator and CorelDraw have featured the ability toEXPORT a le to Photoshop layers. (Sadly Freehand nevergot this far and is now a lame duck).

That means that an illustra on can be created out of

vector paths and brought into Photoshop as individuallayers at the push of a bu on (well, maybe three or four).

This is something you have to try yourself to behold.Not only do the layers come into the program intact, butnamed layers retain their names as well.

If expor ng from Illustrator, and the MAXIMUMEDITABILITY bu on is pressed, individual objects oneach layer will arrive as GROUPS, and can be edited

separately.

For illustrators and web designers this is like magic.

Move 26:

B g g P p




Here’s a vector logo that has been assembled in Adobe

Illustrator. As you can see there are numerous layers, each

with their own name. If we want to add some nishing

touches to this logo in Photoshop, we want all the layers

together.

The EXPORT command in Illustrator (below) gives youmany op ons, including wri ng layers. The MAXIMUM

EDITABILITY op on keeps groups and sub-layers intact.

Before you go expor ngvector les to layers,take a moment to

consider the le sizeand the ability of yourcomputer. Make sureyou SAVE rst, as thecrea on of a 600mb

le may choke yourresources.




With all my layers intact, I can add PATTERN

OVERLAYS as well as numerous other special

e ects if I wish.

NOTE: the resultant logo is now a bitmap (pixel)

logo and has lost it’s scalability. To ensure

this logo can be used in most applica ons –

including billboards – I will have to have made

it quite large, which can also be a drain on

resources.

NOTE: CorelDraw also

has the ability to exporta layered vector le

to a na ve layeredPhotoshop le. Note,too, that if you asked

this of Freehand, itwould go ‘Duh?’




GALLERY

This oorplan was created in a vector program (CorelDraw in this

case) and the layers exported to Photoshop intact for some added

a en on




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Also ideal for students intending study or already studying, you will nd that theknowledge contained in these books will give you the edge over your fellow students,and will actually give you an advantage a er gradua on, providing you with the prac calskills to go with your quali ca on.

The modules in the series are:

Book One: Founda on & Theory

Book Two: Tools and Workplace

Book Three: The Raw Materials - Input

Book Four: Prin ng and Prepress - Output

Book Five: Introduc on to Digital Illustra on

Book Six: Advanced Digital Illustra on

Book Seven: Design and Typography

Book Eight: Desktop Publishing

Book Nine: Web Design

Book Ten: Marke ng and Design

Plus many bonus books

To learn more about what this course can do for you, visit:

www.learncomputergraphics.com





A collec on of TOOLS, TIPS, TECHNIQUES and TUTORIALS that aserious Photoshop users should know.

The author has picked out 25 key tasks or tools that he would expect

an experienced Photoshop user to know. These include selec ontechniques, shortcuts, me-saving tools, montage skills and prac calapplica ons of Photoshop that he himself uses daily in real life jobs.

Large illustra ons, step-by-step explana ons and simple instruc onswill have you crea ng Photoshop art like a professional in no me.

Photoshop is like the game of chess. While the fundamentals can be picked up ina few hours, it will take a life me to master it. And while several hundred millionpeople on the planet can ‘play’ chess, there are only a few masters. But if you

went to a compe ve chess tournament anywhere in the world, you’d expect acertain level of competency. While the compe tors at the tournament may not bemasters, they will all be several levels above raw beginners.

So it is with Photoshop. If I was to break both my arms in a skateboarding ‘incident’,

Included inside:Making selec ons•with Alpha Channels

Turning a dull gray •sky blue

Documents

25 Essential Photoshop Moves