Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
This tutorial will teach you how to add colour onto an old photograph that may of lost colour through fading or an image that is originally black and white or greyscale, sometimes this can take a lot of time but the more time spent the better the final result.
1.) Open up the image that you want to use and ensure that the image mode is set to RGB, you can do this by going into Image > Mode and then check its set to RGB.
2.) Press Q to go into quick mask mode and make sure that the quick mask option that is on the main toolbar are set to selected areas. Using the Paintbrush fill in the area that you would like to colourize, this area will then appear in red.
3.) Press Q again and this will send you back into standard mode and a selection will appear around the area you filled with the Paintbrush, when completing the next step your selections will be saved as Layer Masks which you will be able to restore later but you could also save your selections by going to Select > Save Selection and then name the selection after the area which you have just outlined in the image you are using.
4.) Click on Create New Adjustment Layer icon which is at the bottom of the layers palette and choose the option of colour balance from the menu, you will be given a option of highlights, mid-tones and shadows and adjust the sliders for these until you find the colour that you think looks the best, this choice isn’t final you will have the option of going back and editing using your layers palette by double clicking on the adjustment layer icon for the layer that you want to edit.
5.) Repeat this process over again for the other parts of the photo that you need to colourize, when this is al done and you have got colour using your colour balance adjustment layer you can also make further additional adjustment layers to adjust each colour layer more, you will be given a selection of options including Contrast, Shadows, Brightness, Saturation, Hue… Just load the particular selection by clicking CTRL and then clicking onto the adjustment layer, and repeat the process of adding a new adjustment layer.
Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Image Restoration, Photoshop, Saturation, Shadows, Tutorials
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Monday, January 12th, 2009
Photoshop has features that adjust your photographs at the click of a button, one of these being the shadow and highlight correction tool that is under the adjustments menu. The shadow and highlight correction tool is a tonal editing option and makes adjusting pictures much easier.
The tool has a set of sliders for shadows and highlights that you adjust until the balance of tones is correct. I have found using sliders is much easier than levels and curves and gives better results.
Match Colour is another feature that will help you to make two pictures that need to be combined look like they have similar colour tones. For example if you have had a portrait taken with flash and want to combine another photograph of someone taken in sunlight. To do this you need to open both images and select the target and destination and then adjust the sliders until it’s as close as you want. The match colour tool also works if you are copying and pasting parts from one image onto another and it is ideal for people who shoot panoramas and want a natural colour transition from one frame to the next so that the entire image blends together perfectly.
Photomerge is another feature that is good for people who want to piece together panoramic photographs. The feature has been programmed to stitch together photographs that have been taken in a series such as a panorama, it automatically finds the edges where a blend should occur and merges them for you without you having to cut and blend the photos yourself.
Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Design, graphics, Photographs, Photoshop, Photoshop Features
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Friday, January 9th, 2009
Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular design programmes used by Graphic Designers and Web Developers today, this is because of its advanced level of tools and effects when it comes to editing photographs and designing graphics.
The programme was created by Adobe and works with both Windows (PC) and Macintosh. Photoshop’s name portrays it to be a programme solely designed to edit or repair photographs but it is capable of far more than this and once you have practiced tutorials and used your imagination you can create some amazing imagery using Photoshop.
The original versions of Photoshop were produced only for the Mac that allowed image editing to become affordable and accessible on your own personal computers; now Photoshop is industry standard when it comes to image editing.
The programme contains a large selection of image editing tools alongside an advanced capability of producing numerous layers, allowing images to be added, moved and rearranged over and under each other for different effects. It will also read from and convert to a large number of formats but uses its own format for layers, which is PSD.
Tags: Adobe Photoshop, graphics, Photoshop, photoshop CS3, Photoshop Effects
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Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
This tutorial is to help you learn how to create a silhouette from a photo that didn’t quite have the right exposure for it, or to create a silhouette from any photograph that you would like to have the silhouette effect.
If a photo was supposed to come out as a silhouette but it was a little too overexposed this technique will work well for any photo that has a bright light source in the background. The tutorial is for work that is being done in Photoshop.
1. First you need to open up your image in Photoshop and then create a new layers adjustment layer (Layer – New Adjustment Layer – Levels).
2. Adjust the outside sliders so they fit the whole color range.
3. Adjust the exposure so it is more balanced and on the verge of being a silhouette.
4. Create a New Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer (Layer – New Adjustment Layer – Brightness/Contrast).
5. Decrease the Brightness and then you need to increase the contrast, usually the number that works best for this is roughly around 40.
The process and the amount of adjustment that needs to be made will be different for other photographs, but once you have got used to this technique you will get a good idea of which level of settings work best and create the most realistic silhouettes.
Tags: Design, Images, overexposure, Photoshop, silhouette, tutorial
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Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
Images which are used for website layouts and templates, tables, JavaScript enabled menus and interfaces need to be cut up differently, to ensure they are proportioned correctly for what they are going to be used for, this tutorial will show you how to cut them up correctly and then input them into HTML tables ready for use on the internet.
1.) Begin by opening up the image which you want to cut up and use the shortcut CTRL & R to turn the documents rulers on so you have a guideline, drag the edges of the image out so you also have a grey work area to ‘play with’.
2.) Click on the ruler at the top of your page, hold down click and drag down with the cursor, this will make a blue line appear and then drag this line to the point that your want to make a cut and then let go, the final point you stop at doesn’t need to definitely be where you want the cut to be, you can still change the position if the line using the Move Tool to drag the line around.
3.) Use the same process only using the ruler on the left hand side of your image and your image should now be divided into four sections by the blue lines, you need to keep repeating this process until all the areas that you want to cut up are surrounded by blue boxes.
4.) If you want to animate a section of your image you need to make sure that the area is marked to be cut out and this will reduce the file size for your image ensuring the whole image will not need to be loaded numerous times for the animated section, also choose the Snap To Guides option in the view menu.
5.) Using the Marquee Selection Tool make a selection box around the area of the image that you want to cut out, when the area you want to cut out is selected press CTRL & C to copy the selection into memory and then create a new blank document using CTRL & N and the new dialogue box will show the dimensions of the piece you copied, press CTRL & V and this will paste the selection you have copied, save the new image and then go back to the original image.
6.) Repeat this process for every section that you wish to cut up and now the image is separated into usable pieces they will need to be reassembled so they appear to be one whole image again, this will be done using HTML TABLES. You will need the cell spacing, cell padding and border attributes to be set to ‘0’ and the width to be the same as your image as a whole, then all the images should appear lined up like they were still one single image.
Tags: Images, Layouts, Photoshop, Templates, Website Design
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Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
Chrome effects can be created in Photoshop to then be put onto objects or to be used as an effective text effect. In this tutorial I will show you how to apply a chrome effect to text or any other object.
1.) Start by creating a new image 500/500 pixels with a dark grey background, the foreground colour should be white and use the type tool to create text you would like to use to change into chrome, try and make the text as big as possible. Once you have done this choose Layer > Type > Render Layer and then hold CTRL and click on the text to select it, then go to channels palette and create a new channel.
2.) On the new channel fill the selection with white and then deselect (CTRL + D), then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a radius of 8. Repeat Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a radius of 4, repeat again using a radius of 2 and then again using a radius of 1. Once this is done go back to the layers palette and click on the type layer.
3.) Now the type layer is active go to Filter > Render > Lighting Effects and use your preferred lighting effect, try and set the texture of white high and use the light type as a spotlight. Also set the sliders to a more shiny and metallic level.
4.) After this go to Image > Adjust > Curves and alter the curves to a setting which you believe looks the best.
5.) Now you have made your chrome you need to highlight using blue highlights and again having the sliders highest at shiny and metallic. Keep adjusting the levels until you have an effect that you are happy with.
6.) Once this is completed you need to resize your type down to about half the size that it is and then add a drop shadow, you can change your design by creatively ‘playing around’ with Photoshop’s other layer style to add further depth and detail.
7.) Satin is a good effect to use with chrome of you lower the default opacity and the Outer Glow, Inner Glow and Inner Shadows also work well. Gradient Overlays with low opacity can create a interesting effect and explore the blending modes instead of just sticking to normal.
8.) Exploring the different layer styles can help you to learn new ideas and effects, and when you find something the works well you can also save it by clicking the New Style button but ensue you save them when your finished by clicking styles at the top left window, click the arrow button to the right and choose Save Styles.
Tags: effects, Photoshop, photoshop CS3, Photoshop Effects
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Monday, December 15th, 2008
There are several ways of making a drop shadow in Photoshop and this tutorial will show you them all, drop shadows are very simple yet they are used a lot in the design industry and if used correctly are effective.
1.) Begin by finding an object that you would like to add a drop shadow to; drop shadows can be applied to most elements so you can use a logo, text or clipart as long as the object is on its own layer. Once you have chosen your object press D on your keyboard, this will reset yours colours to their default value.
2.) If you have chosen text to apply the drop shadow to, select the type tool and then type your text, make a new layer in the Layers Palette and drag it underneath the layer that contains your text, then name this layer shadow. Hold down CTRL on the keyboard and click on the text layer and this will load a selection around it.
3.) After doing this go to Select > Feather and choose a number and then press OK. The higher the number you choose the softer and more spread out your drop shadow will appear.
4.) Check that the Shadow layer is selected and then go to Edit > Fill > Foreground Colour to then fill the feathered selection with black.
5.) Depending upon the direction your ‘light source’ is coming from you need to move the shadow layer several pixels up/down and several pixels right/left.
6.) Once you have finished this the shadow will look unrealistically dark and to change this you will need to adjust the opacity of the Shadow layer, meaning you make the shadow lighter, do this until you believe the shadow appears realistic.
Tags: drop shadows, Photoshop, photoshop CS3, photoshops effects, Tutorials
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Monday, December 15th, 2008
To view any of your created images it is best to use the file browser in the toolbar menu, different buttons on the options bar will give you a number of ways to view your images one of which will allow you to quickly open up the browser and view high quality images alongside custom-sized thumbnails.
If you are making numerous adjustments to you’re images involving using a lot of layers your best option is to use layer comps, these will let you capture configurations of a document by recording the position, visibility and blending options of the layers which means you can later find a layer comp from the palette and reuse the setting and way everything was set at that stage.
Layers are the building blocks of many image creation workflows, especially if you are building up a document or a image from a number of other images. You may not need to work with layers if you are doing simple image adjustments, but layers help you work efficiently and are essential to most nondestructive image editing.
Tags: layers, Photoshop, Photoshop Effects, toolbar
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Monday, December 15th, 2008
The majority of Photoshop’s effects are most effective when used on photographs, but they can also be used on other types of images. One feature effect that works well on photographs is the lens blur filter, is uses effects that are similar to actually lens used on cameras e.g. focal distance, specular highlights and Iris.
These effects are attached to sliders where you can adjust the size of the aperture, as you would do on a camera, the curve of the blades and the number of blades. And then you apply the adjustment to the area that you want to blur, the effect the acts as a depth of field control tool.
After this you adjust the specular highlight control which then makes the catch lights white again, this process works on a alpha channel by creating a gradient mask and this means you can pin point focus to a certain plane in for example a landscape to make the foreground and background appear out of focus.
The crop and straighten tool is perfect for photos which have been scanned but haven’t been align properly by the scanner, there are scanners available which automatically rotate a skewed photo and crop it but if your scanner doesn’t have this feature then the crop and straighten tool saves a lot of time aligning photographs.
Photograph filters is a feature which professional photographers will appreciate! The photograph filters are automatic colour correction filters and applying these will automatically add a preset filter and then you pick the colour you would like to add using the colour picker option, the intensity of a filter is controlled by an opacity slider and fade option, automated photograph filters will pick which filter would work best for your image without you having to have any input.
Tags: cropping photographs, CS3, filters, Photoshop, Photoshop Effects
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This tutorial will teach you how to add colour onto an old photograph that may of lost colour through fading or an image that is originally black and white or greyscale, sometimes this can take a lot of time but the more time spent the better the final result.