Friday, January 30th, 2009
Zoom effects can be done through using a camera, but you can also get some interesting results when you use certain filters in Photoshop. This effect works great when used on photographs of moving objects, especially motor-sport photographs, but the effect can be just as stunning when used on still images.
1.) The first step is to choose your image you would like to work with, and then choose the elliptical marquee tool from the toolbox. Once you have chosen the tool you need to make a selection on your image, you can also hold down the spacebar to reposition the selection as you are drawing it.
2.) Now, it’s important to feather the selection. If you don’t the effect will be too harsh and obvious. The feather creates a soft edge and a smooth transition to the blurred areas. So you need to choose the options Select > Modify > Feather. Change the size of the feather radius depending on the resolution.
3.) Right now you have a selection around the center of the image, and you want to select everything but the center. Choose Select > Inverse and you should see the selection go around the edge of your page now.
4.) Next choose the options Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and choose Zoom as the method, select good for quality. Choose your amount to suit. For a heavier blur use 100. You might have to test it and undo a few times to get exactly what looks best on your image.
5.) Changing the feather and the blur amount will change the effect. Experiment with different shaped selections and different amounts of blur. In some cases you may want to apply the blur more than once.
Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Auto Tools, effects, filters, Photoshop
Posted in Photoshop Effects, Photoshop Filters, Tutorials | 1 Comment »
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
Posted in Photoshop, Tutorials | No Comments »
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
Posted in Photoshop, Tutorials | No Comments »
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
Posted in Photoshop, Tutorials | No Comments »
Zoom effects can be done through using a camera, but you can also get some interesting results when you use certain filters in Photoshop. This effect works great when used on photographs of moving objects, especially motor-sport photographs, but the effect can be just as stunning when used on still images. 
