This effect works well with a photograph which is underexposed and could be touched up with just a little bit of levels or curves. Instead of just brightening the image which would be our natural instant, an interesting effect is to create the look of a spotlight.

1.) Begin by creating a selection with the elliptical marquee tool, Choose Select > Transform Selection and a bounding box will appear, this will give you the ability to rotate, scale and resize the selected area. 

2.) Press enter/return to apply the transformation to the selection, the next step is to create a curves adjustment layer, choose a new adjustment layer from the bottom of the layers palette and select curves.

3.) This will then open a dialog box, which is for curves, move the mouse from the box and over to the image, the cursor will then change into an eyedropper tool. 

4.) Click and drag and a circle will appear on the diagonal line of the curve. This is the tonal range of the area that you are moving the mouse over. Take a note of where the range is on the curve.

5.) Click and drag on the curve. Move the point up and notice that the image will be lightened. Looking at the layers palette, you will see the adjustment layer with a layer mask applied. Notice that the area of the mask where the selection was present is now white, click the mask to make it active. 

6.) The light edge needs to be softened, do this by choosing the options, Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur 

7.) Remove the effect from the areas that would be in shadow and not illuminated in real life, e.g. such as the air, choose black for the foreground color and select the brush tool, click and drag the paintbrush and you will paint away the adjustment from the regions you desire because you are painting on a mask 

8.) And that should be it! This is a great effect and you can lower the opacity of the adjustment layer if you desire to tone down the effect a little, a great way to draw attention to certain areas of an image.

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.

This is a list of my favorite and most used Photoshop keyboard shortcuts and there’s nothing more damaging to your productivity than doing everything the long way round when using a programme. Searching for tools or buttons is a task that can easily be bypassed with some quick memorization of shortcuts.

Undo, Multiple Times – (Ctrl + Alt + Z)

Most programs allow you to press (Ctrl + Z) multiple times to perform multiple Undo’s, but Photoshop requires (Alt), otherwise you’ll just keep undoing then re-doing then undoing then re-doing then undoing then re-doing.

Hand/Move Tool – (Spacebar)

Holding the spacebar will turn your cursor into the hand in almost any situation… when using different tools, with dialog boxes open, etc… allowing you to quickly navigate your document no matter what you’re doing.

Switch Document Windows – (Ctrl + Tab)

Your Photoshop workspace can become a mess when working on multiple files, so being able to switch windows quickly is a must.

New Layer – (Ctrl + Shift + N) – with dialog?(Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N) – without dialog

Layers are the greatest thing(s) ever invented in any (design) program and being able to manage your layers properly is important.

Duplicate Layer – (Ctrl + J) – without dialog?(Ctrl + Alt + J) – with dialog

You can duplicate an entire layer, or, if you have a selection, the selection will be duplicated to it’s own layer. This is great when trying different techniques or effects without having to worry about errors.

Re-run Filter/ Fade Filter -  (Ctrl + F) – run filter again?(Ctrl + Alt + F) – run filter again, with dialog?(Ctrl + Shift + F) – fade filter

Even though Photoshop provides preview windows in the dialog box for most filters, there’s still no true way of telling whether you’ve achieved your desired effect until you see the full image. If something goes wrong, you can quickly undo, then go back to your filter and try again without having to go through the hassle of moving your cursor. 

1.) You need to open the image that you want to work with and also open any image of a sunset.

2.) Choose Image > Adjustments > Match Color and the Match Color dialog box will open.  We will only need to use 2 settings for the task at hand. Under Source, click the drop down menu and select the image of the sunset. There will be a thumbnail for you to check that you have selected the correct image. Turn on the preview option if it isn’t already. The working image will now take on the color attributes of the sunset image. Most probably the effect will be a bit too much.

3.) Adjust the Fade slider until you are happy with the result. Move it to the left for more of the inherited color and to the right for the original color.

4.) When you are satisfied, click the OK button to apply the changes. There are many things that can be done with this new Filter in Photoshop CS including using the match color to remove a color cast in a single click.

1.) The first step is to get two images to work with. Make sure they are both in the same resolution, 72 dpi if you are using them for the web, and RGB colour mode, then open both documents in Photoshop.

2.) We will want to combine both images into one document. Now select the move tool “V” key. Drag one image into the other window and a new layer will be created automatically with the new layer on top. To center the new image in the window hold down the Shift key while dragging.

3.) Click on the add layer mask button, this will create a new layer mask. A layer mask is transparent. When you paint black into the mask it allows the image underneath to show through. Where it is white, the underlying layer will be hidden.

4.) Press the “G” key to select the gradient tool. Make sure the fore and backgrounds are set to black and white. Select linear gradient and foreground to background. Now drag the gradient diagonally across the image.

5.) You can see the gradient in the layer thumbnail and the result on the image. Where it is white, the top image shows and where it is darker the back shows through. Experiment with differant angles. You may also use any of the brush tools on the mask. Black will “paint away” the image and white will “paint it back”. Use a soft brush for best results.

6.) For an interesting variation change the layer blending mode to multiply. This makes the top image appear as if it is a reflection.

This tutorial works with images that have a good range of hightlights/midtones/shadows but lack of shadows obscuring any parts of the face if you are using this effect on an image of a person. Other images may need a lot of color correcting before they could be made suitable for use in this tutorial, especially as regards shadows on the face. Choose your images wisely before starting the tutorial. 

1.) Open your image. Duplicate the background layer and give it a useful name. Save to PSD to get your working file established.

2.) Make sure your new layer (not the background) is highlighted and run menu option Image > Adjustments > Threshold… The default value in the Threshold dialog box is 128 and then increase or decrease the threshold until you are satisfied with how it looks then press OK. 

3.) Highlight the threshold layer and go to Filter > Stylize > Diffuse then Select Anisotropic mode and press OK.

4.) Run menu option Select > Color Range and use the eyedropper to sample the black portion of the image, then run the Fuzziness slider in the Color Range dialog box up to 200. Press OK. The black portion of the image should now be surrounded by marching ants.

5.) Run menu option Select > Save Selection and give the selection a name and press OK. Press CTRL-D to deselect. You will reload the selection later.

6.) Make a new layer on top of the others. Select the Paint Bucket tool. Set the tool to fill with a pattern rather than a color and fill the new layer. You can use one of Photoshop’s built-in patterns. 

7.) Make another new layer on top of the others and fill it with white. Add a layer mask to this layer by pressing the Add Layer Mask button on the Layers palette.

8.) Run menu option Select > Load Selection and choose the selection you saved earlier from the dropdown menu in the Load Selection dialog box and press OK.

9.) Go to Edit > Fill and fill the selection with black (which should correspond to your current background color if the mask layer is highlighted). Though you’ve filled the selection with black, you won’t see black in the image. What you should see is the pattern fill from the layer below showing through where the selected mask was filled. Press CTRL-D to deselect. 

10.) With the mask layer still highlighted, select the Brush tool and choose a large, hard-edged brush – around size 19. Painting on the mask with white as the foreground color, paint over those parts of the image you might not need, assuming you see extra stuff that doesn’t need to be there.

This tutorial will show you a quick way to use photoshop to create a trendy, effective, two-tone silhouette effect. Once you have mastered creating the two-tone silhouette effect you can experiment with different colours and filters. 

1.) First you need to start with the photo you want to apply the effect to, any photograph will work well with this effect as long as it is of a good quality. 

2.) You then need to duplicate your layer, this isn’t essential but it helps if you make a mistake when completing the design, then desaturate your duplicated layer, you do this by using Image > Adjust > Desaturate. 

3.) Now go to Filter > Artistic > Cutout and use settings similar to the following:

Number of Levels: 2

Edge Simplicity: 3/4

Edge Fidelity: 3

4.) The next step is to go to Image > Adjustments > Levels to bring up the Levels Dialog Box. Drag your sliders very close to each other, until your image is only black and white.

5.) Your image will probably have some pretty jagged edges. To fix this go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter a value of around 2.0 pixels, or whichever makes your edges look smoothed.

6.) Bring up the Curves Dialog Box by going to Image > Adjustments > Curves. Adjust the curves so the edge blurriness is gone, but there is still no jagged edges. You could get a little more advanced with this by masking your subject out (cutting out) first, then running through the steps, this could give you the option to have a coloured background etc. 

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.