Want to add some metal and ink to people in your family, well read this: Press SHIFT+M and cycle through the marquee tools until you come to the circle (alright, elliptical marquee tool) . Once that’s selected, you’ll see some options at the top of the canvas. In the drop down list next to Style, choose ‘Fixed Aspect Ratio’. This of course gives us a perfectly round circle selection every time. Go ahead and drag one out now. Not too big, though. Good. Now we need to go Select-Modify- Border. A screen pops up asking you how many pixels wide you want it to be. I put 3 here. Now we need to put something in it. Stop! Before we fill it with color, we have to make a new layer (CRTL+SHIFT+N). Now press SHIFT +F5 to bring up the Fill screen, and from the drop down menu choose ‘50% grey’. We don’t need the selection now, so CRTL+D to deselect. Now a round circle isn’t going to be very realistic. What we need to do now is distort it a bit. Press CRTL+T to enter transform mode, then right-click and choose ‘Distort’ from the menu. Now play around moving the handlebars around the square. Good. We could now just take the eraser tool and get rid of that bit in the middle. A better way, though, is to use a mask. At hte bottom of the layers panel you’ll see a little grey rectangle with a white circle in it. Click it and our layer gets a brother. The foreground/background colors also change to black and white. Now if we paint black, it will take away the ring, and if we then paint white, it will bring back what we painted black. Just to the left of the mask icon on the layers panel, you will see as well the Layer Style icon. Click it now and from the list that springs down, choose ‘Bevel and Emboss’. This is pops up another screen with lots of options on it. We don’t need to change anything for now, though. You will also see that our ring is updated in real time, so we can see the results straight away. To give it more highlights and make it shinier, hit the ‘Gloss Contour’ box. Another screen pops up where you can alter the mapping. Just click and drag the black line until it is like the example.
Touching up photos is fun and easy, follow these simple steps to learn how to make a black and white photo. Start by choosing the photo you want to convert to Black and White, any size, background or quality is cool. Go to Image – Adjustments – Black and White. Ok, now this menu will show up, you’ll have to change all the values depending on your photo’s color. Take your time to make the best contrast possible. The following settings are just an example. Now that you have finished with the Black and White, we’re going to make some manual shadows and highlights to make the photo more stunning. Grab the Burn tool. Set the master Diameter Settings depending on your photo’s size. Now make some exaggerated shadows. We made this to make like a visual impact. Now, grab the Dodge Tool. (you can find the dodge tool making right click in the Burn Tool) Make some highlights (of course, in the parts you didn’t make shadows) Finally, the last touch.Go to Filter – Sharpen – Unsharp Mask. And put just a little bit of sharp, enough to make the image a little stronger. And its done! Your stunning Professional Black And White Photo in Photoshop CS3 is finished.
Brightness/Contrast is a super important technique in photo manipulation. You can alter the complete mood of photos with brightness and contrast. I will demonstrate how. First get a picture of anything in the world you want. ANYTHING! Now go to Image – Apply Image and apply your image on a new layer. Then go to Image – Adjustments – Brightness/Contrast. Then mess around with the settings. I tend to make the lower the brightness and raise the contrast. But see what is best for your picture. After applying Brightness/Contrast/ Do you see the changes? I sure do. I completely changed the mood of the picture with Brightness/Contrast. So as you can tell this is a very important and helpful piece of Photo manipulation.
It’s time to introduce Adobes ExtendScript Toolkit which is the environment which you will work in to create scripts for Photoshop CS2. In this tutorial I will introduce Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit, reference documents that you will need when writing scripts and in the end I will guide you through a hello world program for Photoshop scripts. ExtendScript Toolkit. If you have Photoshop CS2 you probably already have the ExtendScript Toolkit, to test if you have it create a new file and name it test.jsx. When double-clicking the file ExtendScript Toolkit should open.
From the murky depths of the deepest forests to the frosty desolation of the Siberian wilderness, camouflage is invaluable for breaking up the human silhouette, allowing stealthy approaches towards your prey. It is, however, also deceptively simple to make in Photoshop using only a couple of filters and a basic sense of style. Create a blank document of any size with a single active layer (this can be filled with anything you desire). Using the colour swatches, select #D0C577 as the foreground colour, and #BAAD4A as the background colour. Then choose Edit – Fill from the main menu and fill the background layer with the new BG colour. Now create that camouflage by selecting Filter – Artistic – Sponge, and running it with the following settings: Brush Size – 8; Definition – 25; Smoothness – 15; Repeat the filter a second time with exactly the same settings to bring out highlights. To smooth out the result, go to Filter – Noise – Median and enter a value of 3. And that’s it! See, I said it was easy! Of course, at this point you can brighten things up a little with the Image – Adjust – Brightness / Contrast tools, and/or add a little cloth texture with Filter – Texture – Texturizer, but I’ll leave that up to you… Of course, these colours wont work for every environment, so feel free to play around a little. Take a look below to see a few quick colour variations. Have fun experimenting.
Layers are an integral element of Photoshop. They allow you to edit images more easily, and use transparency to its full effect. By default the background layer (Locked and labelled “Background”) is white, and any subsequently created layers are transparent by default. Layer Opacity: The opacity of the current layer, 0-100%. Blending Mode: The manner in which this layer interacts with layers below it. See below. Active/Linked Layers: A small paint brush icon appears in this space to indicate the active layer, and chain icons signify other layers that are linked with the active layer. Layer visibility: An eye in this area signifies that the layer is visible, and an empty box means it is hidden from view and exempt from formatting. Layers: Two example layers showing an example background layer and new (transparent) layer (Layer 1). New Fill/Adjustment Layer: Creates a layer that can add a gradient to or adjust the hue, etc. of the layer below. New Layer: Creates a new layer [ctrl/cmd + shift + N]. Delete Layer: Deletes the currently selected layer. New Layer Set: Creates a folder for layers to be put into for easy organization of layers. New Layer Mask: Creates a sub-layer with which you can use all normal tools. Adding black to a layer mask, for example, means that that part of the layer is invisible. Layer Effects (Styles): Applies various effects to the current layer – can also be reached via.
A way to make a whole palette from the three colors is not extremely difficult. Open a new canvas, does not really matter the size, but keep it no smaller than 468×60. Click on the gradient tool on the left tool bar. Go into the Gradient Editor, by clicking on the colored gradient on the top toolbar. Place the darkest of the three colors on one side, the lightest on the other, and the mid tone in the middle. Keep the opacity at 100%. Press Ok, then click-drag a horizontal line across the canvas. You can use the eye drop tool to take the color from this canvas and color the skin of your project. Now that we have a pallet of color, we have to understand the effects of lighting on skin. It’s a very simple concept, but understanding it is necessary to shading skin. As any matter, the brighter the light, the lighter the highlight and the darker the shadow. The dimmer the light, the difference between the light and the shadow decreases. The shadow cast by it is also affected by the light and darkness. The color of light affects it in the same way. If the light is green, it will have a green tint to the skin. If it is a small light, such as a lamp, a smaller portion of the skin will be that color, instead of affecting the whole skin. As stated before, most matter is affected the same way as this.
