Thursday, November 22nd, 2012

Photoshop Landscape Glow Effect

Quickly learn how to create a Landscape glow effect in Photoshop to give your photos a dreamlike quality.


Transcript:

Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to apply a landscape glow effect.

Before we get started with creating this landscape glow effect let’s have a look and see what it is that we’re aiming for. This is the original image that I’m starting with. It’s from sxc.hu which is a stock image site and this is just a little house in the middle of a paddock. And this is the result of applying my landscape glow effect to it. The image has a bit more of a glow to it and a slightly more painterly look. I have another image that I’ve applied it to. Let’s just hide that one for now. Let’s have a look and see what this image looked like before. Again it’s a stock image and this is what it looks like after we’ve applied the effect.

So let’s get started creating this effect. I’m just going to remove these three layers from this image, and let’s see how we would do the effect ourselves. We’re going to start on the background layer of the image. And we’re going to choose Select and then Color Range because this allows us to pick out the darker areas of the image without having to make a selection which is really nice because they would be really hard to identify otherwise. So I’m just clicking to select shadows. And Photoshop has automatically selected all the shadow dark areas of my image so I’m just going to click Ok. And this is the selection it has made.

Now I’m going to put this on a new layer so I’m going to choose Layer, New, Layer via Copy. And that’s going to copy the blacks onto their own layer. So you can see this is what we’ve got. I’m actually going to hide that layer for now. Now I’m going to make two additional copies of the background layer. I’m going to right click it and choose Duplicate Layer and click Ok and then do that again. With the topmost of these duplicate layers I’m going to set its blend mode to Screen and that will lighten the image considerably. And then I’m going to merge this layer into the layer below by choosing Layer, Merge Down.

Now I have a lighter version of the image on top of the original. And I’m going to duplicate this so I have two light versions of the image on top of each other. And I’m going to set the blend mode for this particular top layer to Multiply and that will darken it all again. Now with this darkened layer I want to blur it so I’m going to choose Filter, Blur, and then Gaussian Blur. And I’m going to set my blur to a quite high value, something like sort of 9 or 10 but in that sort of higher value area so I’m going to get this sort of glow look to my image and click Ok.

So there’s my blurred darkened layer, my light layer underneath and my original layer below. And now that I’m ready to do so I’m going to make the top layer this dark tree visible again. And you can see that in actual fact the pixels in that layer are really quite light in comparison now to the rest of the image underneath. And I can even make it lighter by blending this particular tree back in in Screen mode and then just adjust the opacity down to suit. So that’s giving my landscape a very sort of glow look. It’s a lot richer color and a lot more of a glow look to it.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed this video tutorial. Thank you for joining me for it. If you liked the tutorial please like it on YouTube and subscribe to my YouTube channel to be advised when new videos are released which is a couple of times a week. You can also visit projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, Illustrator and others.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:photoshop, video

posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

Free Hand Drawn Bird Brushes for Photoshop

Some of you may already know that I’m a bit of a brush junkie, and hopefully you’ve checked out Project Woman’s brush collections before. If not, now is the perfect time! I’ve recently updated the page to include a new collection of adorable hand-drawn bird brushes. The set is entirely free and all pertinent licence information is included.

I update the collections regularly, so make sure to keep an eye out for any new brushes!

Download the bird brush set here!

Helen Bradley

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Categories:photoshop

posted by Helen Bradley @ 3:00 pmNo Comments links to this post

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

Trevor’s Quick Photoshop Tip – Change your Units of measure

original photo by: John De Boer

Need to change the units of measure on your rulers from pixels to inches or vice versa? To do this, right click on either of the rulers and select the measurement you’d like to use. Options include Pixels, Inches, Centimeters, Millimeters, Points, Picas and Percent. Bonus tip – this works in Illustrator too.

 

 

Helen Bradley

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Categories:photoshop, trevor tip

posted by Trevor Payne @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

Photoshop – Understanding Smart Objects

Smart Objects are a great tool for working with images in Photoshop but did you know there are two ways to make copies of them. One way you duplicate the Smart Object so every instance of it will always be the same image and the other way you copy the Smart Object but unlink it so you can change out one image without changing the other.

Also make sure to watch my video on Smart Objects here.

Here’s how it works: Start with a new Photoshop document and add an image as a Smart Object – my favorite way to do this is to choose File > Place and place the image inside the file.  This gives you one image as a Smart Object in the Layers palette. Now, the first way to duplicate a Smart Object is to right click and choose Duplicate Layer. This makes an exact copy of the layer so anything you do with the Smart Object on this layer will be done to both layers. Here I double clicked on one of the layer thumbnails and opened the actual image on that layer. I converted it to black and white then closed and saved it and this is what I have now in Photoshop. The two Smart Object layers are both changed. The alternative is to right click the Smart Object layer and choose New Smart Object via Copy. You get the same result as the earlier option with one exception – the two images are separate and they can be altered individually. Here I did the same alteration as before, only this time the image on the top layer is changed an not the one on the bottom layer. If desired you can change the image on the layer. To do this, click the layer to select it and choose Layer > Smart Objects > Replace Contents. Locate a different image to use, click it and click Place. Here I have resized the placed image so you can see they are different. If I had done this with the Duplicate layer then both images would be replaced. Which of these options you use really depends on what you want to do with the image. Sometimes  you want two of the same image, sometimes not.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:photoshop

posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

Trevor’s Quick Excel Tip – Display Formulas

When you need view formulas instead of their results press Ctrl + ~ to display formulas in all cells in the worksheet. To return to viewing the worksheet as it was, press Ctrl + ~ again.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:office, trevor tip

posted by Trevor Payne @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Monday, November 19th, 2012

Photoshop Smart Objects

Learn how to link Smart Objects so, when one changes, they both change and how to un-sync them so they are separate. I’ll also show you how to replace the contents of a Smart Object with another image. Useful for wedding photographers and for creating albums in Photoshop.

Transcript:

Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to work with smart objects in Photoshop. In this video I’m going to show you how you can use smart objects to assemble complex images, and you can do it in a way that harnesses the value of the smart objects. For example, I’m going to create a smart object for this background and then a smart object for this couple. This will allow me to go to this smart object and choose Replace Image. This will allow me to go to this smart object layer, right click and choose Replace Contents. And I can then replace the contents of that smart object with any of the images from that album. And so I can quickly and easily create images for an album with a background in place. But there is a catch and you’ll want to use the right tool for creating these smart objects so I’m going to show you that too.

Let’s just hide this away and let’s go and get our starter document. I’ve already got a vignette that I’m going to use, but we’re going to put in here the original background. So I’m going to choose File and then Place because that’s a way of getting an image in as a smart object. Here’s the portion of this image that I want to use as my background. I’ve already extracted it as a separate image so I’m going to click Place. And I know that this needs to be enlarged a little bit so I’m just going to enlarge it to 75 percent and then click the checkmark. So it’s now in place and it’s a smart object. It has a special little smart object icon. And I’m just going to show you that you have this vignette which is separate and it just goes over the top.

Now we want to create another smart object, but we want this smart object to be unhooked or unlinked to this one. So I’m going to right click and I’m going to choose New, Smart Object via Copy. And what that does is makes a copy of the existing smart object as a separate layer,  but it is not linked to the original layer. So now if I go into this and resize it, I’m just going to link these two together, this gives us a new smart object layer in the image which is not linked to the background layer although the two share the current image. I’m just going to add a drop shadow to it. So if we were creating a bridal album we could use this as the starting point for our album. I’m just going to get a slightly nicer drop shadow here and pull that vignette down so that it’s over the top of the background and not the image here. So having created this, this could be the first image in our album. And we can then go ahead using the same background image and just change the smart object out without having to recreate this document, right click, choose Replace Contents.

This time I’m going for an image of the bride and groom, and here they are in place. They’re a little large so I’m just going to choose the transform tool with Ctrl or Command T. I know they need to be taken down to about 10 percent so I’m going to scale them down to 10 percent and just move them into position. You can see that the drop shadow is still in place, the background is still in place, the vignette is still in place, and we’ve got another page of our album already created. If I right click and choose Replace Contents I can go and select yet another image to go in here. And again, the border and everything are already on that image. So it gives me a smart way of creating an album very quickly.

I’m just going to discard that for now and let’s have a look at what you might want to use and which would be a bad choice in this situation. And that would be to right click and choose Duplicate Layer. Now that would give us on the face of it exactly what we had before, a smart object with a second smart object layer over the top. Let’s just go ahead and select that and let’s add our drop shadow to it. Let’s position it where we want it to be above the vignette. And here’s what we had, an image over the background. And we’re ready to print that out.

But look what happens if we go to replace the contents of this image with our bride and groom. Not only do we replace the contents of the image with our bride and groom, and we can scale them back down to the 10 percent size that we were using before, but let’s just link that so that it’s going to be 10 percent in both directions. But look what’s happened to our background. These two smart objects instead of just being a duplicate of each other are in actual fact an exact copy of each other. And so anything that happens to this background smart object is also going to happen to this one and vice versa. If we change this one we’re going to change this one. So if we want the ability to create a smart object from another one but to unlink it so that they’re no longer the same image each time, we need to right click and choose New Smart Object via Copy.

But if we do want two smart objects that are linked and they’re always going to be the same image even if they’re different sizes of the same image then we would simply use Duplicate Layer. Smart objects are a really good tool to use when you’re assembling an album like this because it gives you the ability to create a background image and a smaller image on top and to easily replace that image and create an album very quickly.

I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this YouTube video tutorial. If you liked the tutorial please like it and feel free to add comments to the video tutorial. I encourage you to subscribe to my video YouTube channel. We release videos twice a week at the very least and you’ll be alerted to the new video releases. And don’t forget to visit my website at projectwoman.com. There you’ll find more tips, tricks and techniques for Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator and lots of other programs.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Sunday, November 18th, 2012

Understanding Lightroom Process Versions

If you’ve used any earlier version of Lightroom and if you now use Lightroom 4 you need to know a bit about Process versions.

In this post I’ll give you the basics of what you need to know which will explain why you see exclamation points by some of your images in the Develop module and why the new Lightroom 4 sliders sometimes disappear unexpectedly.

Process versions

In Lightroom 3 and again in Lightroom 4 the Lightroom Process version was updated. These process versions affect how your raw images are processed by Lightroom so it’s important to understand what they are and how they work.

Initially there was only one process version used in Lightroom 1 and Lightroom 2 so upgrading from one version of Lightroom to the next didn’t create any issues. The process version used in these versions was called Process 2003.

When Lightroom 3 was released it had a new process version called Process 2010. This process version had better rendering of the raw image and that meant better detail rendering, better noise reduction and better sharpening.

Because this new Process 2010 was so significantly improved, Adobe didn’t apply it by default to images in Lightroom 3 which had been processed using the older Process 2003. To have done so might have produced unwanted changes to images which had been already processed so it was left to each user’s discretion to apply the changes or not. Images newly imported into Lightroom 3 were processed using Process 2010.

Fast forward to Lightroom 4 and the situation is repeated. There is a new process version called Process 2012 in Lightroom 4. Images newly imported into Lightroom are processed with Process 2012, and those which were processed in an earlier version of Lightroom remain unchanged.

So What is the Exclamation Point

If you see an exclamation mark icon in the Develop module to the right of an image this indicates that it has applied to it a process version that isn’t the current version for the version of Lightroom you are using.

If you want to update an image, click the icon and select to update the image or select to update all the filmstrip photos. You can preview the changes before they are applied if desired.

It’s also possible to update images from the Develop module’s Camera Calibration panel.  Here you simply select the desired process version from the Process list. The options are Process 2003, Process 2010 and Process 2012 (Current). In most cases, most users will choose to update the process version to the most current one.

Where did my Sliders go?

When Lightroom 4 was released the Develop module’s Basic panel was altered significantly. The sliders in that panel are now called by different names, they have different starting settings and they do different things to those in the earlier Lightroom versions. In short, the Basic panel adjustments in Lightroom 4 so significantly differ to those in Lightroom 3 that they aren’t interchangeable. Therein lies the explanation as to why your brand new sliders sometimes disappear and the older Lightroom 3 ones reappear – quite simply they do so when you are working on an image processed with an older process version.

So, if you have an image that has Process 2003 or Process 2010 applied to it, the Basic panel sliders will be those you are used to seeing in Lightroom 3 and earlier. If you’re working on a Process 2012 image the sliders are Lightroom 4 sliders. Updating the process version to the most current version will display the new sliders.

What this means to you

If you want the best processing for your images and if you want to see only one set of sliders in the Basic panel then go ahead and update all your images to Process 2012.

If you can see differences between the process versions and if you don’t want those changes applied to some or all of your images then you don’t have to update your images. It’s up to you to make the choice and you can do so for one or more of your images as and when you want to.

However, if you still have some Process 2003 or Process 2010 images in your Lightroom collection just be aware that Lightroom 4 sliders might disappear and be replaced by those from Lightroom 3 from time to time because of this.

Now it is over to you. Have you upgraded your older Process 2003 and Process 2010 images to Process 2012? If you didn’t what made you stay with the older version?

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Friday, November 16th, 2012

Trevor’s Quick Photoshop Tip – Quick Guides

original photo by: Stacey Bry

When you need to add guides to an image to help line up objects or the image itself you can do so if you first display your Rulers. Then click on the ruler and drag onto the image to create a guide – drag from the left to make a vertical guide and from the top to make a horizontal one. To remove an unwanted guide, drag it off the screen back to the ruler and it will disappear. To remove all guides choose View > Clear Guides.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Trevor Payne @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Thursday, November 15th, 2012

Photoshop Grunge Portrait

Give a grunge look to a portrait using the Photoshop High Pass filter and Smart Objects – it is a quick, easy, and fully editable.

Transcript:

Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial we’re going to apply a grunge portrait effect to a portrait in Photoshop. Before we start on creating the grunge effect let’s have a look and see what we’re looking for. This is the original image that I have open here in Photoshop. All I’ve done really is cropped it. And this is the final appearance that we’re going to give this image. It’s a lot more grungy. It’s a lot darker. It’s a lot more interesting image. And the way we’re going to do it is by harnessing the power of the high pass filter which allows us to get edges out of the image. And we going to do it in a way that we could adjust it if we needed to as we go along.

So now that we’ve seen what we’re aiming for let’s get started on our new image. And here’s the image here, and I’m just going to hide away the existing one. And we’re going to start by creating a duplicate of the background layer. I’ll right click and choose Duplicate Layer and click Ok. This is the layer that we’re going to apply the high pass filter to. And if we want it to be editable we need to first convert it for smart filters. All we’re doing effectively is making it a smart object. So we could right click and choose Convert to Smart Object, and it’s exactly the same process to choose Filter, Convert for Smart Filters. This is now a smart object so when I apply the high pass filter to it, it’s going to be done in a way that could be edited later on.

I’m choosing Filter, Other, High Pass. And with this high pass filter what I want is to begin to see the edges in the image but not a lot of color. Now depending on the sharpness of your image and exactly what the image is all about, this might be a larger or smaller value. Usually I suggest around 5 but this image is really quite soft and 5 is just not going to cut it. So I actually have this wound up to 9.6 and click Ok. But because this is a smart filler it doesn’t really matter because if it’s too much or too little we can come back later and fix it. We’re now going to set this layer blend mode to overlay so that we’re picking up these edges in the underlying image. So let’s see how far we’ve come. This is the original image and this is a slightly grittier, grainier version. But it’s going to get better.

We’re going to make another duplicate of the background layer, right click and choose Duplicate Layer. And we’re going to drag this above everything else. And we’re going to make it black and white and then blend it back into the image. It’ll be easier to do if first of all we set the blend mode to something like hard light so we see the effect that we’re going to have. And I would like to do this adjustment using an adjustment layer so that we can also change that later on if we like. Let’s start with Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Black and White. I’m going to click Ok and then I’m going back into this layer stack here. And I’m going to clip this layer because right now this adjustment layer affects everything so we have a black and white image. I just want it to affect this layer. So I click on this top layer and then either position my cursor between the two layers and press the Ctrl and Alt keys, Command and Option on the Mac, to clip that or I could choose Layer and then Create Clipping Mask. It’s exactly the same thing. And what that does is it clips the effect of this black and white layer to adjust this layer underneath.

Now we can have a look at our black and white layer and see how we can grunge up this portrait a little bit better because we’re actually seeing the final results. Now we can drag on these sliders our self to make our own setting or we could select a preset. And I’m going to choose the red filter because I kind of like that effect. And I’m probably just going to lighten these red and magenta channels and perhaps even the yellow channel a little bit before I continue. So I’m just going to close that down now.

Now we’ve got the image that we want we can fine tune it by adding another adjustment to it. And for this I would use a curves adjustment. So I’m going to again choose Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Curves. And this is going to affect the entire image this curves adjustment layer. And I just really want to lighten it and add a bit more contrast into the skin tones. If I click on this slider here you can see where the skin tones are in the image. They’re in this area down here so I can drag around this area to increase the contrast in the skin tones, perhaps lighten them up a little bit as we go. And that’s really personal preference at that point.

So let’s have a look and see where we started and how far we’ve come. This is the original image. It looked a little perhaps grungy when we started but we’ve actually been able to make it even look a lot more grungy with the application of this high pass filter, blending it back in with some black and white and then adjusting the curves. Now all of these changes are adjustable so for example we can come back to this high pass filter, double click here and adjust the high pass filter effect. So we can get more or less grunge effect by just adjusting that filter. We can also come back here and adjust this black and white filter, double click here and adjust this. And the final adjustment layer was a curves adjustment layer and it’s editable too. So there’s how to create a quick and easy grunge portrait effect. It’s all editable so that you can change it and fine tune it if you like.

I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this YouTube video. Look out for more of my YouTube videos on this YouTube channel. I encourage you to subscribe to my channel so you’ll be advised when new videos are released. And remember to visit projectwoman.com. You’ll find more tips, tricks and techniques for working with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom and other applications there.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:photoshop, video

posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

Trevor’s Quick Illustrator Tip – Groups

When working with Multiple Shapes to make one image it’s good to be able to resize or edit them together.  To Group them all together, begin by selecting everything to be grouped and press Ctrl + G on a PC or Command + G on a Mac. To ungroup them press Ctrl + Shift + G.

Helen Bradley

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Categories:photoshop, trevor tip

posted by Trevor Payne @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post

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