Friday, September 18th, 2009

Understanding filters in Photoshop and PS Elements


When I was young, my dad told me that if at first you don’t succeed you should try and try again until you do. In today’s post, I am going to tell you why this adage relates to editing photos by working with filters in Photoshop Elements and in Photoshop.


Not good! start with the wrong colours and filters suck, big time!

Step 1
Start by opening an image that you like, set the foreground color to white and the background color to black and choose Filter > Distort > Diffuse Glow. When you do this, the image will take on a rather nasty dark glow. There is pretty much nothing that you can do to this image that is going to make it look good. You can try to remove the graininess and glow and increase the clear amount to 20 but if you do that, you’ve effectively removed the filter effect. The short answer is it looks ghastly and you might be wondering just what you did wrong?


Same image, better result, it’s the colors that are the difference

Step 2
Exit the Filter Gallery, switch the foreground and background colors so that black is now the foreground color and white is the background color. Reapply the filter using Filter > Distort > Diffuse Glow. This time the filter looks very different.

The explanation is that Photoshop Elements (and Photoshop) use the foreground and background colors when applying the filter. This time go ahead and crank up the Graininess and adjust the Glow Amount until you get a nice glow on your image. Adjust the Clear value to suit and click Ok. Now you have a very different looking result.


Understanding colors and filters
There are many of Photoshop Elements Filters that work differently depending on the current foreground and background colors settings. The Halftone Filter is one of these so, for example, if you have red and green selected the halftone pattern will appear in red and green – not always the desired look.


Instead, set the foreground to black and the background to white and apply the Halftone Filter using Filter > Sketch > Halftone Pattern. This time you’ll get something more like the result that you are looking for.


Switch black and white in the color swatch and try again – and the result is different and not so appealing.

What you need to know
The short lesson to take away from this post is that when you are applying filters in Photoshop Elements or in Photoshop the foreground and background colors that you have selected will have a big impact on how some of the filters work. In most cases the filters affected are the Sketch filters but others use the colors too.

Select the right color mix and the result is pleasing to the eye. Select the wrong color mix and you could be excused for thinking filters just aren’t for you.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Fixing keystone issues in Photoshop Elements


One issue you’ll often encounter when you photograph tall buildings is a keystone effect caused by the angle at which you are forced to photograph from. The bottom of the building often looks wider than the top making it look out of proportion.

Most photo editing programs have tools for fixing keystone problems and, in this post, I’ll show you two methods you can use in Photoshop Elements both of which work the same way in Photoshop.

Method 1: The Move tool

Step 1
The first method involves using the Move too. Start by converting the image Background layer to a regular layer by double-clicking it and click Ok.

Step 2
Enlarge the image canvas by selecting over it with the Crop tool and let go the mouse button. Then drag the crop handles outwards to select a larger area around the image and press Enter to fix the selection. You need to enlarge the canvas or the process will end up cutting off some of the image.

Step 3
Ctrl + Click on the layer thumbnail for the image to select the image but not the extra background.

Click the Move tool to select it and hold the Ctrl key as you drag on one of the corner handles. When you do this you’ll notice that you distort the image – you’ll use this feature to straighten it.

If you choose View > Grid you can display a grid over the image to make it easier to see line everything up. Choose Edit > Preferences > Grid to change the grid dimensions if necessary.

Drag each corner of the image in turn and, if desired, rotate the image until it looks correct to you. When you are done, turn off the visibility of the grid (View > Grid) and Crop the image to remove any excess.

Method 2: The Correct Camera Distortion filter

Step 4
The second method uses the Lens Correction Filter. Select Filter > Correct Camera Distortion and the image will open in the filter dialog. From the Size dropdown list select Fit in View so that you can see the entire image.

Enabling the grid helps you ensure the image is squared off nicely. If necessary, drag on the Angle to rotate the image – in this dialog, the scrubby slider method works best so drag on the word Angle to adjust the angle (not the dial which tends to jump around a lot).

Select the Vertical Perspective slider and drag it to adjust the vertical perspective of the building. Choose Horizontal Perspective to fix horizontal perspective issues.

Step 5
The Correct Camera Distortion filter also includes a Remove Distortion slider which helps fix the sucked in or blown out effect you often see around the edges of an image caused by the curvature of the lens.

You can extend the canvas around the image by dragging the Scale slider to the left or drag to the right to crop the image.

When you’re done click Ok.

These tools also work well to fix an image of any rectangular object which is out of proportion – big or small.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Monday, September 14th, 2009

Lightroom: Add a light source


The Lightroom Graduated Filter tool can be used to add a secondary light source to an image where one was not in existence when you shot it. This often works better to rescue an unexposed area of an image than, for example, applying a Shadow/Highlight fix in Photoshop.

This image is extremely dark on the right – a problem caused by capturing the carousel horse in broad daylight on a very sunny day..

After adjusting the Exposure in Lightroom and tweaking the image using the small Recovery, Clarity and Vibrance sliders the image is still dark in areas where I would like to see more of the detail in the underlying image.

To bring in some light on the right, click the Graduated Filter tool and drag the selector in from the right edge of the image so that the midpoint of the filter is over the point where the problem ceases to exist (around the level of the carousel horse’s eye).

With the Effect Sliders visible, increase the Exposure and then, if desired, adjust the Brightness and Clarity sliders. Click Close when done.

In many cases you will find the Graduated Filter gives better results than, for example, the Shadows/Highlights filter in Photoshop shown here, and it’s a lot less work.

If you’d like to learn more about using the adjustment tools in Lightroom, here are a couple of useful recent posts:

Fixing Blemishes in Lightroom

Spot fixing with the Adjustment Brush

More Adjustment Brush techniques in Lightroom

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Friday, September 11th, 2009

Batch Resize


While it’s relatively easy to write an Action to resize a series of images in Photoshop, it’s easier still to get Photoshop to do all the work for you. Photoshop comes with an image processor script that will open, resize and save a series of images for you – very quickly.

Step 1
Choose File > Scripts > Image Processor. The image processor dialog shows a simple four-step process for resizing the images.

Step 2
In Step 1 of the dialog, select to either resize the images already open in Photoshop (if you have them open), or click Select Folder and select a folder of images to resize. Select Include all Subfolders to include all subfolders of the selected folder.

Step 3
In Step 2 of the dialog select where to save the images. If you select Save in Same Location Photoshop creates a subfolder in which to save the images so you don’t have to worry about overwriting them. If a subfolder by the same name already exists with images with the same names in it, Photoshop saves to that folder but adds a sequential number to the file so you still won’t lose your files. Alternatively, you can select a different folder for the resized images.

Step 4
In Step 3 of the dialog select the file type to save in. For the web Save as JPEG is the obvious choice. Set a Quality value in the range 0 to 12 where 12 is the highest quality and 0 the lowest. For better color on the web, select Convert profile to sRGB and ensure that Include ICC Profile at the foot of the dialog is checked so the profile will be saved with the image.

To resize the images, select the Resize to Fit checkbox and then set the desired maximum width and height for the final image. For example, if you type 300 for the width and 300 for the height, the image will be resized so that the longest side of any image, whether it be in portrait or landscape orientation will be 300 pixels. The images are scaled in proportion so they won’t be skewed out of shape.

The Width and Height measurements do not have to be the same so you could, for example, specify a Width of 400 and a Height of 300 and no image will have a width greater than 400 or a height greater than 300.

Step 5
If desired you can save in another format as well by selecting its checkbox so you can save the same image in different formats and at different sizes in the one process. You can also select to run an Action on the images, if desired.

When you’re ready, click Run and the images will be automatically opened (if they are not already open), resized, saved and closed.

To see your resized images, choose File > Open and navigate to the folder that you specified the images to be saved to. If you chose to save as JPEG, the images will be in a subfolder called JPEG, for PSD in a folder called PSD and so on.

So whenever you need to resize a lot of images for uploading to the web, for example, the Photoshop Image Processor script makes the job almost painless.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Smart scaling with Content-Aware Scale


New to Photoshop CS4 is its Content-Aware Scale tool which allows you to transform an image in a way that you’ve never been able to do before in Photoshop. The technology itself has been around for some time and you may have been familiar with the website rsizr.com which offers content aware scaling as an online service. However, the feature is now built into Photoshop making it a readily accessible tool for images large and small.

In this post, I’ll explain how to use content aware scaling and how to protect areas of your image from being distorted in the process.

Step 1
To see the tool at work open an image in Photoshop CS4 (this feature is not in other versions of Photoshop), double-click the background layer to turn it into a regular layer and choose Edit > Content-Aware Scale.

Step 2
Notice the sizing handles on the image. Drag from one side inwards and watch what happens as you do so. You’ll find that the image shrinks in size, but most of the information in the image is still there – the image is made narrower but key elements in it are not squashed up.

If your image includes people, click the person indicator on the toolbar so that it is not pressed in – when the indicator is flush with the toolbar the option is selected. This protects people by recognizing skin tones and ensuring that they are not distorted by the effect.

Step 3
You can also protect elements in the image using an alpha channel mask. This technique is handy if you have areas of the image that you want to retain at the expense of other areas and it can also be used to protect people in the image.

Make a rough selection around the area that you do not want to be affected by the scale effect. A good tool to use is the Lasso tool – select an area and hold the Shift key to make a second selection over another area, if necessary.

Choose Select > Save Selection, type a name for the selection, such as detail mask, make sure that the Channel is set to New and the operation is set to New Channel and click Ok. Press Ctrl + D (Command + D on the Mac) to deselect your selection.

Step 4
Now choose Edit > Content-Aware Scale and from the Protect dropdown list on the toolbar, select the mask you just created. Scale the image and notice that the masked areas are protected from being damaged as the image shrinks in size.

Content-Aware Scaling is a handy way to change the aspect ratio of an image. For example, you can turn a landscape image into a square image and close up the space between people in a photo if they are a long way apart. It also works in reverse and you can use it to make an image larger. You may need to do some work with the clone tool to repair small areas of the image damaged as the result of the scaling but typically the tool does a very good job.

If you don’t have Photoshop CS4 then head, image in hand, over to rsizr.com and give the online tool a try. Here is an earlier post I wrote on the Rsizr tool.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Monday, September 7th, 2009

Centering a layer in Photoshop

Often you will have a layer in a Photoshop image that needs to be centered in the document.

To do this, first make sure that you have a full size layer that is a regular layer, not the background layer. If necessary, convert the background layer to a regular layer by double clicking on the background layer and click Ok.

Now Ctrl + Click on the background layer which is the full size of the image. It should have marching ants around it. With this layer selected, click the layer that you want to center. The marching ants should be around the entire image but the selected layer should be the one you want to center.

Select Layer > Align Layers to Selection > Vertical Centers to center the smaller layer within the edges of the large one.

Repeat and choose Layer > Align Layers to Selection > Horizontal Centers to center them horizontally. The second layer is now centered in the middle of the main ima

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Saturday, September 5th, 2009

Working with Virtual copies in Lightroom


The Virtual copy feature of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom lets you experiment with multiple editing options for an image without duplicating the original image. So, for example, if you have an image that you think would look good either with its color enhanced or rendered in black and white you can apply both fixes to the same image to see which you like best using virtual copies. No only will you see both versions in Lightroom, you can export each as a different image and you can work with them independently of each other.

Follow these steps to see virtual copies at work:

Step 1
Inside Lightroom locate the photo to adjust in the film strip, right click it and choose Create Virtual Copy. In the film strip you will see both images and, when you select them, you will see they have the same file name. If you have the Info Overlay displayed it too shows the same data for both images.

Step 2
Once you have created the virtual copy you can edit it independently of the original and compare the results. You can also make additional virtual copies and each behaves independently of the original but is, in reality, the same image.

step 3
To view the two images side by side, return to Library view, select both the image and the Virtual copy and click the XY button above the filmstrip. This shows the two images side by side.

Tip
One problem with virtual copies is determining which is the original and which is the copy. You will need to do this, for example, if you want to delete the virtual copy leaving the original in place.

To delete a virtual copy, right-click the version of the image that you think is the virtual copy and choose Delete Photo. If it is the virtual copy you will see the dialog prompt “Remove the selected virtual copy from Lightroom?” – click Remove to delete it.

If the selected version was not the virtual copy you will see the prompt “Delete the selected master photo from disk, or just remove it from Lightroom?”. This tells you that the selected image is not the virtual copy but the original. Click Cancel if you do not intend removing both the original and the Virtual copy(ies) from Lightroom or from your disk.

If you use Virtual copies a lot you can configure the Info Overlay to show you which image is a copy. To do this, choose View > View Options and click Show Info Overlay. Reconfigure one of the info sets to include not only the File Name but also the Copy Name. The original image will display the filename only and virtual copies will display the filename and Copy 1 (or Copy 2).

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Sunbursts in Photoshop

Following on from the post on creating silhouettes in Photoshop, here is how to create fun sunburst images to put behind them.

Step 1
Start by adding a new layer to your image by choosing Layer > New > Layer.

Click the Pen tool, ensure the Paths option is selected on the options bar and draw a single triangle.

Do this by clicking where the point will be at around the middle of the image, then click above this and slightly to the left to create the first of the sides, hold the Shift key and then click to the right to create the base and then click again over the original point to finish. You now have a triangle path.

Step 2
View the Paths palette; click the Load Path as a Selection button at the foot of the palette.

Set the foreground colour to your choice of fill colour and press Alt + Backspace to fill the shape with this colour.

Press Ctrl + D to turn the selection off.

Step 3
Click on the layer itself, choose Layer > New > Layer Via Copy then choose Edit > Transform > Rotate to display the rotation tool options.

In the Reference Point Location block select the bottom middle of the nine boxes. Set the angle to 15 degrees or some value that divides evenly into 360 and click the Commit Transform button.

Step 4
Select Layer > New > Layer Via Copy and then Edit > Transform > Again.

Repeating these two commands or pressing the shortcut keystrokes Ctrl + J and Ctrl + Shift + T lets you repeat the copy and transform task and, in a few keystrokes, you will have a piece of custom art. When you’re done, merge all the layers except the background layer.

Here is how I created my silhouette background:

Control + Click on the flattened sunburst layer and select the Gradient tool. Select a yellow/orange radial gradient and fill the shape with it by dragging from the middle of the shape outwards.

Add a second new layer and drag it to the bottom of the layer stack. Fill it with the same gradient but this time drag from outside the image to the middle to reverse the gradient.

The music staff is created using a pen line – I drew a single wavy line using the pen tool with the Paths option selected.

Display the Paths palette and click on the Work Path layer.

Click the Brush tool, set it to a small hard brush, set the foreground colour to black and click the Stroke path with brush icon at the foot of the palette to add a brush stroke to the pen line.

Move the line using the Path Selection Tool and repeat the process to add a stroke to this path. Repeat until you have five lines in total.

I finished by adding a few musical notes using shapes from my Photoshop shapes collection.

You can download free music shapes from http://myphotoshopbrushes.com/custom_shapes/id/2033 if desired.

This time use the filled pixels option to fill the shapes as you draw them. I blended both drawing layers using the Color blend mode and then added the silhouette.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Saturday, August 29th, 2009

Moving a Lightroom Catalog


I’ll explain how to successfully move Lightroom files and a catalog to a new disk.

One issue that stumps many people is how to successfully move a Lightroom catalog from one computer to another or from a local hard drive to a removable one.

Having just faced this situation head on and having made a right royal mess of my first attempt, here’s my take on the smartest way to do this.

The problem in moving the catalog and files for me was that I didn’t want to lose the editing history for any of my files so it was critical that everything moved correctly and, in the end, the ideal method was to make Lightroom responsible for the move so all along it stayed informed about what was happening.

Step 1
Start by backing up your Lightroom catalog and files – if everything goes pear shaped at least you’ll have your backups.

Step 2
Plug in your external drive (or fire up the new computer) and copy one photograph into the root folder on the drive, or if you want your photo folders to be stored inside a folder called Photos, for example, and not in the root folder, create this folder and copy one photo into it. There must be an image in a folder for you to import the image (and the folder) into the Lightroom Folders collection.

Step 3
Now locate your Lightroom folder which contains your catalog and preview images and move it onto the new drive. This has to be done with Lightroom closed.

Step 4
Launch Lightroom and it will report it can’t find the catalog – so far so good. Point Lightroom to the Lightroom folder on your new drive and click the catalog file (it has the lrcat extension) – Lightroom will open the catalog and find everything intact because you haven’t moved anything yet – except its catalog.

Step 5
Inside Lightroom, choose File > Import from Disk and import the single image that you copied into the folder on your new drive. This adds the root folder for your images on the new drive to the Lightroom Folders collection.

Step 6
Make sure the Library is visible and the Folders area opened. Now drag and drop each folder of images from your local disk onto your new drive in the Lightroom folder view. I did this one folder at a time but you can, if you wish, drag the root folder from your old disk and drop the lot into your new folder on the new drive – it depends how you want everything organized. Lightroom works pretty fast when moving the files so it doesn’t take too long. The most inconvenient part of the move for me was that Lightroom can only move one folder at a time so the process had to be supervised manually – when one folder was moved, I dragged and dropped the next one and so on.

If you prefer to do so, you could move all the folders containing your photos outside Lightroom – this would be an easier process than doing it inside Lightroom if you want to retain the same overall folder structure. Then launch Lightroom and, in the Folders list, right click the old root folder and choose Update Folder Location and point to the new location for the files.

Once the Lightroom catalog and all your photo files and folders are on the external drive or on the new computer, your images will be instantly accessible anytime by simply opening Lightroom.

External drive letters issue
If you’re using an external drive to store your Lightroom catalog and files you may encounter problems when attaching the drive to a second computer as it may recognize it as having a different drive letter. If this happens, Lightroom will still show you previews for all your images but you’ll encounter missing file warnings if you try to edit one. The easiest solution at this point is to right click the root folder in the Folders list in Lightroom and choose Update Folder Location. Navigate to find this root folder on your external drive and, when you locate it, all the images in that folder will be immediately found.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Smart Dodge and Burn in Photoshop Elements


In the traditional darkroom, you could adjust the relative lightness or darkness of parts of an image using processes called dodge and burn. If you were dodging or lightening the image you would expose parts of the image for a shorter length of time to lighten them. If you wanted to darken a portion of the image you would expose it for a longer period of time so that more light would be applied to the photo paper with the result that you would be darker.

The terms dodge and burn continue to be used in software today and Photoshop Elements has a Dodge tool and a Burn tool which are both accessible from a toolbar position which they share with the Sponge tool. The disadvantage of using the Dodge and Burn tools as they are shipped with Photoshop Elements and, indeed Photoshop, is that these fixes are designed to be made to the original image and the cannot be made on a separate layer and then, for example, be blended into the image.

The result is that if you apply a Dodge or Burn fix and later determine that you do not like the result or want to adjust it, it will be difficult to undo the changes that you have made.

In post production, dodging and burning are best applied to a separate layer in the image so that they can be undone, edited or blended at a later date.

Here is a method dodge and burn an image in Photoshop Elements which works the same way in Photoshop. It involves creating a layer on which the dodge and burn process is performed. It also takes advantage of a special characteristic of the Soft Light blend mode. This is a different dodge and burn method to that which Food blogger Danny Jauregui used in his recent post.

Step 1
Open your image in Photoshop Elements (or Photoshop) and add a new layer by choosing Layer > New > Layer and click Ok.

Click on the foreground color swatch and set the R, G, and B values each to 128 and click Ok.

Step 2
Click the Paint Bucket tool in the tool list and click on the image to fill the layer with the gray color. You can also press Alt + Backspace (Option + Delete on the Mac) to fill the layer with the foreground color.

Step 3
Set the layer’s blend mode to Soft Light. The result will be that you will see your image just as it was when you opened it.

The Soft Light blend mode can be used to lighten or darken an image. If the color on the top layer is darker than neutral grey the image on the layer below is darkened and if it is lighter than neutral grey the layer below is lightened. When you blend with neutral grey, nothing happens. Here we have filled the layer with neutral gray (each of the RGB values are 128) so you see no change to the image.

So, if we now paint on this top layer with white the image will be lightened and if we paint with black it will be darkened. This is the equivalent of dodging and burning on the image.

Step 4
Select the Brush tool and select a circular soft edge brush adjusting its Opacity to around 25 percent. Adjust its size by pressing the [ or ] key on the keyboard. Set the foreground and background colors to white and black by pressing the D key and then the X key. Paint over the image on this top layer in white in those places that you want to lighten the image below.

For those parts of the image that you want to darken, paint over them with black.

If desired you can create one layer for burning and a second one for dodging. This will allow you to alter the opacity of each layer separately so you can subtly adjust the strength of the lightening or darkening applied.

To ensure that the fix remains changeable, save your image in a format that saves the image layers such as .psd.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

An Adjustable Black and White Conversion

Most photo editing programs offer multiple ways to convert to black and white and Photoshop Elements is no exception. In fact it has a great Black and White conversion tool which is marred by the very small preview images you get to work with. Additionally, there is no zoom feature so you’re stuck with seeing your image in miniature (see image), or you find another way to make the conversion.

Here’s an alternative method of converting to black and white in Photoshop Elements which lets you work on the image at any size so you can see what you’re doing. It also works in Photoshop:

Step 1
Open your image Photoshop Elements and duplicate the background layer. Do this by first displaying the Layers palette by choosing Window > Layers, right-click the Background layer and choose Duplicate Layer.

Step 2
Select the topmost layer and choose Enhance > Adjust Color > Remove Color. This converts the image to a black and white image.

Step 3
From the Blend mode dropdown list in the Layer palette, select the Hue blend mode. This ensures the top layer’s hue (color) shows but uses the layers below to provide the lightness and saturation for the image. We can now adjust the bottom layer to change the black and white image.

Step 4
Select the bottommost layer in the image and select Enhance > Adjust Color > Adjust Hue/Saturation. This opens the Hue/Saturation/Lightness dialog. You can now select any of the sliders and drag them in either direction and you’ll see as you do so that the black and white image changes.

For example, adjusting Lightness will adjust the lightness and darkness of the image itself. Adjusting Saturation will also make the image darker or lighter. Use the Hue slider to change the colors in the underlying image with the result that different colors will tend towards being light and others tend towards being dark. For example, in this image, changing the Hue made a significant difference on some of the signs over the street – at one position the text was all the same shade of gray and in another position the text was lighter against a dark sign. Pick a slider position that works best for your particular image.

Step 5
To adjust the contrast in the image, with the bottom layer still selected, choose Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Shadows and Highlights. Drag on the sliders to adjust the tonal range in the image. You can darken the lighter areas, lighten the shadows and add some contrast to the midtones this way. With the preview option enabled, you will see the results at full size on the image as you work. You can also do the same with the Levels adjustment – again apply it to the bottom layer of the image.

When you are done, flatten the image by selecting Layer > Flatten Image.

This process allows you to convert an image to black and white while previewing the results at full screen size while you work and with quite a bit of creative control. I find it gives me a better appreciation of what my image will look like than using the very small dialog previews in the specialist black and white conversion tool.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Friday, August 14th, 2009

Finding Lightroom presets

There are lots of Lightroom presets that you can download from the web and use in the program. The question then becomes where do you put these. There are a couple of ways to find the presets folder in Lightroom. One is to open the Develop module, locate the presets dropdown list and right-click one of the user presets that you’ve created and choose Show in Explorer. This opens the Lightroom presets folder inside Windows Explorer. If you’re using a Mac, the link will be to the Mac equivalent. The other method of doing this is to choose Edit > Preferences > Presets tab. Click the Show Lightroom Presets folder to view the presets folder location.

You will need this location to store downloaded presets, in and you will also need the location so that you can ensure that you back up your presets so that you do not lose them as, by default, they are not stored with the catalog and so will not be backed up with it.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Create A Three Up Photoshop Template

Recently LisaMarie from LisaMarieDiasDesigns.com asked me to look into creating a tutorial for her newsletter subscribers to show how to create a template with a 3 pixel frame around it and openings for three 2″x2″ or 3″x3″ images.

The process of designing a solution is a little complex so I’ve done two things. First of all, I’m giving you the templates as PSD files that you can use to create your own design, but secondly I’m going to show you how to do it yourself. So, if you want to know how to create a reusable design like this or one that can be used with different size photos, here’s how:

I’ll step you through creating a solution for displaying three 3″x3″ images at 72 dpi with a 3 pixel frame around each of them.

Step 1
It’s a good idea to sketch the design on paper and work out the dimensions before you start. For three 3″x3″ inch images at 72 dpi the starting image needs to be 660 x 222 pixels and it will look like this.

Step 2
In Photoshop, choose File > New and create an image 660 pixels wide and 222 pixels high with a resolution of 72 pixels per inch.

Set the background to be white and click Ok.

Step 3
To add the gridlines, choose View > New Guide and create a vertical guide at 3 pixels. Repeat and create a second vertical guide at 222 pixels. Repeat and add a third vertical guide at 441 pixels and a fourth one at 657 pixels.

Add two horizontal guides, one at 3 pixels and one at 219 pixels.

Step 4
Now choose View > Snap To and select None.

Repeat and choose View > Snap To and select Guides.

Make sure that the View > Snap option in the menu is checked.

Now selections and images will snap to the guides that you have created.

Step 5
Add a new layer by choosing Layer > New > Layer and click Ok.

Click the Rectangular Marquee tool and from the tool options area select Fixed Size and set the Width to 216 pixels and the Height to 216 pixels.

Click on the image where the two guides intersect in the top left corner of the image. The selection will snap to these guides.

Make sure that white is selected as your foreground color and press Alt + Backspace on the PC (Option + Delete on the Mac) to fill the selection with white.

Switch to black as your foreground color, press Ctrl + D (Command + D on the Mac) to deselect the selection and, with the Paint Bucket tool, click somewhere in the layer not where you added the white, to fill the remainder of the layer with black.

Step 6
Add a new layer to the document by choosing Layer > New > Layer. Hide the previous layer if desired.

Select the Rectangular Marquee tool and click at the intersection of the second vertical guide and the top guide. Your selection should appear in the middle of the image. Fill this with white. Deselect the selection and then fill the surrounds of that layer with black.

Step 7
Repeat once more, this time clicking at the intersection of the third vertical guide and the first horizontal guide.

Again, fill the selection with white and then fill the remaining portion of the layer with black.

Your layers palette should look as this one does.

Step 8
Now open the images to use. You should size these to a minimum of 3″ by 3″ but the project will work just as well if they are a little bigger.

In fact, you may want to make your images bigger than this so that you can see how the masking process will ensure that your images do not have to cropped to the exact size for this design to work.

For example, to size an image to around 3.5 x 5 inches at 72 dpi, open the image, choose Image > Image Size. Enable the Constrain Proportions and Resample Image checkboxes and select Bicubic Sharper as the mode for resampling the image. Enter 72 pixels per inch as the resolution and type either the width or height to use such as 5″ – Photoshop will automatically calculate the other measurement. Click Ok to resize the image.

Step 9
Open the first of the resized images and drag its background layer into the composite image that you’re working on.

Repeat for the other two images. It doesn’t matter what the document looks like at this stage.

Step 10
Select one of the layers that has an image on it and use the Move tool to drag it roughly into position where you want it to appear in the final presentation.

Do this for the second layer and for the third.

Ignore for the moment that some of the images are overlapped and extend over the borders.

Step 11
Select the first of the image layers and click the Create a New Group button at the foot of the layers palette. Drag and drop the image layer onto the new group so that it is inset underneath it. Click the group layer name and click the Add Layer Mask button at the foot of the layers palette.

Step 12
Click on the layer mask thumbnail so that it is selected.

Choose Image > Apply Image and from the layer dropdown list, select the layer in the layers palette that has the white square where this image should be in the design. Click Ok.

This applies a layer mask to this layer masking it to that small square size.

Step 13
Select the second image to work with and click the Create a New Group icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

Drag and drop the image layer onto the new group so that it is inset underneath it. Click the group layer name and click the Add Layer Mask button at the foot of the layers palette.

Click on the layer mask thumbnail so that it is selected.

Choose Image > Apply Image and from the layer dropdown list, select the layer in the layers palette that has the white square where this image should be in the design. Click Ok.

This applies a layer mask to this layer masking it to that small square size.

Step 14
Select the final image to work with and click the Create a New Group icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

Drag and drop the image layer onto the new group so that it is inset underneath it. Click the group layer name and click the Add Layer Mask button at the foot of the layers palette.

Click on the layer mask thumbnail so that it is selected.

Choose Image > Apply Image and from the layer dropdown list, select the layer in the layers palette that has the white square where this image should be in the design. Click Ok.

This applies a layer mask to this layer masking it to that small square size.

Step 15
You can now disable or delete the three layers which contain the black and white designs as they are only used to create the masks.

You can also remove the gridlines by choosing View > Clear Guides.

This is your final design.

Step 16
Any of the images in the design can be adjusted by clicking on the image layer, click the Move tool and then drag the image around inside that layer.

Provided the image is larger than 3″ x 3″ you can move it so the piece of the image you want to feature appears in the desired position. The mask ensure the image does not extend over the borders.

Step 17
You can also replace the images – this is how you will use the template in future.

For example, open another image to use and resize it as you did the earlier images.

Drag and drop the image into your file as a new layer. Drag the layer into the group for the position it will appear in the design and remove the image that currently occupies that position. As you can see, all you need do is to position and resize your images; none of the rest of the layout needs to be recreated.

Once you understand the basics of creating this design you can mark out and create a display image that will hold 2 x 2 images and even 2 x 3 or other varieties of sizes.

To make it simple for you, here are two PSD file downloads for the 2 x 2 and the 3 x 3 design that you can use yourselves:

2x2layout.psd

3x3layout.psd

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:30 am0 Comments - links to this post

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

Smarter sharpening with the High Pass filter


In previous posts I have introduced the basics of sharpening in Photoshop and I also looked at a way to spot sharpen an image in Photoshop Elements using faux layer masks. In this post I want to show you the benefits of using high pass sharpening in Photoshop as an alternative to using the Unsharp mask.

The Unsharp mask has historically been the sharpening tool that most Photoshop users start out using. There are, however, different and better tools to use and one of these is the High Pass filter. One reason for this is that the Unsharp mask operates on the actual image pixels and it makes changes to those pixels. The sharpening process that makes use of the High Pass filter doesn’t operate on the original image so it does not destroy the image pixels – this is particularly useful if you’re using Photoshop CS2 or earlier which doesn’t offer the Smart Objects for Filters option for applying the Unsharp mask filter.

In addition, instead of sharpening the entire image as the Unsharp Mask does, using this High Pass filter process limits sharpening to the edges in the image which is where the most value can be obtained from sharpening the image.

Step 1
To see the process at work, open an image and duplicate the background layer of the image. If your image has multiple layers, add a new layer at the top of the layer stack, click it to select it and press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac) to fill the top layer with a flattened version of the image – without affecting the other layers.

Step 2
In the Layers palette set the blend mode of the new top layer to Overlay. This will let you see the sharpening results in place on the image in the next step.

Step 3
With the topmost layer still selected, choose Filter > Other > High Pass. This filter has one slider to adjust the Radius value. Drag the slider until you see a pretty much gray image in the preview window with the only detail being around the edges of objects in the image. If you can see color in the preview image then the radius is set too high. Typically a Radius value of well under 10 pixels should be sufficient – we used 2. Click Ok.

Step 4
The image is now sharpened – check the original against the sharpened version by clicking the Layer Visibility Icon for the top layer on and off to compare the result.

To finish the effect, adjust the Opacity of the top layer to 0 and then move it back up stopping when you have a good sharpening result. The ideal Opacity will depend on your personal preference.

If desired you can use blend modes other than Overlay, for example Soft Light and Hard Light can be equally as effective depending on the result that you are looking for.

Tip
When you are sharpening an image, adjust the image to the way you want it to look if you’re planning to display the image on the web. If you’re printing it you can (and should), sharpen more aggressively.

Tip

If you are using Photoshop CS3 or CS4, before you apply the High Pass filter to the top layer of the image, convert it to a Smart Object by selecting the layer and choose Filter > Convert for Smart Filters. Then apply the High Pass filter to the new smart object in the same way as I have outlined above. When you apply a filter to a Smart Object you can return later on to edit it – simply double click the filter name in the layer palette and the filter dialog opens allowing you to change the Radius value.

If you’re new to sharpening, check out these recent posts:

Sharpening 101 – Understanding the basics of Sharpening

Sharpening in Lightroom 2

Photoshop Elements, Spot sharpening with a faux layer mask

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:48 pm0 Comments - links to this post

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

How do you Vignette?

Adding a vignette to an image involves adding a subtle (or not so subtle) edge effect to it. A popular vignette technique involves darkening the edges of your image – it gives the image a slight border which helps keep the viewer’s eye in the photo. This is an effect which has been popular for years and which was is a feature of some classic film cameras such as the Holga.

Nowadays many photographers and digital artists use vignettes as a way to finish their images. There are lots of ways to add a vignette to an image and here are some of them. I’ve included methods that work with Lightroom, Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. The latter process will work with most photo editing programs.

Lightroom 2

To add a vignette in Lightroom, move to the Develop module and choose the Vignette options. Set the Post Crop Amount value in a negative value to darken the edges. Set the Roundness to a low value such as -70 to get a rectangular vignette and set the Feather to around 50 so it is soft but not too soft.

Photoshop #1

A simple way to add a vignette in Photoshop is to use the Lens Correction filter. Choose Filter > Distort > Lens Correction and adjust the Vignette amount to the Left to a negative value and the Midpoint to the left to bring the vignette into the image more.

Photoshop #2

Another way to add a vignette in Photoshop is to use a Layer style. This has some benefits and one is that the method works on just about any size image and it’s simple to do once you have the Style created.

Make the background layer a regular layer by double clicking it and click Ok. Select the Add Layer Style icon at the foot of the Layer palette and choose Inner Glow. Set the Color to Black, set the blend mode to Darken or Multiply and adjust the Size so you can see the edge. You can save this as a style preset and you can then record the process of adding the style to the layer as an action so that you have a one click vignette solution.

Almost any photo-editing software

If your software supports layers and layer opacity then this method should work just fine in most photo editing programs. I’ve used Photoshop Elements and you should check your program’s help if you are unsure how to perform these tasks in your software.

Add a new layer using Layer > New > Layer and use the Rectangular Marquee to select around the inside border of this layer leaving a small margin. Choose Select > Inverse to invert your selection so the border area is selected. Now use the Paint Bucket to fill the area with black or dark brown. Choose Select > Deselect.

Choose Filter > Blur >Gaussian Blur and use a high radius value to blur the edge and soften it. Adjust the Layer Opacity to blend this edge into the image underneath and, if desired, set the Blend Mode to Darken or Multiply.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:25 pm0 Comments - links to this post

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