Learn how to crop and resize in bulk in Lightroom. If you have a lot of images you need to, for example, crop to 5 x 7 and then save at a particular pixel size and resolution, you can learn how to do this quickly and effectively in Lightroom. This makes use of the tools in the Quick Develop panel in the Library module.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can bulk crop and resize images and export them from Lightroom.
A reader recently posed a question to me and that was what do I do if I need to crop all my images to 5 by 7 in size and get them out as 500 by 700 pixel images. In Lightroom that’s not that difficult to do. What I suggest you do is you do it from the Library in Quick Develop mode. So I’m going to select the images here and then I’m going to select Crop Ratio and I’m going to choose 5 by 7. And that will crop all of these images to 5 by 7 images. But look what it’s done with the verticals. It’s cropped them to 5 by 7 but it’s kept that same vertical alignment.
So now let’s go to the Develop module and just see what we’re seeing here. This is the crop marquee. And you can see that this image, each one of these images in fact has been cropped to 5 by 7. And let’s go and find a vertical crop and see how it’s been cropped. Again, it’s been cropped to 5 by 7 but in a vertical direction. So this means that all of these images have automatically been cropped.
All we would do is have a quick look and make sure that important parts of the image have not been cropped off. If these were people we’d have a quick check to make sure that somebody’s head hasn’t been chopped off for example. And having done that now knowing that everything is cropped to 5 by 7, to export these images at 500 by 700 pixels in size or 700 by 500 we would select all of them by clicking on the first and Shift click on the last. I’m going to right click and choose Export and then Export again and we would just set up the Export option. So here I’m going to put this in a folder called 5 by 7.
I don’t want to rename these files. All we want to do is to resize them. But what I do want to do is I want to select Resize to Fit. And the longest edge since I know that these are all 5 by 7s is going to be 700 pixels and the resolution I can set to 100 pixels per inch. So these are then going to be 5 by 7 images at 100 pixels per inch resolution. And all I need to do is to click Export and Lightroom is going ahead and it is cropping and resizing all of those images so that they are all going to be the exact right size that we chose. And here they are including the ones that were verticals. You can see that these are 500 by 700 pixels in size. This one is 700 by 500 because it’s a landscape image.
So in Lightroom you could batch resize and export these images in just a matter of a few seconds by just choosing the right option. And that is here in the Quick Develop module setting a crop ratio for those images. This is not something you can do easily in the Develop module, but it’s something that you can do very, very simply here in the Quick Develop area of the Library in Lightroom.
My name is Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this Lightroom video tutorial. If you liked the tutorial please comment, press the Like button, consider subscribing to my YouTube channel. You’ll also find more of my tutorials, tips and tricks on my website at projectwoman.com.
Learn how to make an image its own mask using Apply Image in Photoshop.
Here we use an image of a cast iron grill and apply it to itself to show another image through it.
Transcript:
Hello I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial we’re going to look at using an image as its own mask in Photoshop. And we’re going to do this using the Apply Image tool.
Before we get started with this tutorial let’s have a look and see what it is that we’re trying to achieve. I have an image here that’s just some oranges and then I have another image here of a grate. And what I want to do is to put the grate over the oranges just as I’ve done here. And I’ve actually got a drop shadow behind it to give it some dimension. And what we’re going to do in this tutorial is see how we can use an image and use itself as its own mask to mask that image and how we can also adjust the mask so that we get this effect that we’re looking for and adding a drop shadow to it. So if you’re ready let’s just get rid of the bits that we don’t want. I’ve now got my orange image and let’s get started.
The first thing I’m going to do is bring in my grill image. So I’ve got these images just floating loose because I find that the easiest way of doing it. And I’m just going to drag this image’s background layer away from it, hold the Shift key and just drop it over the top of this image. Now of course it hasn’t disappeared from its original image. I’ve just dragged a copy away. And I don’t need that any longer so I can just get rid of it. With this image it’s a little bit on the small side, so I’m going to press Ctrl T and Ctrl 0 (zero) to see my handles and to set transform on. I’m also going to enabled this lock so that the ratio between the height and width is fixed. This means that the image is not going to be skewed out of proportion. And now I’m just going to drag it into position and I can place it anywhere I want. So I think this is a pretty good arrangement so I’ll click the checkmark here.
Now right now we’re not seeing through this image because of course it brought its own background with it and it’s got a sort of dark background with some light aspects. We’re going to need to do some work to fix this image up. And in actual fact the work that we’re going to do is in masking so I’m just going to drag this up a little bit. What I want to do is I really want to turn this image into its own mask.
So once I’ve got it in position it’s fairly critical that I actually get it in the right position before I start because I want the mask and the layer to be in the same place. I’m going to add a layer mask to this layer by just clicking the Add Layer Mask icon. But what I want to do is put this image in this mask. And an easy way to do that is to click the mask itself and use Apply Image. It’s up here, Image, Apply Image. And what it lets us do is to apply an image as a mask. So for example layer zero is the oranges themselves so that in this case we would be applying the oranges as a mask. But we can also select layer 1 which is applying this particular grill as its own mask. Now it’s not looking good right now but it is certainly masking it. I could invert it if I wanted to but that’s only going to give me the orange images over the grill work not where I want it. I want it in the bits in between the grill work so I’m going to disabled invert because I don’t want it inverted. If I’ve got that right I’m just going to click Ok.
Now the problem with this mask is that this particular image is not black and white. It’s not. Let’s just turn everything off here. You can see that this is actually really quite gray. And for the mask to really be doing its work it needs to be almost black and white. So I need to boost the contrast up on the mask alone. So I’m going to click the mask to target it so any changes I’m making now are to that mask alone. And I’m going to choose Image Adjustments and Curves because curves will allow me to adjust the mask and have a look here on the mask itself as I work. What I’m doing here is I’m increasing the whiteness of the mask and then I’m increasing the black areas. The whiter and lightest areas are going to ensure that we can see the grill in these places. And the black the darker black areas are going to cope with the areas that we’re seeing through. So I need a fairly sharp change from black to white and I also need to make sure that my sharp change from black to white copes with the fact that there’s a sort of darker gray bar behind the image. And I want to make sure that that dark gray bar goes to the right color. It needs to go to black and not to white. And what I’m looking for here is to make sure that I can really see the image through this grill, and when I’ve got it I’ll click Ok.
Now if I wanted to I can lighten my grill. That’s fine. I need to make sure that my mask is black and white so that the image behind is being shown through and then if I want to change the actual grill itself well then I can add an image adjustment to that. But the two are very different adjustments. One is adjusting the grill color itself and the other is changing it as it appears as a mask over that original grill image. So if I want to make that a bit more light I can do so just to add that extra contrast. And now to add a drop shadow to push the orange image behind that grill I’m just going to click on the grill layer and choose Drop Shadow. And here’s the default drop shadow. Well that’s what you would see as a default drop shadow. And I can add as much or as little drop shadow as I want to push that behind and gave us the sense that there is a dimension or a distance between the grill and the actual orange image itself. And we can make that deeper or less deep as we want to and then click Ok.
So here we’ve used an original image of some oranges. We’ve added an image of a grill and we want to see through the holes in the grill to the image of the oranges behind. And we’ve done that using the image as its own mask so it’s showing us where we want to see through. We’ve added a lot of contrast to this so this mask is almost pure black and white. The image itself can be anything. We just gave it a little bit more of a pop by making it a little bit brighter but it could be anything. And we’ve finished with a drop shadow to add some dimension to the entire scene.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for that this tutorial. Look out for more tutorials on projectwoman.com and on this YouTube channel. And please if you liked the video click to like it and consider subscribing to this YouTube channel.
In this video I demonstrate having a little fun in the iPad app OmniSketch, which lets you create tons of funky and interesting brushes.
Transcript:
I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial on creating a mirror drawing in OmniSketch on the iPad. If you followed my previous tutorial you know how to create this sort of Seurat background. Now we’re going to create some hearts.
So the first thing I’m going to do is select here and click this box here that has lines through it. This means that we’re going to start drawing four things at once and then I’m going to select a brush to use. So I’m going to start with probably this second brush in the top row and we’ll just see how we go. I’m going to choose a sort of red pink because I think I’m going to make some red pink hearts here, okay. And now I’m going to start drawing and you can see that I’m actually drawing all four at the one time.
Now everything is a bit light here so let’s go and see. Let’s increase the width and fiddle with the adjustments. So you can see now that I can get a heavier rendition of these hearts. So I’m going to change brushes and see if we can’t find some brushes that will go down a bit more quickly. Okay, the opacity is really low on that. The width is really low. Let’s go and get some change of color. You can see how these brushes all paint very, very differently. OmniSketch would be probably one of my favorite applications simply because it’s just totally funky. You can get some really, really interesting effects with it. And it’s the kind of application that you can play with for hours.
So I’m just trying to give you a look at – ohhh. Okay, probably not the bubbles. I’m trying to give you a look at some of these different brushes. But let’s just undo that one and let’s go and get a different brush. Okay, this one is pretty good. And for all these brushes you can adjust their opacity and width. And of course you want to keep changing your colors as you work so that you get some interesting designs happening. And I want to fill this one in pretty fast so this is usually a pretty good filler tool. And let’s make it pretty wide and let’s start filling it in. Of course we can always go back to our Seurat dots which are the dots that we used to create the background. I don’t want them to be very wide but you can slowly just draw in this area. And of course I can draw in any one of these and right now I’m working in the top left corner. But I can change and draw on any one of these that I like because wherever you’re drawing you’re just repeating all the way around the image.
So I just kind of work and build up, that was not a happy brush. If you make a mistake just tap Undo and wait as it undoes. It’s probably a little bit delayed here because I’m screen recording at the same time. I’m just going to change the color and yes, let’s just dial down the width on this brush. This is a really nice little brush. And I tend to use it a bit but sparingly because it does really, really funky things so I’m going to see. Sometimes it’s really not clear what adjustment does but varying it just has an interesting effect. I think I need this to be wider and certainly adjustment is going to help me here with this brush. This is really a nice little brush. I think I’m going to darken it up and use it quite a bit for my heart here.
So I’m just looking at building up an overall heart shape. And let’s go back to this brush and I think it’s a small width. I’m just testing this one here. We’ll just undo it. This is a brush I like to use at the very end because it has this really nice little spiky effect. So sometimes I’ll use it for sort of like the star effect because if you just tap you can get this like star happening on your heart shape. So let’s call that good for now. You can obviously work on something similar yourself.
Let’s have a look at what I’ve done in the past. I’m just going to save this and we’ll go back and have a look at some of the hearts that I’ve created previously. This is one of the hearts and it has that same effect down the side. Let’s just open this up. I’m not quite sure why it’s upside down but let’s just go with it. It’s got those little edges around it.
Here’s another set of hearts. This has been drawn on a white background but again it’s had these black hairs around it. Now I’m thinking with the black hairs I might have erased in the middle here as I was working after I did the black hairs. But this mirror drawing is really interesting. You can get some really, really nice effects with it. So there’s a little bit of an introduction to the wonders of OmniSketch on the iPad. And as I’ve said it’s probably one of my favorite applications for drawing because you get these wonderful, wonderful brushes to play around with. I’m Helen Bradley.
Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more iPad tutorials as well as Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements on my YouTube channel. And visit projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials. And please subscribe to my YouTube channel and Like the video if you liked it. Thank you.
Use your preferred software to create an image frame effect in either Photoshop Elements or Lightroom.
Photoshop Elements:
See how to use the Custom Package in Photoshop Elements to create a neat frame effect for your photos, whether for print or for the web.
Lightroom:
See how to create a simple framed image effect in Lightroom 3 & 4. Includes an Identity Plate to display your name below the image.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial we’re going to look at creating a framed photo in Photoshop Elements.
I’m here in Photoshop Elements and I have my image already open. And I’ve sized it down just a little bit so that I can actually see around the surrounds of the image here in the window. That’s pretty important right now. Now I’m going to select white as my background color because I want to add some white around the image.
So first of all I’m just going to select around the image just by selecting over it. And I’m going to add a very, very narrow black border to it so I’m going to choose Edit and then Stroke Outline Selection. I’m going to add a white pixel black border on the Inside just so it’s easy to see and then just click Ok. And that will give my image just a one pixel black edge which will stop it from sort of bleeding into the white surrounds.
With white as my background color I’m now going to choose the crop tool and I’m going to select over my image with the crop tool. I’ve selected over and let go of the mouse button. That’s pretty critical the let go bit. And now I’m going to hold the Alt or Option key as I drag out on this corner handle. And see what happens when I do. When I drag outwards I’m adding some extra area around the image and because I’m using the Alt or Option Key the exact same amount of image is being added to the left and right of the image on top on bottom.
Now I want this to be a museum style frame so I’m actually going to let go the Alt or Option key and then drag down on this bottom so that I get some extra room here. And because white is my background color when I click the checkmark we’re going to have a white border around the image. Now if this were going up on the web onto a website that perhaps had a white background, I might add an extra black edge to it. So again I’ll go and select everything and I’ll go to Edit and then Stroke Outline Selection. I’m going to add a one pixel black inside. But you don’t have to do that if you’re perhaps going to print and you just want this nice muted down border effect.
Now the next thing to do is to add our text so I’m going to click on the text tool and click here on the image where we’re actually going to apply the text. Now I’m using Myriad Pro but for this image that’s way too big a font size. I’m thinking something like 12 points will be plenty and I’m just going to type in my name Helen Bradley and photography. And it looks like we’re using a white color so that’s a little bit difficult. Let’s go and get a dark gray instead.
Now once I’ve finish typing I can click the checkmark and then I can move it into position just using the move tool. So I’ll place it in position here. And then my image is ready to save or to print whatever I want to do with it.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this very quick video tutorial. Look out for more video tutorials on my YouTube channel. Visit projectwoman.com to find more tips, tricks and tutorials. And please if you like this video click the Like button.
Photoshop tips and tricks for using the Spot Healing and Clone tool to remove problems from an image. I also demonstrate using a separate layer for the fix so it can be erased, blended or undone.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial we’re going to have a look at the Spot Healing Brush tool and the Cloning tool in Photoshop and look at some tips for getting a more effective and quick result using these tools.
When it comes to practicing with the Clone Stamp tool this image is just wonderful. It’s one I use in my face to face classes and I’m going to use it here to show you some of the techniques that I would use in fixing this image. What I’m looking to do is to remove the signs of the light pole and this sign here, everything that sort of detracts from a rather quaint little English house. I’m not going to crop until I finish so I want to just start off with fixing what I see as the problem for what I want to fix with this image.
The first thing I’m going to do is to drag the background layer onto this New Layer icon because that makes a duplicate off it. I could also right click and choose Duplicate Layer or I could click Layer, Duplicate Layer. All I want is a duplicate of the image layer so that I’m working on a copy, not on the original.
Now I’m going to add a new blank layer, again just this time by clicking on Create a New Layer or I could choose Layer, New Layer and that would add a new blank layer. The reason why I like to use a new blank layer when I can is that I can put my fixes on this layer and then blend them in later on if I want to or remove them if they’re not quite right or continue to fix them if I need to.
So I’m going to start with this particular problem with the Spot Healing Brush tool because if this tool works it’s just Simply the easiest tool that you can use. Now I’ve just turned off my Caps Lock key so I can see the size of my brush and I’ve got my layer selected. And I have Sample all Layers selected up here. That means that I can sample the layers below but apply the fix to this layer so I’m going to click here and then just Shift Click here to draw a line with my Spot Healing Brush tool. And that takes out that entire piece of electric wire. And I’m going to do the same here. And I’ll continue down here. And hopefully we’ll make it around that bend in the wire, which we did. So we’ve got a reasonably good fix happening there.
Here I’m probably going to have to paint it on because the wire bends too much to use that little trick, but certainly for a straight piece of wire the Click Shift Click option is by far the quickest way of getting rid of things. And I’ll do that here too, Click and then Shift Click to try and get rid of some of this detail in here. I’m going to zoom in so I can see my problem area a bit more clearly, and again, I’m looking for a good fix around here. And I can size my brush down with the Square Bracket key if I want to.
And here I need to get rid of this entire piece here so I’m thinking that probably the Clone Stamp tool would be better for this. So I’m going to switch to the Clone Stamp tool and I’m going to add a new layer because again I don’t want to be doing this on an original. And I want to be able to turn this stuff on and off if necessary if I need to make some fixes like I have lost some pieces over there which I’ll have a look at a little bit later. The Clone tool is one where you have to take a sample. So you want to make it about the size that you want to work with so I’m thinking about this size would be good. And then you’re going to take a sample of the place that you want to start painting with so I just really want the very edge of this chimney. And so I’m going to Alt Click on this position to sample it. I’ve got Sample all Layers selected and so now I can just position my mouse where it is, I can see a little preview of what I’m painting with, and I can just paint an edge onto that chimney and paint out that bracket. And now I need to get some fresh sky so I’m going to Alt Click on some fresh sky and just paint that in over here so that we’ve got rid of that piece. And I want to go back over here to the area where I lost a piece of that chimney.
If I turn this layer off that’s what I get. If I turn it back on again you can see that I really do have some problems and I haven’t done a particularly good fix here. So I’m thinking with this layer I’m just going to erase the bits of the fix that I don’t like and do it some other way, so just double click on that brush to select it. This is an eraser so I’m just going to go into the area where I want to erase back some detail. I can just check and see.
I think I’ve pretty much got what I want to have back into the image at that point. And again, I think I need to do a little bit of cloning here. I’ll just add a new layer just in case I make a mess of it, size my brush down. And with the Clone tool we have to take a sample so I’m going to click here right on the edge and then build back in the edge of my bricks here as I go down. And then I would come back in Alt Click on this and just remove the bits that I want to remove.
Let’s go back to the main image because there are some things that we can use to make some really wholesale fixes here, again New Layers every time. I’m concerned about this light pole here and finding a good fix for it. But as you can see this is a reasonably good fix for this area. What’s happening here is pretty much what’s happening here. So we could go and get the Clone Stamp tool, pick a fairly sizable brush, we could Alt Click just where the — I’m just picking the area. I’m just going to get a pointer here so you can see. I’m just going to pick the area here between this dark and this light roof and the line so that I’m going to start painting it on over here.
So let’s just go back and get the Clone Stamp tool. So this is where I’m going to click to sample. So that’s my sample point and now I can start painting it in. I’m just going to line it up with the piece of roof here. And there we’ve got rid of the worst of that pole. Now we’ve obviously overstepped the mark a little bit, but that’s really not a worry because we could come back to this layer here and erase it. We could just use an eraser so I’m just going to enlarge my Eraser tool here and just on this layer just erase back in that little edge so I’ve got a sort of blending with the original content on that layer.
So I’m going to come back with the Clone tool here. I’m going to have a look at this bottom edge here so I’m going to sample here and start my sample point about here and then just paint this bottom edge in so that we’re getting a sort of consistent look to our roof. And then we can just come back in and Alt Click on some surrounding area here and just use it to clone out that. In actual fact that’s not a very good situation. Maybe we would find it better if we used the Spot Healing Brush tool. And if we did use the Spot Healing Brush tool then we’re going to use this new empty layer that we created a little bit early and fix on it instead. The Spot Healing Brush tool is doing a better job of getting rid of this content here than the Clone tool, but you just need to work out which tools work. In some cases the Clone tool is an ace tool to use, in other cases it may not be what you need.
With this window here there’s a slight problem because we’d need to make up some content that we didn’t already have. But you’ll see that this window is probably a pretty good fix for this one and so too is this one. So if I were to fix up this window surrounds first and just get this looking the way I want it to then I can come in with the Clone Stamp. I’m just ignoring making layers at this stage just to show you what I’m looking for. So I’m actually going to work out which bit of this image I’m going to start sampling on, probably the top corner of this windowsill, start sampling it. And then we’re going to line it up here and paint. And there we’ve got a window back and again, probably the Spot Healing Brush tool I’m thinking for the rest of this plant, at least until we get into the area where we have to start creating content that we don’t have easily available in the surrounding content. And for this I’m thinking this is going to be just fine. So again, back into the Clone Stamp tool, go and find some content we can use starting at the corner of this thing, lining it up to make sure it’s going to fit properly when I start painting it and Click and paint. Now again, we’ve got a fix that’s not perfect here because we’ve started running into wall problems and things. But we can take the Spot Healing Brush and blend it in using that or we could have just erased it. I don’t know what the Spot Healing Brush– it does a reasonable fix of that too.
So that’s how I would approach the task of fixing this image is just having a look and seeing which tool will apply best. If you can use the Spot Healing Brush tool it’s obviously the easiest tool that you can use, so use it. If you need to then perhaps look at the Clone Stamp tool. And sometimes what I’ll do is just go and grab a piece of something. So for example here I might just go and grab this piece of roof here and just say okay well that’s going to fix this area here. So I’m going to do Edit, Copy and I’ll do– I’m not getting it from here so I need to get off this layer, Copy and then Paste it. We’ve got a duplicate piece of the roof and we can just move it into position here, size it if it’s a little bit too big, adjust its rotation, and then just blend it in to make up the bit of the roof that we didn’t have.
So here it is here and now I’m just going to erase over the edges of it, perhaps not quite that much, but erase over the edges, smooth it out a little bit, maybe use some Spot Healing Brush tool because we’re sampling all the layers here to get rid of the greenery and to try and blend this piece in. If I make a mistake, well not actually make a mistake, but if the blending process is not what I want I’ll just Ctrl Alt Z to undo it and go back to where I was.
And so I just continue working on this. But you can see that it’s not going to be a huge job to clean up this house. And let’s just see where we came from. This is what it looked like and this is what we’ve managed to achieve so far.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more tutorials on my YouTube channel. Like this video if you like it and visit projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom.
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.
Improve your photography by undertaking self assignments. In this video I’ll describe how to undertake a self assignment, some topics for it, and how to assess your progress.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. Today I’m going to talk about photographic self-assignments. What is a self-assignment. Self-assignments are short self-assigned photo projects that you shoot just for the sake of shooting. And typically they shouldn’t require you to go out and buy anything special or to go anywhere special to do them. They are the sort of thing you could go and do immediately after you’ve finished watching this video — grab your camera and you’re ready to start.
It’s a good idea to do self-assignments regularly and when you are not under pressure to capture anything at all worthwhile so you’d never undertake one when you are the main photographer at a wedding for example. Self-assignments are generally quite short so you can spend as little as a few minutes at a time on them — but of course they can consume a lot more time if you have it available.
Self-assignments technically have a topic — you’re not just out to shoot, you’re out to shoot a something or to practice something — you’re not aiming to shoot ‘keepers’ so much as you are aiming to learn something. Self-assignment should take you out of your comfort zone and help you see things or experiment with techniques and your kit.
Preparing for a self-assignment
When you’re preparing for a self- assignment, firstly you need to allocate the time to work on your self-assignment. Often you can find it by repurposing time you already spend doing something such as walking to the bus station — make this the time that you work on your self-assignment. Or you could park a few blocks from your office and walk there, walk at lunchtime or walk when you get home at night and, as you walk, you can photograph for your self-assignment. If you don’t get out a lot then photograph inside your house or your backyard or spend the time waiting at an airport or train station catching shots for your current self-assignment.
You will also need to take a camera with you — everywhere. It doesn’t have to be your good camera but it’s good if it is. It might seem strange to carry your camera with you all the time but the more you do so, the less uncomfortable you will feel and you’ll really notice it when you don’t have your camera handy.
Topics and subject matter
Plan your self-assignment — You’ll need a topic or a focus for your shooting. It should be something that challenges you and forces you to learn something new or to look at the world a little differently. Some topics which you might want to pursue are: saturated colors, circles, paint marks, streetlights, the color blue, doors, shadows, repetition, food, street art, reflections, or alphabet which is a great one for the airport. Don’t expect to always nail the project on day 1 — so if you’re shooting something like circles — it’s worth going over the same territory a couple of days in a row — notice how many more circles you see on day 2 than you did on day 1. Your assignment might also be related to a piece of your kit — perhaps you have an unused or little used lens in your case — unused because you really don’t know how to use it — and because you can’t trust yourself to use it for important situations the cycle becomes self-repeating so you never use it.
Set yourself a self-assignment to shoot with the lens for a couple of weeks. By the end of the two weeks you’ll know a lot more about the lens and how to use it. If you’re someone who always uses the Auto mode on your camera now is a good time to start using Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority mode and start learning what creative possibilities they might offer. Determine the topic or focus of your self-assignment and a timeframe to work in. Once you’re done with the first assignment you’ll ready to start on the next but don’t be surprised if you continue to shoot these self-assignment themes in other situations.
Assess the results
When you are working on a self- assignment, download the images as often as you can and view the results. Assess how you’ve gone in your project. How easy was it for you to ‘see’ things that matched your topic. Assess the technical aspect of your shots — are they in focus, is the depth of field used appropriate for the subject matter — how would you improve the shot next time and what will you do differently tomorrow? If you’re working on a self-assignment to learn how to use a piece of kit, ask yourself what have you learned about it. What worked and what did not work. Analyse the results in front of you to determine what you’ll try that will be different tomorrow or the next day. What you’ll gain Self-assignments are creative learning projects so approach them with a sense of wonder and enthusiasm for your topic — reward yourself when you see something you wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t been doing your self-assignment.
Self-assignments can help you see the world different and they’re guaranteed to make you a better photographer. If you are a creative person who wishes they could photograph more but have to juggle photography with other commitments then self-assignments provide a creative outlet that can be fit into even a few minutes of your spare time.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. I encourage you to subscribe to my YouTube channel and visit projectwoman.com for more photography tips and tricks.
Learn how to make paisley shapes in Illustrator using Graphic Styles. I demonstrate graphic styles such as scallop edges stroke style, dotted stroke and a stroke that shows dots that vary in size from big to small.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. Today we’re going to be using Adobe Illustrator and we’re going to be making paisleys with graphic styles. Before we go ahead and actually create our paisley shape let’s have a look and see what we’re aiming for.
This is a paisley that I’ve created using graphic styles and we’re going to create these graphic styles so that we can create it ourselves in future. You can see that there’s a scalloped border around the edge and you’re going to learn how to make this scallop border. You’ll also see how to make these blue dots which are another graphic style and then how to make these pink dots so that they change in size. So each of these is a graphic style and it’s just applied to the shape really, really easily. So it’s a very simple process to create this once you create the graphic styles. And they themselves are pretty simple too.
So let’s just close this down for now and we’re going to work on this document here. For ease we’re going to start with a rectangle because it’s just a whole lot easier than drawing paisleys right now. So let’s do a rectangle. And the first graphic style we’re going to create is that scalloped edge. So we’re going to start by selecting a stroke color to use. And I want my scalloped edge to be a sort of pale blue so I’m going to select that as my stroke color. And I want the fill color for this to be a sort of darker blue so I’m going for a darker blue here. Now the stroke is going to need to be fairly wide so I can see my dots so let’s make that 20.
And here we have the beginnings of our scallop edge but it’s just not looking a lot like a scallop border right now. What we need to do is to go into the appearance panel. So you would select Window and Appearance to get to it. Now we’re going to change the stroke so that we actually have dots. So I’m going to click Stroke here. And what I want to do is I want to make sure that the Cap is round and I want to use a dash line and I want this option here that aligns dashes to corners and paths. And I want to make my dash zero and then my gap something less than the weight of the lines. So here 16 is a pretty good fit here and that’s going to give me my scallop border.
Well it’s giving me a two side scallop right now, but that’s easily fixed. You see this appearance panel works very much like a layers panel and so the appearance that’s at the very top is the one that way we’re seeing over the top of everything. And right now that’s the stroke. If we put the fill over the top of everything then the fill would fill up to the edges of this rectangular shape and we’d be left with a scallop border not on the inside of the shape. So all I need to do is to target the fill here and just drag it up above the stroke. And you can see when I drag it above what I’m seeing is this scallop border. So now that we’ve created the first of our graphic styles we’re just going to save it. And I’m just going to click here for new graphic style and it’s now saved.
Now we can go ahead and create the second one which was those blue dots. We can continue to work on the shape here. That’s just fine. Because we’ve already saved the graphic style we won’t be losing if we make changes here. The first change I want to do is I want to remove the fill entirely. So this will be an empty rectangle with just a border. I’m going to select a different color for the stroke and this time I’m going for an even darker blue than we’ve been working on. So let’s go for this dark blue here. And let’s go for stroke and we want to change the values here. I want the weight to be 16. So this is going to be a slightly thinner set of blue dots which would be appropriate if we’re trying to make a shape that’s going to be reducing in size every time we add a graphic style to it. But I want the gap to be bigger because I want things to be circles and I want them to be dots separated from each other not overriding each other. And I do that by changing the gap value. So I’m going to make that 25. And you can see that that’s giving me my circles. So there’s our second graphic style. Let’s just save that.
And let’s go ahead and make the third one. The fill again is nothing, but this time I’m going to choose pink as my shape and we want to make pink dots that vary in size. And that’s just a little bit different to what we’ve been doing previously. Now the weight needs to be a bit smaller because it’s going to be further into the center of this paisley shape. So I’m going to reduce the weight down to 12 points. Because the weight is 12 points I’m going to decrease the gap. So I’m going to make that 16 so the dots are a little closer together. And now we have to make sure that our dots are going to reduce in size. So I’m going to make sure that I have my shape selected. Again, let’s go to stroke and let’s have a look at how we make them reduce in size. At the moment the profile is uniform so all these dots are the same uniform shape. If I change it to width profile one what I get is small to large and that’s what’s giving us these different shape dots. So there’s our third graphic style and we’re just going to save that.
Now if I was to trash this document I’m going to lose those graphic styles so let’s go ahead and let’s make our paisley in this document. So I’m just going to delete the rectangle shape. And we’ll go ahead and make a paisley but use the pen tool to do that. So I’m going to click and drag to start my shape. I’m just going to make it using 3 points so click and drag at the top of the circle. And you can see that we’re still using that last graphic style so it’s happening in place as we draw. It’s not the one we want but we’ll put up with it for now. What I do want is this original style so I’m just going to click on it to apply it to that shape. And here is our paisley shape with the first style on it.
Now all we need to do is to make the same shape but a little bit smaller. So I’m going to select the move tool here and I’m going to choose Edit, Copy and then Edit, Paste in Place. And that should give me a second version of the shape. Let’s just make this a bit bigger here so we can see where we’re working. I’m just going to size this down. And right now I’m going to size it down in proportion so I’m holding the Shift key as I resize it. I’m just going to drop it into place here. And this time instead of this scallop border I want to use the blue dots. So I’m just going to tap on the blue dot graphic style and you can see that we’ve got the scallop with its second layer. And again, I’m going to select that layer, choose Edit, Copy and then Edit, Paste in Place, Paste in Back, placed anywhere, really it doesn’t matter. I’m going to just move it out of the way here. I’m going to Shift and resize it so it’s a smaller size, apply my pink dots to it and just move it back into place. Actually I think I want it a bit smaller still because I have an idea for an intermediary step.
Okay let’s just go and get the blue one. We’re here. I’ve got it selected. I’m going to Edit, Copy and Edit, Paste it. And this time I’m going to add just a very plain stroke. So I’m going to get a green and I’m going to make it a weight of about 10 points. And let’s just go to the stroke options here and let’s just turn off this dash line because I want it to be a plain line. Now I’m thinking that’s a bit wide for this purpose. So let’s just make it that and let’s put that into place. It’s not small enough yet. I think I can resize this in place a little bit. So there’s our paisley shape. And we can do this over and over again using graphic styles. We will have to save these graphic styles though if we want to use them in other documents. So from this right click menu we can choose Save Graphic Style Library and we could save that as a set of graphic styles that we could use again in future.
But you’ve seen here how to create a scallop border, how to create a graphic style that is just dots and how to create a graphic style that is a series of different size dots and then how to apply them to increasingly smaller size shapes so you can create a paisley that looks like this very quickly and very easily. And of course these graphic styles can be applied to any shape so you could do it to circles or stars or whatever it is that you want to draw.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more of my video tutorials on this YouTube channel and please subscribe to the channel if you’d like to hear about new videos because we do distribute them twice a week. You can find more of my tutorials and links to other work on projectwoman.com and please like this video by clicking the like button if you liked it. And I always look forward to hearing your comments.
Speed up and streamline importing images into Lightroom using Import Presets. Learn how to create and edit presets for importing images into a Lightroom catalog, includes backup on import, renaming, import presets, choosing previews and folders for storing images.
Check out all our tutorials on our YouTube channel.
Complete transcript of this video:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can streamline the importing process in Lightroom with import presets. An import preset helps you speed up the process of importing images into Lightroom because you don’t have to make all the settings each time that you import. I’m in the Library module. I’m just going to click here on Import. I already have a disk in the drive. I’ve got a camera card in the drive. And we’re going to have a look at an existing import preset because you can see that the default here right now is craft images. What this is is in import preset that I created to import images that I shoot of the crafts that I make. And it has certain settings already in it. There’s no file renaming because I don’t rename my files. Apparently there are no develop settings here but there is some metadata that’s being added to the images as they’re imported. And the destination is already selected. You can see here that the destination is craft images. This Into Subfolder is not actually being used because it’s not checked. So in actual fact everything is going straight into the craft images folder. So let’s go and create an import preset. And the way that we do it is just to make the settings that we usually want to use. Here’s the camera card. I only want to bring in new photos. In this case these are daily photos. So let’s just check. I do want standard previews made. I don’t want to import suspected duplicates. If I wanted to make a second copy I could automatically set that up but I’m just seeing that my backup drive is not attached at the moment. So let’s leave that blank. If I wanted to rename files I could select that and set up the renaming, but I don’t usually do that. Apply during import. Now there is a develop setting that I want to use here. And here it is in my user presets. And it’s a camera standard profile. What that does is makes my images when they appear inside Lightroom look the way they did on the back of the camera. And then I can go to metadata and I can select the metadata. I’m just going to click Edit Presets just to see what this metadata preset looks like and make sure it’s the one that I want to apply. Well no, that one looks a bit empty. So let’s go to Helen Bradley copyright. This looks like the right one. So I’ll click Done. Now I’m not going to apply any keywords to these image. The problem with keywords is that they’re going to be applied to all of these images. So you can see that there’s a whole range of images here. And there’s really not a keyword that I would apply to everyone of these images. So I usually keyword later on if I keyword at all. So let’s just close Apply during import. And now I need to select my destination. Now I already have a folder for these images on my removable disk. It’s actually this one. Toshiba hard drive green is where my images are kept. I’m going to go into photos and I want to pick up my daily walk from 2010 onwards. So this is the folder in which the images are going to be placed. And once I’ve made all these settings I can go ahead and import the images. But if I want to use these settings or most of these settings again in future I’m better off creating them as an import preset. So I’m going to choose Save current settings as a new preset. And here is my preset dialog. And I’m just going to call this daily walk, whatever it is that is going to remind me that these are these images and click Create. And now I have an import preset that’s going to be saved with Lightroom. It’s going to be available from this dialog anytime I come into Lightroom. All I need to do is to select daily walk and all these settings will be automatically applied to my import. Now if for example I do go and reconnect my backup drive then I could click here and just make a change to the settings. It’s not going to change the import preset but I can actually vary these things if I want to. But it gives me most of the settings that I need most of the time. So I’m going to go ahead and just click Import. So there’s the basics of using an import preset in Lightroom. You’ll find that if you repeatedly choose to use the same settings that an import preset will save you a lot of that setup time. I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video training session. If you liked this video please click the Like button here in YouTube to tell others that you liked it. If you’d like to see more of these videos and be notified when they’re released please subscribe to my channel. You’ll find lots of other Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom tutorials in this YouTube channel. And visit my website at Projectwoman.com for more blog posts and interesting articles on these programs.
Learn how to create a Kaleidoscope in Photoshop. Video includes tips for a shortcut for copying and rotating a layer.
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Transcript for video:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to create quick and easy kaleidoscopes in Photoshop. Before we begin let’s have a look at the sort of thing that we can create. This is the kaleidoscope I created earlier from the image that we’re actually going to use. And as you can see I’ve layered various copies of the same kaleidoscope on top of it, changed some of the colors to create an even more distinct pattern effect. This was my original kaleidoscope. This is a second version of it on top and this is another version of it in the middle. So let’s get started with our image. This is an image I shot at the Neon Bone Yard in Las Vegas. The first thing I’m going to do is to convert this background layer into a regular layer just by dragging and dropping the lock icon into the trashcan. Then I’m going to move this image. So I’m going to first of all zoom out a little bit so I can see where I’m going. Then I’m going to select the Move Tool and I’m going to start transforming this shape. And what I want to do is to transform it through 60 degrees, some sort of 60 degrees, minus 60 plus 60. And what I’m going to do is drag this shape over the edge of the image here. I can resize it if I want to but I want it to only go over two edges of this image because I want to use the 60 degree angle that we have. So I’m going to save it. That’s good because I’ve got some nice texture in here and I’m just going to click the checkmark. So if we had a really good look at this we would see that there’s some anti- aliasing down here on this edge. So to get rid of it I’m going to click the Magic Wand Tool here. I’m going to click on this side of the image. And you see perhaps even on the video that there’s a little bit of a gap between the selected area and the image itself. So I’m going to choose Select Inverse to inverse the selection so I have only my corner piece selected and then I’m going to bring it in by choosing Select Modify Contract. And I’m going to bring it in one pixel and that should make it just a little bit smaller. And then so that I get just that piece I’m going to choose Image and then Crop. And this is the piece that I’m going to use to create my kaleidoscope from. So we have it on its own layer. But we need a bit more area to work in. So I’m going to select the Crop Tool. And if you didn’t know that you can do so you’re going to find out now that you can actually crop in a negative direction. So you can use the Crop Tool to add space to your image. So I’m just going to add a little bit of extra space around my image so we have a bit of a better area to work with. I’m going to select my layer with my shape and I want to flip it. So I’m going to choose Layer New Layer via Copy. And with this shape I’m going to transform it. So I’m going to choose Edit and then Free Transform. And I want to transform it around this side. So I’m just going to click on this side so it’s anchored here so that when I flip it over it doesn’t move. And I want to flip it over so it’s exactly mirrored which means that it’s negative 100 percent. So I’m just going to make that negative 100 percent and then I have an exact duplicate of this shape. And this is the piece that I’m going to rotate around to create my kaleidoscope so I’m going to merge these two layers together. I can do that by selecting both layers and choose Layer Merge Layers or Merge Visible, either of those would work. So too would Flatten Image or I could just press Ctrl E. But let’s choose the menu option. Now that we have our basic shape I’m ready to rotate it. And I’m going to do this the smart way so I don’t have to do every single one of them. I just want to do it once, Layer New Layer via Copy, Edit Free Transform. I’m going to anchor it at its bottom center point. And I’m going to rotate it around 60 degrees, and I’m going to click the checkmark here. And having done that once I’m now going to get Photoshop to do it automatically for me. And all I need to do to do that is to press these keys, Ctrl Shift Alt T, and that’s Command Option Shift T on the Mac. So I’m going to press all these keys and every time I do it Photoshop duplicates the layer and rotates it. So with four keystrokes I’ve now got the rest of my kaleidoscope. Again I’m going to select all these layers and Ctrl or Command E to merge them into one. And now I’ve got one layer I can make a duplicate of it. And then I can size it as we saw earlier. If I want to size it around its center point I’m going to hold Alt and Shift as I resize it. And now I can also rotate it. So I might rotate it for example 15 degrees. And then I might make another duplicate of this and do something similar to this duplicate layer, again holding down the Shift and Alt so I’m rotating or sizing around the middle point, place my shape in and then rotate it. This time I might choose say let’s go 30 degrees. And then for each of these I could add a hue/saturation adjustment. And that will allow me just to recolor the shape and perhaps get a more interesting effect in doing so. I’ll do that and just click Ok. So there is the basics of creating a kaleidoscope in Photoshop. Now you could use a different measurement than the 60 degrees that I used. You might want to try it with 30 degrees to get a more complex kaleidoscope. But basically once you get your flipped shape and you merge it you can get Photoshop to do all the copying and rotating work for you. I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more of my Photoshop video training on my YouTube channel.
