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 enlarge images from iPhoto – because it won’t do it for you!
If you try to export an image from iPhoto on the Mac you’ll be invited to resize it on export. Funny thing is that even if you ask for the size to be larger than the original iPhoto won’t warn you it is about to ignore your request – seriously! It happily takes the size you ask for and, if it is bigger than the original, it exports the image at the original size but doesn’t tell you it did so. So you can think you’ve been successful but you have not.
In short, you can’t enlarge or upsize an image from iPhoto. So here’s a simple solution – I use PIXizer.com. So, start from inside iPhoto, select an image and then select File > Export.
Then select to export the image as a JPEG maximum quality and leave the size set to Full Size – ie the original image size.
Then export the image to your desktop or somewhere else it will be easy to find.
Click Choose File and choose a file to upload and use the tabbed panels to choose the quality and image size. When you click to Preview Image the image is uploaded and resized. You can then click to download it and it will download automatically to your download folder.
I like the efficiency of PIXizer – it would be nice if iPhoto actually enlarged images but since it won’t – I now have a free and quick and easy solution when I need a quick image enlargement.
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.
I’ve been revisiting some of the apps I’ve previously reviewed to see what changes have been made to them recently and how they have developed. One of these apps is Adobe Photoshop Express for the iPad. This app is free but it does have some in app purchases – one of which – the Camera pack that includes Noise removal – you can safely ignore. I think it is expensive and not worth the $4.99 that Adobe charges for it. However, ymmv.
The free Effects in Photoshop Express are pretty limited and there are just nine of them so unless you buy the add on Effect Pack ($2.99) you won’t have a lot of creative options. That said, the Effect Pack has a lot of fun effects in it. You could get access to similar effects for free in other apps, but if you want everything in one place you might consider this pack worth shelling out for. There is also a Border pack for 99¢.
Like many free apps the add on borders and effects are shown in the app so you can see them but not use them unless you buy them. You can’t hide them either so this might be a bit off putting – personally I’d rather not see what I don’t own, but that’s my take on it.
One change to the app that I like is the on screen prompts showing you how to use the app. This was a huge complaint that I had initially with the app as it had no indication as to how you made your adjustments. I thought at the time that this made it very hard for inexperienced users to use the app as it wasn’t clear how to do so. In a free tool aimed at beginner users I thought this was inexcusable.
Now the first time you choose an option like Brightness and Contrast an overlay appears showing you how to adjust these options. It’s much less confusing and a whole lot easier to work with. So much so that I’d wholeheartedly recommend this app for beginner to intermediate users.
In Photoshop Express you can edit images from your Camera Roll or capture images using the app. What you cannot do is upload images to Adobe Revel – the new online replacement for photoshop.com (and which was previously called Adobe Carousel – have I confused you yet?). You can also not download images from Adobe Revel to edit them in the app. Since Adobe owns all these sites and apps it would be nice if all its apps and storage locations talked to each other instead of operating in isolation.
Other changes I noticed is that the feature for adding effects and borders has been revamped allowing you to see the full range of effects and borders in one large screen already in place on a small version of your images. Those that are not enabled have a blue mark on the corner and there is a shopping cart link in the bottom right of the screen that you can use to buy add on packs, if desired.
So far as sharing is concerned, Photoshop Express is light on options when compared with some other apps. You can share to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and email images but that is all. You can also save images to your Camera Roll.
In all, the changes to Adobe Photoshop Express are welcome and make the app a lot more usable for its target audience. I now actually like this app and would heartily recommend it particularly for beginner to intermediate users looking for a simple and easy to use photo fixing tool.
The Watermarking feature in Lightroom was significantly overhauled in Lightroom 3. As a result you can now add sophisticated watermarks to your images on export either to disk or via the Print and other modules.
Not only can you add a text watermark to an image but you can also add an image watermark – and that’s what this post is all about – making and using images as watermarks in Lightroom 3 and Lightroom 4.
Create the image
To use an image watermark in Lightroom you will need an image and for that you’ll need an image editor. You can use anything that can create .png images – Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are obvious contenders but basically any photo editor or painting program will do.
Unlike text watermarks you can’t set the color of an image watermark in the Watermark dialog so you need to get it right before you begin. For that reason I create two – one black and one white – which cover most situations.
I do this in Photoshop working on a transparent layer – the reason is that I want this transparency to appear in the watermark when it is placed over the image. So, even if I use a fill layer behind the watermark so I can see the design as I work, I’ll hide this before saving the image.
When saving the image I’ll save it as a .png format file – this flattens the image to a single layer but retains transparency – something that the .jpg format does not.
To create the image as a watermark open a module that has Watermarking such as the Print module. Click it to enable it and then choose Edit Watermarks from the dropdown list.
Click Graphic in the top right corner to select that as the Watermark Style. When prompted select the image to use. This image is dark so I chose the white version of the copyright watermark image.
If you cannot see the image, scroll down to the Watermark Effects area and adjust the Size so you can see the image. Set the desired size and placement using the Size, Anchor and Inset settings. Typically you will use the bottom left anchor point (or the bottom right) and move the image a little in from the edge of the photo.
Once you have the position and size correct you can save this as a Watermark you can use anytime in future by clicking the Custom dropdown list and choose Save Current Settings as New Preset and type a name for the preset.
In future you can select and use this watermark in any of the panels in Lightroom that support Watermarking such as the slideshow module here:
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.
Photoshop Levels offers is a simple way to fix dull, lifeless images. Learn how to apply a Levels Adjustment layer to an image, how to read the histogram chart and how to use it to fix your image in seconds.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. Today I’m going to show you a quick fix for a dull or muddy looking image. This is an image that lacks tonal range. It lacks contrast and we’re going to give it a punch and we’re going to do it quickly and easily. In this video tutorial I’m going to show you how you’re going to fix an image that looks a bit like this. This image is what I would call muddy. It actually lacks tonal contrast. There no blacks in this image. We’ve got some light pixels around the sky area but there are no blacks. And the result is that the image looks a bit foggy, a little muddy, a little lacking in tonal range, lacking in contrast and the color is a little bit flat as well. And this is the fix that we can apply to the image extremely quickly and Photoshop will actually tell us how to make the fix. It will tell us what’s wrong with the image and how to fix it. So let’s have a look and see how we’ll do this.
To start off with, with the image open in Photoshop I’m going to choose Window and then Layers because I want to see this layer’s palette. Now we’re going to choose an adjustment layer. It’s exactly the same as making an adjustment except this time it is editable, and we would like to get you started using adjustment layers because it gives you a little bit more power in Photoshop. So we’re going to choose Layer, New Adjustment Layer. And the one that we’re going to use is called levels. So let’s just click on Levels and see what we get. We get offered to add a new layer so I’ll click Ok to say yes. And then we get this dialogue here. Now this might look a little bit confusing but it’s actually Photoshop telling us what’s wrong with the image and giving us a chance to fix it. This is the pixels in the image. It’s a histogram. And what Photoshop has gone and done is it’s had a look at every single pixel in the image, how light or dark it is, and it’s counted up how many really dark ones it has and how many middle tone ones and how many light ones. And it’s done that for all the 255 tonal ranges in this image. So we got from 0 to 255. And it’s telling us how many pixels are in each of those ranges of tone. And this is black and this is white. So you see that we’ve got a few pixels very, very white and then a lot of pixels in that sort of light white area which is of course all around in the sky.
But see here, this is the problem in this image. There are no blacks. There’s nothing in this black area of the histogram. And so levels is not only telling us that but it’s also giving us a chance to fix it. So what we can do is we can drag on this slider here, the one under the chart. I want you to ignore these ones all the way at the bottom. It’s these under the chart that you’re interested in. And when you see the chart doesn’t make it all the way to either end of this histogram you’re just going to drag in until it does. And look what happens to the image as we do that. We’re just going to drag in to give ourselves some black pixels in the image, and then we can adjust this mid tone point as well. We’ll go to the right to darken the image or to the left to lighten the image. And you just need to choose for your image where the best point for that is. And we could come in a little bit here on the whites, perhaps. And certainly if the chart didn’t reach the edge then we would drag in on those whites. So you just need to read your chart and then just drag these little sliders into position. And when you’re done you can just close that dialog.
And there’s our fix. This is the before and this is the after. Photoshop showed us what was wrong with the image and gave us the chance of fixing it. Let’s have a look at another image that also has a similar problem.
This was captured in London on the London I through a fair bit of Perspex glass I should imagine. And also given that London tends towards being a little bit cloudy and gray I think that’s probably not helped this image either. So again, with the layer’s palette visible we’re going to add an adjustment layer, Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Levels, click Ok. Here’s our levels dialog, not unsurprising that we have no black pixels in this image. And in this image we have practically no white ones either. This one is a little bit different. So if we want to perk up the whites we can just bring in this slider here to lighten the whites and stop them being gray and make them white, things like the clock face here and some of the areas around here, this white building probably here. And now let’s drag in on the black slider to get some blacks and then we could adjust the mid tone if we wanted to darken the image or to lighten it and again, it’s to your taste. When you’re done, click the Close button. This is how the image started out and this is how it looks now. And that fix will take you 30 seconds.
Now the benefit of using adjustment layers, if I double click on this you’ll see that it opens up again. And if I think that I haven’t darkened it enough I can darken it up now and close it. So I’m not bound into this fix. I can remove it if I want to or I can double click it to adjust it and just improved it a little bit if I think I haven’t got it perfectly right.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. If you liked the video please click the Like button. Consider subscribing to my YouTube channel to be advised when new videos are released. And visit my website at projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom and other applications.
To resize the content on a layer or an object in Photoshop CS6 bring up the bounding box or transform controls by pressing Ctrl + T on a PC or Command + T on a Mac. When the controls appear you can drag on them to resize the object. To resize the background layer of an image you’ll first have to transform it to a regular layer by double clicking it in the layer palette and click Ok.
Learn how to link Smart Objects so, when one changes, they both change and how to un-sync them so they are separate. I’ll also show you how to replace the contents of a Smart Object with another image. Useful for wedding photographers and for creating albums in Photoshop.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to work with smart objects in Photoshop. In this video I’m going to show you how you can use smart objects to assemble complex images, and you can do it in a way that harnesses the value of the smart objects. For example, I’m going to create a smart object for this background and then a smart object for this couple. This will allow me to go to this smart object and choose Replace Image. This will allow me to go to this smart object layer, right click and choose Replace Contents. And I can then replace the contents of that smart object with any of the images from that album. And so I can quickly and easily create images for an album with a background in place. But there is a catch and you’ll want to use the right tool for creating these smart objects so I’m going to show you that too.
Let’s just hide this away and let’s go and get our starter document. I’ve already got a vignette that I’m going to use, but we’re going to put in here the original background. So I’m going to choose File and then Place because that’s a way of getting an image in as a smart object. Here’s the portion of this image that I want to use as my background. I’ve already extracted it as a separate image so I’m going to click Place. And I know that this needs to be enlarged a little bit so I’m just going to enlarge it to 75 percent and then click the checkmark. So it’s now in place and it’s a smart object. It has a special little smart object icon. And I’m just going to show you that you have this vignette which is separate and it just goes over the top.
Now we want to create another smart object, but we want this smart object to be unhooked or unlinked to this one. So I’m going to right click and I’m going to choose New, Smart Object via Copy. And what that does is makes a copy of the existing smart object as a separate layer, but it is not linked to the original layer. So now if I go into this and resize it, I’m just going to link these two together, this gives us a new smart object layer in the image which is not linked to the background layer although the two share the current image. I’m just going to add a drop shadow to it. So if we were creating a bridal album we could use this as the starting point for our album. I’m just going to get a slightly nicer drop shadow here and pull that vignette down so that it’s over the top of the background and not the image here. So having created this, this could be the first image in our album. And we can then go ahead using the same background image and just change the smart object out without having to recreate this document, right click, choose Replace Contents.
This time I’m going for an image of the bride and groom, and here they are in place. They’re a little large so I’m just going to choose the transform tool with Ctrl or Command T. I know they need to be taken down to about 10 percent so I’m going to scale them down to 10 percent and just move them into position. You can see that the drop shadow is still in place, the background is still in place, the vignette is still in place, and we’ve got another page of our album already created. If I right click and choose Replace Contents I can go and select yet another image to go in here. And again, the border and everything are already on that image. So it gives me a smart way of creating an album very quickly.
I’m just going to discard that for now and let’s have a look at what you might want to use and which would be a bad choice in this situation. And that would be to right click and choose Duplicate Layer. Now that would give us on the face of it exactly what we had before, a smart object with a second smart object layer over the top. Let’s just go ahead and select that and let’s add our drop shadow to it. Let’s position it where we want it to be above the vignette. And here’s what we had, an image over the background. And we’re ready to print that out.
But look what happens if we go to replace the contents of this image with our bride and groom. Not only do we replace the contents of the image with our bride and groom, and we can scale them back down to the 10 percent size that we were using before, but let’s just link that so that it’s going to be 10 percent in both directions. But look what’s happened to our background. These two smart objects instead of just being a duplicate of each other are in actual fact an exact copy of each other. And so anything that happens to this background smart object is also going to happen to this one and vice versa. If we change this one we’re going to change this one. So if we want the ability to create a smart object from another one but to unlink it so that they’re no longer the same image each time, we need to right click and choose New Smart Object via Copy.
But if we do want two smart objects that are linked and they’re always going to be the same image even if they’re different sizes of the same image then we would simply use Duplicate Layer. Smart objects are a really good tool to use when you’re assembling an album like this because it gives you the ability to create a background image and a smaller image on top and to easily replace that image and create an album very quickly.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this YouTube video tutorial. If you liked the tutorial please like it and feel free to add comments to the video tutorial. I encourage you to subscribe to my video YouTube channel. We release videos twice a week at the very least and you’ll be alerted to the new video releases. And don’t forget to visit my website at projectwoman.com. There you’ll find more tips, tricks and techniques for Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator and lots of other programs.
original Photo By: Gisela Royo