Here I show you how to create works of art using your images in Photoshop. Included is how to find and select texture images to use, how to blend these into the image and, how to add a lightening effect to highlight areas of the image to draw attention. Also, included is one method of adding a vignette to an image.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can make art from your photos using textures in Photoshop. Before we get started with this video tutorial let’s have a look and see what we’re aiming for. This is the image that we’re aiming for. And quite often when I’m doing these tutorials I’ll play around with a few images before I come up with something that I really want to share. But today it was just this one image, this one texture and the whole thing just blew my mind. So here it is in video form.
To start off with I’m going to show you where I got my textures because these textures are totally awesome and I love this guy’s work and I want to introduce it to you. So this is a Flickr photo stream and the guy is called Skeletal Mess. And he has a whole lot of textures that you can download. Now I downloaded this one. It’s very big but I just want to show you his set that he has on Flickr so you can see the sort of potential for what there is available. Now with this particular image I was having a look through his sets and just having a look to see what I might use. And this one really spoke to me and I’m going to show you why because we’ll go back to the image that I have and we’ll see why blue worked particularly well for this image. So let’s just wind back what I’ve done.
So I’m just going to the layers palette for this image and let’s go and create a brand new image. Okay, so here’s our duplicate image that we’re going to work with. That was what we were aiming for so now I’m going to take away the pieces that went to make up this image. Now you’ll see why I thought that that blue texture would work particularly well here because this image has no sky and if we can borrow the blue from this texture then that would give us an awesome result. We could have used this one too or this one and perhaps just rotated them. But this one really spoke to me so I downloaded that. So I’m just going to grab it now because whenever I download an image even though I can just drag and drop it into Photoshop I’ll also save it just in case I want to use it again later on.
So I’m just going to bring it in here. It’s a whole lot smaller than my image but because it’s a texture that doesn’t really matter. So now I’m going to grab the move tool and just size it to fit all the way across my image. And again because it’s a texture it doesn’t matter that it’s pulled a little bit out of square. So it’s been pulled a little bit wider than it was tall. The next thing I’ll do is just run down these blend modes and just see what it gives me because this is like totally the most exciting thing that you get to do. So I’ll just select Dissolve and then we’ll just run down these blend modes until we get what we’re looking at. And Multiply I think is probably the one I’m going to come back and use but let’s just see what there is in this list. And it was at the point at which I got to that Multiply blend mode that I thought I actually had something I really wanted to work with but you might find other things here that are speaking to you. There’s a whole lot of potential. I usually run down the list and then come back up and by then I’ve pretty much made my choice as to what is working for me. This one possibly but it’s not nearly as good as the Multiply one. So here’s the Multiply blend mode applied to this image.
Now having achieved that I thought in actual fact the middle of the image could be a bit lighter. So what I did was I added a brand new layer and from my tools palette which has gone walkabout here I just grabbed the elliptical marquee tool and just dragged out an oval on that image. I switched so that white and black would be my colors and I also added a feather to this. So I’ll choose Select and then Modify Feather. This is not a very sophisticated feather option but I’ll just add a 100 pixel feather radius to it. That just really softens this edge so now when I fill it by pressing Ctrl Backspace, Command Backspace on the Mac, it’s going to have this feathered soft edge. So now Command or Ctrl D to deselect the selection.
Now I have a big white splat right in the middle of image. That’s obviously not going to work but what I’d want to do then is to blend it in so again I’ll just select the first blend mode in the list and then just run down until I find something that works for me. And here’s Overlay blend mode. That’s lightening that image really well in the area where the lightening effect was. I’m thinking that’s probably the blend mode of choice. But let’s just go and check these others particularly in this lighter area with soft light, hard light, vivid light and pin light. You’re never really sure that they’re not going to give you something so I always run through those just in case one is better than the other. So we’re pretty much to the end and Overlay is going to be our choice. So I’m going back up to pick up Overlay. Now this is too white for me so I’m just going to drag down on the opacity of that layer just to make it a little less opaque. I’m also going to test around this area. I’m thinking that some of this lightness is coming through from this layer and it’s probably a bit more than I want.
So again I’m going to add a layer mask to this layer, go and grab a paintbrush and just paint with black with a very small opacity brush, you can see it’s only 26 percent opacity, just to knock out the bits where I think the lightening effect is too much. I really just want it on the front part of this boat. So once I’ve neatened that effect up now I’m thinking a vignette around the edge. Now there’s umpteen ways of adding vignettes. I’m just going to show you one of them. So a brand new layer, I’m going to go back to my marquee tool, this time the rectangular marquee, I’m just going to drag in around about probably an inch into the image and then I’m going to invert the selection, select Inverse so everything that was selected is now not selected.
So I’ve got this outside edge selected. Now I’m going to sample a color from the image by clicking the eyedropper. I’m thinking one of the colors around here is kind of pretty good. It’s sort of dark but not really, really dark. I’m thinking that color was pretty good. And now I’ll Alt Backspace, Option Delete on the Mac, to create that as my fill color. Now I can deselect my selection with Ctrl or Command D. Now this is not looking like a vignette but that’s fine because we’re going to again run down our blend modes and look for something that is going to give us a darkening effect at the edge. Things you would look for are going to be in this light field. Obviously Overlay is going to do it. Multiply will do it as wells. That will always darken everything up a little bit.
So they’re the ones to look out for but also look out for any surprises as you run down. You might see something that gives you an effect that makes you go oh, wow, that is just too amazing. So I’m headed towards probably Overlay. So now it’s still not the vignette effect that I want but I’m going to blur this. So with that layer selected I’m going to go Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Gaussian Blur is an awesome blur for just blurring things to almost oblivion. So here it is at zero radius effectively and now we’re just going to wind it up to soften this edge and pretty much just blend it into the image. And at some point it just becomes a really, really nice soft vignette effect for our image. So I’m just going to click Ok.
So there we have the effect. It’s very, very simple. This is a throwaway image. It’s just the sky is gone. It’s Hong Kong. It’s smoggy. It’s an overcast day. The sky is just nonexistent and I really wouldn’t have given this image a second look except that I was looking for a challenge. Add a really nice texture from Skeleton Mess free online textures from Flickr, add a bit of a highlight in the middle and then add this vignette effect and we’ve got an image that is now a keeper.
I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more of my tutorials on this YouTube channel. Please subscribe and also visit my website at projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on Illustrator, Photoshop, Lightroom, iPad and a whole lot more.
How to use the Color sliders to change color and remove color casts
When an image has a colorcast or a color that you’re wanting to play down in it, select the Color option in the HSL/Color/B&W panel. Here you can select the color to minimize the impact of and reduce its impact by dragging on the Saturation slider to reduce its saturation. Drag to the right on the Luminance slider to lighten the color.
This tool also allows you to take one color and alter its hue. So, for example you can target yellow and drag it towards green or towards orange by dragging on the Yellow Hue slider. In this way, any color in the image can be adjusted to one of its adjacent colors.
Five Must Know Features of the Photoshop Brush Tool
Brushes are used a lot in photo editing from removing blemishes and smoothing skin to dodging and burning and painting on masks. Here are five important features of the brush tool in Photoshop.
1. Adjust Size, Opacity and Hardness from the Keyboard
When a brush is selected you can adjust its size without having to open the Brushes palette by clicking the [ and ] keys on your keyboard.
Provided a brush is selected you can change its Opacity by typing a number. For example, type 5 to set Opacity to 50%, type 1 for 10% and 0 for 100%.
To adjust the hardness of the brush hold the Shift key as you tap either the [ or ] keys on the keyboard. Each tap increases or decreases the hardness by 25% in the range 0%-100%. The results of doing this are harder to see as there is no hardness indicator on the tool options bar. However, if you have the Painting Cursor set to Normal Brush Tip in preferences you will see a difference in the brush size as you do so
2. Save the Brush
When you have a brush configured with your preferred settings, save it as a Tool preset. To do this from the Brush Preset list in the top left of the screen click the Create New Tool Preset button and type a name for the preset. Click Ok.
In future you can select this saved preset from the list and just start painting with it.
3. Disappearing Brushes
One of the very annoying things that will happen to most of us at one time or another is to have the brush appear to disappear. Instead of the regular brush cursor which shows the size and style of the brush you will see a crosshair cursor.
The issue is not with the brushes themselves but is with the Caps Lock key. If you disable Caps Lock on your keyboard the more visual brush cursor will reappear.
4. Paint a Straight Line
To paint in a straight line, click at one end of the line, hold the Shift key and click at the other end of the line. This draws a continuous brushstroke between both points.
If you adjust the spacing of your brush by using the Brush panel Spacing option to make it more than 100% you can create a line of dots this way.
This can also be used to remove power lines with the Spot Healing Brush Tool. Click at one end of the power line, Shift + Click at the other end to paint a straight line over the power line and it will be removed automatically.
5. Quickly Show the Brush Panel
You can quickly show the Brush panel so you can choose a brush to use by first selecting a tool that uses a brush such as the Brush Tool, Dodge, Burn, Eraser tool and so on.
Then right click on the image and the brush panel appears automatically. To select a brush and exit the panel in one step, double click the brush to use.
And now it is over to you. What other features of Brushes do you think are valuable for photographers to know?
Change the Tone Curve to allow it to behave as a draggable Point Curve
In Lightroom, you can make the Tone Curve behave as a Point Curve clicking the Click to edit the Point Curve indicator at the foot of the Tone Curve panel.
When a tone curve is set to be a point curve you can drag on any point on the curve to adjust the tones in the image at that correspond to that point on the curve.
With the point curve selected, click on the Targeted Adjustment Tool in the top of the Point Curve dialog and drag on the image to lighten or darken the image at that point. Drag upwards to lighten, down to darken.
To delete a point on the curve, hold your mouse over the point, right click (Command + Click on the Mac), and select Delete Control Point.
Learn how to use a spin button (also called a spinner) form of control in Excel to aid in data entry. Using a spin button, a user can click the button to increase or decrease a value in a worksheet cell.
This video explains how to access the Developer tab, then, how to add the spin button form control and, finally, how to set up the control. It also explains how to scale the value that the control provides so it can provide percentages and very large or very small values. This feature is in Excel 97, 2000, 2002, Excel 2007, Excel 2010 and Excel 2013.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial we’re going to have a look at creating spin buttons in Excel to make data entry just about as much fun as data entry can be. Before we get started with spinner controls let’s have a look and see what we’re talking about.
Here is a copy of the worksheet that we’re going to be working on and this is the spin button control. It’s been set to work between 20 and 30 so it will take a value between 20 and 30 years and every time I click the down arrow it decrements this cell by one so that the overall payment per month on the mortgage is increased because the term is much shorter. When we increase the term on the mortgage by clicking on the up arrow the overall payment is reduced. And it stops at 30.
So let’s see how we would add the spinner control to this particular worksheet.
Well first of all you have to have the Developer tab available. It it’s not choose File and then Options and in Excel 2013 and 2010 you’ll go to the Customize Ribbon button here and you’ll check this Developer tab here so that turns it on. In Excel 2007 you’ll go here because there will be an option here for Show the Developer Toolbar in the Ribbon.
So once you’ve got the Developer toolbar available click it and then take this Insert option and you want the form controls. Now the Active X controls look pretty much the same thing but they work very, very differently. And what we want are the simple form controls because they’re the easiest to use. I’m going to click here on the spin button control and then I’m going to click and drag to create the control on my worksheet. Now I can resize it later on but I’m going to start by drawing this size.
I’m now going to right click it and choose Format Control. And this gives me my options for formatting the control. To start off with I can set its current value. So I can start it at for example 25 and then I can set its minimum value which I had previously set to 20 so all our mortgages are going to tested between 20 and 30 years in length. And then I’m going to make the maximum value the 30. So we’re going to move between 20 and 30. And the incremental changes how big a change do I want to happen with each click of the button. Now these have to be integers so one is the smallest value. And cell link is a pointer to the cell that I want the value to be inserted in so I’m going to click in here and then click in this cell because this is going to be my link cell and click Ok.
You can see that the cell value changed to 25. That’s because that was the starting value. Now if I click on the spin button right now nothing is going to happen because it’s still active. So I’m just going to click outside it and now I can test it. You can see I can click up but when I get to 30 I can’t click it any more and then it will click down. And when I get to 20 it won’t go any lower.
So that’s a spin button control that you can use to control this sort of value. But there are some limits to spin buttons that we’re going to have to get around. One of them is that they only return integer values and the maximum value is 30,000. So right now that would cause us some problems in trying to add the mortgage amount which is in the region of 200,000 or more when the maximum value is 30,000. And here the interest rate is 5 percent. That’s .05. That’s not even an integer. It’s not even a one. So we’re going to have problems controlling that. And we’re going to have to find a way around it which of course can be done easily.
To see how we would deal with the situation where the amount borrowed is a much larger figure than we can use in the spin button control let’s have a look at this worksheet. In this worksheet we’re looking at how we could possibly scale a range of 0 to 30,000 to actually work for us. Let’s say that the minimum amount that we want this mortgage calculator to work for is 100,000 and the maximum is one million. Well let’s look and see what 100,000 is. Well 100,000 is 10 times 10,000 and a million is 100 times 10,000. So we could have our spinner work between 10 and 100 if we could scale it up by 10,000 each time. I’m going to replace the formula with a value and it’s going to multiply the contents of cell D2 by 10,000. Now there’s nothing in cell D2 right now but we know that we can put a value in there using a spin button.
So again Developer, I’m going to Insert and I’m going to select the Spin Button Form Control. I’m going to drag to create it on the worksheet, right click it and choose Format Control. This time I want my minimum value to be 10 because I’m going to use a 10 to 100 scale here. The maximum value is going to be 100 and I’ll have it increment by one digit at a time which is going to be 10,000. I’m going to set my current value to, for argument sake, 20 so that we’ll get back our 200,000 in this cell. And the cell link cell is going to be the cell that has the value in it that this formula is using. When I click Ok let’s see how it’s working.
As you can see the spin button here is giving us this value here of 20 and in this cell we’re just taking the value of 20 and scaling it up. So now if I click on this button it’s going up by 10,000 every click of the button and it’s going to max out at one million. And if I were to come down then it would max out in the bottom direction at 100,000. And each time as I click on the button, well I’m sitting on the button right now, but as I click on the button the amount that we’re paying each month is being recalculated accordingly. So scaling up like this is a way of getting larger values than the 30,000 that we’re allowed in the spin button control. Of course that’s preempting the solution for this value here. All we need to do now is to scale this downwards. So let’s see how we do that.
To reduce a value using a spinner we’ll work the opposite direction. Let’s say that we want an interest value between 2 and 10 percent. That’s between .02 and .1.
.02 can be represented by 2 times .01 and 10 by 10 by .01. Now that’s only going to give us whole interest values so I don’t think it’s going to be quite big enough. Let’s go down a scale and let’s say it’s 20 multiplied by .001 and 100 multiplied by .001. That’s going to give us additional percentages in the range so instead of going 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent we can go 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and so on. So let’s take this scaling back to our worksheet. Again we’re going to add a spin button here so from the Developer toolbar Insert make sure that you’re using this form control and drag a spinner into position. We’ll right click it and choose Format Control and we’re going to use cell D3 as our intermediate cell. The minimum value is going to be 20. The maximum value from our previous calculations on the other worksheet is 100. We’ll use an incremental change of one for now and the cell link will be this cell here D3 and press Ok.
Now nothing is actually happening because we haven’t put our formula in here yet. The formula multiplies this value here by .001. And here is our smallest value 2 percent. We’ll need to reformat this cell so I’m going to the Home tab of the Ribbon and I’m going to increase the decimal places here so that we can see exactly what values we’re getting and not rounded values. Here everything is now going up in .1 of a percent. And it will max out at 10 percent because that’s where we set it to max out at. It won’t be able to go any larger than that.
Now all we need to do to make this worksheet a little bit neater is just to hide the column that contains those intermediary values. And now somebody can use this calculator to calculate a loan and instead of having to put value in here manually they can just click on the spin button controls to do it automatically.
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 visit my website at projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on a range of Office programs including Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Publisher.
Using the Tone Curve, you have the choice of preset settings: Linear, Medium Contrast or Strong Contrast. Use these as a starting point for adjusting the image.
Select the starting point then drag the Highlights and Lights sliders to the right to lighten these areas. Drag to the left on the Darks slider to darken the Darks. To bring detail out of the shadows, drag to the right on the Shadows slider.
See your document as a web page and keep it looking that way
To see how any of your Word 2010 and 2013 documents will look when they are saved as web pages, select the View tab on the Ribbon, then click Web Layout.
Now, to save a document as a web page, select File > Save As. In the Save As dialog, under click the Save as type: dropdown list and choose Web Page (*.htm;*.html).
Make sure to choose a location to save the document in, give it a name (it should have the .htm extension), and click Save.
Many of the fixes we commonly apply to images come from darkroom processes. Contrast masking is one of those fixes and it can be used to fix an image which is under or over exposed.
Contrast masking is a relatively simple process and it can work wonders with your images. I like it because it generally doesn’t require you to make selections and there is a lot to like about fixes that don’t involve selections.
Here’s how to use Contrast Masking to fix an under exposed image:
Open your image and duplicate the background layer. Target this duplicate layer in the Layers palette.
Desaturate this layer by choosing Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. Right now the default convert to black and white is just fine.
Alter the blend mode of this layer to Overlay.
To invert this black and white layer choose Image > Adjustments > Invert – this gives a negative of the image.
Adjust the layer opacity to suit.
Convert the top layer to a Smart Object by choosing Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.
Now blur this layer by choosing Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Adjust the Radius to adds some sharpening back to the image. Check the preview to get the best result for the image.
Use a text box in Word to control text wrap around a table
In a previous tip I showed you how to place a table inside a text box so you could put two tables side by side. You can use the same process to make the text on your page wrap around a table.
To control the way text wraps around a table, first create a text box and place a table inside it.
Then click to select the text box and, from the Ribbon, select the Format tab > Text Box Tools. Click the Wrap Text dropdown menu and choose the desired wrapping option from those in the list – typically you will use Square to wrap text round the text box with its inserted table.
