132 PAGES! Master every tool in the Photoshop toolbar AdobePhotoshop Every tool explained! Unleash the full power behind every icon in the Photoshop toolbar 132 pages of easy-to-follow tutorials and expert advice to help develop your Adobe Photoshop skills Welcome Polish up your knowledge… Unravel the mysteries of the Photoshop Toolbar and its resident icons.They’re not as scary as they look! Start up Photoshop and what do you see? Well, besides the menu options along the top of the screen, you’ll see a Toolbar that’s chock-a-block with icons. You’ll probably recognise some of these, such as the ‘T’ that designates the Type tool and the paintbrush icon that unlocks the various Brush tools. But do you really know what the rest of these icons mean? … Honestly? The chances are that – like many Photoshop users across the world – you’re only using a fraction of the program’s full potential, but this second issue in the Photoshop Focus Guide series will change all that, helping you make the most of all the tools at your disposal. Even professional designers often admit to being hopeless with the Healing Brush and dodgy with the Dodge tool, but there’s really no reason for any of the tools to be a mystery. This issue will help you get more from the Clone, Gradient, Paths and Effects tools, to name but a few. You’ll find expert tips and advice for working more efficiently with each of the tools, as well as tutorials to demonstrate exactly how to carry out useful image-editing tasks. In the final section you’ll find a step-by-step guide that brings together all the skills you’ve learnt, showing how to create a striking Photoshop image. And let’s not forget the CD that accompanies your Focus Guide. On here you’ll find a library of stock images (worth £1,990), plug-ins and video training tutorials to enhance your enjoyment of Photoshop further still! Have fun! ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 3 Future Publishing Ltd 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW www.thefuturenetwork.plc.uk Editor Dan McNamara Art Editor Simon Bleeze Writer Simon Danaher Production Clive Somerville Jonathan Palmer Cover image Chris Stocker New Media Co-ordinator Matt Gallimore Production Co-ordinator Diane Ross Group Publisher Dave Taylor Publishing Director John Weir Distributed through the UK Newstrade by Seymour Distribution, 86 Newman Street, London W1T 3EX Overseas Distribution by Future Publishing Ltd. Printed in the EU All contents © Future Publishing Ltd, 2003 We recommend that you always maintain All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a an up-to-date backup of your hard disk data. retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher. Future Publishing does not accept any Websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsibility for disruption, damage and/or responsible for the contents of these sites or any changes or updates to them. loss to your data or computer system that None of the information in this guide is intended as legal advice.The articles are for information purposes only. may occur while carrying out procedures described in this publication. Future Publishing is part of The Future Network plc. The Future Network produces carefully targeted specialist magazines and websites for groups of people who share a passion. We aim to satisfy their passion by creating titles that offer superb value for money, trustworthy information, multiple ways to save time and money, and are a pleasure to read or visit. Today we publish more than 80 magazines and over 30 magazine websites and networks from offices in four countries. The company also licenses 32 of its titles resulting in over 60 local editions in a further 23 countries.The Future Network plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FNET ). Non-executive Chairman Roger Parry Chief Executive Greg Ingham Chief Operating Officer & Managing Director, UK Colin Morrison Finance Director John Bowman Tel +44 1225 442244 www.thefuturenetwork.plc.uk Bath • London • Milan • New York • Paris • San Francisco 4 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Icons explained Finding your way Read this Guide from beginning to end or dip in and out as you please. Either way, our icons will prove indispensable… With so much to say about icon categories, see below.These Adobe Photoshop it’s been handy hints, tips and shortcuts are difficult to cram all the information always relevant to the topic that’s that we wanted to include into this being discussed, and will help you Focus Guide. That’s why you’ll find develop your Photoshop skills that the special icons that occupy the little bit faster. margins so very useful. Our writers are always experienced As you leaf through the pages, Photoshop experts who regularly you’ll find a range of attractive contribute to our sister magazines, symbols, each of which denotes an such as Computer Arts and Digital extra nugget of knowledge. The Camera Magazine. So you can rest icons enable you to identify exactly assured that all the information what kind of information you’re they provide is both authoritative dealing with – for a full guide to and thoroughly tried-and-tested. On your CD-ROM Take note Some of the software that we refer to may be You’ll find a number of these nuggets of knowledge included on your bonus CD. Every now and then scattered throughout the Guide. They’re crammed we remind you of this by flagging up the disc icon with useful information that complements the and listing what’s on it. Handy, eh? main text perfectly. Top tips Watch out! This indicates an expert tip. Anything sheltered The skull and crossbones sign means proceed beneath this icon is guaranteed to reveal a useful with caution. You’ll find some important points hint about using Photoshop’s extensive range of outlined below this icon, which you should tools, palettes and features. certainly take seriously. Further information Links We’d like to tell you absolutely everything, but When we refer to a website, we may pull out the there’s just not enough space. Instead we refer web address in the sidebar to make it easier for you to other useful resources, such as websites you to read and remember. and specialist books for further reading. Shortcuts Carrying out common tasks again and again can get a little tedious. Our handy shortcuts show you how to carry out these tasks with a few deft key-presses, saving you lots of time and effort. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 5 Contents CONTENTS Selections 1 SELECTION TOOLS IN PHOTOSHOP 10 Making selections is the core of Photoshop’s way of working.There are a variety of tools you can use for the purpose, so here’s how to get the most out of them BASIC SELECTION TOOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 THE LASSO TOOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 THE MAGNETIC LASSO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 THE MAGIC WAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 QUICK MASK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 WORKING WITH THE QUICK MASK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 SELECTIONS, MASKS AND CHANNELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 SLICES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Navigation and manipulation NAVIGATING AND EDITING YOUR IMAGES 22 2 Getting around inside an image is important if you are to work quickly and efficiently. This chapter covers the view navigation tools and shortcuts for managing your workspace PANNING AND ZOOMING IMAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 THE NAVIGATOR PANEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 VIEW MANAGEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 MOVE, ALIGN AND DISTRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 THE MOVE TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 DIRECT AND PATH SELECTION TOOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 VECTOR SHAPES AND MULTIPLE PATHS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 6 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Contents Brushes and Pencil tools USING THE BRUSHES AND PENCIL TOOLS 32 3 This chapter introduces you to Photoshop’s more arty tools,the Brushes. But as you’ll discover, you can use these versatile tools for far more than just painting THE BRUSH TOOL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 USING BRUSHES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 EXPLORING THE BRUSHES PALETTE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 THE BRUSHES PALETTE IN DETAIL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 SCATTERING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 TEXTURES AND DUAL BRUSHES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 THE HISTORY BRUSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 USING THE HISTORY BRUSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 ART HISTORY BRUSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4 Cloning and Healing tools USING THE CLONING AND HEALING TOOLS 46 The Cloning and Healing tools in Photoshop offer an elegant way to fix damaged photos, correct bad scans and generally clean up your images. And they’re great fun to use THE RUBBER STAMP (CLONE) TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 REMOVING UNWANTED ELEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 CLONING SKIN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 THE HEALING BRUSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 THE HEALING PATCH TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 5 Gradients,Fills and Erasing THE GRADIENT, FILL AND ERASER TOOLS 54 Once you get more competent with Photoshop you’ll appreciate the importance of these utility tools.The Gradient tool in particular is essential for all manner of tricks and effects THE PAINT BUCKET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 MORE FILL OPTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 THE GRADIENT TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 THE GRADIENT EDITOR PANEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 USING GRADIENTS CREATIVELY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 GRADIENT STYLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 GRADIENT MASKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 MASKS AND SELECTIONS IN DETAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 MAGIC AND BACKGROUND ERASERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 7 Contents 6 Effects Tools GETTING TO KNOW THE EFFECTS TOOLS 68 Photoshop’s effects tools include Blur, Sharpen, Smudge, Dodge and Burn. Discover how best to use them to spice up your artwork, composites and photographic images THE ‘FOCUS’ TOOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 THE BLUR TOOL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 THE SHARPEN TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 THE SMUDGE TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 WORKING WITH THE SMUDGE TOOL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 DODGE AND BURN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 THE SPONGE TOOL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 USING DODGE AND BURN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 FOCUSING IN WITH DODGE AND BURN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 7 TextWORKING WITH THE TYPE TOOL 80 Creating text in Photoshop is quite easy to do, whether it’s for artistic effect or simply to add essential information.This chapter looks at the various options available with the Type tool THE TYPE TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 TYPE OPTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 TYPE TOOL TIPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 USING THE WARP TEXT PANEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 RASTERIZING TYPE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 STYLED TYPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 8 VectorsWORKING WITH PATHS,VECTORS AND MASKS 90 Photoshop has always used vector-based ‘paths’ to draw smooth shapes and outlines. Learn how the latest version has the ability to create shapes and masks with vectors too USING THE PEN TOOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 VECTOR SHAPES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 USING VECTOR SHAPES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 MASKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 VECTOR SHAPE DETAILS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 8 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Contents 9 Miscellaneous tools and Utilities ANNOTATIONS, NOTES AND THE MEASURE TOOL 100 Along with the creative tools, Photoshop provides several tools to add accuracy, sound and vision to your work.These fall into two tool groups – Notation and Measurement tools NOTES AND ANNOTATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 THE EYE DROPPER TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 USING THE EYE DROPPER TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 THE COLOUR SAMPLER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 THE MEASURE TOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 10 Artwork project CREATING TOP QUALITY ARTWORK 108 In this final chapter we’ll put together a piece of artwork using all the tools and options that we’ve looked at over the course of this Photoshop Focus Guide CREATING A MONTAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 FIX MISSING PARTS OF THE IMAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 USING THE PEN AS A BRUSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 ADDING A BACKGROUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 APPLYING ARTISTIC DETAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 VECTOR SHAPE AND TYPE LAYERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Essential information CD PAGES AND RESOURCES 120 Your essential guide to the software on your disc. Plus our handy glossary and index CD PAGES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 GLOSSARY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 9 Chapter 1 SELECTION TOOLS IN PHOTOSHOP In this chapter… Making selections is the core of Photoshop’s D i s c o v e r h o w t h e way of working.There are a variety of tools you P h o t o s h o p s e l e c t i o n t o o l s w o r k can use for the purpose, so let’s take a look at L e a r n h o w t o m a ke how to get the most out of them a c c u r a t e s e l e c t i o n s C r e a t e p a r t i a l o r g r a d i e n t s e l e c t i o n s In earlier versions of Photoshop the main tools for doing 90% of the there was no Select tool – one tasks in Photoshop. that looked like a traditional arrow Selections are an essential part of cursor, that you would use to select understanding Photoshop’s methods ‘objects’. Because Photoshop dealt and central to the way the program primarily with pixels, it made no works – making a selection then sense to have a Select tool – there performing an action on that were no ‘objects’ to select. Instead, selection is the basic workflow. the selection tools were default tools The better you become at Photoshop – ones you used automatically, to the better you’ll become at making begin editing. selections and vice-versa. In Photoshop 7.0 there is an arrow tool for selecting objects, since the No need for discretion introduction of vector shapes (those What’s important to understand, drawn using a series of points or though, is that selections are not ‘vectors’) made this necessary. necessarily discreet. They don’t have Despite this, the selection tools, in to define rigidly what is or is not their many and varied forms, are still selected – they can be partial too. Selections Page 12 The Circular Marquee tool Page 13 Single Column marquees are Page 15 The Magnetic Lasso lets you makes an elliptical selection used to select only certain columns make detailed selections with ease Page 17 The Magic Wand tool selects an Page 18 Quick mask mode turns any Page 20 Photoshop can convert object in an image to change the colour painting tool into a selection tool channels into selections and vice-versa It is perfectly possible to make a border around the selection where selections so that some pixels are some of the pixels are partially 100% selected and others are 100% selected, smoothing whatever effect unselected, and in between there is a or operation is applied to the selection gradient, where pixels are selection, or merely preventing partially selected. This is how you jagged edges. create effects that blend smoothly into existing pixels, and this also The soft option forms the basis of ‘anti-aliasing’ – By making the feathered edge larger, smoothing jagged, pixelated edges. you’ll be able to create very soft Feathering is the most basic selections, and this is very useful when implementation of gradient making photo-montages, for instance, selections in Photoshop. When or retouching images. We’ll look at making a rigid selection using one how anti-aliasing and feathering are of the Marquee tools for instance, implemented in Photoshop’s selection you can tell Photoshop to make the tools, and how you can use them to edge of the selection slightly soft, or achieve professional results quickly ‘feathered’. This effectively creates and easily. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 11 Chapter 1 Basic Selection tools Let’s take a look at the various tools in the toolbar available for making selections The Rectangular Marquee tool is the 1 first tool in the Toolbar, and is used to select rectangular areas of an image. It’s simple to use – just select the tool and drag Changing across the image to select the area you want. marquees By default the tools works in corner-to-corner Holding down the mode. Dragging from top-left or bottom-right [Alt] key will change creates the marquee. the marquee mode so that the selection expands from the centre, rather than the The Circular Marquee works in exactly 2 the same way, except the selection will corners, as you drag. be elliptical. With both tools you can constrain the selection so it is either a perfect circle or a perfect square by holding down the [Shift] key while you drag. Lift your finger off the [Shift] key while still holding the mouse button down to switch back to unconstrained mode. The Options bar displays tool-specific 3 settings.The selection tools all have a set Shifting around of four buttons that change the effect that Rather than using the subsequent selections have on the one that’s buttons you can hold currently active.The normal mode is New down modifier keys to Selection – each time you click and drag, a new add and subtract selection is made and the current one is lost. selections.To add, hold Add mode makes the current selection larger the [Shift] key before and a different shape. you begin to click and drag.To subtract hold In Subtract mode, you can remove areas the [Alt] key before you 4 from the current selection. Here we click and drag.The changed to the Circle Marquee tool to marquee cursor will subtract an elliptical shape from the change to show which rectangular selection we had made. You can mode you are in. continue to make negative selections that chip away at the current selection. This is a good way to refine a selection to fit a specific shape in an image. 12 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Selections The fourth mode is Intersect. When in 5 this mode, you can create a new selection that is the intersection between the currently active one and one you will drag out. Short intersection Basically all parts of the current selection will To activate Intersect disappear except that portion that overlaps with the new selection you drag out. Here is mode without using the original selection with a new one being the buttons hold dragged out over it, using the Intersect mode. down the [Alt} and [Shift] keys before you drag. This is the result of the intersection. 6 Note that it’s only the overlapping parts of the two selections that remain selected. This selection method is not used very often but you’ll appreciate just how handy it can be in certain situations. Creating similar selections any other way would be very Perfect circle difficult and time-consuming. If, after dragging while holding down the [Shift] key, you want to force the selection to be The last two selection types in this tool 7 constrained to a perfect group are the Single Row and Single circle or rectangle, Column Marquees. These are special types of marquee which, as their name suggests, select release the [Shift] key either a single row or column of pixels. In this momentarily and press case dragging only defines which row or it again. Holding the column in the image is selected and the [Alt] key while dragging selection extends to the edges of the image will force a selection to in either mode. be drawn from its centre as mentioned. If already holding the Uses for the Single Row and Column 8 [Alt] key, such as when Marquees are varied, but not always using the Intersection obvious. Here, they’re used to create multiple random vertical and/or horizontal lines in an shortcut, momentarily image much more quickly than using the release it and then Pencil or Line tool. The Add Selection mode press the [Alt] key. was used and the selections filled with black, This forces the on separate layers, to create lines whose ‘constraint from opacity and blending mode we can vary. centre’ to occur. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 13 Chapter 1 The Lasso Tools The standard, Polygonal and Magnetic Lassos are ideal for creating complex selections The Lasso tool is a free-form selection tool. You can use it like a pen to draw your selection Poly-gone border by hand. When using the When using the Polygonal Lasso Lasso tool selections can be any holding down the shape you like, but it can be hard to [Alt] key invokes the be precise because selection must be normal Lasso tool. drawn in a single motion. The Releasing the [Alt] key Polygonal Lasso is much easier to reverts back to the use, and can be found in the Lasso Using the [Alt] key technique allows you the best Polygonal Lasso. tool pop-up in the toolbar. This of both worlds, drawing straight sections or enables you to click from one point detailed curves as and when you need to to another to create straight line or click on the starting point of the segments to make up your selection. selection to end it and consequently All you need to do is double-click, close your selection. LASSO OPTIONS ROUNDED UP Combined Lasso With the Lasso tool THERE ARE two ways in which to work using the [Alt] shortcut. active, just hold down Assuming you have the normal Lasso tool selected, if you keep the [Alt] the [Alt] key at any key held down when you click and drag, the tool will behave like the stage to turn it into the normal Lasso. Polygonal Lasso. IF YOU want to get really precise,then the Magnetic Lasso is the key. With this selection tool you can draw close to the edge of the object you wish to select and the tool will figure out where the boundary should be and adjust the selection to fit. YOU CAN set the Frequency high to place lots of points as you drag. This can be handy for jagged edges. A LOW Frequency is also useful when you don’t need the added complexity of hundreds of anchor points, but can make do with a less precise selection. 14 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Selections The Magnetic Lasso If you want detailed selections without too much effort, here’s the perfect tool for the task This tool lets you make more detailed 1 selections, particularly of specific objects in an image, without requiring too Fast pan and zoom much effort. You don’t have to keep the mouse button held down when drawing either – You can use the Pan and click once to start, drag close to the object Zoom shortcuts to move edge, then double-click to end. Note that the the image around while tool automatically places ‘anchor points’ as still in mid-selection. See you draw to keep the selection in place. Chapter 2 for more about navigating and editing your images. If the area you are tracing is too 2 indistinct and low in contrast for Photoshop to find an edge itself, you can click the mouse to force an anchor point to be placed. The default setting in the Options bar is fine most of the time, but there can be problems – here, the tool has no problem with the edge of the hair, but it didn’t seem to detect the pumpkin stalk. This is a problem of contrast. By 3 reducing the Edge Contrast setting in Magnetic switch the Option bar you can help the Magnetic Hold the [Alt] key to Lasso to detect edges that are lower in activate the contrast. But you will still need to manually Polygonal Lasso add anchor points by clicking, to help the tool when using the Lasso do this. Magnetic Lasso. Another trick to help on very low 4 contrast portions of an image, such as where the pumpkin stalk is in front of the girl’s face again, it can help to increase the Frequency setting. This will cause the tool to place anchor points more often, therefore reducing the span of pixels it has to analyze as you drag the mouse. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 15 Chapter 1 The Magic Wand The Magic Wand is a special selection tool, used for selecting areas of similar colour The Magic Wand tool is used to select 1 areas using a single click. The tool works by sampling the colour of the image where you click and then looking at all adjacent Unrestricted pixels for those that are the same or similar in colours colour. Take a well-defined shape like the one When the Contiguous here and click in it with the Magic Wand – the setting in the Options whole shape is selected in one go. bar is checked, Photoshop makes a selection of similar- coloured pixels that Most images don’t contain large areas of 2 flat colour like the one above, so here’s a are also physically more typical use for the Magic Wand – selecting joined to your starting the girl’s jumper to change its colour. Using the point. Disable this Magic Wand, we can click on a section of the setting and similar jumper to select all pixels with a similar colour. colour pixels across However, using the default setting there are the whole image will many ‘islands’ of unselected pixels, so not all of be included, which the jumper has been selected. can take a few moments. The Magic Wand will only select colours 3 within a certain range, defined by the Tolerance setting. And it will only look at contiguous pixels – that is, ones that actually touch each other. Areas of colour not directly connected, like the chest and other arm, are Use All Layers not considered for selection. The Use All Layers option allows you to calculate the selection based on how the We can improve the ability of the wand image actually 4 to select the colours we want by appears on screen increasing the Tolerance setting, from the when working with default 32, to 50 then [Shift]+clicking in each multi-layered of the separate areas. Any other parts of the documents. If this is jumper still not selected can be added by left unchecked, then [Shift]+clicking on them again until you have only colours on the a good clean selection with no ‘islands’. currently selected layer will be analysed for similarity. 16 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Selections Here you can see that a part of the arm 5 has been selected. This is due to the high tolerance setting used. You can easily remove it from the selection, but first reduce Colour tweaks the tolerance to a lower value, such as 24, The Hue/Saturation then [Alt]-click on the arm inside the selection to remove it. panel lets you adjust the whole spectrum or individual sectors of the colour spectrum. Choose By adding a Hue/Saturation Adjustment these from the 6 Layer while the selection is still active, pop-up menu. you can change the colour of the the jumper, and only the jumper. Photoshop creates a layer mask from the selection and uses is to limit which areas of the adjustment layer will actively affect the layers below. If we zoom into the document we can 7 see that there is a slight fringe of red. This is because some of the jumper that Let it slide overlaps the background was left unselected. The sliders at the This is a limitation of the tolerance setting bottom of the used by the Magic Wand. Fortunately, there is Hue/Saturation panel a way we can fix this. enable you to adjust the range of colours affected in each sector. By selecting the layer mask and 8 applying the Gaussian Blur filter with a smallish value we can make the layer mask slightly bigger. Then by applying Levels to the layer mask we can make the blurred edges brighter, controlling how much of the Hue/Saturation effect is applied to this area. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 17 Chapter 1 Quick Mask Quick Mask is not a tool as such, but a mode you can enter when working with selections When any selection is active, no matter 1 which of the selection tools you started off using, you can enable Photoshop’s Quick Mask mode. Here is a less-than-perfect Fill the gaps selection we have made using the Magic Wand. Holes in a Mask or Quick Mask can be filled by selecting the inside or outside area and applying the Minimum filter. By clicking the Quick Mask button at 2 the bottom of the toolbar, or pressing the [Q] key, the selection is converted to a mask. The mask is displayed, not in shades of grey, but as a semi-transparent overlay. This mimics the techniques used in traditional printing where a red ‘rubylith’ overlay is used to mask out parts of a photo or artwork. The red overlay is slightly transparent 3 so you can see what it beneath. Red Keep it sharp areas are masked out (unselected) while Apply the Minimum clear areas are unmasked (selected). But filter to a copy of a internally, Photoshop stores the mask in layer using the shades of grey, not red – so this is how the Overlay mode to mask looks to Photoshop. give you a ‘live’ sharpening layer. While in Quick Mask mode, therefore, 4 you can use any of the normal painting tools to modify your mask, and hence your selection. You can see that Photoshop offers a huge amount of freedom when creating selections, and this is indicative of how important selections are when using Photoshop. Here, the Paintbrush tool is being used to clean up the mask. 18 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Selections Working with the Quick Mask The Quick Mask lets you create a ready-made mask, which you can edit or turn into a selection When painting, take notice of the foreground colour indicated in the bottom of the toolbar. When in Quick Mask mode Disappearing ants this will only indicate shades of To hide the ‘marching grey, so any colours you have set ants’ while a selection will appear grey. Hitting the [D] key is active use the sets the colours to the default, white [Crtl]+[H] shortcut (that’s and black. As you paint you can use [Command]+[H] the [X] key to reverse the background Make use of the foreground and background for Mac users). Be and foreground colours so that you switch key [X] to flip between masked and unmasked colours careful to remember can paint in white (unmask) or black that you have a (mask) to edit the mask. once more to exit Quick Mask selection active Once you have touched up the mode. You’ll then be able to convert though! mask, you can press the [Q] key the edited mask to a selection. HOW TO MODIFY YOUR SELECTIONS IF YOU need to make a selection slightly bigger all the way round,you can do so using the Select > Modify > Expand menu command. A dialog will appear in which you can enter the number of pixels by which you wish to expand the selection. Hiding YOU CAN contract a selection by using the Select > Modify > Contract applications menu command. To make a selection larger by a specified number of To hide other pixels around it, choose Select > Modify > Expand from the menu. applications on a Mac and leave only TO SOFTEN a selection and make its border less jagged,you can use Photoshop visible, type the Select > Feather menu command, enter a value in pixels (from 1 to [Command]+[Alt]+[H]. 250) and click OK. On PCs, Photoshop has an application IF YOU need to modify just the border of the selection area you can background window, select it using the Select > Modify > Border. This is useful for creating so this is not special edge effects, in combination with some filters, like Torn Edges. applicable. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 19 Chapter 1 Selections,Masks and Channels Let’s look at selections in a little more detail to see how how they relate to layers and channels As we’ve seen with the Quick Mask 1 mode, selections are handled internally by Photoshop as a greyscale image or ‘mask’. White areas in the mask are pixels that are Alpha channels fully selected, black areas are fully unselected The term alpha and grey areas are partially selected. Let’s channel simply means create a simple selection using the Elliptical any extra greyscale Marquee tool. channel saved along with the three RGB channels, or four CMYK channels, that make up We can convert the selection into an 2 a colour image file. ‘alpha’ channel by switching to the Channels tab and clicking the Save Selection Photoshop files can As Channel button, (second from the left at store many of these the bottom of the palette). The selection is alpha channels at once. then represented by a greyscale image. Now that the selection is saved as a 3 channel, we can drop the selection and continue to make new ones. It’s only possible to have one selection active at a time, so Channel selection saving them to a channel is a convenient way to store them for use later on. Here we’ve [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Shift]+click created another selection and saved it as on a channel to load another channel. It’s just a larger ellipse. the intersection of the current selection and a channel. To reload a channel as a selection once 4 again, click the Load Channel As Selection button at the bottom-left of the Channels palette. A better technique is to press [Ctrl] (or [Command] on a Mac) while clicking on the channel icon directly – we can load the larger ellipse as a selection (by pressing [Ctrl/Command] while clicking on it) then subtract the smaller ellipse by pressing [Ctrl/Command]+[Alt] while clicking its icon in the Channel palette. 20 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Selections Slices Slices are special kinds of selections for web page design, before the Image Ready stage Here’s an example of where slicing can 1 really help. This is an example web page, containing text, a background, a photographic image and graphics created in Photoshop. Reassembled slices Obviously, for the web we want the page to When you save the download as fast as possible but also look as good a possible. sliced page Photoshop creates an HTML file plus separate image files for each slice. When the HTML file is read by a The problem here is that the different web browser all the 2 kinds of graphics element on the page slices are reassembled in really need to be saved individually using the their original position, compression settings best suited to each. giving the appearance We can’t do this without using slices in of a single image Photoshop. As this pretty extreme example once again. shows, achieving a small file size causes most of the elements to look terrible. Using the Slice tool we can divide up 3 the image into sections. It’s simple to use – just select the tool and drag out marquees to cut the image into appropriate Keep it tidy boxes. Photoshop automatically adds extra slices where necessary to keep everything Hold the [Ctrl] key rectangular because each slice essentially while using the Slice becomes a separate image file. tool to toggle the Slice Select tool on and off. Use this to select a slice and drag its edge Now choose File > Save For Web to open 4 handles to resize it. Be Photoshop’s web compression tool. In careful not to have this panel, you can select each slice and apply any unnecessary precisely the compression most suitable. For ‘sliver’ slices between example, a photo saved as high quality JPEG, the text as a medium quality JPEG and the the main slices. Zoom graphics as GIFs.The backgrounds can be saved in to check they all as low quality JPEGs.This sliced, higher quality butt up against each image is only 5k larger than our first attempt. other nicely. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 21 Chapter 2 NAVIGATING AND EDITING YOUR IMAGES In this chapter… Getting around inside an image is important if L e a r n h o w t o p a n a n d z o o m i m a g e s you are to work quickly and efficiently.This D i s c o v e r h o w t o s e l e c t chapter covers the view navigation tools and a n d m o v e l a y e r e l e m e n t s shortcuts for managing your workspace U s e s h o r t c u t s t o s c a l e a n d p a n t h e v i e w Wo r k m o r e e f f i c i e n t l y a n d p r o d u c t i v e l y Being able to zoom and pan an do something to change that fact, image is important when such as creating a new layer on working on a Photoshop document. which to paint. In some 2D Like all other aspects of the program programs, every time you paint a there is more than one way to get stroke or apply an effect, a new around an image, manage your object is created. While this gives windows and documents, and you a totally non-destructive way of generally navigate the Photoshop image editing, it can make managing landscape. Similarly you’ll need to your document a very complicated be able to work with the elements procedure. In Photoshop it’s much within a document, such as masks, more straightforward. layers, floating selections, paths and vector masks. There are a number of Painting in layers tools to accomplish these tasks. If you paint on an image layer, stop As mentioned before, Photoshop is say, to change colour, then paint over not an object-based 2D program – what you just did, the result that is, you work directly with the destructively alters those pixels in pixels of a layer until you explicitly the layer. It’s much like painting in Navigation and manipulation Page 24 Use the Zoom and Pan tools Page 25 The Navigation palette is great Page 26 Manage your screen space to navigate your images on screen for giving an overview of the whole page when multiple documents are open Page 28 The Move tool enables you to Page 29 Quick 3D effects are possible Page 31 Use the Direct Selection and navigate your layers with a pop-up menu using the Move tool in copy mode Path tools to work with paths and vectors the real world, except in Photoshop vector-based elements. It’s important you have an Undo command. to learn the difference between If you need to paint over the top of them, and we’ll examine these existing artwork and be able to go differences more closely in the back and change the position, size, following pages. colour and opacity of those strokes later on, then you have to paint on a Old and new new layer. This holds true for any The Path Select and Direct Selection other aspect of the program where tools are not easy to find in older new pixels are created. versions of Photoshop. The Path While the Selection tools – the Select tool used to be part of the Pen Marquee, Lasso and so on – are used tool group, but can now be found in to select pixels within a layer, there its own tool group on the toolbar. are other tools for selecting and Many revisions have been made to moving layer elements themselves. both the menus and toolbar, but These include the Move tool, the rest assured that most of the Path Select tool and the Direct information in this book also applies Selection tool for dealing with to older versions of Photoshop. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 23 Chapter 2 Panning and Zooming images Here we show you the basic navigation tools available for viewing your image When you open an image in Photoshop 1 it is automatically scaled so that the whole image is visible at once. The scaling factor is displayed as a percentage in the 100% accuracy window’s title bar. But how do you zoom in to To zoom the image so see more detail in a large image? As is often that it is at exactly the case when using Photoshop, there are a 100% scale, double- number of different options. click the Zoom tool in the toolbar. At the bottom of the toolbar are the 2 Hand (which we’ll refer to as the Pan tool) and Zoom tools. Click the Zoom tool then click on your image to zoom in. Eventually you’ll zoom in so far that the individual pixels will become visible as large blocks of a single colour. You’ve exceeded the resolution limit for the image on your monitor, but getting this close is often very useful. To zoom out again, either click the 3 Zoom Out button in the Option bar and Viewing options click in the image, or hold down [Ctrl] and click Use the buttons in the (that’s [Option]+click on a Mac). If the image Option bar to zoom extends past the borders of the window you the image to full size, can pan the image by clicking on the Pan tool, print size or to make or holding the Space Bar at any time and it fit on screen. dragging in the window. Two useful options are the Resize 4 Window To Fit and Ignore Palettes options in the Zoom tool’s Option bar. With the former option enabled the window will change size along with the image, and with the latter option enabled the window will continue to extend below any open palettes, though not the toolbar. 24 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Navigation and manipulation The Navigator panel A useful device for getting around documents is the Navigator panel. Here’s how it works From the Windows menu you can access 1 the Navigator panel, though it’s open by default in Photoshop. This is a handy tool because it enables you to view the entire Navigator panel image in a small window, pan the main view, This can be very and zoom in and out, all from the same small area on screen. It’s great for those that don’t useful when working like to use keyboard shortcuts. on multiple monitor set-ups.You can have a full-screen preview of your image on one The Navigator panel is very useful when monitor while you 2 zoomed in very close to an image, work up close on because it shows you with a red box exactly another.This prevents where in the main image the zoomed in you continually portion is located. Note that you can make the zooming in and out to preview larger by dragging the lower right see how the editing corner of the palette to resize it, even to fill the whole screen. looks relative to the rest of the image. To zoom in and out using the Navigator 3 you have a few different options. You can use the zoom slider to interactively zoom the image, and that’s quite fun to do. Or you can click on the Zoom In and Zoom Out A different scale buttons either side of the slider. Or you can Some previous click in the text field to enter an exact scale. versions of Photoshop do not allow incremental and fractional scaling – The triangle at the top-right of the you can only scale out 4 Navigator accesses the options for the to 75%, 50%, 25%, panel. There are only two in Photoshop 7: 12.5%… or in to Dock To Palette Well and Options. The latter 125%, 150%, 200% lets you change the colour of the zoom box, and so on. which can be handy if you have a very red image like ours and the box is hard to see, of if you just don’t like working with the red colour. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 25 Chapter 2 View management Photoshop has several gadgets to help you work with various views of your document Floating away The main interface in Photoshop is quite simple and well laid- out, but it has been constantly The floating palettes refined through development to can get in that way, offer highly efficient document and especially if you are working on a small view management. Within the main monitor. No matter, at menu is the View menu which has any time you can hit many view management options – the [F] key to toggle the Zoom In and Out commands and the display mode to their respective shortcuts, as well as Multiple documents can be arranged on the full screen. Use the commands to show the Rulers, screen using Tile, in Windows > Documents. This Tab key to toggle the fits your images next to each other on screen Guides and Grids and the option to palettes on and off to enable various kinds of snapping. [Ctrl]+[+] and [Ctrl]+[–] to zoom in get a totally uncluttered view. As well as using the Navigator or and out (Mac users replace [Ctrl] Zoom tool you can use the shortcuts with [Command]). ZOOMING AROUND When the Zoom tool is The Navigator panel is active the Options bar grouped with the Info displays a few extra buttons – palette. Use the navigator to Actual Pixels, Fit On Screens perform multiple view and Print Size. These zoom navigation tasks in one area, the view to specific sizes. with one hand. You also get a handy image preview. The Zoom and Pan tools can be found at the bottom The Print Size pop-up is of the toolbar. Click on these located at the bottom of the to zoom and pan inside document window. Click on the image. the blank space here to preview how large the image will print out on the paper size set in the Print dialog. At the bottom of the toolbar are buttons to control full screen view. The middle one makes the current window fill Yet another way to zoom the screen, the right makes the document is to type in a the menu bar disappear and value here at the bottom-left the left returns it to normal. of the document window. 26 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Navigation and manipulation Move,Align and Distribute The latest version of Photoshop has handy Align and Distribute features Line them up As well as moving and copying selection. If you click on the lines, The Align features pixels, Photoshop’s Move tool you’ll switch to the Free Transform work with selections allows you to align and distribute mode, enabling you to scale, rotate on fully filled layers objects evenly across the document and deform the objects. too. If a selection is active then it is used or within a selection. With the Move The next section of options only as a master guide for tool selected you will see a number becomes active when you have all the layers to be of options available. linked layers. To link layers so that aligned to. If you have The first option, Auto Select you can move them as one object, go accidentally moved Layer, is very handy. It enables you to the Layers palette and click the image layers so that to click on a pixel in the image to blank icon box between the eye icon they lie partially off select that layer. The next, Show and one of your layers. A chain icon the canvas you can Bounding Box, displays a transform now appears in the blank icon box, use the Align feature to make them all line box around the selection or element indicating that the layer you have up again squarely on or layer. You can drag the handles on just clicked next to is now linked to the canvas. the edge of the box to move the the currently selected layer. ACTIVATING ALIGN AND DISTRIBUTE Feel like going MAD? Here’s how to Move, Align and Distribute When you select a layer that has other layers linked to it the Align and Distribute options of the Move tool become active. Click on these to distribute the layers or align them to various key points. You can use the Align Left Edges button, for example, to align individual text layers so that their left edges line up. It’s important to note that these options only take into account the bounding box of the layer. If you have a series of layers linked together but they are filled totally with pixels, then the align options will have no effect. This is The Align and Distribute buttons in because the layers have nowhere to be aligned to, as they the Move options bar can be used to are already lined up on the canvas. align multiple linked layers ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 27 Chapter 2 The Move tool The Move tool is a very handy, multi-purpose gadget – and surprisingly easy to use The Move tool is the second tool at the 1 top of the toolbar. It looks like an arrow but without the tail. Use this tool when you want to move elements in a document, be On the Move they selected pixels or whole layers. At any time,no matter what tool is selected, you can access the Move tool by pressing [V] on your keyboard. The neat thing about the Move tool is 2 that it has a built-in layer navigation feature. In a multi-layer document you can find out exactly which layers are beneath any given point in an image by control-clicking and holding on the image. A menu will pop up displaying the names of the layers in order, from the top downwards. You can scroll your mouse through the 3 list to select precisely the right layer you Scissor action want to move without having to go to the The Move tool cursor Layers palette. Here we’ve selected the displays a pair of Wireframe layer, and moved it. Getting into scissors next to it the habit of naming your layers will help here. when it is over an active selection. If a selection is active then the Move 4 tool will move the pixels in the selection only, as opposed to the whole layer. Here we’ve selected the whole object in a flattened document and dragged it. The result is that the pixels are lifted and moved, leaving a hole behind. 28 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Navigation and manipulation Moving pixels and leaving a hole behind 5 may be fine in some circumstances but if you want to copy the pixels instead of cutting them out then you have to hold down the [Alt] Extrude and move key (often called the ‘Option’ key on a Mac, In the 3D text example although it’s still labelled ‘Alt’) as you drag with the Move tool. Notice that the cursor will on the left, we first change to a double arrow, indicating you’re created a text layer, now in Copy mode. then loaded it as a selection by command clicking the layer. In a Now as you drag the selection will be new layer below the 6 copied, lifted and moved to another text layer we created a location on the layer. Note that while the gradient through the selection is still active the copied pixels selection, and with it occupy a quasi-layer. This is said to be still active we carried ‘floating’ selection. You can move it around out an extrude- as if it was on its own layer. Only when you deselect the pixels will it be dropped on to move function. the layer. Another way to do this is to create a 7 new layer from the selection first, then use the Move tool as normal. With a selection active press [Ctrl] + [J] (that’s [Command] + [J] on a Mac) to convert the selection to a new Computer Arts layer, then move it as normal. To discover even more ways to develop your Photoshop skills, check out our sister magazine, Computer Arts. A nifty trick is to hold down the [Alt] key 8 You can find the and use the arrow keys to nudge the magazine’s website at selection diagonally. Used on a text outline www.computerarts.co.uk. filled with a gradient like this, repeatedly pressing the Up and Right Arrow keys creates an extruded 3D object. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 29 Chapter 2 Direct and Path Selection tools Use the Path Selection and Direct Selection tools to move and edit paths and vector shapes Here we have two vector shapes in a 1 single vector mask applied to a Solid Colour layer. They are not properly aligned and we need to select them independently, A familiar Path but how? The Move tool only lets us move The Path Selection the whole layer, so we’re not able to select tool is much like the the paths independently. old arrow cursor in the Pen tool group of previous versions of Photoshop, before vector shapes For this we need to activate the Path 2 Selection tool. This is in the eighth row and masks of the toolbar and looks like a black arrow were introduced. cursor. With this selected, clicking on the edges of each path in the vector mask selects it. We are able to move the path and transform it to fit by making the bounding box visible and clicking on the edge of the box to activate Free Transform. Much like other selections in Photoshop 3 you can add to them using the [Shift] Hide and seek key. Here we have selected both paths by You can show and [Shift]-clicking on the second path to activate hide the path outlines it. Both can now be transformed together. by typing However, to make this work you must have [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[H], on the Show Bounding Box option turned off. your keyboard (that’s [Command] +[Shift]+[H] for Mac users) or toggling the With both paths selected you can click Views > Show > 4 on the Combine button in the Path Target Paths menu Selection’s Option bar to merge both (or as command on and off. many as you like) into a single path. If you click away from the paths to deselect them, then reselect them, you’ll see that all the paths are now selected because they are one. 30 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Navigation and manipulation Vector shapes and multiple paths Follow our step-by-step guide to working on vector shapes and multiple paths If you want to edit the points of a vector 1 shape mask then you need to change from the Path Selection to the Direct Selection tool. With this tool active, you are able to Take the A road click to select individual points in a path or The [A] key is the vector shape. shortcut to the Path Selection tool group. To toggle between Path and Direct Selection mode type If you need to select multiple points on [Shift]+[A]. 2 a path and move them as one you can drag out a marquee with the Direct Selection tool. Alternatively the usual ‘shift to add’ maxim holds true: [Shift]+click to add points to the selection that are difficult to select within a single marquee. With either the Direct Selection or Path 3 Selection tools active you can duplicate Make a point a path, or multiple paths by [Option]+dragging Clicking once on a them. The cursor will change to display a plus sign next to it when you hold the Option key point that already has down as a visual cue that you are about to handles with the Cusp make a copy. cursor converts it to a sharp point with no handles. With the Direct Selection tool you can 4 select a point in order to access its Bezier handles and modify the shape of the curve. If a point has no handles you can pull them out by holding down [Ctrl]+[Alt] as you drag ([Command]+[Alt] on a Mac). The tool changes to an inverted ‘V’, called the Cusp tool. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 31 Chapter 3 USING THE BRUSHES AND PENCIL TOOLS In this chapter… This chapter introduces you to Photoshop’s U s i n g t h e B r u s h a n d P e n c i l t o o l s more arty tools, the Brushes. However, as we’ll E d i t i n g a n d s a v i n g see, you can use these versatile tools for far b r u s h p r o p e r t i e s more than just painting C r e a t i n g c u s t o m b r u s h t i p s U s i n g t h e H i s t o r y a n d A r t H i s t o r y b r u s h Photoshop is traditionally known everything else in Photoshop, and for image manipulation, getting the most out of the Brush retouching, effects and colour tools involves finding out all the correction, but not so much as a little secrets and features buried painter’s tool. This has partly been inside the program. Actually they’re due to the fact that the artistic not that secret but its surprising how capabilities of the program were few of the shortcuts some Photoshop severely limited due to the poor users know. It’s usually those who support for artistic media have been using it since the early simulation. Other programs such as days that know all the best tips. Corel Painter used to lead the market here, but the last few versions of Spoilt for choice Photoshop has seen it’s Brushes In a way, the later, feature-rich system completely overhauled, versions spoil you by giving you so making it much more useful as an many options to work with. The artistic media program. History palette, introduced in Having said that, Brushes have version 5, is a fantastic time-saving always been essential for just about device. It’s also an incredible feature Brushes and Pencil tools Page 34 Photoshop’s brush editing Page 35 Access Photoshop’s hidden Page 36 Learn about the importance of system gets the most from Brush tools extras for more versatility Spacing, Flow and Opacity for brushes Page 41 Dual Brushes offer the user Page 43 The History Brush offers Page 45 The Art History Brush allows unprecedented levels of detail superb photo manipulation options you to turn an image into a painting that takes the basic Photoshop time. These will not ‘fall off the functions and multiplies their back’ like items in the undo list capabilities tenfold. The History would when the list exceeded the palette essentially adds a kind of number of steps set in the non-linear undo to the program. Preferences. However all this power Previously undo was limited to just and flexibility comes at a cost: hopping back step-by-step. The disk space. The History states can History palette displays all your consume very large amounts of operations (up to a maximum ‘scratch disk’ space, the random number that you specify) in a list, storage bin that Photoshop uses as a complete with the tool used and its kind of virtual memory. icon. By clicking on any of these steps you can immediately jump Performance figures straight back to the document as it Keep a large amount of hard disk was at that point in time. space free for Photoshop – as much Even more impressive is the as 2 to 4GB if working on large ability to store permanent snapshots images. Ideally, partition your disk of the state of the document at any and dedicate one part to Photoshop. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 33 Chapter 3 The Brush tool Brushes offer some of Photoshop’s most flexible features. So where can you find them? The Brush tool can be found in the fourth row of Photoshop’s toolbar. When selected, the options Back and forth bar displays quite a few settings for You can set two colours, a foreground the current Brush such as Opacity, and background Flow and whether it is in Airbrush colour, and switch mode or not. There are also pull- between them while down menus for the Apply mode, painting with the Brush Shape preset and the new Brush tool by pressing Brush Editing palette. The Color palette lets you choose colours in the [X] key. Brushes are used to apply coloured various ways – via a gradient strip, sliders or swatches, which are located in their own tab pixels to an image. They take their colour from the current Foreground number of different ways – by using Colour swatch. The Colour palette the small gradient strip at the base, can be used to choose colours in a the sliders or the Swatch tab. THE BRUSH INTERFACE AND CONTROLS The Brush presets are The Brushes palette can be located here at the top-left of accessed by clicking this icon the Options palette when the in the Brush tool’s Option bar. Brush tool is selected. The basic Brush settings, such as Size, Shape and Angle as well as the spacing Choose the display option control can be accessed by for the presets from the clicking the Brush Tip Shape preset menu. You can display section at the top, the the presets as a list or as controls of which display at icons if you prefer. the bottom of the palette. The Brushes palette is very versatile but can seem a bit The panel can be complicated at first. It’s far expanded by dragging the more advanced than in bottom-right corner. previous versions. 34 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Brushes and Pencil tools Using Brushes There is a huge range of customisable and preset brushes. Here’s how to use them Once you select the Brush tool you can 1 choose a Brush Shape from the Brush preset drop-down menu in the Options bar. Each preset is saved at a given size, indicated The key to opacity below the brush preview icon in the preset You can also reduce list. You can alter this by dragging the master diameter slider. opacity using the numeric key pad. Pressing the 0 key sets the opacity to 100%, while pressing the [5] The Opacity of the brush defines how key sets the opacity to 2 transparent the paint is – that is, how 50%. Pressing the [1] much of the colour underneath shows numeric key sets the through the paint. By default it is set to 100%, opacity to 10% but you can reduce this using the Opacity and so on. slider in the Options bar. Flow is like opacity but is a dynamic 3 property. Whereas opacity sets a value Nimble numeracy for the maximum amount of opacity, Flow sets To get an intermediate the minimum amount. With the Flow setting opacity value like 15%, very low, say 10%, and opacity set to full, you type 1 followed can paint with what seems like a low opacity, quickly by 5 on the except when you paint over the strokes you numeric keypad. have just applied. In this case the paint ‘builds’, 4 accumulating opacity the more and more you paint. This is very useful for building up tones and colours in an image gradually. You can see the effect clearly here. Where the strokes double back and cross each other the colour intensifies. The downside is that the individual ‘dabs’ are also visible. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 35 Chapter 3 Using Brushes continued This brings us on to the Brushes palette, 5 which is opened by clicking the icon at the top-right of the Options bar. The palette contains a setting called Spacing. This controls Brush size shortcut how frequently Photoshop places a ‘dab’ of You can change the paint as you drag the brush. The default brush size up and down setting of 25% makes each dab overlap the in 10 point increments next by three quarters of its diameter. using the square Here’s the result from a low Flow setting. bracket keys [ and ]. By reducing the Spacing you can get 6 better results when using a low Flow setting. Here the Spacing is reduced to 5%, which means each dab overlaps by 95% of its diameter. This results in a much smoother stroke, but its also more opaque, as the brush tends to ‘self build’. More shortcuts On this month’s CD you’ll find PDF files In order to counteract this effect, you that contain all the 7 need to use an even lower Flow setting. possible keyboard Here the flow has been reduced to 3% for a shortcuts for both PCs 5% spacing value. You can see that the strokes and Apple Macs. . appear much smoother and build nicely as we apply more paint. You can also turn Spacing off using 8 the check-box in the Brushes palette. When it’s off, Photoshop applies spacing depending on how quickly you draw your stroke. This can be good or bad, depending what you want the stroke to look like. 36 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Brushes and Pencil tools Other brush properties include 9 Hardness. This defines how sharp the edges of the brush are and can be varied from 0 to 100% in the Brushes panel. The brush on Brush shortcuts the left has a hardness of 100% while the one Lots of Photoshop’s on the right has a Hardness of 0%. They are exactly the same diameter, but notice that the tools use the same soft brush seems smaller because its edges brushes interface.You are less opaque. can use the same shortcuts to change brush size and pop up Soft brushes are very useful especially the preset panel with 10 when used with other tools such as the any of them.Take a Rubber Stamp, which uses the same brush look at the PDF files interface as the Brush tool. A Hardness of included on the CD for 100% is not totally hard, however. There is still a full list of shortcuts some edge smoothing because of the effect for both PC and Mac. of ‘anti-aliasing’ (on the right stroke). If you want a totally hard brush (left stroke) switch to the Pencil tool. When painting an image using brushes 11 it can be a chore moving to the Options bar to change brush size and shape. However the preset pop-up is available right beneath Straight ahead your mouse if you right-click in your image. To paint perfectly Mac users should hold down [Ctrl] and click straight lines click for the same effect. once to place the star point of the stroke then shift-click elsewhere. A straight stroke will joint the Also, while painting you can choose a 12 two points. new colour from the image by holding down the [Alt] key. The Brush tool changes to the Eye Dropper, allowing you to sample a colour from any pixel. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 37 Chapter 3 Exploring the Brushes palette The basics of the Brushes palette and presets and how they affect the look of your strokes Take a tablet With a graphics tablet attached, the brush The Brushes palette is where it vary during use. Photoshop allows all happens. It’s Photoshop’s you to set the various properties, parameters can answer to its previous lack of natural such as scattering, colour and hue respond to pen media tools. In truth, it’s not really a variation. These can stay fixed, pressure, speed and tilt natural media simulation system, but respond to cursor speed or fade over (if supported).The rather an extension of the brush a pre-defined distance. This gives result is that you can dynamics features that previous you a large additional range of create brushes that are versions of the program already had. natural, organic variances to your responsive to your When you open the Brushes brush strokes which would not touch and work more like real artists tools. palette you are faced with an otherwise be possible with a mouse. But you can also set up overwhelming array of controls and However, to get the most from the the dynamics so that they do take a while to become brush dynamics, and experience the brushes perform in familiar with. Most of the controls their intuitive ‘feel’, you should a totally unnatural way are to do with the ‘dynamics’ of the really invest in a graphics tablet and too, if you wish. brushes – how the brush properties pen, such as the Wacom Intuos. CHOOSING YOUR BRUSH SHAPE Having the right brush shape for the task is the key to success Brush shape is the final part of the jigsaw when creating and editing brushes. The standard brushes offer a circular shape that can be hard or soft, round or oval and rotated at any angle. But there are a number of special brushes that are more graphic in nature. These can be selected from the Preset menu and there are many more that come with Photoshop but are not loaded by default. To load a preset library choose one from the Brush preset panel menu (the triangle at the top-right). You are then asked to Replace or The preset brush libraries have many Append the current list. Append adds the selected library different brush shapes. The menu is at to the current list of brushes, rather than replacing it. the top-right of the preset brush pop-up 38 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Brushes and Pencil tools The Brushes palette in detail Having seen the Brush palette’s potential, let’s delve deeper into the Brush Preset features There are 13 sections in the Brushes palette, displayed in a list down the left-hand side. The first Saving your presets of these is the Presets section – You can save the essentially a duplicate of the Preset currently loaded set of pull-down menu in the Option bar. presets as a library You can choose a brush preset from using the Save Brushes the list, or load new ones from the command in the pop- pop-up menu at the top-right of the up menu at the The Brush Presets section at the very top stores top-right corner of the palette. At the bottom is a preview complete brush settings, including the type of palette.The library is of how the current brush stroke tip shape and the dynamics settings saved as a .abr file, would behave, and above that is the which only Photoshop Master Diameter slider. At the very Brush button creates a new preset, can read. bottom are the New Brush and which you can name and save to Delete buttons. Clicking the New reuse another time. THE TOOLS OF BRUSH DYNAMICS Size Jitter – Controls the Minimum – Sets the variation in size of the dabs in smallest size the brush will a stroke. The higher the value, reach when it is jittered. the greater the variation. Tilt Scale – Enabled when Control – These menus the Pen Tilt option is selected define what dynamics in the Control pop-up. attribute controls the Adjusts the tilting sensitivity. parameter. Fade reduces the effect of the parameter over a certain distance, entered in the numeric field. Other Angle Jitter – If the brush is options are Off, Pen Tilt, Pen asymmetrical you can jitter Pressure and Stylus Wheel. the angle of the dabs, but not on a perfectly round brush. Roundness jitter – This tool Minimum Roundness – randomly alters the amount Sets the minimum value that a brush is squashed or is reached when randomly ‘rounded’ on one axis. jittering the Roundness. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 39 Chapter 3 Scattering Scattering is a great way of adding random brush strokes to images. Here’s how it works The Scattering section is great fun. This 1 adds a random scattering of the dabs and is a great way to add random, organic strokes to images. The Scatter slider controls Better late the amount of scattering perpendicular to the than never stroke direction. Brushes in later versions of Photoshop have more options to control their behaviour. If you’re using an older version you may find When the Both Axes option is enabled 2 the scattering takes place perpendicular that some of the to the stroke and along it. Most of the time features that we’ve you’d leave this option off, unless you want a mentioned do very randomized stroke, almost like a spray. not apply. The Count slider multiplies each dab by 3 the number shown. instead of a single Scatter effects dab, a setting of 5 in the Count slider will Wide Scatter settings produce five times as many dabs, each of can be used to create which may be scattered. Because it increases random but even the density of the brush dabs you may want to variation in tone or lower the Flow setting of the brush. colour on your artwork. Use it with selections to control the placement Count Jitter simply varies the number in of the effect. 4 the Count setting per dab, and is not very noticeable in most situations. Note that there are Control pop-ups in the Scatter section so you can link the parameters to graphics pen tilt, pressure and scroll wheel, or fake the effect of distance. 40 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Brushes and Pencil tools Textures and Dual Brushes Achieve seriously complex brush effects with additional features of the Brushes palette The rest of the parameters are operated 1 in much the same way as the Scattering section that we looked at in detail. The best thing to do is to experiment with the settings Precise strokes by playing around with them. Here the Texture Don’t forget gradient section is enabled. This lets you add texture to the brush tip using one of Photoshop’s selections are a great preset textures. way to control where ‘paint’ will go on an image.You can blend or fade away your Enabling the Dual Brush option makes strokes very precisely 2 things really interesting. This feature using these gradients. adds a second brush tip to texture the main one. It has its own Spacing, Size, Scattering and Count settings and is mixed in using an Apply mode chosen from the pop-up menu at the top of the panel. Colour Dynamics takes the concept of 3 scattering and jitter but applies it to the Go easy colour properties of a brush. You can achieve Dual brushes are the very complex and detailed strokes using the settings in this section. key to getting more detailed brush strokes in less time.They are more suited, however, to be used sparsely rather than as dense strokes. Enabling Scattering Enabling all of the numerous other 4 is a good idea. settings and it becomes like playing with wet paint, and great fun. It only takes seconds to spray the canvas with incredibly detailed patterns and colours, and work them together like real paint. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 41 Chapter 3 The History Brush Discover Photoshop’s secret weapon for retouching and photo manipulation The History Brush seems a bit Every time you perform an action, of a mysterious tool in the such as painting a stroke, applying a Photoshop toolbox for both filter, or deleting a layer, that step is Step back in newcomer and veteran alike, and for stored in the History palette as a History The History Brush lets that reason is one that often gets ‘state’. By clicking on any of these, you paint previous overlooked. This is usually because you can return your document to the states of the current veteran Photoshoppers have got used state it was in at that point. Now, document over the to the way Photoshop used to work here’s the best bit – by clicking on current state.This before the advent of the History the small icon box next to a history makes it a powerful Brush and old habits die hard. state in the History palette, you tool for selectively But it’s worth getting to know this earmark that layer as the source for applying filters unusual tool because, together with the History Brush. When you then to an image. its indispensable partner the History paint on the image with the History palette, it should turn out to be a Brush only those pixels will be total delight to any newcomer. returned back to the earmarked state. HISTORY AND UNDO So what’s the difference between Undo and History? Photoshop 5 onwards has two kinds of undo. There’s the normal [Ctrl]+[Z] undo ([Command]+[Z] on a Mac), which undoes and redoes the last action you performed. This can be handy to flip back and forth, checking the result of your last action. There is also History. You can step backwards in History using [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Z] (that’s [Command]+[Alt]+[Z] for Mac users). By repeatedly pressing this shortcut, you step back further and further through the history. To go forwards again press [Ctrl/Command]+[Shift]+[Z]. Set the number of You can set Photoshop’s maximum states stored in History by going to Preferences > General number of History states from the and entering a new number in the History States field. General section in Preferences 42 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Brushes and Pencil tools Using the History Brush The History Brush is a powerful and flexible tool, but has all the simplicity of a normal brush A good use of the History Brush is to 1 apply an effect to an image in localised areas without the need to construct a mask or selection first. Here’s our starting image to Size does matter which we want to apply some special effects. To paint with History First of all we resized it to make it a bit smaller. states the source state must be the same size as the current document. if you resized an image you Typing [Ctrl/Command]+[I] inverts the will not be able to use 2 image, turning the shades and colours any states prior to to their opposites. This will be be the basis for that as a source for the effect we want to achieve using the the History Brush. History Brush, and it has been saved as a state in the History palette. We want to get the image back as is was 3 so that we can selectively invert it, but United states undoing the last step also clears the state In order to paint with from the History, which is no good. Instead we mark the uninverted state as a History source. History states, the Choose Edit > Fill and set the Fill mode to source state must also History, et voilá, back to normal but with be the same colour History intact. space. If you changed this you will not be able to use any states prior to that point as Now we can change the History source 4 a source for the to the Inverted state, select the History History Brush. tool and a fancy brush and paint. Wherever we paint the pixels in the image will be inverted. Obviously you can use this technique with any effect, filter or adjustment you like. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 43 Chapter 3 Using the History Brush continued Here’s another example of the same 5 technique. We’ll use History to fake a ‘depth of field’ blur effect on this 3D image. Normally you might do this using a depth Filter tip render as a mask, but what if you forgot to You can use this same save one? technique of Brushing using History to selectively apply any filter to an image. So, we follow the same steps as before 6 except this time we blur the whole image by Applying the Gaussian Blur filter instead of inverting it. Now we return the image to its original 7 state by selecting the unblurred state as Early edits the History source then using the Edit > Fill In earlier versions of command set to History mode. Photoshop you could open part of a large image and edit it, placing the edited part back into the large image once finished.That was in Now we select the Gaussian Blur state the days when RAM 8 as the source for the History Brush and was expensive. paint in the image precisely where we want it to be blurred, leaving the unblurred pixels intact to create a forced ‘depth of focus’ effect. 44 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Brushes and Pencil tools Art History Brush The History Brush has an even more creative cousin – meet the Art History Brush The Art History Brush is one of those 1 bizarre but fun features Adobe comes up with once in a while. Basically, it is used to convert any image into one that looks hand- Historic detail painted. The original photo is on the left, and Even if the detail has the Art History conversion on the right. been obliterated, you can bring it back by using a smaller brush, because the original, untouched image is Here’s how it works. Open any photo, used as the source. 2 preferably one that will work well as a painting. You don’t need to perform any action to set things up, just select the current state as the History Source and select the Art History Brush. We used the Impressionist preset from the pop-up menu at the very top-left of the Options bar and painted over the image. That blocks out the image nicely. Now 3 we can paint some of the finer details Pick a mode back in. Changing the brush to a much smaller The Art History Brush radius lets you add back some details, but you can do this only to certain areas. We’ve used a can be applied in 3-pixel brush, and the Loose Medium Style different blending from the History Brush’s Options bar. modes: Darken, Lighten, Hue, Colour, Saturation and Luminosity. You can carry on adding details back, 4 changing brushes and styles until you get the result you want. Here we went back and lightened the original image then used this as the source, enabling us to add in some detail in the darker part of the face. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 45 Chapter 4 USING THE CLONING AND HEALING TOOLS In this chapter… The Cloning and Healing tools in Photoshop L e a r n h o w t o w i e l d t h e C l o n e t o o l ( R u b b e r offer an elegant way to fix damaged photos, S t a m p ) l i ke a p r o correct bad scans and generally clean up U s i n g b l e n d i n g m o d e s t o g e t b e t t e r r e s u l t s your images.They’re great fun to use too w h e n c l o n i n g d i f f i c u l t t e x t u r e s l i ke s k i n L e a r n h o w t o c l o n e p i x e l s b e t w e e n d o c u m e n t s tip shapes, dynamics and blending modes, but applies these to cloning. Wo r k i n g w i t h t h e Cloning is a very simple and obvious concept in image H e a l i n g a n d P a t c h manipulation. Take pixels from over In addition to these the Clone tool t o o l s t o i m p r o v e here and duplicate them over there. lets you clone not only pixels from a p o r t r a i t s a n d p h o t o s That’s really all there is to it. The single layer but from the whole of a P e r f o r m s p e c i a l Clone tool, also known as the multi-layered document. This can be e f f e c t s a n d i m a g e m a n i p u l a t i o n t r i c k s Rubber Stamp, is Photoshop’s a very powerful feature for advanced u s i n g C l o n i n g implementation of this technique users but can cause problems if you and offers you a great deal of power don’t keep your wits about you. for retouching images. The tool works by ‘sampling’ Seamless sampling pixels at one location in an image, When sampling pixels from a multi- or even in a different document layered, composite image you must altogether, and painting them in a be aware of any Adjustment layers different location using what is present. If you sample a composite essentially a brush. The Clone tool image with say, a Hue/Saturation offers most of the properties of the Adjustment layer applied to it, normal Brush tool – size, hardness, boosting the saturation, cloning on Cloning and Healing tools Page 48 Cloning copies parts of your Page 49 The Clone tool can remove Page 50 Less-than-perfect portraits image and transplants them elsewhere unwanted parts of an image can be fixed up in seconds Page 51 Revive damaged photos and Page 52 The new Healing tool can Page 53 The Healing Patch tool is a images with cloning techniques make someone look years younger great way to fix up photos to layers below this adjustment layer Healing, however, lets you clone will result in the cloned pixels being pixels over a problem area but rather boosted twice. If your intention is to than simply overlaying them, as the have a seamless result, your hopes Clone tool does, it blends them with will be dashed, so it always pays to those they are replacing, using some be aware of this. clever algorithms. In version 7 of Photoshop, Adobe introduced a tool that takes the Skin care concept of cloning to the next level As you may have guessed, the in terms of ease of use, known as the upshot of such technology is that Healing tool. Cloning is a great tool you don’t need to be nearly so to have but as we saw earlier, it can careful in your cloning – when take some effort to get a seamless blending the blemishes on the face result, especially when the sample of a subject in a portrait, for point pickings are slim and when example. The Healing tool will dealing with multi-layered images. intelligently blend the pixels to get It can take quite a bit of practice to the best result (at least most of the achieve smooth results. time), which works well on skin. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 47 Chapter 4 The Rubber Stamp (Clone) tool The Rubber Stamp tool is useful for copying pixels from one part of an image to another Let’s focus on the more creative and fun 1 aspects. Here’s a great example of what cloning is all about – our source image is a typical group portrait. Sample mode When you hold the [Alt] key down the Clone cursor changes from the brush outline to crosshairs to show that it’s in sample mode and allowing more To ensure that we can easily return to 2 the original if necessary, we first make a precise sampling. copy of the image as a new layer. Selecting the Clone tool we can see the Options bar looks much like the Brush tool’s. At the far right are two extra options though: Aligned and Use All Layers. Turn off the Aligned check-box. Selecting a 20-pixel soft brush we first 3 set the Sample point from which to Precision painting clone. To do this we hold down the [Alt] key Use the Caps Lock key and click where we want to sample from – in on any brush tool to this case the face of the boy in the lower-right activate Precise of the photo. Cursor mode. Now we can clone the boy. Releasing 4 the [Option] key returns to normal cloning mode. We can clone over the face of the boy at the top-right, replacing his with the face of the boy from the lower-left. We can carry on and make as many clones as we like. 48 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Cloning and Healing tools Removing unwanted elements Cloning is ideal when you need to seamlessly eradicate an unwanted part of an image Another great use for cloning is for 1 removing objects from a picture. Here’s an example image. Perhaps you wanted to use the image with some text overlaid on one side, or you just need to change the composition. In the right measure Use the Measure tool to drag along the top edge of one of the bench slats to read its angle, then use the This time we make sure the Aligned Edit > Transform > 2 option is enabled. This allows us to use Rotate command.The multiple strokes, and to maintain the offset so angle that you that the cloning is consistent. In a duplicate just found will layer we set the sample point on to the middle automatically be of the park bench and begin cloning out the entered in the man on the left. rotation field. It sort of works but the cloned part of 3 the bench does not line up properly with the original. To fix this we can undo the cloning, rotate the image slightly so that the slats are horizontal, and clone again. This time Online tutorials they line up. You’ll find a host of handy tutorials to help you take your Photoshop skills further at the website of our With a bit of effort we can remove the sister magazine, 4 man entirely from the image. Note that Computer Arts. to do this successfully we need to stop when www.computerarts.co.uk the alignment of the image begins to drift, and take a new sample point. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 49 Chapter 4 Cloning Skin You can fix problem portraits in seconds using the Clone tool and its subtle blending mode One of the most common uses of the Clone tool is to fix blemishes, bruises and marks on A cloning skin. If you want to fix marks on the alternative An alternative skin such as a rash or the occasional technique, which uses spot you can easily clone it out using the same principal, is the Clone tool as normal. While to clone on to a new you’ll remove the blemish you’ll layer using the probably find it very difficult to get Normal mode but set a seamless clone. What tends to Fixing skin in photos is easy, once you know that the layer’s blending happen is that the clone will be the secret is simply to change the Clone tool’s mode to Colour blending mode and subtly clone out the marks slightly the wrong shade or colour, or Luminosity. so that when you zoom out to original blemish, which defeats the inspect the whole image, the cloned whole point of removing the blemish point is almost as visible as the in the first place! THE TRICKS FOR SKIN CLONING REVEALED Less is more Using a low opacity CLONING SKIN correctly requires careful use of the brush blending allows you to clone modes. In the Options bar set the blending mode in the drop-down away blemishes menu to Luminosity and the opacity to 50%. You can then clone the gradually. image using only the brightness of the sampled point. This lets you get You don’t always rid of light or dark blemishes easily, without changing the colour. need to eradicate blemishes totally. In IF THE blemish is a red patch of skin or bruise,set the blending mode to fact, doing so can Colour before you clone. That way the brightness of the pixels remains look too fake. Instead the same, but the off-colour will be removed. just reduce their MAKING USE of both apply modes in turn is likely to be the best intensity a little. option for very bad marks like cuts and bruises. This allows you to deal with the colour and brightness independently. WITH BOTH methods try to keep the sample point as close as you can to the problem area to minimize the difference in skin tone. 50 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Cloning and Healing tools The Healing Brush No time to fuss with the Clone tool? Then fix up an image with the Healing Brush instead The Healing Brush can be found in the 1 fourth row on the toolbar, and looks like a plaster. It uses the same sampling principal as the Clone tool but works by blending the Extreme healing original and cloned pixels together to create a The same technique near-perfect fix. Here’s an image that needs a bit of a repair. of setting the blending mode to either Colour or Luminosity instead of Normal works with Using the Clone tool works, but leaves a the Healing tool just 2 very slight, but noticeable mark behind as well as the Clone due to the sampled pixels being a sightly tool, but you’ll only different shade. We could use more advanced need it for extreme techniques, but why bother when the Healing situations when the brush is at hand? built-in blending algorithm doesn’t quite cut it. Using the Healing brush instead results 3 in a totally invisible repair. There’s no need to change blending modes or opacity, just set the sample point using the [Alt] key then click and drag over the damage. Sample and Pattern The Healing tool works in two modes: Sample and Pattern. In Sample mode it The Healing brush has different works like the Clone 4 blending modes which you can choose tool, while in Pattern from the Options bar drop-down menu, 90% mode it blends the of the time you won’t need to use them. pixels with one of Photoshop’s stored patterns.The uses for this mode are less obvious, but useful for certain effects. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 51 Chapter 4 The Healing Patch tool If you don’t like using brushes and selections are more your thing, try the Patch tool The Patch tool can be found in the same 1 tool group as the Healing Brush, but it has fewer options. The most logical mode to use is Destination, so this is how we have it set No smear for now. We want to make the man in this The Healing and Patch photo look a bit younger by removing the tools can smear if they bags under his eyes. are near to very dark pixels.Use a selection to protect the area you want to fix if smearing occurs. With the Patch tool selected we lasso an 2 area of clean skin texture, just below the eye we want to fix. That area is highlighted with the familiar marching ants. Because Destination mode is enabled 3 we can drag these selected pixels onto the destination pixels. As you drag a copy of the pixels, the selected area moves with the mouse as a visual cue – you are actually cloning the pixels. When you release the mouse button, 4 the pixels will become merged with those below. Photoshop performs its trick intelligently, so the dark area vanishes but the skin tone looks normal. We can repeat this on the other eye to complete the anti- ageing process. 52 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Cloning and Healing tools The Healing Patch tool works the 1 opposite way round when in Source mode. Depending on your way of thinking, Source mode may seem less intuitive. We will Large patches perform the same trick of removing lines The Patch tool can be under the eyes in this image but use Source mode instead. useful when attempting to repair very large areas in one go. It’s much quicker than using When in Source mode you need to the Healing Brush too. 2 select the pixel that you want to change first, as opposed to selecting the pixel you want to use to fix the problem area. Here we drag around the line under the left eye using the Patch tool to select it. Now all you need to do is to drag the 3 selection over the pixels you want to Select then Patch use to fix the problem area. This time only the If you need to, you can selection outline moves, not the pixels that are selected, as is the case in Destination mode. make the selection before you choose the Patch tool.This means that you can use any of Photoshop’s advanced selections tools, such as Quick Mask, Colour When you are happy with the selected 4 Range or the Magic area you release the mouse. The Wand to preselect the selection snaps back to its original location area you require taking the source pixels with it. When Photoshop blends the two, the line vanishes. more precisely. Here’s the result on both eyes. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 53 Chapter 5 THE GRADIENT, FILL AND ERASER TOOLS In this chapter… Once you get more competent with L e a r n t o u s e a n d c o n t r o l G r a d i e n t s Photoshop you’ll appreciate the importance of C r e a t e C u s t o m these utility tools.The Gradient tool in particular G r a d i e n t s , u s i n g t h e g r a d i e n t e d i t i n g is essential for all manner of tricks and effects features in Photoshop 7 U s e t h e P a i n t B u c ke t t o o l t o f i l l a r e a s w i t h a c o l o u r, p a t t e r n o r h i s t o r y U s e G r a d i e n t s a n d that gradually changes colour. Fi l l s f o r s p e c i a l e f f e c t s Gradients come in all kinds of a n d i m a g e Gradients and Fills are such simple tools in Photoshop that m a n i p u l a t i o n their simplicity can often hide their different shapes: Linear, Radial, power, especially in the hands of an Angular, Reflected and Diamond, R e m o v e a s u b j e c t f r o m i t s b a c kg r o u n d u s i n g experienced Photoshop user. and this makes them very useful for t h e B a c kg r o u n d a n d A Fill is simply a way to pour a a variety of different situations. M a g i c E r a s e r t o o l s single flat colour, pattern or history The Gradient Editing feature in state into a selected area, or the Photoshop enables you to create whole canvas. Like most of the tools gradients with two or more colours. in Photoshop, there is more than one You can have a simple white-to- way in which to accomplish a Fill; black gradient, or a whole rainbow we’ll explore some of these different of colours. For special effects work techniques later on in this chapter. the simple black and white gradient is absolutely indispensable, putting Gradual benefits a whole range of additional options The Gradient options are even at your disposal. For example, if you more powerful than Fills. With the want an effect to smoothly fade Gradient tool you can create a fill from full strength to invisible then Gradients, Fills and Erasing Page 56 Learn how to fill colours in an Page 57 Fill with 50% grey for special Page 59 We look at the Gradient tool image using the Paint Bucket tool effects and image enhancement and its various options Page 62 Use gradients and blending Page 64 Blend two or more image Page 66 Learn how to avoid the pitfalls layers to simulate photographic filters layers together with Gradients of the Background Eraser tool it’s easy to use a white-to-black an image, the next family of tools gradient to control this, usually as that we’ll look at does quite the a layer mask. opposite. The Eraser tool lets you remove pixels by simply using a Photo perfection brush, like an anti-paint brush, For photographers, coloured which enables you to paint away gradients can play the role of custom pixels on a layer leaving nothing but filters, making it easy to create transparency behind. The power sultry sunsets or brooding, stormy version of the Eraser is the skies at the drag of a mouse. If you Background Eraser. This tool is combine gradients with alpha designed to make the extraction of channels you have the power user’s subjects from their background a playground. The ability to construct relatively simple task. Don’t be complex masks and selections using fooled though – it’s still a tricky alpha channels and the Gradient tool proposition, but we’ll show you how is unparalleled. to avoid the pitfalls of this technique While the Fill and Gradient tools so that you can achieve the best are concerned with adding pixels to possible results every time. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 55 Chapter 5 The Paint Bucket The Paint Bucket tool lets you pour pixels into any selection, and it has a few tricks too The Paint Bucket can be found in the 1 sixth row of the toolbar in Photoshop 7, in the same tool group as the Gradient tool. If you make a selection you can use this tool Missing Paint to fill it with the current foreground colour. Bucket? Photoshop’s toolbar has undergone many revisions over the years, so the Paint Bucket may be located elsewhere in It can operate in Foreground Colour 2 mode or in Pattern mode, which you older versions. choose from the drop-down menu in the Options bar. You can then select a pattern from the drop-down presets menu, also in the Option bar, and click in the image to fill it. However, the Paint Bucket has more in 3 common with the Magic Wand than you Select and fill think. If your selected area already has image Save time by using pixels in it, clicking on the image will not the Paint Bucket in necessarily fill the whole selection or layer. one fell swoop, instead of using the Magic Wand to make a selection and then filling it. Instead, what happens is the same as 4 with the Magic Wand tool. The Paint Bucket searches for similar coloured pixels to fill, within the tolerance that you set, rather than covering the whole layer. Increase the Tolerance setting in the Option bar to fill a wider range of colours. 56 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Gradients, Fills and Erasing Using a lower tolerance you can build 5 up the fill by clicking a couple of times on different areas of the image. In this example we did so in a new layer. You have to make In the mode sure the Use All Layers option is checked In Overlay mode 50% when using a transparent layer for the fill. Applying the layer in Color mode allows us to grey pixels are totally change the colour of the girl’s kagool. transparent. Pixels brighter than 50% are applied in Screen mode, while those darker than Another use for fills is for special effects. 50% are applied in 6 An example is for adding noise to a 3D Multiply mode. or digital image to make it look more like photographic film. We could simply apply noise to the image directly but this limits our options later if we want to change the noise, say, to make it less obvious. Applying the noise as-is also tends to looks fake. We need to soften the noise, by blurring 7 it but not the image. So we need to Video tutorials apply the noise in a layer above the image. On the CD this month However, the Noise filter does not work on a transparent layer. Enter the Paint Bucket. is a set of video The Foreground Colour is set to 50% grey training tutorials using Colour Picker and setting Lab Lightness created by our very to 50, A and B to 0. own Photoshop guru, George Cairns. If you want to learn more about using every The layer is filled with the grey, by 8 tool in the Photoshop making sure the Use All Layers option is toolbar, you’ll find off and clicking in it. Now we can set the Layer your CD invaluable. mode to Overlay and apply the noise, blur it slightly, then change the opacity of the layer any time we want to control the effect. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 57 Chapter 5 More Fill options The Paint Bucket is just one of a number of ways in which you can fill an image or selection The Paint Bucket enables you to fill areas using a tolerance setting like the Magic Wand tool. Fetching patterns It also has settings to fill contiguous Custom fill patterns can be found on the web. pixels – or not, as the case may be. Here’s the address of a Enabling the Contiguous mode in site where you can the Paint Bucket tool’s Options bar download free (this is the default setting) only fills Photoshop patterns: pixels that are both within the http://graphicssoft.about. tolerance and physically connected The difference between the smooth anti-aliased com/library/free/ in the image. Disabling this mode fill (green) and the jagged non-anti-aliased fill blfree_pspatterns1.htm (pink) is quite obvious in this close-up causes the Paint Bucket to search over the whole image for pixels means that the edges of the fill are similar to the one that you click on. smoothly anti-aliased to remove any The Anti-aliasing option simply unsightly jagged edges. FILLING TIPS Keep it cool YOU CAN fill using the current foreground colour by typing [Alt]+ Fills and patterns are [Delete]. Typing [Ctrl]+[Delete] (or [Command]+[Delete] for Mac users) useful for creating will fill using the current background colour. Pressing the [D] key reverts backdrops for web the colour to the default black and white. pages. Be careful though, because ANOTHER WAY to fill is using the Edit > Fill menu command.This has a patterned backgrounds few extras, such as a pop-up menu for choosing to fill with either White, can be very distracting, Black, Foreground or Background colour, or the handy ‘50% Grey’. so keep them as subtle as possible. THE FILL Command also enables you to fill using the earmarked history state in the History palette. You can furthermore set it to Pattern mode and choose a pattern from within the Fill dialog. CHOOSE YOUR pattern from one of Photoshop’s presets or use your own custom-made pattern if you prefer. Any rectangular selection can be stored as a pattern using the Edit > Define Pattern command. 58 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Gradients, Fills and Erasing The Gradient tool The Gradient tool is indispensable when working on multi-layered documents A gradient is very simply two colours 1 spread over a distance and smoothly blended from the one to the other. They can be monotone, like this simple black-to-white Degrees of linear gradient… constraint Hold down the [Shift] key while dragging to constrain the angle of your gradient to 45-degree increments. ...or colourful, like this red-to-green 2 gradient. You can also blend a monotone colour, like black or white into a colour such as red, and the brightness and saturation of the colour will smoothly blend across the distance that you specify. The Gradient tool can be found in the 3 sixth row of the toolbar, and has an icon Gradient presets with a small black-to-white gradient. Use the While using the tool by simply dragging out a line indicating the direction of the gradient. The first point Gradient tool right-click you click defines where the first colour will to pop up the gradient end, and the point where you release the presets palette. Mac mouse after dragging is where the second (or users will need to press last colour if it has more the two) will begin. [Ctrl] instead. The distance you drag will define the 4 width of the gradient. It can by very tight if you only drag a little way (top) or very loose if you drag a long way (bottom). Note that before the first point the pixels are made up of 100% first colour, and after the last point they are 100% last colour. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 59 Chapter 5 The Gradient Tool continued There are actually three types of 5 gradient. Foreground to Background, Foreground to Transparent, and Custom. Each type is selected from the preset pop-up in the See-through Gradient tool’s Option bar. There are usually a options number of preset custom gradients available. The Transparency check-box in the Options bar allows you to turn off the transparent part of a gradient if it is enabled. Foreground to Background mode 6 simply uses the current foreground colour as the first point, and the current background colour as the last point and creates a blend between them. Foreground to Transparent takes the 7 current foreground colour and blends Make it noisy it to nothing, leaving only transparent pixels. The Dither check-box This can be great for blending gradients over enables a dithering or images, for example. jitter to the gradient, adding a touch of noise, which can help reduce banding effects when printing. Custom gradients can contain any 8 number colours that you specify and are edited in the Gradient Editing panel. They can also incorporate transparency. Here is a custom preset that combines a multicolour gradient with alternating transparency. 60 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Gradients, Fills and Erasing The Gradient Editor panel Editing gradients is done in the Gradient Editor panel in Photoshop 6 onwards When the Gradient tool is selected, clicking on the preset sample at the top-left of the Changing stops Option bar opens up the Gradient Creating new stops is Editor panel. Here you can choose done by clicking in free from a range of ready-made space above or below gradients, or create your own. the gradient strip.To To create a custom gradient just remove a stop, select a preset and begin editing the drag it away and let go. Stops can be moved by colours of the ‘nodes’ in the editing Clicking on a colour node, (or ‘Stop’ as Adobe dragging them strip at the bottom of the panel. calls them) in the gradient strip at the bottom of the panel selects it for editing. left or right. The top of the strip contains the transparency nodes, while the Adobe calls them) to edit its colour. bottom contains the colour nodes. The Stops section lets you edit Click on a node (or ‘Color Stop’ as the properties of the selected stop. THE GRADIENT EDITOR EXPLAINED The Preset list is displayed You can change the type at the top. You can change of gradient from the pop-up. the size of the previews from The options are Color the panel’s pop-up menu. (normal) and Noise. the Transparency Stops Create a new preset from are displayed on top of the the current gradient strip by gradient strip. They can be clicking on this button here. either white, black or shades of grey only. The Color Stops (or nodes) When you select a Colour are displayed underneath the or Transparency Stop its gradient strip. Click on one to mid-point handle is also select it for editing. Clicking displayed. Drag this to where there is no stop change the rate of blending present adds a new one. between nodes. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 61 Chapter 5 Using Gradients creatively Now let’s look at how useful Gradients can be when working creatively in Photoshop Gradients are great for those working 1 with digital or scanned photographic images in Photoshop. We can use gradients in place of traditional photographic filters to Trial and error create some cool effects. Here’s the original Experiment with all the unfiltered image. Layer Blending modes and get a feel for how they affect the image. Some will have similar pleasing effects, while others will just look In a new layer we add a vertical dark 2 blue transparent gradient over the plain awful. image. Setting the layer’s blending mode to Overlay blends the colour and brightness of the gradient in a special way, creating a deeper, darker sky. Another use for gradients is to add 3 mood to a Photo. Here’s an image of a Comprehend model looking quite moody, but the picture the blend itself could be even moodier. It’s simple with There are technical a gradient to add that mood. explanations for each of the Blending modes in your Photoshop Manual or online guide. It's worth going through these to In a new layer, we add a Foreground understand exactly 4 to Transparent gradient once more, but what's going on. choose a much darker blue. The layer mode is this time set to Multiply, creating a dark cast over the image. Finally, a Levels Adjustment Layer is added to the image, which controls all brightness and gamma. 62 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Gradients, Fills and Erasing Gradient Styles The Linear gradient is only one of five styles. We’ll look at the others and see what they offer At the top of the Gradient tool’s Options 1 bar next to the preset pop-up are the Gradient Styles. Linear is the default, but next to it is the Radial style. Selecting this creates Turn it around a radial gradient using the selected preset. The invert button in the The first point you click is the center of the gradient, dragging outwards to the edges. Options bar reverses the direction of the colours in the gradient. The next style option is the Circular 2 style. This is not a common one to use, but can be useful. In this case the gradient is wrapped around in a circular motion. The line you drag doesn’t mark the size of the gradient, but only the direction of the colours. Next up is the Reflected style. This type 3 of gradient can be useful, especially for Quick sample creating masks and selections. In this case a Use the [Alt] key to Linear gradient is created, but in opposite directions from where you drag. activate the Eye Dropper.You can then choose colours for the gradient from your image. Finally, the Diamond style is similar to 4 the Radial style, except that the edges form a square rather than a smooth circle. This can be useful for certain kinds of vignette effects, for example. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 63 Chapter 5 Gradient Masks Use a simple black and white gradient in a layer mask for creating composite images One very popular use of the Gradient 1 tool is to make one image blend smoothly into another. Here are two images that we want to composite, by blending one Application gradually into the other. options You can apply masks to adjustment layers as well as normal image layers. So we could have applied the levels as an adjustment layer One image is copied into the other by 2 dragging its layer from the Layers using the same palette over the other’s image window and gradient trick to mask releasing the mouse. The sky image is scaled out its effect on the roughly to fit using the Free Transform tool. lower part of the image. A layer mask is added to the Sky layer, 3 by clicking the New Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers palette. Making sure the layer mask is selected and not the layer, we can use a black-to-white linear Vignettes gradient to mask out the bottom of the sky layer, blending the two images together. Create vignettes using a Radial gradient as a layer mask applied to a Solid Fill Layer.You can then adjust the Finally Image > Adjustment > Levels 4 colour of the fill to suit is applied to the Sky layer (not to the different uses. mask). In the dialog box that appears, drag up the black input slider to darken the sky and making it match better with the image below. 64 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Gradients, Fills and Erasing Masks and selections in detail We’ll look at some different ways to create gradient masks and selections Because Photoshop handles selected, shades of grey are partially transparency as a mask, a selected, depending on brightness. simple black and white gradient can So loading a gradient in this way Goodbye halo be used to smoothly manipulate creates a variable selection, through If applying a filter such as Gaussian Blur through a layer transparency. Photoshop also which we can apply filters, paint or gradient selection it’s best to enables us to convert a mask into a whatever. Another way to do the apply the filter multiple times with a small value. selection and vice-versa. same thing would be to enter Quick Otherwise you will get a For example, you can create a Mask mode, apply the Gradient tool ‘halo’ around the partially selected pixels rather than a gradient selection by switching to on the Quick Mask, then press [Q] smooth blur. the Channels palette, creating a new to convert it to an active selection. alpha channel and drawing a Once a gradient selection is made, gradient in it. Then by [Command]+ you can convert it to a layer mask clicking on the alpha channel, it can simply by adding a layer mask to a be loaded as a selection: black areas layer with the selection active. are unselected, white areas are fully GRADIENT LAYER MASKS WITH ADJUSTMENT LAYERS Here’s another handy way of using Gradients As we’ve seen, we can use gradients as layer masks when compositing images. We can also apply gradients to layers using blending modes to get different effects. Another use, which is sort of between the two, is to control the effects of an adjustment layer with a gradient mask. It helps to make the gradient selection first, as described above, then add your adjustment layer. Unlike pixel-based layers, adjustment layers are created automatically with a layer mask. Any current selection will become the layer mask for this new A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer is layer. Make the adjustment, such as increasing the contrast, applied to this image using a gradient and see the results as applied through the mask directly. layer mask ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 65 Chapter 5 Magic and Background Erasers One is like the Eraser and Magic Wand in one, while the other is ideal for cutting out objects In an image such as this it is fairly easy 1 to remove the subject from the background because there is a definite difference in colour between them. Photoshop Know the limits has many ways of doing this, you could make In all honesty the Magic a selection using the Magic Wand tool then Eraser is not one of the delete it, for instance. best tools in Photoshop's arsenal. It can be useful for quickly erasing something but only Alternatively you can cut out the middle 2 man (or woman as is quite literally the works well on a limited case here) by using the Magic Eraser tool. With range of images. this tool you can click on the background to erase it directly in one click. All colours that fall within the tolerance setting are deleted. After a couple of clicks the whole 3 backdrop is erased, leaving a nice Look elsewhere clean-edged subject surrounded by There are a number of transparent pixels. This is useful if you then third party tools want to save the image as a GIF for example, available that do a with transparency intact. better job at removing backgrounds than Photoshop’s Eraser tools. Our Dog image proves to be far more 4 difficult a proposition, however. Although the Magic Eraser works fairly well on the sky, on the grass it doesn’t do so well. This is because the grass is so varied in colour and brightness that the Eraser has a hard job of finding the right colours to remove. 66 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Gradients, Fills and Erasing Background details Turning off the Contiguous option 5 Like the Magic Wand, might improve matters. This makes the Background Eraser the tool search the whole image for similar colours, rather than just examining pixels has a Tolerance setting that are connected to the starting point. but also Limits and Unfortunately we end up losing most of our Sampling Method dog as well when we try this method. options. Continuous lets you sample as you paint, while the Once option samples only on the first click. Using the Background Eraser tool 6 Background Swatch (you’ll find it in the Eraser tool group in lets you save a colour the sixth row of the toolbar) results in a more to use as the sample. controllable method of chopping the pooch out of his environment. The tool is brush- based, so you simply paint away to remove the background. The tool has a boundary like a normal 7 brush and a central cross. When you Glitch invasion paint you must keep quite close to the edge The Background Eraser of the object you wish to keep, without actually touching it. The tool samples and is not a tool that a erases as it goes, but does so only within the professional Photoshop brush area. If you slip and accidentally cross user would feel at home over onto your object then it will be deleted, with. It tends to leave far so care is required. too many glitches in the edge of the cut-out objects, which take extra It’s still slightly messy, but the bulk of 8 time to fix up later. the rest of the background can be deleted using a rough selection. It’s the bits near to the subject that cause the problem, and the Background Eraser does a pretty good job of keeping the parts you want and deleting those you don’t. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 67 Chapter 6 GETTING TO KNOW THE EFFECTS TOOLS In this chapter… Photoshop’s effects tools include Blur, Sharpen, B l u r o r s h a r p e n p a r t s o f a n i m a g e u s i n g t h e Smudge, Dodge and Burn. We’ll look at how ‘ f o c u s ’ t o o l s best to use them to spice up your artwork, C r e a t e f i n g e r - p a i n t i n g e f f e c t s o r b l e n d composites and photographic images c o l o u r s u s i n g t h e S m u d g e t o o l C r e a t e b e t t e r c o m p o s i t e i m a g e s u s i n g ‘e x p o s u r e ’ t o o l s M a ke y o u r s u b j e c t respects, but do so in a more s t a n d o u t w i t h D o d g e artistically controllable way. a n d B u r n e f f e c t s When it comes down to it, Photoshop is mostly about effects. Be it a simple vignette, a Essentially these are brush-based crop or even an image enhancement, filters, allowing you to ‘paint’ the what you are really doing is creating effects just where you need them. some kind of effect to spice up an image. Photoshop’s filters offer you Focus and exposure a broad palette of effects, which can Effect tools are in two different be applied to images, both very groups. The ‘focus’ tools are in the subtly or dramatically. Combine seventh row of the toolbar in filters with selections and masks, Photoshop 7 and consist of the layers and blending modes and you Blur, Sharpen and Smudge tools. have a cornucopia of digital tricks ‘Exposure’ tools are directly to the that can improve an image no end. right of this and contain the Dodge, Photoshop also has a small group Burn and Sponge tools. Click and of effects-based tools which work in hold on the groups to reveal all the a similar way to the filters and tools in that group. You’ll also note adjustment features in many that next to each tool is a letter. This Effects Tools Page 70 The Blur tool works by blurring Page 71 Decreasing the brush spacing Page 72 Maximise the usefulness of the the pixels in an image, to varying intensity allows for a more intense Blur effect Sharpen tool, with its blending modes Page 73 The Smudge tool lets you Page 75 Dodge and Burn adjust pixel Page 79 Focus in on an object within an apply paint with a finger-painting effect contrast and brightness by painting them image by Burning the background is the tool’s shortcut key, and there The ‘exposure’ tools – Dodge, is one for almost every tool in Burn and Sponge also let you paint Photoshop’s toolbar. Pressing that their effects onto an image directly. key will activate the respective tool These tools produce effects similar no matter what else is selected. to the Adjustment tools like Levels, The ‘focus’ tools – Blur and Curves and Hue/Saturation. Sharpen – allow you to apply these filter-like effects directly to pixels in Shadow play the image using any of Photoshop’s Using the exposure tools is an brushes – including the complex, excellent way of producing photo- customisable brush shapes. But most realistic composites. The tools of the time you’ll find it best to use enable you to paint additional these tools with a normal, soft, shadows or highlights in precisely round brush. The Smudge tool works the right areas, to give composited in a slightly different way, however, elements the correct shading. The and we’ll look at how to use that shadows will then look like they particular tool more closely later in really belong there – which is just the chapter. the effect you’re after. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 69 Chapter 6 The ‘focus’tools The ‘focus’tools are simple to use when you understand how they work. Let’s explore them The Blur tool can be selected from the 1 seventh row of the toolbar or with the a shortcut key [R]. Simply put, you can use this tool to soften edges and detail in an image by Pop-up palette painting over it. You can also pop up the brushes preset palette by right-clicking in the image window. Mac users will need to hold down [Ctrl] and click. The tool uses the normal brushes 2 interface and preset menu, accessible from the Options bar as usual. Most of the time you’ll be using the Blur tool with just a normal, round, soft brush rather than anything fancy. The Strength slider in the Options bar 3 controls the intensity of the blur – how In a hurry? quickly the blur intensifies as you paint. Use The pop-up Brushes the numeric keypad to quickly type in the palette can be strength you require. For example, pressing momentary ([Alt]+ the 1 key on the keypad equals 10% strength, click+hold) or persistent 5 equals 50%, and 0 equals 100%. Here’s the ([Alt]+click+release) same stroke applied once at 10%, 50% and enabling you to choose 100% strength to the pattern’s bottom edge. a brush quickly or browse at leisure. The tool applies the effect continually 4 so even if you stop moving the mouse the effect continues to be applied. The strength slider therefore does not control the maximum amount of blur, but rather the rate at which blurring will intensify. On the right the blur tool is applied for 5 seconds at 10%, and on the left 5 seconds at 100%. 70 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Effects Tools The Blur tool Even with the tool set to 100% strength 5 it can seem like it doesn’t blur to a very high degree. In fact it feels like it reaches a plateau where it no longer has any effect. This is because as the pixels get more blurry you Blurred or focused? need an ever stronger blur to see any effect. But since the strength is at maximum, the tool The trick for a just appears to come to a halt. successful blurring effect, as on the girl’s portrait, is to apply the blur tool only to There is however a simple way to parts of an image and 6 overcome this and to boost the Blur leave key areas, such tool’s power. What you need to do is edit the as the eye, in focus. Spacing setting for the brush you are using. The default 25% spacing is often not enough. Reducing the Spacing means the ‘flow’ of the effect in increased, so blurring is given a boost. The tools can be set to different 7 blending modes, and this can be very Blurred light useful for certain effects. In Darken mode, Other blending modes blurring parts of an image creates an eerie dark glow around objects. The result is on offer – Hue, Colour actually similar to some types of old and Saturation, are less cinematic film. suitable modes to use with the Blur tool in most cases. But Lightness can be quite handy, as it blurs Setting it to Lighten mode does the 8 the details but not opposite and creates a light glow or the colours. halo. This is a great way to soften bright highlights within an image in order to create soft focus and bloom effects on otherwise dead sharp images. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 71 Chapter 6 The Sharpen tool The antithesis of the Blur tool is the Sharpen tool. No prizes for guessing what this tool does The Sharpen tool is used to selectively 1 sharpen pixels in an image. This can be very useful, as in this image, where there is variable focus. Applying the Sharpen filter can A sharp escape sharpen unwanted noise in the blurred parts When working on large of the image. images with large brushes, the Blur and Sharpen tools can take some time to calculate. If you want to stop the calculation of a blur or You could of course construct a mask to 2 protect the blurred areas, but using the sharpen while in Sharpen tool with a large soft brush it’s simply progress, press a matter of painting in where you want the the [Esc] key. sharpening to occur. Noise in blurred parts is therefore kept at bay. The Sharpen tool works best when the 3 Strength slider is kept low – on Slick selection photographic images, or those that have been Selecting the general compressed using lossy compression such as area before using the JPEG, the sharpening can increase ‘noise’ – Blur or Sharpen tool the pixels become too sharp and stand out can speed things up. too much from the image. Therefore, too high a strength setting for the sharpening effect can ruin the image. To reduce the multicolour noise effect, 4 switching to the tool’s blending mode, to Luminosity, is a great help. Now only the brightness details in the image are sharpened but not the colour, which is often where the noise resides. 72 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Effects Tools The Smudge tool The Smudge tool is more like a spacial paintbrush than a focus effect – here’ s why In the focus tool group you’ll also find the Smudge tool. Its inclusion in this group is a slightly Activate with R moot point because it has more in The [R] key activates common with the Paintbush, at least the uppermost tools in the way it’s used. A look at the in the focus tool Smudge tool’s options in the Options group. [Shift]+[R] bar at the top of the Photoshop cycles through the interface reveals its various Blur, Sharpen and Smudge tools. properties. There is the usual In Finger Painting mode, the foreground colour Brushes Presets drop-down menu, is mixed with the original image pixels, while in Normal mode only the image pixels are used where you can select any of Photoshop’s brushes, the Blending Finger Painting mode, which smears mode menu, Strength slider, the foreground colour onto the Multiple Layers option, and the image, using the other pixels. THE SMUDGE TOOL’S OPTIONS IN DETAIL Smudge it Use the Smudge tool in IN NORMAL mode the Smudge tool smears the pixels along the the same way as you direction of the brush stroke. The Strength slider is important here. would your finger when Setting it low causes the smudge effect to fade out as you brush. You can working with pencil or set the strength from 1% to 99%, but setting it to 100% enables a special charcoal. Smudging a mode – the first pixels you click on are sampled and smeared indefinitely, textured brush will for as long as you paint. smooth it out. ALL LAYERS lets you smudge colours from all layers.However,the results is only applied to the currently active layer, not to all the layers. It only means that the Smudge tool samples from all the layers. THE SMUDGE tool can take a lot of computation,especially for large brushes. If your computer is grinding to a halt, try reducing the brush size. MAKING USE of the blending modes can be a lot of fun.For example, Lighten mode can create glowing swirls and streaks on an image. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 73 Chapter 6 Working with the Smudge tool Here’s how to use the Smudge tool to create some amazingly eye-catching effects Using the Smudge tool is pretty 1 intuitive. Set to a very high strength, 90% here, the tool continually samples colours from the image you are smudging, dragging Smudge control the colours with it as it goes. The Smudge tool’s dynamic settings can be set up to respond to a graphics pen’s pressure and/or tilt for extra response and feedback. The Strength slider controls the length 2 of the smudge effect. A low Strength setting smudges only slightly, but it will continue for as long as you keep the mouse button pressed. What can be useful is editing the 3 current brush to enable the Fade New layer setting. Clicking on the button at the far right The Smudge tool has a of the Options bar opens the Brushes palette. Use All Layers option. In the Shape Dynamics section the Size You can use this to control can be set to Fade and a value for the smudge pixels on all distance in pixels entered. This creates a visible layers. It’s best to tapering smudge, useful for creating wisps do this on a new clean and curls. layer so you can undo the effect easily Setting the Fade control on the Other if necessary. 4 Dynamics section to alter the Strength property creates a brush that gently fades the strength, so that it’s 100% to begin with and 1% at the end. The Fade value represents the distance over which the effect is faded. 74 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Effects Tools Dodge and Burn The Dodge and Burn tools enable you to add subtle or intense shading to an image The Dodge and Burn tools are two sides 1 of the same coin and refer to traditional photographic techniques. The Dodge tool is used to lighten pixels in an image, while the Burn tool darkens them. Here are two strokes Burn your own material to illustrate each tool. The image has been Dodged on the left, Burned on the right. Use the Burn tool to add shadows to objects you create from scratch in Photoshop – such as when creating photo- Both the Dodge and Burn tools operate realistic images 2 in three modes, which can be selected and graphics. from the Options bar. These are the Highlights, Midtones and Shadows modes. By default the Dodge tool operates in Highlights mode, and the Burn tool in Shadows mode. We’ll demonstrate the differences, but first here is the original image before the exposure tools are used. In Highlight mode the Dodge tool 3 lightened only the brightest pixels in Dodge the issue the image. With an image that has strong Use the Dodge tool to contrast such as this it’s easy to overexpose the highlights and blow them out. add Highlights to objects that you have created from scratch in Photoshop. With the Dodge tool set to Midtones 4 mode only the middle range of tones is affected. The brightest and darkest pixels are unaltered. You can see that a lot of otherwise invisible detail has been revealed. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 75 Chapter 6 Dodge and Burn continued In Shadows mode, it’s the darkest pixels 5 that get lightened. this is quite a different result. it looks like we’ve painted across the image with a transparent white To the extreme brush – not good at all. Both the Dodge and Burn tools don’t seem to work well when affecting the opposite ends of the tonal spectrum.There are situations where this If we start with a very light image and 6 use the Burn tool we can better see its can be useful, but effects. Here in Shadows mode, the tool picks they tend to be used out the dark areas in the image and makes very subtly. them even darker. In Midtones mode the middle range of 7 tones is darkened leaving the darkest Background and lightest pixels as they were. This is like elements applying the gamma slider in the Levels Focusing in on a subject dialog to darken an image’s midtones, but by dampening the only where you paint. highlights of background elements using the Burn tool is a good example of the tip above. There’s something familiar about this 8 one. In Highlights mode, the Burn tool lowers the brightness of the brightest pixels, resulting in what looks like a stroke of transparent black paint across the image. So the Burn tool works best in Shadows and Midtones mode and the Dodge tool works best in Highlights and Midtones mode. 76 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Effects Tools The Sponge tool The Sponge tool is the cousin of Dodge and Burn. It varies the saturation level in an image Using the Sponge tool couldn’t be 1 easier. It’s a very simple tool that makes pixels either less or more Saturated. By saturation, we mean how colourful a pixel is. Spray the sponge More saturated colours are vivid, while less The Sponge tool has saturated ones are washed out. an Airbrush mode. You can click and hold to continually apply the effect. You can of course perform this kind of 2 action using the Hue/Saturation command or an Adjustment Layer. But the Sponge tool does the same thing in a more hands-on way. Here, we’ve painted on the image with the Sponge tool in Desaturate mode to make the girl stand out from the background more. Switching to Saturate mode, you’d think 3 it would be easy to increase the Colour Range saturation of the girl to enhance the effect. Make a selection using However as you can see even when we lower the strength setting, the result is uneven, and Color Range to focus in some places the colours have ‘flattened’ out the Sponge tool on due to over-saturation. certain colours in the image. A better way to go about this is to apply 4 Hue/Saturation to the whole image before you desaturate it with the Sponge. This lets you see how much saturation to apply, rather than flatten out the colours. You can even control the saturation of the colours independently using the pop-up menu. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 77 Chapter 6 Using Dodge and Burn Here’s how the Dodge and Burn tools work in real, or surreal, situations Using the Dodge and Burn tools is quite simple but you need to take into account certain Toggle tools things, in order to get the best Use the [Alt] key to toggle between the results. The Dodge and Burn tools Dodge and Burn tools are often used to add shading to as you work.There’s no elements in a composite image so need to stop and switch that they match the background or tools manually. other elements in the image. Look for shadows in the image to The direction of the light cast on other elements find out where the main light is or in the background image, determines where to apply effects with the Dodge and Burn tools coming from. Highlights – parts of the object in direct illumination – Midtones mode, while shadows can can be added by painting with the be painted on with the Burn tool in Dodge tool in Highlight and/or Shadows and/or Midtones mode. THE EFFECTS OF DODGE,BURN AND SPONGE The Options bar is where Airbrush mode is available you’ll find the different for the Dodge, Burn and modes and the strength Sponge tools. This applies the slider for the exposure tools. effect constantly while the mouse is held down, so there’s no need to wiggle the mouse to intensify the effect in a certain spot. Dodge, Burn and Sponge These areas in the image tools are located in the have been darkened by ‘exposure’ tool group in painting on the image using Photoshop 7’s toolbar. the Burn tool, and setting it to Shadows mode. The Sponge tool has been These areas in the image used in many of the dodged have been lightened by and burned areas to painting using the Dodge desaturate the image in tool in Highlights mode. those places. 78 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Effects Tools Focusing in with Dodge and Burn Dodge and Burn is a great way of focusing in on the subject of an image, or even a new area Here’s a good example of an image that 1 has no focus. It would work well as a texture or background, but the uniformity of the subject makes it difficult to pick out any Faded paint one leaf as the main subject in the image. After using the Dodge, Burn or Sponge tools, you can used the Edit > Fade command to vary the intensity of the last We can force the image to have a stroke you painted. 2 subject by picking one of the leaves and then adjusting the rest using Dodge and Burn. First we isolate the subject leaf by creating a mask for it using the Magnetic Lasso and then Quick Mask mode to touch up the edges. We can work on the background layer, 3 (having made a copy of it) with the layer mask applied to protect the main leaf. We’ll Fade away use the the Burn tool set to Highlight mode and a low opacity. Keeping the brush strokes The Fade command loose and slightly random, we can dampen actually works with the brightness of the surrounding leaves. most of the brush- based tools in Photoshop.You can often change the blending mode here Using Shadows mode is probably not 4 as well as the opacity. a good idea in this case because you would be changing the contrast balance between the subject and background in a more unnatural way. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 79 Chapter 7 WORKING WITH THE TYPE TOOL IN PHOTOSHOP In this chapter… Creating text in Photoshop is quite easy to do, U s i n g t h e Ty p e t o o l a n d Ty p e l a y e r s whether it’s for artistic effect or simply to add C r e a t i n g t y p e e f f e c t s essential information. We’ll look at the various w i t h L a y e r S t y l e s options available with the Type tool Managing, transforming and distorting type Type and text has numerous text is created as real type just like in applications in Photoshop. a word processing program or vector You can create logos, web buttons, illustration program. The type can be cool 3D text, even paragraphs of edited, so that you can go back and prose using the Type tool. In earlier change the font used, the colour versions of the program, text was a applied or the properties of the text, very basic affair. You created text as such as scale, leading (line spacing) a selection which could be filled and kerning (letter spacing). with a colour in a layer or applied as a layer mask to create type that Quality assured knocked out part of an image, or was Type layers are produced using itself filled with an image or texture. vector technology, just like in a In Photoshop 7, text has become a vector-based tools such as Illustrator fully-fledged feature, and the most or Freehand, and this has two very important aspects of this are its Type important consequences. The first is Layers. Like Adjustment Layers, that type is ‘resolution independent’. Solid Fill and Gradient Layers, Type This means that you can scale, Layers are ‘live’. This means that the rotate, stretch and distort type layers Text Page 82 Older versions created text as Page 83 Type layers in Photoshop 6 Page 84 Get to grips with the idea of selections. Photoshop 7 is more flexible and above can be edited at any time different kinds of anti-aliasing for text Page 84 Learn how to distort vector Page 87 The Warp Text palette lets Page 89 Use Layer Styles with live layers text in later versions of Photoshop you distort your type any way you like to create rich and varied text effects and they will never degrade. It is the used in order to convert the flowing vector paths that are altered, and the lines of the vector paths into the rasterization is performed at the end. rows of square, coloured pixels in a You’ll always have crisp, clean type, normal image layer. To be honest, until the Photoshop document is printing type as true vectors is only saved as a flattened image or printed. important when producing the highest quality artwork for printing Pixel perfect on professional printers. Because of The other consequence is that you this it only works when out-putting can, if you wish, decide to keep the CMYK separations from Photoshop. text as vectors if you print to a postscript printer. This means that Note: Rasterization is the process of the type is printed at the highest converting vectors and paths into possible quality and is never ‘raster’ images, made up of pixels. converted to pixels. Even perfectly Once a type layer is rasterized it rasterized type will print slightly loses any of its special editable fuzzy at the edges. This is because properties and becomes just an of the necessary anti-aliasing that is ordinary pixel-based layer. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 81 Chapter 7 The Type tool Photoshop’s Type tool allows you to add impressive text and type effects to any image Previously, in releases of Photoshop 1 earlier than version 6, text was created like this, as a selection. You could type in your text in a panel, choose the font and other Twice the size options but once created, that was it. If using an older version of Photoshop without vector text and you need to transform type, do so in a new document that is twice the size of the The type selection could be filled with a 2 flat colour, saved to a channel ready for destination document. some channel effects work, or as here applied The higher resolution to an image layer, to create image-filled text. will minimise the degradation of the text edges. Resize the image once the transformation is completed, sharpening it While this is fine, the text is not a vector as necessary. 3 object, so the edges of the type are not always as crisp and clean as they could be. This is due to the anti-aliasing used to smooth non-straight edges of pixel-based images. Computer Arts To discover even more ways to develop your Furthermore, if you wanted to edit the 4 Photoshop skills, check mask, to make it smaller or larger, distort out our sister magazine, it and so on, then the quality of the edge Computer Arts. pixels will deteriorate even further. After just a www.computerarts.co.uk few transformations the edges become fuzzy. 82 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Text The vector text introduced in 5 Photoshop 6 is a whole different ball game. The Text tool, located in the eighth row of the toolbar, contains four different tools. Vectors and rasters Horizontal and Vertical Type, and Horizontal Though the type layers and Vertical Type Masks. are vector-based, just like any vector program Photoshop has to rasterize them in order to display them. But The Type Masks are just like those in this is an ongoing 6 older versions of Photoshop, except process.The type itself they are more easily edited while they are is still stored internally being created. Afterwards they are not as a vector. editable. The normal Type tool creates type as a special vector layer called a Type Layer. Type created like this is ‘live’. You can 7 select the layer and make changes to the text it contains, change the font, colour Rescaling with text and whatever else you like. Transforming this layer is possible using the Free Transform tool, If you were to rescale a just as if it was a normal pixel layer. document containing a live Type Layer, the type would scale up correctly along with the pixel layers, but would not suffer Even after many transformations, the 8 any degradation. type layer’s edges remain as crisp and properly anti-aliased, as it was when the type was first created. You don’t have to worry about the edge degrading when working with type layers. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 83 Chapter 7 Type Options The Type tool’s Options bar is one of the most feature-packed in Photoshop The familiar Options bar in Photoshop 7 is home to the Type tool’s Options and Properties. Cycling fonts The Font field can be As with all tools the first entry at the scrolled through to view top-left is the tool preset picker alternative fonts, just like the Font Size field. Just place pop-up, from which you can select your cursor in it and using preset tool settings, or reset the tool the Up/Down arrow keys. to default. Next is the Horizontal/ Vertical Type toggle, followed by the Font drop-down menu, Font Style The Type Anti-aliasing feature controls how and Font Size drop-downs. smooth the edges of your type is. It’s more noticeable on small type that on larger type. The next menu is the Anti-aliasing control. This is an interesting feature fly. The options are None, Sharp, because it enables you to change the Crisp, Strong and Smooth and range edge anti-aliasing of your text on the from sharpest to smoothest. A WHISTLE-STOP TOUR OF YOUR TYPE TOOL OPTIONS Choose the typeface you Choose your paragraph want to use for the selected alignment by clicking on the type from the Font menu. buttons in the Option bar or in the paragraph panel. A text layer is denoted by a Text can be warped using large letter T in the layer the Warp Text panel. This is preview. The layer name is useful for creating many always the first few special text effects. characters of the text. The Character panel Selected text is highlighted contains many of the in black. The text colour is properties found in the inverted when selected, Options bar plus some so this type will be black extra ones, such as Kerning, when deselected. Leading and Scale. 84 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Text Type tool tips Some practical tips and advice for getting the most out of Photoshop’s Type tool When you create text in a Type Layer, 1 one of the main things you’ll want to do is get the text the right size. There are, as always, different ways to do this in Photoshop. Quick resizing The most obvious is the Size menu in the You can increase or Options Bar. Open it up and choose a size. decrease the size of text by placing your cursor in the Size field and using the Up and Down arrows. You’ll notice that the drop-down list [Shift]+Up/Down 2 only goes up to 72-point text. This is fine moves the values in for most web page titles and such, but not larger chunks. nearly big enough for images destined for print. If you want larger text, then you have to enter a value in the text field manually. Here we’ve used 500-point text in a 1000x1000- pixel image. When creating headings and other 3 large type, there is a simple rule that Specify units you can apply to get better results. Basically, You can specify text size larger text such as headings – especially chunky bold fonts – can have much tighter using any units you like. kerning (letter spacing) than normal text. Just place your Here’s the same word, one with much tighter chosen unit after the letter spacing. number value. For example, 20cm is the same as 2362.2 pixels. To set the kerning for your text, open 4 the Character palette by clicking the palette icon in the Type tool’s Options. There’s a letter spacing pop-up menu, where you can choose your desired value. Negative numbers offer tighter spacing. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 85 Chapter 7 Type tool tips continued Selecting text can be tricky, but once 5 you get the hang of it you’ll be fine. Once text has been created you can click on the tick in the Options bar to return to normal Speedy selections Photoshop operation. While text is selected Select text by clicking most of the key commands no longer work, on it with the Text so be careful you don’t accidentally add tool. Alternatively you unwanted characters. can select a type layer and the text within it by double-clicking the Layer Preview icon. However, when you move your cursor 6 far enough away from the text it turns into the Move tool automatically. This at least gives you the option to move text around without leaving the text editing mode. The only safe way to navigate your 7 document when in editing mode is to Type tool options use the View menu or the [Ctrl]+[+/–] shortcut The Type tool’s (that’s [Command]+[+/–] on a Mac). At least shortcut is, surprise then you are able to zoom in and out of the surprise, the [T] key. image while text is selected. You can cycle through each tool in the tool ground by typing [Shift]+[T]. Attempting to pan an image while text 8 is selected will result in this. All your text will be replaced by a space. If this happens just click the Cancel Current Edits button in the Option bar to retrieve your previous text as it appeared before you started editing it. 86 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Text Using the Warp Text panel Photoshop won’t let you warp text along a path, but there are still plenty of Warp options When you select a ‘live’ type layer, 1 you can access the Warp Text panel by clicking its icon on the Options bar. The panel opens and allows you to distort the selected Be patient type using some simple controls. Because Type Layers are vectors the distortion does not degrade the quality of the type. However, large amounts of text will There is a Style pop-up menu, from take longer to distort 2 which you can choose numerous than a single character. distortion types. This is a simple Arc Warp, set to Vertical mode. Warps can be subtle or pretty severe, 3 depending how you set the sliders. Extra text tools The Horizontal and Vertical sliders control a Photoshop has kind of perspective distortion of the type layer, making it appear to tilt towards or away Paragraph tools as well from you on either axis. as Character tools. These can be found in the Paragraph palette, which is docked with the Character palette by default. Using nonsense fonts or symbols 4 together with the Warp panel you can get some weird shapes and patterns. It can be fun and – like all the best features – it takes some playing with. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 87 Chapter 7 Rasterizing type In order to apply normal Photoshop effects to type, you’ll need to rasterize it first Because type layers are vector- based you cannot apply pixel- based effects to them. So you can’t Flatten it use filters or paint on them directly, All non-pixel layers can be rasterized in and you can’t apply adjustments to Photoshop, using the them to change their colour or appropriate brightness. You can get around these commands in the problems by adding an adjustment Layers menu. layer above your type layer, but you’ll also need a mask if you only Rasterized type layers act like bitmap layers, want the adjustment applied to the because that’s just what they are. This type has text and not to the layers below. been rasterized, blurred and adjusted with levels. You can change the blending especially over image layers. But modes of type layers, which results to really get stuck into text layers in some interesting type effects, you’ll need to rasterize them. RASTERIZING YOUR TYPE LAYERS One way to rasterize type Another method is to load is to Choose the Layer > the type layer as a selection. Rasterize > Type command [Ctrl/Command]+click on the from the main menu. layer icon and create a new layer. Fill this layer with colour using the type selection. If you want to keep the type layer editable, you can make a copy of the layer by You can apply Layer Styles dragging it onto the New to live type layers. In this case Layer icon at the bottom of there’s no need to rasterize the Layers palette. them beforehand. If you try to do something that requires the type layer to To rasterize a type layer, be rasterized, Photoshop may right-click on the layer’s ask you if you wish to do this name in the Layer Palette first in a warning dialog. and choose Rasterize Layer. 88 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Text Styled Type Layer Styles can be used to create stunning type effects for any occasion With a type layer selected in the Layers 1 palette you can select Layers > Layer Styles and choose an option from the sub-menu to apply that style to the text. In this case a simple drop-shadow has been Quick colour change applied. The Layer Styles panel will automatically pop open. The Colour Overlay section of the Layer Styles palette can be used to quickly change the colour of your text To create text with a bit of relief you can without changing 2 use the Bevel and Emboss options to to the Type tool add depth to your text. It helps if the text is and selecting it. not set to 100% white or black, because the Bevel and Emboss effects add black and white shading to create the illusion of depth. The Pattern option lets you fill the text 3 with any saved pattern. In this case Save your Styles we’ve used an American flag that we had Custom Styles can be previously saved as a pattern to fill our New York text. saved as presets and stored for reuse by clicking the New Style button in the Layer Styles palette. Text can be ‘stroked’ using the Stroke 4 section of the Layer Styles. The Stroke function adds an outline to the text, which can be useful if you have filled it with a pattern because the text is more clearly defined. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 89 Chapter 8 WORKING WITH PATHS,VECTORS AND MASKS In this chapter… Photoshop has always used vector-based L e a r n h o w t o u s e t h e P e n t o o l t o d r a w p a t h s ‘paths’ to draw smooth shapes and outlines, L e a r n h o w t o c u t o u t but the latest version has the ability to create o b j e c t s u s i n g p a t h s a n d c o n v e r t t h e m t o shapes and masks with vectors too s e l e c t i o n s , a n d v i c e - v e r s a Work with Vec tor Masks t o a d d a d d i t i o n a l l a y e r i n g c a p a b i l i t i e s t o y o u r d o c u m e n t s Photoshop has limited capabilities L e a r n t o u s e Ve c t o r Vectors are totally different from pixels: vectors are when it comes to saving vector-only S h a p e s a n d i m p o r t e d mathematically defined lines and files but you can include vector v e c t o r a r t w o r k curves, which you can use to draw information in a normal Photoshop perfectly smooth shapes and file. While this means file sizes outlines. Whereas a shape made up won’t be quite as small as they of pixels has a definite size and would be with a true vector-based resolution, vectors can be of any size program, you will still get all the or resolution – they are said to advantages of a vector’s scalability. ‘resolution independent’. Furthermore a vector-based image Various vectors will be a very small file when saved In Photoshop, vectors come in to disk, compared to a pixel-based different varieties: first, there’s the bitmap image. The same file could Pen tool, which is used to create be used to make a 128x128 pixel ‘Paths’ (Photoshop’s traditional web graphic, or a 5000x5000 pixel name for vectors) but there are also poster. The quality will be perfect in Vector Shapes; these are a new both situations. feature that appears in later versions Vectors Page 92 Learn how to use paths and Page 93 Use the Freestyle Pen tool to Page 94 Use the Convert tool to alter work with the Paths palette sketch paths the control points Page 95 Add Shape Layers to the layer Page 97 Set overlapping vector shapes Page 99 Apply Layer Styles directly stack when you create a vector shape to different Boolean modes to Shape Layers of Photoshop which you can use in shapes and imported artwork into their own special layers, instead of complex painted graphics with the relegating them to the Paths palette. richness of pixel-based brushes. Paths were an alternative method for creating selections in Photoshop, Shape your behaviour since a path can be loaded as a Vector shapes behave like layer selection once it’s been drawn. This masks, blocking and revealing parts makes them ideal for cutting out of the layer to which they are complicated shapes, such as when applied. You can edit them with the you’re removing an object from its Pen tool or the Direct Selection tool, background – useful when the and they offer a further level of background is complex and it has functionality for the program. become difficult to select using the Photoshop is not a fully-fledged selection tools. vector-drawing application such as Paths can also be ‘stroked’, Illustrator, Freehand or Corel Draw, making them an alternative painting and probably never will be, but there tool. Stroking a path with a brush is is surprisingly good support for a fun way of turning plain vector vector drawing in Photoshop. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 91 Chapter 8 Using the Pen tools You can use the tools in the Pen family to draw all kinds of paths The Pen tool is located in the ninth row 1 of Photoshop’s toolbar – it’s easy to find because it looks just like its name. In older versions of Photoshop the only place you Control points could create paths was in the Paths palette. Each time you click All the paths you drew would be located here. with the Pen tool, a control point is added. Always try to use as few control points as you can, because it makes the path much The Pen toolgroup contains five 2 separate tools. The first is the ‘normal’ easier to control. Pen tool. Use this to draw smooth or angular paths by clicking in the document; clicking without dragging creates a sharp control point used to make angular paths, such as this quadrilateral shape. Clicking and dragging pulls out the 3 Bézier handles from a control point, Path options turning it into a smooth point. You can use The Paths palette has smooth points to create curved paths, such as an Options menu, this roughly circular path. where you can choose the size of the display icon, or choose to turn it off. You can combine smooth and sharp 4 control points in a path to make it both smooth and angular – simply click without dragging to place a sharp control point where you need one. 92 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Vectors Paths can be open or closed. An open 5 path does not loop back on itself, whereas a closed path does. To close a path, you position the cursor over the starting Add anchor points control point and the Pen cursor will change When using the Pen to show a small ‘o’ next to its pointer. When you click, the ends of the path will join up. tool, the cursor will automatically change to the Add Anchor Point tool whenever it’s over part of the A Path layer in the Paths palette can path. Just click on it to 6 contain more than one separate path add a point. entity. Once you’re finished drawing a path, [Ctrl]+click to end the Pen drawing action so you can start a new path. Mac users should [Command]+click instead. The second tool in the Pen toolgroup is 7 the Freeform Pen tool. With this tool you Quick curves can literally draw a path, as opposed to You can edit the curve clicking to place point. Your freehand sketch will be converted to a path consisting of as between two points few control points as possible. directly by clicking and dragging it.The handles of the two adjacent points change simultaneously, but do not change Next is the Add Anchor Point tool. This 8 their location. tool enables you to add control/anchor points in between existing points on a path. The path will not change shape when you add a point using this tool. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 93 Chapter 8 Using the Pen tools continued The fourth tool is the Delete Anchor 9 Point tool. This tool does the opposite of the Add Anchor Point tool: clicking on an existing point on the path with this tool will Load a path delete it. You might find that the path will To load a path as a change shape as a result. selection, [Ctrl]+click on the path icon in the Paths palette (that’s [Command]+ click for Mac users), or click the ‘Load path as The final tool is the Convert Anchor 10 Point tool. This is used to change a Selection’ button at sharp point into a smooth one, and vice-versa. the bottom of To use it, click on a smooth point to convert it the palette. into a sharp point (or ‘cusp’); drag on a point to convert a sharp point into a smooth one. You can also use the Convert point tool 11 to edit the Bézier handles of a smooth Convert a point. When you do this with this tool the selection Handles will ‘break’ – that is, they will move You can convert a independently of each other. selection into a path by clicking the ‘Make Work Path from Selection’ button in the Paths palette. Holding down the [Ctrl] key when any 12 of the Pen tools are selected activates the Direct Selection tool (Mac users should hold down the [Command] key). This is the prime editing tool for Paths. Use this tool if you want to move Bézier handles together without breaking them. 94 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Vectors Vector Shapes Vector Shapes are new to later versions of Photoshop – here’s what they do Next to the Pen tool in the ninth row of the tool bar is the Vector Shape tool. This enables you Preset styles do draw shapes as vector paths or If you choose a Layer vector masks by dragging them out Style preset from the in the Layers or Paths palette. Layer Styles preset With the tool selected you can pop-up before you choose from the Options bar what drag out a shape, that you want to create. You can select style will be applied to the shape. the Pen and Freestyle Pen tool from A Vector Shape can be created as a mask for a the Vector Shape tool’s Options, but solid fill layer, and optionally, as here, have a layer style automatically applied to it. there are also the specific shapes: Ellipse, Rectangle, Rounded Shape, which enables you to choose Rectangle, Polygon and Line. a shape from the library of designs A third option is the Custom that ships with Photoshop. HOW TO CREATE CUSTOM SHAPES The Custom Shape option This is a Shape Layer: it is in the Vector Shape’s Option essentially a solid fill layer bar gains you access to a with a vector mask. large library of custom vector designs. Your shape can be created in three ways: as a Shape layer, as a plain vector path Layer Styles can be applied in the Paths palette, or as a to Shape Layers; here a drop direct pixel fill with no saved shadow is applied. vector attributes. Whenever vector shapes overlap in the same layer, you can choose how they will react to one another. The Photoshop comes with a options are: Add, Subtract, large collection of custom Intersect and Exclude. vector shapes. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 95 Chapter 8 Using Vector Shapes Using the Vector Shape tool in versions of Photoshop that support vector shape layers When you select the Vector Shape tool, 1 you have three options that determine how shapes will be applied to your document. These options are located at the top-left of the Arrowheads Options bar. The first is Shape Layer mode. Arrowheads can be found in the small pop- up menu next to the Custom Shape button in the Options bar. This creates a Solid Fill Layer and adds 2 the path as a vector mask to the layer. Layers in Photoshop 6 and onwards can have two masks per layer: a vector mask and a normal layer mask. Here a gradient mask is used on the layer as well. The second option is to create the 3 shape as a simple path in the Paths Line width options palette. You do not need to be in the Paths In Line mode, you can palette to do this, just click and drag in a layer change the line width – the vector shape is created in the Paths by entering a value in palette automatically. points in the Options bar. Hold down the [Shift] key when drawing lines to constrain them to The fourth option is to do away with 45-degree angles. 4 any vector information and create the shape as pixels on a normal layer. Using the Line Shape option, this is the only way to simulate the Line tool function in older version of Photoshop. 96 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Vectors When set to Layer Shape mode, 5 dragging out additional vector shapes creates new vector shape layers, which is not always what you want to happen, and also Add mode precludes the use of the vector shape Boolean You can also add to interaction options. the current vector mask by turning on Add mode in the Boolean options to the right of the In order to add a vector shape to an Options bar. 6 existing shape layer, you must switch to Path mode and select the Vector Mask Layer. Now when you drag out a vector shape it is added to the same vector mask in the currently selected vector layer. In Add mode, the overlapping vector 7 shapes simply overlap and add Chop and change together. However, switching to Subtract Make complex vector mode turns the next vector that you draw into a ‘cutter’, which you can use to remove shapes by intersecting, portions of the current shapes. subtracting, adding and excluding more simple ones. You can use the Boolean switches 8 on existing shapes in a vector mask as well, just as you can for shapes that you are about to create. Here we have changed the mode for the third circle from Subtract to Intersect mode. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 97 Chapter 8 Masks A bit of detail about masking to help you get the most out of vector layers and masks Layer Folders A Layer Folder (aka ‘Layer Set’) can Photoshop has more masks than You can also group layers together you might realise. There is an into a ‘clipping group’ by [Alt]+ actually hold two additional mask in each layer clicking between them on the masks: a normal layer (besides the background layer, which separator in the Layers palette – the mask and a vector is always 100% opaque) that you cursors will change to overlapping mask, giving you don’t usually see. This is because circles indicating clipping group potential access to it’s the layer itself, or rather the mode, and clicking will cause the four different masks. surrounding transparent pixels. uppermost layer to be indented. If you paint on a transparent layer, The layer will be masked using the the brush stroke is surrounded by bottom layer’s Layer Transparency transparent pixels. The pixels in the Mask, and its Layer Mask and its layer are a mask in their own right. Vector Mask, if these are present. This can be proved because you can This enables you to quickly mask load it as a selection by [Ctrl/ multiple layers using a single layer Command]+clicking the layer icon. or vector mask, and is very useful. VECTOR MASKS AND LAYER FOLDERS If you run out of masks you can always add a folder Photoshop 6 introduced a new kind of layer mask: the Vector Mask. This uses a vector shape to make portions of a layer transparent and works in tandem with the normal layer mask. Vector masks are either on or off: they either hide or show the layer 100%; there is no in-between value like with normal layer masks, which use 255 grayscale values. But what happens if you already have a layer mask and a vector mask on a layer but would really like a third? You can do this through the use of layer folders. Adding a layer folder and A layer folder can be used to add placing your layer inside it gives you access to two further further masks to a layer if you find masks that can be applied to the folder layer itself. you need more than two 98 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Vectors Vector Shape details We’ll look at some of the options that are specific to Vector Shapes The Rounded rectangle shape is used to 1 create rectangular shapes and masks with rounded corners. Before you drag out the shape you can set the desired corner size in In a corner the Options bar. Add a Layer Style if you like. You cannot change the radii of the corners of a rounded rectangle after it has been created. The Polygon shape tool is used to create 2 regular shapes of any number of sides. Here a triangle is created in Subtract mode to cut a hole in the Rectangle. When editing the shapes you need to 3 select the Direct Selection tool. Then Quash confusion you can drag out a marquee around the Don't confuse the points you wish to move. Selected points are displayed as filled-in dots; unselected ones are Move tool with the unfilled dots. Path Selection tool. The Move tool does not have a 'tail' and cannot be used to move paths individually. The usual copying options apply with 4 paths as well as selections, so you can make a copy of a shape by selecting it and [Alt]+dragging it. Here we’ve duplicated the arrows, and changed their mode to Add. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 99 Chapter 9 ANNOTATIONS, NOTES AND THE MEASURE TOOL In this chapter… Along with the creative tools, Photoshop A d d N o t e s a n d A n n o t a t i o n s t o y o u r provides several tools to add accuracy, sound P h o t o s h o p d o c u m e n t s and vision to your work.These fall into two tool Learn which file formats work with Notes and groups – notation and measurement tools Annotations U s e t h e E y e D r o p p e r t o o l t o s a m p l e c o l o u r s f r o m a n i m a g e a project, or for producing learning S ample precise pixel values at different The ‘notations’tools, Note and Annotation, can be found in the aids directly within the program. points of an image with tenth row of the toolbar in their own the Colour S ampler tool group. The Note tool allows you Measure for measure to attach informative notes to The measurement tools are very Photoshop documents. These can be useful utilities in Photoshop. The read by other Photoshop users when Measure tool itself lets you measure the document is opened, so the tool distances and angles, providing you can be very useful when using with precise information that you can Photoshop collaboratively. It can also use in conjunction with other tools be very handy for creating teaching in Photoshop. You can measure the aids in an educational environment. distance between two points, or the Taking this one step further is the total horizontal distance covered, Annotation tool. This allows you to plus you can snap the tool to grids add sound clips to images that can be and guides when more precise played by double-clicking their icon. measurements are needed. This again provides a useful way to The Eye Dropper and Colour communicate with others working on Sampler are essential when working Miscellaneous tools and Utilities Page 102 Add notes to images to use Page 103 Sound clips can be added to Page 105 Choose the foreground or as a handy reminder later on images, with a microphone backround colour with the Eye Dropper Page 105 Sampling options can read Page 106 The Colour Sample tool puts Page 107 Use the Measure tool to help the perceived colour from a noisy image up to four sample points on an image straighten out crooked images and scans professionally with colour, but are values in the Info palette. This can also very useful on a day-to-day be extremely useful when making basis for any Photoshop user. The colour adjustments because the Info Eye Dropper can be accessed in palette displays the original values various ways in Photoshop. For both of the sampled pixels and the instance, when the Colour Picker is adjusted values. open, if you move your cursor off the Colour Picker panel and over the Colour by numbers image, the cursor automatically The great advantage of these colour changes to an Eye Dropper, enabling measurement tools is that you don’t you to sample the colour of any need to rely on your eye or the pixel. The tool can also be toggled on dubious colour characteristics of and off by holding down the [Alt] your computer monitor. Instead, you key when a Brush tool is selected. can see the exact values numerically. The Colour Sampler is like the This accuracy is a real bonus for Eye Dropper tool on steroids. You professional printing needs, but also can sample a maximum of four for achieving good results on a home points simultaneously and read their colour photo printer. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 101 Chapter 9 Notes and Annotations Make notes and annotations, attach them to images, and learn how to open and save them Creating a note could not be easier. 1 With the Note tool selected you click on the image where you want the note icon to appear. A window, like a little Post-It note, Name change appears where you can enter your text. You can also change the name in the title bar by entering a new one in the field in the Options bar and pressing return. There is not a lot of editing that you can 2 do to the note text itself, but you can change the font and set the size. There are only five preset sizes: Smallest, Small, Medium, Large and Largest. Smallest and small are practically unreadable, though. You can have more than one note in a 3 document, and in order to differentiate Closing notes between them you can choose to give them To close a Note click different colours. The note’s title bar and its the close box in the icon take on the new colour when collapsed. top-left corner of the Note’s title bar.The Note will collapse to an icon on the image. Double-click it to open it again. To save a document containing a note, 4 you must use one of three file formats. These are Photoshop, Photoshop PDF and TIFF. All the other file formats will discard the note information, as they do not support it. 102 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Miscellaneous tools and Utilities With the Annotation tool you can attach 5 a sound clip, usually a spoken sentence, to an image in a similar way to notes. Clicking on the image with the Annotation tool opens Take the mic a dialog prompting you to start recording. In order to record an annotation you must have a microphone connected to your computer’s sound card or mic input. Click on Stop to end recording. There is 6 no interface for the audio annotation, you just double-click to hear the recording. If you look hard enough you can just about see the icon next to the Annotation tool’s cursor. Because the audio annotations are a bit 7 difficult to see it may be wise to build Colourful sounds your document with spaces to accomodate Annotations can be them. This is an example of a way to help guide people to the right annotation. coloured using the colour swatch in the Annotation tool’s Options bar.You can reuse annotations from other documents. You can import As with notes, documents containing 8 annotations annotations must be saved as either by selecting File > TIFF, Photoshop PDF or plain Photoshop Import > Annotations. format. If you don’t want to display annotations you can hide them using the View > Show > Annotations menu command. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 103 Chapter 9 The Eye Dropper tool The Eye Dropper is an essential Photoshop tool, especially for achieving colour accuracy The Eye Dropper tool samples the colours of individual pixels in an image, but there is more to it than just Eye Dropper info being able to set a new foreground You can also use the Histogram with the colour. In Levels Adjustment, you can Eye Dropper to read use the Eye Dropper by moving the values and gauge the cursor over the image, and reading the distribution of tones tonal values at different points. To see in an image. if the darkest shadows are really black and the lightest really white, hover the Using the Eye Dropper tool while working with Eye Dropper over them and read their the Levels adjustment panel allows you to read the original and adjust values in the Info palette. values in the Info palette. The palette can display various colour values – the darkest pixels should read 0,0,0. CMYK, RGB, LAB and so on. With Pure white reads 255, 255, 255 – the RGB (Red, Green and Blue pixels) maximum brightness value. THE COLOUR SAMPLE TOOL Select a sampling method CMYK documents are from the Options bar. Choose destined for print and colour to take a point sample, or is critical in this type of measure the average colour medium. You can check what within 3x3 or 5x5 pixels. colour mode the document is in the title bar. Using the Sampler you can The Colour Sampler tool look at the darkest an lets you place multiple lightest points in an image sample points in an image, simultaneously. marked by ‘bull’s eyes’. The Info palette displays colour values differently The colour values for each depending how you have it point are displayed in the set up and what colour mode Info palette. your image is in. 104 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Miscellaneous tools and Utilities Using the Eye Dropper tool Using the Eye Dropper tool couldn’t be easier, but it boasts a few less obvious features too You can choose a different foreground 1 colour when painting by selecting the Eye Dropper tool from the toolbar and clicking on the image. The tool will sample the Colour accuracy colour of the pixel you click in and store it in The 3x3 average the Foreground Colour swatch. sample size can be more accurate, especially on busy images where the colour varies To chose a new background colour, dramatically. 2 you could flip the Foreground and Background swatches using the [X] key, take a sample and flick back, or simply hold down the [Alt] key when the Eye Dropper tool is selected. When in Point Sample mode, selected 3 from the Options bar drop-down menu, Get a colour it can be tricky to sample the perceived colour update of a particular area of a noisy image. The actual pixels may vary in colour dramatically Click and drag over and not represent the overall colour of the the image to see the particular area of the image. colour sample update interactively in the toolbar. To get around this there are two other 4 modes – 3x3 Average and 5x5 Average. Each mode samples a grid of pixels around the one you select, sums their colours and takes the average.The sample is usually a much better match to the colour you perceive by eye. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 105 Chapter 9 The Colour Sampler The Colour Sampler tool enables you to take up to four colour readings at once The Colour Sampler tool in the 1 Eye Dropper tool group (tenth row of the toolbar) can be used to place multiple permanent sample points on an image to help Neutral colours while adjusting the image’s colour. The Info RGB mode stores the palette displays the colour reading. image as three colour channels, Red, Green and Blue. If you sample a pixel and each of the values for R,G and B are the same, (say, 45,45,45 You can move sample points around 2 after they have been created, and they or 189,189,189) then are truly permanent. Even if you close the you know that pixel is a document, and reopen it the sample points neutral pure grey tone. will have been stored. Displaying colours in RGB mode in the Info palette helps you gauge the neutrality of tones in an image. To delete a sample point hold the [Alt] 3 key down and click on the point – the Colour in cursor turns to a pair of scissors. Alternatively confidence right-clicking on a sample point will open a Using the absolute pop-up menu from which you can choose colour values is a sure- the Delete command. Mac users will need to fire way of proofing [Ctrl]-click for the latter function. certain aspects of an image, since it avoids the vagaries of your computer’s Like the Eye Dropper tool, you can set monitor display. 4 the mode for the sample points to be either single pixels, or averaged pixels (3x3 or 5x5 pixel arrays, around the sample point). The latter are useful for ‘noisy’ images. To clear all the sample points, click the Clear button in the Option bar. 106 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Miscellaneous tools and Utilities The Measure tool Taking measurements is very useful for accurate drawings or precise transformations The Measure tool can be found in the 1 tenth tool group along with the Eye Dropper tool. You can use this tool to measure distances, widths and angles directly in the image. Here we can measure the exact size of Diagonal perfection an object by dragging with the Measure tool. Hold down the [Shift] key to constrain the Measure tool’s angle to 45-degree increments. This is useful when you The measurement is given in the want to measure a 2 Options bar, and the Info palette, in this perfect diagonal. case the line is 280 pixels thick. We can now make a duplicate line with the same thickness by entering 280px in the Line tool’s Size field. To measure an angle drag out the 3 Measure tool along one edge, then [Alt]- drag from the end point to pull out a second Auto measurements line. The angle between the two lines is displayed in degrees in the Option bar and With the Free Info palette. Transform tool, the value will automatically be applied after taking an angle measurement. If it’s in A single line’s angle is displayed too, 4 the wrong direction, which can be useful for straightening simply add or delete a crooked images.You can measure a line that minus sign in front of should be straight and then use the Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary command.You don’t the angle value in need to enter the value you measured, the Options bar. because it’s already been entered for you. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 107 Chapter 10 CREATING TOP QUALITY ARTWORK In this chapter… In this final chapter we’ll put together a piece of artwork using all the tools and options that S e e h o w P h o t o s h o p’s t o o l s c a n b e u s e d t o we’ve looked at over the course of this c o n s t r u c t a c o m p l e x , m o n t a g e - b a s e d i l l u s t r a t i o n Photoshop Focus Guide L e a r n t h e t r i c k s o f t h e t r a d e t o c r e a t e m o r e p r o f e s s i o n a l - l o o k i n g a r t w o r k interface makes Photoshop as easy C o m b i n e t o o l s t o g e t to use for home dabblers as it is for t h e b e s t r e s u l t s i n t h e Photoshop has many uses, ranging from film and television graphics, to 3D texturing, the professional artist. s h o r t e s t t i m e to web design, to colour correction and printing. All are different, yet Creating illustrations Photoshop has the toolset to enable Another use for Photoshop is artists working in totally different creating incredible works of art disciplines to get the best results and illustrations. These may be from their work. hand-painted, some composite of Photoshop is also a superb photographic or 3D images, or some photographer’s tool, providing wild combination of other media. digital darkroom capabilities that In this last chapter we’ll be putting are second to none. And with the together an illustration combining proliferation of digital cameras photos with Photoshop filters, available these days, the importance brushes and effects. We’ll need to of Photoshop as a photographic tool draw on the skills and techniques has never been greater. What’s more, learned in the rest of the book in the ease of workflow and smart order to create this image, and you’ll Artwork project Page 110 Selecting and removing a Page 111 Paint away holes inside a Page 112 Reconstruct missing parts background is tricky, but worth a try mask with the Brush tool of an image with the Clone tool Page 113 Create duplicate brush Page 115 Seamlessly blend images Page 119 The illustration is completed strokes by stroking a path over complex backgrounds with Vector Shapes and Type elements see how the tools used are an has an ill-defined edge. Wispy hair integral part of the creation process, is a classic case; it can be nearly as well as facilitating the idea itself. impossible to extract this from a As with any other program, you’ll background using Photoshop alone. need to be aware of the limitations Indeed, there are a number of third of Photoshop, or you could end up party plug-ins designed solely to painting yourself into a corner. tackle this very problem. Often you will need to think ahead in order to progress smoothly. For Eggs and baskets instance, it may be necessary, in Do not make the execution of a concept, to remove a foreground difficult task pivotal in the creation element from its background so of an image. It may not work, and that it can be used in the artwork if it doesn’t, you’ll be left with seamlessly. However, this can be a nowhere to turn. Photoshop is a very difficult thing to do – arguably rich and varied system; explore it the single most difficult task a thoroughly and remember any quirks Photoshop artist can be faced with, you discover – you never know especially if the object in question when you may need to use them. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 109 Chapter 10 Creating a montage Now we can experiment with a montage using all the techniques we’ve learned Here’s the starting image for our 1 illustration/montage. It’s a straight portrait of a model, with even lighting and good all-round quality. It’s also at a high Experimentation resolution of about 3,000 pixels. Because this is a creative exercise, we can risk experimenting with cutting out the background, since there may be a creative solution We intend to apply as many Photoshop 2 tools as we can, while attempting to to any problems produce as artistic an image as we can. we encounter. Cutting out the background in such an image can be tricky because of the wisps of hair. We need to keep this in mind before we commit to a total removal of the background. Let’s begin by attempting to remove the 3 background to see how well we can Background layer achieve this. The Magic Wand tool will be first When increasing the up to bat. Using the default settings of a canvas, the 32-pixel tolerance, we shift-click to select each background layer, sector of the background. which cannot have transparent pixels, is filled with the colour in the background colour swatch. Set this before Here’s the resulting selection as a mask. you run the command. 4 Not too great, but not bad either. It’s promising and worth having as a half decent mask, so let’s keep it and refine it further. 110 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Artwork project In Channel view we can see the mask 5 and the RGB channels at the same time by clicking the eye icons next to the channels. The mask is displayed as a rubylith overlay, Invert a selection just like in Quick Mask mode. This enables us We could have to paint out the problem areas with careful use of the Brush tool. avoided this step by inverting the selection before applying it as a layer mask.To invert a selection (as opposed The fixed mask is loaded as a selection to the pixels within a 6 and applied as a layer mask to a selection) type duplicate of the background layer. Another [Alt]+[Shift]+[I]. layer has been added below the new layer and filled with white. The mask needs to be inverted, which you can do by selecting it in the Layers palette and typing [Alt]+[I]. The layer mask can be smoothed to 7 remove some of the graininess by applying a filter to it. By applying the Gaussian Blur filter to the mask (not the image part of Inverted layer the layer) we can vary the smoothness to get masks the right effect. This also has the effect of If you want to load a fading the edges of the subject, which looks selection as an inverted quite cool. layer mask, you can do so in one action by [Alt]-clicking the Add Layer Mask button in At this point we need to make the 8 the Layers palette. canvas area larger. Using the Image > Canvas Size command we can expand the document horizontally to 4,000 pixels. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 111 Chapter 10 Fix missing parts of the image We can regenerate our subject with the Clone tool and add shading with the Burn tool Using the Clone tool we can paint back 1 part of the model’s left arm, which had been cropped off in the original image. Sampling from skin tones nearby the cropped Cut and paste part of the image we begin to rebuild the Another approach is missing portion. to use selections to cut and paste sections of the skin from other areas of the image. We use a hard-edged brush for the edge 2 of the arm to get a good line for her arm. The inside parts are filled in using a softer brush. This can be tricky, but don’t worry if it looks flat – we can add back the shading later. The tones are a bit blotchy but we can 3 even them out using the Blur tool. Safety layer Remember the tip of reducing the Spacing If you are unsure of of the brush to increase the strength of the what you are doing, effect. This won’t fix everything but it’ll help. try cloning onto a new layer rather than the image's own layer. Make sure Use All Layers is checked, though. To add back some shading we begin by 4 adding a bit of highlight to the edge of the arm to match the existing highlight on the shoulder. We’ll use a textured brush for this, and the temptation is to simply paint it on by hand, which is fine, but there is another way. 112 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Artwork project Using the Pen as a brush We can use the Pen tool to create accurate, repeatable brush strokes In order to have a bit more precision 1 when adding the highlight, we can use the Pen tool. We begin by drawing a path along the length of the arm. Sketchy stroke The technique of using a pen as a stroke can be applied in other ways.You can give vector shapes a more 'hand-drawn' We select the Dodge tool and set up a look by stroking them 2 large textured brush for it in Midtones with sketchy brushes. mode at 50% strength. By clicking the Stroke Path with Brush button selected in the Paths palette, the Dodge tool will be stroked along the path. By repeating this action with 3 successively smaller radius brushes we Broken paths can create a nice fake illumination to the edge Break up a complex of the arm. Each stroke passes in exactly the same position because of the path. path into different sections to add variety and detail to stroked paths. The rest of the arm is touched up to 4 remove any further unevenness in tones on the skin (the eye is very sensitive to this) using the Burn and Clone tools. The result is pretty good, especially if you didn’t know where to look for the fix-up job. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 113 Chapter 10 Using the Pen as a brush continued The next tool we need to use is the 5 wonderful Healing Brush. We can use this to just subtly remove some wrinkles and blemishes from the model’s face. Keep it real Overdo a touch-up job and your subject can end up looking like one of those plastic models on the front of countless fashion mags. The most obvious lines to fix are those 6 on the brow. Using a brush that’s about Remember to keep three times the width of the line, we take a your effects subtle. sample just above it and paint it out. You must be careful not to overdo it and remove all the lines totally, as it can look too false. Next we can tackle the occasional 7 blemish. The odd spot is removed using Progress report the same technique with the Healing Brush Use the Zoom tool to tool. Note that even where there are areas of zoom out of the high contrast and detail (such as where the image to look at the light strikes her face at the edges) the tool will image as a whole. still work well. This will give you a good idea of how well the touch-up is coming along. You can be as thorough or as subtle as 8 you like when using the Healing tool. In this example we’ve removed the small wrinkles near the corners of the eye. The right side has been done and the left side has not. 114 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Artwork project Adding a background We can add a colourful background in order to provide more visual impact The white background was just a 1 stand-in to enable us to see the effect of the layer mask. We can replace it with a better image, such as this. This is not a photo or a Discard or apply? painting, but a 3D render produced using When you discard a some special focus rendering effect. mask by dragging it to the trash, you are prompted to discard or apply the mask. Choosing the option to The render is dragged into the main Apply cuts away the 2 Photoshop illustration document by masked pixels before dragging its layer from the Layers palette and the mask is deleted. dropping it over the image. Placed below the masked layer we can see the edges of the original background more clearly. We decide to go with a creative effect to 3 solve this problem – blurring them until Trash layers they are unnoticeable. Before we do that we Any layer element can remove as much of the white as possible using an eraser. The layer is duplicated and the mask be deleted by dragging is applied to the layer by dragging it over to it to the trash can icon the trash beforehand. at the bottom of the palette. Next we load the layer mask as a 4 selection, and then use the Selection > Feather command and a large value (about 60) to smooth the selection. Then we shrink it by 20 pixels using the Selection > Modify > Shrink command. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 115 Chapter 10 Adding a backgroundcontinued The selection is inverted using 5 [Alt]+[Shift]+[I] so that only the outer edges will be affected; the face will stay sharp. Gaussian Blur is used to blur the edges of the More layers girl, producing a forced ‘depth of focus’ effect Always think how and hiding a lot of the white edge. something can be accomplished without actually changing any pixels destructively. Rather than adjusting the colours of the girl We can make use of this same selection 6 again by applying it as a layer mask to layer directly we use the blurred girl layer and inverting it. This another layer in Colour fades out the blurred portion, blending it into blending mode. the background. Levels are used to adjust the degree of blending. To blend the colours of the background 7 and the girl better we can make use of Overwrite rules Photoshop’s blending modes. The red You will find that background layer is duplicated, blurred and some work you do placed above the girl layer. Using Colour earlier will be negated mode, the layer’s colours are transferred to the by later artistic girl layer. changes. Don't worry - it's a part of the process that even best laid plans can't avoid. The Opacity is adjusted to get the right 8 blend. Too much and the girl’s colours are washed away; too little and she stands out too much. The greenish/yellow patch of the red layer is removed by cloning over it. 116 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Artwork project To intensify the girl layer and add more 9 contrast to it once more, Layer Blending modes come to the rescue. The girl layer is duplicated and applied in Linear Burn mode, with an opacity of 50%. Advanced blending Access a layer’s options panel by double-clicking it. Here you can find the advanced blending In fact, the opposite works well too: sliders. In this case, the 10 applying the duplicated layer in Linear ‘This Layer’ slider is set Dodge mode brightens the girl up, but to Red and the dark likewise it also intensifies the image – it’s time slider moved towards to make a decision. the right to fade out those colours only. The sharp red layer is once again 11 duplicated and moved to the top. We Split the sliders want some of the sparks to be in front, as well To ‘split’ the sliders you as behind, to give some more depth to the image. The Layer is applied in Screen mode [Alt]+drag them.This but most of the flat red colour is removed has the effect of using the sliders in its layer options. feathering the transparency of the layer to prevent an obvious cut-off point for the blend. A mask is added to remove the sparks 12 that cover the girl’s eyes and face. This is painted on using a large soft brush, varying the opacity as we go, by making use of the numeric key pad. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 117 Chapter 10 Applying artistic detail We can use the Art History Brush here to add some extra background detail A selection is made of the girl’s eyes 1 and copied to a new layer. This layer is enlarged to fill the document. However, when you do this, the image quality will suffer. All about image Because the Art History Brush applies new pixels using original colour, you can make low-res images into high-res ones. To get round this we can apply the Art 2 History Brush to ‘regenerate’ the pixels in the enlarged layer. We mark a previous state as the source for the Art History Brush and begin filling in the canvas with a large brush in Dab mode. Using successively smaller brushes 3 and changing to the Tight Medium Effect limitations Art mode, we can add back some detail. The Very small images brushes we used were 200, 100, and then 50 blown up very large will pixels in radius. start to show pixels and compression artefacts, so the effect has its limits. A very fine brush is finally applied to 4 pick out the fine edges. You only need to do this where needed, because it can be quite slow. The layer is applied in Hard Light mode and a Gradient Layer Mask fades out the left side. The other elements are repositioned for better composition. 118 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Artwork project Vector Shape and Type layers We can add further creative elements using Vector Shape and Type layers A Type layer is added by clicking on the 1 image with the Type tool. Appropriately, the number 7 will be used as a graphic element for the image, since 7 is the current Balancing elements version of Photoshop. When creating an image such as this, try to balance the foreground and background elements, making sure the The Warp Text tool helps to bend the background detail does 2 7 into a more interesting shape, and not overpower or clash assists in integrating it into the image depth- with the main subject. wise. A layer mask aids this further making it appear to wrap around the girl. Applied in Screen mode, an Outer Glow Layer Style makes for a subtle effect. A Levels Adjustment layer is applied to 3 the image and a Vector Shape is used as Big impression a mask to create a further layer of detail in the Using a Hue/Saturation image. A combination of two overlapping Vector Shapes in Exclude mode interacts to Adjustment Layer you create an interesting shape. can change the feel of the entire image just by changing some of the colours. Finally, a layer mask is applied to the 4 Levels Adjustment Layer. Using the Gradient tool set to black and white and Radial mode, a gradient is drawn that protects the girl’s face from the effect of levels. ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 119 On your CD-ROM/DVD Here’s how to get the most from the disc that accompanies your Focus Guide Featured software… V i d e o t u t o r i a l s t o t a ke y o u t h r o u g h t h e t o o l s E v e r y P h o t o s h o p h o t ke y f o r P C a n d M a c To access the programs and files on ‘I Accept’. Please remember that on this disc, including the this disc has been thoroughly photo collection from Image Source, scanned and tested at all stages of first insert the disc into your drive. production, but – as with all new Whether you’re using a PC or an software – we still recommend that Apple Mac, the disc will work you run a virus checker before use. equally well. If it doesn’t run We also recommend that you have automatically, look at the opposite an up-to-date backup of your hard page to find out how to start your disk before using this disc. Future installation manually. Publishing does not accept responsibility for any disruption, Before you go on damage and/or loss to your data or The first item that should appear computer system that may occur on your screen is the disclaimer while using this disc, or the data and window; here you’ll need to click programs on it. Please consult your VIDEO TUTORIALS The toolbar explained by Photoshop expert George Cairns As well as the printed tutorials in this issue, George Cairns has supplied a range of video tutorials covering a wide variety of the tools available to Photoshop users. George will take you through the basics of each tool, what they are called, what they do, where they can be found as well as a brief description of how to use them. Watch and learn about the following essential tools: Blur tool,Brush tool, Crop tool, Dodge and Burn tool, Erase tool, Eye Dropper tool, Photoshop expert George Cairns takes Gradient tool, Hand tool, Healing tool, History Brush tool, Lassoo you through the tools of the trade in tool,Magic Wand tool,Move tool,Note tool and Slice tool. our superb video tutorials On your CD-ROM/DVD network administrator before attempting to install any software Finding on a networked PC. your files Click on the Focus Guide link Installation at the top of the disc interface screen to Once inside you’ll find yourself access all the files that on our introduction screen, with a accompany this book. number of options in the menu bar of the team, call 01225 822743. along the top. Click on the relevant Please note that we can only provide link in the menu bar to access the basic advice on using the interface file or program that you require. and installing the software. We If you have a query about your disc’s cannot give in-depth help on interface or content, email our support specific applications, or on your team (support@futurenet.co.uk) for computer’s particular hardware help. If you want to talk to a member or operating system. PHOTOSHOP HOTKEYS Over 250 keyboard shortcuts for just about any Photoshop task The PDF documents on your disc, provided by GFX^TM, contain every Photoshop 7.0 hotkey for both PC and Mac. A hotkey is simply a keyboard shortcut that saves you having to click through on-screen menus with your mouse. While you may know that pressing [Ctrl]+[C] on your keyboard is how you would copy a selection, for example, you may not know that 'Fill from History and Preserve Transparency' can be accessed by [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Shift]+ [Backspace]. These indispensable documents catalogue over There’s a wealth of Photoshop training 250 keyboard shortcuts and are a useful resource for material and experience on the GFX^TM Photoshop beginners and experienced users alike. website: www.user.fundy.net/morris http://user.fundy.net/morris ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 121 Index Index Turn straight to the information you need with the help of our comprehensive index A Add Anchor Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Cloning skin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Feathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Adjustment CMYK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81, 104 Fill tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56-58 (Levels, Curves and Hue/Saturation). 69, 71, 77 Color palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Finger Painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Adjustment layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65, 77 Colour Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Flow setting for Brushes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Adobe Illustrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 91 Colour Sampler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104, 106 Focus tools (Blur, Sharpen and Smudge)70-74 Alpha channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Colour Stops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Focus and Exposure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Annotation, Notes Contiguous option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 67 Foreground to Background, and Measure tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100-107 Convert Anchor Point tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Transparent and Custom gradients . . . . . . 60 Anti-aliasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Corel Draw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Freehand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 91 Art History Brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45, 118 Corel Painter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Auto measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Count Jitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 G Creating a montage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110-111 Gaussian Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65, 111 B Creating Top Quality Artwork . . . . . . 108-119 Gradient, Fill and Eraser tools . . . . . . . . . 54-67 Backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66-67, 115-117 Custom Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Gradient Masks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Bevelled and Embossed type . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Gradient Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Bézier handles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 92, 94 D Gradients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54-65 Blending mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Darken mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Graphics tablet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Brush dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Delete Anchor Point tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Brush hardness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Destination mode in Healing . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 H Brush shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Direct and Path Selection tools . . . . . . . 30-31 Healing Brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51-53 Brush tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Dither . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Healing Brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51, 114 Brushes and Pencil tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32-45 Dodge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75-76, 78, 79,113 Healing Patch tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52-53 Brushes – customisable, preset . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Dual Brushes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Highlight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78, 79 Brushes palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38-39 History Brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42-44 Burn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75-76, 78,79,112 E Horizontal and Vertical Type . . . . . . . . . 83, 87 Effects tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68-79 C Elliptical Marquee tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 20 I Changing Marquees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Exposure tools Intersect mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Channels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 65 (Dodge, Burn and Sponge) . . . . 68-69, 75-79 Characters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Extrude and Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 K Circular Marquee tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Eye Dropper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104-105 Kerning, Leading and Scale . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 85 Circular gradient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Clone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 49, 50, 112 F L Cloning and Healing tools . . . . . . . . . . . 46-53 Fade. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Lasso tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14-15 124 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Index Layer Blending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62, 64, 117 Polygonal Lasso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Type and text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Layer Folders (Layer Sets). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Type layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82-88, 119 Layer Styles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Q Type masks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Levels Adjustment layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Quick Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18-19 Type options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Lightness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Quick Mask mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65, 79 Type Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80-89 Linear Dodge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Linear gradient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 R U Luminosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Rasterization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81, 83, 88 Undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Rectangular Marquee tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Use All Layers in selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 M Rubber Stamp (Clone) tool . . . . . . . . . . . 48-50 Using the Brushes and Pencil tools . . . 32-45 Magic and Background Erasers . . . . . . . 66-67 Rulers, Guides and Grids . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26, 107 Using the Cloning and Healing tools . 46-53 Magic Wand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16-17, 56, 110 Magnetic Lasso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 S V Marching ants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Sample mode in Cloning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Vector Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 95-97, 119 Masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18-20, 64-65, 98 Sample mode in Healing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Vector text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Measure tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49, 107 Saturate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 View Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Midtones mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75-76, 78, 113 Scattering in Brushes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Modifying selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Scratch disk space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 W Move tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27, 28-29 Selecting text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Wacom Intuos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Move, Align and Distribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Selection tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-21, 23 Warp Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87, 119 Selections for web pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 N Shadows mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 79 Navigating and Editing Images . . . . . . . 22-31 Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 37 Navigator panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Single Column/Row Marquee tool . . . . . . 12 Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57, 72 Slices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Strength slider. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70, 73, 74 O Styled Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Opacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Subtract mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 P T Paint Bucket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56-57 Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Panning and Zooming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Tolerance setting for Eraser tools . . . . . 66-67 Paths, Vectors and Masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90-99 Tolerance setting for Magic Wand . . . . . . . 16 Pattern mode in Healing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Tolerance setting for Paint Bucket . . . . 56-57 Pen tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90-93, 113-114 Transparency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES – FOCUS GUIDE 125 Glossary Glossary Finding the lingo a puzzle? Here’s your handy guide to essential terms found in this Focus Guide Alpha channel and artistic filters. You’ll find of the original image layer (the HTML file, plus separate image Alpha channels are stored a complete list by clicking in background) in order to change files, for each slice. The web alongside colour channels the Filter menu at the top of the appearance of the image. browser then reassembles the slices within Photoshop files but do the Photoshop window. Layers do not directly affect the in their original position to give the not affect the final image layers beneath them, in the appearance of a single image. printout. Instead, they store Font same way as a blurry piece of information that is helpful to A commonly used term used to glass placed over a photograph Thumbnail you, such as saved Masks. describe the typeface you are does not actually affect the A small, ‘thumbnail-sized’ using. For instance, Times New photograph – in both cases, it is version of an image. You’ll find Anti-aliasing Roman is a font where all the the appearance that is changed, them in folders of images and Moving pixels around can cause letters look fairly formal. In leaving the original untouched. in Photoshop’s File Browser – undesirable jagged edges to Arial, however, all the letters Because they’re smaller than a appear, where edited pixels have are far simpler looking. Marquee full size image you can browse not blended smoothly together. The flashing dotted outline that through them more quickly, Anti- aliasing refers to the process GIF (or .gif) surrounds a selection. You’ll which makes finding the file of smoothing out these jagged A type of image file format best also see it referred to in some you’re after far easier. edges for a more natural look. suited for producing simple places as ‘marching ants’. images for the web. Examples Pixel Brush include logos, banners, buttons Navigator An abbreviation for ‘picture Brushes enable you to paint on and anything made up of only a In Photoshop’s default screen element’, it is essentially a tiny Photoshop images with colour, few flat colours. layout, the Navigator is dot of colour on screen. Most other bits of images and pre- positioned in the top-right images are made of up millions defined patterns. They mimic Greyscale corner and gives you access to of pixels, which combine to real brushes in that you can An image is greyscale if it the whole image, even if you are make an image look seamless. alter the size, hardness and contains no colour information. currently zoomed in to a Zoom in very close on an image, texture in order to achieve the Almost all digital camera files, specific part. The red box within however, and you can clearly effects you want. for instance, will be in colour. the Navigator image denotes the see these individual pixels. But you can turn them into area that is currently on screen; Colour channel black and white with many fine you can move around your PSD There are three colour channels gradations of grey, from within image by clicking and dragging Photoshop’s own file format, in all colour images: red, green Photoshop by turning them in to the red box around the which preserves things such as and blue. Each one contains greyscale images. Navigator image. layers and channels. If you’re information specific to that editing an image file, it’s colour. Photoshop enables you Image size Resolution sensible to save it as a PSD, in to alter each channel This refers to the physical size A measure of how many pixels order for the changes you have independently, making it of an image. For instance, a make up an image. A resolution made to remain editable when possible to reduce grainy blue photograph you are working on of 300dpi (dots per inch) is you next open it. skies without affecting the rest may be 20x15cm. This matters recognised as the minimum of an image, for example. most when you come if you’re intending to print Tool Options bar to printing out the image. your images. When a tool is selected, the Feathering corresponding Tool Options bar Softening the edges of pixels in a JPG (or .jpeg) Selection automatically appears at the top selection, so that they will blend A type of image file format that Any part of an image which you of the Photoshop window, smoothly when moved elsewhere. gives a desirable combination of select with Photoshop’s tools, giving you access to various Photoshop does this by only small file sizes and good quality shown by a marquee around it. options, including such things partially selecting some of the pixels photo reproduction. It is You can then work on certain as Brush Sizes and Feathering. around the edge of the selection. commonly used in digital parts of an image, or remove cameras to store the images that then without affecting the rest. Filter you take. The small files sizes One of Photoshop’s preset tools also make it ideal for the web. Slices that applies an effect to an These are special kinds of image (or a selection within the Layer selections for web page design. An image). Examples include Layers containing effects or bits image can be split into segments or sharpening, blurring, creative of images can be stacked on top slices, and Photoshop creates an 126 FOCUS GUIDE – ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOOL TECHNIQUES Notes Notes Notes Notes Adobe FocusGuide Photoshop From the makers of Computer Arts Ten chapters of expert tips and advice Master every tool in the Photoshop toolbar Navigate and manipulate images with ease Use the Cloning and Healing tools to retouch your photos Make pixel-perfect selections every time Harness the power of the stunning Effects tools All book related CD content can be found on the magazine cover disc Tailor-made video tutorials Every keyboard shortcut for PC and Mac Free with issue 19 of Printed in the UK. © Future Publishing 2004 Document Outline TOC