How to Use Photoshop Revealed

You have probably heard of Photoshop as being this most amazing piece of software that can be used to perform the most amazing digital photo edits. You may not be aware that virtually anybody can use Photoshop Software, so if you fancy the idea of editing your digital photos like the pros do, then read on and learn how to use Photoshop…

Photoshop is a computer program used to generate and alter images. You can use their vast array of tools to create images from scratch, or you can download photos, scanned artwork, or Internet icons to Photoshop and change them however you want. To the novice, the breadth of Photoshop’s functions can be daunting, but after spending some quality time with the instruction manual, even the beginner should be able to take advantage of Photoshop’s many features. Online tutorials are also available to guide you through any part of Photoshop you with to go.

There are four main components that will appear on your screen when you open Photoshop. These will be the main tools you use to create and edit images. These tools are:

-Menu Bar

-Drawing Canvas

-Toolbox

-Palettes

We’ll start with the familiar first. The Menu Bar thankfully looks like the menu bar in most other applications. You can save, get a new screen, copy, and paste; all the functions with which you are already familiar.

The next component of Photoshop with which you should familiarize yourself is the Drawing Canvas. The drawing canvas is the large white area in the middle of the screen where you will draw or edit your images. You can set the size of your drawing canvas to limit the size of your image. The drawing canvas title bar tells you the name of your image, as well as the zoom and what mode you are in. It is possible to have an unlimited number of drawing canvases open at a time and to set them to all different sizes.

The Toolbox is your main arsenal for creating and editing images in Photoshop. The toolbox holds twenty different tools that allow you to draw and modify images on your drawing canvas. You can draw lines, fill in colors, erase images, select parts of an image, and so much more. For every function you select in your toolbox, Photoshop changes the shape of your pointer in hopes of helping you to remember what tool you have selected.

The final main component of Photoshop is the Palettes. By default, five palettes will come up on your screen when you open Photoshop. These palettes are: information, brushes, layers, command, and color. More are available in a drop down menu on the menu bar. The palettes are what give Photoshop its versatility. Each palette modifies the properties of the tools in the toolbox. For example, the brushes palette allows you to change the thickness of line your brush draws. There are a lot features in each palette. As you are familiarizing yourself with this function, make sure to check out all the tabs and fly-out menu options.

Once you have familiarized yourself with the basic functions of Photoshop, you should get to know all the tools in your toolbox. The best way to do this is open a new drawing canvas and start to draw with each tool. If you can do this with the instruction manual open in front of you, you will both be able to read about all the properties of each tool as well as see what you can do with it on the canvas. After you become well-versed in the basics, it is time to move on to more advanced Photoshop applications.

Photoshop Services

In this period of influence of Photoshop services, almost all specific images need to have some acquaintance of glamour intensification before they are obtainable. The spotlessness of genuine mirror image in camera is not at all times proficient to influence the demand. Images have turn out to be obligatory and deepest part of a scrupulous statement. The continuing pressure of images in advertisements and sales makes clipping path very enthusiastic occupation.

Clipping path is not about changing an image ineffectually or entertainingly. Clipping path and glamour augmentation necessitate Photoshop services experts powered with profound understanding about photography and communication as well. The graphic designers observe the image thoroughly. Stumble on the ways to make it more having an important effect for a better account. Work on a variety of attributes of photograph and try to make photos good to improved and better to most excellent.

Entice up the appeal, it is an exceptional service to make the image stand out. The graphic designers at photoshop services companies keep in mind, the appeal or it will distract the viewer. By scrupulous surveillance and Photoshop Services they try to find out the tediousness and spots. Photoshop Clipping path is very complex and involves knowledgeable eye and arty mind.

The specialized Clipping path service provider ask clients about where they are going to use the image and what do they think about altering it. After the information is gathered from the clientele the graphic designers make use of the Photoshop services. With best care and aptitude, the skilled graphic designer can make livelier an image with the skillet. It will articulate more than its substantial demonstration with this service and of course, soon you will get fervent feedback from your clientele and viewers.

Features of Adobe Photoshop

Adobe  Photoshop , commonly called  Photoshop , is one of the leading image-editing software in the market today. The software was developed by Adobe Systems and has been one of the standard applications of many web developers, designers, and advertising agencies around the world.

With  Photoshop’s  powerful features, you can have unlimited possibilities in image editing which makes it standout among all other graphic software in the market. It has all the necessary tools that can be used to enhance and alter images.

Image editing is a method of altering any image, either an illustration, digital or analog photographs.

Adobe  Photoshop  Features:

Selection – This is the most basic but powerful feature of  Photoshop . You can select only part of an image wherein you want changes to take effect. This method is done with the use of the tools like the marquee tool, lasso, and pen tools.

Layers – Layers is a set of different stacked elements that contains different parts of an image. This is one of the best features  Photoshop  created. Layering lets you work on different parts of a photo and put them together for a dramatic finish.

Image size alteration – This feature enlarges or reduces an image as needed.

Cropping – Cropping lets you select a portion of the image you want to retain. It deletes the rest.

Sharpening and softening –  Photoshop  features the power to render a sharper or blurred effect on images. This feature is done by selecting the main subject and applying sharpening or softening effects. This feature is mostly used in portraits to create a better focus on the subject.

Merging images – This features allows two or more separate images to merged as one.

Removal of unwanted elements – This technique involves the use of clone tool to maintain the texture of the image. This is useful when you want to get rid of distracting objects in an image which gives more focus on the subject. This feature can enhance close up portraits, to erase acne marks in a face.

Selective color change – Using this feature lets you alter the color of certain parts of an image, keeping the rest of the colors original.

Slicing – This features the ability of slicing a whole image into parts and is labelled with different files and later on used as contents of a website. This feature is automated and widely-used in creating mock-ups of websites.

There a lot more features of this great software which you just have to discover and will greatly help you do your image editing task faster and efficient with professional looking results.

Learn Photoshop Fast - Top 10 Tips to Help You Feel Like a Pro

Do you feel intimidated when you are trying to learn  Photoshop ? Are you getting frustrated every time you open  Photoshop  and try to do something?

Here are the top ten tips to help you feel like a pro, Fast.

1. 
   Double-click to open documents: To open a document in  Photoshop , just double-click on the grey  Photoshop  window background and hey presto.


2. 
   Hiding the Palettes with the Tab key: Need more room on the screen? Hide the palettes by pressing the Tab key. Get them back by pressing Tab again.


3. 
   Full screen mode: Need even more space? You can toggle between a full screen mode with and without menu bar, and normal editing mode just by clicking the F key.


4. 
   Nudging: Want more precision on your moves?. Hold down the Control key and use the up, down, left and right arrows to move the layer 1 pixel at a time. To move the layer by 10 pixels at a time, hold down the Shift key as well.


5. 
   Moving whole layers: An easy way to move a whole layer is to simply hold down the Control key and click and drag on your layer with the mouse


6. 
   Copy layers between documents: You can copy a layer from one document to another simply by clicking on it in the Layers palette and dragging it across to the second document window


7. 
   Use Layer Sets: Layer sets let you organize your layers into folders – very useful if you have lots of layers in a document! An example of this may be a vector background with a complex foreground mosaic. You could make a folder for each the background and the foreground. To create a new Layer Set, click on the folder icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, then drag layers on top of a layer set to add them to the set


8. 
   Choosing colors quickly: Press I to bring up the Eyedropper tool, then click on a colour in your image to make that colour the foreground colour. Press the ALT key and click to make the color the background color instead.You can also press the D key to reset the foreground and background colours to the default (black and white), and the X key to swap the foreground and background colours.


9. 
   How to get straight lines: Constrain movement of the mouse to the nearest 45-degree or 90-degree angle just by holding down the Shift key while you click and drag with the mouse.


10. 
    I Made a Mistake, What do I do: Try pressing CTRL, Z to undo the last command. If its older than the last then open the History Window from the Windows menu. From here you can see all the changes you have made. Highlight the change you want to undo and then click on the rubbish bin.

OK so now you should be a little bit more comfortable with using  Photoshop . So get going and create.

Photoshopping Tutorials - An Enlightening Experience

  Photoshop  is a valuable tool to enhance photographs as well as to create original art online. First of all, it is an excellent tool to edit photographs on the computer. It can be used to remove noise, correct lens distortions, sharpen images and adjust the color and brightness of a photo. Its more advances features include the ability to straighten a warped image, darken an overexposed portion of a photograph while leaving the rest of the photo unchanged, and even moving an upraised arm and placing at the subject’s side.

There was a time when photographs with blemishes would have to be discarded. A finger partially over the lens would ruin a shot. Now, with  Photoshop , most errors can be corrected. Modifications range from simple ones, like enhancing the contrast or removing “red-eye”, to more intricate ones like removing the errant fingerprint and replacing it with background or another object. A set of tutorial videos are available to teach you these techniques in only two hours.

 Photoshop  can also produce images from scratch on the computer. It allows you to paint freely on the screen as if you were painting with brushes and paints. It allows you to introduce textured brush strokes and also to create High Dynamic Range images. It has a mixer brush available to blend colors on the image.

David Peters has assembled a remarkable set of video tutorials that will take you step by step from the simplest  Photoshop  functions to the most incredible things that  Photoshop  can do. In two hours you will go from being a novice to being so adept with  Photoshop  that you will impress your friends and relatives.

If you are going to be processing any photographs on the computer or creating images entirely with  Photoshop  it is essential that you learn all the possibilities available with this powerful program.

Creating a Fire Breathing Dragon With Photoshop

When I was young I constantly doodled. I doodled a lot of things…but mainly I doodled dragons. Fast forward a number of years…well…a whole lot of years…and my twin brother is showing me pictures of his pet iguana…pretty cool looking creature…. Then it occurs to me…what a perfect dragon the iguana would make…and now I had the ultimate doodle tool… Photoshop !

With PhotoSshop pictures of an iguana become a photograph of a fire breathing dragon!

 Photoshop  is an incredibly powerful tool of alchemy…given the right raw materials any new photographic reality can be created. Without those raw materials  Photoshop  can be an exercise in frustration and a road to mediocrity. To make sure that I have the raw materials to create my photographic visions it helps to begin with a sketch. Once I have the sketch I can systematically photograph those raw materials, comparing them with the sketch, until I know I have the parts to complete my stock image.

My brother brought in his iguana to my studio and we did the necessary photography. I also had a pile of cobblestones that had been dug up form the street in my San Francisco studio (I have since re-located to Sausalito). I used those to create a “perch” or “roost” for my dragon. For the background I went through my own stock files and found an image of the Teton mountain range shot near Jackson Hole, Wyoming while on a family vacation. For a final detail I found an image of a castle I shot in Spain to put in the distant background.

With all the raw materials shot and scanned (this project was before digital capture had reached it’s now exalted state) I set to work.

To create the long neck of the dragon the tail can be manipulated by creating a clipping path around it, converting the clipping path to a selection, creating a new layer from that selection, and then using the warp tool and the liquefy brush to reshape it. Free Transform can be used to position and size the new “neck”. The same tools can be used to stretch the jaws of the iguana into a more “dragonesque” look.

Once again those tools can be used to convert the spines of the iguanas back into dagger-like teeth and fangs. The flap of skin under the iguana’s jaw can be selected (again with a clipping path…I believe the most important selection tool in  Photoshop ), turned into a new layer, and then reshaped to become the dragon’s wings.

Each element, be it a leg, claw, tail or whatever, can be selected with an appropriately hard edge (usually a 1-pixel feather when converting the clipping path to a selection) and then “faded” into it’s new adjoining part by using large soft brushes and a layer mask.

I find it truly increases the effectiveness of an image by using adjustment layers and their accompanying masks to add shadow and lightness to enhance the dimensionality of a given part. I mostly use “curves” (usually again with an adjustment layer) to adjust the density of a part in order to match the part with its new neighboring parts and environment.

An adjustment layer using Color Balance can help with fine-tuning color variations…and sometimes Hue/Saturation for major color changes. Of course, throughout the project I use the clone tool as necessary. A wonderful new feature of  PhotoShop  CS4 is the “preview” that is shown through the brush as it is moved over the area to be cloned. That alone might be worth the upgrade!

Once the image is looking complete I “Merge Visible Layers” with the option (Mac) key held down thereby creating a new layer that is a composite of all the visible layers. This gives me a final image in one layer facilitating dust-spotting and other touch up work without losing the ability to go back and revisit the underlying layers if need be.

The final result is a realistic photograph of a dragon breathing fire, a professional grade high-quality stock photo. You’d swear it was real.

10 Time-Saving Photoshop Shortcuts

1. Adjust brush size. With the Brush Tool activated, rather than accessing the dropdown menu at the top of the screen, press the right bracket key, ], to increase the size of the brush and the left bracket key, [, to decrease.

2. Adjust brush hardness. Along with size, brush hardness frequently needs to be adjusted. Holding shift + ] (right bracket key) increases the hardness of the brush while holding shift + [ (left bracket key) will decrease the hardness. Now you can keep the brush tip where it belongs, in the middle of your image, instead of making frequent trips up to the properties bar.

3. Copy to a new layer. Again, keep the pointer on the artboard. Duplicating a layer is as simple as pressing CTRL + J (PC) or Cmd + J (Mac). This will create a copy of the active layer in the layers palette. It will also copy an active selection onto a new layer, leaving the current layer intact. Also, pressing CTRL+ Shift + J (PC) or Cmd + Shift + J (Mac) will cut the current active selection from the active layer and paste it onto a new layer. If you name all your layers, simply adding the ALT (PC) or Option (Mac) key to either of these combinations will open the New Layer dialog box so you can name the new layer on the fly. You can also adjust the opacity and blend mode of this new layer right in the New Layer dialog box, saving you an extra trip to the Layers Palette.

4. Fill the layer or selection with color. Press CTRL + Backspace (PC) or Cmd + delete (Mac) to fill the layer with the current foreground color. Press ALT + Backspace (PC) or Option + delete (Mac) to fill the layer with the current background color. These same commands can also be used to fill a selection. Bonus: To change the foreground and background colors back to the default colors (black for the foreground and white for the background) simply press the D key.

5. Undo. No need to visit the History palette. CTRL + Z (PC) or Cmd + Z (Mac) will undo one step. Pressing this combination again will redo (or rather, bring you back to before the undo). Need to go back further than the last step? Simply hold CTRL + Alt (PC) or Cmd + Option (Mac) and press Z. Every time you press the Z key, you will move backwards one more step.

6. The Hand Tool. Forget the scroll bars at the edges of the document window. To quickly navigate around the image, hold down the spacebar to temporarily activate the Hand Tool. Click and drag with the Hand Tool to move the document. To deactivate the Hand Tool, release the space bar.

7. Favorite Tools. Learn the keyboard shortcuts for your favorite tools. For example B = Brush Tool, V = Move, J = Spot Healing Brush. As you become familiar with these, you will notice that groups of tools all share the same shortcut key. For example, the Spot Healing Brush, the Healing Brush, the Patch Tool and the Red Eye Tool all share the same shortcut key – the letter J. By pressing J, you will activate the last used tool in the group. To cycle though the other tools in the group, hold Shift + the letter for that group of tools, and the active tool will cycle to the next tool in the group.

If you find yourself continually using a command that doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut, you can easily assign one. Go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts. Find the command on the list and assign the key combination you would like to use. If you try to assign an already used combination,  Photoshop  will ask if you would like to reassign that key combination. This dialog box is also a great place to find out what keyboard shortcuts are assigned to all commands.

8. Layer Opacity. To quickly change the opacity of the current layer, simply press a number key. Pressing 5 = 50% opacity, press 3 = 30%, etc. To narrow the opacity to a percentage more specific than a multiple of 10, press the two numbers quickly. For example, pressing 5, 5 in quick succession will set the opacity to 55%. (To get back to 100%, quickly press 1, 0, 0.) Please note, this shortcut will not work if one of the tools in the second group is active.

9. Zoom in and out. To zoom into an image, press CTRL and + or Cmd and + and to zoom out press CTRL and – (PC) or Cmd and – (Mac).

10. Scrubby sliders. Most settings in  Photoshop  provide a slider to adjust to your liking.

Click and drag on the name of the setting to active the Scrubby Slider. Sliding to the left or right will adjust the setting value up or down without having to open the slider. You will know that a Scrubby Slider is available when your cursor turns into a little pointing finger with arrows to the left and right.

Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut for good, old fashioned practice, but once you’ve memorized these shortcuts, you’ll be well on your way to finishing projects in record time! As anybody who sells their stock photos knows, it’s important to maximize your revenue in every way possible.

Article written and contributed by Karl Rosencrants.