Practical Photoshop » adjustment layers

Create a geometric abstract portrait

scliffe — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 08:00:46 +0000

Geometric shapes and repeating patterns are key to many forms of modern art, with lines and shades carefully positioned to capture the eye and draw people in. Here, we’ll take this concept and apply it to giving a straightforward black and white portrait an unusual twist.

Our after image

It’s an on-trend device that you may see on cutting edge album and magazine covers. The design plays with the concept of composition, moving the traditional focal points of the eyes into unusual alternative positions. Our technique will incorporate a variety of duplicate layers and transformations to build up a slightly unnerving effect. We’ll use shapes to create the triangles rather than selections as these can be clipped together with image layers – in effect, they’re acting as masks. This means that both editing the scale and image position is quick and easy and ensures that you get the right look and instantly add interest to your shot.

Our starting image

01 SELECT A TRIANGLE

Open your starting image and select the Shape tool. In the Options bar, set Tool Mode to Shape in the top left drop-down, set Fill to white, set Stroke to 0. In the preview bar at the top, click on Shape and the small arrow at the top right to access the options and select Shapes, then Append.

02 TRANSFORM THE SHAPE

Scroll through the shapes and select the black triangle. In the colour swatches, make sure that you have white selected as the foreground colour. Draw the first triangle, making sure that you keep the Shift key pressed to constrain the shape’s proportions.

03 ADD A SHADOW

Double-click the shape layer to bring up the Layer Style Panel. Highlight and tick the Inner Shadow option and decrease the Opacity to 40% and Distance to 10. You can leave the other options exactly as they are.

04 DUPLICATE THE IMAGE

Click onto the Background layer and hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to duplicate it. Click and drag the layer above the shape layer in the Layers Panel. Hold down Alt and hover between the shape and image layer until you see the cursor change, then click to clip the layers together.

05 TRANSFORM THE FACE

Transform the duplicate image layer. Make sure that the duplicate image layer is selected in the Layers Panel then use Free Transform (Cmd/Ctrl+T) to adjust the scale and position. Remember to keep the Shift key pressed down to constrain the proportions and then hit Enter to confirm.

06 FINISHING FLOURISHES

Repeat the process of creating triangles and duplicating image layers for the rest of the montage, then use a Curves Adjustment Layer to improve the tones. If necessary, add a 50% grey layer with a Blend Mode set to Overlay to dodge and burn the final image.

Adjustment Layers provide a flexible, non-destructive way of editing images

scliffe — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 11:00:57 +0000

Have you ever redecorated a room, brought all the furniture back in and hung up all the pictures only to realise that the new colour just doesn’t work? If so, you’ve probably wished that there was an easy way of seeing how the room would look with the walls a variety of different shades before you start slapping the paint on. And maybe there could be a simpler way of making changes once you’ve got everything back in the room so you can assess the final effect straight away? Well, we can’t help you with the decorating, but we can help you avoid having similar problems when adjusting images. If you use Photoshop’s standard method to adjust the contrast and colour balance of an image, you can’t go back and undo the work easily at a later date. However, if you use an Adjustment Layer that holds all the information about the edit, you can make changes whenever you like provided that you save the file in a format such as Photoshop PSD or a TIFF, formats that support layers. Another great thing about using Adjustment Layers is that the Levels and Curves controls are just the same as they are normally, but if you prefer you can apply masks to target where the edits are applied. In fact, you can use all the usual layer controls, making Adjustment Layers an extremely powerful and flexible way of editing an image. Once you grasp the concept, you’ll see how useful they are. Read on to find out how…

Control Issues

The controls over the adjustments made with an Adjustment Layer are contained within the Properties Panel that appears when the layer is created. The central section will be familiar because it has the controls that are available when the adjustment is made normally. As you make an adjustment you’ll see the image change accordingly. Icons along the bottom of the panel enable you to reset the adjustments to the default positions, turn the layer’s visibility on and off
and delete the layer.

If you’d like to revisit the adjustments later on, simply click the layer’s thumbnail in the Layers Panel. To see the image without the adjustment applied, click the eye icon in the panel next to the thumbnail.

Elements user?

Adjustment Layers aren’t the sole preserve of Photoshop CS6. They are also available for editing images using Elements 11. However, there are only eight options: Levels, Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, Gradient Map, Photo Filter, Invert, Threshold and Posterize. They are created by clicking the relevant icon in the Layers Panel or by selecting Layer>New Adjustment Layer and selecting the relevant option. It’s now also possible to apply masks to Adjustment Layers in Elements, simply by clicking the mask icon in the Layers Panel.

Adjustment Layer types

01 Brightness/Contrast

Sliding controls offer the easiest way to adjust the brightness and contrast of an image.

02 Levels

Set the white, black and mid-point brightness levels.

03 Curves

Manipulate the curve shape to adjust brightness and contrast.

04 Exposure

Use the Exposure control to adjust the highlights, the Offset to tweak the shadows and Gamma Correction to change mid-tone contrast.

05 Vibrance

This saturation control targets only under-saturated colours.

06 Hue/Saturation

Adjust Saturation and colour of the whole image or individual channels.

07 Color Balance

Achieve the right balance between opposing colours with the sliding controls.

08 Black and White

Set the brightness of each colour to define the tones in a converted monochrome image.

09 Photo Filter

Adjust the colour temperature of an image using washes of colour.

10 Channel Mixer

Adjust the blend of colours that make up the image by channel.

11 Color Look-Up

Apply preset colour and contrast adjustments to your images.

12 Invert

Quickly create a negative or colour reversed version of an image, similar to pressing Cmd/Ctrl+I.

13 Posterize

Use the sliding control to govern the number of brightness levels for each colour.

14 Threshold

Turn pixels black or white according to the threshold you set.

15 Gradient Map

Convert colour images to monochrome or add coloured gradient fills.

16 Select Color

Use this control to adjust the colour of specific colours in your image.

A beginner’s guide to using Layers

jmeyer — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:00:40 +0000

REently we took a look at how Photoshop’s Blend Modes work and the 10 best blends for photographers. Today we want to go even further back to basics with photo editing and look at the types of Photoshop layers and how to use them to get the effect you want.

It’s a given that layers are key to successful image editing in Photoshop but, for novices, layer lore can still seem like a black art. In this post we’re going to demonstrate how user-friendly and essential Photoshop layers are to you.

In a nutshell, layers enable you to work on one part of an image without affecting others. You can change the opacity of layers, so they’re opaque or barely visible. You can move layers, mask and subtly blend them.

You need to think of your Photoshop layers as sheets of acetate stacked on your background image. A layer can be filled with image pixels, or just have a small area of an image with other areas transparent.

You can also blend layers and hide parts via Layer Masks. On the third page of this post you’ll see a deconstruction of our featured image image, and how we used layers to achieve the result.

How to rescue shadow detail and colour from hazy landscapes

jmeyer — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:34:23 +0000

When you take photographs on a hazy day, moisture particles in the air diffuse the light, causing distant objects to display a more subtle range of tones. This is a great way of evoking a sense of depth, due to the gradual change in contrast between objects in the foreground and those in the background.

The downside of shooting in such hazy conditions is that those more distant objects can be somewhat lacking in detail and definition. The haze can bleach distant colour, too, especially when shooting into the sun.

Our original shot

As you can see, our original high-contrast scene has a range of tonal and colour problems to fix. Much of our landscape is backlit, so the foreground shadows are under-exposed and lack texture and detail.

As the haze has robbed the distant mountains of detail and colour too, there’s lots of selective tones to tweak before you can recover hidden detail.

Here, we’ll show you how to combine the tools of the Camera Raw editor with the standard Photoshop editor’s powerful Adjustment Layers to restore the textures in the under-exposed foreground, while recovering detail and colour from the washed-out, hazy background.

01 Open your source file
Open your start image. If the file is a digital negative it will open in Photoshop Elements’ Adobe Camera Raw editor. By starting your image editing in the uncompressed RAW format you will have much more tonal information to work with, enabling you to keep artefacts such as picture noise to a minimum.

02 Fake fill-in flash
The rocky foreground shadows are under-exposed. If you boosted the strength of the Exposure slider you’d blow out the hazy background highlights. However, by dragging the Fill Light slider to 42 you can lighten the backlit shadows without adjusting the highlights. This has the same effect as using a large blast of fill-flash on location.

03 Improve the Clarity
The washed-out tones in the hazy background vary in subtle ways, making the distant hills blend together. By increasing the Clarity slider to 54 you can gently enhance the contrast in these delicate areas, at the same time bringing out some of the landscape’s features that were initially hidden by the haze.

04 Boost the Vibrance
By boosting the strength of colour in the scene you can bring out more texture and detail. Drag Vibrance up to +23. This slider boosts typical landscape colours, such as blues and greens. When enhancing weaker colours it leaves strongly saturated colours untouched to avoid over-saturating parts of the picture.

05 Crop and straighten
The shot’s horizon is a little wonky. To fix this, grab the Straighten tool and draw a line that follows the tilted horizon. The Camera Raw editor will automatically rotate and crop the shot to make the horizon horizontal. To see the cropped and rotated shot, click on Open Image. The edited photo will now appear in Photoshop’s standard interface.

06 Spot removal
Use the Zoom tool to take a closer look at the nasty sensor spot on the horizon. To remove it, grab the Spot Healing Brush from the Tools palette. In the Options bar, set a Size of 40 pixels, and then carefully spray over the spot. Photoshop will replace it with a clear patch of adjacent sky.

07 Getting warmer
The shot’s colours are a little cold. To quickly warm up the whole image, go to Window>Layers to open the Layers palette. Click the Create New Adjustment Layer icon and choose Levels from the drop-down menu. Grab the Set Grey Point eyedropper, then click on a patch of hazy light blue sky.

08 Shades of grey
The shot now looks too warm. For a less dramatic adjustment, click on the Levels 1 Adjustment Layer’s white mask to target it. Next, choose Edit>FillLayer. In the Fill Layer window, set Contents to 50% Grey and click OK. This reduces the strength of the Levels adjustment by 50%.

09 Select the sky
Click on the Background layer in the Layers palette to target it. To add more colour and texture to the hazy washed-out sky, grab the Quick Selection tool from the Tools palette. Spray the tool over the sky to create a selection marquee. Next, create a new Levels Adjustment Layer. This layer will feature a black-and-white mask.

10 Adjust shadow levels
Click on the Levels 2 Adjustment Layer. In the Adjustments palette, drag the black Shadow input level slider to the right, to a value of around 136. This adjustment will darken the sky and reveal more colour and texture. The black section of the mask protects the foreground’s tones from being altered.

11 Remove unwanted artefacts
You’ll see that there’s now a sharp line where the sea meets the sky. There’s also a dark fringe around the edge of the distant hills. To remove these lines, grab the Brush tool from the Tools palette. Choose a soft round brush with a diameter of 300 pixels, then set the foreground colour to black. Set Opacity to 50%.

12 Blend the sky and sea
Click on the Levels 2 mask in the Layer’s palette, then spray the brush over the horizon to lighten it and blend the sky with the sea. The semi-transparent brush adds grey strokes to the mask, causing the Levels adjustment to be weaker in the painted areas. Lighten the lower sky to remove the fringe around the hills.

13 Protect the sky
To increase the foreground contrast without altering the sky, Ctrl-click on the Levels 2 mask to create an instant selection. Choose Select>Inverse, then create a new Levels Adjustment Layer. The black-and-white mask will be the opposite of the Levels 2 mask, so this time only the foreground will be adjusted.

14 Adjust foreground contrast
Set the Levels 3 Adjustment Layer’s white Highlight input level slider to 221 to brighten the highlights. Set the Shadow slider to 20 to darken them. Lighten the midtones by dragging the grey input slider to 1.27. Spray a black brush on the mask to prevent the background hills being lightened.

15 Make the grass greener
The grass in the foreground is too yellow. To make it a more natural green colour, create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Set the Colour drop-down menu to Yellows, then drag the Hue slider right to +13 to turn the yellows into a more vibrant green and bring out the texture of the grass.

16 Restore some detail
To recover more tonal variation in the distant hazy hills, grab the Brush tool from the Tools palette. Reduce the Opacity to 7%, then click on the Levels 2 Adjustment Layer’s mask. This is currently set to darken the sky. Set the foreground colour to white, then spray the brush to gently darken (burn) detail in the washed-out hills.

Expert tip
Once you darken the sky in step 10 you’ll reveal hidden textures and colours and hidden artefacts, such as sensor spots. When you’ve finished editing the image, choose Layer>FlattenImage. You can then use the Spot Healing Brush to polish off any remaining dust.

Photoshop Layers panel: a quick cheat sheet

jmeyer — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:02:17 +0000

Do you know your Blend mode from your Opacity control? While the seasoned hands will be quite familiar with the Photoshop Layers panel, many who are new to the software, or photographers who use Photoshop sparingly, might not. To help you along, we’ve made this handy cheat sheet to finding your way around the Photoshop Layers panel.

To download this cheat sheet, simply drag and drop the image below on to your desktop. And stay tuned, as we plan more Photoshop cheat sheets and other freebies for the very near future.

Use Adjustment Layers for a bleached photo effect

jmeyer — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 07:00:29 +0000

One of our favourite Photoshop tricks is to age an image to give it the look of an old, bleach photo print. This bleached photo effect is very easy to achieve using Adjustment Layers.

Our original image

Below, we show you how to achieve this classic gritty, desaturated look in just 4 simple steps.

Step 1: Improve the contrast 
Open your original image and press Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy Background image to a new layer. Go to Image>Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights. Move the Shadows slider to 35% and Highlights slider to 10% to even out the harsh shadows and bright highlights.

Step 2: Darken the sky
Click Create New Adjustment Layer and select Curves. Plot a point and drag it downwards until Output reads 97 and Input reads 148. Select a black soft-edged brush and paint the Curves adjustment out of the car and buildings.

Step 3: Lose the colour
Click on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon and select Black & White. Leave the sliders at their default position. Click on the Blend Mode options and choose Overlay. The image now takes on a semi-monochrome look.

Step 4: Lower the saturation 
To increase the bleaching effect, click on Create New Adjustment Layer one final time and choose Hue/Saturation from the drop-down. Move Saturation slider down to about -45 or until only the strongest primary colours remain visible.

Our final image