Practical Photoshop » photoshop tutorials

Photoshop Curves Tool: 6 techniques every photographer must know

jmeyer — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:30:50 +0000

The Photoshop Curves tool is one of the most powerful commands you have in the digital darkroom. But it can be intimidating to some. Here are 6 Photoshop Curves techniques every photographer should incorporate into their workflow.

The Photoshop Curves command is your most powerful tool for adjusting tones to brighten, darken, add contrast and shift colours, yet many users choose to avoid it.

The problem is, despite being the most effective, it’s also one of the most difficult commands to get to grips with. This may be why Adobe has never included it in the more beginner-friendly Photoshop Elements.

As Elements gets better and better with every new release, the lack of a full Curves command remains one of the few big reasons not to plump for the more wallet-friendly version of Photoshop.

Beginners need not fear. After you’ve spent a little time experimenting, Curves quickly becomes the go-to tool for many tonal tweaks. It’s often the first edit you make on an image.

And as well as being one of the most powerful tools Photoshop has on offer, it’s one of the most versatile.

Whether you want to lighten a dark scene, boost contrast and colour, check for clipped pixels or make a variety of colour shifts, Curves is the tool for the job.

So, read on for six top tips to help you master the best tonal tool Photoshop has to offer.

Essential Photoshop Curves Techniques: 01 Curves Adjustment Layer

Curves is best applied as an Adjustment Layer. Go to the Layers Panel, click the Create Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom and choose Curves.

Now your original image remains untouched.

Whatever settings you apply are editable by double-clicking the layer thumbnail, and you can take advantage of all the options working with layers allows, such as Masks, Blend Modes and Opacity.

Essential Photoshop Curves Techniques: 02 The Curve line

You can drag anchor points up or down on the Curve line to lighten or darken tones.

Think of the X-axis as a scale from dark tones on the left to light tones on the right.

It’s important where you place a point, as this determines which part of the tonal range you wish to alter.

Points towards the left will target shadow tones, and towards the right will adjust highlight tones.

Essential Photoshop Curves Techniques: 03 Set white and black points

Hold Alt and drag inwards on the white and back point sliders (at the bottom right and left of the graph) for a greyscale view that shows any clipped pixels in your shot.

This is of great help when setting pure black and pure white tones.

Most images will benefit from containing a full range of tones, so drag the white and black points inwards while holding Alt until the point where pixels begin to appear.

Essential Photoshop Curves Techniques: 04 The amazing S-curve

Made by dragging one point upwards in the highlights and a second down in the shadows (and sometimes with a third to anchor the midtones) the S-shaped curve is a classic tonal tweak for boosting contrast and colour saturation.

The more pronounced the S-shape, the more the image will pop.

If you want to leave colour saturation unchanged, change the Blend Mode of the Curves Adjustment layer to Luminosity.

Essential Photoshop Curves Techniques: 05 Making selective adjustments

Make selective tonal changes to different areas of your image by painting Layer Masks to hide or reveal the Curves effect.

For example, portraits often benefit from a boost in the irises.

To achieve this, add a Curves Adjustment Layer and plot an S-shaped curve, then hit Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert the Curves layer’s mask to black.

Then grab the Brush tool, set colour to white, and paint over the iris to reveal the adjustment.

Essential Photoshop Curves Techniques: 06 Tweaking colour channels

You can tweak different colour channels via the dropdown menu at the top of the Curves box.

By plotting different points along the colour line you can shift colours – for example, reducing reds as we’ve done in the hair here.

An upwards drag on the red line adds red and down adds cyan; up on the blue channel adds blue and down adds yellow; up on the green line adds green and down adds magenta.

In Depth – Inside the Photoshop Curves box

1 Anchor points
Plot these along the Curves line, then drag them up to lighten and down to darken.

2 White and black points
Drag these inwards to set new white and black points. Hold Alt while dragging for a view of any clipped pixels.

3 RGB dropdown
Select different colour channels here access the red, green or blue Curves lines.

4 Preset
Choose from a list of handy presets, or use them as a starting point for further tweaks.

5 Pencil and smooth
Toggle the Pencil tool on to draw a freehand Curve. Use the ‘Smooth Curves values’ option to smooth the line.

6 Adjust brightness
Toggle the Hand icon on, then drag up or down over tones in the image to control brightness.

7 Histogram
A graphical representation of all the tones laid out in a ‘tonal range’, with shadows on the left and highlights on the right.

8 Eyedroppers
Toggle the eyedroppers on, then click over a tone in the image to set it as white, black or midtone grey.

9 Input and Output
Input represents the original tones in the image (the X-axis), while Output represents the new brightness value on a scale of 0-255 (the Y-axis).

Photoshop Brushes: Get creative by creating your own Photoshop brush

scliffe — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 09:00:37 +0000

There’s nothing quite like playing with your food, especially where Photoshop is concerned! As long as you have creativity, the sky’s the limit… Actually, it’s not! We decided to go further and took our image idea into outer-space to create our very own planetary system from a few scoops of ice cream.

We created our ice cream solar system using a combination of selections, masks and Adjustment Layers. And any big planet needs its own rings of cosmic dust, or in this case, sprinkles! We’ll show you how to do this by creating your own brush, and using brush dynamics and paths to create your own planetary ring.

Our starting images

To begin, we took three pictures of ice cream scoops, which we placed on top of straws. We shot them on a plain background as this will make them easier to cut out in Photoshop.

How to create your ice cream planet solar system

01 Cut Out the Ice Cream

Open your three ice cream shots and boost the Clarity and Vibrance in ACR before opening them in Photoshop. Use the Quick Selection tool to select a scoop, then click Refine Edge, select a Smart Radius of 3px and click OK. Repeat with the other two images. Press Cmd/Ctrl+A to copy one of the ice cream images.

02 Add the Background

Create a new document. Select two dark blues for the foreground and background colour swatches, and use the Gradient tool to create the background. Float all the windows and drag the ice cream layers into the new document. Duplicate the planets and adjust their sizes and colours to create some variety.

03 Create the Stars

Click the Background layer and create a new blank layer. Select a small hard-edged white brush and dab on some stars. Select a slightly larger soft-edged brush with a tint of yellow and reduced Opacity, then use the brush over a few of the existing stars to create a glow.

04 Create a Brush

Create a new document, and with a large black brush draw the shape of a sprinkle, then Select Edit>Define Brush Preset. Select the brush you’ve created. In the Options Bar at the top, click the Brush Panel icon and switch on Shape Dynamics, Scattering, Color Dynamics and Smoothing.

05 Use Brush Dynamics

Select two bright colours in the swatches and set Shape Dynamics to 90, 0, 49, 0; Scattering to 420, 5, 4; and Color Dynamics to 100, 100, 100, 35, 78 with Pen Pressure, Both Axis and Control Off ticked for each section where available.

06 Create a Path

Select the Paths tool and draw a ring around one of the scoops. Make sure the brush size is relatively small, select the Paths tool, right click the Path and select Stroke Path. Select Pen Pressure and click OK. Add a mask to remove any unwanted overlay of the ring.

Batch Processing: how to edit multiple photos in Adobe Camera Raw

jmeyer — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 07:00:05 +0000

Want to speed up your digital workflow? Learning the simple art of batch processing and how to edit multiple photos in Adobe Camera Raw will save you time when fine tuning your raw files. Here’s how it’s done.

Adobe Camera Raw is the best place to begin editing your raw format files. The tidy interface and intuitive tools help to make editing raw files a simple task. With options to tweak colour, apply sharpening and correct distortion, you can perform the kind of tasks photographers need to make to improve their images.

As well as a powerful raw editor, Adobe Camera Raw can also be a great time-saver. By opening several files at once you can make universal edits to the whole group.

This can be handy if, for example, you need to change the white balance on a batch of images or save them as JPEGs. It’s ideal for making speedy changes to a set of images that has been shot under similar conditions, like at a wedding.

Here we’ll show you how to use Adobe Camera Raw for a typical batch-process task. We’ll apply a couple of crucial edits before converting to low-resolution JPEGs for printing. These techniques are guaranteed to save you time, leaving you more time to take photos!

Batch processing step-by-step

01 Open raw files
Open Adobe Bridge, then navigate to the five batch.NEF files. Select the first file, then hold shift and click on the last one to select them all. Right-click and choose ‘Open in Camera Raw’. JPEG and TIFF files can be opened into Adobe Camera Raw in the same way.

02 Click Select All
Click through the images and choose one that’s most typical, then click the ‘Select All’ button at the top right of the interface. Now any changes you make using the panels to the right of the screen will be applied universally Adobe Camera Rawoss the whole set.

03 Set Camera Calibration
Go to the Camera Calibration tab and click on the Mode: drop-down. Choose ‘Camera D2X Mode 3’ from the list. It’s always worth experimenting with the different presets in this drop-down list, as the default ‘Adobe Standard’ doesn’t always give the best results.

04 Apply Basic Tweaks
Click on the Basic Panel, then adjust the sliders to set Exposure +0.15, Contrast +5, Shadows +6, Clarity +5 and Vibrance +10. Hold down Alt and drag the Whites slider to about +16, until you just begin to see pixels being clipped to white.

05 Choose Output options
Click the blue link at the bottom centre of the interface to access Workflow Options. We want to prepare the images for printing at around 6×4 inches, so click the size drop-down and choose the smallest option: 1024×1539. Set resolution to 300 pixels/inch and click OK.

06 Save as JPEGs
Double-click the Zoom tool to zoom to 100%, then click the Detail Panel. Set Sharpening Amount 45, Radius 1.4, Masking 30. Click the Save Images button. Choose a destination, select naming options, then set Format: JPEG, Quality 12 and hit OK. Finally, click Done.

Apply settings with Bridge
If you decide, after editing a raw file, that you want to apply the same effect to similar images, right-click the thumbnail of the edited raw file in Adobe Bridge and choose Develop Settings> Copy Settings. Select the images, right-click and pick Develop Settings> Paste settings, then choose which settings you want to paste.

Heat up your images using the Glass Filter in Photoshop

scliffe — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:59:47 +0000

You may be surprised at how easy it is to create a realistic look of something that is on fire in Photoshop. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to make this exciting effect in just a few easy-to-follow steps.

Our original shot

If you want to add more drama and excitement to your images, adding flames can be a good way of achieving this, especially for sports and action shots. Photoshop makes creating this effect easy.

Flames to be added to our shot

We begin with our start images of a BMX rider and some flames. The next step is to seamlessly blend the two together, then duplicate and distort the flame image on different layers to build up the effect on the BMX rider. Then we’ll move on to adding smoke using a similar technique.

Finally, we’ll complete the image by adding a heat haze using the Glass filter – an often overlooked filter that’s perfect for our project here. You’ll learn how to apply the filter to a Smart Object layer so that you can paint the haze onto the image wherever it is needed.

01 Add Some Flames

To add the flames image, choose File>Place and select your flame image, then click Place. The flames are added as a Smart Object layer. Use the sizing handles to scale the flames to a smaller size and rotate and drag into position over the rider. Press Enter or click Commit Transform to finish.

02 Blend The Flames

Click on the fire layer and, from the Blend Mode drop-down list, select Lighten to blend it. Right-click this layer and choose Duplicate Layer and click OK. Grab the Move tool, drag the flames into position and resize to suit. If desired, hold the Cmd/Ctrl key and drag on a corner of the selection to shear the shape.

03 Mask The Layer

Continue to duplicate the layer containing the flames, resize and move them into position until you have built up plenty of fire. To paint out flames if they are in the wrong place, target the layer, click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel and paint on the mask with black to remove the flames.

04 Add The Smoke

To add smoke, choose File>Place, select you smoke image, and click Place. Rotate, size and drag the smoke into position and press Enter. Set the layer’s Blend Mode to Lighten. Click Add Layer Mask and paint on the mask with black to remove any unwanted smoke. Repeat using ‘smoke1.jpg’, ‘smoke2.jpg’ and ‘smoke3.jpg’ to build up the effect.

05 Add Glass Filter Effect

Go to the Background layer and select Filter>Convert for Smart Filters. With this layer selected, choose Filter>Filter Gallery and from the Distort group of filters, choose Glass. Set Distortion to 13, Smoothness to 4, Texture to Frosted and Scaling to 57%. Click OK.

06 Paint On The Haze

Target the Layer Mask for the Smart Filter layer and press Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert it. Set light grey as your foreground colour, select a soft brush and paint the Glass filter effect over the image to suggest heat being emitted by the flames. Finish with a Curves Adjustment Layer to boost the overall image contrast.

Unsharp Mask: how to sharpen photos for a crisper finish

jmeyer — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 08:00:33 +0000

The Photoshop Unsharp Mask filter gets its name from a traditional darkroom process used to sharpen an image. The Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop works by increasing the contrast around the edges in an image, which makes them look crisper and sharper.

Our original image

In this photo editing tutorial we’ll show you how to crop and size an image for printing and then sharpen it using the Unsharp Mask filter.

How to sharpen photos with the Unsharp Mask filter

01 Crop and resize
Open your start image in Photoshop. Use the Crop tool to crop the image as desired. Choose Image>Image Size, enable the Constrain Proportions and Resample Image check boxes and set your desired resolution and size. We set Resolution to 300 Pixels/Inch and Width to 16 Centimetres. Click OK.

02 Launch the filter
To sharpen the image, choose Filter> Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Click a portion of the image that contains detail such as the centre of the flower. This then appears in the filter dialog box sized at 100%.

03 Set the Amount
Set the Amount to 150%. The Amount controls how much sharpening is applied to the image. You can readjust this later, but for now, you want to see the results of adjusting the other sliders clearly.

04 Rradius tweaks
The Radius sets the width of the haloes around the image edges. The larger the Radius, the wider the haloes are. For a sharp image, set the Radius to something between 0.5-1.5. We used a setting of 1.0 here.

05 Adjust the threshold
The Threshold setting controls how much difference in brightness there must be between adjacent pixels for them to be considered an edge. A small Threshold value sharpens everything and a large one sharpens nothing. We set the Threshold to 10.

06 Fine-tune the result
Readjust the Amount to fine-tune the result. When sharpening for your monitor, adjust the Amount based on what you see on your screen. When sharpening for print, oversharpen a little because printing softens the image a little. Click OK to apply.

How to crop photos correctly in any version of Photoshop

jmeyer — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 08:25:35 +0000

Photographing small subjects often requires cropping photos later on the computer. Our latest Photoshop tutorial shows you how to expand your smaller subjects and enlarge subjects the safe way – at printable sizes – in any version of Photoshop CS or Elements.

There are a lot of fascinating small animals and insects around – photogenic, but also tiny. Even with a macro lens, you’re unlikely to get a subject such as our spider to fill the frame, so you’ll probably want to crop your photo in the digital darkroom.

Doing this, however, means you’re discarding part of the image, which may well become a problem when you come to print.

Cropping in tight on the spider in our shot has left us with only around 900 x 750 pixels. Conventional wisdom says that for photo-realistic quality you need to print at a resolution of at least 240ppi (pixels per inch), which means our cropped image can’t be printed at bigger than about 4 x 3 inches.

Our original shot

Even if we push it and print at 150ppi, we won’t get bigger than about 5 x 4 inches without risking the image becoming grainy and blurred.

If you want to print a similarly hard-cropped photo at 10 x 8 or A4 size, what you need is some way to enlarge the cropped photo for printing that preserves its crispness and detail. You need to not just enlarge but resample.

Cropping photos correctly in any version of Photoshop CS or Elements

1 Crop to size
The Crop tool gives you the option to specify Height, Width and Resolution for your crop. If you have a size in mind, feel free to enter it; this will constrain the crop frame to the correct proportions, even if you resize it. Draw the crop frame, then drag it to reposition it as desired.

2 Don’t specify Resolution
Leave the Resolution field blank, and don’t select a preset size. Presets are based on resolution (in Photoshop, 300ppi) as well as size. Enter a value in the Resolution field, Photoshop will interpolate (add pixels) to reach that resolution, but for more control do this separately.

3 Test Image Size
After cropping, go to Image>Image Size. Ensure Resample Image is disabled, choose inches as the units from the pop-up, and type in the print Width or Height you want. If the Resolution figure is below about 180ppi, you’re spreading the image pixels too thinly for a crisp print.

4 Configure Resampling
Enable the Resample Image option, and select Bicubic in the pop-up menu. Enable Constrain Proportions, then specify a Width or Height and an adequate Resolution, and Photoshop will generate new pixels to plug the gaps.

5 Sharpen for output
The interpolated pixels are based on existing pixels – in an area of brown, for example, Photoshop will add an average brown. It can’t create new detail, so you can’t enlarge beyond about 1.5x or 2x at most and get a crisp image. You’ll also need to sharpen before printing.

Photoshop Tip: Play the percentages
You might get better results if you stick to relatively even multiples of the image size, so try selecting ‘percent’ in the units pop-up and specifying not a new Width but ‘150 percent’ or the nearest to what you want. Even if you’re using resampling, though, enlarging too much will make the image become indistinct and blurred.

Photoshop Presets: the best way to make a black and white preset

jmeyer — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 09:00:02 +0000

You know the saying about not putting the cart before the horse? Rather than deliberately making a range of Photoshop presets, a more organic approach is probably best. The more presets you have, the more time goes into trying out different Photoshop effects one after another. Below we’ll show you a simple way of doing this.

If you’re at all serious about your photography, an Instagram-style workflow won’t help you learn or develop your own creative senses.
In fact, you already have as many presets as you need.

Photoshop’s Black and White Adjustment Layer has a Preset drop-down menu, and there’s an equivalent selection in Lightroom’s Develop workspace, too. There’s enough variety for you here to choose a starting point and decide which direction the picture should take.

When you’ve edited a photo and you like the results enough that you’d like to apply it to other pictures, that’s when you should save a preset. Let your range of presets accumulate from your successes.

How to make black and white Photoshop presets

01 Black & White Adjustment Layer
From the Layers Panel, click the circular Adjustment Layer icon and choose Black & White. Apply an existing preset from the Presets drop-down menu and study the effect on the image.

02 Add tone
Your own preset can include a coloured tone. In the Black & White adjustment’s properties panel, click the swatch and choose a colour from the Color Picker dialog box. Or if you prefer, sample it from another picture.

03 Save your preset
Save your own preset in the Black & White properties panel. At its top right is a small pop-up menu – the lines with an arrow. Your preset will now be available in the panel’s Presets list.

Create a Bauhaus Christmas card in Photoshop

scliffe — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:48:05 +0000

Founded in Germany in 1919, the Bauhaus art movement is known for its designs based on simplicity and functionalism. Typified by the use of blocks of colour (usually red, blue and yellow) and simple clean shapes, it’s a style that’s easy to replicate in Photoshop. So why not use it to make a festive design like this?

01 Tweak the tones

Download the image above and open the Layers Panel (Window>Layers). Click the Create Adjustment Layer icon and choose Black and White. Drag the Yellow slider down to -125. Next, add a Color Balance Adjustment Layer. Set Cyan/Red -10, Yellow/Blue +44

02 Make red baubles

Grab the Ellipse tool from the Tools Panel, hold down Shift and draw several small circles. Double-click the layer thumbnail and choose a shade of red, then click on the Blend Mode drop-down menu and choose Vivid Light. Lower the Fill to about 85%.

03 Add more baubles

Begin another circle on a new shape layer, holding down Shift to constrain the proportions again. Make more baubles and choose a shade of blue for this layer. Make another shape layer for yellow baubles. If you want the circles to appear behind the branches, use Vivid Light, Fill 85%.

04 Create some type

Click the Create New Layer icon, then grab the Polygonal Lasso tool and make a shape in the corner. Right-click and choose Fill, then fill it with Red. Next, grab the Horizontal Type tool, click near the shape and type a word.

05 Make another word

Click the Move tool, then check Show Transform Controls and use the box to move, rotate and position the word on the shape. Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy the word and use the Move tool to position it, then double-click the thumbnail in the Layers Panel to edit the type.

06 Add a Mask

Hold down Cmd/Ctrl and click the thumbnail of the type layer to load it as a selection, then hide the layer, highlight the red shape layer, hold down Alt and click the Add Layer Mask icon. Finally, make a new layer and plot a thin line with the Polygonal Lasso tool, then fill it with black.

Final image

Luminosity masking: how to make the perfect HDR image

jmeyer — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:00:43 +0000

In our latest tutorial on how to use specific Photoshop tools we show you a luminosity masking technique that enables you to create the perfect HDR image from raw format files by blending two exposures according to lightness, not just area. This is a variation on the traditional HDR photography technique, but because we want to darken highlights and lighten shadows throughout the image rather than in selected areas, we’ll blend the images in a different way.

01 Create a well-exposed sky
To create a version of the image with a well-exposed sky, we’ve reduced Exposure to -0.40. Now we can open the edited image in Photoshop/Elements or save a copy before producing a second edit. By reopening the original file in Adobe Camera Raw if need be, and increasing Exposure to +2 and dropping Blacks to 2 or 3, we can produce the foreground exposure – you can go back later and try different Adobe Camera Raw settings at this stage if you like.

02 Rename the images
Now we can open this second edit in Photoshop/Elements (if we’d saved the edits out of Adobe Camera Raw, we’d open both from our desktop). We should also rename the images ‘sky1’ and ‘foreground1’ in case we want to produce more raw edits (bear in mind that if we tried this using a raw file in Elements, we wouldn’t be able to open the RAW file again unless we renamed the second version).

03 Combine the sky and foreground
Using the sky image, we Select All and Copy. Then on the shadows image, we Paste the sky image into the foreground document as a new layer. (In Elements, we’d see a bit-depth warning if the images were in 16-bit mode; you’d OK this to convert to 8-bit). The new layer is renamed ‘sky’ so we don’t get confused about which layer is which.

04 Make the selection
Now it’s time to create the luminosity selection that we’ll use to blend the two images. If we were using Photoshop Elements, we’d skip to steps 6 and 7 at this point. Using Adobe Photoshop though, we open the Channels palette and [Ctrl]/[Command]-click on the RGB channel. This action generates a selection of the sky layer’s highlights and light midtones.

05 Photoshop: Add the mask
With this selection active, we click the ‘Add layer mask’ button at the foot of the Layers palette. The layer mask will be based on the luminosity selection that we’ve just generated: the selected highlight areas of the upper layer will be revealed and its dark areas will be hidden, revealing the correctly-exposed shadow areas on the Background layer, which is the shadows image.

06 Elements: Create the mask
To create a luminosity mask in Elements, click the sky layer thumbnail and select Select All and Copy. Next, add a Levels adjustment layer, and OK the dialog without touching the sliders (from Elements 8, this will be the Adjustments panel rather than a dialog). To display the mask in the main image window, [Alt]/[Option]-click the mask thumbnail and paste the copied sky image.

07 Elements: Create a clipping mask
A grayscale version of the sky layer is now visible; the mask will be based on those grayscale values. A quick [Alt]/[Option]-click on the mask thumbnail enables us to view the image again. To apply the mask to the sky layer, we move the Levels layer beneath the sky layer in the stack, then [Alt]/[Option]-click the line between the two layers to create a clipping mask.

Our Teach Yourself Photoshop app is now live!

jmeyer — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:50:02 +0000

Our new Teach Yourself Photoshop app is now available on Apple Newsstand!

Teach Yourself Photoshop delivers more than six hours of easy-to-follow video tutorials presented by Photoshop experts. Each of the ten chapters will help you master a Photoshop feature, from black and white portraits to HDR landscape shots.

This single app gives you a complete series of tutorials that teach you how to apply quick fixes to your photos, create stunning portraits, and master advanced features.

Learn how to apply creative effects and retro styles to your images, get to grips with RAW files and understand tools and file types.

Master the skills needed to fix exposure levels, create HDR shots, amplify your colours, and fix photo flaws.

However you want to use Photoshop, Teach Yourself Photoshop video app will give you the expert knowledge you need to become an image-editing master!

You can download the Teach Yourself Photoshop app for £5.99 / $8.99 US.