Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 2 i Photoshop Image Editing The Complete Manual

Let us show you just how powerful Photoshop is, while discovering a range of tools and techniques that can make excellent digital artists of us all. Even if you are a beginner, Photoshop is easier to learn than you might imagine. This guide begins with the various tools and editing basics that can get you up and running in no time. The second half concentrates on some creative projects that will expand on what you’ve learnt and have you creating new images just like a digital professional. www.pclpublications.com…

Photoshop has a great interface, with a dark slate grey work area, slightly lighter menu and palette bars and sharp white text. It looks great and really makes photos stand out from the background. Let’s see what it has to offer. Menu Bar You’ll find all the menu options here and many more nested menus to control all aspects of Photoshop. Read on for more details. Tool Palette Here you’ll find your main editing tools. The following pages look at the individual tools and what you can do with them. Tool Option Bar For each tool on the palette there are options, such as brush size or softness. You’ll find them in this area. Document Window Each window you open will have its own tab to identify it. It includes…

One of Photoshop’s best features is its huge list of fully customisable keyboard shortcuts. Almost all of the program’s functions can be accessed quickly by pressing various combinations of keys and once you learn those shortcuts your workflow will speed up immensely. You can even make up your own for your most frequently-used operations. Customising Shortcuts You’ll find the Keyboard Shortcut preferences menu at the bottom of the Edit menu, although naturally it has its own keyboard shortcut, Alt+Shift+Ctrl+K. You’ll find an exhaustive list of all Photoshop functions, broken down into category headings matching the names of the main menus. You’ll find that many operations already have their own default shortcuts. You can easily change these, or even add your own new ones. To apply a shortcut to an operation,…

It’s very easy to find and open a photo, work with it, and then save it again, without the need to turn it into a native Photoshop PSD file that retains all the layers and adjustments information within it. We’ve looked at creating new documents from scratch, so now we can take our newly created blank document, start importing images and begin the process of building a basic design with just a couple of images. As simple as this guide may appear, it is a cornerstone to what makes Photoshop so useful as an image editing and digital manipulation tool for photographers and designers alike. We will use this tutorial to get used to bringing in images and working with them on their layers. 01 Opening a single image is…

If we are talking about key skills that make Photoshop the most popular photo editing program around, then we have to talk about the ability to cut out parts of one image and then use it as part of anther image entirely. Cut outs are another staple of image enhancement and manipulation that are essential skills to have. It is lucky for us that Photoshop has a number of tools at its fingertips that can help make the process less of a chore. We are going to take two images and then cut out part of one and use it on the other. Yes, it’s a very simple tutorial, but it’s also very useful. This is a skill you will need to use a lot if you wish to create…

What do we mean when we say non-destructive? Well, in simple terms, if you open a photo shot as a jpeg file and make all your edits and enhancements directly to the image itself, you will find that unless you save the results as another jpeg file, the original will be lost to you. You have effectively overwritten the original with your edited version and there is now no way to retrieve it. Unless you specifically wanted to only use the edited version from then on, that could be a very annoying outcome. This is where Photoshop’s use of layers and adjustment layers comes in very handy. Something simple like a boost to brightness and contrast need not be applied to the image itself. You can use an adjustment layer…

When you take a digital photo of a scene, you are relying on your camera to be able to capture all the colours and tones that you see. Unfortunately most digital cameras simply aren’t capable of recording the full range of colours and shades that the human eye can see, so your photo of what was a bright and colourful scene may prove to be a bit of a disappointment when you see it on your monitor. Fortunately there are many different ways to improve both contrast and colour saturation, which might help to restore some of the sparkle to your photos. Let’s take a look at some of the alternatives. 01 As an example we’ll use this snapshot of a parrot. In reality the colour of the scene is…

Sometimes a digital photograph can be the wrong size. Maybe you’ve got too much of the surroundings in the picture, when you wanted to concentrate on just the main subject, or maybe the whole image is too big, and you need to make it smaller to send via email or publish on a website. Doing both of these things is very quick and simple in Photoshop. We’ll use this landscape shot of an old shack and lake as the image to start with. What we want to do first is crop it down so we just have a tighter view of the shack. 01 The best tool for the job is, not surprisingly, the Crop Tool. You’ll find it in the tool palette, fourth down from the top. It looks…

While a Quick Mask function is an easy way to selectively edit your pictures, the more traditional method is to use Layer Masks. The advantage to this method is that it is non-destructive, so if you don’t like the results you can just go back and start again. It is also repeatable, because you can use the same mask for multiple effects, saving you time and effort. For this quick tutorial we’ll use a Layer Mask to apply a selective monochrome or colour extraction effect. We’ll start with this bright image of a lady in a red dress. The red tones will remain in colour while the rest of the picture will be changed to black and white. 01 To start with, right-click on the thumbnail of the photo in…

Photoshop’s standard selection tools: the Marquee, Lasso and Magic Wand, are fine for making basic selections of regular, well defined shapes, but they’re not so good at picking out soft-edged or very fine shapes. One thing in particular, that has always been a problem, is the edge of fine or untidy hair. Take the photo shown here for example: This image is representative of a typical studio setting, with good lighting and against a plain background. Photos like this are used all the time for catalogues, advertising posters and the like. However, in order to fit these needs the model will have to be separated from the background. With a plain background like this, it would be tempting to use a normal selection tool such as the Magic Wand. However…

The Clone Stamp Tool (also known as the Clone Brush in some programs) is one of the most useful items in your image editing tool kit. Despite recent developments such as Photoshop’s Spot Healing Tool and Content-aware fill, it is still the most precise and reliable way to retouch photographs, allowing you to remove unwanted elements such as dust spots, skin blemishes, lens flare, telephone lines and other intrusive objects from your pictures. Because the process is entirely manual it can be somewhat time-consuming, but the results are often superior to the output of the more modern automatic tools. The Clone Stamp works by copying (“cloning”) pixels from a selected target area and placing them over the unwanted objects. Using the Clone Stamp, it is relatively straightforward to remove even…

Photographers use graduated filters placed in front of the camera lens to selectively change the exposure and sometimes the colour of part of a picture, usually to darken the sky to bring out details in the clouds and balance the exposure with the landscape in the foreground. They come in many different shapes, sizes and colours to fit all types of camera system. As with most photographic techniques, it’s possible to duplicate the effect of graduated filters using Adobe Photoshop and as usual there are several ways to accomplish this. For this example we’ll use a landscape photo of a sunrise over a field. Graduated Filter in Camera Raw Since this photo was taken using Raw mode, we can use the Graduated Filter tool in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). ACR…

One relatively simple operation that you can do in Photoshop is to replace one colour with another. By using some of the selection tools we looked at earlier, along with the Hue/Saturation controls, we can change the colour of individual objects in our photos, such as replacing the colour of the cat’s green eyes in this shot. 01 Selecting large areas of the same colour is one of those few occasions where the Magic Wand tool is actually useful, so we’ll use it as a starting point here. With a tolerance setting of 40-50 it should be able to pick out the items without too much trouble. 02 With the Magic Wand, it’s best to add a bit at a time. Click on an area that’s a mid-tone for the…

When Photoshop arrived on the scene all those years ago, no-one could really have predicted just what a monumental impact it would have on the fields of design, photography, art, and of course, image manipulation. Be in no doubt that there is a lot to learn, but also comfort yourself in the knowledge that it is also easier to grasp the basics than you might think. In this section, we shall cover a Q&A session where we will try to answer some of the more common (and perhaps not so common) questions that users both new and old are asking. There are no silly questions, even experienced users don’t know every single thing there is to know about Photoshop. We can speak from experience to that point. There’s always something…

Photoshop comes with Camera Raw as standard. It offers a range of processing options that enable you to get the best out of your photos, including exposure adjustment, sharpening, noise reduction, colour correction and automatic correction for lens distortion. It’s regularly updated so it’s compatible with the latest cameras and lenses. It recently underwent a major update and the layout has been redesigned to match the look of the mobile version of Lightroom. Flimstrip This shows all the files you currently have open in thumbnail format and is displayed on the left side of the screen. You can alter its orientation and display it along the bottom of the screen if preferred. Click the one you want to work on. Image Window The image you are currently working on is…

Ask any five professional photographers about the process they use to create their pictures, you’ll get five different answers. The amount of processing and adjustment used will vary, depending on the job at hand and the type of final image required, as well as the type of camera used to take the photo and the use to which the photo will be put. There are certain operations that will be common to most photos that you’ll want to process, so we’ll take a look at a common general purpose workflow that will be suitable for most types of photo. Our example will be using a sunrise photograph taken on a rocky formation down on the coast. 01 If you look at the histogram at the top right of the screen…

If you are out and about doing landscape photography, there are times when you are faced with some compositional and technical challenges that could affect the quality and overall impact of your photos. One area that regularly demands your attention is that of exposure and getting a beautifully balanced tonal range. When trying to photograph scenes of very high contrast, that can be a very tall order. A lot of photographers will employ the HDR (high dynamic range) technique. This is where they will shoot the scene at three or more different exposures, capturing a much larger range of tonal values that can be merged at a later time on the computer. Great, but what happens if you are also tasked with shooting a very wide panoramic shot that cannot…

Have you ever been out with your camera, taking shots of some beautiful scene? It’s sunrise down by the water’s edge. The light is amazing, the clouds are well defined and lit by the rising sun, there is a glow along the horizon and some cool reflections in the wet sand at your feet. You compose a strong yet simple shot and click off a few frames. When you get home and download them to your computer, you open them up and are surprised how different the images look to how it was in real life. The images are a bit washed out, the colours seem a little weak. Did you get your camera settings wrong? There’s every chance you didn’t. Sometimes what you see with your own eyes is…

02 Using your imagination, Photoshop, free assets from image sharing sites and a bunch of layers, you can put together compositions of amazing complexity. Of course, if you happen to be a bit of a photographer, you can shoot your own bespoke content not seen elsewhere.…

05 A few simple photographic and illustrative components from image sharing sites like Pixabay or Deviant Art and a little imagination can lead to eye-opening art. Let us show you how Photoshop can unlock your creative power.…

Check out these useful new features and tools October 2021 saw the release of the latest version of Photoshop 2022 which at the time of writing is in release version 23.1.0. It has many new improvements over those tools first offered in the 2020 update. Certain additional new tools and updated features are still in beta but available for us to have a play with. So play we will. A number of the new beta filters have to be downloaded and there are also a number of tools that are as yet unavailable but Adobe ask you for input and submit reasons why a filter like this is useful to you. At first glance, some of the tools new to this version look a little gimmicky but others are actually…

The main elements of the Photoshop Toolbar haven’t changed all that much since the introduction of Layers and the Move Tool with version 3.0, back in 1994. The shape has changed a bit, elongating into a single column to take advantage of today’s larger monitors and a few more tools have been added, but anyone who’s familiar with any previous version of Photoshop will soon feel right at home. Move Used to move pixel information on the active layer or selection. You can also create multiple layouts using the Artboard feature. Marquee The Marquee is used to select an area of the active layer. Alternative options include an elliptical shape and single row or column selections. Lasso The Lasso is also used to make area selections from the active layer…

Now that Photoshop and a host of other Adobe products have moved to the subscription model, you have an application that can be continually updated, over time, without needing to buy a new version. This is in contrast to older versions of Photoshop where you bought a box containing a disk, installed it and called it done. If a new version was released, you had to purchase it or upgrade to the new version. That has been superseded; your computer now maintains an online link with Adobe so each program you have downloaded and installed can be incrementally updated. Photoshop is a good example, since you can have an update appear that adds new features and fixes bugs in the current version. To make sure you are keeping your versions…

You might think that opening or creating a new Photoshop document is a very simple task to achieve. In the days of older versions of Photoshop that was certainly true with its original start up sequence. You either opened a photo, or you made a new document and started work. These days, with the advent of Photoshop CC, it’s a slightly more involved affair and goes way beyond anything that has been seen in Photoshop before. The newest version of the program has a Home screen and a more interactive front end, offering a lot more choice from the very moment you open the program. Let’s start at the very beginning, dive in and have a quick look at what the Home Screen has on offer for the new user,…

The concept of Layers was first introduced with Photoshop 3.0 in 1994, and has become the very core of Photoshop image editing, as well as being imitated by every other image editing program on the market. Layers are exactly what they sound like; the elements of the image are stacked up and displayed in descending order. Since layers can include transparency, lower layers can be visible through higher layers. Effects, adjustments and operations can be applied to individual layers, or to all the layers at once. You can: move layers around relative to one another, change the order of layers in the stack, turn layers on or off and delete layers, without affecting the others. Some people seem to have a hard time getting their head around the concept of…

The ability to select discrete areas of an image and change them in isolation is fundamental to Photoshop editing and to help with this there are many different ways of making that selection. The most frequently used are the Marquee tools, which allow you to select regular shapes such as rectangles, ellipses and lines. For irregular shapes there are several Lasso tools, which let you draw the area to be selected. For quicker selections there are the Magic Wand and Quick Selection tools. Common Options If you look across the top left of your menu bar, you will see there are common tool options for all of the selection tools. After the Home button and the Tool preset picker are the selection options. The row of four buttons are: New…

The introduction of text and type effects in Photoshop now means that you can create cool logos or even documents with paragraphs of text in them, if you want. Although you don’t have the more complex control of text that you might have in desktop publishing programs such as InDesign, you can still produce simple text layouts, and other effects with relative ease, thanks to a set of useful tools and text controls. You can produce normal horizontal text and vertical text if required, and you can also use both vertical and horizontal text to create masks. The only limiting factor is the number of fonts you carry on your system. The more fonts you have, the more choice you have. 01 Having opened an image, in the form of…

One very useful facility that Photoshop provides is the Gradient tool. It can fill an area of a layer with a gradual blend between multiple colours. You can choose from a selection of pre-set gradient fills or create your own. It’s a great way to add gradient filters for enhancing photographs, or to create effects such as vignettes and centre-spot soft-focus. Let’s take a closer look at how it works. You’ll find the Gradient tool about halfway down the Tool Palette. It has its own unique set of options in the Tool Options bar, the main one being the Gradient Picker, which lets you choose from a list of pre-set gradients. Next to this is a row of buttons that create different gradient shapes. The default setting is a straight…

Photoshop CS4 introduced the world to an amazing new technology called Content-aware Scaling, which can resize an image while preserving the proportions of important image elements. It works by analysing the image and removing lines of pixels that contain relatively little information, so that a plain background will be affected before the main subject. The best way to illustrate the effect is with examples, such as this image of a tree and clouds. Content-aware Scaling 01 If we resize the image vertically by 60 percent using the standard Photoshop Image Size menu option, the tree and clouds will end up looking flattened and out of proportion, since their height has also been reduced by about 60 percent. 02 However if we use Content-aware Scaling, the clever algorithm detects that the…

Although it is primarily designed and best known as an image editing program, Photoshop also offers a range of versatile tools, allowing you to create original artwork as well as adapting existing images. The brushes, pencils and eraser are designed to behave as much like their real life counterparts as possible, to make using them an intuitive process. If you have a graphics tablet and a pen, this helps even more. The Brush Tool The most useful drawing implement is the Brush (keyboard shortcut B), which is a multipurpose tool that can emulate almost any type of drawing tool imaginable, be it a fine pencil, a felt-tip marker pen, a soft-bristle brush, an airbrush, or anything in between. The Brush tool has received a major upgrade for version CS6 and…

Often when editing in Photoshop it’s useful to be able to block off certain areas that we don’t want to be affected. For that we use masks and there are several ways of creating them, but by far the easiest is Quick Mask, a fantastically useful feature that was first introduced in Photoshop 7. Quick Mask lets you create and edit masks and selections quickly and easily using any of Photoshop’s pixel painting tools to apply a brushed mask with freehand strokes of the mouse. It’s extremely simple to use, but it can produce a wide and varied range of results. You’ll find the Quick Mask mode button near the bottom of the Tool Palette. Clicking it will toggle Quick Mask mode on or off. The most basic way to…

The Clone Stamp Tool is very powerful as we’ve already seen, but on its own, it does have its limitations. The shortcomings of the Clone Stamp Tool are most obvious when trying to clone out an item that is on top of a very regular pattern with a perspective. The repeating pattern of a brick wall or tiled floor looked at from an angle will appear to recede into the distance and get smaller, or get closer and larger. The Clone Stamp Tool cannot match this perspective on its own and your cloning will look pretty bad. It’s ok though. Photoshop has just the tool to help with this tricky form of cloning. It can be found under the Filter menu and is called the Vanishing Point Tool. The Vanishing…

One of the new features introduced with Photoshop CS6 is called Adaptive Wide Angle; this can warp and bend an image to undo the optical distortion common to all very wide angle lenses. We’ve all seen photographs taken with “fisheye” lenses. These lenses are called ultra-wide-angle, because the angle of view that they can capture can be as much as 180 degrees. Naturally the ability to squeeze half a room into the same shot comes at a price and that is extreme optical distortion. Straight and parallel lines appear to be bent, perspective is massively shortened and familiar objects take on almost unrecognisable proportions. In the photo opposite, the straight uprights of the pillars and floor seem to curve strangely, everything appears to bulge outwards and the whole effect is…

Soft focus is an effect used widely in television and in the movies, as well as in many commercial and advertising photographs, for producing a dreamy romantic look. It’s also a big favourite with wedding photographers to give their images a soft, dreamy look. In traditional photography the effect is achieved with a special filter fitted over the camera lens. Many digital cameras now include soft focus as a digital effect, but we can produce the same results in Photoshop with ease, using Gaussian blur and layer transparency. 01 The first step is to turn the picture into two identical layers. To do this, go to the Layer menu and select Duplicate Layer. Don’t worry about naming this layer, it’s the only one we’re going to make. 02 Next, go…

If you are new to Photoshop, you may possibly have encountered the term ‘plugin’ and wondered what it actually was and how you can access them. Plug-ins are small, self-contained programs that add extra effects and workflow possibilities to the Photoshop toolset. Plug-ins can can simply be a single effect added to your image that automates existing Photoshop effects. It could even be an effect Photoshop may not be able to do itself. It can also be something more complex, like a self-contained mini editor that you can use to modify your images and return the result to Photoshop for further editing. plugins are supplied by Adobe themselves and by many third-party vendors. There are so many to choose from, it can be a bit of a minefield. As an…

The Toolbar in the newly updated layout of Camera Raw sits vertically in the top right side of the interface. It is broken down into a series of buttons that you can click. Each button you click, will display its particular tools in the main control panel situated right next to the Toolbar. This version now looks more like Lightroom, the mobile-focused version. Edit First in the Toolbar is the Edit button. Clicking on this displays the main tools that you will be using to edit and adjust your photos. Edit is broken down into nine sections that cover all your typical adjustment tools such as altering Brightness and Contrast, Hue and Saturation, Detail and Noise Reduction. There are also tools to correct optical flaws in camera lenses and alter…

If there is one area that really helps artists to show off their skills, it is in the creation of unique images and fantasy artworks. Websites like DeviantArt and Pixabay are full of images that have been assembled in Photoshop using many disparate components to create a final, cohesive end result. Part of the attraction of those websites is that artists and photographers create content and allow others to download their images and use them for their own artworks. If you find yourself wanting to create your own brand new fantasy image, then Photoshop is perfect. It lets you put each image element on its own layer and with some careful editing and masking, you can blend them to produce a final image worthy of any fantasy genre. So why…

Before the advent of digital technology, it was the job of the makeup artist to get the skin looking perfect on set or in the studio. Now, thanks to Photoshop you are the makeup artist. You can control exactly how you want your model to look in the final image. As ever, there are numerous ways you can go about retouching skin. Some techniques are very simple but do not give natural results. Some take it to extremes and end up with their models looking like mannequins. Of course, there has been much debate about the use of retouching and manipulation of body shape. All we are looking to do is make our model’s skin look as healthy and glowing as possible. We are going to use a technique called…

One of the many techniques that Photoshop allows us, the digital artist, to do, is to manipulate colour and tone. Changing the colour of an object to a totally different colour is not too hard, but to do it in a realistic way can be a bit more challenging. The complexity increases when your original colour is white. Imagine trying to change a white shirt into a black one. How would you even do that and make it look convincing? Well, this tutorial aims to show you a relatively easy way to convert a white object with shadows and highlights and convert its colour into any other colour and still look great. We also take it a step further and convert the white object to black. In our example, we…

03 The most commonplace images, be they photos of your family, snaps taken during a woodland walk, or assets procured on the web, can all be combined to let Photoshop do what it does best. When it comes to adding elements together into new compositions, Photoshop’s layer-based system makes the process easy.…

06 Compositing is a form of digital artwork creation that relies on assembling a number of different elements in one scene to look like they all belong together. One particularly effective method to combine real people into a scene is to shoot them against a grey screen. This greatly aids the process of masking and combining the subject with their new background.…

Thomas and John Knoll created Photoshop in 1988 with the release of Photoshop 1.0 following in February 1990. It is a raster graphics editor and has become the predominant industry standard for digital image editing. At its heart, it has a suite of tools that allow the user to edit, assemble and compose images using multiple layers and masks. It is this use of layers and masks that are the core features of Photoshop’s power. Such layer-based editing means you can build very complex images and create incredible works of art using this method. Photoshop’s Strengths Photoshop is a pixel-level editor. Where Lightroom allows you to adjust pixels in an image, Photoshop lets you move them and manipulate them in a way that’s nothing short of magical. Photoshop allows multiple…

The main interface of Photoshop has no fewer than twelve menus and a Help option, each with many options and with many additional nested sub-menus. It’s vital to become familiar with the contents of the most important ones, because once you know where to look for everything you’ll be able to work more quickly, efficiently and confidently. Let’s take a look at some of the key menu listings. File The most important options here are New… to create a new document, Open… to open an existing document, Save to save your current project in its default file format and location and Save As… which gives you the option to save in a different format or location and to change the file name. Also in the File menu are the important…

Photoshop is nothing if not customisable. You can shape and adjust the user interface to suit your own needs and make it a very personalised, and customised, workspace. Not only can you choose what appears in the main toolbar, you can also arrange and group the various windows and features entirely to your preference. That accounts for the items you interact with on the screen, however there are also a number of options you can tweak to adjust various ‘under the hood’ settings, as it were, too. Photoshop has a listing of all its Preferences both general and specific, so we thought we’d share the salient points with you here. 01 Under Photoshop CC > Preferences > General (Cmd + K) you will see the list of preferences available. The…

A true Photoshop masterpiece has to start somewhere right? In order to create that masterpiece you have to be able to open and navigate to your various image assets, and then fire them up in Photoshop in order to begin working on them. Photoshop is no different to many other programs in that it allows you to bring up a browser window in order to find the files you require. It also has its own methods for both managing and locating your images in the form of Adobe Bridge, which lets you search for images as well as keyword them making future searches much easier. This is all useful stuff, so get ready to try it out. 01 Since we’ve covered how to create a new document, it seems worthwhile…

Now is the chance to get to the nitty gritty of what Photoshop is all about. Working with layers in a document and importing various images and graphics is a key part of how Photoshop functions. Opening a photo and then adding layers of adjustment or additional elements on top is what makes Photoshop the incredibly useful image editing program it has become. You can simply enhance a favourite photo to make its colours look more vibrant and the details a little sharper, or you can create amazing compositions by combining various images, or parts of them, in new and exciting ways that will have your viewers wishing they could do it too. 01 This new artwork starts with the opening of a base image. In this case, we chose…

Photoshop’s use of layers is one of the most important aspects of what makes it is so versatile and enables the user to unleash their full creativity. Once you include the ability to add masks to those layers, you have yet another very powerful tool that lets you blend or hide parts of one image on a layer and control how they interact with another. Masks are not only very useful in hiding or revealing parts of an image, they can also be used, in conjunction with an adjustment layer, to provide the same function of hiding or revealing parts of the effect you’ve chosen. We are getting ahead of ourselves however. Let’s take a look at how you can use a simple mask to produce a very cool effect.…

Even with the sophisticated technology found in the light metering systems of modern digital cameras, they are not infallible. Some lighting conditions can confuse them, resulting in pictures that are over or under-exposed. All cameras have a limited dynamic range, levels of illumination at which they record featureless pure white or featureless pure black. The tonal variation available between those two extremes depends on the quality of the lens, sensor and image processor that captured it, along with the bit-depth of the file type used to record it. For maximum bit-depth it’s always best to use Raw mode, since this will usually store images in 42-bit or even 48-bit form, capturing greater dynamic range. We’ll look at improving the exposure of the more common JPEG images from a compact camera.…

You’ll find the Curves function in the Image > Adjustments menu, or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd+M. The Curves dialog looks a bit daunting at first; a graph with a diagonal line running up the middle of it, like a difficult piece of maths homework. It’s nothing to be scared of though and is in fact the most useful and versatile tool for making adjustments to the exposure and tonal balance of your images. We’ll use this female portrait as the image to begin with. What we want to do first is crop it down so we just have the main part of her face and hair with some trees beyond. The Curves graph is a histogram showing the relative strengths of different tones within the image. It shows the…

Although there are many editing options in the Image > Adjustment menu, they all have one thing in common. When you apply them to an image the effect they have is destructive, because they discard information from the original image. For example, if you apply Curves, then Hue/ Saturation, then add a Photo Filter effect, that’s three operations that have discarded information, each one degrading your image quality. If you apply an operation repeatedly, such as multiple Curves corrections, you’ll actually be able to see the degradation. The only way to undo the damage done by these modifications is to revert to an earlier version by using undo or the History palette, but that also undoes all your subsequent editing as well. This degradation is much worse with 8-bit than…

Even with a modern digital camera, your photos may have slight imperfections. Maybe it’s just a stray hair or an unwelcome skin blemish in a portrait, or maybe some dust has managed to get onto your sensor, causing dark spots on your photo. Whatever the reason, sometimes you need to remove some small features from your images and the best tools for this are the Healing Tools. There are five Healing Tools in Photoshop, which you can see if you click and hold on the Spot Healing Brush Tool icon in the tool palette. Healing Brush Tool The Healing Brush is a legacy from older versions of Photoshop. It does much the same job as the Spot Healing Brush, but is rather less sophisticated. It works in much the same…

The quickest and most common way to make selections is to use the Polygonal Lasso tool but since that only draws straight lines from point to point it isn’t ideal for making accurate selections around curved edges. Photoshop does have a tool for making smooth curves though, and it’s called the Pen tool (keyboard shortcut P). Rather than creating a selection directly like the Lasso tool, the Pen tool is used to create a Work Path. A Work Path in Photoshop is a vector graphic outline which can be used for several functions, including shaped text, outline strokes and of course selections. A path consists of straight and curved lines segments connected with points. You can leave a path open to form a straight or curved line, or close a…

Many digital cameras have a feature known as “Panorama Stitching” or “Panorama Assist” mode. It’s there to help with a particular type of photograph, or rather series of photographs, in which successive shots are taken as the camera is panned across a scene. After you take the first shot, the camera shows the edge of that shot superimposed on the monitor so you can match up the position of features in successive shots, producing a long continuous photo showing an entire panoramic scene. You can also shoot your pan sequence manually, especially if you have a tripod handy to keep the camera level. When it’s done well the results can be breathtaking, but getting a satisfactory result isn’t as easy as it looks. Having downloaded our panorama pictures from the…

There’s no doubt that when it comes to getting better at something, the best way to learn is to do. Getting hands-on is always worth doing. With applications like Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom, the same is certainly true. Dive in and see what is intuitive and what may need a little more research and possible time spent flicking through a user manual. It’s all good experience. There may be times when you encounter a situation that a manual doesn’t answer. Or, you may just have some general questions about these applications that may help you decide whether you are going to invest in any of them at all. You ask a question, you get an answer, you go from there. Simple. We would always advocate the asking of questions, but…

All digital SLRs and Compact System Cameras, and most of the better compact cameras, have a shooting option called Raw mode. You’ll usually find it in the menu as an option under image quality. Raw mode offers greatly improved image quality over the usual JPEG image file format, and is recommended for all serious photographers. Let’s take a closer look at Raw mode, find out how it works and see how it can help you produce better photographs. What is Raw Mode? Raw mode is a special image recording option that is available on digital SLRs, Compact System Cameras, and other high-quality digital cameras. If your camera has this option, you have access to much higher image quality than the standard JPEG file format. Essentially, Raw mode is just what…

The main interface of Camera Raw is comprised of a series of menus, each with a series of control sliders and some additional menu tabs to access further features. Although you will no doubt spend most of your time working in the Basic panel, when used in conjunction with adjustments from the other control panels, you will be able to enhance your images beyond what you thought possible. Basic The Basic panel in Camera Raw is probably the one you will spend the most time in and also making the most important global image adjustments. You can adjust White Balance, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights and Shadows as well as Whites and Black. To bring out detail, you can use Texture, Clarity and Dehaze to reduce haze in your photos. You can…

Dual lighting, as the name suggests, is a technique used by photographers to add two separate coloured lighting effects to a subject. Most typically, they are used in a studio setup and can add a lot of drama to a portrait session. One colour of light is used to strongly illuminate the subject from one side and then the second light is brought in to add a cross-lit effect with another complimentary colour on the other side. This can be done with just the head and shoulders or the whole body depending on the subject. Of course, not all of us are photographers with access to expensive studio space and photographic equipment, but with a good source image, Photoshop can turn a normal portrait into an image with just as…

King Midas was a character from Greek and Roman legend who wished that all he touched could turn to gold. When he got his wish, he nearly starved to death since his food was also turning to gold. He then realised his error and quickly wished for an end to the golden touch! Well, thanks to Photoshop, you can turn things into gold and not worry about your next meal being inedible. Using some fairly simple techniques, you can turn many subjects in your photos into golden objects that have that beautiful lustre that only comes from solid gold. We will take a photograph and manipulate it in such as way as to give it shine, highlights and the colours you associate with this precious metal. A couple of layers,…

01 This surreal image is relatively simple in terms of composition and all the elements are free to use from Pixabay. The fish and the bubbles were transparent PNGs and the other elements could easily be cut out using your favourite selection tools.…

04 Part of what can set you apart as an artist or image manipulator is creating images that are simple yet effective. Take this example. It only uses a couple of elements but is surreal and spooky and can be put together in 30 minutes.…

Active layer The layer currently selected in the Layers panel. Adjustment layer A layer that lets you apply colour and tonal adjustments to your image without permanently changing pixel values. Use adjustment layers to experiment with colour and colour tones. You can think of an adjustment layer as a veil through which the underlying layers are seen. Adobe RGB The RGB colour space profile created by Adobe Systems, Incorporated. It provides a large gamut of colours. (See also RGB.) Aliasing The jagged edges seen at the edges of diagonal lines, arcs, and so on, caused by pixels lining up in a saw-tooth pattern. Alpha channels Masks, which let you manipulate, isolate, and protect specific parts of an image. In Photoshop, alpha channels are called saved selections. To save an alpha…