Photoshop: Start learning the easy way

It is this photography ‘purest’ to whom I appeal (this time) – the ones that still like using film every now and then. Most photographers have Digital SLRs (DSLR – “et moi aussi”). I know you can create this effect with Photoshop, after the fact; but having creative control over this special effect makes it exciting because you execute this photo miracle at the precise moment you push the shutter button. Ghosting. This is what this special effect is called; accomplished by using your SLR’s multiple exposure feature, but with a simple twist to ensure proper film exposure. The procedure detailed in this article is different from the instructions in your SLR manual.

Through highlighting edges of your photo, you also highlight its details. The method of unsharp mask and others like the difference of Gaussians increase the change in brightness close to each step. This technique’s standard version adds a bright halo along the bright edge of the step and a dark halo along the dark edge. Depending on what effect you’d like for your image, there are advantages in just using one or the other. Using both may not do very much to improve your image, though.

Now you may want to add a Brightness/Contrast layer. This will help get rid of any extra grain or lines that are unwanted. I used a very subtle Brightness/Contrast layer, because I didnt want it to get too bright or too contrasted. So just experiment with it until you find a nice amount. Now that we have added our Brightness/Contrast, we are ready to start making it a brush. So first I want you to desaturate it. After desaturating our fractal we want to invert it. So invert your fractal. Now that we have inverted we are going to go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. 1. Every fractal is different and will require different settings. 2. I want you to experiment so your learning and not just copying down numbers. Now that we added the Brightness/Contrast we are almost done with making our brush! All we have to do now is hit Ctrl – A and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. Name the brush what ever you want, and try it out!

You may be looking at a photo you took on your last vacation of the crystal blue waters on the ocean, but all Photoshop sees is a gray ocean. Did you manage to snap a picture of a rainbow arching across the sky after a summer evening storm? Photoshop sees it as a beautiful assortment of shades of gray. And that famous pot of gold at the end of it? To Photoshop, it’s a big ol’ pot of gray. Don’t feel sorry for Photoshop though. It’s perfectly happy in its colorless world. In fact, the only reason it shows us our images in color at all is because we as human beings expect to see them in color. We wouldn’t know what to think if everything was appearing in black and white. But not Photoshop. To it, life just couldn’t be sweeter than in black, white and gray.

Creating actions is fun and easy. All you have to have is a bunch of pictures and then record them all together, start by clicking on Record and the button below will turn red. Any action you perform in Photoshop will be recorded. With the Record mode on, start editing your photo. In our case, lets resize the image. Choose Image -> Image Size, enter 450 for width (or any other sizes), click Ok. Click on the record button to turn the Record mode off. Testing the action Now that you have an action recorded, lets open up another image that needs to be resize. This time, we’ll just hit the shortcut key Shift F2, or clicking on the Play selection button. You should be able to resize in just one click. To exercise the usage of Photoshop Actions, you can try recording more complex actions. Mastering actions will help you perform alot of routine Photoshop tasks in shorter time. Have fun.

Photoshop training is one of the best investments you can make in your professional career. Whatever field you’re working in, Photoshop training can help you reach your full potential. Anyone who works with digital images and graphics knows that the Adobe Photoshop line of software is the tool of choice for graphic designers and professional photographers around the world. The Photoshop interface hasn’t changed a great deal since the earliest versions, so users can easily upgrade to Photoshop CS2 from any previous version. Photoshop CS2 has powerful new features that will aid designers in all fields. You can literally use Photoshop CS2 to create any visual effect that you can image-if you can dream it, you can create it with Photoshop. Like previous versions of Photoshop, CS2 is available for both Macintosh and Windows. And the best thing about the new version is the price: Photoshop CS2 costs less than previous versions of Photoshop.

Pictures are made up of many things, editing requires knowledge of all 3: 1) Contrasts adjustments (the highlights and the shadows) 2) Neutral tones balance (color cast on grey) 3) Increasing or decreasing the saturation The work flow of the photographic post production can be performed with many adjustment tools as: Brightness/contrast – Color Balance – Hue/Saturation, or Levels – Hue/Saturation, or Auto-Adjustments – Sponge. This tutorial is very brief and introduces a new method to decrease color cast on neutral tones. The picture has a really intense orange color cast. I took this picture of Christopher Columbus’ statue along the “lower pavement” in Funchal (Madeira Island). No need to be a colorimetric expert to understand that, the light effect due to the night orange lights is to much. The goal is to decrease color cast, of course, without changing the “meaning” of the picture.First of all we duplicate the background layer. Then we apply Filter>Blur>Average, that will transform the picture’s layer into a colored “stain” by the average pixels’ color. Then we have to invert (ctrl i) the obtained color in order to see the opposite color.Now we change blending mode to Color (read also Blending modes tutorial) and decrease master opacity until we obtain our goal. And that’s all!