Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2022 i Practical Photoshop

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3xlRYsD Select and Mask is the most comprehensive tool for removing backgrounds in Photoshop. Not only is it a good tool for making cutouts, it’s also often an essential stop-off to improve selections made using other tools and techniques. Go to Select>Select and Mask to get started. You’ll also see a Select and Mask button at the top whenever a selection tool is active. 1 BEGIN YOUR SELECTIONS IN SELECT AND MASK You can either make an initial selection with any Photoshop selection method before entering Select and Mask, or instead open the command then use the Quick Selection tool or the Select Subject button (which uses artificial intelligence to isolate the subject). 2 OVERLAY VIEWS Hit For use the dropdown to see differing views. The Onion Skin…

Blend If is a wonderful tool if there’s a difference in brightness between the background you want to remove, and the one you want to replace it with. So it’s ideal for knocking out a white or black backdrop. You can also use it to target the Reds, Greens or Blues. Double-click the top layer to open the Blending Options. Here you’ll find the Blend If controls. The top slider lets you control the transparency of the currently selected layer. Drag the white or black slider in and any pixels beyond that point will become transparent. If we drag the highlights slider in here, we make the highlights transparent, which knocks out the white backdrop. The further in we drag, the more highlights are hidden. By contrast, if we drag…

The Pen tool works by plotting either straight lines or Bezier curves. These are parametric curves based on math rather than a line of pixels, which means they can be scaled up or down with no change in quality (as such, all fonts are vector-based shapes). Photoshop calls them Paths, or Shapes instead if they form a block of colour. There are three main types of line: straight, curved and pointed. To make a straight line [A] click between two points. To make a curved line [B], click and drag outwards from the point. To make a sharp point [C], Alt-click on the point of origin to remove the outward handle then click another point to take the path in the opposite direction. While placing an anchor point, you can…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3K There are all kinds of objects and details that look incredible in close-up, but insects are perhaps the most beguiling. Ultra macro photography allows us to blow their tiny features up to a tremendous scale, revealing alien-like features, vibrant colours and incredible details. But how do we get close enough? You can spend a lot of money on macro photography. From specialist objective lenses to bellows and motorized focus rails, close-up photography can get expensive very quickly. But for those looking to dip their toes into the world of ultra macro photography, there is a cheaper option – extension tubes. These enable you to convert any lens for macro use by allowing for closer minimum focusing distances, and if you already own a macro lens then…

PHOTOSHOP CC FROM £9.98/$9.99 PER MONTH WINDOWS, macOS Photoshop is the software of choice for most professional and non-professional photographers. Beyond the standard photo-editing features, it boasts a vast array of more creative tools and filters. Layers are one of the key differences between Photoshop and Lightroom. They enable you to mask out selected parts to build up increasingly sophisticated images. ELEMENTS 15 £79.99/$99.99 WINDOWS, macOS Elements is the consumer variant of Photoshop, and contains many of its key tools and features within a simplified interface. It’s limited, but it does provide access to layers for those who have switched to a Lightroom workflow. LIGHTROOM CC FROM £9.98/$9.99 PER MONTH WINDOWS, macOS Lightroom CC combines professional imageprocessing tools with asset organizing. It keeps all its images online in the Creative…

Photoshop has many types of layers and adjustment layers available, but there are six that you’ll find you need to use again and again. Learning how they should be used may seem a little daunting for beginners, but once you’ve got to grips with them, you’ll find they play a part in the creative process of almost every image you make. 01 LEVELS This should be the first layer you add to an image, because it fundamentally alters the tonal range of the entire image. Create a Levels Adjustment Layer, drag the Black point slider inwards until it touches the lefthand edge of the histogram, and drag the White point slider inwards to the right-hand edge. This remaps the tones of the image to make more of the available tonal…

Removing backgrounds is a common task for all kinds of projects, and it’s something that Photoshop does better than any other image editor. But there are a variety of tools and techniques that will get the job done, so which is best? Over the next few pages we’ll explore the best tools and techniques for removing backdrops… DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE http://bit.ly/pho_134 ON YOUR PC OR MAC…

As the name suggests, the Background Eraser tool is useful for removing backgrounds in your photos. Whether you want to cut out an object, make a background transparent or replace it with a new one, this tool can be very handy. It works by seeking out edges and similar colours in the backdrop, then erasing them. So it’s sort of like a combination of the magic wand and eraser tools. 01 DUPLICATE THE LAYER The Background Eraser works by detecting similar coloured pixels and erasing them, so it’s a bit like the Magic Wand tool except it erases rather than selects. In order to keep the tool nondestructive, begin by duplicating your background layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J) then click the eye icon next to the lower copy to hide it. This way,…

There are essentially two stages in removing a background. First we isolate the subject, then we remove everything else. For the former, the goal is usually to make a precise selection using any number of Photoshop’s powerful array of selection tools. For the latter, it’s always best to use a layer mask. After making any selection, you can convert it to a mask by clicking the mask icon at the bottom of the layers panel (many selection commands like Focus Area also give you the option to output the results as a mask). Masks simply let you hide or reveal parts of a layer. Unlike the Eraser tool, nothing is ever deleted, only hidden. So you have the freedom to reveal areas at any time by adding white to the…

01 FOCUS STACK IN PHOTOSHOP Highlight all the images for the focus stack in Adobe Bridge then go to Tools> Photoshop>Load Files into Photoshop Layers. Next, highlight the layers and go to Edit>Auto-Align, choose Auto and hit ok. Go to Edit>Auto-Blend Layers, choose Stack Images and hit OK. 02 MERGE TO A PANORAMA If we treat the insect like a panorama by shooting in segments then we can use Photoshop’s panorama stitching features to combine our stacked images. Open Photoshop and go to File>Automate>Photomerge and load in the stacked images to stitch them. 03 RETOUCH DISTRACTIONS No matter how diligently you clean them, insects are likely to be covered in dust and other distractions. So we need to spend time retouching these unwanted details. Open the image into Photoshop then…

This is without doubt the easiest way to remove a background, it often only takes a single click. It won’t work perfectly every time, but even if it doesn’t come up with the goods, it can still be a useful starting point for making a cut out, as you can go on to paint on the resulting layer mask, or right-click the mask thumbnail and use Select and Mask to improve it. 01 OPEN QUICK ACTIONS Quick Actions are like Photoshop shortcuts for common effects and editing techniques. They’re great for beginners and those looking to expand their repertoire of skills. You can find contextsensitive Quick Action buttons by going to the Properties panel (Window >Properties) or access the full list in the Discover panel (Cmd/Ctrl+F). 02 REMOVE THE BACKGROUND…

Channels let us make selections based on the colour information in the image, so if the area we want to cut out has a contrasting colour or brightness with the backdrop then Channels can be hugely useful for precise selections in very little time. When we Cmd/Ctrl+click a channel we load the white parts as a selection, so to creare a cutout we simply need to duplicate one of the channels, modify it to make one part white and the rest black, then make our selection and convert it to a mask… 01 CHOOSE A CHANNEL Open an image and go to Window>Channels. Click through the channels to see which gives the best contrast between subject and backdrop. Here it’s the Red Channel. Duplicate your chosen channel by dragging it…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3O8MAzc Many of the selection tools we’ve included here are brilliant at cutting out complex objects, but they can sometimes struggle with smooth, hardedged objects like the boat here. For really clean cut-outs of objects like this, the Pen tool is often the best choice. We use the tool to manually plot anchor points around the object, creating a path that can be tweaked and adjusted as much as you like. Once perfect, we can convert the path to a mask to remove the backdrop, then drop into another photograph if we like.…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3rlzFzT Of all the edits you can make to an image in Photoshop, cropping could be the most transformative. A tighter crop can elevate a photo to another level. It can help to remove distractions around the edges, create an unusual aspect ratio or lead to a stronger composition. Here, a cinematic aspect ratio of 16:9 lets us come in tighter to our subject, enhance the mood and remove extraneous details around the edges. Cropping can also be functional. We might need to straighten a wonky horizon, correct sloppy framing or prepare an image for printing at a certain size. With so many uses – creative and practical – it pays to know the ins and outs of the Crop tool. It may come as a surprise…