Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 i Practical Photoshop

“Welcome to issue 129 of Practical Photoshop! If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get a whole year for just $19.99?” As the nights draw in and the decorations come out, why not spend an evening or two expanding your Photoshop skills? This issue we’ve got a host of festive projects for you to try out, fom our cover composite to Christmas card ideas. Elsewhere, learn how to color-grade and clone like a pro. www.digitalcameraworld.com…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3oGdHWl It may not be a white Christmas for all of us this year, but we can still give our photos a festive snowstorm, whatever the weather. We’ll explain how to create your own snow with brushes, and how to change your brush settings to create a random scatter effect for the snow. Whether you want to add a snow effect to your photos or get creative with all kinds of amazing brush tricks, we’ll show you how. Of course, you can save these brushes for use in future designs and effects as well. you can also experiment with brush settings that allow you to scatter, rotate and spread out your brush. These fun features let you randomize the snow brush effect, as if you were throwing…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3kRnKqv The basic mechanics of the Clone Tool are simple: you Alt-click to sample pixels from one place, then paint to replicate them in another. But there’s real skill involved in cloning, and the tool takes experience to master. In fact, with the possible exception of the Pen Tool, the Clone Tool could claim to be the most involved tool in Photoshop. When you delve into the Clone Source Panel, experiment with brush Blending Modes and discover cloning in the Vanishing Point filter, you’ll soon realize there’s much more to the Clone Tool than meets the eye. Our image here is the sort of seascape where precision and clean lines are vital, but there are a few glaring errors. First, spots of water on the lens have…

If you want to test a design, it might be easier to use your own printer. Ideally print onto specialist matte photo paper. You can use the Print Module in Lightroom Classic to create a template for your print. Here we’ve fitted two cards to an A4 sheet. If you’re planning on sending out lots of cards, it’s more cost-effective to use an online printing service. Many services offer card templates, so all you need to do is upload your photo, choose a template and specify the number of prints. 01 CHRISTMAS PORTRAITS Enhance the bokeh effect you get with lights by including out-of-focus highlights in the foreground and background. We created a ‘bokeh frame’ for this portrait by twisting a set of Christmas lights around a piece of wire…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3oNGsAx In this festive project, we’ll show you how to make a composite picture from four images: the snowy forest, the Moon, the snowflakes and Santa on his sleigh. With the help of Blending Modes and some quick layer techniques, it takes mere minutes to combine these photos – and these same skills can be used for all kinds of creative projects… 01 DOWNLOAD THE IMAGES We got the snowflakes from the Adobe free stock site (search for AdobeStock_302520032) and the others for free from pixabay.com (search for starry-sky-4742307, full-moon-1869760 and christmas-312463). Open all four images in Photoshop to get started. 02 MASK THE MOON Go to the moon image and grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Hold Shift+Alt and drag out from the center of the moon…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3HzW5nz Neural Filters are one of the most interesting things to happen in Photoshop in years. They use machine learning to apply different filter effects, so the effect is tailored to the content of the image. We’ll use the Style Transfer Neural Filter here to transform our photo into a festive greeting. This particular filter lets you restyle your photo based on analysis of another work of art. So you can load in a Van Gogh or a Degas and transfer the color palette and brush style to your photo. Like all filter effects, Style Transfer is a bit hit and miss. But it’s fun to try out, and it’s interesting to see how the filter works differently in areas of the image rather than as a…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3kTUoHP At times like these, photos can help to bridge the spaces between us. And while sharing pictures on social media is fine, there’s something special about giving and receiving a proper Christmas card. With the convenience of online printing and the quality of home printers, it’s arguably easier to print your own Christmas cards these days than it is to buy them from the shops; possibly cheaper too. More importantly, it’s also the perfect way to send friends and family a personalized photo and a message that means something special to you and them. Customized cards like this aren’t simply put in the recycling bin once Christmas is done, but instead kept as a keepsake. You might already have a special image that would work for…

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 left-hand 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…

The Brush Tool is more than just a simple tool for painting colors. If we delve into the Brush Panel (Window > Brush Settings), we can find all kinds of wonderful brush effects. Scatter and Size Jitters are especially helpful for a scattered glow effect like this. First choose a brush tip or make your own (see tip 3), then go to the brush settings, click Scatter and increase Scattering. Next, go to Brush Tip Shape and adjust Spacing to change how many times the brush paints in one go. Then go on to adjust the Size and Angle Jitters in Shape Dynamics to randomize things further. Here we’ve used scatting effects in combination with Layer Styles to create our Christmas tree effect. WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3kUBznQ…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3x2cnka The recently introduced Color Grading panel is available in Photoshop’s Camera Raw plugin and Lightroom – and it’s one of the most powerful toning tools on offer. Several of the other color tools in Camera Raw are geared towards correcting unwanted color shifts, but Color Grading is different. Rather than correcting, it instead invites you to add creative color shifts of your own in order to give an image a certain look or mood. As such, Color Grading is one of the best tools to use for boosting the atmosphere of a scene. Color Grading is a replacement for the old Split Toning Panel. Like its predecessor, it lets you add individual tints to different parts of the tonal range of your image, based on brightness…

1 SET AND FORGET When you’re photographing kids and animals, it helps to have an exposure setting that you can set once, then forget about. Try using Manual mode with an aperture of f/5.6 or wider, shutter speed 1/200 sec and Auto ISO. This way the ISO will adapt to the conditions. 2 USE WINDOW LIGHT Window light is ideal for portraiture inside, as it gently fills in the shadows and offers even illumination. Use a room with large windows or patio doors. If it gets too dark, use flash instead. It’s best to attach a flashgun and angle it to bounce off a nearby wall or ceiling. 3 BLUR THE BACKDROP When you’re using window light indoors, you’ll usually need to rely on a wide aperture and a fairly…