Innehållsförteckning för Issue 2 från Photoshop User

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…

Nothing is quite as eye-catching as a neon sign. If you've ever been around a metropolitan area after dark, you have no doubt been bombarded with any number of high visibility signs in a host of gaudy colours selling their wares. Although LED signs and even large digital displays are now very commonplace, there is something about a glass tube filled with gas, stimulated by an electrical current that can still command your attention. That effect certainly carries over onto the web and in graphic design in different forms. Whether you want a realistic neon sign or more of a graphic representation, we have a fun guide that can show you the basics of getting a good neon glow on the go. 01 Our example image is perfect for our…

It’s a popular trend at the moment to be able to turn a picture of yourself, a friend, or loved one into a cartoon that you can use as an avatar on social media sites etc. There are plenty of tutorials out there that cover all aspects of the process, however, some can be very involved and require digital painting and illustration skills in both Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. There are also a varied number of methods to achieve a cartoon style. We have a tutorial that can cartoonize a portrait, producing a result that has a graphic novel feel to it, without the need for a lot of illustrative technique. Here’s how to do it. 01 We have chosen an example portrait of a very fierce-looking tiger in a…

Using Filters Filters play a huge role in getting a photo just the way you want. With some clever tweaks, Lightroom is capable of delivering spectacular results, such as the before and after images you see on these pages. We will delve into elements like this in later issues. Shots like this, that combine foreground with skyscape, are prime candidates for a graduated filter. In this case, we’ve increased the overall exposure slightly, pulled back the highlights to bring detail into the clouds, and reduced the shadows to bring out texture in the boat and houses. We then applied a coloured graduated filter from top to middle, reducing exposure by one stop and increasing colour saturation. The result is a bright and colourful shot worthy of any picture postcard. Turn…

Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are part of the same scene. There are a number of ways to produce composite images. In this tutorial we will be looking at a fairly typical approach for the two main elements of the image which is the grey/neutral background compositing technique. The beauty of shooting your main subject against a grey screen is that it gives them a well defined edge that makes the process of blending them into another environment all the easier. Whether your subject is normal human-sized or in this case, just a 150mm tall action figure, grey screen compositing is the choice of many graphics professionals and is easier to do than…

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/It’s impossible to avoid this image degradation altogether, but by using Adjustment Layers we can reduce it as much as possible. Adjustment Layers sit above the pixel layer in the stack and their effects are applied in real time as the layers are displayed. That way if you change your mind about an effect, or wish to change it after it has been applied, your alteration doesn’t have any further effect on the layer below it and the image degradation isn’t applied until…

Double or multiple exposure photography is another reference to the more traditional methods of image capture where a photographer would expose one frame of film more than once to achieve a surreal look in the final image. A downside to this method was that you could never be certain of what effect you were actually achieving until the negative was developed and a print was made in the darkroom. An alternative method was to stack two negatives in the enlarger at the printing stage. These days, of course, we can explore the creative aspects of combining multiple images on our computers with effects that can be edited and adapted precisely to suit our needs. For our example, we are going to combine a graphic image of a woman and a…

1 Color Grading Color Grading is one of the adjustment tools found in the Develop Module. It is a graphical user interface replacement of the Split Toning panel. It works in the same way by letting you adjust the hue and saturation in the highlights or shadows of your image, but the methods by which you interact with it have been updated. Rather than using a series of sliders for highlights and shadows, you now click and drag your cursor over a series of colour wheels. Now you are able to alter not only highlights and shadows, but also the mid-tones too. You just choose the corresponding colour wheel and drag your cursor over it. As you do, the colour selected will be injected into the image, creating a colour cast.…

Quick Actions - Photoshop 2021 onwards These so-called Quick Actions are very similar in feel to the automated effects available in Photoshop Elements. They are quick in the sense that you simply click once on each effect’s Apply button and the effect is added automatically. At the time of writing, there are twenty Quick Actions available with the promise of more to follow. These new actions are accessed via the Help > Photoshop Help menu option. This opens the Discover panel. There are other options to look at but we will look at a few Quick Actions. Quick Actions - Remove Background Let’s start with the Remove Background action. Click on it and you will be presented with a small effect preview, a quick explanation of what the effect will…

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 red truck. 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 the layer palette…

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…

What do we mean when we say nondestructive? 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 photography was in its infancy, the method by which images were captured was complex, timeconsuming and involved a lot of brittle materials and harsh chemicals. That said, some early wet plate images are amazing to behold even now. So great is the lasting impact of these early photographs that photographers today actively seek out ways to replicate the look. Some actually use the old equipment and process using the old wet plate techniques. Some use a digital approach using Photoshop. Safe to say this is only an approximation of the result you would get if you did it for real but since not everyone has access to old bellows cameras, darkrooms, plates and chemicals, here is our version of the classic effect given a Photoshop twist. 01 Let’s start…