Innehållsförteckning för December 2020 från Practical Photoshop

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

Editor’s Note

“Welcome to issue 117 of Practical Photoshop! If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get a whole year for just $19.99?” Over the years, the range of filter effects on offer in Photoshop has started to look rather stale and generic. But now, with the new Neural Filters in Photoshop CC 2021, things have become a lot more interesting. These AI-powered effects mark a bold new direction for Photoshop filters. www.digitalcameraworld.com HIGHLIGHTS: WHAT’S INSIDE… EXPLORING NEURAL FILTERS ▪ Get to grips with these powerful new AI effects CREATE THE COVER IMAGE ▪ Learn how to use Style Transfer for painterly effects MASTER THE MAGIC WAND Make powerful and precise selections BLACK-ANDWHITE HDR ▪ A guide to crafting beautiful monochrome HDRs LIGHTROOM SKILLS ▪ Ways to sort and view…

1 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

THE BEST OF STYLE TRANSFER

1 HOKUSAI’S CLASSIC WAVE Katsushika Hokusai’s famous painting ‘Under the Wave off Kanagawa’ (sometimes known as ‘The Great Wave’) is a nice choice for landscapes and outdoor scenes like this. 2 WHITE AND RED FLOWER This white and red flower gives a pleasingly bold result. Note too how the car has been singled out and colored differently to the backdrop, which illustrates the power of machine learning and subject recognition. 3 TATTOO OUTLINE The Tattoo preset is one of the most consistently pleasing of the 50 on offer. Here we checked Focus Subject in the settings, which changes the contrast and detail over the face and hair for a better result. 4 MUTED FLOWERS Sometimes Style Transfer filters can work well in combination with other effects. Here we created a…

1 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

SUPER ZOOM

You know in Hollywood films when someone zooms in on a still from grainy CCTV footage and miraculously cleans it up to make the image crystal-clear? The Super Zoom filter could bring this closer to reality. It lets you crop in on part of an image and boost the resolution of the area. Photoshop will recognize the content and attempt to build in extra pixels to increase the level of detail. Our results from this ambitious filter so far have been mixed. It removes JPEG artifacts and reduces noise, but the smudgy result is often less attractive than if you simply enlarge part of the image by transforming it. However, you might find it useful for certain enlargements. Go to Neural Filters, click on the Beta tab and check Super…

1 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

ESSENTIALS

If you’re relatively new to editing in Photoshop, or you just don’t know where to begin, then this section is the best place to get started. Over the next 10 pages, you’ll find an overview of the different versions of Photoshop available; a breakdown of the typical image-editing workflow in Photoshop; an overview of raw file editing; a guide to the six most useful layers; and a glossary of the most useful shortcuts. This guide condenses most of the tools and techniques you’ll use every time you import a new roll of pictures. CREATIVE CLOUD PLANS CHOOSE THE PLAN WITH THE COMBINATION OF TOOLS AND STORAGE YOU NEED 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…

5 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

SIX ESSENTIAL LAYERS FOR PHOTOS

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…

3 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

NEURAL FILTERS

Released in October 2020, Photoshop CC 2021 brings a raft of new features and updates. One of the most interesting is Neural Filters, which employ artificial intelligence to apply an effect or carry out a task. Each filter can analyze an image and make changes based on the content in the frame, rather than simply applying a universal effect. It means, for example, that your subject can be recognized and worked over differently to the rest of the scene. This is just the beginning for Neural Filters: you can see from the list of planned filters in development (which includes things like ‘Face to Caricature’ and ‘Dust and Scratches’) that Adobe has big plans for the feature. This issue we’ll explore the new Neural Filters on offer, from Style Transfer…

1 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

SMART PORTRAIT

This set of sliders lets you make an array of face-altering edits. You can experiment with age changes, alter the expression to make a person look more happy, surprised or excited, and also – to an extent – change the angle of the head or the direction of the eyes. We’ve experimented with a variety of faces here. Some of the results are impressive, others less so. But keep in mind the filter is still in beta stage – and in some cases, these are groundbreaking edits. SPREAD THE HAPPINESS AGE A FACE SHIFT A GAZE CHANGE HAIR THICKNESS ALTER HEAD POSITION RE-LIGHT YOUR FACES…

1 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

MAKE MAJESTIC SCENES WITH THE MAGIC WAND

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/35GDAgu The Magic Wand is one of Photoshop’s best selection tools, especially if you need to target an area of an image that is uniform in color or tone, like the backdrop to the bonsai tree image above. The tool works by seeking out similar pixels to the point that you click on, so it can be a huge help while you’re creating a fantastical composite like this, or for any time when you need to quickly lock on to part of an image. Making a successful selection in Photoshop is often mostly about choosing the right tool for the job. There are lots of great tools to choose from – the Quick Selection Tool, the Object Selection Tool, and Select Subject – but there’s still a…

3 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

THE IMAGE-EDITING WORKFLOW

The image-editing process begins as soon as you’ve transferred your photos from your memory card to your computer. 1 The first stage is to begin sifting through your pictures to discover which are the keepers. The image organizer that comes with Photoshop is ideal for this task. Adobe Bridge has controls for keywording, rating and filtering your images, and there are handy tools for batch renaming files, creating panoramic stitches, making contact sheets and more. Launch Adobe Bridge and navigate to a folder containing new images. Use the cursor keys to quickly flick through the images and click below a thumbnail to add a star rating, or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+1-5. You can then filter your photos by the star rating to group the ones you want to work…

1 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

14 ESSENTIAL KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

D Reset the foreground and background colors to black and white ALT+[SCROLL WHEEL] Zoom in or out of the image CMD/CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E Create a merged copy of all the layers in the layer stack SPACE BAR Temporarily switch the current tool to the Hand tool, for moving around the image while zoomed in ALT+[EYE ICON] Switch off the visibility of all other layers in the layer stack, for before-and-after comparisons CMD/CTRL+I Invert the color of a layer mask to black SHIFT+[LAYER MASK] Disable the effects of a layer mask X Switch the foreground and background color swatches [OR] Resize the brush tip SHIFT+[OR] Cycle backwards or forwards through the layer blend modes CMD/CTRL+Z Undo the last change made to the document. Works multiple times CMD/CTRL+[LAYER MASK] Load the currently active layer…

1 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

HOW TO USE STYLE TRANSFER

As the name suggests, Style Transfer lets you mimic the style of a piece of artwork. There are over 50 preset artworks to choose from, including famous works by Van Gogh, Degas and Gauguin. Choose a preset and the style of the art will be transferred to your own image. The colors will change, the surfaces will be textured and the details will mimic the brush strokes of the sampled work. Here’s how it works… 1 CHOOSE A PRESET Go to Filter > Neural Filters, then click the slider icon in the top-right and turn on Style Transfer. (You might need to download the filter at this point if it’s your first use of it.) Next, choose an artwork to sample from. Experiment with the different choices the filter offers…

1 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

COLORIZE OLD PHOTOS

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/38SWlPt 1 USE THE COLORIZE FILTER The Colorize filter seems to work best on completely black-and-white images, so begin by desaturating your photo with Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+U. Go to Filter > Neural Filters, then click the test tube to access the Beta filters and check Colorize. The black-and-white image will automatically be colored. 2 TWEAK THE SETTINGS The sliders on the right let you shift color one way or another. The Focus Color/Scene Color slider alters the way the subject is colored: adjusting the balance towards the Focus Color end adds more color to the people here. You can also click on the color box to choose a color, then click on the preview image to add that color to different parts of the scene. 3 PAINT YOUR OWN…

1 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

HDR IN MONOCHROME

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/35CFFtx High-dynamic-range photos are usually associated with bold colors and eye-popping images, and less so with black-and-white images. So if the colors are part of the draw of HDR, why use it in your mono shots? HDR is about expanding the dynamic range of a photo to encompass the brightest and darkest parts of a scene, and this can be just as useful for monochrome images, which are all about tonality. In fact, with black-and-white HDRs we have a few advantages. The lack of color leads to a subtler HDR treatment. What’s more, several of the traits of HDR – crunchy textures, bold clouds and enhanced shadow detail – can often look more natural in monochrome than in color. In essence, black-and-white photography hinges on the play…

5 min

Practical Photoshop|December 2020

THE BASICS OF RAW PROCESSING

The latest version of the raw file processor included with Photoshop is so powerful that most photos can be processed entirely in the raw processor, with no need for further editing in Photoshop. And by making your adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw, rather than in Photoshop, you’ll ensure the best possible image quality, because raw files contain more picture information than bitmap images such as un-layered PSDs and JPEGs. Here’s our reference to the features you’ll use the most in the Basic panel. THE BASIC PANEL IN ACR TEMPERATURE Use this slider to warm or cool an image if the White Balance tool fails to correct a color cast TINT This slider enables you to correct a green or magenta cast, again, if the White Balance tool fails EXPOSURE Controls…

1 min