Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i Practical Photoshop

When you make composites like this, it’s a good idea to layer different elements to create a sense of depth, so that it looks like some parts are close to the camera while others are in the distance. There are a couple of tricks you can use to trick the eye here. First you can lower the background contrast to wash out the shadows and highlights. This is easily done with a Levels Adjustment Layer. Simply drag the Output sliders (not the sliders under the histogram, but the ones at the very bottom of the Levels settings) inwards slightly to wash out the darkest and lightest tones. This gives the impression of atmospheric interference, making the objects look further away. You can further enhance the effect by painting in smoke…

Often you’ll find that posters and designs will add subtle changes to letter shapes to add interest to the design. Here the J is lengthened slightly so it drops below the other letters. To do this, highlight the type layer then go to Type > Convert to Shape. Once done, you can manipulate the shape of the letters with the Pen tool or other path tools in the same way as you would with any path or shape. Here you simply drag a box over the bottom part of the J using the Direct Selection tool, then drag those points downwards to change the shape of the J.…

01 FIND THE ANGLE After setting up the platform for the car and the camera on a tripod, the most important part of the technique here is fine-tuning the camera angle so that everything looks natural. Bringing the camera in as close as possible to the model will make it seem larger. 02 PERFECT THE HEIGHT The camera height will dictate the angle at which we see the car. For a natural-looking angle, aim to line the camera height up with the roof. Live View is handy for studying the scene in detail and making small compositional changes like this. 03 LOCK THE EXPOSURE As we’re combining a set of images, it’s important that exposure stays consistent throughout the shoot, so Manual mode is the best choice of exposure mode.…

RESTORATION BASICS Restoring damaged or faded old photos is a rewarding task, and needn’t take too long. There are several ways to speed up the process. First, it helps if you can quickly zoom into and out of different areas, so get used to using the Ctrl/Cmd+Space shortcut, which – combined with dragging the mouse – is the best way to zoom. While most retouching work is done with the Clone and Heal tools, a few filters can help too. Dust And Scratches is useful for improving large and otherwise clean areas. Sharpening filters like Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen help improve fine detail. 01 IMPROVE FADED COLORS Often old prints will become faded and bleached out after time. A good place to start is the Auto-Color and Auto-Tone commands,…

Before you begin painting with the Art History Brush, it’s worth experimenting with different filter effects to enhance the brush-based look. Duplicate your layer with Ctrl/Cmd+J then go to Filter > Filter Gallery [1] and play with artistic or stylized effects. You can apply several filters at once in the Filter Gallery by clicking the new Filter icon [2] – we’ve used the Water Paper and Palette Knife filters in combination here [3]. Once applied, use the History panel to target the History state at which the filter was applied, then delete the contents of the layer. (Press Ctrl/Cmd+A then Backspace.) Now you can get to work with the Art History Brush [4]. If you like, finish with a pencil sketch effect [5]. Duplicate the original layer and apply Glowing…

To transport your subject somewhere fantastical, you usually need to make a precise cut-out: this enables you to rid them of their original background so that you can add a new one. As such, getting to grips with the Select And Mask command is essential. This is a hugely powerful tool that takes all the hard work out of cutting out. Begin by making an initial selection with one of the intelligent selection tools, such as the Quick Selection brush or Magic Wand. Take this rough selection into the Select And Mask command to improve the edges. There are several tools for improving the selection edge in Select and Mask, but the key feature is the Radius command. First you can use the Radius slider to expand the area along…

If you want to base your movie poster mashup on an existing poster design – or if you want to recreate a typeface from any design – you need to be able to use a similar font style to that in the original design. But how do you find the right font? Luckily there’s an excellent feature hidden within the Type menu that can help. First you need to find and open the original design into Photoshop – this could be a screengrab, a JPEG, or any type of image. Next, simply go to Type > Match Font and adjust the box to cover the words you want to match. A dialog will open as Photoshop searches its database of fonts (including those from Typekit) for any that closely match…

One visual device you’ll often see used in film posters and other eye-catching designs is an effect where one element (usually a photo) is confined to the shape of another element – often a letter or bold shape like this. This is easy to achieve in Photoshop with a Clipping Mask. By ‘clipping’ a layer, you are able to confine its shape to the layer that it is clipped to. The shape layer should be below the image in the layer stack, then when you clip the image layer to it (either by right-clicking the layer and using Create Clipping Mask or by Alt-clicking the line between the two layers) the image shows in parts where it’s directly above the shape on the layer below. In a design like this,…

Forced-perspective photography is one of the oldest visual tricks in the book, and also one of the most fun. With careful arrangement of objects in a scene, you can fool the eye by combining small and large elements into a believable whole – and it gives you an excuse to play with model cars. This project is a prime opportunity to make use of shooting skills and Photoshop magic. You’ll start off by setting up our model car. The height of objects plays an important role in how our eyes perceives them in a standard 2D image. So in order to create this illusion, you must raise the car off the ground and line it up with the scene behind. From a technical point of view, the main hurdle we…

01 COMBINE THE SHARP PARTS Select all your images in Bridge, then go to Tools > Photoshop > Load into Layers. Shift-click the top and bottom layers in the Layers panel to highlight them, then go to Edit > Auto-Align Layers. Set Auto and hit OK. Next go to Edit > Auto-Blend Layers. 02 BLEND THE BACKDROP Once the focus stacking is done, open the image of the empty scene. Drag it to the top of the focus stack, then Alt-click the Add Layer Mask icon to hide it behind a mask. Paint white over areas of the scene to reveal them, like the barrier on the left. 03 ADD THE FIGURES Drop in the shots of the figures, and mask them in the same way. There will inevitably be…

01 START PAINTING Open the provided start image, art_history_before, then go to the Layers panel (Window > Layers). Next, make two new layers on top of the photo layer. Fill the middle layer with white (Edit > Fill) then highlight the top layer, grab the Art History Brush, choose a brush tip and paint loosely over the top layer. Your image starts to form… 02 REFINE THE EFFECT Make another new layer on top, then paint over it again, this time using a smaller brush tip. Paint heavily over areas where fine detail is required, and more loosely over parts that are soft or detail-less. If you want to redo an area, hold down the E key to temporarily switch to the Eraser tool and remove the patch.…

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…

CREATE THE COVER: STEP BY STEP GUIDE 01 DROP IN A SKY Open cover_before.psd into Photoshop. (Our figure is a cut-out, but if you’re using your own photo you’ll need to cut it out – see over the page for advice on doing this.) Open the sky image then use the Move tool to drag it across to the portrait. In the Layers panel, drag the sky layer below the figure layer. 02 BUILD THE BACKDROP Use the Move tool to position the sky. (Press Cmd/Ctrl+T if you need to change its size.) Open foreground.jpg and drag it in. Drag the layer above the sky layer. Click the Add Layer Mask icon. Select the Brush tool, choose a soft-edged tip and paint with black to make a smooth transition between…

You often need to bring in elements from other photos for our composites or poster designs. There are a few great options out there if you don’t have the asset from your own photos. For rights-free photos like the building we used to make our tower, try Pixabay (pixabay.com). Another great source of older out-of-copyright and public domain photos is WikiCommons (commons.wikimedia.org). Nasa (nasa.gov) is also great for stunning high-res rights-free photos. Another option is Adobe Stock, where you can search Adobe’s library of stock photos, videos and 3D objects within Photoshop, via the search bar in the Libraries Panel (Window > Libraries). You can download a preview version of any photo (they have a watermark) to see how it works in your composites or designs. If you’re happy, you…

Layer Masks are invaluable for all kinds of composites. Here you can use them to blend the hard edges of each image so that there is a smoother transition between them. Essentially, Layer Masks allow you to either hide or reveal parts of a layer. After you click the Add Layer Mask icon in the Layers panel, the selected layer will be accompanied by a small white box in the Layers panel. This is the mask thumbnail. Whenever this box is highlighted (rather than the image thumbnail beside it) it means you can paint with black over the image to hide parts of the layer behind the mask. If you decide later that you want to reveal those parts, you can simply paint with white instead.…

1 THE CAR The fun in this technique is making a model car look life-size – so use a realistic model, like the famous Jaguar E-type here. If you’re looking for a similar motor, search for die-cast models. The bigger the better, so go for 1:18 scale or larger. 2 PLATFORM You must raise the car upwards to force the perspective to match the background. A small platform is ideal; we used a piece of board. It helps if you can adjust the height, so a light stand or a tripod with clamp can be a good choice. 3 TRIPOD Fixing the camera to a tripod allows us to make fine adjustments to the camera angle and study the composition so that everything aligns perfectly. It also allows us to…

We subconsciously perceive scale and depth in flat photos by making a number of assumptions. First there’s ‘occlusion’: the assumption when one object partially obscures another – like our foreground figure here in front of the car (blended using a layer mask) – then the obscured object must be further away. Second, there’s ‘relative height’ – here we assume objects that are further away have higher bases, hence the platform we use to raise up the car. Third, there’s ‘familiar size’, an assumption based on past knowledge of the objects in the frame – we know what size cars should be, especially when placed on a road. By exploiting these subconscious assumptions, you can trick the eye.…

1 STYLE SETTINGS The Style setting changes the way the brush rearranges the original colors into new shapes. We’ve used the Dab setting here, which applies the brush tip in random dabbed patterns. Other options behave differently – Loose Curl creates swirling shapes, for example. 2 HOW DOES IT WORK? The Art History Brush adds a stylized or brush effect to a source image, resulting in a painterly look. Like all brush tools, you can choose different tips, and alter the size of the tip with the square bracket keys. A large brush tip results in big shifts in detail, while a smaller tip is better if you want finer detail. 3 SET A TOLERANCE The Tolerance setting has a crucial impact on your results. A low Tolerance setting means…