Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 144 i Advanced Photoshop

Challenge entries The best entries and overall challenge winner 1 Anna Przybylska Challenge entry “Instead of setting this picture out in space, this composition instead centres in an art studio. The astronomers and the rocket images are both used as paintings.” 2 Ronaldo Unruh Lugar de exploracion “This entry takes mystical influence. The plasma globe is used on the top of the pyramid, and the paintbox is used at its base. It uses all four images.” 3 John Fitzgerald Global exodus “I wanted to create a story with the image and give it a punchy name. I’ve used all the images and positioned them onto an image I took with my iPhone out the window of a train.” 4 Marcus Jones Yippi! We’ll be home for Christmas “Inspired by astronaut…

01 Preparing the render This image is from a project for luxury villas situated around the Dubai islands. We begin with the raw render. After importing the RGB channels for all the elements, the render is then ready for post-production. 02 Comping the image Since this is based in Dubai, an appropriate skyline is placed in as a background image and a night sky is put in place using Photoshop. The seawater is textured and light/colour corrected to match it. 03 Retouching the render Most elements and materials from the render are retouched. Reflections and contrast are enhanced, some colours are adjusted and the overall mood of the image is defined. Subsequently, some elements might be moved or altered. 04 Finishing touches applied After all of these more detailed modifications…

Essentials Works with What you’ll learn How to use HDR adjustments, Camera Raw filter and adjustment layers Time taken 2 hours Expert Simon Skellon “Even though there are plenty of HDR programs out there, I love nothing more than to explore Photoshop’s own HDR function to keep things purely Photoshop based. “I have been working with Photoshop for more than 10 years, and even to this day I find myself learning new techniques and discovering new things in the program.” High dynamic range imaging, or HDRI for short, has always been a challenge for even the most technically minded photographers. Originally involving the overlaying of the same image taken at differing exposures, the end results presented a detailed image from the darkest shadows through to the brightest highlights. But what…

USE ON HAIR Stroke the Spot Healing brush over wispy strands of hair to remove them from your subject’s face. Texture can really enhance your projects in Photoshop and bring them to life, but it’s not always welcome when it comes to skin. A good HDR effect can make your subject look grittier and coarser, but for most portraits, there’s a fine line between gritty and messy. It’s a standard editing step to erase blemishes and smooth everything out, and Elements has a range of tools to help perfect your portraits. The Spot Healing brush has been a regular retouching aid for years now. The tool uses a black marker to show you exactly where it’s working; in the last few Photoshop and Elements updates it’s seen a speed upgrade…

YOUR COMPLETED CHARACTERS Lay your text out into a sentence that uses every letter to see how each character looks next to the others. Once you create a single letter for your alphabet, you can duplicate the straight lines and curves onto new layers to form a complete alphabet. The most time-consuming section of the project is making sure that the letters all look like they belong to the same family, but it can also be the most fun. Don’t be afraid to be as creative as you can on individual characters. 01 Add guiding dots Select four subdivisions of squares, or 2cm to be precise, and fill on a new layer with black in position of where each of your letters should fall. Reduce this layer to 50% and…

DEPTH AND SHADING The shadows are worked into the finger segments, along with added texture, to make the composition seem even more realistic. If you usually prefer to use Photoshop CC for your photomanipulation projects, then it might come as a surprise to learn that this effect was completed totally in Elements. You can create something so layer-demanding with the tools that Elements has to offer – it’s just a case of knowing how best to use them. Before making the first incision into the hand, we need to head to the Expert section of Photoshop Elements, which houses the Layers panel. This effect is going to create a string of layers, masks and adjustments, which will fill up your Layers panel sooner than you might expect. In the following…

Price £90 / $129.99 US Web www.pixnub.com ACTION APPLICATION Pick which actions you want to apply. Pause the actions if need be so that you don’t have to stop the batch process. SOURCE AND SAVE FOLDERS Decide on the folder you wish to edit and the destination that you wish to save your edited pictures into with these options. FILENAMES You don’t have to overwrite your original pictures: name them something new and even add the action you’ve used to the filename. The specs Company Pixnub Additional specs Mac 10.6.8 + Windows XP / Vista / 7+ Photoshop CS3 + Photoshop users and photographers in particular are always looking for ways to cut their editing time. Learning shortcuts and creating actions can drastically reduce the time you spend at your…

01 Clarity Clarity is a well-known adjustment to any Camera Raw user. It heightens the contrast in your picture to create a grittier texture, and it’s one of the key adjustments to make when upping the detail in your picture. Use it subtly for best effects. 02 Colour correction You can always alter anything about the colours in your chosen pictures, using the Tone Curve and the other Color Filter tools. You can increase the saturation of individual hues and even add a split toning to your photo. 03 Masking If you wish to add detail to specific places in your image, select the Brush tool at the top of Aurora HDR and simply paint where you’d like your effect to be applied. Always edit onto a new layer so…

Elissandro Pinto www.photoshopcreative.co.uk/user/Elissandro Image of the issue “This is an image I created for my sons. Colour was extremely important in the creative process and I used adjustment layers to control all of it. The lens flare gave a distinctively science fiction feel to the entire picture.” Ata Alishahi www.photoshopcreative.co.uk/user/Ata “I created this picture from a combination of photos and Photoshop brushes. I took advantage of layers, and blending every one to perfection, and I finalised the picture with a few adjustments. I was happy with the results!” Peter Spencer www.photoshopcreative.co.uk/user/Seventy%20Eight “I started by cutting out the image of the lady and then adding the London skyline over the top as a clipping mask with the blend mode Screen. I added a photo filter and a few gradient maps to…

The world of architectural visualisation has moved on greatly in the last few years, so studios need to be at the cutting edge of design to keep up. One such studio is Bulgaria-based REDVERTEX, which develops 3D visualisations and animations for architectural clients. The studio has seen a huge growth in the arch-vis industry over the last seven years, working on more than 500 projects for a huge number of international clients. From a modest team of ten, working entirely in the local market, REDVERTEX now has over 80 team members and takes on clients from France, Belgium, England, India, Brazil, Chile, United Arab Emirates, Japan and Israel, among others. Over the years, architectural design has blossomed from purely functional to a product that can be sold. This has changed…

Essentials Works with What you’ll learn How to composite a four-season landscape with masks and blending Time taken 8 hours Expert Mark White “I love this kind of project: it’s bright and exciting and it really tests your creativity. The best way to hone your skills is to start off with a blank canvas and see what you create. As Senior Staff Writer on Photoshop Creative, I’ve learned all kinds of tips to help with even the most impressive pictures.” Creating a panorama based on a few select photos is a simple project for any photographer to master. But how far can you take that idea? Trying to include all four seasons in one picture is an ambitious idea. You can spend hours just on the colouring alone, and searching…

SIMPLE SUPPLIES You don’t need many supplies for this tutorial, as the results you end up with will be a result of the surfaces that you’re photographing. WIDE CAPABILITY You will need a camera, obviously with a wide angle capability, to really take advantage of the textures. ROUGH WALLS A rough wall will be easiest to get good shots of because of the more dramatic texture. A stucco wall or ceiling will work well. No matter how many photos and textures you have, as designers, you’ll always be looking for more. Textures can be found anywhere; inside, outside, small and large scale, just waiting to be used. But there are a few basic tips for realistically capturing useful textures. These methods and tips can be applied to any flat surface…

Shortcut Hit Cmd/Ctrl+’ any time in order to bring up the guide A good typeface is at the heart of any good poster or design. Despite there being so many great fonts on the internet, picking the perfect typeface can sometimes seem impossible. Online fonts can be expensive, have ‘personal use only’ licenses or simply look common. Making your own font needn’t be difficult. If you have a font-creating program, you can take this project one step further and save your individual characters into a TTF or OTF file ready to be imported into Elements for typing. There are programs out there that are fairly inexpensive and simple to use, so it’s a good investment if you’re interested in taking this kind of hobby further. In the meantime, perfect your…

LAYER STYLES Use basic layer styles like Stroke to create special versions of your font, and save these as duplicates to use in projects. Shortcut Hit Ctrl/Cmd+Opt/ Alt+Shift+S to Save it for the web Saving the font and working out where and how to use it is really where you judge how good your work is. You might have a font-creating program that you can import your letters into, or you might just want to save to PNG. If you’re feeling particularly creative, incorporate colour or even pictures into your characters and then simply paste whichever letters you need for your projects. 01 Add punctuation and glyphs With your upper case completed, decide on whether you want to do lower case, and then add punctuation. Use the same styles of…

COMIC EFFECT WITH SLIDERS Layer up some filter effects to give a comic-book twist to your photos. No drawing required. Before the slew of superhero films arrived and geek became chic, the mainstream didn’t really pay much attention to comics. But over the past few years, more and more people are starting to realise the joy the comic book universe offers and have a new appreciation for what an art form it is. Comics have their own rules for storytelling, using panels and images to create a cinematic effect. Acquiring the skills to create the artwork takes years of dedication. So you might be wondering why we are suggesting you have a go yourself. The fact is, you can create a comic-book effect in Elements using nothing but filters, selections,…

01 Camera Raw If you create an action of some simple Camera Raw tweaks, such as temperature and sharpening, Hot Folder is perfect for applying the same RAW adjustments to a group of pictures. Great for shots from the same photo album. 02 Crop Cropping actions are easy to create, and if you’d like an entire folder to be a specific ratio, Hot Folder can speed up that process. If you work for the web, this is a particularly useful way to always get perfect dimensions for blog-post images, for example. 03 HDR If you wish to apply a simple HDR toning to your shots to bring out the clouds in each of them, use the Hot Folder option in the plug-in to automatically create moodier versions of your pictures…

There’s nothing more inspiring than surfing the internet and seeing what other artists are creating and we encourage you to do so. Here are some of our favourite pictures that caught our attention recently, from some of the world’s most exciting artists and designers. Nikita Pilyukshin www.behance.net/nikitap “I made this image using Photoshop, Zbrush and Keyshot. The sketch was drawn in Photoshop, and I created the mountains and the girl with clothes by Zbrush. All these models were rendered in Keyshot and the post-production was done in Photoshop.” Thibault Daumain www.behance.net/ thibaultdaumain “This illustration is a personal illustration inspired by James Blake’s song Measurements. I first draw the entire illustration with a thin mechanical pen on a thick white sheet of paper. Then I scanned the finished drawing and added…

Essentials Works with What you’ll learn Selection methods, transforming and blending with layer masks Time taken 2 hours Expert Sarah Cousens “Funny compositions make me giggle. When I make my own using photos of friends and family, it’s even more fun to see their reaction. I am a freelance illustrator, designer and writer, and have been using Photoshop extensively since forming my own illustration and design company, Cool Surface, over eight years ago.” Funny photomanipulations are always sure to get a few laughs! Here we are going to show you how to create an amusing face swap image, and have provided a start image for you, however we’d recommend you apply this idea to a photo of your own for some truly hilarious (or possibly creepy!) results. We’ll be using…

Just as every great piece of art starts out with an idea, professional font creators will sketch out and draft ideas for their letters before jumping onto their computer. You might want to get creative with pen and paper, even if it is just to make sure you have a basic structure for your letters to follow – it’s important to be organised and have a good idea of where your design will go. Use the guides and grids too to keep everything concise and in place. 01 Sketch out the font Begin by making simple sketches with a pencil and paper of how you want your font to look. Choose either serif or sans serif and keep cohesive elements; here, we’re going to keep 45-degree sides and a constant…

FINAL EDITS Merge everything into one final layer (Cmd/Ctrl+Alt/ Opt+Shift+E) and tweak the final saturation (Cmd/Ctrl+U). In the 21st century, everyone’s a photographer thanks to cameras on smartphones. Not only is photography easier to practise, but it’s also easier to share thanks to social media. There are countless apps that you can download to follow others, ‘like’ their imagery and share your own phone photography. Instagram is perhaps the defining photo-sharing app and, with its retro filters and simple sliders, it has helped to re-popularise retro snaps. It’s easy to see why Instagram filters are so popular too; they evoke classic Lomo cameras with bright colours. But while anyone can add a filter and increase the saturation on a picture from their Camera Roll, Elements can offer some more refined,…

Price £128.75 / $147.75 US Web www.aurorahdr.com EXPORT AND OPEN Take the hassle out of organising shots with the simple Open and Export commands. Aurora HDR can also post to social-media sites. TOOLS Every tool you possibly need to create an HDR shot is located on the right-hand side of Aurora HDR, including tone, colour and sharpening effects. The specs Company Macphun Additional specs OS X 10.9.5 or above 1280 x 800 resolution or higher 2 GB free space on hard drive HDR pictures are easy to create on smartphones these days, but there is still an art to harnessing high-dynamic range effects in your photography, and there are no shortage of apps and software packages that can help to turn any dull shot into a bright, eye-catching or dramatic…

Recolour The first thing I did was de-saturated the skin of the subject to create a ghostly feel, then I strengthened the blue colours of the subject’s hair with brushes and adjustment layers. Add colour I then added more colours of the same tones in a layer using a large, soft brush. This gives a much more cohesive feel to the entire portrait, bringing in similar tones in order to unify the portrait. Adjusting & perfecting Next, I added adjustment layers to bring out the best tones of the portrait, and cut away different shapes from the subject, using a variety of brushes. Final adjustments I softened the blacks and muted the tones by adding a slight yellow tinge. You can do this by going to the Adjustments panel and…