Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 147 i Advanced Photoshop

Fixing photos is what many people associate Photoshop with, from improving holiday snaps to transforming images for the media. Even the most creative projects can also benefit from a bit of editing, as enhancing your start images can only make your final artwork better! Turn to p.16 to discover 20 photo-fixing techniques that you simply must learn. There are also step-by-step tutorials on creating incredible typography with photos, making your own paint-splat people, compositing an action scene and much more. Also learn how to master fashion retouching with our step-by-step tutorial. And if you want to show off your art in a professional portfolio, see how you can use Photoshop for all your web-design needs in our professional guide. Don’t forget that this issue’s FileSilo has more than $230 worth…

Essentials Works with Elements CS CC What you’ll learn Retouch a photo and embellish with a variety of objects and adjustments Time taken 2 hours Expert Andre Villanueva “I love the process of narrowing down assets and creating something interesting from a limited pool. I’ll often give myself a mandate: pick a portrait, grab some objects and photos, then GO! “I discovered Photoshop when studying web design. I’m now art director for a tech company, soothing my inner instructor by sharing techniques with readers.” Art and design are mental jigsaws where you can draw from an infinity of pieces to form your solutions. With so much stock to rifle through, the process of deciding on assets can sometimes take as long as the actual creation time of the piece! Narrowing…

01 Make a mask Select the layer, click on the Add Layer Mask button. With the Brush tool, select the black colour to erase the bottom edge of the image. If you want it to reappear, change the colour to white. 02 Add a shadow Select and duplicate all layers (Cmd/Ctrl+J), merge (Cmd/Ctrl+ E) and flip vertically (Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical). Change the Opacity to 30% and make a mask to leave a soft reflection. 03 Add another shadow Make a circle with the Elliptical Marquee tool (M), paint it yellow (# ffd103) and change the blend mode to Multiply. Finally, use the Gaussian Blur filter set to 20px. 04 Adjust lighting With the Brush tool, select the white colour, change the Opacity to 70% and make the background highlight. Use a…

Once the design work has been completed for your portfolio website in Photoshop, including the responsive designs, the coding will commence in Adobe Dreamweaver. As soon as pages have been developed and made actively responsive, Dreamweaver enables the designer to view the website on various device sizes such as desktop, tablet and smartphone. This gives an accurate representation of what the website will look like and how it will behave once it is live. You will be able to see how your web pages reflow and restructure in various forms, thus enabling you to pick up on any potential design issues by live inspecting the pages and then tweaking them as required. Something Photoshop users must consider once the development phase has begun is that certain design choices or elements…

EYEDROPPERS Identify whites, blacks or midpoints in your photo by using the Eyedropper tools to select them. Whether the blacks and whites of your photo could do with a slight tweak, or you want to change the entire contrast in your image, tone is extremely important in photography. Nearly every picture you take will need adjustment of some sort and luckily, the Levels tool is capable of transforming the tone of your photos with a series of simple sliders. Of course, this isn’t the only way that you can change the lighting, contrast and balance of a picture in Elements, but this is one of the easiest methods to edit the whole of your picture in just a few clicks. The histogram in the Levels palette displays where the light…

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. Ashraful Arefin www.ashrafularefin.com I wanted to create an autumnal scene. I took the main shot, then I collected some dry leaves and photographed them separately. I added the leaves in Photoshop and used the Gaussian Blur filter to blur out some of the leaves to mimic camera focus. Laura Palumbo www.behance.net /Laurapal ‘A Flat Trip Around Europe’ is my thesis project in Graphics for Publishing. It’s a series of books containing illustrations of European cities, forming a unique visual journey for travellers and tourists of all…

Is there such a thing as a perfect photo? Maybe so, maybe not. Some deem perfection boring anyway. However, if your images could do with a boost, there are plenty of ways to fix photos and make them more enjoyable and presentable. With so many devices and gadgets capable of taking photos, we find ourselves with troves of pictures that vary in quality. A lot of pictures are taken with phones or point-and-clicks, and these devices can’t match the quality of expensive, high-end cameras. Adjustments can help level the playing field, though. Levels and Curves can help with tone, while commands like Vibrance, Hue/ Saturation, and Color Balance can get colouring just right. Blemishes on skin, vehicle exteriors or landscapes can be lessened or eradicated using Photoshop’s retouching tools such…

01 Create the base shape Start with a document with a black background. On a blank layer, use the Rectangular Marquee tool to create a thin selection in the centre. Fill with white. Turn off the selection (Cmd/Ctrl+D). 02 Blur the shape Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Set the Angle appropriately. Increase blur until bar gets stretched. Don’t overdo it. Click OK. If the bar is too thick, Free Transform (Cmd/Ctrl+T) to make it thinner. 03 Duplicate and rotate Duplicate (Cmd/Ctrl+J). Bring up Free Transform (Cmd/Ctrl+T), hold Shift, then click and drag to rotate to make perpendicular. Commit (Return/ Enter). Press Cmd/Ctrl+E to merge down. Duplicate again (Cmd/Ctrl+J). 04 Finalise and blur Free Transform to scale down and rotate to make diagonals. Press Cmd/Ctrl+E. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and blur lightly.…

Essentials Time taken 20 hours The artist James Gardner-Pickett “I’m self-taught in art and went to a major CGI studio in London at 18, where I gained experience in tackling ambitious ideas and projects www.thepixelprositess . I love shading .com and lighting @ hepixe in prosites particular, as that’s where the ambience and feeling of the images come from. You can see more of my work at www.jamesgardner.co.uk.” “I wanted to capture a certain atmosphere, to do an image that pushed my skills in lighting and composition and to create something that would evoke a feeling,” says James, of his incredible mouse-trap composition. It took James two weeks to complete the image, which is a combination of CGI work in Luxology Modo, a photo shoot featuring a real rodent, and…

The UI (User interface) components are the graphical elements and stylistic choices that form the aesthetics or visual presentation of the website’s actual design. The UI, therefore, is an incredibly important factor in the overall usability of the website. It also lends itself to the look and feel of the interactivity of the website. You can think of UI design as the process in which the user is visually guided through the interface. This is where the designer will introduce typography, colour and graphical elements to help enhance the experience of the user’s interaction with the interface or website. These will be created by various means, but most commonly by calling upon the Type tool (T), Shape tools and the Color panel accessed from the Window drop-down in the top…

Essentials Time taken 6 hours Expert Nadegda Mihailova “I like to invent and create cosy @t landscapes ix lprosites , fantasy locations, unusual buildings and architecture in my work. By combining small pieces of different photos together, you can create some new and unusual things. “In this tutorial we’ll look at techniques that will make the picture from different photos look like a seamless whole. “I am a retoucher and illustrator, and have been creating photomanipulations for about five years. I use different pictures and a rich variety of Photoshop tools.” In this tutorial we will be creating a stunning landscape from different photos. We will gather fantasy elements for the castle from fragments of various buildings, and add a lot of detail. We’ll use a range of Photoshop tools,…

The fantastic array of tools and commands in Elements means that it is capable of creating all kinds of amazing compositions, digital-art pieces and powerful photo edits. One thing that really makes it exciting, though, is its ability to bring together various pictures into a bigger project, and a magazine cover is one example of such a project. During the course of creating a cover, you get to devise a main image, inset images, a masthead and other text elements, before bringing them all together into one creative piece. Magazine covers vary depending on genre and audience, so decide what you like and then create an exciting new magazine brand. This is a project that you might want to try with your own photos; perhaps you’re creating a magazine cover…

LAYER MASKS Layer masks let you non-destructively merge multiple photos and textures into a gritty arrangement. Get radical with your layers in Elements! We’ll grind our way into the gritty world of skateboarding and build a composition that would be at home at any urban skate locale. You’ll first select the main skater using the Quick Selection tool. Once the selection is complete, you’ll add a layer mask, quickly isolating the skater. You’ll put this aside as you work on the background. Create the ultimate skate spot by blending two scenes with layer masks. Painting with black on a mask hides part of the layer. Use a soft-edge brush to melt away the hard photo edges, mashing the two images together. Painting on the masks around the canvas edges will…

Anja De Dobbelaere’s Photoshop posters are visually striking. “I strive for a good balance between positive and negative space. I don’t like overcrowding in pictures,” says Anja. “A good balance between dark and light is important too.” We caught up with Anja to ask her how she discovered Photoshop, which tools she recommends to beginners and how she creates such amazing pieces. When did you first use Photoshop? I’ve been creative all my life. I always regretted not pursuing graphic design for a living, so in 2008 I undertook a course and fell in love with Photoshop instantly. I now have two shops with digital resources and I try to devote all of my time to my own designing career. Do you start with resources when you create an image,…

Ready for the day 09:30 I arrive at the London studio. I start the day by reading some design blogs and the studio Slack channels. I grab some cereal and coffee, and get myself ready for the day. Daily review time 10:00 Every morning the team does a 15-minute stand-up, allowing us to talk through what happened yesterday, what we’re working on today and to raise potential issues. Everyone gets a better picture of what’s going on. Planning a project 11:15 I discuss the user journey for a new feature with the UX designer, then sketch out different possible routes and attend a sketching workshop with the whole team – it’s good to get all the brains together! A spot of downtime 13:00 I have some time to unwind my…

01 Clone Stamp tool Tidy up hair with the Clone Stamp. Create a new layer above. Set Sample to All Layers or Current & Below. Set sampling point (Option/Alt+click) to an area of the background that matches the target area. Paint to clone over unwanted hair. 02 Patch tool Problems in areas such as lips, skin and hair can be patched up by sampling from a cleaner part of the same region. Duplicate the target layer for a backup. 03 Spot Healing Brush Select the tool and create a new layer above the target layer. Tick Sample All Layers. Size your brush a little larger than the problem area, then click to heal. 04 Healing Brush Reduce bags and wrinkles with the Healing Brush. Create a new layer and set…

About the artist The Studio at JPL www.jpl.nasa.gov @NASAJPL The Studio is a collection of designers and artists working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA. These visual strategists describe themselves as being passionate about helping scientists and engineers at JPL imagine the future, and giving people a sense of awe about the universe. Visit the site to download the posters for free. Name of the project Visions of the Future “Many of the things we are doing today at NASA were imagined by artists and science fiction writers decades ago,” explains Dan Goods, just one of six visual strategists who worked on a series of travel posters commissioned by NASA to show what life was like on other worlds. The posters have become an enormous success on the internet.…

Photoshop CC has been used here as the main application for the wireframing and designing of a portfolio website design. All visual elements and design considerations are created and have to be finalised in Photoshop CC. These elements include the imagery and UI elements such as icons, colour usage and typography. Make the most of recent Photoshop CC features, such as CC Libraries, to quickly re-create and save your assets, and Adobe Generator to quickly extract graphical elements and images to avoid tedious methods of individually saving each asset. As you have seen, this will drastically reduce the time spent on your website’s design. You’ll soon come to realise that various small design changes may need to occur to accommodate the development of the website, so it’s always worth bearing…

Essentials Time taken 3-4 hours Expert John Ross “I’ve always been a firm believer that less is more, and what you don’t show can be just as important as what you do show. “Fashion retouching in Photoshop and making facial features stand out is a matter of knowing which tools to use to achieve the greatest effect. For instance, just a quick pass inside Camera Raw using the Gradient tool can boost the drama by sculpting the light. That creation of dark tonal balances alone already enriches the image and vastly improves it. “With 20 years of professional experience in the field, I educate photographers and retouchers by expanding their knowledge through my website www. TheArtofRetouching.com.” Glamour, style, fame – high fashion always has an air of mystery to it.…

HOW CAN I ADD FILTERS TO MY PHOTOS? There are loads of ways to add amazing photo filters to your work in Elements, but the Quick mode of the program has a nifty selection of one-click fixes to help transform your work. Smart Looks are perhaps the first filters to look at. They pick five of the best filters from a bank of hundreds, specifically tailored to your picture. They can range from monochrome adjustments to colourful filters and once applied, can be tweaked using the Expert mode, where they appear simply as adjustment layers. You can do the same with the seasonal filters too; these are four filters based on the four seasons, which rely on adding either warm or cooler colours to your pictures. Other options include Toy…

Rubén Álvarezess recalls how “less than a year ago I was refused work as an intern in my town.” Just a few months later, his artwork was chosen by Adobe to be its Photoshop splash screen. “Wonderful things come when you least expect it!” It’s a big turnaround for anyone, but what are the influences behind Rubén’s bucolic pictures, and what does the future hold? How did you discover Photoshop? I discovered Photoshop when I was 16. I wanted to create pictures to share on forums, but the first time I opened it, I saw so many tools and options I thought I’d never be able to learn how to use it all, so I closed the program and didn’t open it again for two months! I persevered eventually, and…

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