Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2016 i Practical Photoshop

CONTENT-AWARE CROPPING A new feature for the Crop Tool helps to fill in the empty parts around the edge of the frame that often occur when you straighten a wonky horizon. The new Content-Aware Crop will automatically fill in any empty areas by analyzing the rest of the image and generating new pixels to fill the space. Of course, as with the current Content-Aware tools, it’s more effective on some images than others. As you’d expect, it works very well on images with simple details around the edges, like plain patches of sky and land, but it may not be so effective on images with finer detail around the edges of the frame. As is often the case with new features, it’s more of a workflow improvement than an oh-my-gosh-wow-this-isamazing…

01 THINK LOCATIONS When it comes to choosing a location, pretty much anywhere indoors or outdoors will do. Simple scenes will probably work best, as you need the space to let the effect breathe. 02 WIND IN THE HAIR We certainly didn’t need any extra wind on this blustery hillside, but if the air is still, a bit of movement in the hair can add to the effect. Try using a reflector or board to fan the hair. 03 WATCH THE SKIES Consistent lighting is key. If you’re shooting outside, watch for the sun dipping in and out. It’ll be harder to match up a shady shot with a sunny one, so wait until the sun goes back in. 04 GO SHALLOW A shallow depth of field will draw attention…

01 MAKE A SELECTION Grab the Quick Selection Tool. Paint over the subject to make a selection. (Hold Alt and paint to subtract if the tool goes wrong.) Go to Select > Refine Edge. Use the settings to tweak the selection, then choose Output: Layer Mask. 02 ASSEMBLE YOUR COMPOSITE We’ve cut out the left leg and balloons from other shots in the same way. Drag them to the empty image with the Move Tool, then press Cmd/Ctrl+T to position each element. Add a tonal effect on top with an Adjustment Layer. TAKE IT FURTHER An urban location, like the car park here, can work well for the levitation effect. We used a long lens (a 70-200mm zoom at 135mm) and included soft foreground detail to add to the mood…

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/sfffcy The Puppet Warp tool lets you push and pull objects into new shapes. If you’ve ever used Liquify, this does a similar job, but the ‘pins and mesh’ approach it takes makes it better suited to changing the overall shape of an object, like the wings in the composite here. Watch the video for the full walkthrough. PROJECT INFO You’ll learn • How to reshape objects using Puppet Warp, and make a composite image You’ll need • Photoshop CS6 or above It’ll take • 20 minutes DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE http://tiny.cc/8bhfcy ON YOUR PC OR MAC…

01 KEEP THE CAMERA STILL If everything is captured in alignment, things are much easier to piece together later on, so a tripod is a must. A low camera angle will help to emphasize the space between the subject and the ground. 02 POSE THE SUBJECT Perch your subject on a stool or ladder. Pay particular attention to the point at which they contact the perch. Make sure that clothes stay loose, and that the stool or ladder doesn’t obscure any part of the body. 03 EXTRA BODY PARTS Shoot extra frames for parts of the body that were in contact with the perch. For example, if your subject is standing, first capture them on one leg, then the other, so you have two dangling legs to work with. 04…

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 lefthand 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…

Levitating portraits have a magical, mysterious quality that forces the viewer to look twice – but there’s nothing difficult about this type of visual trickery. All you need is a tripod and, if you like, a few simple props. We’ll show you how to plan your shots so that they’re easy to combine later in Photoshop – something that, with a little direction, even a complete Photoshop novice can do. Although you might label it as a Photoshop effect, the bulk of the work here is done in-camera. As long as everything is captured under the same conditions, the digital editing need only take a few minutes. If you want to take things slightly further, you can even reposition the person elsewhere in the scene, as we did here to…

01 COPY AND PASTE Open your images. If you shot in raw, synchronize changes to exposure or colors across the set. In the image with the subject, press Cmd/Ctrl+A then Cmd/Ctrl+C to copy, then go to the empty scene. Press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+V to paste. 02 ADD A MASK Go to the Layers Panel (Window > Layers). You need to make a hole in the top layer to reveal the clear scene underneath. Click the Add Mask icon in the Layers Panel. Grab the Brush Tool, and press D then X to set its color to black. 03 HIDE THE STOOL Zoom in around the perch and paint with black to hide the area. Paint precisely where the perch meets the body, and more loosely elsewhere. If you go over the body…