Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2016 i Practical Photoshop

Watch The Video http://tiny.cc/7b03gy This is a hugely intuitive tool that gives you on-image control. You alter tones or colors simply by dragging up/right to lighten or increase, and down/left to darken or decrease. There are five different options. Parametric Curve lets you alter the brightness of the shadows or highlights; Hue, Saturation and Luminance affect eight different color ranges within the image, depending on where you drag; and Grayscale Mix is for black and whites. Click and hold on the tool to change what is targeted. 1 ADD DRAMA TO A SKY Right-click with the tool and choose Luminance, then drag down over the blues in a sky to make the blues darker and more intense. Right-click and choose Saturation, then drag up to add saturation to the blues.…

WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/ka03gy This is hands down our favorite Camera Raw tool. In fact, it probably comes close to being our all-time favorite Photoshop tool. It’s simple, quick and very good at its job. We use the Adjustment Brush all the time to selectively alter areas of our images, perhaps by making them brighter, or increasing contrast, or boosting color. So it’s equally useful for dodging and burning landscapes or enhancing a portrait. 1 SELECT THE TOOL Grab the Adjustment Brush from the toolbar. There’s a brush that lets us paint over the image, and a set of sliders that dial in the adjustment. It doesn’t matter whether you choose to paint over an area then make the adjustment, or dial in some settings then begin painting. We prefer…

To shoot photos to use in a focus stack project, simply use a tripod and take a series of shots while incrementally adjusting the focus ring (in manual focus), until you’ve captured front-to-back sharpness across the entire subject. Take care not to move the camera between frames. If you find the extended depth of field leaves the background looking too detailed, move the subject further away from the background to create greater separation. A conservatory is a really good place to set up a home studio for this type of shoot, as you get plenty of natural light and shelter from the wind. An LED light panel like the Interfit model used here is also a great addition for close-up photography, as a bit of extra directional light can help…

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…

The 2017 update to Photoshop CC is upon us – and the big news is… well, not much, unfortunately. We’re treated to revamped Start and New Document dialogs, with a variety of templates to get started in your projects, divided into several categories: Photo, Print, Art and Illustration, Web, Mobile, Film and Video. We never really took to the Start screen when it was released a while back, but at least it can be turned off. Elsewhere you’ll find incremental improvements to the ever-useful Libraries panel. Now you can undo deleted items, and right-click assets and choose Find Similar to search for similar images on Adobe Stock. There’s also a handy new search tool, accessible with Ctrl/Cmd+F, that lets you quickly type a search term to find tools, stock assets…

Watch The Video http://tiny.cc/yl03gy Camera Raw’s Transform tool offers a new way to fix keystoning and distortion. You simply plot lines through the image and let Photoshop do the work of straightening it out for you. The only thing you need are natural guide lines within the image to trace along, like a convenient wall or horizon line. The tool also houses the familiar Upright controls that are often very effective for auto-fixing distortion and tilt. 1 GUIDED UPRIGHT The new Guided Upright tool helps you fix converging verticals and wonky horizons. You will find it in the Transform options, alongside the Auto, Level, Vertical and Full. Unlike these automatic tools, Guided Upright offers you manual control over plotting lines along horizontals and verticals. 2 CORRECT DISTORTION Before you begin…

We know what you’re thinking: Really? The Save Box? Yes, as tools go, it’s about as exciting as a Brussels sprout. But the thing is, this is one of our most-used commands in Camera Raw. There are a couple of essential features that make Save an important part of our workflow. First, it gives you the option to save raw files in different formats, like JPEGs or TIFFs [1]. Of course, this can be done in Photoshop – but increasingly we find that Camera Raw offers all the controls we need to edit an image, and often there’s no need to open into Photoshop at all. So it’s useful to be able to save in other formats here. What’s more, you get to decide whether to include metadata or copyright…

TIP 1 USE THE PLUS/MINUS ICONS The Adjustment Brush will automatically remember the previous settings you chose – which is sometimes helpful, sometimes not. Sliders can be reset individually by double‑clicking them. But we prefer this method: click the plus or minus icon next to any slider to reset all the other sliders and begin a new adjustment at the same time. TIP 2 FLOW AND DENSITY Flow lets you build up your brush strokes gradually. Let’s say you dial in -1.0 Exposure. If you set the brush to a low Flow of around 30, you can brush over an area repeatedly to gradually darken it down, until eventually the adjustment maxes out at -1.0. Flow can be useful for dodging and burning. Density sets the brush to a uniform…

Photography, portraiture and surrealism all have long and colorful histories – and since Photoshop came along, it’s easier than ever to create subversive images or fantastical scenes. With a few Photoshop skills, you can take your images wherever your imagination wants them to go. We’ve combined a face with a set of wooden blocks for an offbeat portrait effect. It may look complicated, but with a few blending tips and tricks, it’s much easier than it seems. All our start images, including the blocks, were photographed with simple window light, coming from the left of the camera. So if you want to shoot your own portrait, position the subject against a plain wall with the window to the left of the camera. WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/7d03gy PROJECT INFO You’ll learn…

THE HISTOGRAM Understanding curves begins with a quick detour into the basics of the Histogram, which you can see greyed out behind the diagonal curve line. Imagine that all the pixels in your image are sorted into piles depending on how bright they are. In simple terms, that’s what a histogram is. Every pixel has a certain value depending on how bright it is, on a scale from 0 (black) to 255 (white). So pixels in a bright, cloudy sky might sit around the 220-255 mark, while the pixels in a nighttime sky are more likely to be around 0-40. The higher the peaks on the histogram, the greater the number of pixels in that part of the tonal range. So if the peaks are clumped to the left side,…

It can’t compare to the breadth and depth of retouching tools in Photoshop, but Camera Raw’s Spot Removal tool is very useful for giving your raw files a quick retouch, especially if you need to remove sensor marks. 1 HEAL OR CLONE Like all tools in Camera Raw, once Spot Removal is selected, you’ll see a set of options appear in the panel on the right. Here you can set the type to Heal or Clone. In our experience, Clone is rather too basic: you’re much better off opening the image in Photoshop and using the Clone Stamp tool there. Heal proves more useful. It employs Content-Aware healing, similar to using Photoshop’ 2 ESSENTIAL SHORTCUTS Use shortcuts for speed. The ] and [ keys resize the brush, and Shift+] or…

Like the Adjustment Brush, the Graduated Filter lets you alter the tones in part of your image. But the change in tones follows a linear gradient. It’s a hugely useful tool, most obviously for darkening skies in a similar way to a lensmounted ND grad. WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/ta03gy 1 DARKEN THE SKY Grab the tool and drag across from one point to another to make a grad. (Hold Shift to keep the grad lines perfectly horizontal, vertical or at a 45-degree angle.) Use the settings change the affected area. Here negative Exposure darkens the sky. 2 EDIT THE MASK If, like the image here, the grad affects part of the foreground that juts into the sky, you can edit the grad with a brush. Select Brush from the options…

01 CUT OUT THE FACE Open surreal_bg and surreal_before, then grab the Quick Selection tool and paint over the face and arm. Click Refine Edge and set Radius to 4. Paint over the hair, set Output to New Layer and click OK. Grab the Move tool and drag the face onto the other image to copy it over. 02 PASTE THE BLOCKS Go to Edit > Puppet Warp. Set three anchor points over the arm, wrist and face. Open blocks_1 and copy it over with the Move tool. Position it over the arm. Duplicate the block and head layers with Ctrl/Cmd+J. Hide the bottom layer copies. 03 BLEND THE LAYERS Change the Blend mode of the top block layer to Multiply. Double-click the layer to open the Blending Options box.…