Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2019 i Practical Photoshop

Here’s a fairly simple layer project to get you up and running. We’ll look at how to drop in a new sky with simple selection and masking skills. You’ll begin by selecting the existing sky using the powerful Select And Mask command, then you’ll convert the selection into a Layer Mask. To finish, you’ll add a sky image and a subtle reflection. 01 SELECT THE SKY Open both the start images, then go to Select > Select And Mask. With the Quick Selection tool, paint over the sky to select it, then grab the Refine Radius tool and paint over any gaps between the buildings to grab the extra bits of the sky showing through. Choose Output to: Selection and click OK. 02 MAKE A MASK Click the Add Layer…

To change the color of a person’s clothes, begin by making a selection of the clothes – the Quick Selection tool is ideal for this. Once your selection is complete, you can add any Adjustment Layer you like by clicking the circular Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers panel. We’ve chosen Channel Mixer. After adding an Adjustment Layer, your active selection is automatically converted into a Layer Mask, isolating the tonal effect to your target area. Now you simply alter the Channel Mixer settings to change the colors.…

Sharpening and noise reduction are two of those rather boring but nonetheless essential imageediting tasks we all need to master if we want the best photographic results. They’re something to be done swiftly and without fuss, so that you can get on to more creative edits – so it helps to speed up this rather mundane process if you know exactly which tools to use, and how. Camera Raw’s Detail panel is the best tool Photoshop offers. Helpfully, it’s divided into two logical sections: sharpening and noise reduction. It makes sense that these appear together: in a way they’re two sides of the same coin. Over-sharpening can amplify image noise, and excessive noise reduction can soften details. There’s no magic formula for finding the right balance between the two: it’s…

01 SET THE EXPOSURE Here’s a good starting point for your exposure. Set to Manual exposure, with a shutter speed of around 1-1.5 sec, an aperture of f/11 and ISO 100, then take a couple of test shots. If the background is too bright, close down the aperture or lower the ISO. 02 CONTROL THE FLASH COUNT Most flashguns enable you to set two stroboscopic controls. The Hz (Hertz) setting controls flashes per second, and the flash count determines the total number of flashes. With flash count 10 at 8Hz here, we’ll get 10 bursts over 0.8 seconds. 03 POSITION THE LIGHT By placing the light behind the subject and to one side, you can illuminate the edge of the dancer’s figure, which enables you to emphasize her shape, while…

Layer Masks let you hide or reveal parts of a layer. Here they allow you to hide parts of the modern photo, thereby revealing the old photo on the layer below. When you add a Layer Mask, you have a few options. You can either paint with the Brush tool to hide (by painting black) or reveal (by painting white); or you can instead begin by making a selection. When you add a mask, the selection is converted into the mask that hides everything outside the selected area. After making your initial mask, you’ll often need to zoom in close to make sure it’s perfect. This is where you can get stuck in with the Brush tool to hide or reveal details along the edge until your mask is finished.…

Blending modes let you blend two or more images in all manner of creative ways. Here we’ve used an old portrait and a free paint image downloaded from Pixabay.com (search for watercolour-1755706). To blend our two images, simply open them both, then use the Move tool to drag and drop the paint image on top of the old portrait. Go to the Layers panel, click the Blending Mode dropdown at the top and experiment with different Blending modes. Here we’ve used Hard Light, then added a Layer Mask and painted black with our Brush tool at 20% to reveal the face a little more.…

01 MAKE LOCAL ADJUSTMENTS Use Photoshop or Lightroom to boost the exposure and contrast. The Adjustment Brush can lighten parts of the pose not caught fully by the flash. Boost Exposure and Clarity, then paint over the areas you want to enhance. 02 CONVERT TO MONO A mono conversion is a great simplifier, so it’s definitely one to try as the stroboscopic effect can sometimes look too busy in color. In Lightroom or Camera Raw, experiment with the black-and-white presets in the Basic panel, like B&W 02. 03 TRY A COMPOSITE A simple background makes it easy to combine poses in Photoshop. Drag the three images into one document and position with the Move tool, then set the Blending Mode to Lighten, add a layer mask, and paint with black…

PHOTOSHOP CC FROM £9.98/$9.99 PER MONTH WINDOWS, macOS Photoshop is the software of choice for most professional and non-professional photographers. Beyond the standard photo-editing features, it boasts a vast array of more creative tools and filters. Layers are one of the key differences between Photoshop and Lightroom. They enable you to mask out selected parts to build up increasingly sophisticated images. ELEMENTS 15 £79.99/$99.99 WIN DOWS, macOS Elements is the consumer variant of Photoshop, and contains many of its key tools and features within a simplified interface. It’s limited, but it does provide access to layers for those who have switched to a Lightroom workflow. LIGHTROOM CC FROM £9.98/$9.99 PER MONTH WINDOWS, macOS Lightroom CC combines professional imageprocessing tools with asset organizing. It keeps all its images online in the…

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…

In this project we’ll explain how to craft this old-school glitch effect, just like a freeze-frame from a 1980s video cassette. Along the way we’ll explore a couple of key features of layers: Blending options and Smart Objects. You’ll use the Blending options command to skew the colors, then apply the Wave filter to a separate Smart Object layer. You can apply this effect to any image you like… 01 TURN OFF CHANNELS Open the start image and duplicate the background layer twice (Cmd/Ctrl+J). Go to the Layers panel and double-click the top layer to open the Layer Styles box. In Advanced Blending, uncheck the R channel box and click OK. Next, double-click the middle layer and uncheck the G box. 02 SKEW THE COLORS Highlight the middle layer and…

Layer Blending modes are a set of different algorithms that change how the currently selected layer will interact will the pixels from the layers below. For example, choose the Lighten Blending mode and only the pixels that are lighter on the current layer will show through. Anything darker on the lower layers will be visible. It’s not always obvious what each Blending mode will do, so it’s usually best to experiment with different modes to see which one suits your images.…

1 CURVES Drag the curve line up or down to change the brightness of the image. For precise control, add several points along the line to alter the brightness at different points along the tonal range. 2 COLOR BALANCE Useful for shifting the colors, perhaps to give an image a cyan shift or to boost the yellows. As well as affecting the midtones, you can also target and tint the shadow tones or the highlights. 3 BLACK AND WHITE Convert an image to monochrome, then alter the brightness of six different color ranges with this excellent Adjustment Layer. 4 COLOR LOOKUP This offers a range of different LUTs that give you various tonal and color effects. It’s useful for toning both stills and video. 5 GRADIENT MAP This applies a…

1 TRIPOD You need to keep the shutter open for a second or more to allow the motion and flashes to be captured. The camera must stay still, so a tripod is essential. Our exposure time was about one second, during which there were eight flashes. 2 SPEEDLIGHT The stroboscopic look is created by a sequence of very quick flashes. On our Yongnuo 560 IV flashgun, it’s called Multi mode. The burst illuminates the subject several times during the long exposure, creating a fragmented action shot. 3 DARK ROOM If there’s too much ambient light in the room, the subject will be blurred, so turn off overhead lights and block any windows (but leave enough ambient light to see by). If you don’t have space indoors, try shooting outdoors at…