Author Archives: Alison Johnston

[Tutorial]Design, Clipping Masks & Endless Possibilities, posted by Alison Johnston @ Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:40:57 -0000

June 4, 2008 – 10:40 pm

A while ago, Scott Kelby did a tutorial on some different ways to present ones work. The basis of what it was – open an image, create new blank layer, use rectangular marquee tool to create the shape you want, fill with any colour, copy and paste/duplicate 2 more, move original image above the rectangles and clip the top layer to it. An example of this is below, although I haven’t done any background design work etc., I’ve just added a drop shadow and some type

Corey Barker came along with another variant to this, where he used the warp tool to get a different take on it.

So I starting thinking that there really is endless possibilities to this technique, using shape layers and even brushes. You could use the pen tool set to ‘shape layers’ to create your own unique shape. You could hunt the internet on a rainy day and download some shapes, brushes etc., The is one technique that is only limited by your own imagination.

You’ll have to ignore the image I’ve used here – but remember that you are not limited to one image. For instance, you may have some flowers lying on a table that you could use for the faded b/ground and another one for the highlight. You may have a nice shot of a pride of lions and have a head shot of a lion that you want to highlight.

So lets take a look at how very easy it can be to create a design for a card or even a larger framed print.

Here is the start image if you’d like to mess around with this first, just click through for the larger image.

The first thing you are going to do is double click on the background layer and a dialogue box will appear, click OK to accept the default Layer 0 or name the layer first. Duplicate this layer. Click on the bottom most layer to make it active, hold down your Ctrl key (Cmd on a Mac) and click the create new layer icon at the bottom of your layers palette. This will force the new layer to be created below your b/ground layer.

Your layers palette will look something like this.

Make sure that you are working on the newly created layer and fill that with a colour of your choice. I’ve used white, but it will be image dependant.

Still working on this newly created layer, I want you to click on the create new layer icon at the bottom on the layers palette. Because we want this layer to be above our filled layer there is no need to hold down the Ctrl key. Turn off the 2 top layers (with your image/images on them) and working on the newly created layer, grab your rectangular marquee tool and draw out something similar to the image below.

Now go ahead and fill that selection a colour … any colour, I used black. You can go ahead and deselect now. Turn on the image layer directly above the layer with the filled rectangle. You can turn off the background layer with a solid fill if you like, it doesn’t matter. If I’m starting to sound confusing, refer to the image below.

To get the effect you want, you are going to clip the image layer with the rectangle layer. Now there’s a couple of ways that you can do this, so I’ll just run through them. Click on your image layer above the rectangle layer and go to Layer>Create Clipping Mask – you can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt + Ctrl + G or a much simpler way to do this is Click on the image layer to make it active, hold down your Alt key and place your mouse on the line that seperates the image and rectangle layer, a small icon will appear, then click and you will get the same result.

If I’ve been explaining this properly, you should end up with an image similar to this

You can still move around the image inside the clipping mask. Grab your move tool and position which part of the image you would like there. You can make the rectangle layer active and move that around independently of the image. If you would like to move both of them around together, click on one of the layers and then shift click on the other, grab your move tool and both of the layers can be moved to position them anywhere you like.

This is where you’ll start moving into the ‘individual options’ part :-) I took the opacity of the image down to 40%, I then make the rectangle layer active, clicked the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette and chose Stroke – and I used black at 3 pixels.

So lets move on to the shape layer and do exactly the same thing as you did here.

Make sure that the active layer is the image that you were just working on and then go to the shape tool, and from the top menu bar pick a shape – I picked a heart – and draw out the shape where you would like it to be. Had I clicked off the shape layer before I took the screenshot, that nasty black edge wouldn’t be there :-)

Make the top image layer active and go ahead and clip it with the shape layer – see above for how to do that. Grab your move tool, and working on the image layer, place it where you like inside the shape. The you could make the shape layer active and give the shape a stroke.

I would go and refine the image by making the rectangular part of this image smaller. Click on one or the other of the first edit you did, then shift + click on the other layer – go to Edit > Transform > Scale and scale it down – or use Ctrl + T on the keyboard and then right click and choose scale. I might even go in and give the heart shape a drop shadow, perhaps even the rectangle and add some text. What you’ll notice in the next image, is that I went back to the first image you clipped with the rectangle and moved it inside the rectangle so that my son was visible, of course I used that part of the image as the highlight.

I did say at the beginning of this that you could probably also use a brush to do the very same thing …… lets go and try it :-)

Do the first part of the tutorial again, but because you aren’t going to be using a shape layer, we will have to create a new blank layer. That will be above the image for the first clip and below the second image that you have turned off. Now go and choose a brush. I picked the leaf brush 95. Once you have that, you will need to go into the brush engine and turn off all the dynamics except smoothing. Referencing the image below, uncheck all the green ticks, but leave smoothing.

Make the brush the size you want it to be and click severla times in the one spot to make sure you have a good coverage – I used black as the f/ground colour. Now, with the tragic …. oops, magic wand tool click in the transparent area, then inverse the selection and fill it with black. Inverse the selection again and grab your eraser tool to make sure there are no pixels floating around. You can deselect and turn on the image above and clip the image with the brush shape. Go ahead and click on the FX button and stroke the brush layer if you like. I grabbed the transform tool and rotated the brush shape, then clicked on the image layer, grabbed the move tool and positioned the image where I wanted it. I then used some text.

And here’s the final image using one of the brushes to make a shape.

The possibilities for designs are endless …… just go and have some fun with it all :-)

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[Tutorial]Working smarter Using Adjustment Layers in Photoshop, posted by Alison Johnston @ Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:20:26 -0000

May 31, 2008 – 11:20 pm

Adjustment layers are a great way to work in Photoshop, they give you the flexibility to go back and alter adjustments on the fly – making sure that you don’t have to lose any of the work you have done by undoing steps to correct an error.

Another positive about adjustment layers is that they add very little size to your file, which is a bonus if you don’t have 8 gigs of RAM at your disposal :-)

I’m going to give you a kind of example here using a Hue Saturation adjustment layer to add colour back into an image. What you need to bear in mind is that it applies to all of the adjustments that are available under adjustment layers.

Adjustment layers can also be useful when using blending modes on a single image without having to duplicate the image and add to the file size. Try this one yourself. Open an image, duplicate it of course :-) and close the original – now go to the little ying yang looking symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and click on it to bring up the menu – click on levels for now. When the dialogue box opens, click OK without making any adjustments, then pick a blend mode …. lets say multiply …. your image will now have used itself, to darken itself …. or you could say that you have used the image to darken the image without having to duplicate the background and then apply a blend mode. Take a look at your file size ….. You can also turn the adjustment layer on and off, reduce the opacity, add a mask to darken certain areas, use a gradient to edit the mask or perhaps a brush.

There are several ways that you can do just about anything in Photoshop, and bringing back colour into an image is no exception. By default photoshop has the history set at 20 states of undo, so if you reach 21 states any previous work will not be available to go back and edit without losing all of the work you have done. You can change the amount of history states available to you by going to Edit>Preferences>Performance and at the top right hand side you will see History States | Cache Levels – just change the history states to a higher amount if you like. Using adjustment layers, rather than permanent adjustments, will give you much more flexibility in your editing capabilities. Getting into the habit of saving your image as a .psd file right from the outset and then remembering to ‘save’ along the way … press Ctrl + S or go to the top menu bar and press ‘save’, will make sure that you are never disappointed if PS freezes or your computer has a hissy fit and dies.

Lets get back to the tut :-) I’m going to add some colour back into an image that I have used a Hue/Sat adjustment layer to desaturate. Why not just go to the top menu bar and use Image>Adjustment>Desaturate you might be asking – because it is a permanent adjustment – one that I may decide that I don’t want there in the future and doing this change with an adjustment layer gives me the option of turning it on and off using the little eye icon, going back in and adding some saturation back into the image etc., If I try to do that 25states later using the permanent adjustment I will lose all of my later work.

There are also several ways to add colour back into an image. You can start with your B&W image, place a new layer above that, choose a colour and fill the layer, change the blend mode to colour, soft light etc., add a mask, invert the mask, and then start adding back in the colour – but what if you decide that you don’t like that colour ? You then have to choose another colour, lock the transparent pixels of the layer, then fill with the new colour. You can also create a new blank layer, choose a colour to paint with, change the blend mode of the brush from the top menu bar and paint away – but still, if you decide you don’t like the colour then you will have to go through the process for the first method. What if you could just move a slider to create a different colour ? Now wouldn’t that be a whole lot simpler ?

Here is our start image, just click through for the larger image.

The first adjustment layer we are going to use is a hue/sat and we are going to desaturate the image. What you’ll notice in the below image is that I forgot to take a screenshot of the desaturated image and had to go back and take one after I had made several adjustments. Its as simple as turning off the adjustment layers.

Next you are going to use a hue/sat adjustment layer again, but this time you are going to check the colorize button when the dialogue box comes up. Then go and adjust the sliders till you get a colour that you like. This is probably the most time consuming part of this adjustment until you become familiar with where the colours lie, and using the saturation and lightness adjustments. I chose a blue colour that was similar to the original image, you can choose whatever colour you like.

Obviously that isn’t quite what we want to happen here :-) Adjustment layers come with a mask – that’s the little white box on the right hand side of the adjustment box – click on the mask to make it active and then press Ctrl + i on your keyboard to invert the mask to black (hide all) white is reveal all. You could also go to Image>Adjustments>Invert – just make sure that the mask is active. Grab your paintbrush and start painting back in the pants. You should now have something similar to the image below. I haven’t painted back in all of the pants, I’m just showing you how to achieve the adjustments.

Just say that you had taken this image in B&W originally, and I pop over to your place and notice what you’re doing and say ….. the pants on that scarecrow weren’t blue :-) The easy way to choose another colour is to double click on the adjustment box itself – not the layer mask – and the dialogue box will open and you can adjust the colour to something new. What I would normally do when re-colouring an image is duplicate the blue layer, turn off the visibility of the original blue layer and then make the adjustment to the copy. This way you will still have the choice of reverting to the blue copy if you decide you want that one instead. In fact, you could make as many different coloured trousers/pants adjustment layers as you wanted.

When doing something like this it is wise to get into the habit of naming the adjustment layers. You can do this by double clicking on the text next to the mask and renaming this what you want. You can see in the image below that I have carried on with a few more adjustment layers and named them. I’ve also done 3 different shades of red for the jacket, shoes and pocket on the pants. I would then do a different red for the scarf. I’ve also done the hair and the flowers, both of these more need more refining to make them look realisitic but I would do the refinements on adjustment layers. I’ve highlighted the file size at the bottom of the image.

You may also notice as you progress with your design, composite, colourising etc., that the adjustment layers can start to get out of hand. This is where Grouping layers together can come in very handy. Select which adjustment layer you would like grouped together i.e. in this particular image you might group together the clothing as I have done – although I accidently added the hair and shoes to the group and couldn’t be bothered going back and grabbing another screenshot – so just ignore those 2 layers :-) Click on an adjustment layer then hold down your Ctrl key to select the next one etc., If your layers are one above the other you can click on the top one, then shift click on the bottom one to select them. Next go to the little downward triangle near the top right hand side of your layers palette, and from the menu select the option ‘New Group From Layers’

Each of the layers you chose will now be in a folder which you can name, I used Clothing in the example below. All you have to do now is open that folder using the little arrow to the left of the folder to have access to the adjustment layers, but more importantly you can still edit each of those adjustment layers.

And that’s it really. Remember to save often while you are working on a file, as I said at the beginning of this.

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[Tutorial]The Smudge Tool, posted by Alison Johnston @ Fri, 23 May 2008 07:25:39 -0000

May 23, 2008 – 1:25 am

The smudge tool doesn’t sound like a terribly exciting tool, something that you could have some fun with – but it can be and we’re going to look at one way in this tutorial.

This tutorial is going to involve the use of the pen tool, but it will be painless :-)

The first thing that you will need to do is create a new document, I have used 800×600 with a black background.

Next you will need to create a new layer above the background layer by clicking on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and then select your elliptical marquee tool and draw out a small circle similar to the one below, holding down the alt + shift keys. Before deselecting the marching ants, go to the gradient tool and pick a gradient from the drop down menu, I’ve used the ‘copper’ gradient. Make sure you are using a linear gradient, and hold down your shift key while dragging from the top to the bottom of the circle – you can deselect the marching ants. You can go ahead and duplicate the small circle by selecting your move tool then holding down the Alt + Ctrl keys (this will copy and drop the copy onto a new layer), drag a little way then hold down your shift key as well and this will constrain the down movement.

Next you’re going to grab the pen tool, and, starting from the centre of the top most circle, click a point then move across and click and drag another point. You will have to reduce the size of your image for this, but keep the canvas larger because you will have to click the final part of the path outside of the image.

Go to your paths palette, which should be default with your layers and channels palette, if it isn’t go to Window>Paths – and at the bottom on that palette click on the ‘create new path’ icon. Go back to your tools palette and choose your pen tool again, click on the centre of the next circle and do something similar to the above, but change the direction a little. Repeat this for the other 2 remaining circles. The original path will be called ‘work path’ and then the rest will be called ‘1, 2, 3’ – you will need to line up the corresponding layer in the layers palette in one of the future steps, but first we have to go and choose a hard edge tip for the smudge tool. Click on the smudge tool and get a size similar to the one in the image below.

I’ve made the circles and brush size bigger than I normally would for the sake of visibility. Depending on what you were going to do with this technique, all things can be changed.

With the smudge tool selected, click on the first layer in the layers palette, then go to the paths palette and click on the ‘work path’ layer, then right click on this choose ‘stroke path’ from the fly out menu – a small dialogue will appear and ‘smudge’ should already be selected, but if it isn’t choose ‘smudge’ from the drop down menu.

Click OK and you should have something similar to the next image.

You can go to your paths palette now and drag the path you just stroked to the little bin icon at the bottom of the palette. Go to the next layer up the stack in your layers palette, make sure the smudge tool is still selected (it should be), go to your paths palette and click on the corresponding path in there, then at the bottom of the paths palette click on the small ‘stroke path with brush’ icon (second from the left) Continue to do this until the remaining paths are completed.

Depending on the gradient you used and the size of the circles and brush size, your image might look something similar to the one below.

Go ahead now and merge the 4 stroked layers in your layers palette to 1 layer. Next, press Ctrl + T on your keyboard to bring up the Transform tool, right click inside this and select ‘distort’. You can do something similar to the image below if you like, but I would suggest that you go to Layer>Matting>Defringe after you distort the selection – I used a 10 pixel radius on this particular image.

From here you can go ahead and do a multitude of different things. Change the background and experiment with blend modes. Use the plastic wrap filter, or give the image a drop shadow then place the drop shadow on its own layer and blur it. You don’t even have to use 4 of these pipe effects.

On the image below I changed the b/ground to blue with a radial gradient, and changed the blend mode to overlay. I then used the FX to give the pipes an outer glow by changing the glow colour to white, a blend mode of ‘Linear Dodge (Add) with an opacity of 50% Technique set to softer and a spread of 90%.

Try out different things and see what you can come up with, but most of all – have fun!

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[Tutorial]Split Toning in Photoshop, posted by Alison Johnston @ Thu, 22 May 2008 06:26:00 -0000

May 22, 2008 – 12:26 am

Lets look at doing a split tone effect in Photoshop. Split Toning is accomplished by adding colour/tone to the shadows and colour/tone to the highlights, and is really easy to achieve in PS.

First off you’ll need to grab the practise image, or use one of your own. Just click on the image below to grab the larger version …. copyright is mine etc., etc.,

The first thing you need to do is make the image into a B&W version. You can do this by using a Hue/Sat adjustment layer (which is the preferred method because it is editable) and take the Saturation slider all the way to the left. Or, go to the top menu bar and use Image>Adjustments>Desaturate (not the preferred method). In the image below I used a B&W adjustment layer in CS3 and the Maximum Black preset. You can grab the image if you want to use it, just click through for the larger version.

Now we are going to use a Colour Balance adjustment layer. Using an adjustment layer will give you the ability to go back and adjust any of the settings later if you want to without having to start from scratch. Go ahead and bring up a colour balance adjustment layer, and it really doesn’t matter if you start with the shadows or highlights – I’m going to start with the shadows. Make sure that the ‘Preserve Luminosity’ box is checked, and that the ‘Shadows’ box is checked and start playing with the slider – in the example below I have simply added some red to the shadows – you can add whatever combination of colours/tones you like.

When you are happy with the colour/tone in the shadows, go ahead and check the highlights box then start playing around with the sliders till you get something you like. I have simply added some yellow into the highlights in the example below.

When you’re adding the second tone to the image, you will see both the shadow and highlight adjustment – I’ve simply kept them seperate to show you what is happening. You can see the difference when the original B&W and the split tone image are side by side in the image below.

And our final image on its own.

Play around with different colours/tones until you get an effect you like. Have fun, and if there are any questions just ask.

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[Resource]Adobe Kuler, posted by Alison Johnston @ Sat, 17 May 2008 13:28:06 -0000

May 17, 2008 – 7:28 am

You’ll need to download flash 9 from the Adobe site if you haven’t already got it.

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