Photoshop Tips



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| |1. - Rectangular marquee tool - Used for making selections of | |

| |items with a rectangular shape. | |

| |- Elliptical marquee - Used for making selections of items with | |

| |a circular shape. | |

| | |12. - Foreground/Background - Used to select the color of the foreground and |

| |2. - Lasso Tool - Used for drawing the shape of whatever you |background for painting tools. |

| |would like to select. | |

| |- Magnetic/Polygonal - More precise selection tools. |13. - Move Tool - Used to move things in your document. |

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| |3. - Crop Tool - Used for cropping the size of the image to |14. - Quick Selection Tool- Used for selecting shapes or other parts of an image from its |

| |whatever you like. |background to be removed or relocated. |

| |- Slice Tool - Used for slicing designs for web. |- Magic Wand - Used for selecting large areas of color |

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| |4. - Healing Brush - Used for blending areas. |15. - Eye Dropper Tool - Used to change the foreground background color to whatever |

| |- Patch Healing Brush - Used for blending patterned areas. |color you click on in your document. |

| |- Red Eye Tool - Clean up Red Eye in photos. | |

| | |16 .- Brush Tool - Used to paint whatever you like with whatever type of brush you |

| |5. - Clone stamp tool - Used to create exact clone of whatever you |choose. |

| |reference it to copy. |- Pencil Tool - Used to draw whatever you like with whatever type of brush you |

| |- Pattern Stamp Tool - Create uniform patterns. |choose. |

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| |6. - Eraser - Used to erase whatever you like. |17. - History Brush Tool - Helps with mistakes and can use previous states of the image |

| |- Magic eraser - Erase bulk areas. | |

| | |18. - Paint Bucket - Used for filling areas with color. |

| |7. - Blur Tool - Used for blurring whatever you click on. |- Gradient Tool - Used for creating color gradients |

| |- Sharpen - Used to sharpen the image. | |

| |- Smudge - Used to blend whatever you continue to click on. |19. - Dodge Tool - Used for turning an image lighter. |

| | |- Burn Tool - Used for turning an image darker. |

| |8. - Pen Tool - Used to create paths or shapes. |- Sponge Tool - Used for saturating/desaturating an image. |

| |- Freeform Pen - Used to create organic paths or shapes | |

| | |20. - Text Tool - Used for adding text horizontally or vertically. |

| |9. - Path Selection Tool - Used to select and or move paths you have | |

| |created. |21. - Shape Tool - Used to create shapes from rectangles to polygons, to even custom |

| |- Direct Select Tool - Used to select and or move nodes you have |shapes. |

| |created. | |

| | |22. - 3D Orbit Tool - Used to rotate 3D camera |

| |10. - 3D Rotate Tool- Used for rotating 3D items in document. | |

| | |23. - Zoom Tool - Used to zoom in and out of your document. |

| |11. - Hand Tool - Used to navigate your view when zoomed in. | |

| | |24. - Quick Mask - Used for selecting part of an image. |

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|Vector Graphics vs. Bitmaps |

|[pic] |Vector Graghics |

| |mathematically created graphics that are scalable and better for printing purposes. |

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| |Bitmaps |

| |graphics that are made up of pixels and can be scaled down but get distorted if scaled larger. |

|General Tips |

- Game Plan:

You must decide what needs to be corrected, in which order and with the

proper tool. Do “Global” changes first and then work on your smaller

areas.

- Organization:

Keep copies of original artwork within your working file.

- Scanning:

Remember to always scan at hi-resolution (300 DPI)

|Image Corrections |

- Color Corrections:

IMAGE - MODE - ADJUSTMENTS:

- Levels: allows you to adjust general levels of contrasts (get rid of that grey color from scanning)

- Curves: also allows you to adjust the contrast of a composition, but allows for multiple adjustments

- Color Balance: when a picture has too much of one color, use this tool to balance the colors to look more natural.

- Hue/Saturation: this has many functions but the important one is to click the COLORIZE box change the color of a selection.

- Tools Commonly Used for Corrections:

- Stamp Tool for cloning out unwanted items

- Healing Brush for more organic corrections (flesh)

- Blur/Sharpen for specific detail corrections

- Dodge/Burn for specific lightening or darkening corrections

|Photo Combinations |

Pitfalls to combining photos:

- Trying to combine photos with two different resolutions (300 vs 72 dpi)

- Clarity (sharpness) of pictures (if the pictures were taken at different eras/cameras)

- Light source different

- Color (different era/camera or b&w vs color)

- Angle or position of characters different

- Picture issues (scratches/cropping)

Bringing over that picture to another picture:

- Make sure you have both pictures open in Photoshop.

- Separate the pictures by clicking and holding the mouse button down on the name tab of one of the documents and pull them apart.

- Click and hold the mouse button down on the LAYER with the picture in the layer window palette and drag and drop it on the other photoshop work area. You should see the object right away.

- Use the EDIT - TRANSFORM - SCALE to resize the picture, hold down the shift key to constrain the proportions. You may need to move the picture around/down to find the edge to start scaling.

- Once the picture is scaled to the proper size, use the blur tool with a light exposure and a 0% hardness brush to blend the picture together.

- Remember, just like we did in class, you may want to select out another character on the original picture and make a copy of them in a higher layer so that your newly introduced character in the photo appears behind them.

Tips:

- You can turn layers on and off just by clicking on the eyeball in front of a layer.

- Watch which layer you are on while working.

- Save often.

|Quickmask Mode |

- Make sure you have a true black in the foreground color picker. Anything less than true black will give you unwanted results. Also, make sure you are working on a layer that has been duplicated from the original. Always keep a copy of the picture in it’s original state.

- Enter the Quickmask Mode located under the color picker.

- Choose the paint brush tool. Set the size of the brush to your liking, but make sure the HARDNESS is set to 100%.

- “Paint” out everything except the object you are trying to select, Use a larger brush for larger areas and make sure you get those corners. If you paint over something you didn’t want to, use the eraser to remove the color. The default color for the quick mask mode is red, so if you are getting black then you have not activated the tool.

- Once you have completed painting out you object, just exit the quick mask mode by clicking on the tool one more time and you should be brought out to you picture with your “marching ants” around your object. If your selection does not look right, you can go back into the quick mask mode and continue to edit your selection.

- If the selection is good, now is a good time to save it. Go to SELECT in the top menu and choose SAVE SELECTION. Choose the option to make it a NEW selection and give it a name that makes sense and click OK.

From here you need to choose what you are doing with this object, if you are just working on an object that will remain on the picture but is modified (like we did with the little boy’s overalls), then we should get that object onto a new layer:

- With the Marching Ants still active on the screen, go to EDIT-COPY and then EDIT –PASTE from the top menu.

- This places the object into a new layer perfectly placed. From here you can do whatever function you would like. Colorize, color correct, etc.

OR if this is where you need to eliminate the background for a character you are bringing over to another picture:

- After coming out of the quickmask mode, save your selection as explained before. Make sure you are still working on a copied layer. Make sure you save the document so you will not have to go back and redo any work.

- Turn the view of the original picture off (eyeball).

- Go to SELECT and choose INVERSE so that the selection is now reversed and hit delete on the keyboard. This will eliminate the background leaving you just the character to bring over.

|Vector Graphics |

- Vectors in Photoshop are a bit tricky, since Photoshop is a bitmap environment. You will see that if you use any of the general shape tools, that in your layer management it creates a layer with a full layer of color and a mask with a cut-out of the shape.

- To adjust the color once a shape is made, the easiest way is to click right in your layer management and click on the color block, this will open the color picker.

- To adjust the size of a shape after drawn, just go to EDIT – TRANSFORM – SCALE/ETC. Remember since it is a vector graphic you can manipulate it in any fashion without worrying about ruining the shape.

- Remember to use the SHIFT key to constrain the proportions.

- Remember to look at your options bar when using the line tool to add arrowheads, and when using the shape tool, there are a number of pre-loaded shapes to choose from.

- Make sure you have the SHAPE option turned on in the options menu and NOT PATH, otherwise you will not get workable shapes with color.

- Vectors can get out of control quickly, with every click and drag on the screen you create a shape and a new layer. Remember to name your layers…they will get lost quickly.

|Pen Tool |

- There are a couple of pens available, avoid the freeform pen tool unless you are looking for a real organic shape.

- The standard pen tool works in this fashion, you need to create anchor points and adjust the curves as needed. To do this (you should probably have a picture open to use as a guide) using the pen tool (again to create shapes and not paths) click of the screen to create an anchor and release the mouse button. To further up on the screen and click your mouse button down to create a separate anchor, BUT hold the button down and then pull the mouse in any direction to create the curve and add handles to the anchor. Once the desired curve has been created, let the mouse button go.

- Next, to get ride of the extra handle so you can continue on and create more curves, hold down the OPTION (mac)/ALT (pc) and click on the anchor. Click further down the picture to create another anchor and follow the same steps over again until you get back to the original anchor.

- Use the Path Selection Tool (Arrow that is colored in) to move the shape around on the screen or to do basic manipulation (sizing)

- Use the Direct Select Tool (arrow with white middle) to adjust individual anchors or curves.

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