Adobe Photoshop – Graphic Design and Photo Editing Tips

The best way to draw pearls in Photoshop is to start with a grey background, draw in a simple white circle, and add shadows accordingly. Learn to use cast shadows and blending to make a three-dimensional sphere with help from an experienced graphic designer and illustrator in this free video on using Photoshop. Expert: Deb Cikovic Contact: designone.net Bio: Deb Cikovic is a graphic designer and illustrator with years of experience. Filmmaker: Matthew Cikovic

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more like a knock off photo shop…but whatever. I’m really bad at drawing freehand with it. any tips?

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Many people think they have to have an expensive, top of the line digital camera to take great photographs, but the secret to a great picture is not the camera, it is the photographer. If you try these simple tips when using your digital camera you will reap the rewards of better photographs no matter what your subject matter is.

1. Position your subject

Use the Rule of Thirds to make your photographs more interesting. Imagine the scene divided into three sections, like tic- tac- toe, horizontally and vertically. Positioning your subject at the intersection of those lines will break up symmetry and result in a compelling photo. If you don’t get the perfect shot, you can crop it with Photoshop. You should be able to get a free download for Photoshop at the Adobe website.

2. Choose the Right Backgrounds for your Subject

Simple backgrounds are best for subjects with busy patterns. You can also adjust the depth of field to focus on objects closer to you while blurring objects far away. Simple subjects look best against a more detailed background. Be sure the background doesn’t interfere and take attention away from your subject.

3. Create Distance and Dimension

A photo of a distant subject can seem static and one-dimensional. Including subjects nearer to you in your photos gives a sense of distance. Blurring the background focuses attention on your subject.

4. Choose an Orientation that Suits your Subject

Your camera produces a rectangular image which gives you two orientations to work with-vertical or horizontal. Your subject will lend itself to one or the other. One sure way to find out is simply to take your photo both ways and decide which is best.

5. Use a Unique Point of View/ Get in Close to your Subject

Break the habit of shooting everything from eye level. Experiment with kneeling down to capture subjects from near the ground, or photographing subjects above you. Get in close to your subject — close-up photography adds intimacy to your photos and helps capture all the hidden details and moments you might not ever see. Learn Photoshop so you can edit, crop and enhance your digital photos.

6. Use your surroundings to Frame Your Subject

Position your subject in front of an interesting doorway, window, scene, etc. to frame your subjects, keeping the Rule of Thirds in mind.

7. Avoid Underexposed Pictures

Indoors – move near a window or bring a lamp into the room. Move closer to your subject. Manually adjust the shutter speed on your camera. Change exposure settings. For lighter photos, adjust exposure up; for darker photos, adjust down. You are able to see what your image will look like as you adjust this setting

8. Avoid Overexposed pictures

On sunny days, find a shady spot to photograph your subjects and use the flash which will cast an even light over your subject. Take advantage of overcast days to avoid shadows. When indoors, provide as much natural light as possible to avoid using the flash which may wash out colors and cast harsh shadows. Avoid the midday sun, early morning and late evenings are better times for photography.

9. Avoid Red Eye

Turn off your camera’s flash or if it’s too dark to go without a flash, ask your subject to look toward the camera, but not directly at the lens. By taking daytime photos, you may eliminate the need for a flash. Bring in additional light sources if needed. Try stand further away from your subject. If you try all this and still have red eye, try using Photoshop to edit your photograph.

10. Avoid Blurry Photos

Avoid shutter lag by pressing the button halfway down before you shoot your photo. When you are ready to take the shot, press all the way down to instantly capture the desired photograph. Use a tripod or brace yourself against a stationary object to hold the camera still. If your subject is moving, use the Action mode on your camera. The Action setting automatically optimizes the shutter speed to capture the action.

The best way to learn to take good digital photos is to takes lots and lots of pictures. You can just delete those you don’t want. learn photoshop so you can to make corrections, enhance your pictures, and use special effects to make your digital photographs look like a pro’s.

For more photoshop tips and Tricks, visit: http://www.PhotoshopDemos.com

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ohkay so i had adobe photoshop CS for a while now. i seen what it can do. but ican never do it. i really want to learn how to use it better. please help. i am big into photography and editing.

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I usually use the eraser, which is not the most effective method. Magic wand doesn’t seem to work right. Is there some sort of settings for this?
Please help.

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Learn how to rotate layers in Adobe Photoshop from our very own expert in this free computer video on how to correctly use Adobe Photoshop for beginners. Expert: Kyle Saylors Contact: www.myspace.com/kylesaylors Bio: Kyle Saylors has been in national film and television production for over ten years. Filmmaker: kyle saylors

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Adobe Photoshop has set the industry standard for photo and image editing. In fact, its popularity is such that it has become a full-blown industry in itself. In terms of ease of use and editing possibilities, Adobe Photoshop is hard to beat. And it’s quite easy to learn even for beginners, especially those who have never in their life tried an image editing software before. There are literally thousands of tutorials online and on DVDs that can teach anyone the magic tricks of Photoshop.

If you’re quite capable of navigating yourself using a program, your Adobe Photoshop installer has everything you need. Provided of course you know what you’re looking for and what the terms mean, you will find the ‘help’ function very helpful. However, if you do not know the difference between crop and cut, you’ll need to turn to other resources.

Head off to http://Adobe.com to find out more about Photoshop. There are plenty of info you can access from the site courtesy of their in-house experts. You’ll find thousands of featured tutorials online, although if you’re a beginner, you might want to take it slow and go to the ‘Basic’ tricks first before getting your hands on the more advanced techniques.

Adobe Photoshop is very easy to learn but you should first understand how it works and what exactly it can do so you’ll have realistic expectations. Don’t worry, though. Adobe Photoshop can create lots of magic and it won’t disappoint. Once you’ve learned the basics, you can move on to the intermediate and advanced techniques.

If you prefer textual tutorials, you can use the articles on http://Creativepro.com. This site lists some of the best Adobe Photoshop techniques you’ll find very useful. Included in the list are tutorials on the use of adjustment layers, aging of metal textures, using Camera Raw, using brush and patch, color replacement using Photoshop CS and even the all-important technique of restoring damaged photographs.

Whether you’re an Adobe Photoshop newbie or pro, you will find a lot of tips and tricks at http://PSDesigns.com. This site lets you penetrate deeper and understand what goes on when you use different tools and devices. In fact, their tutorials are categorized based on technique. Included are background or knockout tricks, type, shape and pen techniques, pattern techniques, web and graphic design techniques.

One of our recommended sites is http://Photoshopsupport.com. This is a one-stop shop for online and video Adobe photoshop tutorials. Everything you need to know about Adobe Photoshop is right here. There are free tutorials you can access online, including v.9 or CS2 tutorials.

Photoshopsupport.com also hosts free tutorials from Photoshop experts. Most recently, they have hosted tutorials by CreativeBits’ Ivan Raszl. It features some of the most popular and creative techniques including removing red eye, creating textures like diamond-plated metal and brushed aluminum, making water drops and integrating photographs with uneven surfaces.

Some tips are as simple as changing colored photos to black and white and creating water drops – stuff you’ll find handy later on. You can even access the photoshop tips & Tricks series volumes 1 to 6 on the site. And you don’t have to be a grown-up to learn photoshop either. The site has links exclusively for kids.

There are a lot of freebies onsite, including brushes, fonts, textures, plugins, photos and actions. If you prefer to download Photoshop video tutorials, there are also free video clips available.

If you have Photoshop v.10, you can access the CS3 resource center through this site. You can even download a trial version of public beta CS3 through Adobe Labs for free. The site alone has all the tutorials you’ll need to sharpen your Adobe Photoshop trick armada and you can even do more using links to other tutorial sites.

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I have an image that’s about 500px wide that I’ve scaled down to about 100px wide.

A part of the image is a newspaper. After scaling it more or less looks blurred. The overall images is a fan arrangement of magazines/newspapers.

Any tips or tricks on this, mateys?

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It’s a common question asked with many Photoshop users: How can I make the hair selection from an image with accuracy? This question mostly asked by Photoshop beginners which usually tend to choose their own photo as the object of their exercise. They started to make selection around the body, and as the selection is done, they erase the outer parts of the selection so changing the background images would be a lot easier. But the hardest part came when they reach the hair area which usually blended with the background.

Forcing to close the selection with manual hair-by-hair tracing would almost make the selection result became jagged and the hair look would become unnatural. Some users then apply the fastest way by applying “feather” to smoothen the selection, so there would be a soft transition between the object and the background. This might work in some cases, but sometimes not. The picture gets the bad collage effect that the picture couldn’t balance with the new background, whether it’s blended or contrasted.

So what is needed to be done to have the perfect hair selection as it would possible to combine with any backgrounds? The answer still gets around the selection techniques, but it’s more than just using tools and how to apply them. You should combine the following items in your preference.

Selection tool; undoubtedly there are many tools to do the selection from lasso, magic wand, marquee, and pen tool [if you feel more comfortable to deal with it].

Channel palette; this palette contains information from each of your separated colors based on the active color mode. RGB color mode consists of Red, Green, and Blue channels which usually proofed on screen media, such as monitors or LCD projectors. Otherwise the CMYK color mode is made up from 4 separated channels which are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. This color mode usually applied on printed media such as papers.

Remember, that every channel provides certain values which represented on a monotone-colored look. By using it, you can make a selection based on certain channel which provides more detail selection range.

Layer Blending Modes; this palette applies the behavior of certain layer against the layer below it. Spanning from multiply, lighten, screen, overlay and up to 23 modes you can experience to get various blending effect throughout your image. You can maximize the feature of these blending modes to enhance the quality of your hair selection.

Defringe; the final way to enhance your selected image to get blended with the new background. It will automatically remove the tiny edge pixel which usually occurs on every selection. You can have it from the Layer – Matting menu, and select Defringe. When a dialog box of certain number appears, I usually left it with 1 pixel amount and let them do the best work.

So, what’s the step?

The first step is use the selection tool to manually select your image area. But, this I usually do: separate the image between the body and the head. Why is that? Since hair selection is the hardest part, I can easily select the body part and left the head for the main task. By separating the head, it also means that you are working on less area which requires less resource from your machine.

After separating the head section and put it on a new separated layer, you can start using the help of channel palette. I usually work within the RGB color mode and choose the green channel since it contains the contrast value of an image. The shortcut to load from channel is by holding the Ctrl [Mac: Command] key and clicking on the corresponding channel. You should have a more detailed hair selection by now and erase the outer part of your selection.

Using the Layer Blending modes is the next step to enhance your selection quality. You can have those blending modes right at the top of your layer palette. I usually choose the screen mode to do the work and the image will automatically blended with the new background. But if try to experiment with another mode, maybe you’ll find a more interesting result.

The last key is defringing your selection to wipe those white pixels around your selection. I think you have a better result for your hair selection right now.

And, if you want to make yourself inside a movie poster, maybe you’ll be interested on my other photoshop tips here.

Technorati Tags: Easier, hair, Making, More, Photoshop, Selection

Digital photography is fun, convenient, and you can see the rewards of your labors quickly. No film required, no sending film off to be developed, what could be easier? Before you run out and buy the most expensive digital camera with the most megapixels and the highest optical zoom you need to do some research.

Digital cameras can be expensive so the first thing you need to consider is how you will use your new digital camera. If your main use of digital photographs is to post pics of your buddies on FaceBook or MySpace, you will not require the same digital camera that you will need if you are taking pictures and getting paid for it, such as at a wedding. People generally fall into one of three categories of digital camera usage:

Snappers – You need a simple point and click camera that produces reasonable quality digital photographs. Perfect for people who don’t want much fuss and rarely print their pictures.

Hobbyists – You may want to be a little creative occasionally. You may take a few close ups, night shots etc. and are attempting to learn photoshop. You print some of your pictures and want good quality 8” x 10” prints.

Pro/Semi-pro – You want a camera that delivers top quality photographs, operates fast and is adaptable. You want excellent print quality and sturdy construction.

How Many Megapixels Do You Need?

One way to decide how many megapixels you need is to decide what you may want to do with your pictures after you take them. This chart is a guide to the amount of megapixels you may need to get a good quality print of the various sizes:

Megapixels: (MP) – Quality prints up to this size:
Minimum of 2MP – 4” x 6”
Minimum of 3MP – 5” x 7”
Minimum of 6MP – 8” x 10”
Minimum of 8MP – 10” x 12”

Digital Zoom and Optical Zoom

Most digital cameras have both optical zoom and digital zoom. The optical zoom works just like a zoom lens on a film camera; the lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed. The image quality stays high throughout the zoom range. A digital zoom simply crops the image to a smaller size, and then enlarges the cropped portion to fill the frame again. Digital zoom results in a significant loss of quality. You can do a similar if not better job using an image editing program such as Photoshop. You can find a free Photoshop download at Adobe.com.

How to Get a Good Digital Camera for Less

To save a little money, look for a camera that has been out about a year. Also style can cost you more; if picture quality is important to you, disregard the shiny model for the not so stylish one that takes great pictures. Stick with brands that are established camera manufacturers; digital cameras are made in basically the same way as film cameras, but in digital photography, light falls onto an image sensor and not onto film. The other parts of the camera are basically the same. Unless you really need special features for your digital photography, don’t pay for them.

After you get your new digital camera home, start using it! Luckily, digital camera memory is cheap and can be reused thousands of times. So get out there and shoot some photos and you’ll soon find your skills improving remarkably.

For more photoshop tips and Tricks, visit: www.PhotoshopDemos.com.

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