Adobe Photoshop – Graphic Design and Photo Editing Tips

A friend of mine had been saving up for some time to buy the legendary Photoshop. The editing software of choice by graphic designers, soulless tabloid journalists and artists around the world, he knew he was making a great choice. He imagined his life would be complete when he bought Photoshop. Life would be breezy, he would glide around his laptop making outstanding images whenever he wanted. But when he eventually bought the Photoshop package, he was completely lost and really needed to begin understanding the basics of Adobe Photoshop that very day.

You shouldn\’t have to go through this tragedy. You deserve better. Photoshop may be expensive, but anyone who knows how to properly use it will tell you it\’s worth every cent. Like anything else you will have to make mistakes and learn by yourself, exploring the interface of the software. One way to help is to go to \’Preferences\’. Here you can improve the performance of your Photoshop.

Here is some advice to get you started. Search for the \’History Log\’ on the screen. This is where you can save your progress while you edit your image. The are a number of options to personalize your session. For example select \’Sessions Only\’ to make the log remember the time and date that you start each session. Choose \’Concise\’ to recall more information about your work. And you can pick \’Detailed\’ for the most information, recording details about every edit you do to the image.

Find the \’History Log\’. Here you can save every step you take when making your picture. You can choose how much information it saves. For example choose the \’Sessions Only\’ to remember the time and date that you start each Photoshop session. \’Concise\’ records more information on all the editing sessions. You can also choose \’Detailed\’ which does the same job as \’Concise\’, but also notes the file path and details about every edit to the file.

The only real way to learn photoshop is to play around with things. Keep exploring and discover what you can do. For more specific learning read about Photoshop online and try out the many available video tutorials. After a while, you\’ll be making superb pictures just like my nephew wanted to! He also wanted to know how to make a collage using Photoshop, and he found this excellent video – http://www.learnphotoshopnow.com/blog/2009/08/how-to-make-collage-using-photoshop.html

LearnPhotoshopNow is a great place to start learning the basics of Adobe Photoshop and offer a step by step video tutorial program that will help you to really understand the basics of Adobe Photoshop in less than 2 hours, as my friend did.

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For the digital photography enthusiast, becoming well acquainted with photo editing is one of the digital photography basics that can make a world of difference in how well a photograph turns out.

Image editing software to a digital photographer is what the dark room is to a film photographer. The big benefit of photo editing software is that it’s easier to do than setting up a darkroom.

And with photo editing software, you can do standard image editing functions like cropping and adjusting color, and can also do photo manipulation.

Image editing refers to any change that is made to a picture. Photo manipulation refers to what film shutterbugs used to call “trick photography” switching backgrounds and such. (For some fun examples of photo manipulation, look up the “National Geographic Photo Foolery” page online.)

Once you know the type of image editing you want to do, you will be better able to choose a photo editor. In this article, we’ll highlight the most popular ones:

Picasa: A free photo editor from Google. If you are just getting into the very basics of digital photography, this will serve you well for a while. It is really designed to be more of an online photo album or photo manager but can also handle basic photo editing. Picasa offers basic editing tools such as retouch, which helps you remove blemishes, scratches, etc. Like many photo editors it has red eye remover. It also has some fun functionality where you can create screensavers with your photos and even integrate them with Google Earth.

If you’re ready to advance from digital photography basics and do more with your images, consider one of the other photo editors.

Adobe Photoshop Elements: This is more user-friendly and less costly than it’s “big brother” Photoshop CS4 and is the market leader in photo editing and manipulation. It’s good for the photography enthusiast plus there is a free trial version.

Adobe Photoshop CS4: This has everything you could possibly need as a professional photographer or graphic artist. It sells for about $700 on their website, but you can find it half that price by some vendors or look for a free trial version.

Paint Shop Pro: This is a close competitor to Photoshop Elements and also runs about $90. They also offer a 30 day free trial.

The GIMP: An odd name for such a powerful program, the acronym stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. This open source, freeware continues to improve and has a good community of users should you need help. It is available for Unix/Linux platforms, as well as Windows (NT4/2000/XP/Vista) and Mac operating systems (OS X). It doesn’t quite have everything that you get with Adobe Photoshop CS4, but it has more than Elements or Paint Shop Pro and is used by some professionals.

No matter what photo editor you have, read through the guide or help sections so you understand what you can do with it.

It takes time to learn but you will be impressed with what you can do with your images.

For example, here are a just a few of the things you can accomplish (the top 5 even with just Picasa):

* Crop

* Resize

* Lighten or darken shadows, highlights, and midtones

* Correct Colors

* Remove blemishes, a stray branch, a logo, or anything else you don’t want in the picture

* Blur Backgrounds (Photoshop Elements, Paintshop Pro and The GIMP all offer background-blurring applications. Picasa doesn’t.)

You can also create all sorts of special effects with a photo editor. For example, you can convert your photograph into an impressionistic painting. You can turn a color photo into black and white to capture the tones, lines and highlights without the distraction of color.

Or for a more vintage or antique look, you can choose sepia.

Even if you don’t want to do any cool special effects, learning the basics of any photo editor will let you fix “mistakes” in your photos. Just cropping alone can do wonders if you couldn’t get a close enough shot or you’ve got too much clutter in the picture. That is why photo editing is an important part of learning the digital photography basics and why it’s important that you learn it. Before you know it, you will be editing and producing quality images perfect for framing on your wall.

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Adobe Photoshop, called simply Photoshop by most, is a leading graphics editor developed by Adobe Systems. It is used to create and manipulate images, both for personal and commercial use. Photoshop can be used in multiple operating systems, including Microsoft, Macintosh and Linux. Since 1988, Photoshop has evolved from containing basic editing tools to the now more advanced functions, including the warp tool and the grain reduction filter for photos taken in low light. Because of this, there is a need to learn the basics and constantly re-learn additional features of the software; hence, the continuously increasing number of free Photoshop tutorials available.

The Adobe Photoshop program itself offers tutorials. First, check out the manual. This contains explanations on the basic tools of the software. The program also comes with ReadMe and ReadMe First! files that also contains helpful information. When you open Adobe Photoshop, you can also go to Photoshop Help under the “Help” tab. If you are using Windows, the shortcut would be to click F1. You can then choose from a set of basic Photoshop topics, such as making color adjustments, drawing, applying filters, and using layers.

Free Photoshop Tutorials also abound on the Internet. The advantages of using the Internet to look for free tutorials are that these resources are more updated that those found in books or those built-in with the program. The Internet also provides almost unlimited information for various topics and useful tips from other users like you. Also, you can access these tutorials at your own time in the convenience of your home.

The most trusted source of free Photoshop information is the Adobe Website, which can be seen at http://www.adobe.com. Adobe Online offers free tutorials, how-to guides, interactive online courses and online seminars. Adobe Online also allows registered users access to Photoshop Knowledgebase, which contains answers to technical questions. Adobe also offers customer service, which can vary depending on your location.

You can also join several online Photoshop forums. These allow Photoshop users to interact with one another and answer each other’s questions. Adobe also has an online forum for its products, including Photoshop. Aside from this, there are other forums on Photoshop and other similar software that you can join.

If you still want more information, you can also search the Internet for other sources. Using a search engine, you can find numerous websites offering free Photoshop tutorials. Free Photoshop tutorials are available in multiple formats, including text, audio, video, or combinations of these. Depending on your availability, tutorials may also be conducted in real-time or may be accessed on-demand.

Some websites offer a list of free online tutorials from different sources, such as http://www.tutorialkit.com and http://www.photoshopsupport.com. Other sites offer free tutorials that can be accessed on their webpages, while some websites send the tutorials directly to your e-mail. Some websites also offer online tutorial and training courses, which you can try out for free for a set trial period. You can also avail of tutorial courses using chats and call or video conferencing, which can be conducted one-on-one or with a group. These live tutorials are more interactive, allowing you to ask questions during the process and provide feedback to the other users.

Of course, there are also disadvantages to searching for free Photoshop tutorials online is that you cannot always be assured of the quality of the tutorials. Majority of these tutorials are not certified or supported by Adobe Systems. Also, some websites offering free Photoshop tutorials advertise that their tutorials are free when, in fact, they aren’t. Users looking for free photoshop tutorials should be on the lookout for these sites and should proceed with caution.

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Photoshop users may be used to using many of the tools that are part of the program but have you used the Gradient Editor as a way to customize Photoshop’s default gradients?

You need to have a good working knowledge of Photoshop’s Gradient Tool if you want to be able to make the most of the possibilities and this means you have to be able to master the editing options.

No need to be overwhelmed because this is a fairly easy thing to learn and master, it will just take a little practice.

Begin by selecting the Gradient Tool and then click on the gradient preview located in the options bar. This will open Gradient Editor and you are ready to get to work.

When you have opened Gradient Editor you will see several preset gradients. You can choose from the default Foreground, the Background gradient and even the more complex Chrome gradient.

With some practice you will be able to use the preset gradients to create new ones.

You can edit the preset gradients and design new gradients. Some of the gradients have more color stops than others.

The Foreground to Background gradient has two color stops while the Spectrum gradient has seven color stops.

If you want to modify a gradient you can do so by changing the color stops.

Click on one and choose a new color from the color picker, it’s that easy.

You can also click on an image and sample a color for your customized gradient. When you do this you can use the Eyedropper Tool to customize or you may want to add new color stops to a gradient that already exists.

You just click anywhere along the bottom edge of the preview bar and you will be able to add new color stops.

Maybe you want to add different opacity settings so that you can have an image fade from solid to transparent.

This can be done when you use the opacity stops that run along the top of the preview bar. The black opacity stop will be 100% solid while a white opacity stop will tell you that this part of the gradient is 100% transparent.

The gray stops show you the values in between.

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Taking photos can be a lot of fun. It doesn’t matter if you’re taking images of pets, family, sports or scenery, it’s still enjoyable for you. Part of the enjoyment of taking photos is sharing them with others. While before to do this you might have had to send them via snail mail, now all you need to do is go on the computer and use photo gallery software to share them with as many people as you like. It’s a much more convenient way of sharing photos with the people you care about. You’ll learn the basics of photo gallery software in this article.

What is Photo Gallery Software?

So what exactly is photo gallery software? Well, it’s kinda like a digital version of a photo album. If you’ve taken lots of pictures with older cameras (you know, before they were digital), you’ve probably created some photo albums to keep the photos organized. Photo software is just like this, except instead of holding a photo album in your hands, you’ll instead have one on the computer.

A traditional photo gallery software program will allow you to import photos. That is, you’ll be allowed to press a button, select photos from your harddrive, and then put them in your photo by using the software. When you’ve added in all the photos and pressed the button to create the photo gallery, your online photo will be created instantly.

How does Photo Gallery Software Work?

No two photo gallery software programs are alike, but most offer the some of the same features to customers. Usually, when you use the photo software to add images, the program then creates a photo album to house the images. Depending on the software program you are using, during this process, you might be able to choose between different themes for the album. For instance, you might get to customize the gallery’s border, background, text etc.

When the photo album is created, other things are created as well. Thumbnails for the images are also created, which allows people to see a small version of the image and then decide, based on that, whether to click the thumbnail (to see the whole image) or not. This is very handy if you want to have a page for your photos which doesn’t take forever to load. All the HTML coding is also taken care of by the photo gallery software. This is probably a huge relief for those webmasters who can’t be bothered with coding their own photo gallery for their site.

Some photo software programs will allow you to add image captions in when you are adding the images to the program. This allows you to take care of everything within the album while adding the photos in, rather than having to wait until later.

Depending on the photo gallery software program you use, you might also have a great selection of file formats to use. A lot of the best photo software programs will accept many image formats ranging from jpeg and gif to psp. This allows you to upload virtually any type of image format you may have.

Web or Computer?

Not all photo gallery software is the same. Some are focused more on uploading images to the web, while others will only help you to create photo albums for people to browse while using your computer. Usually when you are looking at the information about the program, you’ll be able to tell where the images go. If they are uploaded to a web site, it could be either the photo software maker’s web site, or it could be your own.

Uploading to Your Web Site/Their Web Site

If you’re new to the whole photo gallery thing, it can be difficult to choose the best photo software for your needs. You’re not sure which is the best, and to make this decision, it’s important to think things through. Do you have plans for hosting the photo album on your web site? Do you want the URL (web site address) to be your own? If so, you’re going to want a photo gallery software program that does this for you. Keep in mind that such a program will have to have FTP support, so make sure it does this.

But what if you don’t want to host your own images? While most photo software programs that offer web capabilities are built to work with existing web sites, some offer the ability to upload images to the photo gallery software program’s web site. Your photo along with your photos will be given space on their web site and you’ll be able to pass that link on to others.

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Happy with our training? Donate! tinyurl.com I have compiled my previous 2 tutorials into one file. I hope the quality is good enough to follow. Enjoy! If you have any questions, feel free to message me.

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Taking photographs for people can be a great way to make a living. For the person who has a passion for photography, such a career can be a dream come true. There are a lot of well paying fields within photography, though one that is often overlooked is that of event photography. Event photography is a field in which people can make a great living taking photographs. However, it’s not a field for the highly inexperienced photographer, as it does take some work to master, as well as organizational skills. Event software can make event photography much easier for the beginner, as you’re about to find out.

What is Event Photo Software?

If you know what event photography is, you should have a pretty good idea of what event photo software is. If not, you’ll find out now. Event photo software programs are programs which serve to make event photography a bit easier. They help with organizing the photos (which is very important because event photos need to stay in a certain order so that they “flow” well), naming pictures and much more. To put it simply, event software speeds up the process of actually managing event photographs. It’s like having an automated software do all the repetitive, mundane work for you.

Should I Use Event Photo Software?

That’s an excellent question that many curious event photographers wonder about. The question of whether or not to use event software is heavily debated in photography forums. Most of the time the answer to this question is that yes, you should use event photo software. We’ll give you 5 reasons why.

Reason #1: Professional Looking Photos

Professionalism is of the utmost importance in event photography. People are paying you to take high quality event photographs, so it’s important to make sure your photographs adhere to this high standard. Event photo software can actually help you do this. That’s because you can use event software to edit pictures and make them look better and more professional. For instance, there are event photo software programs specifically created for wedding pictures. These help a photographer to make this type of image look its absolute best.

Reason #2: Slideshows

A common bonus event photographers offer to their customers is that of the slideshow burnt to a DVD. Believe it or not but event photo software programs also help with the creation of slideshows. You can use such a program to quickly and easily create a great slideshow complete with animation and transition effects. These will be very appealing to customers, making event software a great choice for this reason alone.

Reason #3: The Ability to Create a Gallery

When you are showcasing your photos to the customer and letting them pick which they want printed out, it’s a good idea to have them arranged in a gallery. Obviously, doing this manually can be a bit of a chore. First you have to get all the photos together. Then you have to create a great looking gallery. Finally, you add the photos in and arrange them. For the busy photographer (and most of them are busy), this can be a daunting task. Event photo software automates the process and creates a gallery right away. The nice thing about event software is that it not only creates the gallery, but also allows photographers to choose between several different designs, thus allowing them to customize their gallery.

Reason #4: Online Photos

As you can tell, there are many great things about event photo software. Yet another one is that some event software programs will automatically upload the photos to a web site for you. This definitely saves a lot of time as uploading photos manually can take hours, depending on the size, not to mention all the design work involved in putting up a web site and online photo gallery. That’s why using event photo software is a good idea.

Reason #5: Organization

Yet another reason to use event software (which is something we already mentioned) is that it helps to make things more organized. You can use the software to keep track of a lot of photos. Have you ever had to keep track of several hundred event photos at once? It’s quite a chore, isn’t it? Event photo software can do this for you. It can keep a lot of photos organized, and also make naming and captioning photos a breeze. This is the single greatest reason for using event software. It just plain makes the job easier.

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sorry this was a bit late. i will make up for it
So if you want to learn photoshop here is the set of tutorials you will need
here you learn the basics

Duration : 0:10:19

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