Photoshop Tutorials - Name Your Topic for our Experts!

[Darren Rowse]

As I mentioned in the Flickr discussion group last week - I've been looking for photoshop experts to write weekly tutorials for the main blog on different Photoshop topics.

They've already started putting together some great tips/tutorials which I'll post to the main blog in the coming week but some are asking for your questions.

So - what do you want to know how to do in Photoshop?

Also - if any of you feel you've got some expertise in some area of Photoshop (or Aperture, or some other post processing software) I'd love to see your tips in this forum. Just start a thread!

but in the mean time - feel free to add your questions for our PS experts to tackle in tutorials.

[Emmerlee]

Hi Darren
I've been receiving you weekly newsletter for a while which has some great stuff in it for the beginner that I am. My father-in-law recently took some photos at his granddaughters wedding with the 'Incandescent' (i think) setting on his camera turned on by accident - consequently, all of his photos have a significantly blue tinge to them. Can you give me some tips on how to adjust them in photoshop (CS) for him?
Thanks
Emmerlee

[KatherineEmma]

Here's a general question but with a specific example - what (if anything) can I do to correct an over exposed image? I've been fiddling around in photoshop trying to ease the harsh sky in this picture but have so far only succeeded in making it look ridiculous.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49621209@N00/322884078/

[googlit]

emmerlee:

Go to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance (ctrl+b) and play with the sliders. You probably want to bring cyan and yellow up and magenta down... you have to play with it to find a good fix.

[googlit]

KatherineEmma:

That's a great pic. :)

there's not much to do, however, about overexposed pics. What you can do is make a new layer, color it a light blue, maybe with a gradient going from one shade to another, and mask it out so it only covers the sky. Change the blending mode to multiply or darken.

hope that helps. :)

[butchyau]

Have just resumed photgraphy after 20 years and gone digital; have a Mac and consequently iPhoto6; if it is not a dumb question, will iPhoto be OK for most minor adjustments, and only use PSE for anything more major, or do I really need to look at mastering PSE? also can I tweak in PSE and save the image back into iPhoto folders?? thanks.

[Merlyn]

Open the photo in PS and make a rough selection of all the sky information with the lasso tool. You can include some of the building and such, it will not matter.
Click on select at the top and then select the color range tool. With this tool, click anywhere in the sky area of the photo. Adjust the fuzziness level so the it does not bring out any detail in the photo except for the sky area. Go down to the adjustment layers icon in the layers pallet, the circle that is half black and white, click and select photo filter. Select the color you wish. A cool filter. 80 works well.
Deselect preserve luminosity and vary the density to your liking. It should work well.
I did you photo for example, can email it to you if you wish.

[pisagor]

My question is about sharpening.

In PS2, what are the differences, pros&cons between Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpening tools? And, when sharpening an image, how to adjust the settings, what to do/not to do ?

Thanks in advance for the replies...

[Merlyn]

My question is about sharpening.

In PS2, what are the differences, pros&cons between Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpening tools? And, when sharpening an image, how to adjust the settings, what to do/not to do ?

Thanks in advance for the replies...
In Photoshop CS2 Smart Sharpen also includes the same adjustments as Unsharp Mask plus you can apply corrections to Shadow and Highlight areas of the sharping effect. This is cool but I like using Unsharp mask.
What to do is a big question and would require a whole book to explain. General rule, keep your Threshold setting real small, same for the Radius setting. The Amount is to your liking.
Another way is to use the High Pass filter. Under filters/others, select High Pass. Use a low setting here also. After adjustment, select the Blend Mode in the layers pallet, the box that says Normal in the upper left, and select Hard Light.
Remember when adjusting Sharpen to use a duplicate layer to work with any photo so as not to alter the orginial photo.

[Joshua Schroeder]

Have just resumed photgraphy after 20 years and gone digital; have a Mac and consequently iPhoto6; if it is not a dumb question, will iPhoto be OK for most minor adjustments, and only use PSE for anything more major, or do I really need to look at mastering PSE? also can I tweak in PSE and save the image back into iPhoto folders?? thanks.

Now my Mac isn't new enough (and I haven't spend to money) to have iPhoto6, but I've found that iPhoto5 is quite lacking in RAW support, so I've quit using it entirely since getting my digital SLR. I understand iPhoto6 has much better RAW support though. I've also found that when I get a large iPhoto library, the performance gets rather sluggish. So recently I've been playing with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Beta (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/) for my RAW processing. It's reasonably good ... kind of like having your own little dark room :) I'm anxious to give Apple Aperture (http://www.apple.com/aperture/) a run as well, but unfortunately it won't run on a 12" PowerBook ... I'll have to wait until I upgrade to that 24" iMac I've been eying up.

For now, I'm mostly using Photoshop CS2 for all of my image adjustments though. It's very valuable to learn the tricks you can do with Photoshop, because it'll give you the ability to make your images really pop.

[Kevin Helton]

Hi Darren
I've been receiving you weekly newsletter for a while which has some great stuff in it for the beginner that I am. My father-in-law recently took some photos at his granddaughters wedding with the 'Incandescent' (i think) setting on his camera turned on by accident - consequently, all of his photos have a significantly blue tinge to them. Can you give me some tips on how to adjust them in photoshop (CS) for him?
Thanks
Emmerlee
Here are two methods on use frequently:

1. Open image and go to Images -> Adjustments -> Match Color. Click the "Neutralize" box and see if corrects the color cast.

2. Or, open the Levels command (Ctrl + L) and click on the white eye dropper on the bottom right. Now, move the cursor over the image and click on a part of the image that is suppose to be white (as close to pure white as possible). You should see the color shift. If it doesn't work the way you want it, hold the Alt key and the Cancel button will change to Reset. Then you can try again. You can also use the black or neutral gray eye droppers too.

There are several better, more detailed ways, but these should give you something to work with.

[Nicole]

Have just resumed photgraphy after 20 years and gone digital; have a Mac and consequently iPhoto6; if it is not a dumb question, will iPhoto be OK for most minor adjustments, and only use PSE for anything more major, or do I really need to look at mastering PSE?

iPhoto 6 works so much better than iPhoto 5. The RAW support is great (especially if you have OS X 10.4 which I don't have) because you can save as a .tiff file instead of a jpg for editing. Performance has been significantly improved as well. My library is nearly 10,000 pics (yikes!) and it still runs very smoothly. With iPhoto 5, it took a good 10 minutes to start with much fewer pictures, now it starts up in hardly any time.

I also think that it works quite well with minor adjustments. As long as there is nothing huge that I need to fix, I use it with most little things such as red-eye or colour / contrast problems. If you're just doing small or simple fixes, then I don't think that PSE is a necessity.

also can I tweak in PSE and save the image back into iPhoto folders?? thanks.

You should be able to tweak the image in PSE if you're dragging it from iPhoto to PSE, because it will attempt to save the file in the same location. Just make sure that you save it as a jpg. I'm not 100% sure how iPhoto handles the change to the file though because I tend to put the new pictures in their own folder and if necessary re-import to iPhoto later. Sorry that answer wasn't much help.

[elde]

Darren,

I would love to see a comprehensive tutorial of Curves adjustments.

Thanks!

[carley]

I have seen people taking great shots of kids and their eyes are super sharp and bright and clean looking. Their skin is really smooth.

How do you do this?? I am sure it is a multi step thing but I would love more help with this!

Thanks!

[Emmerlee]

emmerlee:

Go to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance (ctrl+b) and play with the sliders. You probably want to bring cyan and yellow up and magenta down... you have to play with it to find a good fix.

Thanks for the tip googlit - i ended up using the Auto Colour Balance for a lot of the photo's which is a great improvement on what they were - a few of them I played with the sliders, but as they were outside shots with lots of blue sky - there's not a great deal of other colours in the photo to compare the changes with -(if this makes sense!)
When I've got some time, I'll try to play around a bit more!
:)

[Maja]

I have seen people taking great shots of kids and their eyes are super sharp and bright and clean looking. Their skin is really smooth.

How do you do this?? I am sure it is a multi step thing but I would love more help with this!

Thanks!

There are several ways to do it Carley, but i'm going to have to say any kind of skin smoothing the clone stamp tool will be your best friend. Use the stamp tool in Photoshop and clone it near the area you are going to work on. For skin on kids i recommend using the stamp clone tool set on "lighten" and at about 35-40% opacity. That should get rid of any redness, imperfections or any other things in people like under eye circles, blemishes, weird shadows.

As for the eyes i usually dodge the inside "color" part of the eye and burn the outer edge to make it pop more.

If you have any more questions let me know its a bit hard to explain all the steps in one go.

[Lastoadri]

photoshop always confuses me, which filter to use for what exactly?!
it takes hell of a time to try all the filters, and sometimes i know nothing about the ratios and numbers written there, so i choose them at random...

is there a possible way to delve into PS. filters to make life seems easier?

[googlit]

PS filters can be used for just about anything, and no filter is restricted to one use. There are all kinds of different applications for filters, so there's no way to say "this is what you should use for that."

A filters tutorial is definitely something worth thinking about. :)

[Torry]

What advice do you guys have for evening out splotchy facial shadows and hot spots caused by the sun popping through the trees, direct overhead sun, hard light source, etc. when unfortunately reflectors, fill flash, etc. weren't used? -thanks

[Merlyn]

What advice do you guys have for evening out splotchy facial shadows and hot spots caused by the sun popping through the trees, direct overhead sun, hard light source, etc. when unfortunately reflectors, fill flash, etc. weren't used? -thanks

Try this if you use photoshop.
Open photo in photoshop.
Press, ctrl/alt/~, this will select the highlights.
Press ctrl/j to create a new layer of your selection.
Click filter/blur gaussian and adjust to something that looks ok.
Click new vector mask at the bottom of the layers pallet to create a layer mask.
Make sure black is your foreground color.
Select a soft brush with the hardness set low and brush over the areas
that you do not wish to adjust the highlights.
That should do it for a quick fix.

Hope this helps

[wulf]

What advice do you guys have for evening out splotchy facial shadows and hot spots caused by the sun popping through the trees, direct overhead sun, hard light source, etc. when unfortunately reflectors, fill flash, etc. weren't used? -thanks
Here is a trick I learned about earlier this week.

Make a duplicate layer, desaturate it and then invert the colours. You will have a white and black negative of the original. Now set the mode of the new layer to "overlay" and adjust the opacity as required. The white areas (which are all over the shadows) will appear lighter while the dark areas will be almost unaffected. Because the balance of light and dark is based on your original image, this is a very simple complementary technique for softening high contrast pictures.

Wulf

[Feisty]

When I open a camera raw file in Photoshop CS2, and make adjustments, how do I save it as a JPEG file? Photoshop gives options for TIFF etc., but not for JPEG. Why not? I've learned I can save the file as a TIFF, then open it again, and save it as a JPEG, but that seems like an unnecessary (and time-consuming) step.

[Merlyn]

When you click save, a large box should open up with file naming options, file quality options and a drop down box for file extensions. .dng,.jpg,.tif.,psd.

Click the drop down box and select.

[Merlyn]

I have seen people taking great shots of kids and their eyes are super sharp and bright and clean looking. Their skin is really smooth.

How do you do this?? I am sure it is a multi step thing but I would love more help with this!

Thanks!


Try this for the skin.
Select your photo then click alt/control/tilde(~) , this selects the highlights,
now click control/j to create a new layer above the background layer.
Go to filters/blur/gaussian blur and move the radius up until you get the adjustment you want, click ok. Some areas may have been adjusted that you did not want to adjust. Create a layer mask of the layer that you are still active on by clicking on the icon at the bottom of the layers pallet that looks like a square with a circle in it. Make sure your foreground color is black, select a soft edge brush and set the hardness to about 4% and the opacity to about 30% then brush the areas that you want corrected.

Hope this reads easy and works for you.

[Emmerlee]

Hi all,
hope everyone had a great Christmas.
What is the easiest way to create a watermark to mark the photo copyright and then apply it to a batch of photos??
Does each photo need to be done individually, recreating the watermark each time?
Thanks
Emmerlee

[Nicole]

Hi all,
hope everyone had a great Christmas.
What is the easiest way to create a watermark to mark the photo copyright and then apply it to a batch of photos??
Does each photo need to be done individually, recreating the watermark each time?
Thanks
Emmerlee

This thread on watermarking (http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91&highlight=watermark) has a link to a tutorial (http://www.dphotojournal.com/photoshop-tutorial-creating-custom-copyright-brush/) about how to make your own copyright brush in photoshop or photoshop elements as well as some info on programs or actions you can use to apply the watermark to batches of photos :)

[NaturesPixel]

When I open a camera raw file in Photoshop CS2, and make adjustments, how do I save it as a JPEG file? Photoshop gives options for TIFF etc., but not for JPEG. Why not? I've learned I can save the file as a TIFF, then open it again, and save it as a JPEG, but that seems like an unnecessary (and time-consuming) step.

try going .. IMAGE, MODE, and changing the mode to 8 BIT
you will be able to save your image as JPEG from the save drop down menu then :)

[beckywithasmile]

I just recently got photoshop 7 and I am feeling a little lost as this is the first time I have used photoshop. Maybe some photoshop basics would be good. I get a little lost as to how to start something or even what I can do in this program.

Since your tutorial I can successfully make the photos black and white and change one thing back to color. Besides this, I don't have a lot figured out. I'm pretty handy with the computer, but feeling overwhelmed with this program.

[Merlyn]

Buy books and read. There are tons on sites for Photoshop tutorials, written and video, on the web. Not trying to brush off giving a tutorial, but it would take time and a lot of space on this site to do so. This site, Learn Photoshop (http://watchandlearnphotoshop.com), will sell you video CDs, but they also provide a newsletter through email that gives you a free video tutorial about once a week.
Hope this is of some help.

[googlit]

I just recently got photoshop 7 and I am feeling a little lost as this is the first time I have used photoshop. Maybe some photoshop basics would be good. I get a little lost as to how to start something or even what I can do in this program.

Also, check our your local community college and see if they have an intro to Photoshop class. Having a curriculum and someone who knows the program going through everything methodically might give you a head start.