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Photoshop Lesson #8: Applying Filters

On August 17, 2011

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m teaching an upcoming Photoshop course at work. I’m not an expert but I can make my way around the tool. I’m sharing my class in pieces. This post is about applying filters.

Photoshop offers many effects you can add to images to make them more visually interesting. These effects can be added alone or in combination and there’s no real way to apply them incorrectly because it’s all based on personal preference.

To apply a filter, first open the file you want to work with. Then go to your filter menu. You will find tons of available options.

If this is your first time working in filters, it’s probably best to just start applying them at random. With each filter, a new window will open that allows you to play with the intensity of color, width of brush strokes, etc. Changes to your image will be shown in real time so you can keep playing. After you see how it turns out, select Alt + Control + Z or Edit … Step Backward to undo the filter application and try something new.

Here are some examples of effects you can accomplish and what I did to achieve them.

Lake picture before:

Lake picture after:

This effect was achieved using the Crosshatch Filter, which can be found at Filters … Brush Strokes … Crosshatch.

Bee before picture:

Bee after picture:

This effect was achieved using the Colored Pencil Filter, which can be found at Filters … Artistic … Colored Pencil.

Cow before picture:

Cow after picture:

This effect was achieved using the Colored Pencil Filter, which can be found at Filters … Stylize … Glowing Edges.

None of these edits is in any way critical. But, they can result in an image that looks like it took hours to create when in fact you can accomplish it in seconds.

Want to start from the beginning? View class 1, which reviews the Photoshop toolbar. View Class 2, which reviews pictures for print versus web. View Class 3, which explores cropping and resizing images. View Class 4, which reviews balancing color. View Lesson 5, which goes over the clone stamp tool. View Class 6,which reviews color match. View Lesson 7, which talks about how to copy pieces from one image to another.

As always, see something you disagree with or think is just plain wrong? Tell me! Seriously – I want to know.

Photoshop Lesson #7: Copying Pieces From One Image to Another

By Kate

On August 12, 2011

In technology, work

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m teaching an upcoming Photoshop course at work. I’m not an expert but I can make my way around the tool. I’m sharing my class in pieces. This post is about using the copying pieces from one image onto another.

There are real reasons why you might want to take part of one image and place it on another. Maybe you need to make a collage of images. Maybe you need a logo to appear on top of your picture. Maybe you want to reuse a watermark.

There are also funny reasons you would want to use one part of an image in another.

There are a few ways to copy parts of an image from one file to another. Regardless, you will need to open up both images.

Method 1: First go to the image from which you want to copy something. Click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool (if you’d prefer a different shaped marquee, click on that icon on your toolbar and hold down your mouse button so other shaped options appear and select the one that best suits you). It looks like this . After you have selected that tool and move your mouse over top of your image, you will see your cursor look like a plus sign. Put your cursor on one far corner of the area you would like to copy, click and drag to the other corner. When you release your mouse you will see a dotted line surrounding your selection.

Copy your select either by Control + C or by Edit … Copy.

Go to the image to which you want to copy something. Paste your selection from the other image either by Control + V or Edit … Paste. Your end result should look something like this:

It’s a step in the right direction but the newly pasted item is in an odd spot in the picture. You can drag it to the appropriate spot by selecting Move Tool, which looks like this , and dragging your pasted item to the correct spot. This will result in something more like this:

That’s definitely better, but the pink showing up on the background is weird. A better option here would have been method 2.

Method 2: When you are working with illustrations and things with solid blocks of colors, method 2 is likely a better option. First go to the image from which you want to copy something. Select the Magic Wand Tool, which looks like . After you have selected that tool and move your mouse over top of your image, you will see your cursor look like a wand. Click on part of the image you want to copy. Holding the Shift key, select all parts of the image you want to copy. When you are done, you should see dotted line surrounding your selection.

Copy your select either by Control + C or by Edit … Copy.

Go to the image to which you want to copy something. Paste your selection from the other image either by Control + V or Edit … Paste. Your end result should look something like this:

The newly pasted item is in an odd spot in the picture. You can drag it to the appropriate spot by selecting move tool and dragging your pasted item to the right spot. This will result in something more like this:

Not all items are as easy to work with as this example but the methodology you use is the same.

Want to start from the beginning? View class 1, which reviews the Photoshop toolbar. View Class 2, which reviews pictures for print versus web. View Class 3, which explores cropping and resizing images. View Class 4, which reviews balancing color. View Lesson 5, which goes over the clone stamp tool. View Class 6,which reviews color match.

As always, see something you disagree with or think is just plain wrong? Tell me! Seriously – I want to know.

Photoshop Lesson #6: Color Match

By Kate

On August 8, 2011

In photography, technology, work

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m teaching an upcoming Photoshop course at work. I’m not an expert but I can make my way around the tool. I’m sharing my class in pieces. This post is about using the Color Picker tool. It’s not the most powerful part of Photoshop, but I love it.

Using Photoshop you can get the exact color of any point in an image. It will get you the information in numerous ways:

HSB – Hue, Saturation Brightness
RGB – Red, Green, Blue
Hex value – HTML-friendly color
Lab – Lightness Component, A Component, B Component
CMYK – Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, Black; color is represented by percentage saturation of each color

When you click your mouse anywhere on the color picker, the values for HSB, RGB, Hex, Lab and CMYK will all adjust accordingly.

By selecting the Color Libraries button, you can also view colors by common color systems. See the full list in the image below.

Knowing this is one thing, but it’s only useful if there are real world applications. And so:

Your brand guide lists your logos Pantone color for printers, but not RGB value (which is easy to apply in Microsoft Word) or hex value (for web). By looking up those colors, you can create headlines and graphics that tie in with your logo color.
You’re designing a piece in Photoshop (because you don’t know how to use InDesign) and want the type to match other elements in the piece.
Someone hands you a graphic and tells you to fix it and you need to figure out how to replicate things in the same color palette.
You’re handed a print piece and asked to make a version for the web but given no electronic files. You can easily scan in the piece and match the colors using Photoshop to replicate things online.

Ultimately, most people trying to match two colors just eyeball it. But by using Photoshop you can create pieces that look much more polished and pulled together.

How to Do It
The Color Picker is one of the easiest tools to use. Open an image and then click on the layered color boxes in your toolbar that look like this: . A window will open up and that’s your Color Picker. You’ll notice that if you move your mouse around over top your open image (outside the borders of the color picker window), your cursor will change to an eye dropper. Use this to sample a color from your image. Click in several different places on your image and you’ll see the color data in the color picker window change accordingly. You can also select a color right within the Color Picker window.

If you are only working within Photoshop, select your color and hit OK. This will change the colors shown in your toolbar for foreground color. (If you want to select a new background color, click on the curved double around to switch your colors and repeat the selecting process.)

If you want to take the color you just got from Photoshop and use it in another program, you will need the data shown in your color picker window here:

There are so many types of software you could use this in but I’ll only cover Microsoft Word here. To change the color of type to match what you are working with in Photoshop (and you would use these same steps for almost any other color in Word), go to your font color tool, which will reveal a window a new window.

Click on the more colors option, which will open up a new window. Select the Custom tab and the view will change to something similar to the Color Picker in Photoshop.

In the Red, Green and Blue fields you can type in the fields from R,G and B in Photoshop. This will result in a color that is an exact match to what you selected in Photoshop.

Want to start from the beginning? View class 1, which reviews the Photoshop toolbar. View Class 2, which reviews pictures for print versus web. View Class 3, which explores cropping and resizing images. View Class 4, which reviews balancing color. View Lesson 5, which goes over the clone stamp tool.

As always, see something you disagree with or think is just plain wrong? Tell me! Seriously – I want to know.

Photoshop Lesson #5: Using the Clone Stamp Tool

By Kate

On August 1, 2011

In photography, technology, work

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m teaching an upcoming Photoshop course at work. I’m not an expert but I can make my way around the tool. I’m sharing my class in pieces. This post is about using the Clone Stamp Tool.

The Clone Stamp Tool is wonderfully powerful. Using this tool you can remove blemishes from an image (or from a person!), take out extra noise in the picture or have creative license with reality.

An example of what you might like to edit is this image of a lizard.

The picture is perfectly fine but the green item on the cement to the left is distracting and so is the smaller red item in the crack of the cement. With the Clone Stamp Tool, those distractions can be removed:

The same methods detailed below can take a logo off of someone’s shirt, remove a pimple, erase stray hairs and even make someone look thinner.

The Clone Stamp Tool allows you to clone, or copy, one part of an image over the top of another. To use the tool, first select the Clone Stamp Tool, whose icon looks like . Before you can start copying over an area of your image, you need to decide where you are copying color from. You select this directionally by placing your cursor on your image, clicking the alt key and dragging your mouse in a direction. When you let go of your mouse, the distance between where you started and ended your cursor indicates the distance and direction from which your Clone Stamp Tool will be pulling color. It’s confusing but makes sense once you’ve tried it a few times.

I took this picture of my sister and her fiancé. It’s a really cute picture, but too bad about the back of the stop sign! Fortunately, using the clone tool you can edit the picture.

You want to copy over the signs with the color of the brick around it so you would select the Clone Stamp Tool, put your cursor in one spot, select the alt key and drag your cursor only a short distance before letting go of your mouse. Now you can use your mouse to copy the brick color over the signs.

You will likely have to change the spot from which you are copying several times throughout the editing process. You may have to change the size of your stamp because if you are working with one that is too small or too big you will run into all kinds of trouble. To change the size of your stamp, click on the circle near your File and Edit menus. This will produce a screen like this:

Either click on the size stamp that works best for you for the display of stamps, drag the slider to the desired size or type in the width of the stamp you would like into the field where “19 px” appears in the image above.

It takes a while but after some painstaking work, the sign is gone.

Want to take creative license with an image? Clone yourself whatever type of image you want.

This picture was intended to be much less creepy, but you get the point.

Want to start from the beginning? View class 1, which reviews the Photoshop toolbar. View Class 2, which reviews pictures for print versus web. View Class 3, which explores cropping and resizing images. View Class 4, which reviews balancing color.

As always, see something you disagree with or think is just plain wrong? Tell me! Seriously – I want to know.

Photoshop Lesson #4 – Balancing Color

By Kate

On July 29, 2011

In photography, technology, work

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m teaching an upcoming Photoshop course at work. I’m not an expert but I can make my way around the tool. I’m sharing my class in pieces. This post is about balancing color in your image.

Assuming that you’re working with an image created with a point and shoot camera (film or digital), the exposure of your image is likely out of your control. With Photoshop, you can work with the colors of an image to make it darker, lighter or have specific colors pop.

Sometimes you have images with something in the picture appearing as a silhouette. Generally speaking, when this happens and you’d like the silhouetted image to appear in detail, you are out of luck.

Other times you have an image where things just look washed out or a little dark. That is when you have potential to improve the colors in the image using Photoshop.

Below on the left is an old family photo from the 70s. It looks like it’s from the 70s with the way it’s washed out and a little yellowed. Further down is the image where the levels have been adjusted, making the image look brighter and cleaner. It’s a subtle difference but adds more life to the image.

Original image:

Edited image:

There are a few ways to edit an image in this way. First, as some background, it’s important to know that Photoshop will display a histogram illustrating the distribution of colors in an image. (A lot of digital cameras will show you this, too.) The histogram looks something like this:

The right side of the histogram illustrates the distribution of light colors in your image and the left side illustrates the distribution of dark colors. If you view the shape in the histogram as a mountain, ideally you will see the base of the mountain on both sides. If the mountain is cut off on either side, then your image is missing some of the color data. In that silhouette image above? The silhouetted image cannot be edited very much because the lighter color data for the image is permanently lost.

To play with the color levels, there are several options. Regardless, you need to get to the screen above. You do that by either going to Image … Adjustments … Levels or by selecting the icon that looks like a black and white cookie in your Layers palette .

Your layers palette looks like this:

If you don’t see that, you can pull it up by going to Window … Layers.

Once you go to the levels window (which, again, you get to either by Image … Adjustments … Levels or by selecting the icon that looks like a black and white cookie), you can edit your image by:

Click the “Auto” button.
Move the small triangle in the slider beneath the histogram. Ideally the right and left slider will be the base of the “mountain” on their respective sides. You can move all three triangles as much as you would like. You will see your image get lighter and darker, sometimes to the point of all black or all white.
The last option is slightly more complicated but gives you more control. On the levels window you will see a drop-down that says RGB. By default you are seeing a histogram that illustrates all shades in one graph. You can also see them individually for red, green and blue by selecting the appropriate color from the drop-down. Then you can adjust the distribution of light and dark for just your greens, blues and / or reds. This can be particularly useful if you have an image that is particularly dense in one of those colors, such as an outdoor picture with lots of greenery.

Want to start from the beginning? View class 1, which reviews the Photoshop toolbar. View Class 2, which reviews pictures for print versus web. View Class 3, which explores cropping and resizing images.

As always, see something you disagree with or think is just plain wrong? Tell me! Seriously – I want to know.