Photoshop cs5 missing manual_9 pot

Then choose Insert Menu Item from the Actions panel’s menu and, in the resulting dialog box, select the item and then click OK.. If the menu item pops open a dialog box, Photoshop won’t

Managing ActionsManaging Actions

If you don’t get your action quite right the first time (which is perfectly normal when

you’re starting out), you can go back and edit it; though, honestly, it’s usually easier

to start over from scratch That said, the Actions panel’s menu has a few commands

that can help you whip misbehaving actions into shape:

• Record Again When you choose this option, Photoshop runs through all the

steps in the action and opens all the dialog boxes associated with them so you

can adjust their settings

• Insert Menu Item For some unknown reason, you can’t record any items in the

View and Window menus when you’re creating an action, but you can insert

them—or any other menu item—using this command, either while you record

the action or after Simply select the step directly above where you want the

menu item to go, or, if you want to insert the menu item at the end of the

ac-tion, select the action’s name Then choose Insert Menu Item from the Actions

panel’s menu and, in the resulting dialog box, select the item and then click OK

If the menu item pops open a dialog box, Photoshop won’t record any settings,

so you’ll have to enter them when you run the action

Tip: There’s no way for you or anyone else running an action to turn off a dialog box that you’ve added

using the Insert Menu Item command (though you can turn off other action dialog boxes—see page 751),

so it’s a good way to force whoever is running the action to enter a particular menu’s settings You can use

this command to insert any menu item you want, even ones like a feather radius that you can record in an

action.

• Insert Stop Use this command to pause the action so you can do something

that you can’t record, like paint with the Brush tool or draw with the Pen tool

To add a stop after a particular step, select the step in the Actions panel and

then choose Insert Stop (see Figure 18-6) You can even include a dialog box

that says what to do next, like “Use the Brush tool to paint a happy face now”

When you’re running an action and come across a stop, after you’ve done what

you need to do, click the Play button in the Actions panel to run the rest of the

action’s steps

• Insert Path Photoshop can’t record the act of drawing a path, but you can use

this command to insert a path you’ve already drawn Just open the Paths panel

(page 550), select the one you want, and then choose this command

• Action Options This command opens the Action Options dialog box so you

can edit the action’s name, keyboard shortcut, and color (this maneuver works

on custom actions as well as built-in ones) You can also open this dialog box by

Option-double-clicking (Alt+double-clicking on a PC) the action or rename an

action by double-clicking its name in the Actions panel

Managing Actions

Figure 18-6:

Top: When you insert a stop, you can include instructions for the person running the action; you can type whatever you want The message appears when that per- son triggers the action’s stop point If you want to let folks continue with the action after they’ve preformed the step described

by the message, turn on the Allow Continue checkbox.

Bottom: Here’s what you see when you run the action and hit the stop point Since

a continue button wasn’t included, your only choice is to click Stop After you’ve per- formed the part that couldn’t be recorded, click the Action panel’s Play button to finish the action.

• Playback Options If you can’t figure out where an action has gone haywire, you

can make Photoshop play the action more slowly by selecting this command In the resulting dialog box, you can choose Accelerated (normal speed), Step By Step (Photoshop completes each step and refreshes the screen before going to the next step), or “Pause For _ Seconds” (Photoshop pauses between each step for the number of seconds you specify)

Editing Actions

You can add, delete, or tweak an action’s steps anytime you’d like, as well as scoot them around within the Actions panel (just like Layers) To rearrange the actions in your Actions panel, just drag an action to a new position in the panel When you see

a highlighted line where you want it to go, release your mouse button Rearranging actions is helpful when you want to keep certain actions together so they’re easier to spot (handy when you’re in Button mode [page 752]) You can also drag and drop

steps within an action to rearrange them To change an action’s settings (such as the

feather amount), just double-click the relevant step while an image is open, enter a new amount in the resulting dialog box, and then click OK

Note: Clicking OK actually runs the command associated with the dialog box (feathering a selection,

for example), but you can undo it by pressing �-Z (Ctrl+Z on a PC) Photoshop still remembers the new settings you entered and will use them the next time you run that action.

Sharing Actions

You can also add steps to an action—just select the step that comes before the one

you want to add and click the Record button Perform the new steps you want to

add, and then click the Stop button Photoshop adds the new steps below the one

you first selected

To get rid of a step, action, or set of actions, just select what you want to delete and

drag it onto the trash can icon at the bottom of the Actions panel You can also

se-lect items and then Option-click (Alt-click on a PC) the Delete button to bypass the

“Are you sure?” dialog box To do a thorough spring cleaning of your Actions panel,

choose Clear All Actions from the Actions panel’s menu and, when Photoshop asks

if you really want to delete everything (including Photoshop’s built-in Default

Ac-tions set), click OK

Tip: To get the Default Actions set back after using the Clear All Actions option, just choose Reset Actions

from the Actions panel’s menu Whew!

Creating Droplets

Droplets are actions that you trigger by dragging and dropping files onto special

icons As self-contained mini-applications, they can live outside Photoshop on your

desktop, as aliases (pointer files) in your Dock (or taskbar on a PC), or on someone

else’s computer

It’s easy to create a droplet from an action; just follow these steps:

1 Trot over to the Actions panel and select an existing action.

You can’t put the cart before the horse! To make a droplet, you’ve got to record

the action first

2 Choose File➝Automate➝Create Droplet.

The resulting dialog box looks like the Batch dialog box shown in Figure 18-5

Click the Choose button at the top to tell Photoshop where to save your droplet

and then set the other options according to the advice on pages 758–760

3 Click OK when you’re finished.

Your droplet (which looks like the one shown in Figure 18-7, top) appears

wher-ever you specified

Sharing Actions

When it comes to actions, folks love to share—there are tons of actions floating

around on the Web Most are free (though you’ll probably have to register with the

website you’re downloading from), but you have to pay for the more useful and

cre-ative ones Sharing actions is pretty easy; the only requirement is that you save your

actions as a set (page 765) before uploading them to a website

Sharing Actions

Figure 18-7:

Top: Your droplet looks like a big, fat blue arrow.

Bottom: To use a droplet, drag and drop a file or folder on top of its icon If Photoshop isn’t currently running, it launches automatically.

If you’re using a Mac, you need Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) or higher

to use Droplets in 64-bit mode If you’re using an earlier version of

OS X, you can always launch Photoshop in 32-bit mode instead (the box on page 6 tells you how).

Loading Actions

One of the best action resources is the Adobe Studio Exchange website (www.adobe com/exchange) Others include Action Central (www.atncentral.com), PanosFX (www.panosfx.com), and ActionFx (www.actionfx.com) (These sites are also great

resources for brushes, textures, and so on.) Most of these sites arrange their goodies

by program, so you’ll have to choose Photoshop and then Actions Downloading and analyzing actions made by other folks is a fantastic way for you to learn what’s possible That said, actions that are short and sweet—ones that expand your canvas, add new layers and fill it with white, and so on—can be even more useful than more complex ones because you’ll use ’em more often

FReQUeNtLY ASKed QUeStIoN

Sharing Droplets

I want to send my extra special Mac droplet to a Windows

computer Is that legal?

Sure! It’s within your Photoshop User Bill of Rights to share

droplets between computers with different operating

sys-tems; however, the droplet won’t work unless you know

these secrets:

• Save the droplet with a exe extension, which tells

a Windows computer that it’s an executable file—in

other words, a program you can run (this extension

isn’t necessary on a Mac).

• If you created the droplet on a Windows computer and want to move it to a Mac, drag it onto the Pho- toshop CS5 icon to make Photoshop update it so it works on the Mac.

• File name references aren’t supported between ating systems, so if your action includes an Open or Save As step that references a specific file, the action pauses and demands the file from the poor soul who’s using the droplet If that happens to you, find and se- lect the file Photoshop is asking for so the droplet can work just like it did on the computer it came from.

oper-Sharing Actions

Here’s how to load somebody else’s action:

1 Download the action or action set to your computer.

What you’re actually downloading is an ATN file Save it somewhere you’ll

re-member (like on your desktop)

2 Drag and drop the action into an empty Photoshop window (no documents

open), as shown in Figure 18-8.

You can also load a new action by choosing Load Action from the Actions

pan-el’s menu, by double-clicking the ATN file, or by right-clicking the ATN file and

choosing Open With➝Adobe Photoshop CS5 No matter which method you

use, it appears in your Actions panel

Figure 18-8:

You can quickly load

an action by dragging and dropping the ATN file into the Pho- toshop window You won’t see anything happen, but it shows

up in your Actions panel instantly.

3 Select the action and give it a whirl.

Test drive your new action by opening an image, selecting the action, and then

pressing the Play button That’s the only way to find out whether it’s lovely or

lame

Saving Your Actions

Photoshop temporarily stores the actions you create in a special spot on your hard

drive If you reinstall or upgrade the program, there’s a pretty good chance your

ac-tions will get zapped in the process If you’ve grown fond of them, you need to save

them so you can back them up outside the Photoshop application folder That way,

you can reload them if they accidentally get deleted As a bonus, once you save your

actions, you can share them with others by uploading them to sites like Adobe

Stu-dio Exchange, discussed in the previous section

Pre-be sure to pick the same spot or you’ll end up with multiple versions of the tion set.

ac-3 Click Save.

Photoshop creates an ATN file that you can move between computers, back up

to an external hard drive, or share with the world via the Web

Tip: On the Mac, Photoshop saves your actions in Home/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe

Photoshop CS5/Presets/Actions On a Windows computer, it saves them in C:\Users\[your user name]\ AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 Settings\Presets\Actions In Windows 7, the path is Desktop\Libraries\[your user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Presets\Actions

(You can also use the Windows “Save in” pop-up menu in the Save dialog box to see where Photoshop hides your actions.)

19

Beyond Photoshop:

Plug-Ins

With enough patience, practice, and keyboard shortcuts burned into your

brain, you can get smokin’ fast in Photoshop But you’ll never be as fast as

a computer As you’ve learned, some things—like creating complex

selec-tions, correcting colors, retouching skin extensively, and so on—are darned difficult,

so they’re going to take you a long time no matter how fast you get

That’s where plug-ins come in handy Think of them as helper programs that run

inside Photoshop (though a few run outside Photoshop, too) and let you do the hard

stuff faster You can get plug-ins from all kinds of websites, and they range from free

to pricey The really good ones give you amazing results in seconds, rather than the

hours it would take to do the same thing yourself (if you can do it at all) Plus, the

newer ones do their thing on a separate layer and, in some cases, run as Smart Filters

(page 634), so you don’t even have to duplicate your original layer first Nice!

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to add and remove these little jewels, as well as how

to store them somewhere other than your Photoshop CS5 folder (it’s safer that way)

You’ll also be introduced to some of the most amazing plug-ins on the market

to-day—the crème de la crème—that run on Macs and PCs.

Adding and Removing Plug-Ins

To install a plug-in on a Mac, download it or copy it from the installer disc it shipped

with and then drag it from wherever it’s saved on your computer into the Plug-ins

folder (see Figure 19-1, top): Adobe Photoshop CS5/Presets/Plug-ins (You can also

store plug-ins elsewhere as discussed on page 37.) On a PC, download the plug-in or

copy it from the installer disc It should be an exe (executable) file, so you can run

it to install a program Simply find the file on your computer and double-click it

it into Photoshop’s Plug-ins folder (top)

or by using the staller provided by the folks who made the plug-in (bottom) On

in-a PC, simply run the plug-in’s exe file.

If you have trouble installing a plug-in, contact the person or company who created

it for help.

After you install the plug-in, quit Photoshop if it’s running (File➝Quit [File➝Exit

on a PC]) and then relaunch it When Photoshop reopens, you should see the

plug-in listed at the bottom of the Filter menu

Note: If a plug-in deals with batch processing (modifying multiple files at once), you may find it in the

File➝Automate menu instead of the Filter menu If it deals with selections or masking (page 113), you may find it lurking in the Select menu.

Some plug-ins come with an installer (like the one in Figure 19-1, bottom), which may also include an uninstaller (handy if you want to get rid of the plug-in) To remove a plug-in, open your Plug-Ins folder and drag it to the Trash (On a PC running Win-dows 7, Start➝Control Panel➝Programs➝“Uninstall a program”; Windows Vista,

go to Start➝Control Panel➝Classic View➝“Programs and Features”➝“Uninstall a program” Then select the plug-in from the list of programs and click Uninstall The next time you launch Photoshop, you’ll see neither hide nor hair of the banished plug-in

Managing Plug-Ins

Now that Photoshop CS5 runs in 64-bit mode on both the Mac and the PC (see

page 6), you may find some of your plug-ins are incompatible with it and are

miss-ing from Photoshop’s menus even after you install them Rest assured that plug-in

companies are hard at work making them 64-bit compatible In the meantime, you

may need to launch Photoshop in 32-bit mode in order to make them work (see the

box on page 6 to learn how)

Note: When you install Photoshop on a PC, you get two full versions of the program in two separate

fold-ers: one for 32-bit mode and another for 64-bit mode (located in Program Files➝Adobe➝Photoshop C5

and Program Files (x86)➝Adobe➝Photoshop CS5, respectively) They don’t share plug-ins like the Mac

version does, so each version has its own set of plug-ins in its respective folder All this means you need

to know before you install whether the plug-in works in one mode or the other, or else you run the risk of

installing it into the wrong plug-in folder (As if there wasn’t enough to worry about already!)

Managing Plug-Ins

Photoshop expects you to store plug-ins in its Plug-ins folder, so that’s where it looks

each time you launch the program That’s all well and good, but there’s an awfully

good chance your plug-ins will get zapped if you upgrade to a new version of

Photo-shop or reinstall the current one The same is true of actions (Chapter 18), brushes

(Chapter 12), and so on (See online Appendix B for more on backing up those extra

goodies.)

To protect your precious plug-ins, it’s wise to store them somewhere else, but you have

to tell Photoshop where you put them by choosing

Photoshop➝Preferences➝Plug-Ins (Edit➝Preferences➝Plug-Photoshop➝Preferences➝Plug-Ins on a PC) Turn on the Additional Plug-Photoshop➝Preferences➝Plug-Ins Folder

checkbox and then click Choose to navigate to the folder where you’ve decided to

store your plug-ins Click OK when you’re finished, drag the plug-ins you want to

move from Photoshop’s Plug-Ins folder (shown in Figure 19-1) to the location you

just picked, and then relaunch Photoshop to make your changes take effect

Pho-toshop won’t stop peeking inside the original plug-ins folder; it just takes a gander

inside the new folder, too

Note: If Photoshop starts acting weird after you install a plug-in, you can temporarily disable the plug-in

to see if it’s the culprit by finding it on your hard drive and adding a tilde (~) to the beginning of its file

name Some manufacturers install their plug-ins in a new folder; for example, you’ll find a folder called

Mask Pro inside your Plug-Ins folder In that case, you can put the tilde at the beginning of the folder’s

name to disable everything inside Either way, adding the tilde means the plug-in won’t load the next

time you launch Photoshop When you want the plug-in to load again, just delete the tilde and relaunch

Photoshop.

In the following pages, you’ll find brief descriptions of some of the most amazing

plug-ins on the market Each one performs its own special brand of magic like noise

removal, color enhancement, or special effects—one even turns your Photoshop

document into a fully functional web page!

Noise Reducers

These plug-ins range in price from $70 to $500, but don’t let that scare you; you can find tons of cheaper (and even free) offerings on the Web (though you may very well get what you pay for) Don’t be alarmed if you don’t see your favorite plug-in in the following list—it’s simply impossible to list them all here

FReQUeNtLY ASKed QUeStIoN

Dude, Where’s My Plug-In?

Help! I don’t see my plug-in in the Filter menu Did it load

or what?

Peace, dear Grasshopper You can find out whether your

plug-in loaded in a couple of ways.

When Photoshop encounters a plug-in that won’t load, it

presents you with a dialog box that says, “One or more

plug-ins are currently not available on your system For

details, see Help➝System Info.” To see why the plug-in

didn’t load, choose Help➝System Info and scroll down

in the resulting dialog box until you see the plug-in in

question, along with Photoshop’s oh-so-brief explanation

of what went wrong For example, if you try to learn why

the Variations adjustment (page 371) didn’t load in 64-bit

mode, you’ll see the following line of text: “Variations NO

VERSION - 32-bit plug-in not supported in 64-bit - next to

the text: ‘Variations.plugin’.”

In CS5, if a plug-in doesn’t load, you’ve more likely than

not encountered one that only works in 32-bit mode In

that case, if you’re on a PC you need to make sure you’ve installed it into the right program folder (see the box on page 6) If you’re on the Mac, check out the box on page 6

to learn how to launch Photoshop in 32-bit mode

If you don’t get the “plug-in didn’t load” message and your

plug-in is still missing, take a peek in other menus, such

as Select or File➝Automate to see if it ended up in there You can also look at the list of loaded plug-ins by choos- ing Photoshop➝About Plug-In (Help➝About Plug-In on

a PC) Because so many Photoshop features are actually plug-ins (most filters, import and export commands, and

so on), the list is rather long, so you may need to scroll to see if Photoshop loaded the one in question.

If your plug-in is on the list but isn’t loading, about the only thing you can do is install a fresh copy of it or, better yet, see if a newer version is available from the developer’s website Keep in mind that some plug-ins continue to work with newer versions of Photoshop, but some don’t.

Note: For a comprehensive list of Photoshop plug-ins, visit

www.adobe.com/products/plugins/photo-shop And why, you might wonder, are some of them called “third-party” plug-ins? Because they’re made

by someone other than Adobe!

Noise Reducers

Noiseware

This plug-in has quickly become the noise reducer of choice for professional

pho-tographers Instead of blurring the whole image to make the noise less visible,

Noise-ware analyzes the image and reduces noise only in the parts of the image that really

need it You also get a handy before-and-after view so you can see what it did It’s

available from www.imagenomic.com and costs around $50.

Tip: You can often get plug-ins much cheaper if you buy them bundled together Be sure to look for

special deals on the developer’s website.

Dfine

This plug-in also reduces the noise in your image in a very simple and

nondestruc-tive way When you launch it and click its Measure button, Dfine scours your image

for noise in areas without much detail (where noise is easiest to see) Start by trying

the factory setting and then increase or decrease the noise-reduction level using the

sliders (see Figure 19-2) When you find a setting you like, click OK to make Dfine

make a copy of the currently selected layer and apply the noise reduction to the

du-plicate instead of the original

Figure 19-2:

Dfine’s handy screen view lets you see how much noise the plug-in removes from your image before you commit

split-to the change Here you see the original image on the left side

of the red vertical line and the result on the right.

Thanks to Nik Software’s amazing control points technology, Dfine lets you reduce

noise in certain areas of your image without making a mask It also figures out which

kind of camera you used to take the photo and then applies the right amount of noise

Making Selections

and Masking

reduction for your particular model (which makes sense because your camera is what introduced noise in the first place) You can buy Dfine for $100, but it’s cheaper

if you buy it along with other Nik products, like Sharpener Pro, Color Efex Pro,

Vi-veza, and more (www.niksoftware.com).

Note: One nice thing about Nik Software’s plug-ins is that they all use the same window layout; so, once

you learn how to use one, you can easily use ‘em all.

Noise Ninja

Long considered the gold standard of noise-reduction software (though the newer Noiseware may have changed that), photographers and newspapers have used this plug-in for years It helps reduce noise (speckled imperfections) and grain (textured imperfections) while preserving details It can tackle 16-bit images (see the box on page 45), do batch processing, and work as a Smart Filter (page 634) It’ll set you

back about $80 (www.picturecode.com).

Making Selections and Masking

As you’ve learned in previous chapters, selecting stuff like hair and fur is really hard Sure, you can learn some tricks, but a plug-in specifically designed for that task can make your life a heck of a lot easier and save you tons of time That said, you’ll need

a bit of patience when you start working with masking plug-ins because they’re not for the faint of heart With practice, though, you can use them to create selections you just can’t make any other way

Note: Adobe put a lot of work into improving the Refine Edge command in Photoshop CS5 So before

you plunk down cold hard cash on a masking plug-in, make sure you’re up to speed on the new ments discussed starting on page 166.

enhance-Fluid Mask

Fluid Mask is a powerful plug-in that helps make easier work of masking around complex areas like hair and fur As soon as you open Fluid Mask, it analyzes your image and marks what it thinks are edges with blue lines (see Figure 19-3) so you can decide which edges you want to keep and which ones you want to zap and then create a cutout of your image to send back to Photoshop to use as a mask You can also save your project and return to it later—a nice touch Fluid Mask costs about

$150 (www.vertustech.com).

Making Selections and Masking

Figure 19-3:

These blue lines mark the edges that Fluid Mask found in the image If you use a combination of the plug-in’s tools (on the left), you can mark areas you want to keep and ones you want to throw away.

Mask Pro

Mask Pro helps you pick the precise colors you want to keep or remove as you build

image masks It gives you two eyedroppers to work with: Use one to select colors you

want to keep and the other to select colors you want to throw away (see Figure 19-4)

Then, you can use its Magic Brush to paint away the background while the program

helps you along by referring to the Keep and Drop color palettes you made

Mask Pro can also extract partial color from a pixel, leaving you with a partially

transparent pixel—important when you’re selecting hair or fur (the edges are so soft

that they have to be partially see-through to blend in with a new background) You

can also view the image in mask mode, which helps you see what the selection looks

like because it’s displayed in shades of gray (just like a layer or channel mask) Mask

Pro can work with 16-bit images and works as a Smart Filter though you have to turn

the layer into a Smart Object first (see page 126); otherwise, the plug-in deletes the

selected pixels as soon as you apply it It costs around $160, though it’s cheaper if you

buy it as part of a bundle (www.ononesoftware.com).

Tip: When you install an onOne Software plug-in like Mask Pro, it shows up in the Filter menu and in a

brand-new menu between Window and Help called “onOne”.

Color Correction and

Enhancement

Figure 19-4:

Because masking plug-ins are inherently complex, the folks who created Mask Pro help you get

up to speed by including

“Show Me How” videos and tips (shown here).

Color Correction and Enhancement

The plug-ins in this category can spruce up or fix the color in your images and produce a startling array of special effects while they’re at it Read on for the scoop!

Viveza

As you’ve learned in previous chapters, before you adjust the color of a specific part

of your image, you need to select it Not so with Viveza Since this plug-in made its debut in early 2008, it has revolutionized selective color and light adjustments If you

mark the areas you want to change with control points (the small gray circles shown

in Figure 19-5), you can adjust the saturation, brightness, and contrast of those areas

at warp speed And Viveza performs its magic on a duplicate layer, so you don’t have

to worry about it destroying your original image It’s available from ware.com and costs around $200.

www.niksoft-Color Efex Pro

If you could buy just one plug-in, Color Efex Pro would be a darn good choice Using the same control points as other Nik Software plug-ins, this one lets you selectively apply 52 enhancement filters and over 250 effects to your images—all nondestruc-tively You can use them to enhance images in creative ways, as well as to fix color casts, smooth skin, and so on (see Figure 19-6) Drop as many control points as you want and use them to set the effect’s opacity in certain areas of your image or click the Brush button to paint the effect where you want it The price ranges from $100

for 15 filters to $300 for all 52, and it’s available from www.niksoftware.com.

Color Correction and Enhancement

Figure 19-5:

By dropping lots of control points on your image (the little gray dots), you can adjust each area’s satura- tion, brightness, and contrast individually Notice that the con- trast and saturation

of the woman’s jeans and the grass have been increased while the man’s red shirt has been desaturated and the sky remains untouched.

PhotoTune

This plug-in lets you correct color and skin tones easily It’s actually made up of two

separate programs: ColorTune and SkinTune The ColorTune part works like an eye

exam, asking you which of two images you like better (see Figure 19-7) Through a

series of six steps based on the choices you make, ColorTune resets your black and

white points (see “Setting Target Colors” on page 368), applies curves for

bright-ness and contrast (page 406), and so on Since it’s incredibly simple, it’s great for

newbies or those who (rightly!) fear the Curves dialog box If you’re more advanced

(or brave), you can skip to the fine-tune panel and adjust the settings manually You

can also take a snapshot of your image and compare it with other versions that use

different settings

Color Correction and

Enhancement

Figure 19-6:

Top: This split-screen preview shows you before and after versions of an image This particular filter, called Bleach Bypass, creates a high- contrast grunge look (If this look interests you, head over to page 778 and read about LucisArt Pro.) Bottom: The Glamour Glow filter gives the original image (left) a seriously dreamy look (right) But because Color Efex Pro applies the effect on another layer, you can always lower its opacity

to blend it with the original.

SkinTune, the other half of PhotoTune, is designed to produce accurate skin color based on the subject’s ethnicity Just click a patch of skin and then select the person’s ethnicity from a pop-up menu (shown in Figure 19-8) SkinTune presents you with

a row of color swatches similar to that particular skin tone; just click the one that looks best to you It also zaps any color cast from the skin and removes the same cast from the rest of the photo You can take a snapshot of your image and compare

it with other versions produced with different settings, as well as save your settings and apply them to similar images later Both ColorTune and SkinTune work as Smart Filters, but you have to convert your image layer to a Smart Object first (page 126)

PhotoTune costs $160, and it’s available from www.ononesoftware.com.

Color Correction and Enhancement

Figure 19-7:

ColorTune asks you to pick the better of two images in a series

of six steps It’s by far the easiest way

to color correct your images.

Figure 19-8:

After you choose your subject’s ethnicity, you can pick from

a row of color swatches developed

by the folks at onOne Software They took countless photos

of people and sembled their skin tones into a massive database of over 400,000 different skin types That’s a lot of skin!

the result is headed to a printer or the Web You can also apply a watermark (a

par-tially transparent graphic) to your files to help protect them from copyright violators when you post them on the Web This plug-in does its thing on its own brand-new layer so it’s nondestructive, and it can also batch-process images The pro edition costs $260 and the standard edition, without the effects from Jack Davis and Kevin Kubota, costs $160 (unless you buy it as part of onOne’s Plug-In Suite) It’s available

color with a slider because you may want to shift the color a little).

With this plug-in, you can vary your image in thousands of ways by tweaking just a couple of sliders, and although you could possibly reproduce some of these effects with Photoshop, you’d never know these possibilities existed if you didn’t use this software first You can use this plug-in to tweak individual channels or work on the composite channel (page 189), and you can also blend the original back into the processed image using a slider Figure 19-9 gives you a taste of what you can do with LucisArt The pro version will set you back $595, but if you make your living work-ing with images, it’s money well spent; a light version that offers fewer settings and gives you limited control over mid-range contrast patterns and reducing scan lines is

available for $280 for the Mac and $360 for PCs (www.lucisart.com).