Photoshop CS3 for Screen Printers- P8 pps

First, the eraser tools either erase to “transparency” or to the background color or, in the case of the Magic Eraser, erase els of similar color.. This is great for screen print-ers, be

Working with Numbers

To create numbers in Photoshop, just use the keyboard to type them in

as you would any text Then, highlight the numbers and choose differentfonts to find the one that you want Figure 9-15 shows some examples.Adding numbers is done exactly the same way as adding text

Printing Numbers

There are several ways to work with numbers, and if you print a lot of them youmight want to invest in a numbering press These presses have screens on themthat are permanently set up, so it’s easy to screen print numbers when necessary.The drawback of these presses is that a client might want a specific style or font.(Take a look at the numbers on the football jerseys of professional teams; eachteam has a different “style” of number.) I don’t screen print numbers because Idon’t get a huge call for that, but if you do, creating screens and saving them forthose jobs is best When I get a job requiring numbers, I use the heat transfermachine

Figure 9-15: Adding numbers is just like adding text

In this chapter you learned practically everything there is to know aboutadding text in Photoshop Adding text is probably the thing you’ll do mostoften, as it is necessary to denote a team name, company name, product,

or business In Photoshop, you can choose from several type tools,including vertical and horizontal options Type masks can be used to cre-ate type from an underlying image or to remove pixels from the image inthe form of type The options bar offers several ways to configure thetext, and text can be molded to fit different shapes, even a circle Filtersand warp options can be used to further manipulate text and togetheroffer an unlimited number of options

There are three eraser tools in the toolbox: the Eraser tool, the ground Eraser tool, and the Magic Eraser tool Each tool does somethingdifferent, although all do some sort of erasing, of course! You can accessthem from the toolbox or by pressing E on the keyboard or Shift+E totoggle through all three Two other items, the Auto Erase option and theHistory Brush tool, can also be used to erase and will be discussed inthis chapter

Back-Before we get too deep into erasing, let’s make sure you understand

a couple of things First, the eraser tools either erase to “transparency”

or to the background color or, in the case of the Magic Eraser, erase els of similar color Erasing to transparency means that they erasecompletely, all the way to nothing When you erase to transparency, youerase all the way to the checkered background, which means there’snothing on the page where you’ve erased This is great for screen print-ers, because we can erase parts of an image we don’t want on the screen.When erasing to the background color, the eraser works to erase to what-ever the background color is in an image

pix-The eraser tools aren’t just for correcting mistakes or erasing parts

of an image you don’t want, though; you can also use the eraser tools toapply effects and correct flaws in an image or design For instance, youcan use the Magic Eraser tool to erase pixels of similar color on a layerand erase to a background image layer such as a photo In this chapter,you’ll learn all of these tips and tricks!

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The Eraser Tool

The Eraser tool is the most basic of erasers To use this tool you simplyclick and drag, kind of like using a pencil eraser If you are working on anormal layer and there’s nothing underneath where you are erasing, iterases to transparency If you are working on the background layer or on

a layer with locked transparency, it’ll erase to the background color Ifyou are working on a file with multiple layers, the Eraser tool erasesitems on the selected layer and will not erase anything from the areaunderneath on other layers In the following project, you’ll do each ofthese kinds of erasing

Project 10-1: Using the Eraser Tool to Create a Sign or Logo

In this project, you’ll learn how to use the Eraser tool, and also learnwhat happens when you use the tool on a file that has one layer as well asone with multiple layers We’ll start with a single photo of a plate with afish design painted on it This picture came from a client who had paintedthe plate and wanted it in a new logo for a sign she wanted printed forher storefront We use the Eraser tool to erase to transparency, and then

we move the fish to another file, which creates a new file with two ers We clean up the image by using the Eraser tool again By the timeyou work through this project, you’ll be an expert on the Eraser tool!

lay-1 Open the file Plate.jpg from the Chapter 10 folder on the companion

CD

2 Open the Layers palette from Window>Layers Notice in the

Lay-ers palette that the layer is locked and is named Background

3 Choose the Eraser tool from the toolbox.

4 From the foreground and background color area of the toolbox, clickthe black and white squares to change the colors to their default col-ors of black and white Remember, when erasing on a backgroundlayer or a locked layer, the Eraser tool will erase to the backgroundcolor

5 From the options bar, click the down arrow next to the Brush andreset the brush library through the additional options in this palette.

Click OK.

6 Choose Brush number 13.

7 Verify that the mode is Brush, that the Opacity setting is 100 cent, and that Flow is at 100 percent Change them if needed using

per-their drop-down lists

8 Click and drag inside the fish’s eye to erase the color and the eye.The colors in the eye will be replaced with white Change Opacity to

50 percent, and then do the same with the fish’s lips.

9 Double-click on the background layer in the Layers palette In the

New Layer dialog box, click OK The layer is now changed from a

locked background layer to a normal layer Doing so will allow us touse the Eraser tool and erase to transparency instead of to the back-ground color

10 With the Eraser tool still chosen, change Opacity back to 100

percent

11 Click and drag outside the fish to erase the blue part of the plate.Notice now that the Eraser tool erases to transparency, not to thebackground color of white Continue dragging and erasing until theonly thing left is the fish Try to erase only the plate, not the wallbehind it You’ll erase the wall in the next step

12 From the toolbox, choose the Magic Eraser tool.

13 Make sure Tolerance is set to 32 in the options bar and that uous is checked (there will be more on this later), and click once

Contig-above the plate Notice that erasing is done much faster than withthe Eraser tool

14 Click with the Magic Eraser tool a few more times to get rid of all ofthe color that is outside the fish

15 Use the Eraser tool one more time to do any touching up The finalresult is shown in Figure 10-1

There’s nothing in the image now except the fish This fish can be moved

or pasted into another file and have any background applied to it Thebackground might be an image or a picture of a fish tank, or it could beleft transparent to be placed on a storefront window, T-shirt, or tote.Whatever the case, using the Eraser tool is a great way to get rid ofunwanted areas of an image

Just for kicks (and there is more on this later, too) select the HistoryBrush tool ( ) from the toolbox or press Shift+Y to toggle to it Using

a small brush, like Brush 13, click and drag over the eye you turnedwhite earlier The eye reappears! This is because the History Brush actslike another sort of eraser; it erases what you’ve done to an image andreturns it to its original state!

Now, let’s actually apply what we’ve done by moving this fish toanother file

1 With the fish file open that you’ve been working on, open the

Palm.jpg file from the Chapter 10 folder of the companion CD.

(If you did not work through the previous exercise, the file

FishCutout.psd is available from the Chapter 10 folder on the CD.)

Figure 10-1: Using the eraser tools

2 Resize the windows so both files can be seen.

3 Click on the title bar of the fish file to make it the active file

4 Choose the Move tool from the toolbox.

5 Click on the fish and drag it to the Palm.jpg picture

6 If necessary, choose the Eraser tool again and clean up the fishyou’ve added by removing any parts of the background you didn’t getthe first time

7 From the Layers palette, right-click on Layer 1 and choose cate Layer Click OK in the Duplicate Layer dialog box.

Dupli-8 Select the Move tool and click and drag the original fish You’ll drag

its copy Drag the copy to another area of the image

9 Use the Eraser tool again if needed to clean up the image of the newfish

10 Add text to finish out the sign, as shown in Figure 10-2

You could also add a couple of lines with the Pencil tool to simulate a fishtank, as well as different text Now, instead of having a single picture of aplate with a fish on it, I’ve got a sign or a T-shirt design for a fish shop!The final copy of this file, entitled Fish Final.psd, is on the CD in theChapter 10 folder

Figure 10-2: Moving the image to a new file

Project 10-2: Using the Eraser to Clean Up a Client’s JPEG ImageThe Eraser tool can be used on JPEGs and GIFs you receive from clients

to clean up a file, remove unwanted areas, or even replace text times a client will come into our shop with a JPEG file they used lastyear (with another print shop), and they want the same thing this yearonly with different text and/or other artwork Although you would thinkthat a single layered image such as this would be difficult to edit, there’s

Often-a neOften-at little trick you cOften-an do with the ErOften-aser tool thOften-at once leOften-arned, willbecome one of your favorite editing tools

The problem with JPEGs is that Photoshop and other programs look at it

the same way it looks at a photograph or scanned image You can’t open aJPEG, click on the type tool, and change the text; it just doesn’t work that

way You’ll get a lot of JPEGs because they e-mail easily and fit on floppy

disks

When working on a file made up of specific colors, you can use the dropper to match that color as the background color, and then use the

Eye-Eraser tool to “erase” to that color Doing so allows you to remove items

in an image that you don’t want, even if it’s a single layer image Figure10-3 shows a before and after example Keep in mind that this is a singlelayered JPEG image from a client, and this client wants to remove theribbon from the design and change the year If you didn’t know this trick,you’d have to recreate the image from scratch, since cropping would betoo difficult for this file

To perform this trick on this file and files that are similar:

1 Open the file Masquerade Ball.jpg from the Chapter 10 folder on

4 Click OK in the Color Picker dialog box.

5 Choose the Eraser tool.

6 Pick a brush from the options bar for erasing

7 Click and drag to erase the date and the ribbons It will erase to thenew background color, which essentially removes the extraneousdata (Now you can add the new year!)

This trick can be used on photographs too For instance, consider a photo

of a person standing on a beach with grass sticking up around them Youcan use this same trick to match the sand’s color and erase the grass It’s

a great way to touch up a photo

Figure 10-3: Before and after JPEG files

The Background Eraser Tool

The Background Eraser tool erases to either transparency or the ground color the same way the Eraser tool does The Background Eraserhas some additional options, though The Background Eraser can be con-figured to sense edges of high contrast, such as a figure, animal, person,etc.—perhaps a person standing in front of a scene or background of highcontrast Using this tool, you can remove the background to transparency

back-so that you can place the perback-son or object in another file or in front ofanother background (You could even put your brother’s head on thepresident’s body if you wanted!) The Background Eraser tool also

ignores any locked transparency settings on a layer, making it easier toperform erasures

Words You’ll Need to Know

There are a few new words you’ll see when using this tool, and you’ll seethese same words again when you use brushes for other applications.You can see all of these words by choosing the Background Eraser tooland looking at the options bar Open the Brush pop-up palette to see thebrush options (the first seven bullets listed here)

n Diameter: Controls the size of the brush and can be set using the

slider or by typing in a number

n Hardness: Controls a brush’s hard center and can be set using the

slider or by typing in a number A higher Hardness setting makes thebrushstroke darker with harder edges; lower this number for a softereffect

n Spacing: Controls the distance between the brushstrokes when

using a brush Increasing the spacing creates a skipping effect,decreasing the spacing creates less of a skipping effect (or none if set

to 0)

n Angle: Controls the angle of the brushstroke Angling creates a

calli-graphic look

n Roundness: Controls how round the stroke will be A setting of 100

percent creates a circular brushstroke; 0 percent creates a linearbrushstroke

n Size: Controls how size should be configured if using a tablet or

sty-lus pen for drawing The default is set to Off

n Tolerance: Controls how the tolerance should be set for drawing

when using a pressure-sensitive digitizing tablet

From the options bar:

n Limits Discontiguous: Use this setting to erase the sampled color

whenever it appears under the brush while you drag, whether or notthe area of color is connected or next to another area

n Limits Contiguous: Use this setting to erase the sampled color

whenever it appears under the brush while you drag, only if the colorareas are connected to each other

n Limits Find Edges: Use this setting to erase the sampled color

under the brush while you drag and preserve the edges of any otherimage or item in the area where erasing is occurring

n Tolerance: The default setting works best in many cases Tolerance

allows you to set how you want the eraser to erase and how much toerase while dragging Lower the number to tighten up how many col-ors will be erased or when colors are similar; increase the number toerase a broader range of colors or when colors are dissimilar

n Protect Foreground Color: If you do not want to erase any area of

the image that contains the foreground color, check this box

n Sampling Continuous: Select this option to erase colors that are

sampled as you drag The sampling color will change as you dragover various colors

n Sampling Once: Select to erase colors that match only the first

place you click This erases only the color that was sampled whenyou first click on the image and will not continuously sample whiledragging

n Sampling Background Swatch: Select to erase only colors that

match the background color

With these new words added to your vocabulary, you’re ready to do someerasing!

Using the Background Eraser

To use the Background Eraser tool, perform the following steps (you canuse the Masquerade Ball.jpg file if you want):

1 From the Layers palette, click on the layer that contains the itemsyou want to erase If there is only one layer, this isn’t necessary

2 Select the Background Eraser tool.

3 Open the Brush pop-up palette in the options bar and configure thesettings to define what type of brush you’d like to erase with Seethe list in the previous section for a description of each option

4 Choose a Limits mode for erasing Experiment with the variousoptions

5 Choose a Tolerance level and experiment with different options

6 Choose a Sampling option and experiment with different options

As you can see, erasing using this tool is the same as erasing with theEraser tool, except there are more options You can erase to a specifiedcolor using a sample of the image itself, or you can erase continuously.Tolerance can be set, as can brush size and limits This is a very power-ful tool Be sure to work through the last example and try all of theoptions so you have a full understanding of each option

The Magic Eraser Tool

The Magic Eraser tool doesn’t work by clicking and dragging as theother two eraser tools do This tool works with a single click of themouse The Magic Eraser tool erases color based on a sample takenwhere you click and acts like the Paint Bucket tool It can be used to editboth large and small areas of color with only a single click

The Magic Eraser tool works best when there are highly contrastingedges in an image When erasing on a background layer or on a layerwith locked transparency, erasing is done down to the background color.Otherwise, the Magic Eraser erases to transparency

1 Open the file Fish Final.psd from the Chapter 10 folder on the

com-panion CD

2 Click on the Magic Eraser tool.

3 Open the Layers palette from Window>Layers.

4 Click on the Background layer in the Layers palette to choose it.

5 Choose the Magic Eraser tool from the toolbox.

6 Verify in the options bar (and change if necessary) that the Tolerance

is set to 32, Anti-alias is checked, Contiguous is checked, Use All Layers is not checked, and Opacity is set to 100 percent.

7 Click inside the image on the blue part that represents the water Youcan see this part clearly in Figure 10-4 Notice that there are fourareas to click to get rid of all of the water When finished, the bluearea in the image will be transparent

8 You could put a frame around this now using the Custom Shape tool,and then use the image on a blue coffee mug, blue T-shirt, blue totebag, etc., letting the color of the ware take over as the color of thewater

You’ll discover lots of uses for all of these eraser tools if you practicewith them a while and on different files If you don’t have any files yet,practice on the sample files that come with Adobe Photoshop

Figure 10-4: Using the Magic Eraser

The Auto Erase Option

The Auto Erase option is available with the Pencil tool and allows you topaint the background color over areas of the image that contain the fore-ground color In order to color or erase the foreground color using thebackground color though, you must first click on an area of the image thatcontains the foreground color before dragging If you click and drag on anarea that doesn’t contain the foreground color, then you’ll draw with theforeground color (which is the default behavior) This option only workswhen using the Pencil tool to click and drag over the foreground color in

an image

To use the Auto Erase option:

1 Open the file Masquerade Ball.jpg from the Chapter 10 folder on

the companion CD This file already has the ribbons removed, and isready to work with

2 Click the foreground color in the toolbox

3 With the Color Picker dialog box open, use the Eyedropper

(automat-ically available) to click on the green part of the image Click OK and

the foreground color in the toolbox will change to this color

4 Click the background color in the toolbox

5 With the Color Picker dialog box open, use the Eyedropper again to

click on and choose the darker purple in the image Click OK in the

Color Picker to change the background color to this shade of purple.See Figure 10-5