Photoshop 6 for Windows Bible- P6 potx

When you save your image, be sure to save in the Photoshop native format or PDF and select the Annotations check box in the Save dialog box.. To recap briefly, the best method is to choo

Figure 3-21: After adding text-based notes or audio

comments to an image, save the file in the PDF format

so that others can access the annotations when viewing

the image in Adobe Acrobat

When you save your image, be sure to save in the Photoshop native format or PDF

and select the Annotations check box in the Save dialog box Otherwise, you lose all

your notes For information on how to delete individual notes in an open image and

how to customize and import notes, skip to the section “Managing annotations.”

Voicing your opinions

If you like to speak your mind rather than put your thoughts in writing, check out

the audio annotation tool This tool works like the notes tool except that it inserts

an audio recording of your voice rather than a text message into the file Of course,

you need a microphone, speakers, and a sound card installed in your computer to

use this feature Also, Photoshop retains audio annotations only when you save the

image file using the Photoshop native format or PDF, as with text notes Be aware,

too, that audio files increase file size significantly

The audio annotation tool shares quarters with the notes tool in the toolbox

Press N to toggle between the two tools (or Shift+N, depending on the preference

you established in the General panel of the Preferences dialog box) Click in your

image at the spot where you want the icon representing your message to appear

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Photoshop 6

Note icon

Open note

When the Audio Annotation dialog box appears, click Start to begin your recordingand then talk into the microphone Click Stop when you’ve said all you have to say.Photoshop represents your audio message with a little speaker icon in the imagewindow Double-click the icon to play the message.

Managing annotations

If you’re a solo artist and the only approval of your work you need is your own, youmay not have much reason to use the notes or audio annotation tools Then again,you may be an easily distracted sort and find annotations a terrific way to remindyourself exactly what you’re trying to accomplish in an image And who’s to saythat your friends won’t love being able to hear an audio clip of your dog Binky yapping at the vacuum cleaner when they view his picture in Acrobat?

Whether you’re using annotations for fun or profit, use the following strategies tomanage audio and text annotations:

✦ Use the Font and Size controls on the Options bar to change the font and typesize in an open note

✦ Click the Color icon to change the color of the icon and title bar for any newnote you create This option comes in handy if several people will be review-ing the image and putting in their two cents’ worth You can assign a differentcolor to each author To change the color of an existing note, open the noteand click the Color icon This time, you affect only the open note — othernotes by the same author don’t change

✦ You can move and copy annotations between image windows Just click theicon and use the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands as you do to move and copyany selection

✦ If an icon blocks your view of the image, you can drag it out of the way.However, when you open the note, its window appears in the icon’s originallocation Drag the size box in the lower-right corner of an open note to shrinkthe window if necessary

✦ Choose View ➪ Show ➪ Notes to toggle the display of annotation icons on and off Alternatively, choose View ➪ Hide All and View ➪ Show All to hide and display icons and other interface elements such as selection marquees,guides, and so on

✦ To delete a single annotation, click its icon and press Delete Or right-click the icon and choose Delete Note If you want to delete all annotations, chooseDelete All Notes or click the Clear All button on the Options bar

If you send out several copies of the same image for approval, you don’t have

to open each copy individually to read the annotations Instead, open just one copy and then import the annotations from the other files Choose File ➪ Import ➪Annotations, select the files containing the annotations, and click Open Photoshopgathers up all the annotations and dumps them into your open image

Tip

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Photoshop 6

Remember to save your image in the PDF or Photoshop 6 file format to retain

annotations in a file And if you’re sending an annotated file to other people for

viewing, tell them that they need to use Adobe Acrobat 4.0 or higher to access

the annotations

Resampling and Cropping

After you bring up an image — whether you created it from scratch or opened an

existing image stored in one of the five billion formats discussed in the preceding

pages — its size and resolution are established Neither size nor resolution is set in

stone, however Photoshop provides two methods for changing the number of pixels

in an image: resampling and cropping

Resizing versus resampling

Typically, when folks talk about resizing an image, they mean enlarging or reducing

it without changing the number of pixels in the image, as demonstrated back in

Figure 3-1 By contrast, resampling an image means scaling it so the image contains

a larger or smaller number of pixels With resizing, an inverse relationship exists

between size and resolution — size increases when resolution decreases, and vice

versa But resampling affects either size or resolution independently Figure 3-22

shows an image resized and resampled to 50 percent of its original dimensions

The resampled and original images have identical resolutions, but the resized

image has twice the resolution of its companions

Resizing an image

To resize an image, use one of the techniques discussed in the “Changing the

print-ing resolution” section near the beginnprint-ing of this chapter To recap briefly, the best

method is to choose Image ➪ Image Size, turn off the Resample Image check box,

and enter a value into the Resolution option box See Figure 3-2 to refresh your

memory

Resampling an image

You also use Image ➪ Image Size to resample an image The difference is that you

leave the Resample Image check box turned on, as shown in Figure 3-23 As its

name implies, the Resample Image check box is the key to resampling

When Resample Image is selected, the Resolution value is independent of both sets

of Width and Height values (The only difference between the two sets of options is

that the top options work in pixels and the bottom options work in relative units of

measure such as percent and inches.) You can increase the number of pixels in an

image by increasing any of the five values in the dialog box; you can decrease the

number of pixels by decreasing any value Photoshop stretches or shrinks the

image according to the new size specifications

Caution

Figure 3-22: An image

(top) resized (bottom left)and resampled (bottomright) down to 50 percent.The resized image sports ahigher resolution; theresampled one containsfewer pixels

At all times, you can see the new number of pixels Photoshop will assign to theimage, as well as the increased or decreased file size In Figure 3-23, for example,I’ve changed the first Width value to 56 percent The Pixel Dimensions value at

the top of the dialog box reflects my change by reading 5.12M (was 16.3M),

which shows that the file size has decreased

To calculate the pixels in the resampled image, Photoshop must use its powers

of interpolation, as explained in the “General preferences” section of Chapter 2 Theinterpolation setting defaults to the one chosen in the Preferences dialog box Butyou can also change the setting right inside the Image Size dialog box Simply selectthe desired method from the Resample Image pop-up menu Bicubic results in thesmoothest effects Bilinear is faster And Nearest Neighbor turns off interpolation

so Photoshop merely throws away the pixels it doesn’t need or duplicates pixels

to resample up

Original

Figure 3-23: With the Resample Image check box turned

on, you can modify the number of pixels in your image

Here are a few more random items you should know about resampling with the

Image Size dialog box:

✦ This may sound odd, but you generally want to avoid adding pixels When you

resample up, you’re asking Photoshop to make up details from thin air, and

the program isn’t that smart Simply put, an enlarged image almost never

looks better than the original; it merely takes up more disk space and prints

slower

✦ Resampling down, on the other hand, is a useful technique It enables you to

smooth away photo grain, halftone patterns, and other scanning artifacts

One of the most tried-and-true rules is to scan at the maximum resolution

permitted by your scanner and then resample the scan down to, say, 72 or

46 percent (with the interpolation set to Bicubic, naturally) By selecting a

round value other than 50 percent, you force Photoshop to jumble the pixels

into a regular, homogenous soup You’re left with fewer pixels, but these

remaining pixels are better And you have the added benefit that the image

takes up less space on disk

✦ To make an image tall and thin or short and fat, you must first turn off the

Constrain Proportions check box This enables you to edit the two Width

values entirely independently of the two Height values

Tip

✦ You can resample an image to match precisely the size and resolution of anyother open image While the Image Size dialog box is open, choose the name

of the image you want to match from the Window menu

✦ If you need help resampling an image to the proper size for a print job, choose Help ➪ Resize Image to bring up the Resize Image Wizard The dialogbox walks you through the process of resampling step by step It’s really forrank beginners, but you might find it helpful when you want to turn the oldbrain off and set Photoshop to autopilot (Note that Adobe uses the word

“resize” simply because it’s friendlier than “resample.” Whatever it’s called,this command does indeed resample.)

If you ever get confused inside the Image Size dialog box and you want to return

to the original size and resolution settings, press the Alt key to change the Cancelbutton to Reset Then click the Reset button to start from the beginning

Photoshop remembers the setting of the Resample Image check box and uses thissame setting the next time you open the Image Size dialog box This can trip you

up if you record an action for the Actions palette, as discussed in Chapter B onthis book’s CD-ROM Suppose that you create an action to resize images, turningResample Image off If you later resample an image — turning on Resample Image —the check box stays selected when you close the dialog box The next time you run the action, you end up resampling instead of resizing Always check the status

of the check box before you apply the Image Size command or run any actions containing the command

Cropping

Another way to change the number of pixels in an image is to crop it, which means

to clip away pixels around the edges of an image without harming the remainingpixels (The one exception occurs when you rotate a cropped image or use the new perspective crop feature, in which case Photoshop has to interpolate pixels

to account for the rotation.)Cropping enables you to focus on an element in your image For example, Figure 3-24shows a bit of urban graffiti from a Digital Stock CD I like this fellow’s face — goodchiaroscuro — but I can’t quite figure out what’s going on with this guy I mean, what’swith the screw? And is that a clown hat or what? That’s the problem with graffiti —

no art direction Luckily, I can crop around the guy’s head to delete the extraneousimage elements and hone in on his sleepy features, as shown in Figure 3-25

Version 6 offers several new, cutting-edge cropping options — har har — including the capability to crop nonrectangular selections, automatically trim away transparentareas from the borders of an image, and correct perspective effects while cropping.You can read about all these features in the upcoming sections

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Photoshop 6

Caution

Tip

Figure 3-24: This image contains too much extraneous information Where

should my eye go? I’m so confused

Figure 3-25: Cropping enables you to clean

up the background junk and focus on theessential foreground image

Changing the canvas size

One way to crop an image is to choose Image ➪ Canvas Size, which displays the

Canvas Size dialog box shown in Figure 3-26 The options in this dialog box enable

you to scale the imaginary canvas on which the image rests separately from the

image itself

Figure 3-26: Choose Image ➪

Canvas Size to crop an image or

to add empty space around theperimeter of an image

If you enlarge the canvas, Photoshop surrounds the image with a white background(assuming the background color is white) If you reduce the canvas, you crop theimage

Click inside the Anchor grid to specify the placement of the image on the new canvas For example, if you want to add space to the bottom of an image, enlargethe canvas size and then click inside the upper-middle square If you want to cropaway the upper-left corner of an image, create a smaller canvas size and then clickthe lower-right square The Anchor grid offers little arrows to show how the canvaswill shrink or grow

To shrink the canvas so that it exactly fits the image, don’t waste your time with the Canvas Size dialog box Using a nifty new command, Image ➪ Trim, you canautomatically clip away empty canvas areas on the outskirts of your image Whenyou choose the command, the dialog box shown in Figure 3-27 appears To snipaway empty canvas, select the Transparent Pixels radio button Then specify whichedges of the canvas you want to slice off by using the four Trim Away check boxes.Alternatively, you can tell Photoshop to trim the image based on the pixel color

in the top-left corner of the image or the bottom-right corner — just click the appropriate Based On radio button For example, if you have a blue stripe runningdown the left edge of your image and you select the Top Left Pixel Color radio button, Photoshop clips away the stripe No trimming occurs unless the entire edge of the image is bounded by the selected color

When you want to enlarge the canvas but aren’t concerned with making it a specificsize, try this time-saving trick: Drag with the crop tool to create a crop marquee andthen enlarge the crop marquee beyond the boundaries of the image (see the nextsection if you need help) When you press Enter to apply the crop, the canvasgrows to match the size of the crop marquee

Tip

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Photoshop 6

Figure 3-27: To quickly snip away

transparent areas from the edges

of an image, use the new Image ➪Trim command

Using the crop tool

Generally speaking, the Canvas Size command is most useful for enlarging the

canvas or shaving a few pixels off the edge of an image If you want to crop away

a large portion of an image, using the crop tool is a better choice

Press C or click the crop icon in the toolbox to activate the tool The crop tool

regains its own slot in the toolbox in Version 6, which means that you no longer

have to slog through the marquee flyout menu to select the tool And that’s just

the beginning of the changes to the crop tool You still drag with the tool to create

a rectangular marquee that surrounds the portion of the image you want to retain

But you can control what happens during and after you crop in two important ways:

✦ To help you distinguish the borders of the crop marquee, Photoshop displays

a colored, translucent overlay on the area outside the crop box — similar tothe way it indicates masked versus unmasked areas when you work in thequick mask mode Hate the overlay? Deselect the Shield Cropped Area checkbox on the Options bar You also can click the neighboring color box tochange the overlay and set the overlay opacity through the Opacity pop-upmenu Note that these controls don’t appear on the Options bar until after you create your initial crop marquee

✦ You now have the option of permanently discarding the pixels you crop or

simply hiding them from view Before you drag with the crop tool, click theDelete or Hide radio button on the Options bar to signify your preference

If you choose Hide, you can bring the hidden regions back into view by enlarging the canvas or by using the new Image ➪ Reveal All command

As you drag, you can press the spacebar to move the crop boundary temporarily

on the fly To stop moving the boundary and return to resizing it, release the

spacebar

Tip

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Photoshop 6

If you don’t get the crop marquee right the first time, you can move, scale, or rotate

it at will Here’s what you do:

✦ Drag inside the crop marquee to move it

✦ Drag one of the square handles to resize the marquee You can Shift-drag ahandle to scale the marquee proportionally (the same percentage verticallyand horizontally)

✦ Drag outside the crop marquee to rotate it, as explained in the next section.This may strike you as weird at first, but it works wonderfully

✦ Drag the origin point (labeled in Figure 3-28) to change the center of a rotation

Figure 3-28: Align the crop marquee with an obvious axis in your

image to determine the proper angle of rotation

✦ Select the Perspective check box on the Options bar, and you can drag cornerhandles to distort the image What’s the point? Well, the primary reason to usethis option is to correct convergence problems that often occur when you takepictures using a wide-angle lens Vertical structures along the edges of theimage tend to lean one way or another due to the design of the lens

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Photoshop 6

Origin point Crop marquee Handles Rotate cursor

The problem is, you can’t preview the results of your drags or undo the

distortion, which makes correcting convergence with the crop tool a

hit-or-miss proposition So I suggest that you tackle convergence problems using

the Free Transform command, covered in Chapter 12, and do your cropping

afterwards

When the marquee surrounds the exact portion of the image you want to keep,

apply the crop by pressing Enter or double-clicking inside the marquee You also

can click the OK button on the Options bar, which is the giant check mark at the

right end of the bar

If you change your mind about cropping, you can cancel the crop marquee by

pressing Escape or clicking the Cancel button, the big X next to the check mark

on the Options bar

Rotating the crop marquee

As I said, you can rotate an image by dragging outside the crop marquee Straightening

a crooked image, however, can be a little tricky I wish I had a certified check for every

time I thought I had the marquee rotated properly, only to find the image was still

crooked after I pressed Enter If this happens to you, choose Edit ➪ Undo (Ctrl+Z) and

try again Do not try using the crop tool a second time to rotate the already rotated

image If you do, Photoshop sets about interpolating between already interpolated

pixels, resulting in more lost data Every rotation gets farther away from the original

image

A better solution is to do it right the first time Locate a line or general axis in your

image that should be straight up and down Rotate the crop marquee so it aligns

exactly with this axis In Figure 3-28, I rotated my crop marquee so one edge bisects

the graffiti guy’s egg-shaped head Don’t worry, this isn’t how you want to crop the

image — you’re just using the line as a reference After you arrive at the correct

angle for the marquee, drag the handles to size and position the boundary properly

As long as you don’t drag outside the marquee, its angle remains fixed throughout

Yet another solution is to use the measure tool Just drag with the tool along the

axis you want to make vertical and note the angle (A:) value in the Info palette I

don’t like this technique as much because it requires you to do some unnatural

math — depending on how you drag, you may have to subtract 90 degrees from the

A: value or subtract the A: value from 90 degrees Then you keep an eye on the Info

palette and rotate until you get an A: value that matches the answer to the previous

equation If you like math, great If not, it’s much simpler to use the technique I

suggested in the preceding paragraph

Tip

Cropping an image to match another

There are two ways to crop an image so it matches the size and resolution ofanother image:

✦ Bring the image you want to crop forward and choose Image ➪ Canvas Size.Then, while inside the Canvas Size dialog box, select the name of the imageyou want to match from the Window menu

This method doesn’t give you much control when cropping an image, but it’s a great way to enlarge the canvas and add empty space around an image

✦ Better yet, use the crop tool in its fixed-size mode This feature works differently than in versions past, so pay attention: First, bring the image you want to match to the front Then select the crop tool and click the FrontImage button on the Options bar (Don’t waste time looking for the old FixedTarget Size option — it’s gone The tool automatically shifts into fixed-sizemode when you click the Front Image button.) The Width, Height, andResolution options automatically update to show the size and resolution

of the front image

Now bring the image you want to crop to the front and drag with the crop tool as normal Photoshop constrains the crop marquee to the proportions

of the targeted image After you press Enter, Photoshop crops, resamples, and rotates the image as necessary

The next time you select the crop tool, it starts out in fixed-size mode Toreturn the tool to normal, click the Clear button on the Options bar

Cropping a selection

Another way to crop an image is to create a selection and then choose Image ➪Crop As with the Version 6 crop tool, the Crop command gives you the option ofpermanently eliminating cropped pixels or simply hiding them in the image file You can bring back hidden pixels at any time by choosing Image ➪ Reveal All or simply enlarging the canvas (If you save the image in a file format other than thenative Photoshop format, however, hidden pixels are abandoned forever.)One advantage of the Crop command is that you needn’t switch back and forthbetween the marquee and crop tools One tool is all you need to select and crop (If you’re as lazy as I am, the mere act of selecting a tool can prove more effort thanit’s worth.) And, as with the crop tool, you can now press the spacebar while youdraw a marquee to move it on the fly It’s no trick to get the placement and sizeexactly right — the only thing you can’t do is rotate

Another advantage of the Crop command is flexibility With the Crop command, you

get all the following options:

✦ After drawing a selection, you can switch windows, apply commands, and

generally use any function you like prior to choosing Image ➪ Crop The croptool, by contrast, is much more limiting After drawing a cropping marquee,you can’t do anything but adjust the marquee until you press Enter to acceptthe crop or Escape to dismiss it

✦ You can use the Crop command on selections of any shape, even feathered

selections and multiple discontiguous selections Of course, your image canvasremains rectangular no matter what the selection shape Photoshop simplycrops the canvas to the smallest size that can hold all selected areas

✦ Finally, Image ➪ Crop lets you crop the canvas to the boundaries of an image

pasted from the Clipboard or dragged and dropped from another image dow As long as the boundaries of the pasted image are rectangular, as in thecase of an image copied from a different application, you can choose Edit ➪Paste, Ctrl-click the new layer in the Layers palette to regain the selection outline, and then choose Image ➪ Crop Photoshop replaces the former image and crops the window to fit the new image

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Photoshop 6

Defining Colors

Selecting and Editing Colors

Occasionally, the state of computer graphics technology

reminds me of television in the early 1950s Only the upper

echelon of Photoshop artists can afford to work exclusively

in the wonderful world of color The rest of us have to be

prepared to print many or even most of our images in black

and white

Some of you might be thinking, “Wait a second, what about

the equalizing force of the Internet? It brings color to all of

us!” Well, I concur wholeheartedly Nearly everyone owns a

color monitor, so we can all share color images freely If this

appeals to you, advance to Chapter 19 and learn how you can

reduce color palettes and otherwise prepare your images for

the bold new challenges of the Technicolor Web

Regardless of who you are — print person or Web head — color

is a prime concern Even gray values, after all, are colors Many

folks have problems accepting this premise — I guess we’re all

so used to separating the worlds of grays and other colors in

our minds that never the two shall meet But gray values are

only variations on what Noah Webster used to call “The

sensa-tion resulting from stimulasensa-tion of the retina of the eye by light

waves of certain lengths.” (Give the guy a few drinks and he’d

spout off 19 more definitions, not including the meanings of

the transitive verb.) Just as black and white represent a subset

of gray, gray is a subset of color In fact, you’ll find that using

Photoshop involves a lot of navigating through these and other

In-depth examinations

of the RGB, HSB,CMYK, and Lab Color Models

Creating grayscale andblack-and-white imagesIntroductions to theTrumatch and Pantonecolor standards

Using the Color paletteand eyedropper

Keeping an eye oncolors with the colorsampler toolUnderstanding howcolor channels work

Using channel editingcommands in theChannels palette

Improving theappearance of poorlyscanned imagesEditing channels toachieve special effects