Photoshop 6 for Windows Bible- P7 pps

If you click theforeground or background color icon when it’s already highlighted — as indi-cated by a double-line frame — Photoshop displays the Color Picker dialog box.. Click or drag

When you choose Image ➪ Mode ➪ Bitmap, Photoshop displays the Bitmap dialog

box, shown in Figure 4-5 Here you specify the resolution of the black-and-white

image and select a conversion process The options work as follows:

✦ Output: Specify the resolution of the black-and-white file If you want control

over every single pixel available to your printer, raise this value to match your

printer’s resolution As a rule of thumb, try setting the Output value

some-where between 200 to 250 percent of the Input value

Figure 4-5: The Bitmap dialog box converts images

from grayscale to black and white

✦ 50% Threshold: Select this option from the Use pop-up menu to change every

pixel that is darker than 50 percent gray to black and every pixel that is 50

percent gray or lighter to white Unless you are working toward some special

effect — for example, overlaying a black-and-white version of an image over

the original grayscale image — this option most likely isn’t for you (And if

you’re working toward a special effect, Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Threshold is the

better alternative.)

✦ Pattern Dither: To dither pixels is to mix them up to emulate different colors.

In this case, Photoshop mixes up black and white pixels to produce shades of

gray The Pattern Dither option dithers an image using a geometric pattern

Unfortunately, the results are pretty ugly, as demonstrated in the top example

in Figure 4-6 And the space between dots has a tendency to fill in, especially

when you output to a laser printer

✦ Diffusion Dither: Select this option from the Use pop-up menu to create a

mezzotint-like effect, as demonstrated in the second example in Figure 4-6.Again, because this option converts an image into thousands of stray pixels,you can expect your image to darken dramatically when output to a low-resolution laser printer and when reproduced So be sure to lighten the image with something like the Levels command (as described in Chapter 17)before selecting this option

Figure 4-6: The results of selecting the Pattern Dither option (top) and the much

more acceptable Diffusion Dither option (bottom)

✦ Halftone Screen: When you select this option from the Use pop-up menu and

press Enter, Photoshop displays the dialog box shown in Figure 4-7 Theseoptions enable you to apply a dot pattern to the image, as demonstrated inFigure 4-8 Enter the number of dots per inch in the Frequency option box andthe angle of the dots in the Angle option box Then select a dot shape from theShape pop-up menu Figure 4-8 shows examples of four shapes, each with afrequency of 24 lines per inch

Figure 4-7: This dialog box appears when you select the

Halftone Screen option in the Bitmap dialog box

Figure 4-8: Four random examples of halftone cell shapes In all cases, the

Frequency value was set to 24

I cover screen patterns and frequency settings in more depth in the “Changingthe halftone screen” section of Chapter 18.

✦ Custom Pattern: If you’ve defined a repeating pattern using Edit ➪ Define

Pattern, you can use it as a custom dither pattern Figure 4-9 shows two tom examples I created the first pattern using the Twirl Pattern file, which isstored in the Displacement Maps folder in the Plug-Ins folder I created thesecond pattern manually using the Add Noise, Emboss, and Ripple filters (as discussed in the “Creating texture effects” section of Chapter A on theCD-ROM for this book)

cus-Figure 4-9: Two examples of employing repeating patterns (created with Edit ➪

Define Pattern) as custom halftoning patterns

For a complete guide to creating and defining patterns in Photoshop, see the

“Applying Repeating Patterns” section of Chapter 7

Cross-Reference

Cross-Reference

To use a custom pattern, open the Custom Pattern palette in the Bitmap log box, as shown in Figure 4-5 Click the icon for the pattern you want to use.

dia-If you don’t feel like creating your own patterns, use one of the preset patternsthat ship with Photoshop 6 A number of these patterns appear by default inthe palette; to access additional patterns, choose Load from the palette menu(click the right-pointing triangle in the upper-right corner of the palette to dis-play the menu) You can find the patterns in the Patterns folder, which livesinside the Presets folder To delete a pattern from the palette, click its iconand choose Delete from the palette menu

Photoshop lets you edit individual pixels in the so-called bitmap mode, but that’s

about the extent of it After you go to black-and-white, you can neither perform any

serious editing nor expect to return to the grayscale mode and restore your original

pixels So be sure to finish your image editing before choosing Image ➪ Mode ➪

Bitmap Even more important, make certain to save your image before converting

it to black-and-white Frankly, saving is a good idea prior to performing any color

conversion

Using Photoshop’s Other Color Selection

Methods

In addition to the Color Picker dialog box, Photoshop provides a handful of

addi-tional techniques for selecting colors The sections that finish out this chapter

explain how to use the Custom Colors dialog box, the Colors palette, and the

eye-dropper tool None of this information is terribly exciting, but it will enable you to

work more efficiently and conveniently

Predefined colors

If you click the Custom button inside the Color Picker dialog box, Photoshop

dis-plays the Custom Colors dialog box shown in Figure 4-10 In this dialog box, you

can select from a variety of predefined colors by choosing the color family from

the Book pop-up menu, moving the slider triangles up and down the color slider

to specify a general range of colors, and ultimately, selecting a color from the color

list on the left If you own the swatchbook for a color family, you can locate a

spe-cific color by entering its number on the keyboard

The color families represented in the Book pop-up menu fall into seven brands:

ANPA (now NAA, as I explain shortly), DIC, Focoltone, HKS, Pantone, Toyo, and

Trumatch, all of which get a big kick out of capitalizing their names in dialog boxes

I honestly think one of these companies would stand out better if its name weren’t

capitalized Anyway, at the risk of offending a few of these companies, you’re likely

to find certain brands more useful than others The following sections briefly

intro-duce the brands in order of their impact on the American market — forgive me for

being ethnocentric in this regard — from smallest to greatest impact

Caution

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Photoshop 6

Figure 4-10: The Custom Colors dialog box enables you to select predefined

colors from brand-name libraries

The color families represented in the Book pop-up menu fall into seven brands:ANPA (now NAA, as I explain shortly), DIC, Focoltone, HKS, Pantone, Toyo, andTrumatch, all of which get a big kick out of capitalizing their names in dialog boxes

I honestly think one of these companies would stand out better if its name weren’tcapitalized Anyway, at the risk of offending a few of these companies, you’re likely

to find certain brands more useful than others The following sections briefly duce the brands in order of their impact on the American market — forgive me forbeing ethnocentric in this regard — from smallest to greatest impact

intro-The number-one use for predefined colors in Photoshop is in the creation of tones, tritones, and quadtones (described in Chapter 18) You can also use prede-fined colors to match the colors in a logo or some other important element in animage to a commercial standard And you can add an independent channel for apredefined color and print it to a separate plate, as discussed later in this chapter

duo-Focoltone, DIC, Toyo, and HKS

Focoltone, Dianippon Ink and Chemical (DIC), Toyo, and HKS fall into the negligibleimpact category All are foreign color standards with followings abroad Focoltone

is an English company; not English speaking (although they probably do), butEnglish living, as in commuting-to-France-through-the-Channel England DIC andToyo are popular in the Japanese market, but have next to no subscribers outsideJapan HKS formerly was provided only in the German and French versions ofPhotoshop, but enough people asked for it to be included in other languages that it now is available in all versions of the program

Tip

Newspaper Association of America

American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA) recently changed its name to

NAA, which stands for Newspaper Association of America, and updated its color

cat-alog NAA provides a small sampling of 45 process colors (mixes of cyan, magenta,

yellow, and black ink) plus 5 spot colors (colors produced by printing a single ink)

The idea behind the NAA colors is to isolate the color combinations that reproduce

most successfully on inexpensive newsprint and to provide advertisers with a solid

range of colors from which to choose, without allowing the color choices to get out

of hand You can purchase a swatch book from NAA for $35 Members pay $25

Trumatch

Trumatch remains my personal favorite process-color standard Designed entirely

using a desktop system and created especially with desktop publishers in mind, the

Trumatch Colorfinder swatchbook features more than 2,000 process colors,

orga-nized according to hue, saturation, and brightness Each hue is broken down into

40 tints and shades Reducing the saturation in 15-percent increments creates tints;

adding black ink in 6-percent increments creates shades The result is a guide that

shows you exactly which colors you can attain using a desktop system If you’re

wondering what a CMYK blend will look like when printed, you need look no further

than the Trumatch Colorfinder

As if the Colorfinder weren’t enough, Trumatch provides the ColorPrinter Software

utility, which automatically prints the entire 2,000-color library to any

PostScript-compatible output device The utility integrates EfiColor and PostScript Level 2,

thereby enabling design firms and commercial printers to test the entire range of

capabilities available to their hardware Companies can provide select clients with

swatches of colors created on their own printers, guaranteeing what you see is

darn well what you’ll get

Pantone

On the heels of Trumatch, Pantone released a 3,006-color Process Color System

Guide (labeled Pantone Process in the Book pop-up menu) priced at $79 Pantone

also produces the foremost spot color swatchbook, the Color Formula Guide Then

there’s the Solid to Process Guide, which enables you to figure out quickly if you

can closely match a Pantone spot color using a process-color blend or if you ought

to give it up and stick with the spot color

Pantone spot colors are ideal for creating duotones and adding custom colors to an

image for logos and the like, both discussed in Chapter 18 Furthermore, Pantone is

supported by every computer application that aspires to the color prepress

mar-ket As long as the company retains the old competitive spirit, you can, most likely,

expect Pantone to remain the primary color printing standard for years to come

The Color palette

Another means of selecting colors in Photoshop is to use the Color palette, shown

in Figure 4-11 The Color palette is convenient, it’s always there, and it doesn’t hogyour screen like the Color Picker dialog box Frankly, this is the tool I use mostoften to select colors in Photoshop

Figure 4-11: The Color palette as it appears normally (top) and with

the Web Color Sliders option selected (bottom)

To display the palette, choose Window ➪ Show Color or press the F6 key If youwant, you can dock the palette in the Options bar palette well For details on thatintriguing offer, flip back to Chapter 2 Either way, you use the elements and optionsinside the palette as follows:

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Photoshop 6

Alert triangleForeground colorColor bar

✦ Foreground color/background color: Click the foreground or background color

icon in the Color palette to specify the color you want to edit If you click theforeground or background color icon when it’s already highlighted — as indi-cated by a double-line frame — Photoshop displays the Color Picker dialog box

✦ Sliders: Drag the triangles in the slider controls to edit the highlighted color.

By default, the sliders represent the red, green, and blue primary colors when

a color image is open You can change the slider bars by choosing a differentcolor model from the palette menu

✦ Option boxes: Alternatively, you can enter numerical values into the option

boxes to the right of the sliders Press Tab to advance from one option box tothe next; press Shift+Tab to go to the previous option

✦ Alert triangle and cube: Photoshop displays the alert triangle when a color

falls outside the CMYK color gamut The color swatch to the right of the gle shows the closest CMYK equivalent Click the triangle or the color swatch

trian-to replace the current color with the CMYK equivalent

If you select the Web Color Sliders option from the palette menu, the alertcube appears to indicate colors that aren’t included in the Web-safe palette

The palette also displays the hexadecimal values for the color, as shown inFigure 4-11 And as you drag the sliders, they automatically snap to Web-safehues To limit the palette so that it displays Web-safe colors only, chooseMake Ramp Web Safe from the palette menu

After you define a Web color, choose Copy Color as HTML from the palettemenu to save the hexadecimal code for the color to the Clipboard You canthen paste the code into an HTML file by choosing Edit ➪ Paste in the Webapplication

✦ Color bar: The bar along the bottom of the Color palette displays all colors

con-tained in the CMYK spectrum Click or drag inside the color bar to lift a colorand make it the current foreground or background color (depending on whetherthe foreground or background icon is selected above) The sliders update asyou drag Alt-click or drag to lift the background color if the foreground icon

is selected or the foreground color if the background color is selected

You needn’t accept the CMYK spectrum in the color bar, however To change

to a different spectrum, just choose the spectrum from the palette menu OrShift-click the color bar to cycle through the available spectrums You can optfor the RGB spectrum, a black-to-white gradation (Grayscale Ramp), or a gra-dation from the current foreground color to the current background color(Current Colors) The color bar continuously updates to represent the newestforeground and background colors

Notice the black and white squares at the right end of the color bar? You canclick ’em to set a color to absolute black or white But if all you want to do is setthe foreground color to black, don’t bother with the Color palette — just press

D For white, press D and then X The first shortcut restores the foreground andbackground colors to black and white, respectively; pressing X swaps the col-ors to make white the foreground color and black the background color

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Photoshop 6

Tip

The Swatches palette

Shown in Figure 4-12, the Swatches palette enables you to collect colors for futureuse, sort of like a favorite color reservoir You can use the palette also to set theforeground and background colors

Figure 4-12: You can create custom swatch collections in the Swatches palette

or in the new Preset Manager dialog box

Here’s how to take advantage of the Swatches palette:

✦ Click a color swatch to make that color the foreground color Alt-click to setthe background color

✦ To add the current foreground color to the reservoir, Shift-click an existingcolor swatch to replace the old color or click an empty swatch to append thenew color In either case, your cursor temporarily changes to a paint bucket.After you click, you’re asked to give the swatch a name Type the name andclick OK If you later want to change the name, just double-click the swatch toredisplay the name dialog box

You can bypass the dialog box and add an unnamed color to the palette byCtrl+Alt-clicking an empty swatch

✦ To insert a color anywhere in the palette, Shift+Ctrl-click a swatch The othercolors scoot over to make room

✦ To delete a color from the panel, Ctrl-click a color swatch Your cursorchanges to a pair of scissors and cuts the color away

Tip

✦ The Swatches palette in Photoshop 6 includes a new icon and trash icon,

simi-lar to those you find in the Layers palette The icons provide alternative ods of adding and deleting colors: Click the new icon to add a new swatch inthe current foreground color; Alt-click to display the name dialog box and thenadd the color Drag a swatch to the trash icon to delete it from the palette

meth-You can also save and load color palettes on disk using options in the pop-up menu

Load Swatches appends swatches stored in a swatches file to the current set of

swatches; Replace Swatches replaces the current swatches with the ones in the file

Save Swatches lets you create a new swatch collection and save it to disk

The Presets folder, located inside the main Photoshop folder, contains folders for

all the available preset items, color swatches being one of them The Color Swatches

folder, found inside the Photoshop Only folder of the Presets folder, contains palettes

for the major color libraries from Pantone, Trumatch, and others In Version 6, you

can load these palettes by simply selecting them from the palette pop-up menu

You’re then given the choice of appending the swatches to the existing swatches or

replacing the current swatches altogether Custom swatch sets that you create also

appear on the palette menu, but only after you close and restart Photoshop

When a color library palette is loaded, positioning your cursor over a color swatch

displays a tool tip showing the name of that color If you prefer to select colors by

using the color names, select Small List from the palette menu Now you see a

scrolling list of colors instead of just the swatches

Swatches presets

You can also create and manage swatch collections using the new Preset Manager

Choose View ➪ Presets and then select Swatches from the Preset Type pop-up menu

(or press Ctrl+2) to display the Swatches presets panel, shown in Figure 4-13 The

presets panel shows the current swatch set

Many functions in the Swatches panel duplicate those offered by the Swatches

palette If you click the arrow to the left of the Done button (see the figure), you

display a pop-up menu that’s nearly identical to the Swatches palette menu You

can choose the Replace Swatches command on the pop-up menu to replace the

current swatch collection with another or choose Reset Swatches to return to

the default swatch collection To append a collection, click the Load button

Alternatively, click a collection name in the pop-up menu, in which case you have

the choice of appending or replacing the current collection with the new one

In addition, you can click a swatch and then click Delete to remove the swatch or

Rename to change the color’s name If you want to dump or rename a bunch of

swatches, Shift-click them and then click Delete or Rename To select all swatches,

press Ctrl+A You can also display the scissors cursor and then click a swatch to

delete it — but for some reason, you press Alt to get the scissors cursor in the

Preset Manager, not Ctrl as you do in the Swatches palette

Figure 4-13: To easily create a new swatch collection using just some

colors from an existing collection, head for the Preset Manager

Aside from being able to delete or rename a batch of swatches at one time, the best reason for bothering with the Preset Manager — as opposed to working in the Swatches palette — is to create a new swatch collection out of colors from anexisting set or sets Load the collection(s) that you want to use as a basis for thenew set Then Shift-click to select swatches for the new set — or press Ctrl+A toselect all swatches — and click Save Set Give the collection a name and store it

in the Color Swatches folder

Note that wherever you do your swatch set editing, you can’t overwrite any existingpreset files Also, after you add a new swatch, you must save it as part of a swatchcollection, either via the palette pop-up menu or the Preset Manager Otherwise,Photoshop deletes the swatch if you replace the current swatch collection withanother

The eyedropper tool

The eyedropper tool — which you can select by pressing I — provides the most convenient and straightforward means of selecting colors in Photoshop This is

so straightforward, in fact, it’s hardly worth explaining But quickly, here’s how the eyedropper tool works:

✦ Selecting a foreground color: To select a new foreground color, click the

desired color inside any open image window with the eyedropper tool (Thisassumes the foreground icon in the Color palette is selected If the backgroundicon is selected, Alt-click with the eyedropper tool to lift the foreground color.)You can even click inside a background window to lift a color without bringingthat window to the foreground

Click for palette menu

✦ Selecting a background color: To select a new background color, Alt-click the

desired color with the eyedropper tool (Again, this assumes the foreground

icon is selected in the Color palette If the background icon is selected, click

with the eyedropper to lift the background color.)

✦ Skating over the color spectrum: You can animate the foreground color

con-trol box by dragging with the eyedropper tool in an image window or along

the color bar in the Color palette As soon as you achieve the desired color,

release your mouse button To animate the background color icon, Alt-drag

with the eyedropper tool The icon color changes as you move the

eyedrop-per tool Again, swap these procedures if the background color icon is

selected in the Color palette

✦ Sampling multiple pixels: Normally, the eyedropper tool selects the color

from the single pixel on which you click If you prefer to average the colors

of several neighboring pixels, however, choose either the 3 by 3 Average or

5 by 5 Average option from the Sample Size pop-up menu on the Options bar

Or right-click with the eyedropper to display a pop-up menu of sampling

options near the cursor In this case, you get one additional choice, Copy

Color as HTML, which works just as it does when you select it from the Color

palette pop-up menu Photoshop determines the hexadecimal code for the

color and sends the code to the Clipboard so that you can use Edit ➪ Paste

to dump the code into an HTML file

To access the eyedropper tool temporarily when using the type, paint bucket,

gra-dient, line, pencil, airbrush, or paintbrush tool, press Alt The eyedropper cursor

remains in force for as long as the Alt key is down The eyedropper lifts whatever

color is active in the Color palette (foreground or background) To lift the other

color, switch to the eyedropper tool by pressing the I key and then Alt-click in an

image window

The color sampler tool

Found in the same toolbox flyout as the eyedropper, the color sampler tool looks

like the eyedropper with a little crosshair target But where the eyedropper lifts

foreground and background colors, the color sampler merely measures the colors

of pixels so that you can monitor how the pixels react to various color changes

Select the color sampler and click somewhere inside the image window Photoshop

adds a crosshair target to indicate the point you clicked The program also brings up

the Info palette (if it isn’t up already) and adds a new color measurement item labeled

#1 This item corresponds to the target in the image, which is likewise labeled #1

Click again and you add a second target and a corresponding item #2 in the Info

palette You can add up to four targets to an image, as demonstrated in Figure 4-14

Tip

Figure 4-14: The color sampler tool lets you measure the colors of four points

in your image, as indicated by the black arrows You can also measure a fifth point

by merely moving the cursor around, as indicated by the white arrow

The color sampler is primarily intended for printers and technicians who want

to monitor the effects of color corrections on specific points in an image If youapply Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Levels, for example, Photoshop constantly updates theitems in the Info palette to reflect your changes (as I explain in more detail inChapter 17) But you can also sample points in an image to monitor the effects

of filters (Chapters 10 and 11, as well as Chapter A on the CD-ROM), blend modes(Chapter 13), and edit tools such as dodge and burn (Chapter 5) The color sampler is just another way to monitor changes to an image

Here are a few more techniques of interest when color sampling:

✦ Photoshop limits you to four color targets If you try to create a fifth one, theprogram generates an error message If you want to measure a different point

in the image, you can either hover your cursor over the point and note thetop set of color values in the Info palette (as in Figure 4-14) or move one of the targets

✦ To move a target inside the image window, drag it with the color sampler tool.You can also move a target by Ctrl-dragging it with the eyedropper tool

✦ To delete a target, Alt-click it.

✦ The Info palette grows to more than twice its normal size when you start

click-ing with the color sampler To hide the sampler information without deletclick-ing

targets, click the Info palette’s collapse box or choose Hide Color Samplers

from the palette menu If you go the second route, you have to choose Show

Color Samplers to bring the samples back

✦ By default, the sampler items in the Info palette measure colors in the active

color space If you want to track a target in a different color space, click the

item’s eyedropper icon in the Info palette or right-click the target in the image

window Either way, you get a pop-up menu of color space alternatives,

includ-ing Grayscale, RGB, and several others that you may recall from previous

explanations in this chapter

To select the color sampler, press Shift+I when the eyedropper is active or Alt-click

the eyedropper icon Or press I repeatedly to cycle between the eyedropper, color

sampler, and measure tool (add Shift if you activated the Use Shift Key for Tool

Switch option in the Preferences dialog box) You can also temporarily access the

color sampler any time the eyedropper is active by pressing Shift This little trick

also works when a color correction dialog box such as Levels or Curves is open, as

explained in Chapter 17 It’s just the ticket when you’re in the middle of an

adjust-ment and you need to know how it’s affecting specific portions of the image

Introducing Color Channels

After I’ve droned on for pages about color in Photoshop, it might surprise you when

I say that Photoshop is at its heart a grayscale editor Oh sure, it offers an array of

color conversion features and it displays and prints spectacular full-color images

But when it comes to editing the image, everything happens in grayscale

This is because Photoshop approaches every full-color image not as a single

collec-tion of 24-bit pixels, but as three or four bands of 8-bit (grayscale) pixels An RGB

file contains a band of red, a band of green, and a band of blue, each of which

func-tions as a separate grayscale image A Lab image likewise contains three bands,

one corresponding to luminosity and the others to the variables a and b A CMYK

file contains four bands, one for each of the process-color inks These bands are

known as channels.

Channels frequently correspond to the structure of an input or output device Each

channel in a CMYK image, for example, corresponds to a different printer’s plate

when the document goes to press The cyan plate is inked with cyan, the magenta

plate is inked with magenta, and so on Each channel in an RGB image corresponds

to a pass of the red, green, or blue scanner sensor over the original photograph or

artwork Only the Lab mode is device independent, so its channels don’t

corre-spond to any piece of hardware

Tip