Photoshop 6 for Windows Bible- P8 docx

The History palette lists brushstrokes and other changes according tothe tool you used to create them.Meet your tools Photoshop provides three paint tools: pencil, paintbrush, and airbru

STEPS: Using the Multichannel Mode as an Intermediary Step

1 Open an RGB image If the image is already open, make sure that it is saved

to disk

2 Choose Image ➪ Mode ➪ Multichannel This eliminates any relationship

between the formerly red, green, and blue color channels

3 Click the new channel icon at the bottom of the Channels palette Or choose

the New Channel command from the palette menu and press Return to accept

the default settings Either way, you add a mask channel to the image This

empty channel will serve as the black channel in the CMYK image

(Photo-shop won’t let you convert from the multichannel mode to CMYK with less

than four channels.)

4 Press Ctrl+I Unfortunately, the new channel comes up black, which would

make the entire image black To change it to white, press Ctrl+I or choose

Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Invert

5 Choose Image ➪ Mode ➪ CMYK The image looks washed out and a tad bit

dark compared to its original RGB counterpart, but the overall color scheme

of the image remains more or less intact This is because the red, green, and

blue color channels each have a respective opposite in the cyan, magenta,

and yellow channels

6 Press Ctrl+Shift+L Or choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto Levels This punches up

the color a bit by automatically correcting the brightness and contrast

7 Convert the image to RGB, and then back to CMYK again The problem with

the image is that it lacks any information in the black channel So although it

may look okay on-screen, it will lose much of its definition when printed To

fill in the black channel, choose Image ➪ Mode ➪ RGB Color, and then choose

Image ➪ Mode ➪ CMYK Color Photoshop automatically generates an image

in the black channel in keeping with the standards of color separations (as

explained in Chapter 18)

Keep in mind that these steps are by no means a recommended procedure for

con-verting an RGB image to a CMYK image Rather, they are merely intended to suggest

one way to experiment with channel conversions to create a halfway decent image

You can likewise experiment with converting between the Lab, multichannel, and

RGB modes, or Lab, multichannel, and CMYK

Replacing and swapping color channels

If you truly want to abuse the colors in an RGB or CMYK image, there’s nothing like

replacing one color channel with another to produce spectacular effects Color

Plate 4-4 shows a few examples applied to an RGB image

✦ In the first example, I used the Channel Mixer to replace the red channel withthe blue I did this by setting the Output Channel to Red, changing the Redvalue to 0 percent and the Blue value to 100 percent The result is a greenwoman floating in a green sea under a purple sky.

✦ To achieve the next example, I again started from the original RGB image andused Channel Mixer to replace the green channel with the red The result thistime is a yellow woman against a deep blue background

✦ To create the purple woman in a green world on the right side of Color Plate4-4, I replaced the blue channel with the red

You can create more interesting effects by using Color Mixer to swap the contents ofcolor channels For example, in the lower left example of Color Plate 4-4, I swappedthe contents of the red and blue channels to create a blue woman on a green seaunder an orange sky To accomplish this, I set the Output Channel to Red, set theRed value to 0 and the Blue to 100 Then I switched to the Blue channel (Ctrl+3) andset the Red value to 100 and the Blue to 0

The next two examples along the bottom of Color Plate 4-4 show the results ofswapping the red and green channels (for a bright green woman) and the green andblue channels Because the green and blue channels contain relatively similar data,this produces the subtlest effect, chiefly switching the sea and sky colors and turn-ing the swimsuit pink

Painting and

Editing

Paint and Edit Tool Basics

Here it is, Chapter 5, and I’m finally getting around to

explain-ing how to use Photoshop’s paintexplain-ing tools You must feel like

you’re attending some kind of martial arts ritual where you

have to learn to run away, cry, beg, and attempt bribery

before you get to start karate-chopping bricks and kicking

your instructor “The wise person journeys through the

funda-mentals of image editing before painting a single brushstroke,

Grasshoppa.” Wang, wang, wang (That’s a musical

embellish-ment, in case you didn’t recognize it Man, I hate to have to

explain my jokes Especially when they’re so measly.) Now

that you’ve earned your first belt or tassel or scouting patch

or whatever it is you’re supposed to receive for slogging this

far through the book, you’re as prepared as you’ll ever be to

dive into the world of painting and retouching images

You might think these tools require artistic talent In truth,

each tool provides options for almost any level of proficiency

or experience Photoshop offers get-by measures for novices

who want to make a quick edit and put the tool down before

they make a mess of things If you have a few hours of

experi-ence with other painting programs, you’ll find Photoshop’s

tools provide at least as much functionality and, in many cases,

more (The one exception is Painter, which is several times

more capable than Photoshop in the painting department.)

And if you’re a professional artist — well, come on now — you’ll

have no problems learning how to make Photoshop sing No

matter who you are, you’ll find electronic painting and editing

tools more flexible, less messy, and more forgiving than their

Saving and editingcustom brush sets inthe Preset ManagerCreating lines thatfade away or taper

to a pointWorking withpressure-sensitivedrawing tabletsSelecting brushmodes from thekeyboard

If you screw something up in the course of painting your image, stop and chooseEdit ➪ Undo (or press Ctrl+Z) If this doesn’t work, press Ctrl+Alt+Z to step backthrough your paint strokes (These shortcuts assume that you haven’t changed thedefault Redo Key setting in the Preferences dialog box; see Chapter 2 for more infor-mation.) You also can select a previous state in the History palette, as explained inChapter 7 The History palette lists brushstrokes and other changes according tothe tool you used to create them.

Meet your tools

Photoshop provides three paint tools: pencil, paintbrush, and airbrush You also getsix edit tools: smudge, blur, sharpen, burn, dodge, and sponge Figure 5-1 shows allthe tools along with the keyboard shortcuts for selecting them

Figure 5-1: The three paint tools and six edit tools;

note that the pencil and paintbrush now share a toolbox slot and a keyboard shortcut

Cross-Reference

When two or more tools share a slot in the toolbox, click or drag on the arrow in the

lower corner of the tool icon to display a flyout menu of all the tools, as shown in

Figure 5-1 Or you can just press the keyboard shortcut listed in the menu to cycle

through the tools However, if you turn on the Use Shift Key for Tool Switch option

in the General panel of the Preferences dialog box (Ctrl+K), you must press Shift

and the shortcut to switch tools

You can vary the performance of the paint and edit tools by using the controls on

the new Options bar, which contains tool settings formerly accessed through the

Options palette and the Brushes palette If you don’t see the Options bar, shown in

Figure 5-2, double-click any tool icon or just press Enter to display it You also can

choose Windows ➪ Show Options If you want to keep other palettes close by, you

can dock them in the Options bar, which appears if you set your monitor’s screen

resolution to display more than 800 pixels horizontally Just drag the palette tab to

the docking well, labeled in Figure 5-2 Upcoming sections in this chapter explain

all the ways to adjust the paint and edit tools Check out Chapter 2 for more details

about the Options bar

If you want to return a tool to its default settings, click the tool’s icon at the left end

of the Options bar and choose Reset Tool from the pop-up menu Click Reset All

Tools to return every tool back to its original state

Figure 5-2: Tool settings formerly contained in the Options and Brushes palettes

now hang out in the Options bar

In addition to the paint and edit tools, Photoshop 6 provides a set of tools for drawing

vector objects I cover these tools in Chapter 14

The paint tools

The paint tools apply paint in the foreground color In this and other respects, they work like their counterparts in other painting programs, but there are a fewexceptions:

✦ Pencil: Unlike pencil tools found in most other painting programs — which

paint lines 1 pixel thick — Photoshop’s pencil paints a hard-edged line of anythickness you specify Figure 5-3 compares the default 1-pixel pencil line with

a fatter pencil line, a paintbrush line, and an airbrush line

If you’re used to selecting the pencil tool by pressing P (as in Photoshop 3),

Y (as in Version 4), or N (as in Version 5), prepare for yet another change The new pencil tool shortcut is B, same as for the paintbrush Toggle backand forth between the two tools by pressing B repeatedly (or Shift+B, depending on your Preferences setting for keyboard tool switches)

Figure 5-3: Five lines painted in black with the pencil,

paintbrush, and airbrush tools The Wet Edges option (second from right) causes the line to appear translucent

I held the airbrush tool in place for a few moments at the end of the line located at the far right

✦ Paintbrush: The paintbrush works like the pencil tool, except it paints an

antialiased (softened) line that blends in with its background.

Thin pencil line

Thick pencil line

Paintbrush line

Paintbrush with wet edges

Airbrush line

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Photoshop 6

When you select the Wet Edges check box on the Options bar, the paintbrush

creates a translucent line with darkened edges, much as if you were painting

with watercolors Soft brush shapes produce more naturalistic effects

Figure 5-3 shows an example of this effect

✦ Airbrush: Dismissing Photoshop’s airbrush tool as a softer version of the

paintbrush is tempting because it uses a softer brush shape by default

Photoshop’s default airbrush settings also call for a lighter pressure, so

the airbrush paints a translucent line But unlike the paintbrush, which

applies a continuous stream of color and stops applying paint when you

stop dragging, the airbrush applies a series of colored dollops and continues

to apply these dollops as long as you press the mouse button Figure 5-3

shows the dark glob of paint that results from pressing the mouse button

while holding the mouse motionless at the end of the drag

The edit tools

The edit tools don’t apply color; rather, they influence existing colors in an image

Figure 5-4 shows each of the six edit tools applied to a randomized background

Future sections cover the tools in more detail, but here’s a brief introduction:

✦ Blur: The first of the two focus tools, the blur tool blurs an image by lessening

the amount of color contrast between neighboring pixels

✦ Sharpen: The second focus tool selectively sharpens by increasing the contrast

between neighboring pixels Generally speaking, both the blur and sharpen

tools are less useful than their command counterparts in the Filters menu They

provide less control and usually require scrubbing at an image Maybe I’ve been

using a computer too long, but my wrist starts to ache when I use these tools If,

unlike me, you like the basic principle behind the tools, but you want to avoid

carpal tunnel syndrome, you can achieve consistent, predictable results

with-out scrubbing by using the tools in combination with the Shift key, as described

in the next section, “Basic techniques.”

✦ Smudge: The smudge tool smears colors in an image The effect is much like

dragging your finger across wet paint

✦ Dodge: The first of three toning tools, the dodge tool lets you lighten a portion

of an image by dragging across it Named after a traditional film exposure

tech-nique, the dodge tool is supposed to look like a little paddle thingie — you

know, like one of those spoons you put over your eye at the optometrist’s —

that you wave over photographic paper to cast a shadow and thereby lighten

the exposure Thank golly we no longer have to wave little paddle thingies in

our modern age

✦ Burn: The burn tool lets you darken a portion of an image by dragging over it.

The effect is similar to burning a film negative, which you apparently do by

holding your hand in a kind of O shape in an effort to focus the light, kind of

like frying a worker ant using a magnifying glass (except not quite so smelly)

At least, that’s what they tell me Sadly, I’ve never had the pleasure of trying it

Figure 5-4: Dragging with Photoshop’s edit tools creates these effects

The boundaries of each line are highlighted so that you can clearly see the distinctions between line and background

If you’re like most folks, you have difficulty remembering which tool lightensand which one darkens So here’s a little tip: That little hand icon looks like itcould be holding a piece of toast, and when you burn toast, it gets darker.Hand, toast, burn, darker That other tool, the eye doctor paddle, is not hold-ing toast, so it must lighten You’ll never have problems again

✦ Sponge: The final toning tool, the sponge tool, robs an image of both saturation

and contrast Or you can set the tool so it boosts saturation and adds contrast.For more information, stay tuned for the upcoming section “Mopping up withthe sponge tool.”

To access the sharpen tool temporarily when the blur tool is selected, press andhold Alt while using the tool The sharpen tool remains available only as long asyou press Alt You also can press Alt to access the blur tool when the sharpen tool

is selected, to access the burn tool when the dodge tool is selected, and to accessthe dodge tool when the burn tool is selected (If the sponge tool is active, pressingAlt has no effect, except maybe to give your finger a cramp.)

Tip

You can replace the blur tool with the sharpen tool in the toolbox by Alt-clicking on

the tool’s icon Alt-click again to select the smudge tool and yet again to cycle back

to the blur tool Likewise, you can Alt-click the dodge tool icon to cycle between the

dodge, burn, and sponge tools

As explained in Chapter 2, the keyboard shortcuts also toggle between the tools

When the blur tool is selected, press R to switch to the sharpen tool Repeated

press-ings of R take you to the smudge tool and back to the blur tool When the dodge tool

is selected, press O to toggle to the burn tool; press O again to get the sponge

If these shortcuts don’t work for you, head for the General panel of the Preferences

dialog box (Ctrl+K) Chances are, the Use Shift for Tool Switch check box is selected,

which means that you have to press Shift plus the keyboard shortcut to cycle through

tools Turn the check box off to give your Shift finger a rest

Basic techniques

I know several people who claim that they can’t paint, and yet they create beautiful

work in Photoshop Even though they don’t have sufficient hand-eye coordination

to write their names on screen, they have unique and powerful artistic sensibilities,

and they know many tricks that enable them to make judicious use of the paint and

edit tools I can’t help you in the sensibilities department, but I can show you a few

tricks to boost your ability and inclination to use the paint and edit tools

Painting a straight line

You probably already know that you can draw a straight line with the line tool And

you may be wondering why I don’t include the line tool in my discussion of painting

tools Well, the reason is that as a painting tool, the line tool is pretty limited in its

usefulness

In the line tool’s defense, it has evolved in Version 6 You now can draw either vector

lines or raster lines using the tool, and you also can set the tool to create a work path

You set the tool’s function through the trio of icons on the left end of the Options bar

Click the first button to create a vector shape on a new layer, as discussed in Chapter

14; click the middle button to create a work path, a topic I cover in Chapter 9; and

click the third button to paint a regular, pixel-based line

About the only reason I ever use the line tool in painting mode is to create arrows

(I explain how in the “Applying Strokes and Arrowheads” section of Chapter 8.) If

you don’t want arrows, you’re better off using Photoshop’s other means for

creat-ing straight lines: the Shift key Uscreat-ing this method, you can paint with different

brushes and access other options not available when you work with the line tool

To paint a straight line with any of the paint tools, click at one point in the imageand then press Shift and click at another point Photoshop connects the start andend points with a straight stroke of paint Use this same technique to apply an edittool in a straight line.

To create free-form polygons, continue to Shift-click with the tool Figure 5-5 tures a photograph and a tracing I made on a separate layer (covered in Chapter12) exclusively by Shift-clicking with the paintbrush tool As an academic exercise,

fea-I never dragged with the tool, fea-I never altered the brush size, and fea-I used just two colors: black and gray

Figure 5-5: Starting from an image by photographer Barbara Penoyar (left),

I created a stylized tracing (right) by clicking and Shift-clicking with the paintbrush tool on a separate layer

The Shift key makes the blur and sharpen tools halfway useful Suppose that youwant to edit the perimeter of the car shown in Figure 5-6 The arrows in the figureillustrate the path your Shift-clicks should follow Figure 5-7 shows the effect ofShift-clicking with the blur tool; Figure 5-8 demonstrates the effect of Shift-clickingwith the sharpen tool

Tip

Figure 5-6: It takes

one click and 24

Shift-clicks to soften

or accentuate the

edges around this

car using the blur

or sharpen tool

Figure 5-7: These are the

results of blurring the car’s

perimeter with the pressure

set to 50 percent (top) and

100 percent (bottom) Set

the pressure by using the

Pressure pop-up menu in

the Options bar

Figure 5-8: The results of sharpening the car with the

pressure set to 50 percent (top) and 100 percent (bottom)

Painting a perpendicular line

To create a perpendicular line — either a vertical or a horizontal line — with any ofthe paint tools, press and hold the mouse button, press Shift, and begin dragging in

a vertical or horizontal direction Don’t release Shift until you finish dragging or untilyou want to change the direction of the line, as shown in Figure 5-9 Press Shift in mid-drag to snap the line back into perpendicular alignment Again, these techniqueswork with the edit tools as well as the paint tools

One way to exploit the Shift key’s penchant to snap to the perpendicular is to draw

“ribbed” structures Being left-handed, I dragged from right to left with the paintbrush

to create both of the central outlines around the skeleton that appears at the top ofFigure 5-10 I painted each rib by pressing and releasing Shift as I dragged with thepaintbrush tool Pressing Shift snapped the line to the horizontal axis, whose locationwas established by the beginning of the drag

Figure 5-9: Pressing Shift after you start to drag with a

paint or edit tool results in a perpendicular line for as

long as the key is pressed

In the figure, I represented the axis for each line in gray After establishing the basic

skeletal form, I added some free-form details with the paintbrush and pencil tools,

as shown in the middle image in Figure 5-10 I then selected a general area around

the image and chose Filter ➪ Stylize ➪ Emboss to create the finished fossil image

Nobody’s going to confuse my painting with a bona fide fossil, but it’s not bad for

a cartoon

It’s no accident Figure 5-10 features a swordfish instead of your everyday

round-nosed carp To snap to the horizontal axis, I had to establish the direction of my

drag as being more horizontal than vertical If I had instead dragged in a fish-faced

convex arc, Photoshop would have interpreted my drag as vertical and snapped to

the vertical axis

Painting simple shapes with the drawing tools

As I alluded to a section or two ago, you can use the new shape tools to create

raster — that is, pixel-based — objects, as well as vector objects (see Chapter 3

if you need a refresher course on the difference) After selecting the rectangle,

rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, line, or custom shape tool, click the Fill Region

icon on the Options bar, labeled in Figure 5-11 Then use the tools as described in

Chapter 14 to create your shapes, which Photoshop fills with the foreground color

Press mouse button, press Shift, begin drag

Release Shift

Release mouse button, release Shift

Press Shift again

to snap line back to perpendicular

Figure 5-10: To create the basic structure for our bony pal,

I periodically pressed and released Shift while dragging with the paintbrush (top) Then I embellished the fish using the paintbrush and pencil (middle) Finally, I applied the Emboss filter to transform fish into fossil (bottom)

Figure 5-11: Click the paint bucket icon to create rasterized shapes with the shape

tools (line, rectangle, ellipse, polygon, and custom shape)

Fill RegionShape tool icons Click for more options

When Fill Region is selected, you can adjust the opacity and blend mode of your

paint strokes through the Opacity and Mode menus on the Options bar You also

can select the Anti-aliased check box to soften the transition between a shape and

its surroundings I created the left star in the figure with Anti-aliased turned off; the

right star shows the same shape painted with the check box turned on If you click

the down-pointing triangle at the end of the strip of tool icons, you display

addi-tional options for the selected tool

Painting with the smudge tool

Many first-time Photoshop artists misuse the smudge tool to soften color

transi-tions In fact, softening is the purpose of the blur tool The smudge tool smears

colors by shoving them into each other The process bears more resemblance to

the finger painting you did in grade school than to any traditional

photographic-editing technique

In Photoshop, the performance of the smudge tool depends in part on the settings

of the Pressure and Finger Painting controls on the Options bar, which you access

by pressing Enter when the smudge tool is active Here’s what you need to know

about these options:

✦ Pressure: Measured as a percentage of the brush shape, this option determines

the distance the smudge tool drags a color Higher percentages and larger brushshapes drag colors farthest A Pressure setting of 100 percent equates to infinity,meaning the smudge tool drags a color from the beginning of your drag until theend of your drag, regardless of how far you drag Cosmic, Daddy-O

✦ Finger Painting: The folks at Adobe used to call this effect dipping, which I think

more accurately expressed how the effect works When you select this option,the smudge tool begins by applying a smidgen of foreground color, which iteventually blends in with the colors in the image It’s as if you dipped your fin-ger in a color and then dragged it through an oil painting Use the Pressure setting to specify the amount of foreground color applied If you turn on FingerPainting and set the Pressure to 100 percent, the smudge tool behaves exactlylike the paintbrush tool

You can reverse the Finger Painting setting by Alt-dragging If the option is off,Alt-dragging dips the tool into the foreground color If Finger Painting is turned

on, Alt-dragging smudges normally

For some examples of the smudge tool in action, look at Figure 5-12 The figure shows

the effects of using the smudge tool set to four different Pressure percentages and

with the Finger Painting option both off and on In each instance, the brush shape is

13 pixels in diameter and the foreground color is set to black

Tip

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Photoshop 6