Photoshop 6 for Windows Bible- P20 docx

Less a dialog box than a separate editing environment, the 3D Transform window contains a wealth of tools and a preview area in which you can draw and... Basic edit toolsThe two arrow to

Although Liquify certainly gives you plenty of ways to reconstruct distortions,

pre-dicting the outcome of your drags with the reconstruct tool can be difficult So if

you don’t get the results you want after your first few tries, you may find it just as

easy to revert the whole image and start from scratch

Wrapping an Image around a 3D Shape

I’ve long maintained that three-dimensional drawing programs would catch on

bet-ter if they were sold as plug-in utilities for Photoshop Imagine being able to import

DXF objects, add a line or two of text, move the objects around in 3D space, apply

surface textures, and then render the piece directly to independent Photoshop

lay-ers After that, you could change the stacking order of the layers, edit the pixels

right there on the spot, or maybe even double-click a layer to edit it in 3D space

Virtually every digital artist working in 3D visits Photoshop somewhere during the

process, so why not do the whole process in Photoshop and save everyone a few

steps? Experienced artists would love it and novices would take to 3D in droves

Frankly, my little fantasy isn’t likely to take form any time soon Photoshop would

have to modify its plug-in specifications, and some brave programming team would

have to spend a lot of time and money producing an aggressive suite of plug-ins

Even so, Adobe seems to share my dream Filter ➪ Render ➪ 3D Transform lets you

wrap an image around a three-dimensional shape Although the drawing tools are

rudimentary, the spatial controls are barely adequate, and the filter lacks any kind

of lighting controls, 3D Transform is a first tentative step in the right direction

Figure 11-43 shows exactly what 3D Transform can do In each case, I started with

the brick image shown in the upper-left corner of the figure Then I wrapped the

image around the three basic kinds of primitives permitted by the 3D Transform

fil-ter — a cube, a sphere, and a cylinder 3D Transform lets you add points to the side

of a cylinder, as I did to get the hourglass shape You can also mix and match

primi-tives, as the final example in Figure 11-43 illustrates

Notice that in each case, 3D Transform merely distorts the image It has no affect on

the brightness values of the pixels, nor does it make any attempt to light the shapes

(which is why I’d prefer to see it under the Distort submenu as opposed to Render)

I added the shadows using Layer ➪ Layer Style ➪ Drop Shadow

To be perfectly fair, 3D Transform is not the first three-dimensional plug-in for

Photoshop That honor went out years ago to the Series 2: Three-D Filter from

Andromeda (www.andromeda.com) Even now, Series 2 offers features that

Photoshop’s 3D Transform plug-in lacks, including a wider range of numerical

controls and lighting functions — but 3D Transform is easier to use

Note

Figure 11-43: The 3D Transform filter lets you wrap an image (upper left) around

each of three basic primitives (cube, sphere, and cylinder), a modified cylinder(hourglass), or several shapes mixed together

Using the 3D Transform filter

Choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ 3D Transform to bring up the window shown in Figure11-44 Less a dialog box than a separate editing environment, the 3D Transform window contains a wealth of tools and a preview area in which you can draw and

evaluate the effect There are a dozen tools in all, but they make a bit more sense if

you regard them as members of five basic categories, itemized in the following

sec-tions Like Photoshop’s standard tools, you can select the 3D Transform tools from

the keyboard (assuming that you have any headroom left to memorize the

short-cuts) Shortcut keys are listed in parentheses

Figure 11-44: The 3D Transform dialog box contains a dozen tools that

permit you to draw and edit three-dimensional shapes

Primitive shape tools

Use one of the primitive shape tools to draw a basic 3D shape in the preview area

This is the shape around which 3D Transform will wrap the selected image

Cube ( M ): Use this tool to draw a six-sided box Adobe selected M as the

shortcut to match Illustrator, which uses M for its rectangle tool And

that M is based in turn on Photoshop’s marquee tool.

Sphere ( N ): This tool creates a perfect sphere Again, the shortcut comes

from Illustrator, this time from the ellipse tool Just remember, N follows

M (Ironically, S goes unused Ain’t cross-application consistency a pain in the

neck?)

Cylinder ( C ): This cylinder tool draws your basic, everyday, dowel-like

cylinders But you can edit them to make lots of other shapes, as I

explain in the upcoming “Cylinder editors.” Thankfully, Illustrator offers no

equivalent for the cylinder tool, so we get a sensible shortcut, C.

Camera controlsPrimitive

Tools Preview area

Basic edit tools

The two arrow tools — the black select tool and the white direct select tool —enable you to change a shape by dragging it around or moving the points Bothtools work just like their counterparts in Illustrator:

Select ( V ): Drag a shape with the black arrow tool to move the whole

shape If you know Illustrator, you already know about the weird V-keyshortcut If not, think of Photoshop’s own move tool

Direct select ( A ): Use the white arrow to move individual points

Dragging a point in a sphere resizes it Dragging a point in a cube or acylinder stretches or rotates the shape Experiment and you’ll quickly seehow it works (Unlike paths, dragged points have no control handles All youhave to work with are anchor points.)

You can switch between the black and white arrow tools by pressing Ctrl+Tab Butreally, there’s no point The white arrow does everything the black arrow does —just drag a segment to move the entire shape In fact, there’s just one keyboardtrick you need to remember: press Ctrl to temporarily get the white arrow toolwhen any other tool is active If you know that, the other keys are redundant

Cylinder editors

The three path-edit tools are applicable exclusively to cylinders Why? Becausecylinders can be modified to create a whole family of tubular shapes Throw thecylinder on the lathe and you can make an hourglass, a goblet, a cone — in short,any shape with radial symmetry and a flat top or bottom To make these shapes,you use the following tools:

Insert point (+): Click the right side of the cylinder — unless you turn it

upside-down, in which case you click the left side — to add a point Thendrag the point with the white arrow tool to move both sides symmetrically.It’s a virtual potter’s wheel

Remove point (–): Click a point you’ve added with the insert point tool

to remove it Don’t click any of the square points that Photoshop put inthere or the program will whine at you

Convert point: The insert point tool adds circular smooth points that

create continuous arcs in the side of the cylinder To change the point to

a sharp corner, click it with the convert point tool Click again to change thepoint back to a smooth point

Moving in 3D space

The next two tools are the most powerful and the hardest to use They permit you

to move the object in 3D space When you switch to one of these tools, Photoshop

Tip

renders the preview so you can see the image wrapped around the shape, as in

Figure 11-45

Pan camera ( E ): Drag the image to move it up, down, left, or right How

is this different than moving the primitive with the arrow tool? This time,you’re moving the image in 3D space across your field of vision (To be more

precise, you’re moving the camera — which is your window into the image —

while the object remains still.) As you move the image to the left, you see

more of its right side Move it up, and you see its bottom

Trackball ( R ): The trackball rotates the image in 3D space Meanwhile,

it’s ultimately a 2D control — you can’t move your cursor into or out ofthe screen; just up, down, and side to side — making it difficult to predict the

outcome of a drag

Inevitably, you’ll end up exposing the back, empty side of a shape When this

happens, spin the shape by dragging against the grain To spin the shape head

over heels, for example, drag directly up or down To spin the shape

side-ways, drag horizontally Don’t fret too much about moving through the 3D

world; just watch how the program behaves when you move your mouse from

one location to another In time, you’ll see some very simple patterns that you

can exploit to your advantage

Figure 11-45: When you select either the pan camera or the trackball tool,

Photoshop renders the image inside the preview area

Rendered preview

Tip

The camera controls

When you select the pan camera or trackball tool, Photoshop offers two Cameraoptions on the right side of the dialog box At first, the two options seem to do thesame thing A low value moves you in; a high value takes you out But, in truth, theyproduce subtly different effects Think of the Field of View option as a wide-anglelens and the Dolly option as a zoom lens, with both operating at the same time Alow Field of View with a high Dolly results in shallow shapes A high Field of Viewwith a low Dolly shrinks you to the size of a bug so that the depth is really coming

at you

Basic navigation

The last two tools in the 3D Transform dialog box are the standard hand and ing glass They work just like their counterparts outside the 3D Transform dialog box:

magnify-Hand ( H ): Drag the image to move it around inside the preview area

You can press either H or the spacebar to get this tool.

Zoom ( Z ): Click with this tool to zoom in, Alt-click to zoom out When

any other tool is selected, Ctrl+spacebar-click and Alt+spacebar-click

to zoom in and out

Layer before you apply

When you press Enter, Photoshop merges your new 3D shape with the originalimage Because the 3D Transform filter provides no lighting controls, the shape may be virtually indistinguishable from its background, as Figure 11-46 makes abundantly clear And that, dear friends, is a giant drag

Figure 11-46: By default, the 3D

Transform filter merges the 3D imageinto the original image, making for anextraordinarily subtle effect

Luckily, you can force Photoshop to deliver the 3D shape on a separate layer Here’s

what you do First copy the image to a separate layer by dragging it onto the page

icon at the bottom of the Layers palette Then choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ 3D

Trans-form and click the Options button inside the dialog box Turn off the Display

Background check box, spotlighted in Figure 11-47, and press Enter

Figure 11-47: Copy the image to

a separate layer and turn off theDisplay Background check box tomake the area outside the 3Dshape transparent

Not only will the 3D Transform filter restrict its efforts to the active layer, it will also

make the area outside the 3D shape transparent, as in the first example of Figure

11-48 Then you can apply layer effects or other lighting techniques to distinguish

the 3D shape from its background, as in the second example

Figure 11-48: After applying the 3D shape to a separate layer (shown by itself at

left), I used the Drop Shadow and Inner Bevel effects to add some fake volumetric

lighting to my goblet (right)

Tip

Color Plates 11-8 and 11-9 demonstrate some of the fun you can have with 3DTransform In Color Plate 11-8, I relied entirely on the Drop Shadow and Inner Bevellayer styles to light the layered 3D goblet I also added a bit of red to the goblet usingImage ➪ Adjust ➪ Hue/Saturation to distinguish the layer from its sandy background.Color Plate 11-9 illustrates the merits of manual lighting techniques After setting thegoblet against a different background, I applied the drop shadow and haloing tech-niques that I discuss in the section “Selecting the Contents of Layers” in Chapter 12.

I also applied the airbrush tool set alternatively to the Multiply and Screen brushmodes to hand-brush some natural tinting Finally, I darkened the top of the gobletwith the help of the elliptical marquee tool After drawing my initial marquee, I choseSelect ➪ Transform to rotate and scale it into position, pressed Ctrl+J to send theselection to a separate layer, and applied the Multiply blend mode set to a low opac-ity Admittedly, the finished effect involved a lot of effort, but it looks significantlymore realistic than anything Photoshop can approximate automatically

Adding Clouds and Spotlights

The remaining five filters in the Render submenu produce lighting effects You canuse Clouds and Difference Clouds to create a layer of haze over an image Lens Flarecreates light flashes and reflections (as I mentioned earlier) Lighting Effects lights

an image as if it were hanging on a gallery wall You can even use the unremarkableTexture Fill to add an embossed texture to a piece embellished with the LightingEffects filter

Creating clouds

The Clouds filter creates an abstract and random haze between the foreground andbackground colors Difference Clouds works exactly like layering the image, apply-ing the Clouds filter, and selecting the Difference blend mode in the Layers palette.Why on earth should Difference Clouds make special provisions for a single blendmode? Because you can create cumulative effects Try this: Select blue as the fore-ground color and then choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ Clouds Ah, just like a real sky, huh? Now choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ Difference Clouds It’s like some kind of weirdHalloween motif, all blacks and oranges Press Ctrl+F to repeat the filter Back to theblue sky Keep pressing Ctrl+F over and over and notice the results A pink cancerstarts invading the blue sky; a green cancer invades the orange one Multiple appli-cations of the Difference Clouds filter generate organic oil-on-water effects

To strengthen the colors created by the Clouds filter, press Shift when choosing thecommand This same technique works when using the Difference Clouds filter as

well In fact, I don’t know of any reason not to press Shift while choosing one of

these commands, unless you have some specific need for washed-out effects

Tip

Color Plate 11-10 shows some entertaining applications of the Clouds filters With

the foreground and background colors set to blue and orange, respectively, I

applied the Clouds filter to a layered copy of the rose image For maximum effect,

I pressed Shift and chose the filter to create the top-left image in the color plate I

then pressed Shift and chose the Difference Clouds filter to create the purple

mon-tage in the figure, and pressed Ctrl+F ten times to achieve the top-right image

Looks to me like I definitely have something growing in my petri dish

Yeah, so really groovy stuff, right? Shades of “Purple Haze” and all that But now

that I’ve created this murky mess, what the heck do I do with it? Composite it, of

course The bottom row of Color Plate 11-10 shows examples of mixing each of the

images from the top row with the original rose In the example on the left, I chose

the Overlay option from the Layers palette In the example in the middle, I chose

the Screen mode And in the last example, I chose Hue This last one is particularly

exciting, completely transforming the colors in the rose while leaving the gray (and

therefore unsaturated) background untouched Without a mask, without anything

but a rectangular marquee, I’ve managed to precisely color the interior of the rose

Lighting an image

Photoshop ventures further into 3D drawing territory with the Lighting Effects filter

This very complex function enables you to shine lights on an image, color the lights,

position them, focus them, specify the reflectivity of the surface, and even create a

surface map In many ways, it’s a direct lift from MetaCreations’ Painter But whereas

Painter provides predefined paper textures and light refraction effects that bolster

the capabilities of its excellent tool, Photoshop offers better controls and more

light-ing options

The Lighting Effects filter is applicable exclusively to RGB images Also, don’t expect

to be able to apply 3D lighting to shapes created with the 3D Transform filter Sadly,

the two filters share no common elements that would permit them to work directly

with each other

When you choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ Lighting Effects, Photoshop displays what is

easily its most complex dialog box, as shown in Figure 11-49 The dialog box has

two halves: one in which you actually position light with respect to a thumbnail of

the selected image, and one that contains about a billion intimidating options

No bones about it, this dialog box is a bear The easiest way to apply the filter is to

choose one of the predefined lighting effects from the Style pop-up menu at the top

of the right side of the dialog box, see how it looks in the preview area, and — if you

like it — press Enter to apply the effect

But if you want to create your own effects, you have to work a little harder Here are

the basic steps involved in creating a custom effect

Caution

Figure 11-49: The Lighting Effects dialog box enables you to light

an image as if it were hanging in a gallery, lying on a floor, or perhaps resting too near a hot flame

STEPS: Lighting an Image

1 Drag from the light icon at the bottom of the dialog box into the preview

area to create a new light source I call this area the stage because it’s as if

the image is painted on the floor of a stage and the lights are hanging above it

2 Select the kind of light you want from the Light Type pop-up menu It’s just

below the Style pop-up menu You can select from Directional, Omni, andSpotlight:

• Directional works like the sun, producing a general, unfocused light thathits a target from an angle

• Omni is a bare light bulb hanging in the middle of the room, shining in alldirections from a center point

• Spotlight is a focused beam that is brightest at the source and tapers offgradually

Color swatches

FootprintPreview area

Hot Spot

Focus point

Handles Trash iconLight icon

3 Specify the color of the light by clicking the top color swatch You can also

muck about with the Intensity slider bar to control the brightness of the light

If Spotlight is selected, the Focus slider becomes available Drag the slider

toward Narrow to create a bright laser of light; drag toward Wide to diffuse

the light and spread it over a larger area

4 Move the light source by dragging at the focus point (the colored circle in

the preview area) When Directional or Spotlight is selected, the focus point

represents the spot at which the light is pointing When Omni is active, the

focus point is the actual bulb (Don’t burn yourself.)

5 If Directional or Spotlight is active, you can change the angle of the light by

dragging the hot spot The hot spot represents the location in the image that’s

liable to receive the most light When you use a Directional light, the hot spot

appears as a black square at the end of a line joined to the focus point The

same holds true when you edit a Spotlight; the confusing thing is that there

are four black squares altogether The light source is joined to the focus point

by a line; the three handles are not.

To make the light brighter, drag the hot spot closer to the focus point

Dragging the hot spot away from the focus point dims the light by increasing

the distance that it has to travel It’s like having a flashlight in the living room

when you’re in the garage — the light gets dimmer as you move away from it

6 With Omni or Spotlight in force, you can edit the elliptical footprint of the

light When Omni is in force, a circle surrounds the focus point When editing

a Spotlight, you see an ellipse Either way, this shape represents the footprint

of the light, which is the approximate area of the image affected by the light

You can change the size of the light by dragging the handles around the

foot-print Enlarging the shape is like raising the light source When the footprint

is small, the light is close to the image so it’s concentrated and very bright

When the footprint is large, the light is high above the image, so it’s more

generalized

When editing the footprint of a Spotlight, Shift-drag a handle to adjust the

width or height of the ellipse without affecting the angle To change the angle

without affecting the size, Ctrl-drag a handle

7 Introduce more lights as you see fit.

You can use a bunch of different techniques to add and subtract lights on the

stage Press Tab to switch from one light to the next Duplicate a light in the

stage by Alt-dragging its focus point To delete the active light, just press

Backspace Or if you prefer, you can drag the focus point onto the trash can

icon at the bottom of the dialog box

8 Change the Properties and Texture Channel options as you see fit I explain

these in detail after the steps

Tip

Tip

Tip

9 If you want to save your settings for future use, click the Save button.

Photoshop invites you to name the setup, which then appears as an option

in the Style pop-up menu If you want to get rid of one of the presets, select

it from the pop-up menu and click the Delete button

10 Press Enter to apply your settings to the image.

That’s almost everything The only parts I left out are the Properties and TextureChannel options The Properties slider bars control how light reflects off the sur-face of your image:

✦ Gloss: Is the surface dull or shiny? Drag the slider toward Matte to make the

surface flat and nonreflective, like dull enamel paint Drag the slider towardShiny to make it glossy, as if you had slapped on a coat of lacquer

✦ Material: This option determines the color of the light that reflects off the

image According to the logic employed by this option, Plastic reflects backthe color of the light; Metallic reflects the color of the object itself If only Ihad a bright, shiny plastic thing and a bright, shiny metal thing, I could check

to see whether this logic holds true in real life (like maybe that matters)

✦ Exposure: I’d like this option better if you could vary it between Sun Block 65

and Melanoma Unfortunately, the more prosaic titles are Under and Over —exposed, that is This option controls the brightness of all lights like a big dim-mer switch You can control a single selected light using the Intensity slider,but the Exposure slider offers the added control of changing all lights in thestage (preview) area and the ambient light (described next) together

✦ Ambience: The last slider enables you to add ambient light, which is a

gen-eral, diffused light that hits all surfaces evenly First, select the color of thelight by clicking the color swatch to the right Then drag the slider to cast

a subtle hue over the stage Drag toward Positive to tint the image with thecolor in the swatch; drag toward Negative to tint the stage with the swatch’sopposite Keep the slider set to 0 — dead in the center — to cast no hue.The Texture Channel options enable you to treat one channel in the image as a

texture map, which is a grayscale surface in which white indicates peaks and black

indicates valleys (As long as the White is high check box is selected, that is If youdeselect that option, everything flips, and black becomes the peak.) It’s as if onechannel has a surface to it By selecting a channel from the pop-up menu, you cre-ate an emboss effect, much like that created with the Emboss filter except muchbetter because you can light the surface from many angles at once and it’s in color

to boot

Choose a channel to serve as the embossed surface from the pop-up menu Thenchange the Height slider to indicate more or less Flat terrain or huge Mountainouscliffs of surface texture

Color Plate 11-11 shows an image lit with a total of five spotlights, two from above

and three from below In the first example, I left the Texture Channel option set to

None In the second example, I selected the green channel as the surface map And

in the third example, I filled a separate mask channel with a bunch of white and

black dollops using Filter ➪ Pixelate ➪ Pointillize and then I selected the mask from

the Texture Channel pop-up menu in the Lighting Effects dialog box The result is a

wonderfully rough paper texture

Working

with Layers

Layers, Layers Everywhere

Layers started out as little more than their name implies —

sheets of pixels that you could edit and transform

indepen-dently of each other But over time, layers have become

increasingly more sophisticated Since the feature was

intro-duced in Version 3, every major release of Photoshop has

witnessed some kind of fantastic, and occasionally frustrating,

layer enhancement Photoshop 4 forced you to embrace

the feature by creating a new layer every time you imported

an image; but it also rewarded you with floating adjustment

layers that let you correct colors without permanently

affecting a single pixel (see Chapter 17) Photoshop 5

witnessed the birth of layer effects, which included editable

drop shadows, glows, and edge bevels (see Chapter 14)

Now comes Photoshop 6, which permits you to bundle and

color-code layers into logical clusters (this chapter), blend

color channels independently of each other (Chapter 13), and

even add vector-based lines and shapes (Chapter 14), not to

mention object-oriented text (Chapter 15)

In fact, in a long line of layer-boosting champions, Photoshop

6 bears the standard with more gusto than any release since

Version 3 Mind you, there’s still room for improvement For

example, one day I hope to see Photoshop integrate

paramet-ric effects, in which filters such as Unsharp Mask and Motion

Blur are fully editable, interactive, and interchangeable, on

the order of Adobe’s full-motion editor, After Effects But

in the meantime, Photoshop 6’s layers provide us with more

freedom and flexibility than we’ve ever had before

For those of your who are wondering what I’m talking about,

permit me to back up for a moment The first and foremost

benefit of layers is that they add versatility Because each

layer in a composition is altogether independent of other

layers, you can change your mind on a moment’s notice

Consider Figure 12-1 Here I’ve compiled the ingredients

12

In This Chapter

Creating and cloning layersFloating thebackground layerBringing layersforward andbackwardUsing the MattingcommandsMerging layersConverting layers

to selectionsMaking drop shadows,halos, and spotlightsCombining layersusing links and setsMoving, scaling, and rotating layersAligning layers toguides and each otherUsing the measure toolSelecting the LockTransparency optionWorking with layer masksCreating clippinggroups