Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers phần 2 ppsx

For example, pressing c on the keyboard will activate the crop tool and pressing j will select whichever of the healing brush group of tools is currently selected in the Tools palette..

Determining output image size

Image size is determined by the fi nal

output requirements and at the beginning

of a digital job, the most important

information you need to know is:

• How large will the picture appear on

the page, poster, etc.?

• What is the screen frequency being

used by the printer – how many lpi?

• What is the preferred halftone factor

used to determine the output

resolution?

• Will the designer need to allow for

page bleed, or want to crop your

image?

But we always use 300 ppi!

There is a common misconception in

the design industry that everything

must be supplied at 300 pixels per inch

This crops up all the time when you are

contacting clients to ask what resolution

you should supply your image fi les at

Somehow the idea has got around the

industry that everything from a picture in

a newspaper to a 48-sheet poster must

be reproduced from a 300 ppi fi le It does

not always hurt to supply your fi les at a

higher resolution than is necessary, but

it can get quite ridiculous when you are

asked to supply a 370 MB fi le in order to

produce a 30” x 36” print!

with which to generate the black plate The spacing of the pixels in relation to the spacing of the 45 degree rotated black plate is thereby more synchronized

For this reason, you will fi nd that the image output resolution asked for by printers is usually at least 1.41 times the halftone screen frequency used, i.e multiples

of ×1.41, ×1.5 or ×2 This multiplication is also known

as the ‘halftone factor’, but which is best? Ask the printer what they prefer you to supply and some will say that the 1.41:1 or 1.5:1 multiplication produces crisper detail than the higher ratio of 2:1 There are other factors which they may have to take into account such as the screening method used It is claimed that Stochastic or FM screening permits

a more fl exible choice of ratios ranging from 1:1 to 2:1

Ideally this information needs to be known before the image is scanned (or captured digitally) Because if you calculate that only 10 MB worth of RGB data will actually be required, there may be no point in capturing more image data than is absolutely necessary If the printer’s specifi cation is not available to you, then the only alternative is to scan or shoot at the highest practical resolution and resample the image later The downside of this is that large image fi les consume extra disk space and take longer to process on the computer If a print job does not require the images to be larger than 10 MB, then you’ll want to know this in advance rather than waste time and space working on unnecessarily large fi les On the other hand, designers like to have the freedom to take a supplied image and scale it in the design layout program to suit their requirements So it may seem contrary for me to state that I normally supply my fi les using a ×2 halftone factor, because that way I know there will always be enough data

in the supplied fi le to allow for a 20% scaling without adversely compromising the fi nal print quality

Pixel Aspect Ratio

The Pixel Aspect Ratio is there to aid multimedia designers who work in stretched screen formats So, if a

‘non-square’ pixel setting is selected, Photoshop will create a scaled document which will preview how a normal ‘square’

pixel Photoshop document will actually display on a stretched wide screen And the title bar will add [scaled] to the end

of the fi le name to remind you that you are working in this special preview mode

When you create a non-square pixel document the scaled preview can be switched on or off by selecting the Pixel Aspect Correction item in the View menu

Figure 2.17The New document and New Document Preset dialogs.

Creating a new document

If you want to create a new document in Photoshop with a blank canvas, go to the File menu and choose New This will open the dialog shown in Figure 2.17, where you can select a preset setting from the Preset pop-up menu or manually enter new document dimensions and resolution

in the fi elds below When you choose a preset setting, the resolution will adjust automatically depending on whether

it is a preset used for print or computer screen type work

You can change the default resolution settings for print and screen in the Units & Rulers Photoshop preferences dialog

The Advanced section lets you do extra things like choose

a specifi c profi led color space After you have entered custom settings in the New Document dialog these can be saved by clicking on the Save Preset button In the New Document Preset dialog shown below you will notice that the options will allow you to select which attributes will be included in the saved preset

Altering the image size

The image size dimensions and resolution can be adjusted using the Image Size dialog The dialog will normally open with the Resample Image box checked This means that as you enter new pixel dimension values, measurement values

or adjust the resolution, the overall image size will adjust accordingly As you adjust one set of units you will see the others adjust simultaneously When Resample Image is unchecked, the pixel dimensions will be grayed out and any adjustment made to the image will not alter the total pixel dimensions, only the relationship between the measurement units and the resolution Remember the rule I mentioned earlier: the number of pixels = physical dimension × (ppi) resolution You can put that rule to the test here and use the Image Size dialog as a training tool to better understand the relationship between the number of pixels, the dimensions and the resolution The Constrain Proportions checkbox links the horizontal and vertical dimensions, so that any adjustment is automatically scaled to both axis Only uncheck this box if you wish to squash or stretch the image while adjusting the image size

Figure 2.18 To change the image output dimensions but retain the resolution, leave the Resample box checked To change the image output dimensions with a corresponding change in resolution, leave the Resample box unchecked Click on the Auto button to open the Auto Resolution dialog This will help you pick the ideal pixel resolution for repro work based on the line screen resolution.

Resolution and viewing distance

In theory the larger a picture is printed,

the further away it is meant to be viewed

and the pixel resolution should not have

to alter in order to achieve the same

perception of sharpness There are limits

though, below which the quality will

never be sharp enough at normal viewing

distance (except at the smallest of print

sizes) It also depends on the image

subject matter – a picture containing a lot

of mechanical detail will need more pixels

to do the subject justice and be reproduced

successfully If you had a picture of a softly

lit cloudy landscape, you could quite easily

get away with enlarging a small image

through interpolation, beyond the normal

constraints

When to interpolate?

I consider ‘ interpolating up’ an image

in Photoshop to be preferable to the interpolation methods found in basic scanner software Digital fi les captured from a scanning back or multishot digital camera are extremely clean and, because there is no grain present, it is usually possible to magnify a digitally captured image much more than you would magnify

a scanned image of equivalent size There are other third-party programs that claim

to offer improved interpolation, but there appears to be little evidence that you will actually gain any major improvements in image quality over and above what you can achieve using Photoshop

Image interpolation

Image resampling is also known as interpolation and Photoshop can use one of fi ve methods when assigning approximated values for any new pixels that are generated

The interpolation options are located next to the Resample Image checkbox

Nearest Neighbor is the simplest interpolation

method, yet I use this quite a lot, such as when I want

to enlarge a screen grab of a dialog box for this book by 200% and I don’t want the sharp edges of the dialog boxes

to appear fuzzy

Bilinear interpolation will calculate new pixels by

reading the horizontal and vertical neighboring pixels It

is fast, and perhaps that was an important consideration in the early days of Photoshop, but I don’t see there is much reason to use it now

Bicubic interpolation provides better image quality

when resampling continuous tone images Photoshop will read the values of neighboring pixels vertically, horizontally and diagonally, to calculate a weighted approximation of each new pixel value Photoshop intelligently guesses the new pixel values, by referencing the surrounding pixels

Figure 2.19 If Image Size is proving too confusing, the Resize Image Assistant is on hand to help guide you This wizard is located in the Help menu and can be used to resize images both for print and for the Web.

Bicubic interpolation methods

The Photoshop bicubic interpolations are improved and more accurate than before, especially with regard to the downsampling of images And if you need to apply an extreme image resize either up or down in size, I suggest that you consider using the Bicubic Sharper or Bicubic Smoother interpolation methods

Bicubic Smoother is the ideal choice if you wish to

make an image bigger In my view it is not a good idea to use Bicubic Sharper when interpolating an image up in size, because although Bicubic Smoother will result in (as the name suggests) a smoother interpolation enlargement it

is better to use Bicubic Smoother followed by a sharpening action at the end, which should be dictated by the type of print output you wish to make

Bicubic Sharper should be used when you want to

reduce the pixel resolution more accurately ; for example,

if you have a high resolution digital capture of detailed machinery and want to make a duplicate copy but at a much lower pixel resolution If you reduce the image size using Bicubic Sharper the scaled down image will retain more detail and sharpness

Step interpolation

Some people might be familiar with the step interpolation technique, where you gradually increase or decrease the image size by small percentages This is not really necessary now because you can use Bicubic Sharper or Bicubic Smoother to increase or decrease the image size

in a single step Some people argue that for really extreme image size changes they prefer to use a 10% step method

Unsharp masking should always be applied last as the

fi le is being prepared for print This is because interpolating after sharpening will enhance the image artifacts

introduced by the sharpening process

Planning ahead

Once an image has been scanned at a

particular resolution and manipulated,

there is no going back A digital fi le

prepared for advertising usage may never

be used to produce anything bigger than

a 35 MB CMYK separation, but you never

know It is safer to err on the side of

caution and better to sample down than

have to interpolate up It also depends on

the manipulation work being done Some

styles of retouching work are best done

at a magnifi ed size and then reduced

Suppose you wanted to blend a small

element into a detailed scene To do such

work convincingly, you need to have

enough pixels to work with to be able to

see what you are doing For this reason

some professional retouchers will edit a

master fi le that is around 100 MB RGB or

bigger even Another advantage of working

with large fi le sizes is that you can always

guarantee being able to meet clients’

constantly changing demands, although

the actual resolution required to illustrate

a glossy magazine double-page full-bleed

spread is probably only around 40–60

MB RGB or 55–80 MB CMYK Some

advertising posters may even require

smaller fi les than this, because the print

screen on a billboard poster is that much

coarser When you are trying to calculate

the optimum resolution you cannot rely

on being fully provided with the right

advice from every printer Sometimes it

will be necessary to anticipate the required

resolution by referring to the table in

Figure 2.21 This shows some sample fi le

size guides for different types of print job

Figure 2.20 The above table shows a comparison of pixel resolution, megapixels, megabyte fi le size and output dimensions at different resolutions, both in inches and in centimeters

Figure 2.21 Here is a rough guide to the sort of fi le sizes required to reproduce either a mono or CMYK fi le for printed use The table contains fi le size information for output at multiples of x1.5 the screen ruling and x2 the screen ruling.

Inches Centimeters Inches Centimeters Pixel size Megapixels MB (RGB) MB (CMYK) 200 ppi 80 ppc 300 ppi 120 ppc

MB Grayscale

MB CMYK

x2 Output resolution

MB Grayscale

MB CMYK

A3 Newspaper single page

85 lpi 130 ppi 3 12.5 170 ppi 5.5 21.5

A3 Newspaper single page

120 lpi 180 ppi 6 24 240 ppi 10.5 42.5

A4 Magazine mono single page

120 lpi 180 ppi 3 na 240 ppi 5.3 na

A4 Magazine mono double page

120 lpi 180 ppi 6 na 240 ppi 10.6 na

A4 Magazine single page

133 lpi 200 ppi 3.7 14.8 266 ppi 6.5 26.1

A4 Magazine double page

133 lpi 200 ppi 8 29.6 266 ppi 13 52.2

A4 Magazine single page

150 lpi 225 ppi 4.7 18.7 300 ppi 8.3 33.2

A4 Magazine double page

150 lpi 225 ppi 9.4 37.4 300 ppi 17 66.4

Converting raw data into pixels

A large number of readers will probably be using a digital camera to capture their photographs and will fi nd themselves presented with a choice between capturing

in JPEG or raw mode Whichever way you look at it, all images are captured as raw data and the raw information has to be converted at some stage into an RGB pixel image that Photoshop can work with

All digital cameras have an on-board processor that will interpret the raw capture data and render it as a pixel image This process will usually take into account the camera white balance settings, along with any other custom settings that dictate things like sharpness, levels clipping, color mode and noise reduction, etc If you shoot using the camera’s JPEG mode, you will be letting the camera decide on-the-fl y how the conversion is to be carried out and the capture fi le output will be a fully-rendered pixel image saved using the JPEG format If your camera output

is a JPEG or a TIFF image, there is not much else you need

to know about raw data right now and you can get straight down to the business of editing your images in Photoshop

When you edit a pixel image, your starting point will always be a fi xed pixel original There are a number of ways in Photoshop that you can edit such a picture non-destructively, by using layers and adjustment layers or Smart Objects even But your options will always be constrained by the nature of the original pixel image Plus, adding more layers can greatly increase the overall fi le size

But if you choose to shoot in raw mode, the possibilities are endless The raw data is just that: it is the raw image data that was captured by the sensor and the only thing that

is fi xed in the raw fi le is the ISO setting that was used to capture the photograph The raw image is therefore like a digital negative just waiting to be developed and you can have complete control over how the image is processed, whereas if you shoot using the JPEG mode, you will

be letting the camera make all the raw process editing decisions for you

Before there was Camera Raw

Deferred pixel processing isn’t such a new concept Some of you may remember the Live Picture program, which used proxy images to apply the image edits and stored these as instructions which could later be used to render a fi nal output image

The Adobe Camera Raw plug-in has evolved over several versions of Photoshop now and provides a lot of powerful features with which to process raw image fi les from selected cameras and convert them into pixel images that Photoshop can work with The Camera Raw plug-in provides true non-destructive image editing because the raw fi le is never modifi ed The edits you make via the Camera Raw plug-in are effectively instruction edits that are saved as metadata to a central database and can also be saved locally to XMP sidecar fi les (or in the case of DNG and other non-proprietary fi les saved to the fi le itself)

This marks a radical shift in direction from the pixel-based image editing that Photoshop built its reputation on, and in Chapter 5 you can read all about all the new features in the Camera Raw 4 plug-in

If I want to preserve all the information from one of

my Canon EOS 1Ds Mk II camera captures as a 16-bit TIFF fi le, the fi le would end up being almost 100 MB in size (and that is before adding extra layers) A raw master

fi le by comparison will be no bigger than 15 MB (less if converted to DNG) and every time I edit the raw fi le, the edit instructions can be stored in just a few kilobytes of extra data Raw image processing is now just as important

as pixel imaging (some would argue it is even more so) and it is not just in the realm of Photoshop There are now many other programs that will allow you to edit almost exclusively with raw images The new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom program will let you edit and manage both raw and non-raw images Capture One is another raw image processor that is popular with photographers and Apple’s Aperture which, like Lightroom, is primarily a workfl ow tool for digital photographers

How do we describe this raw image processing? Do we call it raw editing, instruction set editing, metadata editing?

Whatever it is called, Raw offers photographers a greater level of control over how they process their images and encourages us to keep our images in their raw state longer, before it is necessary to render them as pixel images to be worked on in Photoshop

Figure 2.22 Where tools are marked with a

triangle in the bottom right corner, if you mouse

down on the tool you will see all the other tools

that are nested in that particular group.

Photoshop CS3 Tools palette

The Tools palette layout contains 60 separate tools

Double-clicking any tool will automatically display the Tool options palette (if it happens to be hidden) and from there you can select individual options for that tool (see page 58)

Many of the tools listed in the Tools palette have a triangle in the bottom right corner of the tool icon, which indicates that there are extra tools nested in a tool group

If you mouse down on the tool icon, this will reveal the list of tools (see Figure 2.22) and you can click on any of the tools in the list to make it the new default tool for that group

You will notice that each tool or set of tools will have an associated keyboard shortcut This is displayed whenever you mouse down to reveal the nested tools or hover with the cursor to reveal the tool tip info; you can use these to quickly select a tool without having to always use the Tools palette to select the tool you wish to use

For example, pressing c on the keyboard will activate the crop tool and pressing j will select whichever of the healing brush group of tools is currently selected in the Tools palette Where more than one tool shares the same keyboard shortcut, you can cycle through these other tools

by holding down the S key as you press the keyboard shortcut But if you prefer to restore the old behavior whereby repeated pressing of the key would cycle the tool selection, go to the Photoshop menu, select Preferences

➯ General and deselect the Use Shift Key for Tool Switch option (personally, I prefer using the shift key method) You can also O A-click the tool icon in the Tools palette to cycle through the grouped tools

There are specifi c situations when Photoshop will not allow you to use certain tools and displays a prohibit sign ( ) For example, you might be editing an image in 32-bit mode where only some tools can be used to edit the image Clicking once in the image document window will call up a dialog explaining the exact reason why you cannot access or use a particular tool

Adobe On-line

Any late-breaking information plus access

to on-line help and professional tips are all

easily accessible within Photoshop If you

click on the PS icon in the Tools palette,

this will open the Adobe On-line dialog

(which is also available in the Help menu)

Figure 2.23 The Tools palette with keyboard shortcuts shown in brackets Note that the count tool is only available in the extended version of Photoshop CS3.

Move tool (V)

Quick selection/Magic wand (W)

Brush tool/Pencil/Color replacement tool (B)

Eyedropper/Color sampler/Measure/Count* (I)

Zoom tool (Z)

Spot Healing brush/Healing brush/Patch tool/Red eye tool (J)

Eraser/Background/Magic Eraser (E) Clone Stamp/Pattern Stamp (S)

Hand tool (H)

Lasso tools (L) Marquee selection tools (M)

Background color

Exchange colors (X) Foreground color

Default colors setting (D)

Standard display/Quickmask display mode (Q) Screen display modes (F)

History/Art History brush (Y)

Blur/Sharpen/Smudge (R) Adobe On-line

Pen path tools (P)

Crop tool (C)

Type tools/Type mask tools (T) Dodge/Burn/Sponge (O) Gradients/Paint Bucket (G) Slice/Slice select tool (K)

Annotation tools (N) Path Selection/Direct Selection (A)

Shape tools (U)

Figure 2.24 The Options palette.

Figure 2.25 Here is a view of the Options palette, where I had moused down on the arrow next to the Brush tool icon to reveal the Tool Presets menu.

Hovering tool tips

In order to help familiarize yourself with

the Photoshop tools and palette functions,

help dialog boxes will pop up after a few

seconds whenever you leave a cursor

hovering over any one of the Photoshop

buttons or tool icons (see Show Tool

Tips in the General Preferences) A brief

description is included in the box and

tools have their keyboard shortcuts written

in brackets

Options palette

The Options palette will normally appear at the top of the screen, snapped to the main menu This is a convenient location for the Options palette, and you will soon appreciate the ease with which you can make changes to any options with minimal mouse navigation movement

The Options palette can be unhooked, by dragging the gripper bar (on the left edge) away from the top of the screen As was mentioned earlier on page 38, you can use the SÊ shortcut to toggle hiding the palette stack only, keeping just the Tools palette and Options palette visible

The individual Options palette settings for some of the tools are shown throughout the rest of this chapter To reset

a tool or all tools, L right mouse down on the tool icon

on the left and choose Reset Tool or Reset All Tools Quite often you will see ‘tick’ and ‘cancel’ icons on the right-hand side of the Options palette These are there so that you can OK or cancel a tool that is in a modal state For example, you might be using the crop tool and are about to accept or cancel the crop but, after a while, you may fi nd

it easier to use the E key to OK or the ‰ key to cancel a tool operation such as a crop

Figure 2.26 The Tool Presets palette.

Figure 2.27 The Tool Presets options.

New preset button

Delete button

Tool Presets palette

Many of the Photoshop tools will offer a range of possible tool options Tool Presets will allow you to store multiple saved tool settings, which can be accessed via the Options palette (as shown in Figure 2.25), or via the Tool Presets palette shown in Figure 2.26

With Tool Presets you can access any number of tool options very quickly and this will save you the bother of having to reconfi gure the Options palette settings each time you use a particular tool For example, you might

fi nd it useful to save crop tool settings for different image dimensions and pixel resolutions, so that you can access these without having to reconfi gure the Options palette every time And likewise, you might like to store pre-confi gured brush preset settings, rather than have to keep adjusting the brush shape and attributes To save a new tool preset, click on the New Preset button at the bottom of the Tool Presets palette and to delete a preset, click on the Trash button

If you mouse down on the Tool Presets options, you can use the menu shown in Figure 2.27 to manage the Tools Presets In Figure 2.26 the Show All Tool Presets option was selected which meant that all the tool presets were displayed at once This can be useful, because clicking on

a preset will simultaneously select the tool and the preset at the same time But most people will fi nd the Tool Presets palette easier to manage when the Show Current Tool Only option is selected

You can use the Tool Presets options to save or load preset settings For example, if you create a set of custom presets, you can share these with other Photoshop users

by choosing Save Tool Presets to create a saved set of settings for a particular tool Another thing that may not

be immediately apparent is the fact that you can also use the Tool Presets to save type tool settings This again is useful, because you can save the font type, font size, type attributes and font color settings all within a single tool preset This feature can also be really handy if you are working on a web or book design project

Elliptical marquee toolSingle row marquee tool Single column marquee tool

Magic wand toolLasso tool Freeform lasso tool Magnetic lasso tool

Rectangular marquee tool

Quick selection tool

Selection tools

In Photoshop the usual editing conventions apply: pixels can be cut, copied and pasted just as you would when working with text in a word processing document and mistakes can be undone by using the Edit ➯ Undo command or by selecting a previous history state via the History palette

The Photoshop selection tools can mainly be used to defi ne a specifi c area of the image that you wish to modify,

or have copied The use of the selection tools in Photoshop

is therefore like highlighting text in a word processor program in preparation to do something with the selected content In the case of Photoshop, you might want to make

a selection to defi ne a specifi c area of the image, so that when you apply an image adjustment or a fi ll, only the selected area will be modifi ed Alternatively, you might use

a selection to defi ne an area you wish to copy and paste, or defi ne an area of an image that you want to copy across to another image document as a new layer

The marquee selection tool options include the rectangular, elliptical and single row/single column selection tools The lasso tool can be used to draw freehand selection outlines and has two other modes: the polygon

lasso tool, which can draw both straight line and freehand

selections plus the magnetic lasso tool, which is like an automatic freehand lasso tool that is able to auto-detect an edge you are trying to trace

The quick selection tool is a new addition in Photoshop CS3 and, like the magic wand tool, it can be used to make selections based on pixel color values; however the quick selection tool is a little more sophisticated than the standard magic wand and hence the new default tool in this particular tool grouping For full descriptions of these and other tools mentioned here don’t forget to install the

Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Help Guide that is

available on the DVD

Figure 2.28 A selection can be used to defi ne a specifi c area of an image that you wish to work on In this example, I made an elliptical marquee selection of the inner tire wheel and followed this with an image adjustment to desaturate the red color.

Figure 2.29 In this example I used the rectangle marquee tool to marquee one of the inner panels and followed this by holding down the

S key to select more panels with the rectangular marquee I deleted the selected areas and placed the cut-out image as a layer above a seascape image (see Figure 2.44 for an example of how Photoshop layers work).

Modifi er keys

Macintosh and Windows keyboards have slightly different key arrangements, hence the double sets of instructions throughout the book, where the C key on the Macintosh

is equivalent to the L key on a Windows keyboard (because Windows PC computers don’t have a Command key) and the Macintosh O key is equivalent to the Akey in Windows In fact, on most Macintosh keyboards the Option key is labeled ‘Alt’ anyway

Windows users (and Mac users with a ‘Mighty Mouse’) can use the right mouse button to access the contextual menus (Mac users can also use the L key to access these menus) and, fi nally, the S key which operates the same

on both Mac and PC computers

These keys are referred to as ‘modifi er’ keys, because they modify tool behaviors If you hold down the Swhen drawing a marquee selection this will constrain the selection to a square or circle If you hold down O

A when drawing a marquee selection it will center the selection around the point where you clicked on the image

And if you hold down SO SA when drawing

a marquee selection, this will constrain the selection to a square or circle and center the selection around the point where you fi rst clicked The Spacebar is also a modifi er key, in that it allows you to reposition your selection midstream

Figure 2.30 These composite screenshots

show Quick Mask views of selections created

by dragging out from the center with S held

down (top), with O A held down (middle)

Figure 2.32 These composite screenshots show Quick Mask views of selections modifi ed after the fi rst stage The top view shows an elliptical selection combined with a rectangular selection with S held down, adding to

a selection The middle view shows an elliptical selection combined with a rectangular selection with O A held down, which will subtract from the original selection The bottom view shows an elliptical selection combined with a rectangular selection with SO SA

held down, which will result in an intersected selection being made.

Figure 2.33 The Options bar has four modes of operation for each of the selection tools: Normal; Add to Selection; Subtract from Selection; and Intersect Selection You can also achieve these same operating modes by using the modifi er keys as you work with a tool in Normal mode.

Subtract from Selection Normal

Add to Selection

Intersect Selection

After you have created an initial selection, the modifi er keys will behave differently If you hold down the S key

as you drag with the marquee or lasso tool, this will add

to the selection (holding down the S key and clicking with the magic wand tool also adds to an existing magic wand selection) If you hold down the O A key as you drag with the marquee or lasso tool, this will subtract from the selection (holding down the O A key and clicking with the magic wand tool also subtracts from the existing selection) And the combination of holding down the SO SA keys together whilst dragging with a selection tool (or clicking with the magic wand) will create

an intersection of the two selections

The modifi er keys can also be used to modify the options that are available in Photoshop For example, if you hold down the O A key as you click on the marquee tool in the Tools palette you will notice how this cycles through the tools available in this group And whenever you are in a Photoshop dialog box it is also worth exploring what happens to the dialog buttons when you hold down the O A key You will often see the button names change to reveal more options

Create a new preset from current brush

Brush Preset Picker

Tool Preset Picker

Airbrush mode

Flow control Opacity control Open Brushes palette

Create New Brush Preset button

Brush size limits

The standard brush presets in Photoshop

range from a single pixel to a 2500

pixel-wide brush, with varying degrees of

softness

Pencil tool Blur tool Sharpen tool Smudge tool Burn tool Dodge tool Sponge tool Brush tool

Figure 2.34 Mouse down on the arrow next to the brush shape icon in the Options bar to call up the Brush Preset Picker shown here You can save the current brush size and hardness as a new setting by clicking on the Create New Preset button shown here.

You can also create a custom brush (like some of the other shapes in the list) from an image in Photoshop Create a new document, draw the shape and texture

of the brush you want and choose Edit ➯ Defi ne Brush Name it and it will become appended to the current brush presets To make sure that the brush shape remains permanently saved, choose Edit ➯ Preset Manager, select the brush or brushes you have just created and choose Save Set

Painting tools

The next set of tools I want to focus on is the painting tools These include: the brush tool, pencil, blur, sharpen, smudge, burn, dodge and sponge tools The painting tools are used to add or edit the pixel information in an image

If you want to keep your options open you may want to do all your painting work on a separate new layer, and you can

do this with all the above tools except for the eraser tools

But in some instances you may need to adjust the sample options so that you sample the layers below or all layers

When you select any of the above tools, the fi rst thing you will want to do is to choose a brush size, which you can do by going to the Brush Preset Picker (the second item from the left in the Options palette), select a brush, then double-click on the chosen preset to close the Brush Preset Picker Normally you will be able to choose from many different shapes and sizes of brushes and you can also use the Master Diameter and Hardness sliders to modify these brush size/shape characteristics

Figure 2.35 There is no need to visit the Brush or Tool presets each time you want to change the size of a brush Use the right square bracket key ] to make a brush bigger and the left square bracket key [ to make it smaller.

Figure 2.36 Combine the square bracket keys with the Shift key on your keyboard and you can use the S ] to make a brush edge harder and S [ to make a brush edge softer.

Figure 2.37 When using any of the paint tools in Photoshop, a L right mouse -click will open the Brush Preset menu, while a LS -click or right mouse S -click will reveal the brush blending modes list shown here.

On-the-fl y brush changes

Instead of visiting the Brush Picker every time you want

to adjust the size or hardness of a brush, you will fi nd it is much quicker to use the square bracket keys as described in Figures 2.35 and 2.36 to make these on-the-fl y changes

If you L right mouse-click in the image you are working on, this will open up the Brush Preset menu, directly next to the cursor Click on the brush preset you wish to select and once you start painting, the Brush Preset menu will close (or alternatively, use the ‰ key) Note that if you are painting with a Wacom stylus you can close this pop-up dialog by lifting the stylus off the tablet and squeezing the double-click button If you LS-click right mouse S-click in the image while using a brush tool, this will open the blending mode list These blend modes are like rules which govern how the painting pixels are applied to the pixels in the image below For example,

if you paint using the Color mode, you can apply color only to an image And if you click on the Edit Brush

menu item this will once more reveal the Brush Preset list

Figure 2.38 If you open the Brushes palette, the default view will just list the various brush shapes If you go to the Brushes palette menu options and click on Expanded View, this will reveal the extra brush options shown in the second palette view When Brush Presets is selected (circled) the brush shapes list will remain in the right-hand section of the Brushes palette But if you click on one of the brush attributes in the list, the right-hand section will change to reveal the options settings

Specifi c brush panel settings can be locked by clicking on a Lock button.

Brushes palette

So far we have looked at the Brush Preset options which are used to determine the brush shape and size The Brushes palette, however, is used to defi ne the brush attributes The brush attributes include things like how the opacity of the brush is applied when painting And

if you are using a pressure sensitive pen stylus, there are additional options in the Brushes palette that will enable you to link the pen pressure of the stylus to how much paint opacity will be applied You can switch this behavior

on or off and determine things like how the paint opacity and fl ow will be controlled by the pen pressure or the angle

of tilt of the pen The following section explains in more detail how these settings work

Figure 2.39 In this example, I selected the Aurora brush preset and experimented with the pen tilt settings for things such as the size and angle in the Shape Dynamics settings I then set turquoise as the foreground color and purple for the background I used a pen pressure setting to vary the paint color from foreground to background I created the doodle in this image

by twisting the pen angles as I applied the brush strokes.

Pressure sensitive control

The Wacom™ Intuos range includes some pens that have a thumbwheel control and

in Photoshop you can exploit all of these responsive built-in Wacom features to the full via the brush dynamics settings

You will notice that as you alter the brush dynamics settings, the brush stroke preview below will change to refl ect what the expected outcome would be if you had drawn a squiggly line that faded from zero to full pen pressure (likewise with the tilt and thumbwheel) This visual feedback is extremely useful as it allows you to experiment with the brush dynamics settings in the Brushes palette and learn how these will affect the brush dynamics behavior

Brushes palette options

The following notes and tips on working with the Brushes palette will apply to most, but not all of the painting tools

The Jitter controls will introduce randomness into the brush dynamics behavior Increasing the opacity jitter means that the opacity will still respond according to how much pen pressure is applied, but there will be a built-in random fl uctuation to the opacity that will vary even more

as the jitter value is increased The fl ow setting governs the speed at which the paint is applied To understand how the brush fl ow dynamics work, try selecting a brush and quickly paint a series of brush strokes at a low and then a high fl ow rate When the fl ow rate is low, less paint will be applied, but more paint will be applied if you increase the

fl ow setting, apply more pressure, or paint more slowly

Other tools like the dodge and burn toning tools use the terms Exposure and Strength Essentially these have the same meaning as the opacity controls

The Shape Dynamics can be adjusted to introduce jitter into the size angle and roundness of the brush And the scattering controls will enable you to produce broad, sweeping brush strokes with a random scatter The Color Dynamics let you introduce random color variation to the paint color The foreground/background color control can

be useful as this will let you vary the paint color between the foreground and background color, according to how much pressure is applied (see Figure 2.39) The Dual Brush and Texture Dynamics can introduce texture and more interactive complexity to the brush texture (it is worth experimenting with the Scale control in the Dual Brush options) The Texture Dynamics utilize a choice of blending modes for different effects and of course you can add a custom texture of your own design, direct from the Pattern presets

Photoshop no longer has a separate airbrush tool

Instead, all the brush tools have an Airbrush mode button in the Options palette

Figure 2.40 The Tool Presets palette.

Figure 2.41 In this example I fi lled the

background using a linear gradient tool and the

sun was added as a custom shape layer.

Rounded rectangle tool Elliptical tool Polygon tool Custom shape toolLine toolPaint bucket toolGradient tool Rectangle tool

Brush tool presets

When you have fi nished tweaking the Brushes palette dynamics and other settings, you can save a combination

of the brush preset shape/size setting, the Brushes palette attribute settings plus the brush blending mode (and brush color even) as a single Brush tool preset To do this, go to the Tool Presets palette and click on the New Preset button

at the bottom (see Figure 2.40) Or, you can mouse down

on the Tool Preset Picker in the Options palette and click

on the New Brush setting button Give the brush shape a name and click OK to append it to the current list Once you have save a brush tool preset, you can access it at any time via the Tool Presets palette or the Tool Preset menu in the Options palette

Tools for fi lling

The various shape tools and line tool are of more use to graphic designers for creating things like buttons or adding vector shapes to a design layout In Figure 2.41, you can see an example of how a custom vector shape had been added on top of a gradient fi ll layer

The paint bucket tool is like a combination of a magic wand selection combined with an Edit ➯ Fill with foreground color command As much as I try to ignore the paint bucket, people keep coming up with ways to prove

me wrong Recently, photographer Stuart Weston showed

me how he used the paint bucket tool to add small fi lled patches of color to a large composite fashion image The

fi nal image looked really good!

The gradient tool should be of more interest to photographers You can also use the Adjustment layer menu to add a solid or Gradient Fill layer to an image, and Gradient Fill layers can be applied in this way to create gradient fi lter type effects (see pages 468–469) But you will also fi nd that the gradient tool comes in use when you want to edit the contents of a layer mask For example, you can add a black to white gradient to a layer mask to apply a gradient fade to the layer opacity

Figure 2.42 If you need to isolate an object or create a cut-out like the one shown here, the only way to do so is to use the pen and pen modifi er tools to draw a path outline You see, with a photograph like this, there is very little color differentiation between the object and the background, and it would be very diffi cult for an auto masking tool to accurately predict the edges in this image I timed myself and it took

me between 8-9 minutes to draw the path outline that was used to create the cut-out shown on the right.

Add anchor point tool Delete anchor point tool Freeform pen tool Convert point tool Path selection tool Direct selection tool

Pen tool

Tools for drawing

If you want to become a good retoucher, then at some stage you are going to have to bite the bullet and learn how to use the pen tools The marquee, lasso and magic wand selection tools are fi ne for making approximate selections, but the pen tools are essential for all those other times where you need to create precision selections and masks

The pen tool group includes the main pen tool, a freeform pen tool (which in essence is not much better than the lasso or magnetic lasso tools) and modifi er tools to add, delete or modify path points There are several examples coming up in Chapter 8 where I will show you how to use the pen tools to draw a path

Healing brushPatch toolRed eye toolColor replacement brush

Move tool EraserMagic eraser Background eraserClone stamp Pattern stampSpot healing brush

The line-up of editing tools has changed quite a bit from the early days of Photoshop You have a crop tool that can

be used to trim pictures or enlarge the canvas area

The eraser tools are still there should you wish to erase the pixels directly, although these days it is more common

to use layer masks to selectively hide or show the contents

of a layer The background eraser and magic eraser tools

do offer some degree of automated erasing, but I would be more inclined to use a tool such as the Extract command from the Filter menu, or the new quick selection tool even for this type of masking

The clone stamp tool has been around since the beginning of Photoshop and is an essential tool for all types

of retouching work You can use the clone stamp to sample pixels from one part of the image and paint with them in another The clone stamp tools were joined recently by the healing brush and patch tool which work almost exactly the same as the clone stamp, but cleverly blend the pixels around the edges of where the retouching is applied, to produce almost fl awless results The patch tool functions exactly like the healing brush except it uses a selection to defi ne the area to be healed And the spot healing brush is rather clever because you don’t even need to set a sample point, you simply click and paint over the blemishes you want to remove

Providing you use the right fl ash settings on your camera it should be possible to avoid red eye occurring in your portrait photographs But for all those times when the camera fl ash leaves your subjects looking like beasts

of the night, the red eye tool provides a fairly basic and easy way to auto-correct such photographs And the color replacement brush is kind of like a semi-smart color blend mode painting tool which analyzes the area you are painting over and is useful for making quick and easy color changes without the need to create a selection mask fi rst

Figure 2.43 I mostly use the healing brush and clone stamp tools to retouch small blemishes or to remove sensor dust marks from photographs In this example I have shown how the clone stamp tool can be used to paint detail from one part of an image onto another Note how the retouching is applied to an empty new layer and the Sample: ‘Current & Below’ layers option was selected in the Options palette

Blending modes

Photoshop image layers can be made to

blend with those underneath using any

of the 25 different blending modes Layer

effects/styles allow you to add effects such

as drop shadows, gradient/pattern fi lls

or glows to any layer Custom styles can

be loaded from and saved to the Styles

palette You will fi nd some of the

sub-menu options for layers are duplicated in

the Layer main menu

Figure 2.44 Note that in Photoshop CS2

onwards, layer linking is controlled via a Link

button at the bottom of the palette.

Working with Layers

Photoshop layers allow you to build and edit an image using multiple layered sections A layer can be an image element, such as a duplicate of the background layer, a copied selection made into a layer, or another Photoshop document that has been copied across to an existing document Or, it can be a text vector shape layer

Adjustment layers are like image adjustment instructions that are applied in a layer form Layers can be placed together in groups, which makes the layer organization easier to manage and you can apply masking to the contents of a layer with either a pixel layer mask or a vector mask There are plenty of examples throughout this book where I will be showing you how to use layers

Figure 2.45 The Actions palette.

Figure 2.46 With Photoshop droplets you can apply a batch action operation by simply dragging and dropping a fi le or folder onto a droplet.

an expanded view of the Default Actions set As you can see from the action descriptions, these will perform automated tasks such as adding a vignette or creating a wood frame edge effect OK, these are not exactly the sort

of actions you would use everyday, but if you go to the palette fl y-out menu and select Load Actions you will

be taken to the Photoshop CS3/Presets/Photoshop Actions folder Here you will fi nd lots of useful actions that would

be worth installing If someone sends you a Photoshop action, then all you have to do is just double-click it and this will automatically install the action in the Actions folder and if Photoshop is not running at the time, this step will also launch the program as well

To run an action, you will usually need to have a document already open in Photoshop and simply press the Play button It is also quite easy to record your own custom actions, and once you get the hang of doing this you can progress to using the File ➯ Automate ➯ Batch

function to apply a recorded action to a batch of images,

as well as converting actions into droplets, which are like self-contained batch action operations In Chapter 15 I will explain in more detail how to automate Photoshop using Actions, batch processes and droplets

Nudging layers and selections

The keyboard arrow keys can be used to

nudge a layer or selection in 1 pixel (10

pixels with the S key also held down)

increments A series of nudges count as

a single Photoshop step in history and is

undone with a single undo or step back in

history

Figure 2.47 The move Options palette.

Move tool alignment options

The move Options palette now also

integrates the alignment options that were

previously only listed in the Layer menu

To fi nd out more about layer alignment and

distribution, refer to page 398

Group or layer

There is a menu item in the move tool

Options palette that will allow you to

choose between Group or Layer

auto-selection When Layer is selected,

Photoshop will auto-select individual

layers When Group is selected, Photoshop

will auto-select whole layer groups

transform/alignment tool The Transform mode is apparent whenever the Show Bounding Box is checked (initially a dotted bounding box appears around the object) And when you mouse down on the bounding box handles, the Options palette will change to display the numeric transform controls

The move tool can also be activated at any time when another tool is selected by holding down the C L key (except for the slice, slice select, hand, pen tool or path selection tools) Holding down the O A key while the move tool is selected will let you copy a layer or selection contents Therefore it is useful to remember that using the

O A key plus C L (the move tool shortcut) will let you make a copy of a layer or selection contents when any other tool is selected (apart from those I just listed)

Layer selection using the move tool

When the move tool is selected, dragging with the move tool will move the layer or selection contents (the cursor does not have to be centered on the object or selection,

it can be anywhere in the image window) When the Auto-Select Layer option is switched on, the move tool will auto-select the uppermost layer containing the most opaque image data below the cursor This can be useful when you have a large numbers of image layers stacked up

The move tool also makes multiple layer selection possible, because when the move tool is in the Auto Select Layer mode you can marquee drag with the move tool from outside the canvas area to select multiple layers, the same way as you make a marquee selection using the mouse cursor to select multiple folders or documents in the Finder