There are many factors that will influence the color range and the overall appeal of a photograph. Pictures shot during broad daylight usually will reveal paler colors. Photoshop has great tools to emphasize the color, hue and saturation values of a photograph, giving you the chance to save out copies of dramatically different results. The method below makes use of Photoshop’s powerful Adjustment Layers to create variants of the original image.

Once your file is open in Photoshop, you want to assign two types of Adjustment Layers on top of it. Adjustment Layers are what their name suggests: these are invisible Photoshop entities, but once you activate an Adjustment Layer on an image, it will reveal its function and will remember its set values, as well. A great aspect of Adjustment Layers is that you could have an infinite number of those assigned to a picture and you could activate/deactivate them as need dictates. This gives you a method to store virtually infinite variants of the original image in a single PSD – Photoshop Document – file.

As mentioned, to make use of any Adjustment Layers, first you need to assign them to your image. You could do that in many different ways. At default, Photoshop reveals the Layer palette as an interface element. Depending on your current settings, you may or may not see the Layer palette. To invoke or dismiss this particular palette, you could rely on the hotkey F7. Notice the row of icons on the bottom of the Layer palette. These are different functions that are heavily dependent on the Layer structure of the software. Select the fourth icon from the left, the one represented by a circle with a dark and a bright side to it. Click on this circle and Photoshop will ask for the kind of function you want to assign to the image. Select the “Levels…”option.

You have just created an Adjustment Layer and Photoshop will automatically ask for the values for this particular set of functions. Click OK for now to amend the current settings. You will define the values in a matter of seconds. Before that though, repeat the process you have just been through, but instead of Levels, assign a “Hue/Saturation…” Adjustment Layer to the image. As before, Photoshop will automatically ask for the values for this particular Adjustment Layer, too. Click OK to amend the current settings once again. You will see that two Layers are added to the Layer palette, and will have the names “Levels 1” and “Hue/Saturation 1” automatically assigned to them, respectively. You could rename these new Layers if you would like by double clicking on their names in the Layer palette. Notice the way the Adjustment Layers are represented in the Layer palette. The Eye icon will toggle the visibility of the Adjustment Layer on or off. The icon next to the Eye is where you could specify the values of the selected Adjustment Layer. Double click on this icon on the Levels 1 Adjustment Layer.

Photoshop will reveal the values that you previously amended. This is the way you could adjust the values until you are satisfied with the results. The way a Levels Adjustment Layer works is very straightforward: the slider on the left defines efficiency factor of Dark color values, while the slider on the right defines efficiency factor of Bright color values. The middle slider defines efficiency factor of color values encompassed by the two extremes. Now is the time to adjust the sliders and observe how they affect the image dynamically. Notice how the upper right slider gives you more evident bright values as you set it closer and closer to the middle values and also notice how aggressive the dark values will get as if you choose to set the upper left slider closer and closer to the middle.

Once you are happy with the results, click OK and double click on the Hue/Saturation 1 Adjustment Layer. The layout of this Adjustment Layer and the workflow you will utilize on it is quite similar to what you just have seen and did previously. Keep in mind though that it is always a good idea to “bump up” the middle, Saturation value of the image first. These sliders are highly sensitive and have rigorous reasons to commit to this behavior. For example, notice that once you set the Saturation slider all the way to the left, all color information will be lost temporarily.
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The Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer is context sensitive to your color selection. Once you have a color specified, the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer will notice that and will influence ONLY the color range that your current color selection is a part of. If your image has a consistent portion on it like a sky or a nice field of grass, you could pick up a sample color from these areas using the Eyedropper tool, which is automatically placed in your hand once you activate the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Notice that your consecutive adjustments will modify only the corresponding Master tones the selection color itself consorts to.

Using the methods explained above, you could stack any number of Adjustment Layers on top of any image. In case you happen to find values that seem to work especially well with the types of photographs you are currently creating, you could save out the values as individual files. In Photoshop, all the Adjustment Layers have a unique file extension to them.

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[ad]All Photoshop Brushes are based on a flexible, sophisticated system which you can use to customize existing Brushes or to create new ones from scratch. When you select a tool, its corresponding options will become accessible in the upper tool bar. Being quite complex entities of Photoshop though, Brushes have a separate palette dedicated to them, as well. You can toggle this palette by relying on the F5 hotkey, or, alternatively, you could invoke it directly using the option bar of the Brush tool.

There are numerous attributes that control and define how a Brush behaves when you create a stroke with it. The level of this control could range from simple to extremely sophisticated, depending on the result you are looking for.  The essential attributes of Brushes are the shape, the size and the hardness of the tool. Apart from these properties though, you may also need- or want to control optional values exclusive to the Brush system. As you will see, a wide range and fluent customizability of options are available to form the type of control you need to achieve the results you have in mind.

Accessing Brushes

Photoshop comes with rich libraries of Brushes, inviting you to organize a virtual jar containing the tools that you use most frequently in your current work. While the Brush system is infinitely flexible, the basis of an effective jar consists of the default Brushes Photoshop comes with. Regardless the unique sets and types of tools you will use and create, the most frequently used tool in the software will be the standard Brush with the shape of a circle.

To access a Brush Library, you need to activate the flyout menu of the Brush palette. Flyout menus are easy to spot on all Photoshop palettes. They are located in the upper right hand corner of every palette that has this function associated to it. The flyout menu of the Brush palette is quite rich in its contents. Notice that the menu is divided into numerous parts. The bottommost section lists the available Brush Libraries, while the upper sections give you straightforward controls of Brush management. Once you click on an available library, Photoshop will ask if you want to add these new Brushes to the jar, or, would you prefer to replace the previous Brushes with the contents of the selected library instead. Libraries can be saved out with the .abr – Adobe Brush – file extension to them and this is the file extension you will find downloadable libraries with, as well.

Brush Customization

The Brushes section of the Brush palette hosts all the optional attributes you could utilize to form virtually infinite types of control to define Brush behavior. To see these in effect, pick a Brush Tip of your choosing that has well defined characteristics. Tips resembling grass are good candidates to see the effects of various options on. Brush customization happens via six main categories and all of these have a separate set of controls. To see and understand how custom attributes do work, select the Shape Dynamics category and put a checkmark next to it. You have just activated this optional set of attributes. Now click on the word „Shape Dynamics” to access the attributes themselves.

The values you currently see on the right side of the palette are context sensitive and they are exclusive to the Shape Dynamics category. Try and adjust the different sliders and see how they affect the Stroke preview. This preview is a precise representation of what the stroke will look like if you amend the current settings.

Once you have established values for a category that you are happy with, you have multiple choices. You could lock these values in by clicking on the tiny padlock icon. Locked values will be remembered by the software and the visual results they yield will not be altered by any subsequent changes. There is one exception though, as you could deactivate the effect of the category by removing the checkmark. This will not remove the effect, but will toggle its visibility. These optional attributes are stackable, meaning that they will react to each other non-destructively to create the stroke you are looking for.

Essential Brush Shortcuts

There are multiple methods to access the most essential Brush attributes like the size of the tip and the hardness. A quite effective technique is to press right click with the Brush tool activated. This will grant access to a dialog panel you could define the Master Diameter – size – and the hardness from. You could select a fresh tip from here, as well. Once you are confident with the shape of the Brush though, you may want to gain even more effective control of the size and hardness attributes.

One of the most comfortable pair of hotkeys in Photoshop is activated using the bracket keys. Once you have a Brush in your hand and you press and hold the bracket keys, the diameter will change “on the fly”, giving you direct feedback on the size of the Brush. Keep in mind that the Brush cursor is not necessarily rendered by the software. In case you do not see the Brush cursor, then there is a good chance that you have it deactivated. To display the cursor and the shape again, press the hotkey “Caps Lock”. This is the shortcut to toggle the visibility of the Brush tip.

Being able to alter the size of the Brush intuitively is a valuable ability, but the hardness of the tool remains almost as essential as the previous property. To alter the hardness of the Brush, you could rely on the bracket keys once again, but press and hold the SHIFT modifier key while you set the new value. These four, comfortable hotkey maneuvers will make your work flow much more swift and fluent.

Creating Custom Brush Tips

Create or open up an image and select an area of it which you would like to use as a brand new Brush tip. Keep in mind that your selection will define the Brush tip itself. Once you are happy with the selection, go to Edit – > Define Brush Preset. A dialog will pop up, inviting you to name the new tip. You could do so or you could skip that step, as well. Regardless of your choice, the new tip you have just created is added to the current jar of Brushes. You will find the new tip as the last component of the jar. In case you would like to keep any of your custom Brushes, you could save them out as a variant of an existing Library, or you could create a Library from scratch. To remove and/or rename individual Brush tips from a Library, simply right click on the Brush tip’s thumbnail image in the jar and select the function you need.

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[ad]The end of the year is typically the time for list-posts. Ten biggest business mistakes, top 5 sexiest women of 2009, 5 most retweeted tweets, stuff like that. So, I thought, I should do it too, make a list of the 10 most popular posts on iCan’t Internet for 2009. But, it wouldn’t be me if I would do it the normal way, so I decided to pick the 8 most read posts of 2009, and make it my first post of 2010 instead of my last post of 2009.
I hope you enjoy reading them again!

• Top 25 Photoshop Tips : 25 Photoshop tips that can really save you alot of time and headaches
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Photoshop comes with various selections tools you could utilize to specify what region of an image you want to manipulate. Once you have a selection area defined using these tools, the software will preserve all pixel information outside the selected region. Selection tools are compatible with each other regardless of their corresponding operations, thus, you could create pixel precise selection regions via any number of steps to define the region itself.

[ad]You can find the selection tools right under the Move tool in the toolbox. By default, Photoshop gives you the Rectangular Marquee Tool – hotkey: m – which lets you define a rectangular selection region. The simplest selection you could create in Photoshop is to define a custom rectangular shape with the Rectangular Marquee Tool, though it also is the method to define an area that you want to keep from an image. With a document of your choosing opened, go ahead and designate an area of the document using a rectangular selection. Now try using manipulative tools like a Brush or even Filters on the image. You will see that pixels outside this simple selection will not be affected by the actions you perform, but pixels inside the selection region will be manipulated.

In case you want to define an area of an image that you want to keep without the rest of it, first create the desired selection using the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Now go to Image – > Crop. The picture is restructured and now you are free to deactivate the selection by going to Select – > Deselect, or by relying on the hotkey combination of the same command: „CTRL + d”.

As you have just seen, the Rectangular Marquee Tool gives you a method to define rectangular selections with custom proportions to the shape. In case you need to constrain these proportions to be a mathematically precise rectangle though, you could rely on the SHIFT  modifier key after you started to define the region. Go ahead and draw a column or a row with the Rectangular Marquee Tool, but do not release the mouse button. Instead, hold down SHIFT while still pressing the mouse. As you will see, the proportions will be constrained to a precise rectangle and will maintan this shape as long as the modifier key is pressed.

Additional Selection Modifiers with the left mouse button pressed

There are additional hotkeys you could rely on whenever you define a selection region. The most important thing to keep in mind is to keep the left mouse button pressed until you are happy with the selection. Once you release the button, the current selection will be amended and you will not be able to customize it without adding to- or subsrtacting from it. As long as you keep the mouse button pressed down though, additional modifiers could be invoked.

In the previous example, you constrained a rectangular selection region to maintain the shape of a mathematically precise rectangle, by using the SHIFT modifier key without releasing the mouse button. Now try the SPACE modifier with the mouse button pressed: this hotkey will let you translate the active selection region on both axes. Now give a try to the ALT modifier: this hotkey will set the pivot point of the selection to its center, giving you a whole different method to generate the selection by. The best aspect of these modifier keys is that they are stackable on each other. They will not interfere with each other at all and will remember their corresponding functions even if invoked simultaneously.

Additional Selection Modifiers without the left mouse button pressed

[ad]Once you are happy with the current state of the selection, you can release the mouse button, thus amending the selection state. This is where the creation of more complex selections may start from, according to the current need. Once you have created the region, do not change the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Press and hold down the SHIFT modifier once again, instead. As you will see, the cursor will show a tiny “+” sign as long as you keep the modifier key pressed, indicating that a consecutive selection with the Rectangular Marquee Tool will add pixels to the selection area. Now press and hold down the ALT modifier. The cursor will display a tiny “-“ sign, indicating that a consecutive selection will subtract from the region.

Finer Shapes, Finer Selections

You have seen how to generate rectangular selections and how to manipulate those by relying on various modifier keys. To make the selection regions as fine as possible though, you need to be able to define elliptical and even free form regions. Photoshop gives you all these tools and the techniques you have just learned are all compatible with them. To access these tools, click on the tiny arrow on the right side of the Rectangular Marquee Tool’s icon, or press right click on it. This will give you access to the other selection tools that are components of this particular tool group: the Elliptical Marquee Tool and the Single Row- and Single Column Marquee Tools.

The Lasso Tool, right below the Marquee Tools, also comes in different variants. The Lasso Tool lets you define free form selection regions. Its two additional variants, the Polygonal Lasso Tool and the Magnetic Lasso Tool are valuable companions with a similar aim. The Polygonal Lasso Tool will let you define an area using straight lines. Once you are happy with the selection, press ENTER to amend it. In case you want to step backward to a previous point, use BACKSPACE.

The Magnetic Lasso Tool has contrast sensitivity, thus it will do a fairly nice automatic job of guessing what you may want to select. Using these straightforward selection tools and their universal modifier keys, complex manual selections could be made.

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Enjoy Part 2!

13. Switching Channels

The Ctrl hotkey modifier, combined with the numbers from 0 to 4, will reveal the RGB – Red, Green, Blue – components of an image in an isolated fashion. The current selection is displayed beside the name of the document. The Ctrl + 0 hotkey activates the default rendering method, revealing all color channels of the image.

14. Transform Copy

The hotkey combination Ctrl + t grants access to the Free Transform command, yet, its more complicated sibling, Ctrl + Alt + t will automatically make a copy of the currently transformed selection and will amend the changes on the replica. This is an efficient method of keeping the original variant of a certain element, still being able to see how the Free Transformation would affect it.

15. Repeating Transformations

Ctrl + Shift + t will repeat the last transformation. Ctrl + Shift + Alt + t will yield the same result, but, on a copy of the transformed element.

16. Opacity Tests

The opacity of the current Layer can be adjusted by relying on the number keys 0 to 9, where 0 is full opacity. To gain precise control of the opacity, press the number keys quickly and the decimals will behave accordingly.

17. Merge All Visible

The hotkey combination Ctrl + Shift + Alt + e merges all visible Layers and renders them unto a fresh Layer. This gives you the opportunity to test out- or amend global changes on this Layer without modifying the original elements.

18. Hide All Palettes

The TAB key hides all the palettes and the toolbox, while the hotkey combination TAB + Shift hides all palettes but keeps the toolbox around.

19. The Full Screen Hotkeys

It is the hotkey f that grants access to the various full screen workspaces, with default layouts configurable to contain no interface elements at all. Using the f hotkey and the TAB + f hotkey combination, you can find the right amount of interface elements – including none of those.

20. Selecting Blend Modes

To cycle through the available Blend Modes of the active Layer, rely on the – and + keys, combined with the Shift modifier key. The Blend modes are accessible by their respective letter codes, as well. To invoke a Blend mode using a keyboard shortcut, use the hotkey combination Alt + Shift + the letter code for the Blend mode.

21. Fade

The Ctrl + Shift + f hotkey combination invokes the Fade dialog. This slider lets you control the opacity of the last edit you made.

[ad]22.  Eliminating Unwanted Matte

In case the color difference between the selection and its background is severe, it is common to end up with a slight black/white halo around the selection. Getting rid of these unwanted pixels manually can be troublesome, but it is worth knowing that there is a command in Photoshop to automate this process. To eliminate black or white matte, go to Layer – > Matting – > Remove Black/White Matte.

23. Filters Unleashed

In case you have applied a Filter on a Layer or on a selection, you can repeat that Filter using the Ctrl + f hotkey combination. If you want to change the settings of the Filter, use Alt + Ctrl + f whenever you want to dial in fresh values for the modification.

24. Invert Selections

Inverting a selection is an efficient method of selecting scattered elements of an image with a distinctive color difference to them, when compared to their surrounding. For example, if you have black text on a white background, it is easier to select the white portion of the image than it is to select the black letters consecutively. To select all the letters with minimal effort, first select the black portion of the image with the Magic Wand tool. Now everything is selected, except the letters. To invert this selection, so everything is selected except the current selection, use the hotkey combination Ctrl + Shift + i.

25. Placing Pixel Data into a Selection

If you have pixel data stored in your computer’s memory, you can paste that information into a selection region, using the Ctrl + Shift + v hotkey combination. To store the pixel data itself, you need to define the pixel region you want to store by relying on the Ctrl + c hotkey combination.

Want to learn more about Photoshop? Learn Photoshop in just 2 hours!

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This 2 part article offers 25 tips for Adobe Photoshop, carefully selected to give you increased efficiency and a set of timesaving techniques when using the program. With focus placed on practicality, this compilation delivers many of the overlooked- and little known tricks present in the most popular image manipulation tool.

1. The Quicker Way of Opening Documents

In Photoshop, you are not forced to rely on the upper menu bar to open documents. You can double click on the blank workspace and this action will pop the Open dialog up.

2. Scrub Opportunities

Many vital functions in Photoshop are controlled by sliders, like the opacity of Layers or the opacity of the Brush you are using. It is a little known fact that the majority of these sliders are adjustable by scrubbing the mouse over the name of the desired command.

3. Isolation by Visibility

To make one particular Layer visible and render all the other Layers temporarily invisible, hold down the Alt modifier key and click on the visibility toggle of the Layer you want to isolate. Repeat this action to toggle its function back and forth.

5. Image Size and Canvas Size

Ctrl + Alt + i invokes the Image Size dialog, while Ctrl + Alt + c invokes the Canvas Size dialog. Though Image- and Canvas Size values are intuitively related, they are practically separate from each other. You are free to place an image on the canvas if the image is bigger than the canvas and vice versa.

4. Creating Groups Using Selection Columns

To create a selection column of any number of Layers, first select a Layer to define the top of the selection column, then Shift + select a Layer to define the bottom of the selection column. You can go the other way, as well, defining the bottom first. This is an efficient method to declare elements of a Layer Group. To create the Layer Group itself, rely on the Ctrl + g hotkey combination with the selection column active, or you can select the Folder icon on the Layer Palette with the selection column active.

5. Efficient Layer Stacking

While creating the stacking order by drag and drop seems to be an intuitive method, it has disadvantages. If you grab a Layer and start to modify its position in the stack, you will not be able to evaluate the result until you release the Layer. Modifying its position in the stack with the hotkey combination Ctrl + Brackets gives you immediate feedback of every possible position. It also is a more fluent way of arranging Layers, as Photoshop tends to demand pixel precise accuracy if you want to place a Layer on the top of the stack manually. This becomes much easier with the hotkey combination. If you add the Shift modifier key to the Ctrl + Brackets command, then the Layer will jump right to the top or to the bottom, depending on the command.

6. Efficient Layer Cycling

The hotkey combination Alt + Brackets lets you select a Layer in the stack. If you want your fresh selection to include your previous selection(s), then add the Shift modifier key to the Alt + Brackets command. If you need to select all Layers with minimal effort, you can rely on the Ctrl + Alt + a hotkey combination.

7. Instant Fills

The Alt + Backspace hotkey combination fills the current Layer with the active Foreground color.

The Ctrl + Backspace hotkey combination fills the current Layer with the active Background color.

If you add the Shift modifier key, then the Fill will affect only the opaque pixels of the Layer. Shift + Backspace will bring up the Fill dialog panel.

8. Quick Access to Shadows and Highlights

The Dodge and Burn tools are excellent solutions for defining the shading extremes of any colored region. These tools do fall under the same category and are accessible by the hotkey o or by the hotkey combination Shift + o, depending on the last tool you have used from this category.

9. Creating New Layers

The Ctrl + Shift + n hotkey combination creates a new, empty Layer. The Ctrl + j hotkey combination duplicates the Layer which is currently selected.

[ad]10. Mask On

The hotkey d resets the Foreground color to Black and resets the Background color to White. This is useful when you want to paint Masks, as the White value will reveal the affected portions of the Mask, while the Black value will render those invisible.

11.  Revert Command

The hotkey F12 invokes the Revert command, which will discard all edits you have made since the last save. This is useful when you are unhappy with the current state of the document, as you would be forced to close- and open the document again without this function.

12. Selection Actions

Selecting portions of the image defines the regions you want to amend your edits on. There are selection related hotkeys that are worth knowing. Regardless if you are using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, the Lasso Tool or the Pen Tool to define your current selection region, the following hotkeys do apply. To add to a selection region, start a fresh selection with the Shift modifier key pressed. To subtract from a selection, rely on the Alt modifier key while drawing the selection. The modifier key combination Ctrl + Alt will pick up intersections between selection regions and will give you the intersection itself as a selection. As long as you keep the mouse button pressed while defining selection boundaries, you are free to position the center of the selection on the screen, using the Space modifier key.

Stay tuned for more, in part two, or check out this training course to Learn Photoshop in 2 hours!

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About

In this tutorial I will continue where the previous tutorial stopped: using the borders
you’ve just created. The reason I split
them up is to make it easier for people who do want to use the borders, but do not want
to create them themselves.

Opening the images

[ad]First start at the beginning: opening the two files. First you open the file you wish to add
a border to, next to it, you open the image that will form your border. Now you have two
options: or you create a new file with the correct size (same as the picture you want to
add the border to), or you use the original file with your picture, and change that. In this
tutorial, I will asume you will use the second technique, adding the border to your original
image (or a copy thereof of course).

Using layers

Now comes the hardest part if you are not familiar with it: layers. They may seem scary,
they may sound hard, but in fact, they are what they are called, and they can make life
beatifull, easy, and safe!

beautifull, because they allow you to create the most wonderfull effects on your pictures.
• easy, because if not for layers, you would need to manually recreate each border on each picture again.
• safe, because you are editing a layer on your image, not your image itself!

The layers palette is located in the right bottom corner in Photoshop CS2 and later.

In the layer palette, click on ‘new layer’. Then go to the image containing your border,
and select the whole picture using the selection tool.

Go back to your picture, and make sure in the layer palette, that your new layer is selected.
Then paste the border selection into the new layer.

Go back to the layer palette, and set the blending mode to ‘screen’ (this is by default set
to ‘normal’).

Now you will see the border becomming white on your picture. Your bordered picture is finished!

Finetuning

[ad]

• By playing with the sizer of your border and your picture, you can create the ability to move
  your picture around behind the border, and this way creating the best layout for it. You can
  change the size of your pictures and borders by using the menu: ‘image’->’image size’
• The borders you see here in the tutorial are all in portrait mode. You can easily change
  this via the menu: ‘image’->’rotate canvas’->’90 ccw’

Some borders

Here you can download some borders to start trying this technique.

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About

In this tutorial I will show you how to create a border in PhotoShop that you can re-use
over and over again with any of your images.

[ad]The border you create using this method can be used in other graphical programs too,
such as The Gimp.

Creating the file

Open the new-file dialog using the menu File -> New, and create a new file of which the
width and height have the same values as the images you work with most often. Set the Background Content to “Background Color”, which
standard is black.

Then click the ok button, and you should get a nice black image, as shown above behind the
dialog box.

Creating the border

Now select a pen or stamp of your liking, set the foreground color to white, and draw
your border. You may like fixed width straight lines, or you may like rought edges more,
both can give great results.

If you are pleased with the result, you can simply save this file, and your border is
ready to use!

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