Posts Tagged ‘photoshop’
It pays to show people what you don’t know:
You Suck At Photoshop, the trials and tribulations of Donnie, has won a People’s Voice Award in the 12th annual Webby Awards Comedy: Long Form or Series category. You Suck also won a People’s Voice Award in the “How To” category. [via Photoshop News]
Sometimes “photoshopping” can go a bit too far. Take the example below provided via Photoshop News:
Brian has posted a couple of really great articles on LAB Saturation that anyone who uses Photoshop should check out. The first article was posted back in December and you can still find it here.
Saturation is one of those things that we tend to either ignore or overdo. In some color images, it’s the actual colors that account for the interesting-factor — and in those cases, saturation processing is very important.
I have the sneaking suspicion that most of us (yes, I’m at fault too) will use an RGB saturation adjustment layer (or an ACR adjustment) to boost the color saturation. This is probably OK for very small adjustments on the order of less than 5 or 10%. Once you go beyond that, you’ll start clipping the color highlights and end up losing tone details and textures.
But have no fear, there is a better way! The LAB (Lightness, A, B) color mode is quite useful for making higher quality adjustments to the saturation. I’m guessing that most will avoid LAB editing because it seems less intuitive, or because there’s no immediate need to use it. In reality, it’s no more difficult to use than the RGB color mode. So if you have an image that’s begging to be saturated, try out this technique and I’m certain you’ll find just how powerful it can be. (via EpicEdits)
His follow-up article on LAB Sharpening adjustments was posted this month and can be found here.
It seems that there are many ways to sharpen a photo, and the most common is Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask. It’s a fine tool for most cases, but it can produce terrible results when used incorrectly or without caution. I, myself, usually fall back on the Unsharp mask for a majority of my sharpening needs. But using this tool in the RGB color space is not ideal!
Recently I posted an article about a LAB Saturation Photoshop Technique — and this article is much the same, but with a focus on Sharpening. LAB (Lightness, A, B) color mode is a great way to increase the quality of a tool such as the Unsharp Mask or other sharpening methods. (via EpicEdits)
He provides the Photoshop actions and everything so go read the articles and check out the neat way he does the rollover to see the changes made after he uses the action. I wish I could learn how to do that.
Santa didn’t bring me a fish-eye lens. Boo hoo hoo! I really wanted one.
I’m going to show you how to get that fish-eye lens effect without an expensive fish-eye lens. Instead, we’ll use Photoshop.
First, you need to start with a square photo. (see photo 1)
I made the adjustments in Lightroom and then took it into Photoshop CS3. However you can simply bring your photo into Photoshop and then go to Image > Image Size and in the Image Size dialog box, check the Resample image check box to be sure that Bicubic is selected for interpolation type. Then uncheck Constrain Proportions so that you can alter just one dimension. You will want to click in the Height of the box and type in exactly the same value that is displayed for the Width and Click OK. There may be a little distortion, but this will not be noticeable after we apply the fish-eye effect.
Once you have a square image you go to Filter > Distort > Spherize. In the Spherize dialog box you should select Normal for Mode and increase the Amount slider to a maximum of 100%. Click OK to apply the filter. (see photo 2)
Next we need to select the Elliptical Marquee tool from the Toolbar, choose Fixed Aspect Ratio from the Style box in the Options bar and then position the mouse pointer in the center of the image. While holding down the Alt key we click and drag a circular selection. Don’t worry about the selection fitting exactly; we’ll adjust that in the next step.
To adjust the selection to fit the distortion, go to Select > Transform Selection and click the Maintain Aspect Ration chain link in the Options bar and grab one of the corner handles on the selection bounding box. Carefully adjust the size of the selection with these handles until the circular selection matches the size of the lens distortion. Commit the transformation by clicking on the checkmark in the Options bar.
Now we need to fill the area around the outside of the lens distortion with black so invert the selection using, Select > Inverse and then go to Edit > Fill and choose Black for Contents. (see photo 3)
For the next step, we need to extent the canvas a little. First, hit D on the keyboard for default black/white colors, then hit X to swap them so that black is the background color. Then go to Image > Canvas Size. Check the Relative box and enter 2 cm in both dimension boxes. Check to be sure that the central Anchor square is selected and that the Canvas Extension Color is set to Background. That gives us a nice little border. Now we’ll add a touch of Lens Flare for added effect.
Go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare. In the Lens Flare dialog box, set the Brightness slider to 100% and choose the 105 mm Prime for the Lens Type. Drag the crosshair in the Preview pane across to the very edge of the circular image and voila! (see photo 4)
Layers Magazine has a good tutorial on how to create a polaroid-style photo background. It’s actually a 2-part series where part one records the action of creating the polaroid-style photo and part two shows you how to then create an action using that polaroid photo and create a Christmas card. Check them both out. I saved the action and with a minor modification went from this:
to this:
I say there was a “minor modification” in that the tutorial (as well as a true polaroid) asks for a square photo cropping. When I used a a square, I ended up cutting out the pelican’s feet and I didn’t like that much so my cropping is not exactly square (400 x 477 px. shown). That’s the beauty of recording actions. I set a stop in the cropping area so that I can determine where I want the crop to be and how much.
ChromaticSoul :: The Blog 