• Actions - how to create one

Photoshop 7: Creating Your Own Actions

Objectives: To learn to automate your production process in Photoshop 7 by creating actions to perform frequent or mundane tasks.
Tools/Techniques: Actions, recording and editing actions

Once you start working with Photoshop 7 for some time you'll find that your projects require many of the same, repetitive actions and tasks. By creating custom actions for your more routine tasks, you'll have more time for more important things: Designing!

• Actions - Creating your own actions

How To Create Photoshop Actions

by Drew MacCallum ("Dr. Digital")

Do you find yourself repeating one thing over and over? Do you need to perform a task on a group of images?  Have you tried running an Action in Photoshop?

• Adding a text watermark

Placing a watermark on images that you plan to post on the Web will identify them as your own work and discourage people from copying them or claiming them as their own. Here's a simple way to add a watermark in Photoshop where the text remains editable.

Adding details

Tutorial

• Adding Text

Tutorial

• Adding texture to the iris of an eye

Tutorial

• Adjusting halftones

Sometime an image just needs a final tweak just to finish it off.

Tutorial

• All Cut Up

One of the great advantages of working with digital is that we can take a picture and transform it in a few simple steps.

Tutorial

Black and White from Colour

How often have you found yourself taking photographs with the camera loaded with colour film, and thought "if only Iíd brought some Black & White film I could get some really snazzy pictures". For some it isn't a problem, they may have two cameras or even one of the medium format units with interchangeable backs. But for the bulk of camera owners "no choice" is usually the norm.

Ian Lyones

• Back Light Effect

Tutorial

• Backrounds - removal and replacement

Tutorial by Bud Guinn

This is a tutorial in removing a background from a picture and replacing it with another.First open your subject picture and immediately save it as something else (this tutorial assumes you have started with a jpeg picture)...I like to also make a folder that will hold all subsequent saves...we save a lot and often...always changing names as we go...just add a 1,2,3,4,...etc to the original. You may want to adjust the viewing of this to 150%....the control is in the menu above.

useful basic tutorial

• Basic Colour Correction

Basic Color Correction in Photoshop: An Introduction

Tutorial

• Batch Processing

Photoshop 7: Batch Processing

Objectives: To learn how to customize and automate your workflow in Photoshop 7 by using the Batch Processing command to quickly process large groups of images.
Tools & Techniques: Actions, commands, batch processing

• Beauty - Good, Better, Best!

Tutorial

• Blurrred Light

Tutorial

• Blurring to improve Compression

Tutorial

• Brighter Images

How to make your images brighter

• Brushes - Creating them

More fun with Photoshop: this tip will cover how (and why!) to create custom brushes in Photoshop.

Photoshop has a reputation of being an excellent graphics production tool and photo manipulation tool, but these next tips will focus on how to use Photoshop as a creative tool, too.

Tutorial

• Brushes - Managing Them

How well do you really know your Brushes Palette?

Brushes are used for each of the painting tools (airbrush, paintbrush, eraser, pencil) and image editing tools (history brush, rubber stamp, smudge, focus, toning), so it really pays to know your way around it. I'll give you a quick tour: show you a few shortcuts, and show you how to create, delete and load brushes.

Tutorial

• Channels

Photoshop and PSP Channels: What, When and Why ?

I have been meaning to return to the very basics of raster functions that so many of you request, and this week I finally found my way back.

Tutorial

• Cleaning Images - 4 easy steps

How to clean up your images

• Clone Tool

Dust and noise will cause some spots on your images. Often they are white pixels, but they may be any color. Higher resolution seems worse, I think just because there are so many more pixels. If the spots are dust, it could be on either the glass or the photo. If it is noise, it will be in random spots from scan to scan of the same image. Whatever, they need to come out.

The UnSharp Mask will emphasize these spots and make them real sharp.

Tutorial

• Close up photography techniques

A range of illustrated articles on close up photography

• Colour Correction of Faded Slides

This possibly can be considered an advanced section. The subject is certainly not difficult, but it will require a bit more effort than the rest, It will involve use of individual RGB channel adjustment with the Histogram and Curve tools. The section also contains large and slow images.

Color correction of images is hard to describe. Many of the color tools don't have very wide or precise range, and frankly, other than minor tweaks, they don't always work so well. They are not always sufficient for the bad problems. The situation is often complicated by the need for non-linear correction. The color cast often varies with luminance, so that the shadows and highlights need different amounts of correction. This can rule out the simpler tools except for the mild color casts.

Tutorial

• Colour Masking

Tutorial

• Colour to Black and White (Carl Volk)

Turning Color into Black & White

There are several ways to turn a color photographic scan into a black and white image in Photoshop so, since the results are often image dependent, it is good to test these techniques before deciding which one is best for your photo. The four (slightly sepia toned) black and white results to the right from the color scan of Natasha below demonstrate how varied the response can be with these four different approaches.

Colour to Black and White by Carl Volk

• Colouring Line Art

Tutorial

• Combined Over and Undersexposed Images

One of the first lessons I learned is "less is more". The less I manipulate the images, the more effective it becomes. In my opinion, over doing repair makes for a very unattractive photographic work of art. I think there is nothing better, than taking something straight from the camera that's perfectly exposed, sharp, and has great color.

However, images like this are rare. Sometimes, weather conditions, lighting or other factors will force you to have to do a certain amount of manipulation to get your shot the way you visualized it. Here is an example of a very high contrast shot I took at noon, when the lighting was not optimal.

Not so much a tutorial as an overview

• Combining Images

One of the great advantages of shooting with a digital camera is that if we see something that catches our eye we can just fire away, after all it doesn't cost us a penny! It doesn't even need to be a brilliant image because we can always improve it and even combine two images to make a totally new picture.

Tutorial

• Combining Imges - Basic
  

Photoshop’s Quick Mask mode enables you to create smooth transitions between images on different layers with extraordinary control. Perhaps even easier in many cases is a gradient layer mask.

We’ll work with a couple of pieces of stock art, Dune and Ducky. They can be found in the Samples folder installed by default with Photoshop 6. To put Ducky on a transparent background, Option-double-click (Alt-double-click) the layer named Background in the Layers palette and rename it. Use the Magic Wand to select the white background and delete it. (In the Options Bar, select Contiguous so that you don’t also delete the whites of Ducky’s eyes.)

Tutorial

• Commands - Levels

A good starting point with the levels command is to click on your Auto button, which often gives amazingly good results. In this case however, it gave a colour cast. With the palette still on screen press the Alt key and the Cancel button changes to become a Reset button.

• Composite Images using Clipping Paths

Tutorial

• Confederate Soldiers

Creating an image of old confederate soldiers from a modern day image taken during a re-enactment and making it oval with matting surround.

Tutorial

• Contrast Enhancement

Digital image processing is still new enough for most people that no matter how much we read, experiment and work at it, there seems to be an endless amount to learn. This is particularly true as regards Photoshop, that invaluable tool yet also bottomless pit of a time sink. But every now and then a little tidbit comes along that makes ones work either easier or better, and this one, which I call Local Contrast Enhancement — is one of the best that I've seen in a while.

I learned of it from Thomas Knoll, a member of a couple of my workshops during 2003, and not-incidently, the original author of Adobe Photoshop and Camera RAW. Thomas says that he certainly didn't develop the technique, but I haven't yet seen or read about it anywhere else, though it appears to have been around for a while. (Below are links to sites contain this and similar techniques that have been brought to my attention since first publication).

From Luminous Landscape

• Contrast Masking

A digital file is much like a film positive (transparency) in that the worst sin is to blow out the highlights. In fact it's even worse with digital than with film. Highlights on film tend to trail off gradually on the shoulder of the curve, while with digital it's more like hitting a brick wall. Overexpose — expose too far to the right of the histogram — and you end up with nothing, nada — empty white pixels with no data whatsoever.

From Luminous Landscape

• Correcting Converging Verticals

Have you ever tipped your camera back to get the whole of a tall building in the picture, and then found that in the resulting photo the building looks as though it was falling over backwards? Or maybe you did not hold the camera quite straight and everything looks as though the earth is tilted?

This tutorial shows you how to correct that. You can work on either a photo from a digital camera, or a scan of a print. It does not matter what size it is, but if it is so big that there are scroll bars on its window in PhotoImpact, then hit the minus key on the number pad until it has zoomed out enough for the whole of the picture to be visible in the workspace, with no scroll bars.

Another tutorial on correcting converging verticals

• Correcting Overexposed Images

Tutorial

• Correcting Perspective

Tutorial

• Correcting Underexposed Images

Tutorial

• Creating a Mask

Tutorial

• Creating a Watercolour

Tutorial

• Creating Girds

Tutorial

• Crating Infrared Images from Colour

Step by step illustrated

• Creating Lightning

Tutorial

• Creating visual action using History Palette and Brush

Tutorial

• Crop Tool

Tutorial

• Cropping and Straightening

Good Tutorial

• Curve Tool

he Curve Tool is common to most photo editor software, scanner drivers, graphic applications, etc. It is a standard industry tool in the graphic arts. The Histogram was a safe and easy control, but this one is a more powerful and advanced tool and is more difficult to use. It is however a close representation of how the scanner implements all the other tools. It will allow extreme changes that are optionally not so linear. It was hard to affect colors with the Histogram, but it's easy with the curve tool to greatly modify the colors of the image, either accidentally or otherwise.

Tutorial

• Curves

A critical step in Photoshop color correction is learning how to apply the appropriate curves to an image. Here's how to take an underexposed RGB image and make it look great using Levels and Curves.

Adjusting with Curves

• Curves

petteri

• Curves - an introduction

The Curves tool is really just Levels with the training wheels removed. Levels allows you to adjust the highlights, shadows and midtones of an image. Curves can do exactly the same thing, but it’s not limited to three fixed tonal ranges. You can adjust any point along the 0-255 scale. By adding control points along the curve, you can keep selected tonal ranges fixed while adjusting other values.

nature Photographers tutorial by Matt Hagadom

• Desaturated Colour

Luminous Landscape

• Displace Filter

You may have noticed an innocent appearing item lurking in the Filter>Distort menu: Displace. You may have stumbled across some odd, tiny files in the PlugIns folder, with odd, inscrutable names like “Schnable” and “Cees”. This potent filter has been a part of Photoshop since I started using the software seriously in version 2.5, and it has changed very little in the years since then. It is an extraordinarily flexible and powerful command, hampered by an obscure and counter intuitive interface which harkens back to Photoshop’s earliest days. Those attempting to figure it out through the usual approach (applying it with random abandon!) will be baffled and frustrated. However, this filter (and to a lesser extent its cousin the Glass filter) should be a core part of any seasoned Photoshop artist’s tool box because it can do the most extraordinary things in experienced hands.

Tutorial

• Displace Filter - How to use it

Photoshop's Displace filter moves around the pixels of one layer to make it look as if they're following the curves or texture of the layer below. The image on the bottom layer is called a "displacement map." In this tutorial, I'll teach you in plain English what you need to know about displacement maps so you can take advantage of the stunning effects that can be created only by using these maps.

Displace Filter

• Displacement Maps - using them to distort an Image (Part 1 of 2)

Tutorial

• Displacements Maps - using them to distort an image (Part 2 of 2)

Tutorial

• Dodge Tool - using it

As Photoshop was originally intended to enhance the output of the darkroom, it's not surprising to find that many processes involved in the more traditional aspects of photography have found their way into the digital way of doing things. The Dodge Tool is one such process. In the traditional manner, the dodge tool was used to lighten specific areas of an image. This involved physically holding back light on certain areas, so as to further expose darker areas and bring out detail that otherwise might be lost. Fortunately, Photoshop allows us to do this now without locking ourselves away in a darkened room for hours to get the process right.

The DODGE TOOL may be found on the Tool Palette. It is highlighted, seven positions down the right hand side of the Palette.

Tip from Harry Reynolds

• Dodging and Burning

In Photoshop we are given a dodge and burn tool in the Tool Menu. Unfortunately the results are usually crude and look heavy handed. Here is a better way. It simply involves adding an overlay layer of 50% gray.

Tutorial

• Edge Collage Technique

Create a different look using this technique

• Editing Images

The images produced by scanners and digital cameras are often quite good, but rarely perfect. They may suffice as records of a scene or event, but they seldom have the dramatic impact of a great print. If your goal is to make prints that go beyond simple simple records to capture the essence people and places-- to create prints that stand as works of art-- you will need to edit the image.

Tutorial

• Extract Function

Using Photoshop's Extract Tool: An Introduction

The Extract function is meant to help Photoshop users with extracting elements in an image: that is, it is meant to help the Photoshop user select the elements in their images and isolate them from the background. The idea seems to be that the Extract function should make such projects as snipping a person with whispy blowing hair easy to do – regardless of the background. It is useful for that to some extent. However, the tool may prove more valuable if it is looked at as something more generally helpful to improving your images and as a means rather than merely an end.

Tutorial

• Extract Tool - Non-destructive

Tutorial

• Extracting an item from an Image

Tutorial

• Fog - creating it

In the real world of commercial photography fog is often a desired element. That's why they make fog machines. In addition, some landscapes can be enhanced by adding fog, overall or just in spots.

The biggest problem in creating fog is to create "depth cuing". As we see further away the fog becomes denser. Here is a very easy technique to master. (After clicking on the thumbnails, be sure to expand the image.)

Tutorial

• From Colour to Monochrome

As with most image manipulation jobs in Photoshop, there are several ways of undertaking this task. I will deal with each over the next few weeks and months, but today I will explain the simplest way of doing it.

Tip by Harry Reynolds

• From Colour to Monochrome Using Lab Colour

As with most image manipulation jobs in Photoshop, there are several ways of undertaking most tasks. A second method of achieving monochrome images from colour is to use Lab Colour.

Tip by Harry Reynolds

• Gradients (and other tutorials) PS6

Photoshop 6

• Greyscale from Colour Photos

Tutorial

• Growing Digital Hair

Tutorial

• Hand Colouring

Photographers and other artists have used the technique of coloring a grayscale photograph with dyes or pigmented oil colors for many years. Originally, this was done because no color photographic process existed. Later, color photographs were more expensive than "black and white," and during WWII, color film and paper were not available to the general public, so hand-coloring continued as a way to make "color" photographs. Today hand-coloring exists as both an art form and as a technique in photographic restoration. This exercise will allow you to explore three methods for adding color to a grayscale photograph.

Step by step with illustrations

• Hayes Island Cafe (look see)

Wouldn't it be great to transform an ordinary snapshot into something you could hang on your wall!!

Tutorial

• High key Pencil Sketch

Bryan Duckett

• High Pass Sharpening

Every photographer as well as artisans of all sorts know how important it is to have an extra specialty tool available for when things don't quite work out the way you expect them to. Photoshop's High Pass Filter is one of those tools. Let's see how to use it.

Unsharp Masking is the way that everyone who works with digital image processing knows to sharpen their files. Of course the use of this ill-named tool has nothing to do either with masking, or unsharpness. It's just a carryover from the days when an unsharp negative was sandwiched with a sharp one to enhance edge contrast. And that is in fact what the Unsharp Mask tool in Photoshop does, it increases edge contrast. (For a look at the best methods for doing Unsharp Masking have a look at my tutorial Instant Photoshop.)

But, as useful as it is, the USM tool has problems, and one of these is that it also increases any noise present in the file. Particularly noisy photographs therefore can suffer when USM is applied.

Luminous Landscape

• Histogram - Brightness and Contrast and assorted Histogram Practice

These are 60 dpi scans of a 6x4 inch photo print, to show the effect of some of the controls. The images are all sharpened a little with USM. To determine what the controls in your scanner do, you can can simply look at the histogram to see what they did. I think you will find your scanner Brightness/Contrast controls will act very much the same as here. But the real purpose of this page is to present some histogram practice.

This image was selected because it's not a good photo technically. It needs help. The following images show some assorted and unrelated controls, just to see what happens in the histogram and image.

Tutorial

• Histogram - using it

This month I will build upon that with a discussion of tonal adjustments. These adjustments represent a significant portion of the basic work you will do to an image, and your technique will have a significant impact on the final quality of your images.

How to use a Histogram

• Histogram - What is it ?

The Histogram shows the total tonal distribution in the image. It's a barchart of the count of pixels of every tone of gray that occurs in the image. It helps us analyze, and more importantly, correct the contrast of the image.

Gray?   Yes, photographers know that color prints must first have the exposure and contrast set right, exactly the same as for B&W, and only then do you worry about the color balance.

Tutorial

• Histograms - Understanding them

Possibly the most useful tool available in digital photography is the histogram. It could also well be the least understood. In this article we will look at what a camera histogram tells the photographer and how best to utilize that information.

Virtually every digital camera, from the simplest point-and-shoot to the most sophisticated digital SLR has the ability to display a histogram directly, or more usually superimposed upon the image just taken. (The Hasselblad H1, the latest generation of film & digital capable cameras, can display a histogram on the camera grip’s LCD while the image is separately displayed on the digital back’s LCD.) On most cameras though the histogram display takes place on the rear LCD screen, and most cameras can be programmed to do this both on the image that is displayed immediately after a shot is taken, or later when frames are being reviewed.

Lumious Landscape Tutorial

• Hotel (Polarisation Effect)

Even though it looked good it lacked the punch that can be achieved with a polarize filter. But in a few simple steps using Photoshop we can really add some impact to our image.

Tutorial

• How to compress your images

Information on image compression

• How to Create a CD/DVD Cover

How to create a cd/dvd/ cover

• Image output for the web

While most of the discussion on digital imaging centers around scanning, correcting and printing, preparing images for display on the Web presents its own unique challenges. Accurate color reproduction is nearly impossible, while JPEG compression conspires to turn areas of important detail into pixilated blobs. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though, and with some simple guidelines you’ll be able to produce the best possible images for Web display.

Tutorial by Matt Hagadom

• Infrared in Photoshop (George Lepp and Assoc)

Creating an Infrared Image in Photoshop

• Layer Masks - Blending Imges

Blending Images

• Layer Styles - Maintaining their apperarance

Tutorial

• Layer Styles - Outputting problem files

Tutorial

• Layers - Pt 1 (PS CS1 and CS2)

Ron Bigelow

• Layers - Pt 2 (CS1 and CS2)

Ron Bigelow

• Layers - Pt 3 (CS1 and CS2)

Ron Bigelow

• Levels (Histogram)

Petteri

• Lighting Effects with Texture Fill

Tutorial

• Maintaining Fine Hair Details when Cropping

Tutorial

• Masking Images

Tutorial

• Mattes - Creating and Adding One

Tutorial

• Olde Worlde Look

Tutorial

• Orton Effect Technique (Link 1)

• Orton Effect Technique (Link 2)

• Orton Effect Technique (Link 3)

• Orton Effect Tehcnique (Link 4)

• Paint Bucket - using it

• Better Digital Online Tutorial

• Painting with Light

Tutorial

• Pattern Effects

Tutorial

• Patterns - Defining and Using Custom Patterns

Tutorial

• Pen Tool

Animated Tutorial on the Pen Tool.

• Pen Tool

Tutorial

• Pen Tools - Understanding them

Tutorial

• Pencil Sketch Technique

Well presented tutiroail

• Plastic Wrap Filter

Tutorial

• Popping out of the graphics

make your subject stand out

• Radial Blur Effect

Tutorial

• Red Eye Correction

Tutorial

• Red Eyes - Eradicating them

Tutorial

• Red Eyes - Removing them

Luminous Landscape

• Removing Backgrouns - Channel Masks

Tutorial

• Renoir Style Effect (mmmm)

Tutorial

• Repairing Photographs

Tutorial

• Replacing a Background

Tutorial on replacing a background (phtographic)

• Resizing Images

How to resize images

• Resolution - understanding it

Tricky subject made easy

• Retouching Tutorial

Uses Neat Image

• Rotating Images - How to rotate them

How to rotate images

• Rubber Stamp Tool - Using it

Using the Rubber STamp Tool to remove facial blemishes

• Saving Completed Images

Tutorial

• Selections and Masks (Part 1 of 3)

Tutorial

• Selections and Masks (Part 2 of 3)

Tutorial

• Selections and Masks (Part 3 of 3)

Tutorial

• Selections - Using Channels

Tutorial

• Selective Focus

Tutorial

• Selective Toning

Tutorial

• Shaprening - an alternative method

And alternative method of sharpening

• Sharpening an Image

Tip by Harry Reynolds

• Skies - adding them

Tutorial

• Skies - Creating them

Tutorial

• Skin Tones - getting them right

A tutorial on getting skin tones right

• Texture - Adding it to images

Barry Beckham tutorial

• Textures and Lighting (Part 1)

Tutorial

• Textures - how to load them

Tutorial

• Texturiser Filter

Tutorial

• The Bridge (Adding a sky and lighting effects)

Tutorial

• The Oak (Infrared Effect)

Tutorial

• The Toolbox

Tutorial

• Toning an image

Tutorial

• Unshap Mask (USM) revisited

Tutorial

• Upsizing

Upsizing images - tips and techniques

• Watercolour Technique - variety

Teresa Lunt

• Water Technique 02

My Janee

• Watercolour Tutorial 01

My Janee

• Winter Hay (Improving your image)

Tutorial

• Winter Scene

Tutorial