Using the healing brush

Select the Healing Brush tool from your pallette. Now select the correctly colored area on the picture (Option + Click) and using the healing brush use your mouse to touch up the photo. Be aware that you can change your brush size and the hardness of the brush. The brush hardness defaults to 100 which means a very crisp edge, blending in photo editing is VERY important so I always set my hardness to 70% and then adjust from there.

Source: Beyond Megapixels

Create Catchlights

Step #5 – Here’s my tip on adding in the CatchLights- BE THE LIGHT. You act as the light and think about where the light would hit the subject if you were the light. This is important otherwise it will look really manipulated. A light source between the 10 and 2 (like on the face of a clock) on the eye is usually where you see it in professional shoots. Set your size and your exposure. When I do this I set my size a little bit bigger then I want the actual “Light spot” to be and I set my exposure to 50% and the range to Highlight and I click a few times so that it’s just a bit lighter then I continue to decrease the size of my Dodge tool and nudge the exposure up to 75% concentrating the “Light spot”.

Source:
Beyond Megapixels

create a blinkie in CS3

1. Create a 150×50 72 dpi image in layers, each layer will be one scene of your blinkie (so include the previous layers).

2. Go to Window, Animate

3. In the lower right hand corner click on the icon for frame mode

4. In your layers palette make visible the layer you want to see in that first frame. At the bottom of the frame pane you can set how long you want that frame to show.

5. Click the “new frame” icon at the bottom by the trash can. In that new frame make visible the second layer for your second scene, and continue adding frames until your blinkie is complete.

6. In the bottom left corner there is a tab that controls how often the blinkie loops through.

7. Press play to preview your blinkie.

8. Go to File, Save for Web and save your blinkie as a .gif file.

9. Host it on the web (I use Flickr) and use the code to imbed it in your forum signature or your blog posts.

Source www.scrapbook.com

Adjustment Layers/Nondestructive editing

From DesignerDigitals February newsletter.

Adjustment Layers/Nondestructive editing

1. Click on the layer you want to alter.
2. Click on the “Create a New Fill or Adjustment Layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette.
3. Alter Color, Brightness, Contrast, Levels etc. and click OK.
4. Click on the adjustment layer in the Layers Palette and create a clipping mask (Alt + Ctrl + G) so that the adjustment layer will affect ONLY the layer you are altering.
5. Make changes to the Adjustment Layer by double-clicking the box on the left side of the Adjustment Layer in the Layers Palette. This activates the dialog box, allowing you to alter your adjustment as many times as you like. You can also delete or hide the adjustment layer to revert to the original layer.

Quick Zoom

From Designer Digitals newsletter:

Double-clicking the Zoom Tool increases your layout to 100% so you can see the page up close, at actual size. When you are ready to return, double-clicking the hand tool will fit the image to your screen again.

Zoom feature

Holding down the spacebar when you are zoomed in will turn your current tool into the Hand Tool, allowing you to navigate around the page easily.

(tip from designer digitals weekly e-letter.

Keyboard shortcuts

To learn the shortcut for each photoshop tool, hover the cursor over the tool in the toolbar and the tool shortcut is displayed in brackets. To navigate through the hidden tools, press Shift + Tool Shortcut.

Example: Pressing E will provide the Eraser tool. Shift + E will switch to the Background Eraser Tool and Shift + E again will switch to the Magic Eraser Tool.

Photo Processing

Jessica’s ShaZam

1. Open the photo.
2. Duplicate the layer twice.
3. Set the top layer to Screen, and the second layer to Overlay.
4. Adjust the opacity of this two-layer combination.
5. Erase out any too-dark or too-red parts of the Overlay layer.
6. Burn the edges of the background layer just a titch.
7. Resize as needed, and THEN run Smart Sharpen (sharpening should always be done last, and always on the photo when it’s at its final size). I recommend a strength of 85%, and then adjust the radius to taste.

Brighten Eyes

Two Little Pixels June Newsletter

- zoom in on eyes
- use magic wand tool [w], hold down shift and click on the whites of the eyes
- duplicate layer [control + j]
- click on layer and adjust hue/saturation by moving saturation level to left
- merge layers
- use a small dodge brush to give the eyes some twinkle

Stack everything into one layout

Digishoptalk

Open up all of files you want in in your new document
Go to File–>Scripts–>LoadFilesintoStack
Click on Add Open Files–>OK