Computer Graphics

Making text reflection

2006-07-25T01:37:00.000+02:00

It started. The video tutorials are started being a priority tutorial versions on the blog. I've got plenty of people that want these tutorials to be in video. So, be it. The green light is on. It's easier for me, and a lot easier for you to follow. Only thing is financial problem of hosting them, but I hope I'll find some way. I've managed to optimize videos to be 1 min = 1 MB which is pretty good compressed with good resolution (1024x768). And you'll need TSCC codec, which is free to download.

In this tutorial you'll learn how to make text reflection, which is pretty cool for avatars and signatures on forum or logos for sites, for less than five minutes. It's very easy, and I hope you like the result:

Video can be downloaded here
NOTE: FOR WATCHING THIS VIDEO YOU NEED TSCC codec.
Filesize: 6 MB
Length: >5 minutes

Making ice

2006-07-20T16:10:00.000+02:00

VIDEO VERSION OF THIS TUTORIAL CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE
NOTE: FOR WATCHING THIS VIDEO YOU NEED XVid codec.
Filesize: ~20 MB
Length: ~8 minutes

As promised, in this tutorial, I'll learn you how to make a effect of some kind of ice, or better frozen effect. Some of you probably, in this time of year, have been bored of the sun heat and would like to splash yourselves with frozen water. But, again, we're going to splash you digitally. We're going to make an effect of frozen crystals which are dispersing them on the frozen surface. Of course, their structure is too complex to edit it detaily, so we'll do one easier version which will show you very nice what am I talking about. At the end, everything should look like someone brushed the ice with some various objects, so the typical "scars" will be seen on the surface. So, get prepared your cap, gloves, and other things to finish this, yet another, creative attraction.

Make a new document with square dimensions (I used 500x500 px). Before you click Ok in dialog New, make sure that you select Transparent in the frame Contents. Then click Ok. It'll open a new window with transparent layer. Make sure that the Foreground color is black. You can do that quickly just pressing "D" on the keyboard, which will make default colors for Foreground/Bakcground Color, black/white. In the menu Edit click on command Fill, then choose Use Foreground Color and click Ok. Layer 1 should be filled with black color. Rename the Layer 1 to something like "Background". On the Layers palette click on the small button Create new layer (hotkey - Shift+Ctrl+N) and this will make a new layer. Open the Color Picker dialog, by clicking on the Foreground Color icon, and choose pure red color (R:255, G:0, B:0). Okey, we're getting to some 'smarter' part of the tutorial.

Secret of this tutorial is called Gradient Tool. This tool will help us to make big part of the whole process of making ice. Let's see how this tool works. Select this tool on the toolbar or simple just press "G" on the keyboard. Gradient Tool on the Options trackbar sets few parameters. We'll first select Reflected Gradient, as our type of gradiation, and then we'll change the whole gradiation by clicking its sample on the Options trackbar. It'll open Gradient Editor, so now we must select the Foreground to Transparent preset. Make sure that all options like on the next picture.

Now position the mouse somewhere in the middle of the work area and make one small gradiation (under some angle). Direction and length Photoshop will make with two points. To have big sloppy gradient, try to make distance from first to second point about 1 - 2 cm (smaller than 1") on our resolution 500x500. If the resoulution is bigger, the distance from point to point should be bigger. Make two gradiations with red color; both of them should be placed on various places and various angles. Then again, open the Color Picker dialog and make sure the the HSB-model of colors is selected (by clicking H, S or B radio buttons). The HSB are Hue, Saturation and Brightness. Make sure it's set to H:0, S:100, B:100, what is totally same like RGB 255,0,0. And in the future I'll write my color numbers like example this RGB 255, 0, 0, to make it easier. We only need Hue value for the process, and now change it from 0 to 50. So, the value of HSB should be 50, 100, 100 now. Now make again two various gradients with this color. Then, again in the Color Picker change Hue value from 50 to 100, and make two more various gradients. Repeat this step every time making the Hue value bigger for 50, and you should get the last color of 350. So, at the and you should have seven colors, with fourteen various gradiations, by two colors.

For now, everything looks chaotic and motley. Don't worry, it'll be much worse. Rename your 'happy' layer to "Lines 1", an then make one more layer, but change its Blending mode from Normal to Difference. Doing this, the new layer will work with colors on different method. Now little re-doing. You must again follow the whole process of making the gradients - from Hue 0 to 350. So, again the hard work.

Don't worry, if you're lost in the "process of maltreatment colors". It's important to change every Hue value right and to make for every color two gradients. You can call this layer "Lines 2".

It's time to get some order in the game. In the manu Layer choose command Merge Visible (hotkey Ctrl+Shift+E), which will 'melt' all layers into one. With Ctrl+J hotkey make a copy of the merged layer and go under menu Edit/Transform and click command Rotate 90 CW. Doing this, we've rotated whole picture for 90 degrees clockwise. Rotated layer copy once more on the same way (Ctrl+J) and rotate it once more fore 90 degrees in same direction. Once more, last copying of layer (Ctrl+J) and rotate this layer for 90 degrees CW (clockwise). At the end again you command Merge Visible (hotkey Ctrl+Shift+E).

Okey, now open the Hue/Saturation dialog from the menu Image/Adjustments (hotkey Ctrl+U), check on Colorize radio button and enter these values: Hue = 183 and Saturation = 35. We've got again the soft blue color.

Now, we'll use filter Plastic Wrape located in the menu Filter/Artistic. Value Highlight Strength should be 15, Detail 9 and Smothness 10. Using this filter we'll get some sharp and reflective details.

Of course, we cannot leave the picture how it looks now, so we need more intervention on it. One of them is in the filter Poster Edges, which is located under menu Filter/Artist, just like the last one.

Set the Edge Thickness to 2, Edge Intensity to 1 and Posterization to 2. Now we've got the typical 'frozen' pattern, but our color we've used isn't so realistic. Action of the fridge will play the tool Replace Color from the menu Image/Adjustments. She's working on the principle of HSL-sliders (Hue, Saturation, Lightness). With eyedropper we'll select blue color and in the frame Selection set the Fuziness to maximum of 200. Doing this, we've sure that the color of blue will not escape from the picture. Now set the Lightness slider to 75. We've got the real color of an ice, just as we wanted. If you don't like the color, feel free to change it.

Hope you've like the tutorial, enjoy your stay on the blog and bye 'till next time.

Making fire

2006-07-19T22:40:00.000+02:00

Simulating various mother nature's happenings is probably most attractive task for everyone who take computer for its realization. The problem with computer is that he's, on every question, trying to give perfect results. But, our eyes don't fall on those tricks, revealing every detail.

Like you can see in the title, in this tutorial, we'll entertain ourselves with one very important element of nature - fire. Few hundred years ago, it wasn't very easy for man to make a fire. Luckily, time has changed. Photoshop will, with its extremly usable tools make our job easier. In matter of minutes, you'll "heat" yourself using only keyboard and mouse. Let's get to work.

Make a new document, size doesn't matter, with a white background. In my example, I've made it with 1500x10 px. Main form of fire, we'll make with Clouds filter which is located under menu Filters/Render. This filter make a random pattern in grey tones, which are very similiar to fog or cloud, what we can use in our next step. To make a kind of fire which is throwing its particles in air, we'll use one more filter called Polar Coordinates, located under menu Filter/Distort:

Check option Polart to Rectangular and press Ok. We made a distortion of picture which can be seen more on the upper part, so whole thing now looks like shape of fire, which we need. Even with that, we must work on its realistic.

Flame is very hot, on itself, because of extremly high temperature, which is "pushing" it to all its energy realize in light, relativly with very various intesities. So, we must add our flames a specific "glow" and contrast. Best solution for this is filter Accented Edges, which is located under menu FIlter/Brush Strokes. When his dialog opens, be sure to set Accented Edges in the fall menu. Value Edge width set on 5, Edge Brightness should be 38 and Smothness to 15 and press Ok. Result should be like on next picture:

Okey, our flame is getting more realistic, but the lack of colors seems it very "cold" and unnatural.
We'll "heat" whole thing with one more filter, and that's Lighting Effects (Filter/Render menu):

First, set the Light Type to Omni, and set Intensity to 35, and on the Preview window (small part of the Lighting effects dialog situated on the left side) you can see how our unfinished fire react on these values and parameters. To get the effect that our flame is heater in the bottom part, and gentle on top part, we'll move our light source to bottom edge of the picture. If you don't understand just make it all like on the picture below. His range, which is presented as a perfect ellipse, we're going to enlarge its radius to take at least half width of the picture. Let's get back to parameter editing. In the Properties frame, set the Gloss value to 84, which will disperse light on the surface. Then, set the Material value to 69, which will raise contrast. Parameter Exposure should be gently enlarged to 10, where we'll get on the whole lighting of the picture. Last parameter, Ambience, should be of value 8. At the end, we only have to choose colors of the fire. Click on the first ColorBox (on the frame Light Type), and in the Color Picker choose orange-like color. On our example that color is (R:243, G:126, B:31). In the frame Properties do same like you did on last ColorBox, only difference is that we need red-like color here (R:237, G:33, B:35). Clicking the Ok button, you'll excute Lighting Effects filter and our fire is lighten up.

We've seen that combination of a few filters is possible to make better results than it was on the beginning. Happily, every filter is occupated by a little Preview window, which is making our job much easier. After making this fire, you have rights to call yourself "digital fireman". Hope you liked tutorial, in the next tutorial you'll learn to make something like ice or something. Enjoy your stay on the blog, and bye bye 'till next time.

Vectors in the world of pixels, step 2.

2006-06-19T01:26:00.000+02:00

Again, open same photo you used in the first step. Save is as new .psd file (in our case it's VectorEye.psd). And here, too, we'll use commands Desaturate and Auto Levels. With help of Crop tool (hotkey - C) you have to make a slice of eye. We'll enlarge it 4-5 times using Image Size command in menu Image. Don't worry if your photo looks blurry and too big. In menu Filter/Distort choose filter Displace. In dialog, you need to set both Scale options to 10%, and for the Displacement Map set "Tile", and for Undefined Areas check on "Repeat Edge Pixels". Photoshop, then, wants you to show him path to the Displacement map. You can find some of them in the Photoshop's Plug-In folder. That map, which we need, is Honeycomb (10%).psd. After we selected map, we can see hexagonal pixelation which is used on the slice of an eye. Because, after vectorization, we want to escape from 90°-degrees picture, we'll use tool Dodge (hotkey - O) and brush out the edges of picture, which will give us transparent area, on that places of picture, and get eliptical shape of eye:

Here, too, we'll add one Treshold Adjustment Layer with value of 32. We need to create new set with name "Eye" and give him color you want. After that, using Magic Wand tool (hotkey - W) you need to select dark area and make a work path in Paths pallete. Next, create a new Solid color layer with RGB values of 32. And again, we're on our 'dry' work. It's about repeating process as you did in the previous step, with only difference, that we'll not make 8 repeatings, instead, here we're make only 4 of the drags of color, with values of 96, 160 and 224. Of course, result will not be detailed as in the first step. After that, it's posibble to have those artefacts again. You can remove them again with Direct Selection tool. 'Till next time, enjoy your staying on blog and bye.

Vectors in the world of pixels, step 1.

2006-06-17T18:16:00.000+02:00

Even if the market is flooded by newest versions of Corel, Illustrator and Freehand, that's not reason to turn our back to Photoshop when it's matter of vectors. To be quickest in our work and more sufficient, we should use every byte, that Adobe took from us when we installed this super-application. Taking in mind his "vector brother" - Illustrator, Adobe didn't want to make competition to himself if he gave us all tools and manipulation with vector graphics. No, he's still the best raster editing application, but it's giving us some vector suprises. In this tutorial you'll find out how to make very nice vector effects. Also, we'll show you how to make vector image of photo. Let's get to work!

Open Photoshop and the photo you want, without to many details and colors. Save it in new .psd file (in our case it's VectorMain.psd). With help of hotkey Ctrl+J copy Background layer and new layer rename to "Main". Then one more hotkey intervention, Shift+Ctrl+U. It'll excute Desturate command, which is totally taking the photo color. And, third time, we'll use one more hotkey which will excute Auto Levels, and it's Shift+Ctrl+L:

Then, on the bottom of the Layers pallete click on the little icon "Create new fill or adjustment layer" and choose Treshold command:

This is possible to open by menu Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Treshold... In the Treshold level field enter value which will make Photoshop to neglect all pixels which Lightness value is crossing entered value. For the beginning, we'll leave that value on 128, just to see how command Treshold is influencing on photo. Let's get back to layer "Main" and go under Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur. Scrolling the Radius slider to the right, we can interactively see how contures on the photo are getting simpler. Choose the value which will give you results similiar to these:

After you're statisfied with results, get back to the Treshold layer and change its value to 16. Doing this, big part of photo will disappear, what is totally understandable because we took low Lightness value. But, that's just what we need. Take Magic Wand tool (hotkey - W) and turn off option Contiguous:

Then click somewhere on the dark field on the photo. All dark areas of photo are selected. On the bottom of the Paths pallete click on the icon Make work path from selection:

Doing this, Photoshop "vectorizely" selected contour of selection. On the pallete Layers let's make one set by clicking the icon Create a new set, which is located on the bottom of the pallete. Give it reasonable name, something like "Main" and picture which will help us as orientation:

Okey, we now need one Fill Layer, and that's Solid Color Layer. You can open it from the menu Layer/New fill layer/Solid Color... or from the bottom of the layer pallete clicking on the icon Create new fill or adjustment layer. Make sure that the icon Work path is selected in Paths pallete.

After you made this layer it opens Color Picker dialog. We're interested in RGB values, which should be 16 in every field(R, G and B). Then, click on the icon of the eye next to layer set "Main", to hide this set of layers. Value Treshould should be changed to 64, which will show us one more part of photo. Again, we need tool Magic Want, with which will we click on the black area. Again, in the Paths Pallete click on the Make work path from selection icon, where you can see how the white area, recently made is getting bigger. Then, again, make a new Solid Color Layer and in the Color Picker dialog enter values 64 for R, G and B fields.

This proccess is repeating six more times, and with Treshold values 96, 128, 160, 192, 224 and 240. Of course, this is not entertaining so much, but we must do this to get best vectore picture. So, it all begins giving Treshold value, making new Work Path, making Solid Color Layer and entering same values of Treshold into the RGB fields in Color Picker dialog. After making every Solid Color layer, Drag&Drop that layer to your set, "Main" set actually. After finishing this hard work, your Layers pallete should be richer for six Solid Color Layers with corresponding Vector mask. Turn on, again, that little eye icon next to your "Main" set. This piece of art which is (probably, we hope so) your hand-made vector photo. If you more detailed look at the result of vectorization, you'll probably see small artefacts, which less/more sliped out from the vectorization. You'll get rid of them with help of Direct Selection tool (hotkey - A). Simple, on the layers pallete select Vector mask corresponding color of the artefact which you want to remove, then like making selection, frame out elements and press Backspace on the keyboard.

This is one way to get this vector results. Tommorow, I'll let you know the step 2. of this :) Enjoy staying on blog and bye.

Combining 3ds max and Photoshop to make flag

2006-06-06T02:18:00.000+02:00

Hi, this will be hard to write for me because I have to learn you this without any complication. You can see the picture result at the end. This will be very good lesson for all of you beginners and maybe intermmediate. You'll learn:

In 3ds max -

1.) Making plane and adding texture to it
2.) Placing reactor wind and animating it
3.) Adding lights
4.) Rendering wavy flag, disturbed by wind

In the Photoshop -

1.) Add details to the picture
2.) Add noise
3.) Make glassy orb

You'll need:

1.) Photoshop and 3ds max (no matter which version, it matter to have reactor plugin)
2.) Vector picture of the flag you want
3.) Motive of your country (pyramid, castles, whatsoever)
4.) A lack of time (I need double lack of time :))

I'm gonna be clear in this lesson.

Open 3ds max. Make a new plane in Top viewport. Set its sizes:

Length: 20
Width: 40

Then open Material Editor (hotkey - M). Click any free slot in Material Editor and click little grey box next to Diffuse. It'll open Material Browser, then click Bitmap and browse the vector picture of flag and click Ok to set it as Diffuse map. Then click the Assign Material to Selection. Be sure that you selected plane you made before! It should look like this:

Then click the Select and Rotate tool in 3ds max and make sure the Angle Snap tool is turned on. If it's turned od, it'll make our rotating easier by snaping the rotation on every 5 degrees. Rotate the plane on the x-axis by 90 degrees.

Then select Wind tool which you can access through the Reactor toolbar or by going to panel Create, Helpers tab and choose Reactor from pop-up window. Then you can click Wind box. Then make the wind helper in the left viewport pointing directly to the front of the flag!

It should look like on this picture:

Now this is most important moment. You must create Cloth Collection. You can access it at the Reactor toolbar or at the same place as Wind. Then make it where ever you want. It doesn't matter, because that will not be rendered. Then click on the Cloth Collection you made and at the Modify panel under Properties pull-out menu, click Pick, and select flag plane on the viewport. You'll notice it doesn't adds flag to the Cloth Collection. We must add reactorCloth modifier to the flag. So, click the flag plane and under Modify panel choose modifier Cloth. Now try again clicking on the Cloth Collection, click Pick button and select flag!

What happens now. It works, a miracle. Okey, now select the Wind helper and edit this values:

Now, when you set everything as I said, go to the Material Editor, to edit our flag material. We want it to look better. So, click on its slot and edit values like the ones below:

As you can see, I added the Specular level map. So click on the box next to the Specular level map and from the Material Browser choose Fallof and set these settings:

You should also add MeshSmooth modifier with lterations 2 to the flag plane. Actually, do that if you want to have smooth surface. I added it!

Now the lighting. Add one sky, no matter where. Then make two area spot lights. Your viewports should look like this:

Now, select one by one areaSpotLight and check on Targeted (in the Modify panel), turn on Shadows and set shadows to Ray Traced Shadows. Set Multiplier to 0,8 for one, and 0,5 for other areaSpotLight.

We're almost finished in 3ds max. Go to the Rendering/Render... and set Mental Ray renderer and set Output size to 3508x2480 px. And of course at the Render Output, set in which folder do you want to save picture! Then at last in the Indirect Illumination set these options:

Now at last click Render button to render the picture!

This is what I get:

We've finished our work in 3ds max. You'll not get same result probably but no matter. It will be video tutorial on this in few days, to get your work easier.

We're getting back to Photoshop. Open the Photoshop and the picture you just rendered. Copy the background layer and rename it to Flag soft light. Then click on the new made layer and change its blending mode to Soft Light! Then go under the menu Layer/New adjustment layer/Hue/Saturation. Set its name to "Flag - Hue/Saturation" and click Ok. It'll open the Hue/Saturation window automatically. Lower the Saturation scroller from about -60 to -80. Whatever you want. I set my to -70. Be sure Colorize is unchecked and then click Ok. The image should be a bit 'greyed' now. Now, we want to lower that grey by adding a gradient. Make a new layer, rename it to Flag Gradient. Select the gradient tool. Set colors to your flag's color. In my case, it's yellow and blue. Now drag the gradient tool from the bottom left corner to the top right corner. Now, change the blending of the layer Flag Gradient to Color blending and set its opacity to 50%. This is how it should look so far:

We're finished with the flag. Now it's time for the motive of the country. I'll put the motive of our stone made sculptures from the middle ages called 'stecak'. Make a new layer and rename it to Motive Base. Make an elipse in the middle of the picture and set colors you want for the gradient. Then from the top of the elipse drag the gradient tool to the bottom of the elipse. Then add the Underpainting... filter from the Filter menu and Artistic sub-menu. Then, double click on the icon next to the Motive Base layer and add Drop shadow with your own values.

Now, if you lost selection of the Motive Base layer, you'll get selection back by holding Ctrl and clicking on the icon next to the layer Motive Base. Then get back to the new made layer rename it to Stone Texture and open the texture you want and add it to this layer.Then go under Selection menu, Modify and click Contract and contract the elipse selection by 10 px. Then click Ctrl+Shift+I to inverse the selection and click Delete to delete everything except the elipse texture. Then change the blending of the layer Stone texture to Multiply and set its Opacity to 50%.

Now, we're going to make a new layer and call it Motive. Then open the motive you want and drag it onto that layer. Double click icon of the layer Motive, it'll open Layer Style again. Turn on Stroke and set the color to white. Then change the blending of the layer Motive to the Color, to get the texture of the stone for our motive. Because this motive of our country of a man holding his hand up is sculpted on the stone. That's our national treasure (now there's a pyramid too :)).

Now get back the selection of the layer Motive base and make a new layer and call it, Shine #1. Fill the selection with white color. Set the blending of that layer to Overlay and click Add Layer mask in the Layers pallete. Now when you made layer mask it selects mask automatically. Fill the mask with black color, whole mask. Then take a Brush tool, white foreground and still editing mask of the layer, brush the top of the motive. Before brushing you should lower the flow to about 40%-50%.

Again new layer, rename to Shine #2 and get back selection of the layer Motive Base again. Fill it with white again. Then click Add Layer mask again. Now, leave the white color of the mask of the layer. Then change blending of that layer to the Soft Light. Then take Brush tool again and take black color. But be sure to be brushing on the mask of the layer, not on the layer itself. We want to color mask. Brush the mask on the top of the motive. Then just duplicate that layer once.

Then make a new layer called Frame and fill it with black. Change its blending to the Color. And double click its icon to open Layer style again. Turn on Stroke and set black color, Inside and its blending to Color. Then just click Ok and set the Fill of that layer to 0%.

One more thing and we're finished. Add new layer and rename it to Inner Shadow. Now get back selection like you done before, but now selection of Stone Texture layer. Color the selection with black. Add layer mask again and leave the color of the mask at white color. Now with same selection, go under Select menu, Modify and click Contract and contract it to middle of its size. Then go again in the menu Select but now click Feather and set to 60 px. Then just fill the contracted selection with black color.

Now we only left the text if you want to add it. I'll add it. Select Horizontal Type Tool and type text you want. Center it just under the motive, then right click on the text layer and click Rasterize Type. Then Double click on the icon next to text layer and turn on Drop Shadow. Set the values you want, I have set distance to 5, spread to 4 and size to 14.

Whoa man, I really like it. I hope your thakful on this tutorial. I am exosted. I would like to thanks to Vedad Dizadarević for giving me an idea, support and lot of help about this work and tutorial. Thanks Vedad!

We're finished!!! My result is this:

Now, I also wanted to archive you all files I used in this tutorial so you can work with them if you don't understand them.

Archive download link

That would be that, I'm exosted. I hope you like tutorial. It'll be in few days in Video explained. So, bye once more, enjoy your stay and happy designing :))

Written by Dzahdo

Thanks a lot to Vedad Dizdarević for help and material

Faking text :)

2006-06-04T12:42:00.000+02:00

Hi my dear Photoshop lesson followers :) I'm happy to have time to write tutorial every day. Very often thing on the forums and on the websites, are the fake pictures similiar to this:

"Hey, what's up people. I've bought new computer AMD xx, Intel xx ...."

and their lies never stop. Then when you ask them for a screenshot, they actually send you screenshot with details. But there are to posibillites. Maybe he's very rich and can have every new thingy for computer when it unleashes from companies, or he's a perfect damn lier and great artist in 2D programs. That's very easy to do. In this lesson, I'm not going to teach anyone to lie, altough you can mess with someone, tell him you have new computer. It'll be funny :)

Now, take a screenshot of whatever you want. You can take a screenshot of computer properties (right-click, properties on the my computer icon) or you can install application such as Everest.

Take a screenshot, it should look like this:

Now, what you're going to do. We want to delete the 512 RAM and get 4096 MB of RAM. So, select the 512 MB RAM text and take a Patch tool. Now drag that selection under text (to the grey color) and release. You mustn't drag it on the other text, because you'll not get the result we want. Voila! We did it, we succesfully deleted the text, and we didn't lost the color.

Now take a Horizontal Type Tool and type let's say "4096 MB of RAM" and type these values for the text:

Position the text just under the xx GHz, or MHz (depends on computer). Now, right click on text layer and select Rasterize Type. Take a Blur tool, size 85 and strenght to 5%. Then click on the text once, just once! Then change the opacity of the text layer to how about 69%-75%. Your choice. And we're done. Nothing hard, isn't it? :))

This is my result:

It maybe doesn't look just like the above, but with a little of experimenting today learned things, you'll win and this lesson. So enjoy your stay on the blog, happy drawing and bye. :)

Making signature

2006-06-03T20:07:00.000+02:00

Hi peeps. In this chapter I'll learn you how to make a s-i-g-n-a-t-u-r-e. Nowdays, that's the most famous thing on the forums. We're going to talk about various versions of signatures. Most famous are grunge. In this tutorial I'm not going to talk about grunge signatures. I'll talk about "cute signatures".

Here's one of mine signatures:

That's the way how it should look at the end, but I'm just going to change it a little bit.

Open the Photoshop, new document size 500x100 px. And open the picture under this text:

Then do this thing. Open the frog picture and then do this. Click Ctrl+A to select whole picture and then press Ctrl+C or under menu Edit click Copy. Then get back on your new document you made and click Ctrl+V or under menu Edit click Paste. This will copy the frog picture onto the new document. Click Ctrl+T to enter the Transform mode and in the toolbar under menu type next parameters:

If you didn't already unlocked the Background layer do that now. To do that double click on the padlock and click Ok in the window which will pop-up. Then rename the white layer (Layer 0) to Background and rename Layer 1 to Frog_main. When you've done that download the brush set from the link below:

Brush Set #1

Unpack the brush set, and move it to the hdd://program files/adobe/photoshop/presets/brushes . Doing that you added the brush set you downloaded to the Brushes list. Then make a new layer, rename it to "Drawings" and then take Brush tool (hotkey - B) and draw something like down, using whatever brushes you want. It should look like something below:

You probably don't have the green color as I do, so click Ctrl+U or use command Hue/Saturation from Image/Adjustments and enter these values:

Now, that's the main brushes and we don't need anymore of these. Now, take Eraser tool and open Special Effects brushes (which come in the Photoshop by default) and choose Hypno lines from the brushes list and brush the already made green brushes. It'll look very cool.

Now take Brush tool again and select Hypno Lines again, and set opacity of the brushes to 40% and draw that brush around edges of the picture! It should look like this:

Let's continue brushing, now make a new layer and rename it to "Drawings_bg" and set its position under the Drawings layer. Brush tool again with Petal Crystals brush and set opacity to 55% and Flow to 40% and Brush size to 57 px and brush all around document, but be quick, because we want to have transparent brushing. You'll manage to do that only if you don't repeat brushing process on the already brushed. I hope you understand me.

After doing that, take Scattered Wild Flowers brush set opacity to 100% and Flow to 100% and color to light green and brush whole document until you're statisfied with results.

We're finished with brushing you should have similiar results to the next picture:

After that, click on the topmost layer to select it and click Ctrl+Shift+E to merge all layers. Now make new layer and rename it to borders. And then click Ctrl+A to select whole picture and right click anywhere in the selection and click Stroke it'll open Stroke window. Enter these values:

Width: 3 px
Color: Black
Location: Inside

Other values to default and click Ok. Now do same thing but now with these values:

Width: 2 px
Color: White
Location: Inside

Click Ok. Same thing once more with these values:

Width: 1 px
Color: Black
Location: Inside

Click Ok. Now zoom the borders about 400%, take Magic Wand Tool and click white border. Clicking white color Magic Wand Tool selects all white colors which is in its range. Now click Delete on keyboard to delete white color. Zoom out to 100%. Voila! You have a some kind of frame. I think it's really cool.

Now it's time to add text and we're finished!

Click Horizontal Type Tool and type whatever you want. Color doesn't matter. Now right click on the text layer and click Rasterize Type. Double click on the icon next to text layer and it will open magic Layer Style tool.

Click Drop Shadow and enter these values, other leave on default:

Color: Very dark green
Opacity: 57%
Distance: 5 px
Spread: 18%
Size: 13 px

Then, click Color Overlay enter these values:

Color: Light Green
Opacity: 50%

Then, Pattern Overlay:

Pattern: Molecular
Scale: 59%

And check Stroke, with these values:

Size: 1 px
Color: Black

Click Ok. Voila! We've finished our magical, cute, greeny, nature signature. You could use it if you are often on forums about nature and such things. Otherwise you can set colors you want, and use it for different forums. But that doesn't matter!

This is my result, I only added some starry brushes which are very cool.

Happy signaturing, enjoy your stay on the blog and bye.

Good tool worths bunch of gold

2006-06-03T01:16:00.000+02:00

It's time to get back to interestings of Photoshop. If you followed our tutorials since our beginning, you realized that using various Photoshop tricks, you can simulate every possible things from the real world. Be creative in Photoshop! Photoshop will never leave you alone when the ideas and solving problems are hard. We give you one big advice: JUST PRACTICE, EXPERIMENT WHOLE PHOTOSHOP AND FOLLOW OUR TUTORIALS (caps off :))

On our "daily row" of our school of Photoshop, it's time to make one of the most famous jewlery on the world - gold. We are not going to, of course, talk about chemical, technical and physical caracteristics of this metal, we are only interested in his look.

Before you get on your computer and Photoshop, you should clear some caracteristics of this material. You should be aware of its lightness and noise, reflection of enviroment on the object, and of course, color! We now have all informations we need for this. Now, it's time to Photoshop do its work.

Open Photoshop and new document, no matter on dimensions. Set Color Mode to RGB, and in the panel Contents check the option White, which will able us to work on white background. On the toolbar, click on the icon of Foreground Color, and it will open Color Picker (we talked about it in previous lessons). Type these RGB parameters: 210, 134, 0. Try to get the gold color on the other ways, too. Set all RGB-parameters on 0. Then type this hexadecimal value: D28600 in the field with mark "#". You'll agree with me, that this combination is easier to learn, than the nine numbers which we have in RGB system of colors. Here you'll see two simbols:

Upper one gives us knowledge that this color cannot be printed, because it cannot be found on CMYK pallete of colors, which gives us different color spectar than RGB. The bottom one icon tells us that this color is not "web safe" color, which will not be seen in the web browsers, how it looks like in Photoshop. Actually, there are not all monitors gived pleasure to have more than 16 million colors. Like example we can give you cellphones in color, which use 8-bit screens, and they offer you internet services. If you click on this symbol, Photoshop will choose most similiar color to that, and there are 216 of these colors. Press Ok and take Horizontal Type tool (hotkey "T"). Type text you want, set it's height you want, and center it on the working area.

On the pallete Layers click on the textual layer holding key Ctrl. Doing that, you made a selection of the text. Go under the pallete Chanells and click the icon "Save selection as channel" which is placed on the bottom of that pallete. You get new channel named "Alpha 1". He'll help us as form with which we'll form a look of gold. Stay on the pallete Channels, and choose channel Alpha 1. Then use the filter Gaussian Blur, which you can find under menu Filter/Blur. Value Radius set on 4. You can see how it is blured now inside the text, esspecially on the edges of the text. Even that, we'll blur this result twice time more. First time with value Radius 2, and second time with Radius 1. Choose Deselect in menu Select (hotkey - Ctrl+D), and then last time use same filter, without changing its value (hotkey - Ctrl+F). Doing this we've blured and soften outter edges of the text. If your doing on the document with smaller resolution, difference in the changes will not be seen too much. You'll get best results on the documents with bigger sizes.

Get back again on the pallete Layers and make a new layer. Be aware that the new layer is placed on the top of the pallete. Then click on the icon Foreground Color and type this hexadecimal value: 999999. If you have problems with understanding access to the colors trough this method, you can type RGB values three times 153, and you'll get same color. Try that, you can see how Photoshop autommatically updates values of all color systems in Color Picker. Click Ok and click on the Paint Bucket tool on the toolbar (hotkey - G). If you're accessing this tool through keyboard, it can happen that you select Gradient Tool except Paint Bucket, because they have same hotkey on keyboard. In this case you get your Paint Bucket tool grough mouse. When you activate tool, be sure that you selected top layer and click with left mouse on the working area, which should get you result of grey background.

Next, the explanation of the many possibilites of working with alpha channel. Select filter Lighting Effects from the menu Filter/Render:

Even the filter is primarly made for simulating ligth effects, he has many suprises hidden in it. What am I talking about, you'll realize if you select from the Texture Channel pop-up menu the Alpha 1 channel. In preview window you can see relief display of convex areas, and the dark areas for the inwarded areas. We made effect of easy extruding of the area using Gaussian blur. Caracteristics of the light you can set by your own. We've got best results using this values:

Intensity: 35
Focus: 69
Gloss: 39
Material: 79
Exposure: 0
Ambience: 0
Height: 100

Source of light you should position in the upper left angle so the reflection gets from that direction. When you press Ok you should get something like on the next picture:

Don't move from the topmost layer and click its name on the pallete Layers holding key Ctrl. Make an inversion of the selection with command Inverse from the menu Select and press Delete key on keyboard to delete unwanted elements on the picture. Then unselect all with command Deselect from the menu Select (hotkey - Ctrl+D). It's time to our text gets its final "mettalic look", and we'll search result in the tool called Curves, which is located in the menu Image/Adjustments (hotkey - Ctrl+M). You can play with the curve a bit, but be aware on the changes which are made after changing shape of curve. To get good result, try to get the curve that looks like on the next picture:

When you're statisfied, click Ok. Last filter we need to use is Add Noise:

which will give us soft noisy picture which gold can have (or it not have it). For those who don't know Add noise... is located under menu Filter(Noise. Value ammount set on the 2,5%, in the frame Distribution select Gaussian and check option Monochromatic, which will keep equal tones of the noise. Check this opetions, and then click twice on the icon of the top layer on pallete Layers, which we'll open famous Layer Style window. Check the option Drop Shadow and set the values Opacity to 47%, Distance to 19 px, Spread at 17% and Size on 68 px. Angle of the shadow should be around 133 degrees.

To get most realistic shadow which's solidity is biggest next to the object, and it is drastically decreasing, click on the icon next to Contour, in the frame Quality. Like the same name says, you need to set the contours of the shadow, and you're doing that changing position of points on the curve. Check the option Corner (unless it's already done) and make a shape of the cruve which looks like on the next picture:

When you finish press Ok and check option Anti-aliased to get more soften edges of shadow. Check these options clicking Ok button to leave Layer Style window.

Work is almost finished, we just need to delete greyness which covers our text and give it reasonable color. Even you, maybe, forgotten that problem of color we solved on the beginning of the tutorial. To see the color, drag and drop textual layer on the top of the Layers pallete. Now that textual layer covered layer under it, which we need indeed. To solve this problem, we just need to give it knowledge that we just need its color and nothing else.We'll do this simple, just clicking the pop-up menu on the top of the Layers pallete, Blend Mode and change Normal to Color. Your result should look like on the first picture on the beginning of tutorial. If you want to change your gold to silver or bronze just change the color of the topmost layer, which we used only for color.

You depend on other things. So, we finished and this tutorial. It was fun to make digital gold, only thing I don't like is, the digital gold is not real, but it's gold :)) So good luck, enjoy your stay and bye.

Written by Vedad Dizdarevic

Torn paper

2006-06-01T18:38:00.000+02:00

Like the old Chinese people

From the time immemorial, people are trying to write down their wishes, thoughts and expirience. First attempts we find on the walls of the caves, and somewhere in 300 years b.c. the whole thing is very simplified when man finds parchment.

While the time has been passing, the need for writing was growing, and if we think a bit, it's clear thatMature Nature can't give us much animals as we need paper (parchment was made from animals). Like the smart people of history, Chinese people was those who give us real solution - paper. Even this discovery happend 105. year a.c., his getting to Europe longed for 600 years. But, before this story gets us in history, we'll make a stop line here.

So, paper is our topic of this chapter. Maybe you're wondering what can Photoshop do here, because paper as paer is white and there's no anything to do. Yes, but what's with that paper which is old centuries? If you're student, there's no doubt that you have met yellow paper with darked and torn pages of old books. Many artists have noticed the beuty of that old paper and it's often shown in their works. That's what we're doing in this tutorial, using only Photoshop and lack of time.

Papir a la Photoshop

So, open the new document with dimensions of an A4 format paper. In menu Layer, use the option Duplicate Layer... New layer rename into the "Main". On toolbar select Rectangular Marquee Tool (hotkey - M) and make a selection of the whole document, but leave some 1-2 centimeters from each side of document. Then you'll need Lasso Tool (hotkey - L). He'll help us to make one more selection around the previous selection. That first selection, we use only for the orientation. So, with Lasso Tool, make one rough, humped selection around previous selection. Be aware that the option Add to selection is on. If it's not, turn it on or you can hold key Shift while selecting to make selecting in more moves.

When you're finished, click option Fill in the menu Edit. With this we'll fill our selected area. Because old paper gets caracteristic yellow color, we'll select most similiar color to it. You can see result on the next picture:

Because we want to get an effect of fired paper on the edges, we must make those edges darker than other area, too. We'll do this best with Burn Tool (hotkey - O). If you're working with resolution of 72dpi, let the Brush Size be 40 pixels and has a soft drag. After that drag your brush around edges, until you close the ring.
After that, we use filter Underpainting from the Filter menu Artistic. You can use your own options. To paper get it's first, "rough layer", we'll use the filter Film Grain..., from the Filter/Artistic menu, too. Best results are on these parameters:

Grain: 12
Higlight Area: 20
Intensity: 5

Then, again we need a new layer. Make it and rename it to "Dirty". If you have lost selection of your object, select it again. Easiest way is to hold CTRL and click on the icon of the layer "Main".
Let's get back to new layer. You need to use filter Difference Clouds on it, which is located under Menu/Filter/Render. You'll get 'bluelike' fog which will cover Main layer. She is practically representing dirt which we'll use to make paper dirty. But, before we soil our hands, we'll change its blue color into brown color. We'll do that with a little help of the Hue/Saturation, which is located under Menu/Image/Adjustments:

Okey, it's time to get some help from Photoshop's masks.
In the menu Layer we'll click on Add Layer Mask/Hide all. Doing this we've hidden whole presentation of layer "Dirty". Now, with Brush tool, we need to unhide regions which we don't want to spare. Before we begin, make sure that your Foreground color is white, and then select big radius of brush tool, soft drag and Opacity on 20%. Get yourself on the brushing. When you're statisfied with results, change your Opacity to 50% and set radius on 30px. With this parameters Brush tool will show a smaller, but visible regions of "masked" layer. So, drag the brush tool on the edges of the selection. Be free to stop on some places longer time. If you stop on some places longer time you'll get bigger transparancy of the layer and you'll get the effect that the paper suffered bigger temperatures on some places.
Okey, enough of playing with fire! We're getting back on Main layer. Here we'll add final "rough layer", to get noisiest area. We'll do that with Add Noise filter in menu Filter/Noise. Use these parameters:

Amount: 6
Distribution: Uniform
Type of noise: Monochromatic

That's it! Doing this we almost finished our digital version of an old paper.
But, if you want to add more details, do one more step. With the Lasso Tool you need to make a selection inside an object, get back a little from the edge and cut an object following contures of paper. Then, inside menu Select, use command Feather and make its radius 15 px. Again, in the menu Select we'll click on the command Inverse (hotkey - Shift+Ctrl+I). If you've done everything how you should, your selection should have the shape like on this picture:
In the menu Filter/Texture select Craquelure:
Most realistic results gives these parameters:

Crack spacing: 2
Crack depth: 10
Crack brigthness: 10

With this, it makes an impression that the paper don't have upper layer. We've finished our work! You only have to write a text for it. This encloses our friendship today. Until next time enjoy your stay and bye.

Tutorial written by Vedad Dizdarevic

3D modeling, animation... - the beginning

2006-06-01T10:38:00.000+02:00

In this post, I want to tell you where to start with 3D graphics. First, you must get some of the applications, 3ds max, Maya, Blender or XSI. That doesn't matter. All of them are very similiar. Now, you think it's easy and you're going to model a car in matter of minutes. But, that's not true. In this case with 3D you should do this:

- learn the basics of an application you use
- practice a lot
- think while you're modeling, animating or such

Difference between 2D applications and 3D applications, is that 2D is not that complicated as 3D. So, when you're modeling you must be aware to not mess an object. But that's not very easy when you have three dimensions. That's why practice exists. So, whatever you do learn of application you're using, you must practice that. So, you learn what's extrude and how to use it, then you must practice with the extrude tool on varios forms of objects. Only reason for that is that you know how stuff functions. And believe me, when you learn something and use it, you'll never forget it to use.

Now, I would like to give you links for learning some of these programs.

3ds max:

- Basics

The best resource for basics of 3ds max (if you want to have free tutorials) is the 3dbuzz.com. You'll not regret to visit it. Every move you make in 3ds max is well explained. From the interface to the modeling an alien.

- Intermmediate to Advanced

I like tutorials from this site best. From car modeling to the modeling of a flashlight, you have almost everything there to practice your work. Website is 3d-palace.com

Maya:

- Basics

Same goes for 3ds max, best basics learning on the net is 3dbuzz.com.

- Intermmediate to Advanced

Same thing for the 3ds max goes here - 3d-palace.com. You have from car modeling to the rigging of the robot.
Now, that's enough for these two programs. I didn't want to write about CG shops which have some pretty damn dvd trainings, but I would give them free advertisments then. But, no matter, maybe next week I'll write a reviews about those training dvd's.

Except these links you have very nice sites offering you links to the tutorials such as:

www.cgtutorials.com
www.pixel2life.com
www.tutorialized.com

I would like to tell you something special about cgtutorials. That's an website where you can put your tutorials, 10 tutorials and you get a very nice gift. The tutorial list is growing at high speeds. So, I prefer you to check CG-Tutorials !!!

That would be that for 3D these days. Tommorow, or maybe tonight I'm getting back on Photoshop tutorials :) Be ready stay tuned, and enjoy!

3D graphics - theory and history

2006-05-31T23:07:00.000+02:00

After this long long time, it's time to work again. Hello people :)

In this post, I've decided to give you some basic knowledge about 3D graphics. First, I would like to tell you something about 3D. Well, except 2D graphics, we have 3D graphics. Actually, we live in 3D world. The monitor which you're looking in front of your eyes is 3D object. There's only one difference between computer 3D and real 3D, and that's this:

- God created world, everything in three dimensions, and that's our world
- Programmers and people created software like 3ds max, Maya, Lightwave, XSI and other. In those software you create your own virtual 3D scenes, objects, actually everything you want.

The second story is very complicated and it has a huge history. First story you know already. Now, we are focusing on virtual 3D graphics.

First, I want to say that three dimensions means that you have:

- width
- length
- height

You probably remember functions in mathematics, which you were supposed to draw on graph. You worked only on 2 dimensions x and y. Now third dimension is height and it's very easy to understand it. This is how it looks like:

These are the meanings of x,y and z axes:

x - width
y - length
z - height

You can see an example of box with some segments:

That would be what 3D means. And I want to tell you that 3D graphics has been developing long time ago, and it's still developing. Most famous 3D software today is Softimage XSI, 3ds max, Maya, Houdini, Lightwave. But those are the expensive applications which cost few thousand dollars. You have an alternative, and that's open source application called Blender 3D. That's the application which is still developing and it has bright future. Blender proffesionals have made awesome photorealistic models and scenes in it.

I really don't have much time for writing history of 3D graphics but here is the link: Link
On that page, you have more links directing you to history of other companies. It's worth of reading, it's very interesting :)

That would be that for today, tommorow I'm writing about 3D software. I'll give you many links and resources for learning those 3D applications. And for this time, I wanted to place some of my favourite 3D renders.

Those are my favourite works that I saw on 3dkingdom.org. I hope if artists of these renders won't be mad at me because I've placed these renders :)

Enjoy your stay on blog, and bye.

Coloring a shirt

2006-05-06T15:55:00.000+02:00

So, we have managed how to color hair, and we want to color shirts now. You probably thought, how would it be to be in different color of shirt. Read next rows and find out. I've downloaded my photo from SXC. This is the photo:

Be aware if you're 56k modem user, because this photo is very big, and it will download it very slow. Now, open this photo in Photoshop.

Now, we want to select only one shirt. I'll select green shirt with polygonal selection tool.

You can see how my selection looks like

Now, press CTRL+U or go under Menu/Image Adjustments/Hue-Saturation. This is the window you get:

You can see Edit frame.

Master option means that it will color all master colors when you change hue, saturation or lightness. If you use Master option you'll get something like this:

This is absolutely not what we want to have!

In the same pop-up menu where the Master option is you have 6 more options:

- Reds
- Yellows
- Greens
- Cyans
- Blues
- Magentas

All this options work same like Master option, only when you select for example Reds it will recolor only red colors, untouching others. You'll understand it now. When you select this green shirt in the Edit: pop-up menu select Greens. You're Hue/Saturation window will change:

Now you get more options on bottom. Now set these options:

Remember, you must set all options like mine (if you're coloring this green shirt). And remember this, color will always vary, and options will never be same like this. So, if you're coloring green you pick Greens option, if you're coloring blue you pick Blues option, and other. That's how it works. This is my final work, with options I have used.

That would be that for this time. See ya

Art Class

2006-04-13T18:26:00.000+02:00

Hello all,

I'm sorry 'cause I was off for a while, because I had some things in school to fix and that. While studying friend of mine asked me could I write a tutorial on how to make something like the picture below:

I was very pleasently suprised, because I was thinking to shut down blog and I was thinking that I don't got any visitors. But, later I changed my mind and wanted to continue my work. So, I hope you'll read these stuff and it will be more entertaining from now. In the next rows you can find out how to make very similiar picture like the above one...

In this tutorial you'll learn next:

- change the background
- cut objects from a photo
- make an abstract art
- change layer blending options

First open the Photoshop and then open desired photo. I'll use this one. It's great and it has awsome colors for blending. This is the photo:

Isn't she great :) ? Now take a pen tool and make sure to set your pen options like these below:

then follow my steps in the next video:

VIDEO Download - PEN TOOL ~10 MB

You learned how to use Pen tool. Now if your picture have more things to delete unselect them with any selection tool by holding the Alt key and selecting. I must unselect this part of my picture:

The part which I must unselect is colored by red borders. When you unselected unwanted part you must click Ctrl+Shift+I or go under Menu/Select/Inverse. That option will inverse the selection, so our selection will not be an object of the picture, it will be the background. Now the spectacle. We want to 'destroy' background, but be aware your Background layer MUST BE UNLOCKED!!! If it's locked double click on the lock on the right side of layer's name and it will open the new window. Just click OK.

Now you can click Delete button or go under Edit/Clear. Whoila! You've got an object without background. Now, we must make a brand new background. I made my background with dozens of gradients and brushes. It's very easy. Make a new layer and set it below your object layer and just draw whatever you want. This is how my background and picture looks so far:

I like it a lot. Now it's time to copy the object layer and set some options and get awesome art results. First click the object layer and then click Ctrl+J or go under Menu/Layers/Duplicate Layers.../OK. Your layer is copied. Now, I want to resize my picture and set the head of the babe to high and delete the rest of body. After you make that layer you like, just put it below the object layer and above background layer. So, the newest layer should be in the middle beetween background and object layers. After that just change the layer blending from Normal to Overlay, so the color of the object should be same color like the background. It wasn't very hard isn't it? I hope you like tutorial. This is my result:

Pretty nice, and I like it a lot. That should be that for this time. I don't know when will I write new tutorial, but I beg you to vote which tutorials you would like in the future - Video or Textual Tutorials. The POOL is on the right side of the blog. Have a good time and enjoy staying on blog.

Bye =)

NOTE: "The video file size is about ~10-11 MB and it is uploaded to Rapidshare. When you click the red link it will open the Rapidshare website, you just have to click FREE button on the bottom of the rapidshare page and then wait about 20 seconds until you get code, then just enter the code into the box and you'll get download link." - Dzahdo

P.S. I hope you're not mad because of this upload, but the thing is that I don't have any web space, so if you would like you can push me with some donations for my work. If you want to do that just contact me on my mail - dzkljako@gmail.com...

Coloring the hair

2006-04-08T02:15:00.000+02:00

Hello peeps.

I'm sorry 'cause I've been off for a while. As I promised in this tutorial we'll do something very cool. Guess what, that's coloring hair. Yuhuuu :))) At last, you can color other peoples hair whatever you like, by just reading the following rows...

So let's begin. Open the Photoshop and desired photo of the person you'd like to paint it's hair. I wanted to color the Eva Longoria's hair into red.

First click on the Edit in Quick Mask Mode or just click "Q" on the keyboard. It should transport you to the Quick Mask Mode. In this mode, as I said in the previous chapters, you can select whatever you like with the brush. Now click the Brush Tool and set these parameters (under the menu bar):

Airbrush Soft Round 50%
Brush Size: 80 px
Mode: normal
Opacity: 100%
Flow: 20%-80%

Then in the Quick Mask Mode just brush her hair, like on this picture:

You can see that I wasn't precise. The reason is that we took the soft round brush, and it will give us smooth result, and when we're going to color it will give us good result. But we shouldn't leave the red brush on the skin. So feel free to take the Eraser, and then just delete the red color where you want. When you're finished, just click Edit in Standard Mode or "Q" on the keyboard, to return to the standard mode editing. When you return it will automatically turn the un-red field in the selection, so you must go to Select-Inverse in the menu bar or hotkey CTRL+SHIFT+I. It will make the red field, that we colored, into the selection. When you did that click CTRL+B or go to the menu bar Image/Adjustments/Color Balance. In the Color Balance menu you'll select desired color. In my case I wanted the red color version of the Eva Longoria, so I set this:

Shadows option:

Cyan - Red = +26
Magenta - Green = 0
Yellow - Blue = 0

Midtones option:

Cyan - Red = +57
Magenta - Green = 0
Yellow - Blue = 0

Highlights option:

Cyan - Red = -70
Magenta - Green = 0
Yellow - Blue = 0

And this is my result:

I really like it. I hope you like it too :) Feel free to ask me if you don't understand something and you should upload your results at Slibe image hoster and give me link to see your result. In the next tutorial, I'll learn you how to make very realistic eye, maybe a little spooky, but it will be cool.

Bye bye, 'till next time.

Removing objects from photo

2006-04-04T12:13:00.000+02:00

In this first tutorial I want to explain how will you remove an object from photo. Reason is next. Through whole this beginners guide, I must explain how will you often use the selection tools and such.

Open the Photoshop and then open your photo whatever you want. I prefer using bigger photos. Reason is when you want to delete an object from small photo it doesn't look real. On the bigger photos you have more samples to copy. You'll see what am I thinking right now. This is the photo I'll use:

We'll remove left duck from the photo. First select the duck's legs. It should look like this:

Then take a Patch tool, and listen carefully now. Click and hold selection, just like when you're drag'n'dropping, and drag that selection to the most similiar sample of the ground. This is my result so far:

So far so good. Now we want to get very realistic photo, without one duck. Now take a Clone Stamp Tool, click right-mouse button and set these options:

Master Diameter: 18 px
Hardness: 100%

But you must select Soft Mechanic brush down there. Then hold an ALT key and click the most similiar sample of ground. And then just brush the duck. But be careful. It won't be great for the first time, you need practice this. I'll give you time until tommorow to practice this. If you don't undestand I'll make video tutorial on how to remove an object from a photo. So if you want that just let me know, write it in the Comments or email me....
This is my result:

Pretty huh. You'll learn to do same this, you'll see. But you must PRACTICEEEE :))

So, this would be easy tutorial, in the next tutorial we'll learn some retouching, maybe changing color of eyes, or color the hair.

So, bye bye.

Photoshop Layers

2006-04-03T08:32:00.000+02:00

Hi.

As I said in this chapter I'll talk about Photoshop Layers.

Layers allow you to work on one element of an image without disturbing the others. Think of layers as sheets of acetate stacked one on top of the other. You can see through transparent areas of a layer to the layers below. You can change the composition of an image by changing the order and attributes of layers. In addition, special features such as adjustment layers, fill layers, and layer styles let you create sophisticated effects.

Transparent areas on a layer let you see through to the layers below.

A new image in Photoshop or ImageReady has a single layer. The number of additional layers, layer effects, and layer sets you can add to an image is limited only by your computer’s memory.

Layer groups help you organize and manage layers. You can use groups to arrange your layers in a logical order and to reduce clutter in the Layers palette. You can nest groups within other groups. You can also use groups to apply attributes and masks to multiple layers simultaneously.

You can select one or more layers to work on them. For some activities, such as painting or making color and tone adjustments, you can work on only one layer at a time. A single selected layer is called the active layer. The name of the active layer appears in the title bar of the document window (Photoshop).

For other activities, such as moving, aligning, transforming, or applying styles from the Styles palette, you can select and work on multiple layers at a time.

You can select layers in the Layers palette or with the Move tool.

You can also link layers. Unlike multiple layers selected at the same time, linked layers stay linked when you change the selection in the Layers palette. See To link and unlink layers.

You can lock layers fully or partially to protect their contents. For instance, you may want to lock a layer fully when you finish with it. You may want to lock a layer partially if it has the correct transparency and styles, but you are still deciding on positioning. When a layer is locked, a lock icon appears to the right of the layer name. The lock icon is solid when the layer is fully locked and hollow when the layer is partially locked.

You can use the Move tool to copy selections as you drag them within or between images, or you can copy and move selections using the Copy, Copy Merged, Cut, and Paste commands. Dragging with the Move tool saves memory because the clipboard is not used as it is with the Copy, Copy Merged, Cut, and Paste commands.

Copy Copies the selected area on the active layer.

Copy Merged Makes a merged copy of all the visible layers in the selected area.

Paste Pastes a cut or copied selection into another part of the image or into another image as a new layer. If you have a selection, the Paste command places the copied selection over the current selection. Without an active selection, Paste places the copied selection in the middle of the view area.

Paste Into (Photoshop) Pastes a cut or copied selection inside another selection in the same image or a different image. The source selection is pasted onto a new layer, and the destination selection border is converted into a layer mask.

Keep in mind that when a selection or layer is pasted between images with different resolutions, the pasted data retains its pixel dimensions. This can make the pasted portion appear out of proportion to the new image. Use the Image Size command to make the source and destination images the same resolution before copying and pasting, and then set the zoom of both images to the same magnification.

Depending on your color management settings and the color profile associated with the file (or imported data), you may be prompted to specify how to handle color information in the file (or imported data).

I think this is enouqh for now about layers.. In the next chapter the fun part of Photoshop takes the main part. I must think for few hours what will we make so be patient :)

Photoshop Color Picker

2006-04-02T15:13:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody.

As I said, in this post I'm talking about Color Picker. If you didn't used Photoshop ever, you probably saw in Microsoft Paint that color picker on the bottom-left screen. This is how it looks like:

You can see that there isn't many choices. But if you double-click any color you want in MS Paint, it will automatticlly open the Edit Colors window. You again see small choices, so click any color again in the Edit Colors window and then click Define Custom Colors, and you can set color whatever you'd like. And don't forget when you find the color click on the Add to Custom Colors button.

Let's see how the Color Picker works in the Photoshop. Open the Photoshop, restart your workspace as I explained you in the previous posts (Window/Workspace/Default Workspace). Workspace is like first time you opened Photoshop. On the Photoshop toolbar, you can easly see two colors, (defaulty black and white) Foreground and Background color. If you click on them it opens Color Picker automatically. This is how Color Picker looks like:

So I'll explain every thing on it (except colors :) there's millions of them in Photoshop). First, I would like to say that every a little bit professional application like Photoshop has similiar Color Picker. So if you're using Jasc Paint Shop Pro it has very similiar Color Picker. I don't know about GIMP, I never used it.
So you can see OK, Cancel and Color Libraries. There's no need to explain Ok and Cancel. But click on the Color Libraries. It changes Color Picker to the Color Libraries. On the right side of the colors you have slider:

So you can try to slide down and up, it changes the colors on the right. So, I don't know why is it called Color Libraries, but I think that's because every color has it's own unique name. Above the colors you can see Pop-Up menu if you click on it you can choose various Color Libraries. So try that. On the right you can see this:

I made it red in this screenshot. You can see your current color you have in the Color Picker and above is the color you selected in the Color Libraries. On the right side you can see two little signs. First one is "Warning: out of gamut for printing" and it means that you can't print that color. Second one is "Warning: not a web safe color" and it means that this color is not safe if you're using it for the web, you wouldn't see that color as you saw her in the Photoshop. Let's return to the Color Picker by clicking on the Color Picker button under the Ok and Cancel buttons.

Again, you can see those two little signs in the right of the color. If you click on "Warning: out of gamut for printing" it will match your color with the nearest one which can be printed. On the other side, if you click on the "Warning: not a web safe color" it willmatch your color with the nearest one which is web safe color.

Under everything that you can see bunch of input boxes.

Color Picker lets you select a color based on the HSB (hue, saturation, brightness) color model. When you select a color in HSB mode, the Color Picker updates the RGB, Lab, CMYK, and hexadecimal values accordingly. HSB mode is the default mode for the Color Picker. If you click on any radio button H, S or B it will be HSB color.

RGB images use three colors, or channels, to reproduce colors on-screen. In 8‑bits-per-channel images, the three channels translate to 24 (8 bits x 3 channels) bits of color information per pixel. With 24‑bit images, up to 16.7 million colors can be reproduced. With 48‑bit (16‑bits-per-channel) and 96‑bit (32‑bits-per-channel) images, even more colors can be reproduced. In addition to being the default mode for new Photoshop images, the RGB model is used by computer monitors to display colors. This means that when working in color modes other than RGB, such as CMYK, Photoshop interpolates the CMYK image to RGB for display on-screen.

The Lab Color mode has a lightness component (L) that can range from 0 to 100. In the Adobe Color Picker, the a component (green-red axis) and the b component (blue-yellow axis) can range from +127 to –128. In the Color palette, the a component and the b component can range from +127 to –128.
You can use Lab mode to work with Photo CD images, edit the luminance and the color values in an image independently, move images between systems, and print to PostScript Level 2 and Level 3 printers. To print Lab images to other color PostScript devices, convert to CMYK first.

In the CMYK mode, each pixel is assigned a percentage value for each of the process inks. The lightest (highlight) colors are assigned small percentages of process ink colors; the darker (shadow) colors higher percentages. For example, a bright red might contain 2% cyan, 93% magenta, 90% yellow, and 0% black. In CMYK images, pure white is generated when all four components have values of 0%.

And of course you have the input box for hexadecimal color. For example #000000.

On the bottom-left window of Color Picker you can see radio button Only Web Colors. This option limits all colors to only web safe colors, which you can use on the web.

That would be that about Color Picker. In the next chapter, I'll direct myself on the Layers pallete.

NOTE: The text I made italic is taken from Adobe Help Center.

Bye bye

Photoshop Menu Bar

2006-04-01T11:41:00.000+02:00

So, I'm back again.

I'll talk about menu bar in the next rows, columns or paragraphs. For you who don't know that the menu bar is here's the picture :))

Well, I knew you know what is the menu bar :)) So let's begin.

File menu is one of the standard menus in every application. This is what it gives us:

Note: Wherever you see three points after the word, that means that it has something that you should set on your one.

Click on the New... and it will pop-up new window.

In the Name: box you fill the name you want to call the new file.

Preset pop-up menu gives you already made presets of new documents. So if you click on the A4 it will set all options to A4 size.

Width and Height are the size of new file, and the popup menu on their right side is which units do you want to be. Same thing goes for the Resolution.

Color mode is popup menu which gives you Bitmap, Grayscale, RGB, CMYK and Lab Colors. You can set how many colors do you want in the popup menu after thet (1 bit, 8 bit and 16 bit).

Background contents - White, Transparent and Background color

You have and the Advanced options, but you don't need to touch them.

Second option is:

Open...

I don't need to explain this. Very easy thing.

Browse...

This button opens the Adobe Bridge and let you browse your pictures wery easly.

Open as...

If you want to open some files in the other format. Example you want to open .jpg picture as a .bmp.

Open Recent gives you list of recently opened files.

Edit in ImageReady opens the ImageReady and you can edit your pictures in it.

No need to explain other options in the File Menu. They're standard except Automate and Script.

Edit menu is for editing most of the things. If I explain every thing from the Edit menu and rest menus this blog would be like a Photoshop Bible. So I'll explain everything fast.

Image menu gives you an opportunity to change picture levels, settings and more things that are very handy and useful.

Layer menu is special menu for the Layers. I'll talk about it when I write about the Layers.

In the Select menu, you can edit your selections or make new, or even save the selections and do whatever you want with them.

Filter Menu will get special chapters on this blog because it has some very handy, practical, useful with nice results let's say 'plug-ins'. But they aren't plugins.

View menu for setting your interface of Photoshop.

In Window menu you can easily set which palletes you want to see which don't.

Help menu is very helpful :D

You can see I didn't explained them. I just wrote what are they used for. Except, the File menu. I explained some things from File menu because you can't work with these...

So, bye bye.

In the next chapters I'll explain Color Picker, Navigator, Actions and a little bit of Layers because Layers are very huge definition in Photoshop. And then I'm writing more fun things and we're beginning to work real in Photoshop :))

Bye bye now ... Enjoy your stay.

Photoshop Toolbar #5

2006-04-01T11:11:00.000+02:00

Hello again.

Here is the final part about Photoshop interface. Number five. These are the tools I'm going to explain now:

Well, you can see that these are not the standard tools, actually these aren't tools at all.

First, you see black and white color (by default). First one is Foreground and the second one is Background. You see a two directional arrow on the top-right of these colors. If you click that arrow, it will change Foreground to Background and Background to Foreground. So it will be like this:

And now white is Foreground and black is Background. That's it. Nothing hard. You can see black&white button on the bottom left of these foreground and background colors. So if you click that little button it will change colors to default - foreground = black and background = white. You can easly change colors of Foreground and Background just by clicking them and then in the Color Picker you just select which color do you want. I'll explain Color Picker later.

Under these color settings you see two similiar buttons. First is "Edit in Standard Mode" and the second one is "Edit in Quick Mask Mode". Default setting is Edit in standard mode, and there's nothing to say about it. But, Edit in Quick Mask Mode is very useful when using masks and such things. I'll write bunch of tricks in which we'll use the Edit in Quick Mask Mode. And I think this will be your favourite friend when retouching.

Under those buttons comes new three buttons. They're small so I resized them a bit.

These three buttons have no relationship with the photos and editing. They are the options of how will your Photoshop look like. First one is default. You can see how it looks like:

The second button is Full Screen with Menu Bar mode. This is how it looks like:

You can easly see that there is no title-bar and you get some 30-40 pixels on this. Very useful when you're working one big photo/picture. And the third one is Full Screen mode. I don't need to publish that picture. So, very easy isn't it?

And one last button is:

If you have installed ImageReady (it comes with Photoshop), this button gives you opportunity to easly switch between Photoshop and ImageReady. Very good thing when you're working with designs.

And here finishes our short trip through Photoshop Toolbar. I didn't write details because you'll learn much more things through tutorials and tricks. However you want to call them. Next chapter is about Menu Bar. I'll explain the menu bar fastest as I can, so, I hope you'll try to do something on your own. Rembemer, you can't destroy Photoshop unless you're doing what you really shouldn't.

Bye bye and I hope you enjoy your stay.

P.S. I've recently changed template of the blog, so now it looks very cleaner and better. It will be more better later, when I'll work full time on this blog...

Photoshop Toolbar #4

2006-03-30T21:38:00.000+02:00

Hello again. Three more parts and we're going to get straight to the real business in Photoshop. I can't wait. These basics are soooo boring :) We're on the Photoshop toolbar part 3. So load Photoshop and let's begin.

These are the tools that I'm going to explain now.

First tool is the Notes tool. To be honest, I never used this tool, because I didn't need it. It's very useful if you have millions of stuff on your .psd file, and you don't want to get lost. Or if you're working some project and want to know where did you stoped you just type text in this tool. This is how it looks when you make it:

You just type text in it. If you want to delete it just click on the little box in the top-right corner and it will hide the note. But if you want to delete it totally just right-click on this little button. It should be somewhere on the screen. This is how it looks like :

If you click on the little arrow on the Notes tool you should get another popup with Notes and Audio Annotation Tool. Audio Annotation tool has sam functionality like the Notes tool. You just need to have a microphone. And you record yourself if you don't like to write. Very easy.

Next tool is Eyedropper. It's main functionality is to take samples of color. So, if you have multicolor photo and you want to take one sample of unique color that you like, you just click on that color and the color immidietly migrates to the foreground color. Very nice little thingy.
When you click little arrow, you get the options like Color sampler tool and Measure tool.
If you ever watched famous CSI show, you should know how they select their evidences. Color Sampler tool has same functionality, only this works in Photoshop and only with colors. Maximium numbers of samplers are 4.
And we have left the Measure tool. This tool is very useful if you want to measure lenght from one pixel to another. So, you just make a line with it and in the toolbar under the menu bar, you can see the measurements. It show the measurements on the x, y coordinates, width and length and it shows angles.

We have left Hand tool and Zoom tool. These two 'weapons' you're going to use very very often. Hand tool is useful when you zoomed picture and you want to move around the picture. And the Zoom tool is for zooming areas you want. Maximum zoom on whatever picture/photo size is 1600%.

That should be that for now. Later I'm going to talk about our last part of Photoshop toolbar. Until next time. Bye bye. :)

Photoshop Toolbar #3

2006-03-30T21:14:00.000+02:00

Hello again. In this chapter we're talking about next tools:

First tool is Path Selection tool. When you make a Path in Photoshop, you can't move it with anything you want. You must use this tool. You can select multiple paths and move them. It's very useful when working with paths. And you can edit those paths with Path Selection tool. When you click on the little arrow you get and the Direct Selection tool. This tool is very similiar to the Path Selection tool, only difference is that you are working with anchors on the path, not with the whole path.

Then you have Text tool. I don't have to say anything about this. Just click wherever you want on the picture and type a text. This isn't like notes, it's just the text for you photos/pictures. You have Horizontal and Vertical Type Tool and you have Horizontal and Vertical Mask Type Tool. Horizontal and Vertical type tool are standard text. But, when you're typing by Mask Type Tool, you get selection of the made text (it doesn't matter which font, you always get WYSIWYG selection). Very easy, try to make some mask texts. It's same principle, just different result.

Now the famous Pen tool is on the turn. With the pen tool you can easily make paths whatever you like. This is very useful when you want for example delete background of your character on the photo. When you click on the arrow you get and the Freeform Pen tool, Add Anchor, Delete Anchor and Convert Point tool. Freeform Pen tool is for drawing the path by yourself (your hand/mouse). Add Anchor is useful when you want to add more anchors to the path. Delete Anchor is working the same way, just deletion. Remember you can't add anchors and delete them if you don't click on your path. And we have left Convert Point tool. You just click with this tool on the any point on the path and it changes from Corner to Bezier and if Bezier to Corner. Nothing biggie.

Next are the shape tools. These are the already made shapes/paths. You just draw them whatever you like, on the picture. You have Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line and Custom Shape tool. I don't need to explain them, just draw them whatever you like. Just to say you that Custom Shape tool has some already shapes, but more complicated than the basic ones. You have stars, arrows and those things to choose. Very nice little tool.

I'm sorry that I can't talk more about all these things, but later, we'll learn them more through the practice. So, enjoy your stay, contact me if you don't understand something.

P.S. Few minutes ago, I already made one chapter, but it was about #4 (I forgot about #3) so, I had to make two chapters now. :)

Enjoy your stay and read #4 :) Bye

Photoshop Toolbar #2

2006-03-30T12:18:00.000+02:00

Hello again. In this chapter I'll talk about more interesanting tools in Photoshop. So, load your Photoshop again (if you didn't yet :)). If you have problems and your workspace isn't okey, if it looks something like this:

and you want to fix that workspace, you can just go to the menu Window/Workspace/Default Workspace, and it will be like the normal workspace when you first opened Photoshop.

So, let's talk about #2 Photoshop toolbar. You can see on the next picture which tools are those:

I'll begin from the first. I would like you to open any photo, because these tools are very useful for retouching photos. If you don't have any nice photos of girls and that stuff, you can just go to on this web page - CelebrityWorld.tv and download whatever photo do you like. Or if you don't want girls you have web page FreePhotos.tv and SXC . That would be about downloading photos. Now, open desired photo by going to File/Open... and browse your photo. When you opened it, click on the Patch Tool (first tool of #2 on the picture). And make a selection. You can easily see that this is working on the principle of selection, too. When you made a selection, under the menu bar, you can see this bar:

You can see four little boxes New Selection, Add to Selection, Subtract from Selection and Intersect with Selection. Those are the options when you're selecting. If you made a selection and the 'new selection' box is checked, and you make new selection, the old selection dissapears and it's no longer visible. If you have selection and the 'add to selection' box is checked, and you want to make a new selection you'll not lose old selection, you can add selections whatever you like. Subtract from selection is option to delete selection with a new selection. The name gives you its meaning. And last option is Intersect with selection. So you have a selection and you make a new selection above the old one, you just leave your new selection (of and old selection). It's not hard, you should practice that. It's hard to say that by words. But you'll understand it. So get back on the Patch tool. Patch tool is actually tool for removing unneccesarry things from photos and you don't see that those things dissapeared.
On the Patch Tool you can see that little arrow again, if you hold the tool you'll see popup again. You see Spot Healing Brush tool, Healing Brush tool, Patch tool and Red Eye tool. These tools are for deleting things from photos. You just practice them and you'll understand. Nothing hard. Next is Brush tool, you see again arrow click it and you have Pencil Tool, Color Replacement and Brush tool. Their names said everything. Their not hard. In the later chapters I'll talk about brushes more.

Next, Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp tool. These tools are working on this way, you hold ALT key and you take a sample of something on the photo, and then let the alt key, and you just need to brush on the photo. It's easy just do it as I said, and you'll understand. Now there is a pattern stamp tool. It's just like the brush for patterns. Try it. It's not hard!

Next tools are very useful when you need to bring the first photo. So you edited your photo and you don't like some parts of it. You just click on the History Brush Tool and you reversed it like on the first photo :) Very easy. This tool will not work if you changed canvas size of photo. There is Art History Brush tool, too. It works on same principle, only difference is that Art History Brush tool makes artistic colours when you're brushing the photo. All of these tools are very easy, just practice them.

Eraser tool, Background eraser and Magic eraser tools are just three simple tools for deleting whatever you want from the picture. Eraser tool is standard old-fashioned eraser. Background eraser is when you opened photo, it's layer is Background and it's locked. This eraser makes possible to erase it even if it's locked layer. And Magic eraser is working on the principle of magic wand. You just click blue color on the photo and blue color is removed. Very easy, you can set tolerance so if you don't want to remove whole color.

Gradient and Paint bucket tools are the most simple tools in 2D art, this means just to click and color something differently. Very easy things. Only difference is that paint bucket tool works with one color and gradient works on three colors with softness on it.

Blur, Sharpen and Smudge Tools are very easy. If you want to blur something on the photo just click Blur tool and brush wherever you want. Sharpen tool works good when you have blured photo and you want to sharpen it. Smudge tool is like daub. Very easy.

Dodge, Burn and Sponge tools are very similiar to the blur, sharpen and smudge. Thing is that dodge is lightening the color so if the color is too dark you just dodge it. Burn is just reversed. If you have to light photo you just burn it and over. Spogne is tool for deleting color. So if you use this brush you get black and grey photo.

That would be that. If someone doesn't understand this, please let me know. I'll help you. So this would be this for this time. Until next time, happy brushing and selecting in the Photoshop with things you learned in the past two days ;)

Bye Bye and Enjoy!

Photoshop Toolbar #1

2006-03-28T22:41:00.000+02:00

Hello again.
In next five chapters I'll explain Photoshop Toolbar. You can se on the picture that I sliced the toolbar in five pieces. Those five pieces are five chapters (logical, isn't :D).

So let's begin. First open one picture whatever you want by going File/Open... and browse picture. Then click on the first tool on the toolbar. That's marquee. Default setting is Rectangular Marqee this is the button . You can see a little arrow in the bottom-right section of the button. If you hold a while this button, it will pop-up little menu. You can choose between Rectangular, Eliptical, Single Row, Single Column marquee tools. I think you'll mostly use rectangular and elliptical. If you still have opened picture klick on the Rectangular Marqee tool. Then make a selection by marqee on the picture. You should get something like this.

You can see a black and white border around selection. That border indicates our selection. Whatever you do with other tools you can only do in this selection (if you have selection). So to make it easier to understand, these borders limits actions only in them. You can't work around the borders. I hope you can understand it. If you don't like this border, you can easly hide it by going under menu View/Show/Selection edges and disabling it. If you click on the elliptical marqee you got same result, only difference is because this is rectangular and the other one elliptical. If you want to get 'great' selections, you can hold shift while making the selection, and you'll get correct form of ring. In chapters later, you'll learn more techniques in selecting and other tools, like fixed size and those stuff. This is basics as I said so don't worry, it will be for few days.

So marqee is finished, we are moving ourselves to Move Tool. This is most ordinary thing in all 2D applications. It means move this there, and move that there. So I don't have to explain it a lot. But remember this, if you made selection and you moved selection somewhere else with this tool, you'll get white box under the selection, but you'll not lose selection and piece of picture. If you don't understand this try to work in Photoshop as I said, make selection and move that selection. Otherwise if you still don't understand contact me.

Next tool is Lasso Tools. This is too selection tools. On this button we have again that famous little arrow. If you hold on the button a while, you'll get popup menu with these options Lasso Tool, Polygonal Lasso Tool and Magnetic Lasso Tool.
First, lasso tool is ordinary selection, so you just draw a selection with 'your hand' (mouse). Then you got same border as on the marquees. Very useful tool, too.
Secondly, polygonal lasso tool is selection tool and with that tool you are actually making the border of the selection. Very easy, you're actually clicking where ever you want and at the end you just connect last point to the first point. Very easy. You can download video (600 kb) on which I'm showing you how to use this tool.
And third, magnetic lasso tool is tool very similiar to the polygonal tool. Only difference is that the magnetic lasso tool is working on the principle of the contures on the picture. I made one more movie showing you how this tool works (450 kb).

Video showing the polygonal lasso tool - download here (600 kb)
Video showing the magnetic lasso tool - download here (450 kb)

Next tool is the Crop. The crop tool is tool which you make a selection and then click enter to delete everything except selection. And the croped selection takes it size. So if you have 1024*768 photo and you selected something 200*200 pixels and clicked Enter, you get only the 200*200 selection and that's the size of the 'new picture'. Very easy.

And we have left Slice tool. This is tool firstly for web sites. So when you make web design, you just slice parts of design you want, and those parts are image for itself. And this tool make your coding of web site very easier. It will be explained in the later chapters, when we will do some web designs.

So, everything that is nice, it's short. That's like our friendship. I'm very sorry because I can't write more text. But I have many more things to do, too. Like school, private life and similiar things. So I'm very glad if I helped you again, and learned you something.

Until our next chapter,

See ya and bye bye :))

Enjoy...

Photoshop Interface

2006-03-27T19:38:00.000+02:00

So, I have introduced myself. So I'll stop talk about stupid things. I'm going to work, work and work!!!

First open the Photoshop (I'll use Photoshop CS2 version, but CS and 7.0 are okey, maybe 6.0). When you click on the Photoshop icon, Photoshop launches his exucutive file and you can see that he's loading something. Acctually he's loading all neccessary things with you will work. Those things are various filters, brushes, profiles and others. But that's not important to much. So first thing we see is this:

The interface is standard like the most 2D applications. We have some important things in Photoshop. The most important and most usable things will be menus, toolbar and palletes. We will use them very often. So that's explained. In the next paragraph I'll explain what you have with various menus and palletes (not everything):

File... This menu is for basic operations such as open, save, print and more things you'll use.
Edit... This is menu for everything you can edit, preferences, color settings, and much more things.
Image... You'll probably use this menu when you need to resize photo, retouch it. Easier to say this is the menu which you'll use it whenever you open a photo.
Layer... The layers are most important things in Photoshop. It will be explained in other chapters.
Filter... This is the most entertaiment menu in Photoshop. Not very flexible, but you'll use it often. Very good thing when you need something fast.
View... Standard menu like in all applications. You can set the interface of Photoshop however you like.
Window... This menu is not very useful but, when you lost some palletes, this menu will return it.
Help... I don't have to speak about this.

On the left side of our Photoshop window we can see toolbar. Photoshop wouldn't be Photoshop without this thing. Every operation in Photoshop is followed by one tool from this bar! You shouldn't close this bar!
On the other side of Photoshop window there is many useful palletes. They will be explained in later chapters.

I think this is it for beginners. For the people who know the basic interface, they can learn later some techniques. In the next few chapters I'll explain the tools from the toolbar. One by one. So be ready, don't close Photoshop because tommorrow we'll do something more entartaining than this. If you have some questions leave your comment and email in the Comments link under the post and I'll help you how much I can. And I hope the better users of Photoshop are not mad at me, because I'm helping beginners first. In the one week or two better things will come. So I hope you like this post and you learn something (not very much) but day by day and you'll know very much things.

Be careful, and bye bye, until next time.