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Help me please.

Started by VorpalSword, March 20, 2004, 03:40:43 PM

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VorpalSword

OK, I am new to photoshop, and do not kno who wthis 'monging' is achieved. Can anyone help?

Much appreciated.

ccab

Do you have photoshop yet?

VorpalSword

i have adobe photoshop.

mr rou-rou

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=photoshop+tutorials

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=photoshop+cut+paste+art

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=photoshop+help

etc etc, if you want help with a specific function then I'm sure someone knows the answer but you might as well get reading because people aren't going to spend hours typing out 'how to get started' when it already exists online.

I'm sure some others will dump photoshop help links in here


ccab

OK. Firstly don't be scared of it. Get your fingers dirty & get a feel for what each of the tools do.

(That said - forget about the pen/direct selection tools until later)

Think of the programme in two halves. One half just for selecting areas of an image (the marquees,lassos, magic wand, and masks - but worry about masks later) - the other half for making changes (the brushes, healing brush & patch tool, clone stamp, gradient, dodge & burn, etc etc & the filters). I know all you'll be wanting to do is plunge into it, click on things & make sudden amazing changes - but it is important to understand that unless you are prepared to learn how to make selections your mongs won't look convincing.

Here's a few basic tips -

Layers

Open a picture and look in the layers palette. Drag the background layer onto the "create new layer" icon in the layers palette, which is at the bottom of the palette, second in from the right. You'll see it's duplicated. Look at the top of the palette and you'll see a dropdown with the word 'normal' - this is where you set the layer's blend mode. Change it to multiply - and you'll see everything darken dramatically. Change it to Screen & you'll see it lighten. Try overlay and you'll see the contrast increase.  The opacity slider next to it can be use to fine tune the effect. Over time you'll get a feel for stacking up layers like this to blend objects realistically into images. If you ever want  to hide a layer, click on it's eye symbol.


Liquify

Open a picture of a friend. Use the marquee tool to draw a basic selection around the face and press ctrl+shift+x or going to filter-liquify. The liquify window will open with the warp tool active - very gently - click & move the tool over areas over the picture & see what happens - if you do it gently & patiently & are careful to never use too small a brush, the results will be fantastic.


Healing brush & clone stamp.

Open a picture of some unfortunate diseased leper with acne. Select the healing brush tool or the clone stamp and zoom in to a suppurating zit. Adjust the brush size so it's big enough to enclose the spot (either move the slider to change it's size or use the square bracket keys - [ ] ) then hold down alt and click on a patch of clear skin nearby. release alt and move the cursor over the spot - then click and the spot will vanish.


Transform.

Select any object you want to enlarge - for instance draw around it with the lasso tool - or click your way around it with the polygonal lasso tool. Press ctrl-J and the selection will be copied to a new layer. Then press ctrl+T and a transformation box with handles will appear. When you've resized it, press enter to apply.


Levels and Hue/Saturation

Open an image and press ctrl+L. A very confusing graph will appear with sliders. Press 'auto' and the contrast will be tidied up. Hold down alt and the cancel button will change to reset. This time, move the left and right sliders inwards slightly and see what it does to the contrast. Then move the middle slider to the left and then to the right and see what it does to the lightness in the midtones. Levels is a very easy way of changing an object's density to make it look realistic when you introduce it to another image.

Try pressing ctrl+U. Drag the middle slider (saturation) to the left & you'll see you're image suddenly lose saturation & look like something from saving private ryan. Drag it to the right and the colours will start to haemorrhage. Move the hue slider around to see what that does - this is especially powerful when you isolate a particular colour & change it on its own. The lightness slider is better ignored.


Gaussian Blur & Sharpen


Open an image and select filter-blur-gaussian blur , and test the slider. Open a badly focussed picture and seelct filter-sharpen-unsharp mask. test out the controls - the best results are had leaving the threshold adjustment till last - or not using it at all - and leaving the radius at a low figure.


Gifs.

If you opena  gif, you need to convert it to RGB mode in order to work on it. - image-mode-rgb.


Inverse selections.

Draw a selection around something. Press ctrl+shift+i and the selection will be turned inside out. This is an essential technique.


Masks


Open an image. Now open another. Select the move tool (press V) and drag the one file into the other. Look in the layers palette. The image you've just dragged will be on it's own layer.

Click on 'add layer mask' which is the circle-inside-a-square icon at the foot of the layers palette second in from the left. A white square will appear next to the layer's thumbnail.  Look at the thumbnail. The same circle-inside-a-square symbol will be on it's left to show you you're workin on a mask (usually its a paintbrush symbol). Look at the foreground and background colours. Whatever you had them at, they'll be set to black & white now.

Now, select the paintbrush (B) and begin painting over the layer. (You are actually painting on the mask.) See what happens. Now press X and you'll switch colours from black to white. Paint back over areas you've just cleared and see what happens.

You can work on masks with any of the paint tools or filters. You'll quickly realise just how powerful they are.


I hope that's some use. The best way to pick the application up it to go through tutorials. Someone put a list of great tutorial sites up somewhere - I'm not sure which thread it was in. But if you spend a couple of hours a photoshop each night going through a tutorial & sticking at it until you understand what's going on, after a week you'll be a pro. (incidentally - by tutorials - I mean those that produce impressive composites - not the "how to make realistic pigskin" kind of bollocks.)


Cerys

Also, the smudge tool could be your best friend.  I know I keep banging on about it, but that's only because I'm not familiar half of what ccab explains so eloquently.  I hang my head in shame.

Spaced Cadet

Christ's cock and balls ccab, how long have you worked for Adobe ;-)

Funky Gibbon

My tip is to ditch the lasso and use the pen tool. Draw your path in the shape of what you want to select using the pen tool and make it your selection by dragging the work path in the paths pallette onto the spotty circly thing in the same. Also don't be afraind to add noise and/or blur to get something to look like it belongs.
And don't forget shadows.

mook

I agree with Funky, If you are just starting out you might as well learn how to use the pen tool to make selection rather than that silly old lasso.

I'll have a look about for a tutorial that doesn't try to blind you with science.

Anyway, without going into too much (or indeed any detail) here. Open a image, Select the pen tool. The tool bar at the top of the screen should look like this......



.....then just click a simple path, close the path by clicking on the first point you selected, right click and then opt for "Make Selection", a box will appear giving you the option of feathering. If you hit CTRL+J what you've just cut out be placed on a new layer. I could witter on about things like "beziers" but frankly I'm boring myself now so I'll toddle off to find that tutorial.

Cerys

Are you kidding?  It's much easier to use the point-to-point lasso.

mook

Quote from: "Cerys"Are you kidding?  It's much easier to use the point-to-point lasso.

I got fed up with the lasoo, it seemed everytime I tried to cut out a large complicated shape, just as I got near the end I'd double click and close the selection. I know it was me being a spaccer and not the lasoo tool, but it's still fucking annoying. With the pen the path you draw is constantly editable, and when you get the hang of it the pen really is quickest way to cut out cocks and then mong'em on old dubya's mush.

Cerys

Ah, you're not going about it the right way with the lasso - try copy'n'pasting the image into a new layer and then just cutting away bit by bit.

(She says, cunningly covering up the fact that she's just never bothered with the pen tool and hasn't got a clue, blush....)

ccab

FG, Mook, you're right about the pen. It's the easiest way of accurately outlining smooth shapes. The thing is, you aren't going to persuade any newcomer photoshop's easy by passing them straight off those bezier handles. (Pulling towards the curve to shape the curve isn't automatically logical to anyone except renault engineers.)

Quote
...everytime I tried to cut out a large complicated shape, just as I got near the end I'd double click and close the selection.

Next time this happens, don't deselect & start afresh like a sisyphean fairy, change nothing, hold down shift & anything you subsequently lasso will be added to the selection. Alternatively hold down alt if you want to pare some away.

Another thing to remember - the Quick Mask means that lasso & marquee selections are every bit as editable as vector lines.  Make your botched selection then press Q & paint to finish it - or smudge it up to the edges - hello Cerys - then press Q to convert it to a selection. Voila.

mook

Using a quick mask to edit a selection is a handy feature, I still prefer to use the pen when making the kind of selection where I would have used the lasoo before. As I said before, when you get used to it the pen is the quickest way to make fiddly selections.

Gah.....I found an excellent streaming video tutorial on it a couple of months back, but I'll be fucked if I can find it now. It covered just about every aspect of the tool in easy to understand segments.