Madhan Neelapu

Filters in Photoshop

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 03:36:00 +0000

Filters are used to change the appearance of an image, layer or selection in Photoshop. In this tutorial, I’ll introduce you to some common filters, and show you how to use them.

For me, filters in Photoshop are sort of like those special effects you can add to home videos with those consumer handheld video cameras — easy to use, but they certainly have their place in design. That said, there are plenty of ways to get creative using filters, so they are definitely worth understanding in Photoshop!

Using Filters from the Filter Gallery

Photoshop’s Filter Gallery is basically a one-stop place for working with filters in your documents. In the Filter Gallery, you can browse through many different types of filters, apply them individually to your image, or even stack them on top of one another like you would with layers. You can get to the Filter Gallery by going to Filter > Filter Gallery.

Here’s a quick overview of the Filter Gallery:

Filter Gallery Interface

A. Filter Preview

B. Filter List (Note: You can show or hide this list by clicking the arrow icon to the top right of it)

C. Currently Selected Filter

D. Filter Options

E. Effect Layers

F. New / Delete Effect Layer

The Filter Effect Layers work just like ordinary filters in Photoshop, and can be dragged and dropped on top of one another for desired results.

Applying a filter from the gallery is very easy to do. Simply Click on a filter, adjust it’s options to your liking, and click OK to apply. To stack multiple filters on top of one another, just hit the New Effect Layer (‘F’ in diagram above), and select another filter. You can expand filter types by clicking the folders in the filter list.

The Cutout Filter quickly transforms a photograph into an abstract piece of art.

Quicker Access to Filters

The Filter Gallery is really just a browser of sorts. If you know exactly what kind of filter you want to use, you can access it directly from the Filter menu in Photoshop to speed things up.

Using Other Filters

Not all filters in Photoshop are available through the Filter Gallery. Many of them must be accessed directly through the Filter Menu, and have unique interfaces and options of their own.

We’re not going to go over every individual filter in this tutorial (doing so would take a very long time), but I highly suggest doing some experimentation on your part with different filters to get an idea of what some of them do.

Let’s look at some of the more common filters used frequently in design.

Blur Filters (Filter > Blur)

The Blur Filters are useful in lots of situations.

The Lens Blur Filter makes it very easy to create a realistic lens blur effect in Photoshop.

Noise Filters (Filter > Noise)

Noise Filters are great for adding, or reducing noise and grain in photographs. You may find filters such as the Reduce Noise Filter extremely useful if you work with old, damaged, or dusty photographs that need repair work done to them. The Add Noise Filter can also come in handy, and has some creative applications of its own.

Noise can easily be reduced with the Reduce Noise Filter in Photoshop.

Sharpen Filters (Filter > Sharpen)

The Sharpen Filters are also great for correcting imperfections in photographs, as well as putting emphasis on important elements in a design. When working with blurred images, a sharpen filter can be used to clarify and better define edges by increasing contrast between pixels.

The Smart Sharpen Filter used to sharpen a photograph of a statue.

Filters Disabled?

While all filters are available to be used on 8-bit RGB images, many will be unavailable if working with other color spaces, 16-bit, or 32-bit documents. Filters will also be unavailable for use in Bitmap and Indexed-color documents.

If you’re not able to use filters, you may need to go to Image > Mode, and make sure you’re set to RGB, and 8 Bits/Channel, although some image data may be lost.

Posted by David Leggett in Photoshop Tutorials on June 04th, 2008

Layer Styles in Photoshop

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:15:00 +0000

Effects can be added to individual layers in Photoshop that automatically change as a layer is modified. The combination of effects on any given layer is called its Layer Style. We’ll teach you how to use and make your own layer styles in this tutorial.

What are Layer Styles?

Note: If you’re trying to find out how to install layer styles, please see our tutorial on Installing Layer Styles in Photoshop.

Layer styles are special effects that can be quickly and easily applied to individual layers in Photoshop to drastically change the appearance of something in very little time. They can be preset, customized, or even saved and used for later.

One of the useful properties of Layer Styles are there relationship to the layer contents. Since the style is actually a separate entity that is just linked to the layer, it will continually update itself as a layers contents are edited or moved. Furthermore, the effects can easily be adjusted after applying them, making them non-destructive in nature.

Using Layer Style Presets

Photoshop comes packed with a good number of Layer Style Presets, all which are accessible through the Styles Palette (Window > Styles). To apply a Layer Style, select the Layer you’d like to work with in your document from the Layers Palette, and then select the Layer Style which you would like to apply.

A Text Layer Before and After a Layer Style Preset is applied to it.

After applying a Layer Style, the effects in the layer can be seen, adjusted, disabled or reenabled from the Layers Palette. Layers with effects applied to them will have a small round icon with an ‘f‘ in it. To expand or collapse the effects applied to a layer, click the arrow to the right of this icon.

When a layers effects have been expanded, you can quickly disable specific effects within the layer style by clicking the eye icon next to the effect. Just like a layer, these effects can become visible again by clicking the blank area (where the eye would reside) when an effect is disabled.

Making Quick Changes

You can make quick changes to a layers style by double clicking the ‘f‘ icon to pull up the Layer Style Options. From here, you can completely customize your layers style.

Creating your own Effects and Styles

To add your own layer effects, and create your own styles, go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options, or Right Click your Layer, and select Blending Options. This will bring up the Layer Style Options.

A. Style Presets – List of the Style Presets.

B. Effects – The various effects that can be used in a layer style. It’s important to note that by clicking on the name of any of the effects will enable that effect, and display the options for the individual effect.

C. Options / Settings – When the name for an effect is checked, it’s options will be shown here. When Blending Options is selected, settings such as Opacity, Fill, and other advanced options will be displayed.

D. Layer Style Preview – A preview of the Layer Style.

Effects (B) can be enabled by checking them, and likewise, disabled by unchecking them. To edit an effect, you need to click the name (rather than checkbox). The effects settings will be displayed in the Options area (C), where they can be easily adjusted. To apply a set of effects and options, simply press OK.

Layer Effects

Styles can be built with the following effects:

Drop Shadow – Creates a shadow behind the layers contents.
Inner Shadow – Creates a shadow on top of the layers contents.
Outer Glow - Creates a glow behind the layers contents. Cannot be distanced like the drop shadow.
Inner Glow – Creates a glow on top of the layers contents. Again, cannot be distanced like the inner shadow.
Bevel and Emboss - Used to create unique highlight and shadow effects on a layers contents.
Satin - Gives the layer contents a satin-like, glossy appearance.
Color Overlay - Fills the layer contents with a solid color.
Gradient Overlay - Fills the layer contents with a gradient.
Pattern Overlay - Fills the layer contents with a pattern.
Stroke - Creates an outline on layer contents using a solid color, gradient, or pattern.

Give it a Try!

Let’s try it out to make sure we’ve got a clear understanding of all this. We’re going to test our abilities by creating a basic layer style for some text. Go ahead and create a new document in Photoshop, and use the Type Tool to add some large, black text.

Right Click the text layer, and Select Blending Options.

First we’re going to add a Drop Shadow. Check the Drow Shadow Effect, and click on it to bring up it’s options. Set things up as shown in the diagram below:

As you’re making adjustments, you should be able to see changes being made in your actual document. Keeping an eye on your document while adding effects will allow you to better determine how to adjust settings.

You should be familiar with most of these sliders and types of settings from our Palettes Tutorial you may have read. The Angle setting may be a new one to you, but it’s very simple to work. You can either enter in a numeric value, or adjust the angle with your mouse by clicking on the wheel. Doing so will change the angle of your shadow.

Now let’s add a Bevel and Emboss. We’re going to create a bevel that is subtle, so that it doesn’t draw too much attention, but at the same time pops our text a bit. Again, mimic the settings shown in the diagram shown below.

Nothing really new here. You may want to experiment as I suggested earlier to have a better understanding of the different settings here, but most of them are pretty self-explanatory.

Now let’s add a Gradient Overlay.

By default, the Gradient Overlay will probably use a Foreground to Background gradient, which is not exactly what we are looking for (unless we’ve setup the Foreground and Background Colors in Photoshop specifically for this step). That’s OK though, because we can easily adjust the gradient from here.

Click on the gradient shown in the Gradient Picker (Black fading to White in the above diagram). This will bring up the Gradient Editor. From the Gradient Editor, you may choose a gradient preset, or create a new custom gradient of your own. Towards the bottom of the editor is the current gradient, with Opacity Stops (Determine how opaque the gradient is at a specific point) and Color Stops (Determine what colors are used in the Gradient). We can add, delete, and modify stops by clicking anywhere above or below the gradient, or by clicking on the stops themselves.

We only want to modify the current color stops. Double Click the first color stop, and apply the color #50a2e7, and then apply the color #75cefc to the right most stop. Click OK to Apply the Gradient.

Click OK to apply the layer style you’ve created.

Posted by David Leggett in Photoshop Tutorials on June 06th, 2008

Using Palettes in Photoshop

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0000

In Photoshop, palettes are used to help modify and monitor your documents. An understanding of how to use, organize, and adjust palettes is essential in learning how to use Photoshop.

The Palettes

In order to show you how big of a role palettes play in Photoshop, simply Press Tab in Photoshop to hide all palettes. Palettes include everything from the toolbox, to the option bar, to the layers and colors windows.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

Arrange palettes
Resize, show and hide palettes
Close, Open, and Reset palettes
Use options inside of palettes

Arranging Palettes

It’s possible to arrange palettes to your personal taste. Doing so can help increase your efficiency by moving your most frequently used palettes to a more accessible part of the screen.

To move a palette to a separate palette group, or into a palette group of its own, drag and drop that palettes tab into another group, or anywhere else in the work area.

To move a palette group, drag the title bar of that palette with your mouse, and release when it is positioned as you see fit.

You can also Dock Palettes to one another by having their upper and lower edges meet one another. When a palette is docked to another, it will snap into place.

Resizing, Showing, and Hiding Palettes

Perhaps you’re working with a palette with a large number of styles, colors, or layers, all of which you like to be accessible at the same time. You can resize many of the palettes by dragging the bottom right corner out to whichever size you prefer.

If you want to hide (minimize) a palette that you’re not currently using to save up on space, simply double click that palettes tab. Likewise, you can expand a minimized tablet by double clicking the tab again.

Closing, Opening, and Reseting Palettes

If you have some tablets open that serve no use to you for your current work, it’s possible to close out of them by clicking the “x” in the top right corner of the palette (On a mac, this will be the typical close button).

If you need to open a new palette, or a palette which you have previously closed, go to Window in your menu bar, and select the palette you’d like to reopen.

If you’re ever having trouble getting your palettes back into place, and simply want to revert to the default palette layout, go to Window > Workspace > Reset Palette Locations in your Menu Bar. This will reset everything back to how you started when you first opened Photoshop.

Setting Options in Palettes

Inside palettes, you’ll find all sorts of various settings from color choices, styles, opacity, and other values. We’ll cover many of these options in detail in the future, but for now let’s go over how to operate some of these options.

Drop-down Menus

To operate a drop-down menu, just click the arrow attached to the menu. A list of available inputs will drop down. Click any of these values to select them.

Sliders

Sliders are operated by grabbing a handle by holding down your mouse button over one, and then dragging to your desired value.

Swatches & Styles

To select a color swatch, or layer style, simply hover over it with your mouse, and click once with your mouse.

Posted by David Leggett in Photoshop Tutorials on April 15th, 2008

Install Layer Styles in Photoshop

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:53:00 +0000

If you’re not familiar with layer styles, you’ll probably want to read through our Tutorial on Layer Styles in Photoshop.

Installing Layer Styles is actually just like Installing Brushes and Custom Shapes. Of course, the first thing you’ll need to do is actually download a Layer Style to use.

There are also plenty of sites out there that also offer Photoshop Layer Styles. I wouldn’t consider them nearly as important as Custom Shapes or Brushes (since they are usually replicated with ease), but they can be nice for speeding up workflow and making your life easier.

Make a note of where you save your files. We’ll need to find them in the next part.

How To Install

From Photoshop, find your Styles Palette, and select it. If it’s not visible, go to Window > Styles.

At the top right of the palette, there is an arrow pointing to the right. Click on this arrow to bring up a menu. From this menu, select Load Styles.

Now, simply browse to wherever you saved your styles, and load them. You’ll see them populate the Styles Palette, and can then apply them as you would any other Style preset.

That’s it!

Posted by David Leggett in Photoshop Tutorials on August 12th, 2008

Installing Custom Shapes and Brushes in Photoshop

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:50:00 +0000

If you’re new to Photoshop, you may not be familiar with installing new custom shapes or brushes. In this tutorial, I’ll show you the ropes so you can start using them straight away.

Brushes and Custom Shapes are both collections of design elements in Adobe Photoshop that can be used to enhance your graphics. There are hundreds of online resources that provide free downloads for each of these mentioned elements, but they won’t do you much good if you’re not sure how to start using them.

Installing Custom Shapes:

To install a new Custom Shape you’ve downloaded, you’ll have to first select the Custom Shape Tool from the toolbar.

Now, from the Custom Shapes Options Bar, select the Custom Shape Picker dropdown. From here, you’ll be able to pick any of your currently installed custom shapes for use in your documents. However, right now we want to ignore all of these shapes, and instead click the arrow on the right side of the picker. From here, we want to “Load Shapes…“.

Once you click this, a browser will be opened up for you. From the browser, just travel to the directory where you saved your custom shapes too, and load them from there. Your new shapes will be available in the Shape Picker afterwards.

Installing Brushes:

Installing brushes takes essentially the same steps as installing custom shapes.

Select the Brush tool from the toolbar.

And now from the Options Bar, select the Brush Preset Picker dropdown menu, click the arrow off to the right, and then select Load Brushes…

Again, just browse to the folder where your installed brushes are stored, and load them from there. You’re new brushes will be available in the Brush Preset Picker, as well as the Brushes window.

Posted by David Leggett in Photoshop Tutorials on December 10th, 2007

Transformation in Photoshop

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:44:00 +0000

In Photoshop, Transform is used to scale, rotate, skew, and just distort the perspective of any graphic you’re working with in general. This tutorial will teach you how to use Transform to adjust your images.

Scaling Graphics

One of the most basic transformations Photoshop is capable of is scaling a graphic. Scaling allows you to enlarge or shrink a graphic around a reference point. To scale a graphic, we go to Edit > Transform > Scale.

A set of handles will appear around our selected elements in the document (such as layers, or shapes). By moving anyone of these handles, we can adjust the size of the object. To apply the transformation, hit Enter.

Constraining Proportions while Scaling

Often times, you’ll find it necessary to constrain the proportions of your objects when scaling. This can easily be achieved by Holding Shift while dragging a transformation handle. You can additionally scale from the center reference point by Holding Alt (or Option on Mac OS), or combine the two by holding shift and alt at the same time while scaling.

Rotating Objects in Photoshop

To Rotate an Object in Photoshop, go to Edit > Transform > Rotate. Handles will appear as they did with a Scaling Transform, but instead of dragging one of these, go just outside of the object until you see a curved arrow rotate icon.

At this point, simple drag left or right to rotate the selected object. Once again, you must finish applying the transformation by pressing Enter.

Be Precise with your Rotations!

You can rotate in 15 Degree Increments with this useful little shortcut. While you’re rotating an object, simply hold down the shift button.

Skew, Distort, and Perspective Transformations

The next 3 transformations are all similar, because they are all controlled by dragging handles. That is not to say that they are used to do the same thing, they simply all operate in the same manner. You can apply a Skew, Distort, or Perspective Transformation from Edit > Transform.

Skew: Skew transformations slant objects either vertically or horizontally.

Distort: Distort transformations allow you to stretch an image in ANY direction freely.

Perspective: The Perspective transformation allows you to add perspective to an object.

Warping an Object

The Warp Transformation is quite a bit different compared to the other transformations. The entire shape of the object can be modified, making this transformation useful for several different effects. To use a Warp Transformation go to Edit > Transform > Warp. A Mesh will appear over your object that you can adjust by dragging control points, lines, or any other area inside of it. You can additionally apply a preset warp from the options bar.

BG and FG Colors

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:38:00 +0000

Photoshop uses the foreground color to paint, fill, and stroke selections and the background color to make gradient fills and fill in the erased areas of an image. The foreground and background colors are also used by some special effects filters. You can designate a new foreground or background color using the eyedropper tool, the Color palette, the Swatches palette, or the Adobe Color Picker. The default foreground color is black, and the default background color is white. (In an alpha channel, the default foreground is white, and the background is black.)
The current foreground color appears in the upper color selection box in the toolbox; the current background color appears in the lower box.

To change the foreground or background color, do one of the following:

To change the foreground color, click the upper color selection box in the toolbox. To change the background color, click the lower color selection box in the toolbox. Choose a color in the Adobe Color Picker.

To reverse the foreground and background colors:

Click the Switch Colors icon in the toolbox.

To restore the default foreground and background colors:

Click the Default Colors icon in the toolbox.
You can use the Adobe Color Picker to select the foreground or background color by choosing from a color spectrum or by defining colors numerically. In addition, you can select colors based on the HSB, RGB, Lab, and CMYK color models, choose to use only Web-safe colors, and choose from several custom color systems.
The Color palette displays the color values for the current foreground and background colors. Using the sliders in the Color palette, you can edit the foreground and background colors according to several different color models. You can also choose a foreground or background color from the spectrum of colors displayed in the color ramp at the bottom of the palette.

Note Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:36:00 +0000

You can add notes and audio annotations anywhere on a Photoshop image canvas. When you create a note, a resizable window appears for entering text. When you record an audio annotation, you must have a microphone plugged into the audio-in port of your computer. You can import both kinds of annotations from Photoshop documents saved in PDF or from Acrobat documents saved in PDF or Form Data Format (FDF).

Like post-it notes, but digital. You can use this tool to add small little note boxes to your image. These are useful if you’re very forgetful or if you’re sharing your Photoshop file with someone else. I’m pretty sure it only works with .PSD files.

Zoom Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:34:00 +0000

With the zoom tool, the image is taken to a higher or lower magnification. Select the zoom tool by clicking it's icon or pressing z on your keyboard. When the tool is selected, the cursor becomes a small magnifier with a plus sign in the center. The plus indicates that clicking on the image will bring you closer to the image. Hold the Alt/Option key on the keyboard and the plus changes to a minus to zoom out.

To use the zoom tool just click on the area of the image that you want to enlarge or reduce. Photoshop places the pixels that you clicked on in the center of the screen. The zoom will be at a pre-set percentage each time you click. If you click and drag a selection marquee Photoshop will zoom and center to the selected area. Double clicking on the zoom tool icon in the Photoshop toolbar will zoom the document window to 100 percent.

The zoom toolbar you can choose to resize the windows to fit. The checkbox labled ignore palettes will allow the window to enlarge past the boundaries of any palettes that you have open. The toolbar also has the same three buttons that appear on the Hand toolbar.

To use the zoom tool while using another tool without selecting it from the Photoshop toolbar, hold down Ctrl/Command + Spacebar to zoom in, and Alt/Option + Spacebar to zoom out.

The View menu contains five zoom commands. All of the commands, except print size, have keyboard equivalents. The zoom in and out commands can be issued using Ctrl/Command and the (+) plus or (-) minus key.

Ctrl + 0 (zero) causes the image to fit to the widest dimensions on the screen. Pressing Alt/Option + Ctrl/Command + 0 (zero) causes the image to be shown at actual size.

Photoshop also has a small box in the lower-left portion of the viewing area. You can double click in this box and zoom to any percentage by typing it and pressing enter.

Here are some other keyboard commands that you can use with a large image.

The Page Up key moves the image just slightly less than a full screen up.

Shift + Page Up moves the image up about one tenth of the screen.

Ctrl/Command + Page Up moves the image to the right one full screen.

Replace the Page Up key with the Page Down key to do the previous commands in the opposite direction.

The Home key will take you to the top left corner of the image and the End key goes to the bottom right corner of the image.

TIP: Pretty obvious what this tool does. It allows you to zoom into your image. Don’t be dumb, it doesn’t actually change the size of your image. Hold the [Alt] key to zoom out. Holding the [Shift] key will zoom all of the windows you have open at the same time. Double-click on the Zoom Tool in the palette to go back to 100% view.

Hand Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:27:00 +0000

The Hand Tool is used to navigate to another area of an image when all of the pixels won't fit on the screen. You select the hand tool (press h) and click on the image and drag to the location in the image that you want to be. You can press the space bar to activate the hand while any tool other than a type tool is activated. You can acheive the same affect using the scrollbars located at the right and bottom of the image. However, the scrollbars only move in one dimension and the hand tool can move in two dimensions at the same time.

When the hand tool is selected, the hand toolbar shows three buttons. The first button is used to view the image in actual pixel size. The next button fits the image to the size of your screen. The third button will show you the image at the size it would be if it were to be printed.
All three of these options are available using the View menu, but using them as buttons on the toolbar makes it easier.

TIP: You can really make short work of your job with the Hand Tool. It’s for moving your entire image within a window. So if you’re zoomed in and your image area is larger than the window, you can use the Hand Tool to navigate around your image. Just click and drag. You can get to this tool at any time when using any other tool by pressing and holding the [Spacebar].

Eye Dropper Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:20:00 +0000

The Eyedropper tool (the icon in the Toolbar) is used to sample a color from an image to use this color further. It's practical as it facilitates color selection, for example, an appropriate color for the skin or the sky.

When you pick a color with the Eyedropper tool, it appears as the foreground color in the Toolbar.

If you want to pick a color for the background hold the Alt-key while selecting the color with the Eyedropper tool. Below you see the foreground/background palette of the Toolbar.

To make the color selection more precise, press CapsLock on the keyboard and the Eyedropper will turn into a target so that you can collect one exact pixel of a picture.

It is possible to pick up a color not only from the image opened in the Photoshop's workspace but from other applications too.

Look at the picture below. We reduced the size of the Photoshop window. We want to pick up the color of the sky from a photo on a web-page (Internet Explorer).

Activate the Eyedropper tool, put the cursor to the image of the house, press the left mouse button and drag the cursor outside the Photoshop workspace to sample the color of the sky.

Custom Shape Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:15:00 +0000

2. Here see below . Click on red circle no1 after that click on red circle no2 now click on red circle no3 .

3. Here click on icon which is shown with the red circle Now select star from there

4. Drag with the help of mouse and create a new star shape

5. Now go to Filter > Distort > Twirl = Angle:50

6. Here press Ctrl+j to make a copy now click on the copied layer while pressing ctrl for selection and then fill any color

7. Here press Ctrl+T and with the help of mouse make the transform's corner round and then press Enter

8. Here double click on the copied Layer for Layer style

9. Select Drop shadow from the Layer style and choose all the setting according to the image below

10. Now click on the Custom Shape Tool icon

11. Now here click on the Custom shape picker which is shown with the red circle

12. Now from here you can select any shape as shown below

13. Here drag the shape with the help of mouse and create new shape as shown below

Behind the Interface of ADOBE PHOTOSHOP

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 07:16:00 +0000

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development.

Adobe was founded in December 1982by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. The company name Adobe comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, which ran behind the house of one of the company's founders. Adobe acquired its former competitor, Macromedia, in December 2005, which added newer software products and platforms such as Coldfusion, Dreamweaver, Flash and Flex to its product portfolio.

Early history:

In 1987, Thomas Knoll, a PhD student at the University of Michigan began writing a program on his Macintosh Plus to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. This program, called Display, caught the attention of his brother John Knoll, an Industrial Light & Magic employee, who recommended Thomas turn it into a fully-fledged image editing program. Thomas took a six month break from his studies in 1988 to collaborate with his brother on the program, which had been renamed ImagePro. Later that year, Thomas renamed his program Photoshop and worked out a short-term deal with scanner manufacturer Barneyscan to distribute copies of the program with a slide scanner; a "total of about 200 copies of Photoshop were shipped" this way.

During this time, John traveled to Silicon Valley and gave a demonstration of the program to engineers at Apple and Russell Brown, art director at Adobe. Both showings were successful, and Adobe decided to purchase the license to distribute in September 1988. While John worked on plug-ins in California, Thomas remained in Ann Arbor writing program code. Photoshop 1.0 was released in 1990 for Macintosh exclusively.

Adobe Photoshop Express:

Adobe Photoshop Express is a Flash-based image editing web application from Adobe used to directly edit photos on blogs and social networking sites, so that users do not have to download or upload images. Similar to Picnik, the application currently works with sites such as Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket.

Adobe Photoshop Elements:

Adobe Photoshop Elements is the consumer version of the Adobe Photoshop raster image editing product, targeted at hobbyist users and hence sold at a fraction (roughly 1/6) of the cost of the professional product. It contains most of the features of the professional version but with fewer and simpler options. The program allows users to create, edit, organize and share images, all from the same product.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a photography software program developed by Adobe Systems for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, designed to assist Adobe Photoshop users in managing thousands of digital images and doing post production work. It is not a file browser like Adobe Bridge, but rather an image management application database which helps in viewing, editing, and managing digital photos, the same way photographers used to do in the non-digital world.

Source: Wikipedia

The Type Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:27:00 +0000

Horizontal type tool:

On the face of it the type tool would seem to be a plug and play tool. Just click the big T icon and start typing. This of course will work, but it is worth understanding the basic and advanced options available to you so you can have maximum control over your typography.

Basic options:

From left to right here are the basic options available to you.

Change the text orientation: This changes the text from horizontal to vertical.
Font family: This is a drop down menu of all the fonts currently active on your system. I recommend using some Font Management Software to keep things manageable. I use FontExplorer X.
Font style: This is whether you choose the regular, bold or italic version of your font face. Whether these options are available depends on whether you have all font styles of a particular font.
Font size: This defines the font size. A useful trick is that you can hover over the TT icon and drag left and right. Alternatively you can use the dropdown or type the number you want directly into the box.
Anti aliasing: This defines how you want your text to be anti-aliased. There are five options. See the image below for the effects this creates.
Left, right and centre align text: These align the text according to the text box you have drawn.

Warping text:

Just to the right of the main options is the Warp Text option. Typographers cringe at the thought of have their lovingly crafted typefaces warped like this. I'm not a big fan but just incase you need it here's how it works. Select the text you want to warp and then click on the warp button. This brings up an option box with a dazzling array of options. Have a play yourself to explore all of the options available to you.

The Character Tab - fine-tuning typography

If you want total control over your typography in Photoshop shop you will need to open the Character and Paragraph tabs. They give you precision control over type. Some of the options are repeated from the basic options. Let's start with the Character tab. You will find the character tab icon to the right of the warp icon. Or you can open it by going to Window > Character.

Font family: This is a drop down menu of all the fonts currently active on your system.
Font style: This is whether you choose the regular, bold or italic version of your font face.
Font size: This defines the font size.
Leading: This is also known as line spacing. This is the distance between the lines of text.
Kerning: This is the relationship between particular letters. Most digital fonts do this for you but can override this. For more info see Wikipedia.
Tracking: This is similar to kerning but applies to text as a whole rather than relationships between individual letters.
Vertical scaling: This lets you scale text vertically. Again if you hover over the icon you can drag to resize.
Horizontal scaling: This lets you scale text horizontally. Hovering over the icon you can drag to resize.
Baseline: If you want to move text above or below the baseline you can do it with this optoin.
Color: Sets the color of the text

There are a number of text formatting options after this. A useful one for web design is the underline option which lets you underline links in designs. The language and aliasing options are also available here.

The Paragraph Tab - Formatting text:

Finally the Paragraph tab lets you position blocks of text as you wish. The first row of optoins give you full control over aligning blocks of text. You can left, right and centre align or choose to justify your text.

Indent left margin: This moves text away from the left edge
Indent right margin: This moves text away from the right edge
Indent first line: This indents the first line of the text only
Add space before paragraph: This shifts text down from the start of the paragraph
Add space after the paragraph: This adds padding after the paragraph has finished

Type Mask Tools:

The text tool offers the mask tools to allow you type your text as if it were a selection. Then you can either fill it or apply an effect as you wish. Or you can copy the selection and paste it. In the example below I've used it on the strawberry to generate text with the background of the strawberry. A simple trick that can be very effective.

Burn, Dodge and Sponge Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:22:00 +0000

Straight from the darkroom:

These tools come straight from the darkroom floor where the development process could be tweaked using techniques to change the exposure to the surface of the photographic paper. Before we look at the tools lets examine the darkroom techniques to get an idea.

Dodge - This is where light is blocked out to make portions of the image lighter.
Burn - This is where light is allowed through specific holes to expose the paper to more light making it darker.

Understanding that more light means darker and less lighter is just how the tools work. Let's start with the dodge tool.

The shortcut for all of these tools is O

Dodge tool - Making selected areas lighter:

The Dodge tool is really a post production tool. If you aren't happy with how the exposure turned out on your photo you can use the Dodge Tool to increase it. Select your brush and you then have three options: shadows, midtones and highlights. The tool will target the tone that you choose. Finally set your exposure. This controls how intense the effect is.

Using the Dodge tool you can easily increase the exposure of photos. In the following example the left edge of the picture has been lightened using the Dodge tool. The range was set to midtones and the exposure at 50%. The effect is slight but compensates for the overexposure of the left hand side.

The Burn Tool - the same in reverse:

The Burn Tool is really the inverse of the Dodge Tool. Instead of compensating for overexposure it allows you to darken areas that have been underexposed.

Sponge Tool - Adjusting Saturation:

When you adjust saturation you adjust the strength of a colour. With the sponge tool you paint with a brush to either increase the saturation of decrease it. In the following example we have a beautiful photo by Barbara Rich. Using the sponge tool we are going to bring out the colours a little more by saturating them. Specifically the boat and the sky have been "sponged" to saturate the colours in these areas. Conversely if you wish to tone down colours select desaturate.

Blur, Sharpen & Smudge Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:15:00 +0000

The Blur Tool makes images obscure and softens an image making it look out of focus with a blur effect. The Sharpen Tool goes the other way and makes an image clearer, it sharpens around the edges of an image. Then we have the Smudge Tool which doesn’t blur or sharpen, instead what this tool does is smudge and bump pixels out of place.

First thing I want you guys to do is select the Blur Tool and change the brush size to 65px.

TIP: Next to where you changed your brush size you’ll notice an option called Mode and Strength, in the future when you use this tool you might want to take note that you can change how strong you want these tools to be by upping the strength, and also changing the Mode to Darken on or Lighten. If darken is selected it just means the tool will focus more on the Darker pixels and if Lighten is selected it will focus more on the lighter pixels.

So to get the ball rolling, we are going to play around with the Blur Tool, just slowly go over theBackground behind the skateboarder until everything goes out of focus like the example below.

After you have done that switch to the Sharpen Tool and go over the face, arms and hands of the skateboarder.

Now select the Smudge Tool and just zig zag up and down on the shirt pocket till it smudges in with the creases of the shirt.

Too easy yeah? These are quick tutorials, in your spare time try and get more practice in to familiarize yourself with these tools. You’ll notice later on in the tutorials that you can do so much more with these tools then what I am showing you here. Again, these are the basics you need to learn before we start pumping up the heat. See you in the next lesson!

TIP: Press F12 to start over, might come in handy while your testing out the blur, sharpen and smudge tools.

PEN TOOL

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:28:00 +0000

This is the most important tool in Photoshop. From my experience its one of the toughest and very precious tool.

It is very Difficult to explain it in words written so i am posting a video from an expert. This video explains the basics of how to use pen tool.

Photoshop Paint Bucket Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:11:00 +0000

The paint bucket tool fills an area of an image based on color similarity. Click anywhere in the image and the paint bucket will fill an area around the pixel you clicked.

The exact area filled is determined by how similar each adjoining pixel is to the pixel you clicked on. You can adjust this setting in the options toolbar by changing the tolerance value (make sure the paint bucket tool is selected first). A low tolerance means only very similar colors will be affected, a high tolerance means more pixels will be affected. The range is 0 (exact color matches only) to 255 (all colors).

The example below shows how a simple gradient is filled with green when the center of the image is clicked. The first fill uses a tolerance of 16, the second uses a tolerance of 64:

Other settings in the options bar include:

Fill: Foreground color (i.e. the currently selected color) or Pattern. If you select pattern, the next drop-menu becomes active and you can choose a pattern to use.
Mode: The same "blending modes" found in many other tools, including normal, dissolve, lighten, darken, etc.
Opacity: Set lower to make the underlying image partially visible.
Anti-alias: Make smoother edges by blending gradually with adjoining pixels.
Contiguous: (see below).
All layers: When using multiple layers, all layers are used to create the fill (otherwise only the selected layer is used).

Contiguous Fill:

When the contiguous checkbox is selected, only pixels that are connected to the original pixel are filled. The example below shows how this works. The image is clicked near the left hand side—first with contiguous on and then with it off:

Note:

You can prevent transparent areas being filled by locking the layer’s transparency Layers palette.
The paint bucket tool cannot be used with images in bitmap mode.

Photoshop Eraser Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:09:00 +0000

Photoshop's eraser tool can be found in the second group of icons in the toolbox. It has three variations: Eraser,Background Eraser and Magic Eraser.

The eraser is basically a brush which erases pixels as you drag it across the image. Pixels are erased to transparency, or the background colour if the layer is locked.

When you select the eraser tool, you have various options available in the toolbar:

Brush: Options include the size of the eraser, hardness of edges and various styles. Brush options are not available in block mode.

Mode: There are three options: brush (soft edges), pencil (hard edges) and block (square brush size).

Opacity: 100% opacity erases pixels completely, 0% does not erase at all. 50% is semi-transparent (or coloured). Opacity is not available in block mode.

Flow: Determines how quickly the erasure is applied by the brush. Lower settings produce a more subtle effect. Only available in brush mode.

Airbrush: Use the eraser as an airbrush. Only available in brush mode.

Erase to History: Erases to a saved state or snapshot of the image. To use this feature, click the left column in the history palette next to the desired state.

Background Eraser Tool:

The background eraser tool allows you to remove the background colour from an image or layer. When you click the image, the eraser samples the colour at the centre of the brush and erases this colour as you drag. Options in the toolbar allow you to specify the type of erasure, colour tolerance and sampling method.

Magic Eraser Tool:

The magic eraser tool erases all colours within a set tolerance. This is essentially the same as using the magic wand and hitting Delete. Using this tool you don't need to drag — just click once.

Photoshop History Brush

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:43:00 +0000

The history brush uses a previous state or snapshot of an image. The tool makes a copy of the image as it was in a previous state, then uses the content of this copy to paint with.

Example:

The example on the right shows the history palette of an image. Three things have happened (i.e. there have been three states):

The image was opened.
The levels were adjusted.
A glowing edges filter was applied.

In the left column of this palette there is a selection box next to each state. Click a box to select that state. By default, the selected state is the point where the file was opened or created.

Painting with the history brush tool will add content from the earlier state like so:

Photoshop Clone Stamp Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:41:00 +0000

Photoshop's clone stamp tool allows you to duplicate part of an image.

The process involves setting a sampling point in the image which will be used as a reference to create a new cloned area.

Select the Clone Stamp tool , then check the settings in the options bar. Make sure you have a brush size appropriate for the job. The following settings are fairly typical:

Notes:

Aligned: If this option is selected, the new cloned image will be drawn continuously even if you release the mouse button while drawing. If it is deselected, the clone will begin drawing from the sampling point each time you release the mouse and resume painting.
Use All Layers: If this option is selected, information will be used from all visible layers. Otherwise only the active layer will be used.

Example:

	The original image.
	Hold down the Alt key — the cursor will change to a target. Click the point you wish to use as a sampling point. This will be used as the reference point for cloning.
	Click and draw where you want the cloned image to appear. As you draw, a cross will appear on the original image while a corresponding circle appears where you are drawing.

With a little practice it becomes quite clear how this process works and how to achieve the best results.

Painting Tools: Brush / Pencil

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:55:00 +0000

Photoshop provides two tools for drawing (painting) directly to the image: The brush tool and the pencil tool. Both tools work basically the same way — you left-click and drag your mouse in the image to draw. Painting uses the currently selected foreground colour.

The Brush Tool:

The brush tool paints with smooth edges. The options bar looks like this:

Settings:

Brush: The size of the brush.
Mode: The blending mode. For most work Normal will be the best option. Experiment with other modes to see what they do.
Opacity: Anything less than 100% will allow the underlying image to be seen.
Flow: Determines how quickly paint is applied. Lower setting produces lighter strokes.

The Airbrush Tool:

The airbrush option allows you to apply gradual tones to an image, like a traditional airbrush.

The Pencil Tool:

The pencil tool behaves much like the brush except that it has hard edges. The pencil tool options are the same as the brush tool, except:

There is no airbrush option.
There is an Auto Erase option. This paints the background colour over areas containing the foreground colour.

Note: To draw a straight line, click a starting point in the image, then hold down the Shift key and click an ending point.

Photoshop Healing Brush

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:52:00 +0000

The Healing Brush tool allows you to fix image imperfections such as scratches, blemishes, etc. By sampling the surrounding area or using a predefined pattern you can blend the imperfections into the rest of the image.

The healing brush tool is located in the Photoshop Toolbox, on the left side.

Using the Healing Brush Tool:

Select the healing brush in the toolbox.
Check the settings in the options bar and adjust if necessary. Options include:
- Brush size
- Blending mode
- Source (Sampled from the image or pre-defined pattern)
- Aligned
If you're using sampled mode, Alt-click an area near the imperfection to define the starting point.
Click and drag over the imperfection. If aligned is selected, the healing brush will remember the starting point between mouse clicks.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 (2010)Extended Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:06:00 +0000

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended Edition (2010) | 1.25 GB
System requirements::Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 processor.
:Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 3; Windows Vista Home Premium, Business
Enterprise or Ultimate or any Windows 7.
:1GB of RAM.
:1GB of available hard-disk space for installation.
:1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with qualified hardware-accelerated
OpenGL graphics card, 16-bit color, and 256MB of VRAM
:Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and
OpenGL 2.0
:QuickTime 7.6.2 software required for multimedia features
Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended Edition contains:Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended | Adobe Air
Adobe Device Central CS5 | Adobe Media Player
Adobe Extended Script Toolkit CS5 | Adobe Extension Manager CS5
Adobe Fonts CS5 | Adobe Bridge CS5
IMPORTANT
Some users could not get the serials to work:1330-1548-9682-5953-9309-6924
1330-1034-6108-6307-6472-1237
1330-1293-5291-0002-3138-2830
1330-1640-2219-9370-8845-3827
1330-1803-8387-7367-5435-5840
1330-1437-3903-9723-0201-9564
1330-1770-1405-7229-2996-9124

all the serials do work but if for some reason CS5 wont accept the serial then use the above or install as a trial then enter the serial on the first launch of CS5 and the serial will be accepted.
X64 users skip the copy dll file steps in this torrent and use the 64bit dll from the tool kit torrent linked further down the description.
If after updating you get licence errors then simply recopy the dll files and that should fix things, also check the tool kit link regularly for updates to the hosts file

Download:

Code:

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Photoshop Slice Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Madhan Neelapu) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:11:00 +0000

The Slice tool allows you to divide an image into smaller sections which fit together like a jigsaw (but with straight edges). The slice tool is located in the top section of the Photoshop Toolbox.

There are two tools: Slice (which creates the slices) and Slice Select (which enables you to select and modify existing slices).

Sliced images are commonly used for web design work, which sometimes requires images to be broken up in this way.

Using the Slice and Slice Select Tools:

Select the slice tool in the toolbox.
Click and drag over the area you wish to make into a slice.
Release the mouse button - Photoshop automatically creates the necessary number of slices, with the active slice highlighted.
Using the slice select tool, you can move and resize slices by dragging inside a slice, or by dragging the handles.

Note:

To export the separate images, choose File > Save for Web from the Photoshop menu. When you save the file you will have the option to save the images and/or a new HTML page to contain the images.