Ps Essentials

The Ultimate Photoshop Cheat-Sheet

2012-05-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

All our life we keep looking for easier alternatives and shortcuts no matter what we are into. Photoshop provides us with lots of such options.
Today I'm going to share some of my favorite photoshop shortcuts and tricks, which can make your designing way too fast and easy.

1> See the Change
When working with type, in order to see the text color you are setting, after selecting the text, click on the colour square in options bar. This way while setting the new color, the text does not remain highlighted and changes can be monitored easily.

2> Easy and Fine Selection
The real pain for any ammature photoshop user is fine selection. Though Photoshop contains some most powerful and easy-to-use selections tools, still selection can be a little tricky.
The magnetic pen is a great tool for that purpose, especially for simple objects with contrast background.
Select the Freeform pen and click the arrow new to the Custom Shape icon. In the Freeform Pen Options window, click the magnetic checkbox.

3> Right use of you PS eye
This is a very simple yet very useful option while working on multiple layers. If you want to observe the changes or objects behind a certain layer, just click on a 'Eye' on the left of the layer name and see the difference.

4> Easy Photo Editing
The most simple and easy way to darken and increase the color of an image is to duplicate the image layer. Select the upper layer and apply "Color Burn" as the blending mode.
You can also change the opacity of the upper layer to refine your effect.

5> No Palette Disturbance
When you are into some serious photo editing and there are lots of palettes open in the course, there may be a possibility that these palettes are hindering your view. To monitor the image and hide the palettes press 'TAB'.
Press 'TAB' again to bring the palettes back.

6> Easy Trick to Find Center
The most easy way to find an image's center is by using 'Free Transform'. Keyboard shortcut 'ctrl+T'. A box appears at the edges with a pointer at the center.
You can mark the center location by using Ruler. (View > Ruler , or 'Ctrl+R')

7> Transform and Copy
Sometimes we may need to use an object more than once in our psd, say the same image at different sizes and shapes. Use 'Ctrl + Alt + T'. This works same as the normal Free Transform with the basic difference that the parent layer remains untouched and all the changes you made are stored in a different layer above that.

8> Power of Curve and Level
The Curve and Level options can prove of great help when editing an image, say your profile pic for a social networking site.
Just experiment with 'Ctrl + M' and 'Ctrl + L' i.e. Curve and Level respectively.

9> Clone my Way
The Clone tool has always been on my favorite tools list. The best part of Clone tool is you can not only use it on a same image but can also clone areas from on all together different image.
Select the clone tool, go to the image from where you want to pick the cloning, use 'Alt + left-click' for this purpose. Now get back to your main image and start stamping your clone from an altogether different source.

10> Shortcut to Brush Picker
When working with brushes, its painful to go back to the side palette and select the brush customs. There's an easy shortcut for this purpose.
Press 'Right click' on your mouse and the Brush Picker appears.

11> From Text to Layer
The easiest way to convert a text layer to a shape layer is, Layer > Type > Convert to Shape

12> Undo your Mistakes
Undo a very important option when it comes to photoshop. In order to undo your mistakes more than once, press 'Ctrl + Alt + Z'.

13> Easy Duplicating
Sometimes we need to use the duplicate layer options a lot. This can be a very tedious task, depending on the number of duplication. A simple solution to this is: Select Move > In control options set 'Auto-Select: Layer' > Now click on the layer to be duplicated, hold 'Alt + Left-Click' and drag to new position to create a duplicate layer.

14> Create a Super Quality Panorama
Does your camera quality automatically degrades on panorama mode? No problem! Just take the images in normal camera mode such that each frame captures a distinct shot. Now follow this:
File > Automate > Photomerge...
Browse and enter the images, experiment with different options and get a High Definition Panorama image, just in a click!

15> Read Composite Data
A psd document with lots of layers in it, can take a long time to load up. In order to save time and CPU resources while just viewing the document, follow these steps.
File > Open > 'Shift + Alt + Enter' on the selected file, you wanted to open.
The file will open in flattened mode, while the layers remain intact with the parent document.

16> Photo Filters
Photo Filter option can prove useful when editing an image, say landscape. With some preset filters life warming filter, cooling filter etc., quick effects can easily be given to any image.
Image > Adjustments > Photo Filters...

17> Quick Fixing Overexposed Images
A common problem with images clicked on normal digicam is that the images are overexposed and hence lacks the highlight details, also important bright parts of an image are "washed out" or effectively all white, know as "blown out highlights".
Blending modes can be used effectively for fixing this.
Duplicate the layer > Select the Top layer and set "Multiply" as blending mode.
Opacity of the top layer can be adjusted accordingly to get the best possible satisfaction.

18> Easy Vector Effect
Still have problems with Pen tools? Want a vector effect for your image? Don't worry, here's your savior:
Filter > Artistic > Cutout...
Though it does not create a real vector, yet the effect can efficiently be obtained.

19> Shortcuts Cheat-Sheet:

20> Blending Modes Cheat-Sheet:

Graffiti Tutorial: A tribute to Steve Jobs

2011-10-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. This latest tutorial is to pay tribute to the legend "Steve Jobs". Steve Jobs was a true genius and as the photoshop was developed on a mac, without him none of what we experience today in the graphics and the computer world would have been possible.

This is the least PS Essential can do pay tributes to the legend.

In this tutorial we will learn to make a wall graffiti.

Final Image Preview:

Final Image

Step 1:

We will start with the below Steve Jobs wallpaper.

Our first aim is to crop out Steve Jobs from the above wallpaper. We can easily do that by using any selection tool we are handy with(for example i used quick selection tool mostly). After cropping our image will look like:

Step 2:

Now by using free transformation (Ctrl+T), we will resize the image and bring it to the corner of the canvas.

Now duplicate the layer(Ctrl+J). Select the duplicate layer, and go to: Filter>Stylize>Fing Edges. The image will look like:

Again Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur(with radius 1.0) the image will become:

Now set the blending mode of the duplicate layer to "Overlay". This will make the image like:

Finally merge the two layer by selecting them both using Ctrl and then press "Ctrl+E"

Step 3:

Filter>Texture>Texturizer...

select the following settings:

Now add a white background layer to the image and repeat step 3 on it. This is give:

Step 4:

Generate two duplicates of the layer containing the image and set the blending mode of the topmost layer to "Multiply" and the layer just below that to "Hard Light".

Set the opacity of both the layers to 50% each.

finally merge the layers.

Step 5:
Now use any graffiti font(we used "Amsterdam Graffiti") to type your graffiti text.

Since we have our text in two lines, we made sure that each text line is in a different text layer, so as to get the ability to arrange them in more versatile fashion.

Step 6:

Right click the text layer > Blending Options > Gradient Overlay.

Set the gradient of your choice. Or simply copy our setting:

Copy the same to the other text layers too(in case you have any).

Step 7:

Again Right click on the text layer > Blending Options > Stroke.

Keep the following setting:

Copy the same to the other text layers too(in case you have any).

Step 8:

Right Click on text layer > Blending Options > Outer Glow.

Copy the same to the other text layers too(in case you have any).

Step 9:

Now arrange the text layers in the desired fashion.

After finalizing your text position select the text layers by holding Ctrl and "Right click" and hit "Convert to Smart Objects"

Set the Blending mode to the smart object as "Hard Light".

Step 10:

Finally add a tribute line in any formal font (Times New Roman used here).

Design an easy Papercraft Logo

2011-10-09T02:48:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. Its been a long time since the last update, but PS Essentials is back with a very easy and attractive logo making tutorial. This is a simple logo which gives a paper craft effect. Hope you all will enjoy this.

Final image review:


final image

Step 1:
The first step as usual is to create a new page. Now with logos we should always make sure that we make them big. One simple logic behind this is that it may be needed on big flexes. A small sized photoshop designed raster logo is likely to get distorted when used in flexes which we don't want.
Let us start with the following size:

Step 2:
Go to Gradient Tool(G) and select the following gradient. Also select the gradient style to "Angle Gradient" as shown:

gradient style

Step 3:
Now after selecting the above given settings, go to your canvas and click on the left-most top corner of the canvas. While clicking on the left-top corner hold on the left mouse button along with the shift key on the keyboard and drag the pointer to the right-top corner.
Your background will look like:

Step 4:
Type the name of your company. We used the font most suitable for our need - Disco Deck. Type your company name in such a way that all the letters are in a separate text layer of their own.

Since each letter is in a different layer, we can move them close to each other as per our need and desire. After arranging the texts close to each other, we will get the following:

Step 5:
After all the text layers are aligned, go to the Layers panel and click on "Add a layer style" > "Gradient Overlay"

Step 6:
Keep the following settings for "Gradient Overlay" and "Drop Shadow" respectively:

Settings for Gradient Overlay

Settings for Drop Shadow

Now before hitting "OK" we just need to do one more thing that will make our task lot more easier. Select the "Styles" tab on the left top of the dialogue box, click on "New Style.." and name this style anything you want before saving.

Step 7:
Select every other text layer(letters) and hit the style we just created present in the "Styles" panel.

Our image will now look like:

Step 8:
Our work is now almost done, all we need is just a little refinement. :)
Since all the letters are having the same orientation of the gradient overlay, this makes our logo look a little dull. In order to overcome that we will click on the required layer and select "Gradient Overlay" from the layer effects.
Now we will change the angle of the Gradient Overlay in the multiples of 90* as per our requirement.
We will keep on doing this to all the text layers until they are all randomized yet gives a sense of regularity.
Here's the images comparison before and after the modification:

Step 9:
Finally its time to fill some color in our image. To do that, select the top most layer in the "Layers" panel, right click and hit the "Solid Color" option.

Select the following color and set the blending mode to "Soft Light"

Step 10:
We are all done now. This is how our logo looks:

Hope you all enjoyed!! :)

Photoshop make-up

2011-03-04T23:43:00.000-08:00

Today i'll teach you how to color your hair, lips, and lens eyes using photoshop. Please don't criticize me if the model looks ugly after the makeup as I'm not good in it, this tutorial is just to give you an idea on how to do that so that you can do better makeup using your own ideas.
FINAL IMAGE PREVIEW:

original image

final image

Step 1:
Open your image. Create a new layer and in the select "soft light" as the blending mode. Reduce the the opacity of the layer to 50%.

Step 2:
take the brush tool with hardness 0% and select the color you want to give to your hair. On the selected new later, start painting with brush over the hairs. This will give your hair the color effect you needed.
You can use two different layers with same settings to give the highlighter effects.

Step 3:
Do the same to color your eyes, lips and other facial objects. The Opacity of the layers can be reduced or increased in order to increase or decrease the glow, as needed!

have a nice day! :)

The Godfather effect

2011-02-28T11:48:00.000-08:00

Godfather lives in our heart and soul. Its a guy thing!! We all love Marlon Brando and at some point of our life have tried to be him. In today's tutorial I'll teach you how to make the LEGENDARY godfather poster. Its one of the easiest tutorial of my blog.
You can use any image of your or any celerity image(George Clooney in this case) but give preference to the one in which the person is suited on in a tuxedo.
FINAL IMAGE PREVIEW

Step 1
open the image you want to edit

Step 2
Remove the background of the image by selecting it and deleting
Now: Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrasts
increase the brightness and contrasts to such a level that the image become less vibrant.

Step 3
Image > Adjustment > threshold
set the threshold level as such that the image remains clean as follows

Step 4
Now to soften the image:
Filter > blur > gaussian blur
keep it as low as 0.4

Step 5
Get the brush tool. Set its hardness to 0 and with foreground color as black draw the outline for the image. This may turn image a little shaggy at this point of time but you soon will realize its importance

Step 6
We now will open the original godfather poster image which can easily be downloaded from google image search for reference and for the godfather logo.

Step 7
Open a new page in photoshop with the height same as the height of your image and width approx double the height.
In the new page, fill it with black and paste your image at the left side. Copy the godfather logo from the original poster and paste it on the left side. For the specific DON CORLEON effect select the red rose from the original poster, copy it and paste in on the new page, Place the rose above the breast pocket of your image and the image is complete.

Hope you all enjoyed making your own godfather poster! Keep following for more easy and interesting tutorials.

Colorful bars wallpaper

2011-02-27T03:22:00.000-08:00

Today I'll teach you how to make a colorful bar wallpaper all by yourself. No other image is used in this tutorial. A perfect creation!
FINAL IMAGE PREVIEW

Step 1
Create a new page. File > New.. or Ctrl+N. Set the image pixel size as per your monitors resolution
(1280X800) in my case.

Step 2
Add clouds to the main layer with black as the foreground color.
Filter > Render > Clouds

Step 3
Now apply the Mezzotint effect on the clouds.
Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint

this is how the image will look after the mezzotint effect is applied:

Step 4
Now go to: Filter > Blur > Motion Blur
and keep the following settings:

Step 5
Now create a new layer: Ctrl + Shift + N
select the gradient tool and in the gradient editor make a multicolored gradient. The gradient
made should contain as much distinct colors as possible for the vibrant look.

once the gradient is made, fill it in the new layer with the "linear gradient" selected to get the following:

Step 6
In the Blending Mode select "Multiply" for the New Layer over the original cloud layer to get the following
effect

Step 7
In the layer panel click on "create new fill or adjustment layer" present at the bottom of the panel.
A pop up menu will appear, select "Curves"
In Curves dialogue box select "Medium Contrast (RBG)"

Step 8
Again go to "Create fill or new adjustment layer" and select "Brightness/Contrast.."
increase the brightness and the contrast such that the image gets more distinguished bars

Step 9
Create a new layer. Select it completely using the rectangle marquee tool.
Now on the selected layer: Right click > Fill.

Step 10
Now go to the blending options for the black filled new layer and keep following settings:

After applying the blending the image will look like:

Step 11
Now comes the text part. For this create a new layer. Using the rectangle marquee tool make a selection patch on the new layer.
Now right click on the marching ant selection of the new layer and select fill. Fill it with black and reduce the opacity of the layer.

Step 12
Move the Black patch layer as per your choice. I placed it at the bottom on the image to give the
image a clean look.
Now select the type tool. Type your text and apply your desired font. After that click on the blending
options for the text layer.
In the Blending options dialogue box select "Bevel and Emboss" and apply following settings:

Step 13:
Finalize the position and colors of the text and the image is complete.
You can make the lines more distinct by selecting the cloud layers and applying the "Motion Blur" with
same setting for quite more time. Shortcut to do that is: Select the cloud layer and press Ctrl+F as many
times as the need is felt.
(NOTE: Ctrl+F will work in this case cause the last filter effect applied by us was motion blur. Its not a
shortcut for motion blur, rather its a shortcut for last applied filter.)
FINAL IMAGE

Creating a water color wallpaper

2011-02-26T02:27:00.000-08:00

FINAL IMAGE PREVIEW Let us start off by creating a canvas of 1920X1200 pixels, in RGB mode. I found a picture of Jim Morrison (you can obviously use any of your favourite characters, or your own picture for that matter). Copy and paste the image into canvas. Use transform and scale it to fit our canvas by holding down the Shift-Key. This keeps the original aspect ratio of the image and it does not look stretched.


Even though the picture I am using here is a small resolution one, it will not matter much since I will be using some filters that will remove any sort of pixelation. Adjust Brightness/Contrast and then duplicate the layer.
Apply Watercolor filter from filter gallery to the duplicated layer. Name this duplicated layer as "Watercolor Filter".


Select the original layer and NOT the "Watercolor Filter". Go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold. Name this original layer as "Threshold Effect".


Set the Blending mode to Multiply, and merge both, "Watercolor Filter" and "Threshold Effect" layers. So, we now have a "Merged Layer".




Get to the "Merged Layer". Select and copy the image into the layer. Add a Layer Mask to "Layer 1". Alt + click on the layer mask, and you will see the canvas is in white. Paste the image here, and Ctrl + I to invert the colors. This way, the layer mask hides the Blacks, and reveals the Whites. Click back onto the layer and we can see our image.
Open any water color splash image easy available on google image search and cascade it in any window.

Use some paper texture from net and set it to Linear Burn mode.


Clone some areas in the "Layer 1" using the Clone Tool. This makes the image look more complete.


Finaly, add some more watercolor splashes and add a fancy text, oriented like what I have in this image below. Now you have an abstract watercolor design. You can use your creativity and innovate more on this effect. Hope you had fun in this tutorial!

Easy way to create an attractive typograph

2011-02-25T02:26:00.000-08:00

Today I'll teach you how to make an attractive typographs in a very less time.
FINAL IMAGE PREVIEW

Step 1
Create a new document at 1200 x 800 pixels with a resolution of 72dpi. Start off by importing all of your vector designs separately into a Photoshop canvas. In this case we divided our vectors into 3 separate smart objects and dragged them into the Photoshop canvas.

Step 2
Hide all vectors and create a new text box. In this case I typed out the name of our company, "Ps Essentials". The font we chose was "Tahoma". Keep your font in full caps, especially if your using this one! Continue to copy/paste your text across the text box.

Step 3
Continue to copy/paste the text until it fills the entire canvas. Stretch the box out using the text tool until it expands beyond the canvas size.

Step 4
Once the text box is filled completely with the copy begin to rotate the box clockwise in about a 45 degree angle.

Step 5
Rasterize the text layer and hide it. Make the vector layers visible now. Hold ctrl and click on any of the vector layers so that the vector outline gets selected. Hide the vector layer and unhide + select the rasterized text layer so that a marching ants outline of the vector gets selected on the text layer.

Step 6
Cut the selected area and paste it on a new layer. Position the new layer in such a way that it gets matched to the original position of the cutted portion. For the new layer: Blending options > Color overlay. Overlay the layer with and color of your choice so that it looks good with the background (white in our case)

Step 7
Do the same with your other vector objects and overlay them with different colors to give the typography a vibrant look.

Step 8
Create a new layer and place it on the top of all the other layers. For this layer: Blending Options > Gradient overlay.
select the following settings to give the image a final look

Step 9
flatten the image to make it in-editable.
FINAL IMAGE

have a nice day! :)

Make your own grunge wallpaper

2011-02-24T07:58:00.000-08:00

In this post i will teach you to make a grunge wallpaper.
FINAL IMAGE

For this we need two pictures- one human (kurt cobain in my case) and any grunge texture from net.

Step 1
use eraser tool to delete the background of your face image.

Step 2
use background eraser tool with following settings to provide perfection to image

image after using background eraser tool:

Step 3
apply threshold to the face image layer such that only the basics of the face can be observed

Step 4
drag the grunge texture image into the face image such that the grunge layer is beneath the face layer

Step 5
Select the face layer and in the blending layer options click on the "vivid light" effect.

Step 6
apply "Gaussian Blur" to the image in order to provide the image some smoothness.

Step 7
after this add any text you want on the image using type tool and the tutorial is complete.

How To Turn a New Photo Into an Old Photo

2011-02-23T13:43:00.000-08:00

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial i will show you how to turn a new photo into an old photo.

FINAL IMAGE PREVIEW

Step 1

Start by opening photo. Go to Image > Image size to reduce photo size to 1000px width and 750px height.

Step 2

We are going now to create noise effect. Create new layer, press D to set up foreground and background colors as black and white and then apply Filter > Render > Clouds.

Step 3

After that apply Filter > Noise > Add Noise with next presets:

Step 4

Change layer mode to Soft Light for this layer.

Step 5

Now we are going to create light sepia effect. For this purpose I created new layer above and fill it with color of #e6e1cc.

Step 6

Then change layer mode to Color and you should get next effect.

Step 7

After that create additional layer with Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels:

And set up following levels presets:

Step 8

To add scratches to the photo create new layer, press D to set up foreground and background colors as black and white and then apply Filter > Render > Clouds again.

Step 9

Apply Filter > Render > Fibers:

Step 10

Now apply Image > Adjustments > Threshold:

Step 11

Now apply Image > Adjustments > Threshold:

Step 12

Apply again Filter > Blur > Blur More.

Step 13

Change layer mode to Soft Light and you will see the difference.

Step 14

Reduce layer opacity to 70%.

Step 15

Create a new layer. Select Gradient Tool, select some appropriate colors, for example colors of #e5e5e5, #000000 and drag a radial gradient.

Final Image

After that change layer mode for this layer to Overlay and tutorial is complete.