Rather than focusing on WHAT you want to accomplish while editing images with Adobe Photoshop, it’s better to focus on HOW to accomplish it.

The idea of “layers” and what exactly they do is often difficult to grasp until you know how to use and edit them properly. So, the idea of a “layer mask” can be even more strange, but learning the foundation of masking with Photoshop and applying it to a practical situation is one of the first steps in becoming proficient with the software.

While there are many tools that enable you to make selections in Photoshop, this tutorial will introduce and give guidance specifically on the “magnetic lasso tool”. Making good selections/paths goes hand-in-hand with using a layer mask so the two techniques will be discussed simultaneously in this beginner’s tutorial.

Recommended Software:

• Mac OS X 10.5+, or Windows XP+
• Photoshop CS or higher

I’m a fan of hands-on learning and real-world application examples so this lesson will provide detailed instructions on the process of selective coloring or ‘selective de-saturation’. The technique of selective coloring is a popular one and typically is performed to help draw attention to certain subjects or aspects in a photo. While the end-result of this tutorial can undoubtedly be accomplished more quickly and easily using other methods, the idea of this lesson is to explore and understand the fundamentals of two Photoshop building blocks.

Example of image prior to Selective Coloring Technique discussed in this tutorial

Example of image after performing Selective Coloring Technique discussed in this tutorial

To begin, open up the image you want to manipulate in Photoshop. I recommend editing at the largest size/resolution possible and then down-sizing later if necessary but a high resolution image is not required.

First thing to do is duplicate your ‘Background’ layer. With your background layer selected, press Command J (or CTRL J on your PC). Alternatively you can right-click on the background layer and click Duplicate Layer. You Layer’s palette should now look similar to the image shown right.

At this point we’re ready to select the portion of the photo that will remain in color. Select the Magnetic Lasso Tool from the tools palette, location indicated below.

Locate the Magnetic Lasso Tool

Once you’ve got the Lasso tool selected check the tool’s settings in the dialouge bar above the image pane, displayed below:

Middle of the road settings for Magnetic Lasso Tool

The settings shown above are a happy median but adjust the ‘Contrast’ and ‘Frequency’ numbers as you see fit. In essence what the Magnetic Lasso does is samples the area you’re outlining and automatically snaps to the main ‘subject’ based on different contrast in the surrounding pixels – try it out for yourself to get a better understanding. Your initial outline should be fairly clean but it will take some fine tuning.

To begin making a selection on your TOP layer, loosely go around the subject that will stay in color with the Magnetic lasso. Once you’ve got your basic selection, (shown above) you can refine it a bit. To do so, get out the regular Lasso or Poly-Lasso (or keep the magnetic lasso if you prefer). If there is an area that you want to add to your selection hold the SHIFT key and outline that area. If there is an area you do not want in your selection hold the ALT/OPTION key and select the undesired area and it will be removed.

Spending a little extra time on getting the selection clean makes a big difference but it does not need to be perfect.

With the subject selected, save your selection so you can get it back easily incase you make a mistake. To do this, go to Select > Save Selection … Pictured below:

Save selection from Magnetic Lasso Tool

Give the selection a name or number and click save.

Press Command D (CTRL D for PC) to deselect the currently active selection.

Now you can Desaturate your top layer. With the top layer selected (probably called ‘Background copy’ or ‘Layer 1′) Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (I prefer to use the channel mixer and if you’ve got CS3 use the “Black & White” feature instead of denaturation).

Now we can add a layer mask. With your top layer active, click the Add Layer Mask button, shown below:

Add a mask to top layer in Photoshop

(You’ll see a little white box come up on your top layer in the pallete, thats your “mask”.)

Now go to your Channel’s Pallete – it’s location varies depending on your version of Adobe Photoshop but if you do not see it, go to Window > Channels.

You should see your saved selection from earlier with the name you gave it – shown below:

Load saved selection from channels palette

While holding the Command(CTRL for PC) key click the little thumbnail of your outline. This will make your selection active again.

Now go back to your layers pallette, make sure your top layer is active and click on the white box in your top layer pallete. This makes the mask active. Shown below:

Select layer mask in layers palette

Press D on your keyboard to get the default Black and White colors active in your colors pallete, then press X on your keyboard to make sure that your foreground color pallete is WHITE. Now hit B on your keyboard or select your brush from your tools. Size it accordingly and begin painting within your selection. You should see the bottom layer start to come through. White REVALS the bottom layer and paint black HIDES the bottom layer. So if you accidentally bring too much back from your bottom layer, simply switch to black and paint the top layer back in.

Painting mask in progress:

Painting layer mask within created selection

If you want the background of the picture to be blurred, select your bottom layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur…. but becareful, too much blur action looks pretty corny.

Here’s the selective color with a slight BG blur:

End result after using layer mask and lasso tool

Anytime you’re going to be posting your pictures on the internet its a good idea to add your name/watermark/copyright to help deter people from stealing them and its a good form of “advertising” for yourself/website. And anyone who has processed photos for web-use knows how redundant it can get, thankfully Photoshop has a feature to help automate some of your everyday routines. This feature is called ACTIONS.

One important thing to remember when creating a new action is that you literally have to do things STEP-BY-STEP, and be very tedious in adjusting certain parameters to ensure that Photoshop knows the EXACT task you are trying to perform. This concept will make more sense if you play your action later on and it behaves strangley

Your Action’s palette is usually close to or attached to your History Pallette(To make active: Window>Actions).

Open up the photo you will add a border/signature to. Make sure it has been properly sized.

On your Actions Pallette, create a NEW SET(click folder icon), name it accordingly(My Watermarks in this case):

New Set active:

Within your new set, create a NEW ACTION:

name it accordingly, click RECORD:

From this point forward, every task you perform within photoshop will be recorded. Keep this in mind while creating any new action.

Lets start off by stroking the picture to give it a small border, hit Command-A(CTRL-A on PC), or click Select>All. Do NOT use the marquee tool to select the picture. Now go to EDIT > Stroke… Type in 3 for the size, position should be INSIDE, and select the color you want to use – Black works best in most cases. click ok. IMPORTANT: Even if the color you want to use is already selected when the dialouge box first opens, you must RESELECT that color before continuing.

With your picture selected go to Image > Canvas Size. Click the Box next to the word Relative and enter the desired canvas extension. I would reccomend anything between 20px-50px but use your best judgment. Ensure that both value are the same unless you want a mis-proportioned border. Dont Click OK just yet, click on the drop down menu that Says “canvas extension color”, CHOOSE A COLOR instead of ‘Foreground’ or ‘Background’ color(if you choose foreground or background your canvas extension color will be based on whatever colors are currently active in your Bg/FG color palettes. Click OK.

Lets add a final border….Now make your entire image(including your new white canvas extension) active, Command-A or Select > All, then go to EDIT > Stroke, Size 5px is usually good and remember to select your color even if the dialouge box opens up with the color you want already active. Click OK.

Now Deselect the image, Command-D(CTRL-D on pc) or Select > Deselect.

Click on your Type tool or press T on your keyboard. Adjust the type settings! Make sure you select each parameter and change EACH one even if its already how you want it. Change: Font, Size and Color. Click on the image with your type tool active and enter the desired text(name, website, © info, email, etc.) Once you’ve add your type go to your actions pallette and click on the STOP recording button.(You will usually need to reposition the text layer for each picture but thats easy to do). If you decide later on that you dont want certain instances in your action set you can deselect/delete them and they will not be performed.

TO PLAY YOUR NEW ACTION: Open up your image, go to your Actions palette, select your desired ACTION(not the folder!), and click PLAY.

Thats it! You’ve created an action that will save you lots of time. I have a handful of borders and watermarks that I use and am constantly changing them up. This, often-overlooked , feature in Photoshop can streamline your workflow and improve overall effeciency.

It will probably take a few attempts to get the whole idea of how an action works down but once you’ve got it figured out you can create actions for everything from borders to actual photo enhancements. Next PS tutorial will be creating an action to CORRECTLY re-size photos for the web and Batch Processing… keep an eye out for those.

Apple’s “Time Machine” is a highly effective and user-friendly back-up program that allows you to not only easily back up your hard drive but allows you to go back to EXACT instances and recover files. From Apple.com:

“Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.”

Objective: Divide (Partition) an external hard drive to be used for TWO separate Apple computer’s utilizing Mac’s Time Machine Backup feature.

What you need:

• An External Hard drive big enough to support both (or all) of your existing hard drives. In my case both of my machines have 250 GB Hard drives so I opted to buy a 500 GB Western Digital ‘My Book’.
• Mac OS X 10.5.2 or Higher
• Two or more Apples/Mac Computers

Getting Started ….

One thing that I ALWAYS do before I backup my data is to go back through all of my files and make sure that everything is in order, in tact and looks nice and tidy. Although this is not necessary I do recommend it.
Plug in your external hard drive.
Open up your DISK UTILITY. If you dont know where this is you should (spotlight it).

Now click on the Partition Tab (Shown below)

Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X to create partitioned hard drive

Partition Interface in Disk Utility:

Specifying Volume Scheme and Journal Format Type for Partition

Any and ALL data saved on your hard drive will be deleted when you partition it!

Make sure you save this data elsewhere if you wish to keep it.
Now open up Time Machine. Click Change Disk…. Select the corresponding partition that you just created. Click OK and time machine will begin backing up your data. This will take some time depending on how much information you have stored on your hard drive.

Time Machine working:

Mac Time Machine Syncing with Partitioned External Hard Drive

Now you can Eject the hard drive. On your second machine, open up Time Machine and select the OTHER partition that you created and click okay.

Please feel free to leave comments, feedback, questions, etc.

Things you’ll need:
ESata Cable
Esata Expresscard(Unless of course your computer has an Esata port built-in)
Hard Drive with Esata connection

Just like any other piece of technology, you can find Esata Express Cards at many different resellers and there are a number of available brands. They range anywhere from $15-$100(and probably more in some cases). Being that I’m forced to eat Top Ramen 6 days out of the week, I opted for the cheapest card I could find – The PNY Express Card eSata II – 2 Port. I purchased this card(pictured below) for $20 at a local Best Buy – happened to be the last one on the shelf, not a regularly stocked item according to the salesperson.

The packaging is VERY misleading. It says absolutley nothing about being compatible with Mac OS X and lists system requirements as being Windows XP or Vista only. Thats a ‘lie’… In fact the included CD comes with a driver – in a folder labeled as being Mac OS X. Why they don’t note this on the packaging is beyond me. (Alternatively the driver is available at Silicon Image’s site.) The driver from SI and the driver that comes on the PNY CD are exactly the same! I would recommend checking SI’s site just in case they update the software and release a new version though.

If you are running OS X 10.5.1 its ideal that you upgrade to 10.5.2 as Apple has made some changes which effect how the express card slot and corresponding device(s) communicate. If you’ve already got 10.5.1 upgrading to 10.5.2 will be free as its just an updat e- not an upgrade. This is not completely necessary but I highly suggest it. If you are unsure as to what OS you’ve got click on the Apple in the upper left hand portion of your screen and click on “About this Mac…”, A dialog box will pop up and tell you what OS version you’ve got. Additionally, on the same Apple menu if you click ‘Software Update’ it will allow you to view and install the latest updates.

As of February 2008 Western Digital released an updated driver for the MyBook Hard Drives that address some compatibility issues with Leopard. In short, people who were using eSata connections were getting transfer speeds comparable to USB 2.0. The new driver patches this problem and is available for free download from their site. Click here for Driver. NOTE: not all hard driver manufactures have updated drivers avaliable. If you are having problems and not using a WD drive check the maker’s site for new drivers or Google it

Okay, now that we’ve got our driver’s up-to-date we are ready to start plugging hardware in. Slide the Express Card into its corresponding slot on your Macbook Pro. (Left side of the computer, oval shaped opening with a door that flips down.)

Push the card all the way in, it will click into place – (To remove the card press it inward and it will release, allowing you to pull it back out – Remember to power the card off before removing!)

With your card inserted you’ll notice a little icon pop-up on your top toolbar tray(next to the time/battery info/etc). Click on it and it should read something similar to: “Silicon Image, Sil 3132 Satalink controller”, and gives you an option to power it down. If it says ‘unknown’ you need to reinstall your driver or check to make sure that you’ve got the latest version.

Now you can plug your Esata cable in- I also purchased this item from Best Buy, for about $10 , also PNY brand, 6′ long- to the back of your Hard Drive. The cable only goes in one way. Once you’ve got it hooked up to your Hard Drive, you can plug the other end into your express card, either slot will work.

Your Hard Drive should power up once you’ve plugged in the Esata cable, if it doesn’t just turn it on manually.

Thats it! If you’ve got the correct software installed and the connections snug you’re ready to start getting some real use out of your hard drive.

What good would it be if I just posted pictures and wrote about how cool this eSata/Express Card combo is? Probably not very… So I’ve bench tested the new setup and also tested a few other storage devices(labeled accordingly in image below).

The results are pretty self-explanatory(click image for larger view). Its like using a completely different Hard Drive, quieter than it was before and the speed is outstanding. Browsing folders with lots of pictures/videos/etc – even in ‘cover-flow’ style finder – is just amazing. Night and day difference and makes backing up and archiving a quick task. … of course it works awesome with time machine in case you were wondering! -(Click here See how I partition the same HD for use with two mac’s – both running time machine)

Well worth the ~$30, not to mention Best Buy came in handy for once!

Please feel free to leave comments, questions and suggestions.

Design Features and Overview

In typical Apple fashion, the Magic Trackpad has a slim, industrial and cohesive design – the sleekness of the trackpad lends itself to being a beautiful companion next to Apple’s Wireless and wired keyboards. The surface of the trackpad, as described by Apple, is “touch-friendly and wear-resistant glass” – the same type of finish as found on newer Macbook and Macbook Pro trackpads. The surface of the Magic Trackpad is smooth and “comfortable”

Being a Bluetooth powered device means that connectivity is stable and has a ample reach for most usage situations – the only drawback is that the track pad requires batteries(2 AA’s), but it’s hard to even consider that factor as a downside since battery life is strong and a subtle notice will appear on screen when the juice is running low – making it nearly impossible for you to lose a connection due to dead batteries.

Images of Trackpad & the term “Magic Trackpad” are Copyright © 2011 Apple Inc.