Easily Change the Appearance of any Photo in Photoshop

With Adobe Photoshop you can apply all kinds of cool special effects and transform the appearance of photographs,

The following are just a few of the special effects you can do in Photoshop.

Black and White

Everyone loves black and white photography. In the past you had to use separate film if you wanted black and white images. In digital photography all images are typically photographed in color and the converted to black and white on the computer. This means that you can experiment by turning your photos to black and white.

Sepia Tone

Transform your photos into works of art using sepia coloring.

Color/Black and White Mix

Mixing black and white with color has become a popular effect among wedding and artistic photographers. Typically, most of the image will be black and white while only certain objects in the image are in color. This can create a striking effect. You can easily learn this technique in Photoshop and amaze your family and friends with your photo creations.

Drop Shadows

This is an excellent effect to use on text, logos, and graphic art.

Watermark

It is easy with Photoshop to create a custom watermark on your photos.

Soft Focus

Soft focus is a popular effect used by professional photographers for years to enhance portraiture.

Blur the Background

Pictures of people and other objects will really stand out when the background is blurry. Photoshop allows you to only blur certain areas of the image while leaving other areas in perfect focus.

Frame

There are unlimited ways you can put frames around your photos in Photoshop.

Vignette

Vignette is a popular effect that involves a soft fade, usually in oval shape, where the photograph is light in center and fades gradually into the background where it gets darker.

Vibrant Color

By adjusting the saturation you can turn an otherwise dull photograph into a masterpiece of vibrant color. You can even work with particular color channels while leaving others alone.

As you learn Photoshop and start experimenting with adding special effects to your photos you will learn many more techniques as well as different ways to achieve the same effects.

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To learn more about Photoshop join my Photoshop Tutorials Newsletter and then be sure to check out my Photoshop Newbie Video Tutorials

Happy Photoshopping,
David.

Photoshop for Web Designers -- Finally, A How-to Guide!

SitePoint's new guide, The Photoshop Anthology, shows designers how to use Photoshop for creating, optimizing and manipulating web graphics, as well as for designing Web sites.

SitePoint Pty. Ltd. (sitepoint.com), provider of fun, practical, and easy-to-understand content for web professionals, today announced the release of "The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques" by Corrie Haffly.

This comprehensive book answers 101 "How do I?" questions on topics ranging from creating backgrounds, buttons, and text effects, to manipulating images, creating web interfaces, building animations, and more.

Corrie also explains techniques that can greatly improve workflow and make working with Photoshop more efficient, including batch processing and the automation of repetitive tasks.

"We believe the book’s full-color layout and large format (8” x 10”) make this one of the most usable and enjoyable Photoshop titles available," said Mark Harbottle, CEO of SitePoint.

"Every web designer who uses Photoshop to produce web graphics needs a copy of this book. Whether you’re relatively inexperienced, or you already have a host of sites in your portfolio, you’ll find countless useful examples, techniques, tips, and tricks that you can apply immediately to your own designs in this book," notes author Corrie Haffly.

ISBN: 0-9758419-2-0
Page Count: 278
Price: $39.95 USD / $51.95 CDN

Photoshop Elements 5.0 Announced

Adobe today announced Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 software, a major upgrade to their consumer photo editing software.

Photoshop Elements offers new and more flexible ways for consumers to organize files, edit images with ease and share photos in engaging and innovative ways.

Adobe Photoshop Elements allows for quick, one-click fixes to photos with the option of exploring more sophisticated editing techniques.

Read full story here

technorati tags:adobe, photoshop, elements

Layers - The Backbone of Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is not cheap. There are certainly more affordable photo editing software applications available on the Internet but there are reasons why Photoshop is so popular among professional web designers, photographers, and graphic design specialists.

The ability of Photoshop to allow you to work in layers makes otherwise complex designs easy.

If you are learning how to use Photoshop to do your graphic designs than make sure you pay special attention to the section on how to use layers.

To illustrate how layers work imagine you have a piece of paper. This piece of paper is your background. You could leave the background white or paint it any color you wish.

Now, let’s assume you want to add a photograph of a sunset. Your photograph of the sunset is on a transparent paper and you lay it over the top of your background. The sunset image is on your first layer.

Now, let’s assume you want to add some text. Your text is on another sheet of transparent paper and you lay it over the top.

This is your second layer.

You can add as many layers as you wish. You can also change the order of the layers. For example, if you decide you want the text layer to be behind the sunset layer you can move the layers easily with a few clicks of the mouse.

This is essentially the same way you create graphics and complex images in Photoshop.

The beauty of layers is that if you decide for instance that you don’t want a sunset and you would rather have an image of a beach you can simply delete the sunset layer and add an a new layer for the beach image without disturbing the background or the text layer.

Working in Photoshop with layers allows you to experiment without fear of damaging your original image. Layers also allow the user to make changes without disrupting other elements of the image.

To learn more about Photoshop join my Photoshop Tips and Tricks Newsletter and then be sure to check out my Photoshop Newbie Tutorials

Happy Photoshopping,
David.

Photoshop File Formats: "A File Format for Every Occasion"

As you learn and become more familiar with Adobe Photoshop you will likely notice that Photoshop allows you to save images in many different formats or file types.


Having a working knowledge and understanding of these different image formats is essential to making the most of your digital photo projects. While they are many different image types the following is a description of the most common file types you will use when working in Photoshop.

- Digital Image File Formats

PSD

If you use Photoshop for your digital photo editing then PSD is probably the most important file format that you need to know. A PSD file is a Photoshop file format and is your best option when working on digital photos for two main reasons.

First of all, PSD files allow the user to work in layers and channels and save work being done without compressing the layers. This of course usually results in a large file size.

Secondly, PSD files do not lose image quality as you work on images because there is no compression when the file is saved resulting in lost data. It is always best to save your work as a PSD file until your image is finished and then you can save into the format most appropriate for your project.

JPEG

JPEG, which stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, is one of the most common and well known file formats. JPEG files are good for web use as well as a variety of applications due to their small file size. Due to compression JPEG images loss data (image quality) each time change the file is saved.

GIF

GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, is a popular file format for web use and other Internet applications. These files are typically small in size and load quickly in Internet browsers. GIF files are limited to a maximum of 256 colors.

TIFF

TIFF, or Tagged Image File Format, are high quality images but are not really used that often and are not good for Internet use.

Although there are more file formats than we have listed here these are the formats you will want to use in your Photoshop photo editing projects. For the most part, the only formats you will use on a regular basis are PSD, JPEG, and GIF.

To learn more about Photoshop join my Photoshop Tips and Tricks Ezine and then be sure to check out my Photoshop online video tutorials - for Newbies.

Regards,
David.

Photoshop... and Black And White Photography

In its ongoing efforts to educate photography enthusiasts and snapshooters about digital photography, Adorama has just published a guide to shooting black-and-white photos with digital cameras, titled “There’s a darkroom in your digital camera!” (http://www.adorama.com/catalog.tpl?op
=academy&article=082106&refby=press_bw).

While you can convert from color to black-and-white after the fact in an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, the article focuses on the many benefits of shooting the original photo in black-and-white.

Depending on the camera, users can add a sepia tone to their images, use virtual filters to control how light or dark different colors are rendered in black and white, and control contrast and sharpness. The article explains how each feature works.

Read the rest of the article here:

Digital Camera Modes Revive Interest in Black-and-White Photography

technorati tags:photoshop, photography

Retouching and Improving your Photographs ­ Photoshop makes it Possible.

Digital imaging and more specifically Adobe Photoshop as well as other image editing software have revolutionized photography. The advances in digital image manipulation now allow for unlimited possibilities in the area of improving photographs through retouching and restoration.

What types of improvements are possible by retouching photographs with Photoshop?

Blemishes

Embarrassing skin blemishes like acne or scars can easily be removed using the retouching tools available in Adobe Photoshop. You can learn these Photoshop techniques in minutes.

Damage to Prints

The benefits of digital imaging for restoring old damaged or worn out photographs are one of the best reasons to learn Photoshop. Once an old photograph is scanned it can be retouched to remove tears in the paper or water marks. You can also restore colors that have faded over time. Once you have retouched your image and it is like new again it will last forward because digital images do not deteriorate over time like prints.

Closed Eyes

This is one of the most common problems with group photographs. You finally got the entire family together for a family photograph including Aunt Martha only to find that she closed her eyes. Closed eyes are not a problem for a skilled user of Photoshop. You can easily open her eyes and no one will ever know.

Removing unwanted Subjects

Not only can you remove blemishes in Adobe Photoshop but another common use of Photoshop’s retouching capabilities involves removing unwanted people or objects. Old boyfriends can be forever removed from photographs quickly and easily if you know what you are doing.

Retouching photographs has never been easier than it is today. Photoshop and other photographic editing software applications have made it a breeze to open closes eyes, remove blemishes and scars, change colors, restore old damaged photographs and remove unwanted objects.

To learn more about Photoshop join my Photoshop Tips Ezine and then be sure to check out my Photoshop online video tutorials.

Regards,
David.

How do you make your own myspace layout with Photoshop?

"I use Photoshop CS2 and I want to know how to make my own layouts.......usually I go to pimpyour profile.com and use the generator but how do I use a contact box I made in photoshop?"

Yahoo! Answers - How do you make your own myspace layout?

Here's a quick tutorial for you... How to Add Textures to Your Text

Photoshop Tutorial: How to Add Textures to Your Text? Well this a really cool tip, usually used by professionals in Photoshop using a texture filter. You may ...