History of Adobe Photoshop

A PhD student at the University of Michigan by the name of Thomas Knoll began writing a program on his Macintosh Plus to show grayscale images on a monochrome display back in 1987. This program appropriately named ‘Display,’ attracted the interest of his brother, John Knoll, an Industrial Light & Magic employee, who recommended Thomas create it into a full-blown image editing program.

Taking a six month break from his studies in 1988, Thomas collaborated with his brother on the program, which had been renamed ImagePro. Later that same year, Thomas renamed his program Photoshop and negotiated a short-term deal with scanner manufacturer called Barneyscan to distribute copies of the program with a slide scanner; shipping a total of about 200 copies of Photoshop this way.

John, in the meantime, made his way to Silicon Valley and gave a demonstration of the program to engineers at Apple Computer Inc. and Russell Brown, art director at Adobe. Both presentations 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 FEATURES

Adobe Photoshop has strong connections with other Adobe software for media editing, animation, and authoring. Files in Photoshop's originating format, .PSD, can be exported to and from Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Adobe Encore DVD to make professional grade DVDs and make available non-linear editing and special effects services, such as backgrounds, textures, etc, for the Web, film, and television. Photoshop CS largely supports making menus and buttons for DVDs as one such example. Adobe Encore DVD can read as buttons or menus those .PSD files exported as buttons or menus also, needing only layers, nested in layer sets with a cuing format.

Photoshop can utilize the color models RGB, lab, CMYK, grayscale, binary bitmap, and duotone. It has the ability to read and write raster and vector image formats such as: .EPS, .PNG, .GIF, .JPEG, Fireworks, etc. Photoshop also has several native file formats:

• The .PSD (Photoshop Document) format holds an image while supporting most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, color spaces, ICC profiles, transparency, text, alpha channels and spot colors, Clipping paths, and duotone settings. This is different to many other file formats (e.g. .EPS or .GIF) that restrict content to provide streamlined, predictable functionality. Photoshop's positive reputation means that the .PSD format is widely used, and it is supported to some extent by most competing software.

• The .PSB (Large Document Format) format is a newer version of .PSD designed for files over 2 gigabytes. The .PDD (PhotoDeluxe Document) format is a version of .PSD that only supports the features found in the discontinued PhotoDeluxe software.

How to use Photoshop to Match Colors

The Match Color command is not used a lot. If used right though, it can create some spectacular images. The command makes Photoshop evaluate and match the contrast and color of one picture. It then can be applied to another picture to create a great artistic effect. It is also useful for producing the illusion of consistency in a series of photographs in terms of lighting and color. There are as many uses of this function as you can think of as with Photoshop the possibilities truly as endless.

You'll have to tweak this effect to make the image look just how you want it to, but experiment and you'll be surprised by what this command can do. Adobe states that the tool is perfect, but in my experience you will have to adjust it to get the best effect.

For more information go to:

http://www.photoshop911.com/tutorials/match_color.html

How to save underexposed photos

The good news is that dark photos have a lot more data than overexposed photos, so there is a better chance of recovering a decent photo from an underexposed one.

Bright photos blast the screen with light blocking any input with a sheer overload of information. So if you have a photograph that is too dark, you may have a chance of turning it into a decent image.

It should be said that not all shots can be saved. There is an element of luck in the process due to all the factors and variables that effect the process.

The best method to avoid underexposed photos is to alter your camera's aperture settings. Changing your shutter speed and film speed can help too. Does this sound too complicated? Well don't worry, Photoshop was created for the photographer who has better things to do.

So how do you save underexposed photos in Photoshop?

Just go to Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlight. The effect this has on your photo may be too much for you, but you can adjust the settings on the Amount and Tonal Width Sliders until you find just the right look.
This is a basic guide, so if you want more in-depth information on fixing underexposed photographs go to:

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/jennifer/fix-underexposed.html

How to Create a Mirror Image

Photographing products on a glass surface producing a fluid reflection is becoming extremely popular after Apple used it for advertising the iPhone. It gives a fresh,pure look to the product making it appear unique to the market.

Before the digital technology available today, it would require a lot of time and effort to achieve an effect like this. Without modern editing software, you would need to construct a set to prepare for this shot.

The best way to produce this effect is to take a straight shot of the product. If the shot is taken at an angle you will need oblique reversals which is very time-consuming. The product itself will have an impact on how successful this technique is.

Here is a link to a detailed look at how to achieve this effect:

http://www.photoshop911.com/tutorials/reflections.html

Dodge/Burn Tools

The most obvious tools for dodging and burning are the Dodge and Burn tools. Choose Dodge to lighten and Burn to darken. Options include Range and Exposure.

Range - Here you can choose Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights. Dodging and burning will emphasize these tones.

Exposure - Here you can determine the strength of the dodge/burn tools. Default is 50%.

You can retrace to build up dodge/burn effects in a painterly fashion. The default exposure of 50% works well in this regard. Excessive dodging or burning can be undone with Ctrl-Z (undo) or backing up to a previous version in the History palette.

The Dodge and Burn tools change image pixels. This makes it difficult to undo or make changes at a later date. Although you can control range and exposure, the controls are somewhat primitive. You cannot, for example, increase or decrease contrast.

Why do your prints look different from the images on your screen

Your monitor is only accurate if you have calibrated it using a monitor calibrator. These are relatively inexpensive devices now and are easy to use. Adobe Gamma comes packaged with Photoshop and is relatively easy to use. When you adjust the image colors on a calibrated screen you will be confident that it actually needs adjusting. A good print service provider should now be able to provide you with prints that are very similar to the images that appear on your screen.

Special Thanks to the Owner of the Product

Most of us have heard of the "easter eggs" in Microsoft products. But were you aware they exist in most Adobe products as well?

Open adobe photoshop 6 (and above). Click on Help and then About Photoshop. Wait until the credits start moving. Either wait, or click Alt until it says:"Extra special thanks to (name of the licensed user), one of our favorite customers."

Create an image with a transparent background

By default, most images in Photoshop open up with a solid (usually white) background color. When you "delete" pixels, you'll be changing them to white. In order to create an empty background, you'll need to use layers.

To make the background of an image transparent, open the image for which you want to change the background. Note that the Layers palette has a single layer, "Background."

In the Layers palette, press Option/Alt and double-click the Background layer. This will change that layer into a "real" Photoshop layer that can deal with transparency. Note that the word "Background" in italics has been replaced by the non-italic "Layer 0." If you don't press Option/Alt when double-clicking, you'll get a dialog box that allows you to change the name of the layer when creating it.

Using any combination of selection tools (the Magic Wand/Lasso combination tends to work the best), select the background of the image.

If you want to add a semi-soft edge to the image, choose Select>Inverse to choose the image, choose Select>Feather and then enter a value such as 1 or 2 pixels in the Feather Selection dialog box. This will soften the edge of the image so that there won't be jaggies between the background and the image. After feathering, choose Select>Inverse again so that the background, and not the image, is selected.

Press the Delete (or Backspace) key on your keyboard. The background will be removed. When you save the image for placing in another Creative Suite application, be sure to save it as a .psd image so that the transparency is preserved.

Click Here To Read More Information And Get All The Latest Tips On Photoshop.

Exporting layers to individual files

Occasionally, you'll come across or create a Photoshop file that has several layers. You can extract a single layer or many layers to use as individual images.
To export layers to files, open the Photoshop file that has images on different layers that you'd like as individual files. Choose File>Scripts>Export Layers to Files.

In the Export Layers To Files dialog box that appears, enter a name in the File Name Prefix text box. This name will be the prefix for each of the files.

Click the Run button, and each layer will be exported as an individual file.

Adobe Delivers Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Beta

Press Relsease: SAN JOSE, Calif. - April 2, 2008 - Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta, a public preview of new and improved functionality to be delivered in the next major release. Lightroom is the professional photographer’s essential toolbox, providing one application for managing, adjusting, presenting large volumes of digital photographs. Lightroom 2.0 beta will feature enhancements such as dual-monitor support, localized dodge and burn correction and will be the first Adobe application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 Intel Macs and Microsoft Vista 64-bit operating systems.

Eliminate Dark Circles

Ever have a subject look like they had a late night? Are dark circles a permant part of some of your photos? Here is a great video tutorial on how to eliminate those dark circles:

Screen Blending Mode

Photoshop has many different ways of blending layers. Different blending modes determine how the pixels on one layer effect the pixels on other layers beneath it. The Screen blending mode is available with all the other blending modes on the layers window. Screen blending mode brightens the underlying layers depending on how bright the screened layer's pixels are. If the screened pixel is black, it will look completely transparent. A white pixel will be white. A screened black layer can be used to add lens flares and other bright things to a picture with the option to remove, filter or fade them.

Brightening Dark Shadows

To brighten up those dark shadows in your photograph all you do is go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > SHADOW/HIGHLIGHT and move the top slider to the right.

Hint: reset the defaults to have the amount at 0 each time you call up this adjustment.