photoshopuser_september2022

The complexities of Photoshop will eventually seem less daunting as you become more familiar and confident with the large array of tools available. There is also no doubt that over time, you will default to a certain number of core tools and techniques

that matches your workflow. It is always good form to step out of your comfort zone now and again and try something new. Let’s continue the learning process in this issue. While you’re at it, say hello to Photoshop Elements too.

Do more than you thought possible

CompositionsComplex

One of the many benefits of layer-based editing is how you can manage and organise more complicated projects that consist of many layers and adjustments. This means you can work nondestructively by duplicating image elements in order to retain the original source materials and stacking adjustment layers rather than destroying the original pixel data, colour and size of each element. Take a look at our example over the page. It ends up with nine layers to create the final sci-fi image.

ArtSci-fi

Turn friends and loved ones into mechanical beings

It is often the case that as a digital graphic artist, you sometimes have to work with a number of image components and bring them together to make one final image. This means working with your multiple images over many layers with adjustments and masks; it is a good exercise in being able to manage a larger than usual document. Our example uses a collection of foreground and background images as well as

some assets to be used to create a human/cyborg hybrid. This tutorial aims to help you understand a little more about working with many layers and how the order of the various components work as well as masking and adjusting colour, exposure, saturation and layer styles. At the end, you will have a neat little sci-fi image and hopefully learn a few interesting creative tricks along the way.

We have four main components that will be assembled to create the final piece of art. There is our main character base, a secondary character element, a backdrop and a human portrait. For your attempt, you can find many similar images like these for free on sites like Pixabay.com.

We’re using Adobe Bridge to navigate to the folder where the four images are kept. Highlight all four and then go to Tools > Photoshop > Load Files Into Photoshop Layers. They will be put into a new Photoshop document in alphabetical order.

At the moment of course, the order of elements is incorrect. In the layers palette, click and drag the layers to reorder them with ‘face’ at the top and ‘simulant’ below that, then ‘cyborg’ and finally ‘station’ at the bottom of the stack.

For the moment, you don’t need to see the ‘face’ layer yet. Click on the visibility icon to the left of the thumbnail image to turn it off. Now you should see the other three components in their correct order.

First, click on the ‘station’ layer and then go to the bottom of the layers palette and click on the Create A New Layer button. The new layer will be added above the ‘station’ layer you just clicked. Name it ‘mist 1’ and make sure it is active.

Go to the toolbar and select the Brush Tool (B). Use a large soft brush of about 1800 pixels and make sure the foreground colour is white and Opacity is about 50%. Paint white around the cyborg character to create a little mist that separates him from the background.

Add a second new layer called ‘mist 2’ and place this one between the ‘simulant’ and ‘cyborg’ layers. Using the same large white brush, paint around the main character to create some additional separation between the simulant and cyborg characters.

Next you need to create our human/simulant and add a human face to the character on the ’simulant’ layer. Go back to the ‘face’ layer and click its visibility icon once more to make it visible again.

In order to be able to match the size and positioning of the human face to the simulant character image, reduce the Opacity of the ‘face’ layer to 50%. You will now be able to see the rest of the image below it.

Press Cmd + T to use the Free Transform Tool and move and scale the ‘face’ layer image so the main features such as eyes, nose and mouth roughly match the existing features of the simulant character beneath it. Press Enter to commit the changes you’ve made.

Now you need to make a mask to conceal areas of the human face so it appears to fit exactly over the face of the character on the ’simulant’ layer. Since the facial aperture has some interesting curves, you need to use the Pen Tool and make a path that can then be turned into a selection.

Keep the ‘face’ layer active and go to the Toolbar and choose the Pen Tool (P). Click once on the edge of the simulant suit face area to add an anchor point and then click and drag further along the edge to add another anchor point.

You drag your mouse around and will be able to create a curved line between the two anchor points that you added, that matches the curve of the suit. When you have the curve as you want it, you can release the Mouse button.

You can then move along and add a new anchor point and click and drag that one to continue creating curved areas along the suit face mask. If you don’t want any curves, you can simply click once to add a point and move on and click again to add another.

Using the Pen Tool you can work your way around the face mask until you’ve gone all the way around and come back to where you started. You can click on your starting point to join up the path you’ve created.

Go to the Paths tab above your layer stack and click on it. You will see the path you’ve just drawn as a Work Path. Below are a number of icons. Click on the Load Path As Selection to convert the path to a selection. You will see marching ants appear to confirm this.

Go back to your Layers tab and make sure the ‘face’ layer is still active, go to the bottom of the layers palette and click on the Add Layer Mask button. A mask will be added in the shape of the selection.

You can now return the Opacity of the ‘face’ layer to 100% and only the area inside the face mask can now be seen. Everything else outside the selection is hidden by the mask you just added. You may notice that the human face isn’t quite wide enough to fit the face mask.

Between the ‘face’ layer thumbnail and the mask thumbnail is a small chain link icon. When visible, it means that any move, scale or adjustment to the image will also affect the mask. Click the chain link icon so the image and the layer mask are independent of each other.

Make sure the ‘face’ thumbnail is active and go to Filter > Liquify (Shift + Cmd + X). The Liquify panel will open and you can use the Forward Warp Tool (W) to stretch out the edge of the girl’s face.

Work around the edges of the face by the cheeks and chin. You won’t need to stretch it out too far. Make sure the lips, eyes and nose are unaffected by the stretching. When you’re happy, you can click OK to apply the Liquify effect.

When you return to the document, her face will have been warped so now there is no gap along the side of the face mask. Now you need to better blend her face into the face mask give her flesh the appearance of being less human and more synthetic.

Keep the Layer Style panel open and go down to the Blend If section and the white furthest right slider on This Layer. Alt + left-click on the left-hand side of the stop and it will separate into two pieces. Click and drag the left-hand part of the slider to the left.

When you do, you will see how the ‘face’ layer blends much better with the brightest areas of the white face on the layer below. Do the same with the furthest left slider on Underlying Layer and slide it a little to the right to blend the darker areas.

Double-click the ‘face’ layer and you will call up the Layer Style panel. Start by checking the Inner Shadow button and use the settings shown to add a small shadow that makes the human face look more a part of the mask.

You can also check the Bevel & Emboss button and use the settings shown to add a small bevel to the edge of the face mask to give it a more solid feel. Next, you need to blend the human face into the white simulant face below.

In the options menu above, click the Add To Selection button. Click and hold on the centre of one eye and then press the Alt key, you can now draw an ellipse outwards from the point you clicked. Encircle the iris. Then do the same for the other eye.

The lips and both eyes are now selected. You need the mask to only let the Hue/Saturation layer affect them so you need to invert the selection by going to Select > Inverse (Shift + Cmd + I). The selection will invert, so everything except the eyes and lips are selected.

Next, click the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer button and choose Hue/Saturation from the dropdown list. This will add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the top of the layer stack. You can use this to colour her eyes and lips to match her suit.

Go to the toolbar and choose the Lasso Tool (L) and draw around her lips; when you join back up to the start point, you’ll have a selection of the lips. Next, go to the toolbar again and this time choose the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M).

Set your background colour to black and then simply hit the delete key. The inverted selection will be replaced with black. The mask should now display the lips and both eyes as white on the black mask. the selection by pressing Cmd + D.

Click on the Hue/Saturation layer icon and in its Properties panel make sure Colorize is checked and make Hue 40, Saturation 60 and Lightness about -5. Both eyes and her lips should now be a golden yellow to match the highlights on her suit.

Combine, create, and enjoy

Photoshop is there to help you make amazing art.

Click the Photo Filter 1 layer to make it active, set its Blend Mode to Darken and drop the layer Opacity to 50%. This blends the green in a more subtle way giving the image a more Matrix-style colour palette.

Your image is complete. By taking a group of elements and assembling them into a great science fiction image. You’ve also used masks, selection tools and adjustment layers to combine and colour grade the various parts.

PhotoshopExploring

To learn every toolbox item, technique or adjustment in Photoshop may seem like an insurmountable task. It’s part of the reason we’ve split up the tutorials in order to keep them manageable. Don’t worry though, you’ll be surprised that how quickly they become second nature with a little practice.

ModifyingSelections

Photoshop has sophisticated tools to refine selections

Photoshop’s standard selection tools: the Marquee, Lasso and Magic Wand, are fine for making basic selections of regular, well defined shapes, but they’re not so good at picking out soft-edged or very fine shapes. One thing in particular, that has always been a problem, is the edge of fine or untidy hair. Take this photo for example:

This model has been photographed in a typical studio setting, with good lighting and against a plain background. Photos like this are used all the time for catalogues, advertising posters and the like.

However, in order to fit these needs the model will have to be separated from the background. With a plain background like this, it would be tempting to use a normal selection tool such as the Magic Wand. However if we try it, what we end up with is something like this:

Modify Selection Border Smooth

Photoshop has other tools to modify a selection which you’ll find, appropriately enough, in the Select menu, under Modify. The options include: Border, Smooth, Expand, Contract and Feather. They’re all relatively simple, but useful nonetheless. We have some examples to show you.

Border converts the single-line selection into a border of the specified width. You can use this selection to create a border around your original selection by using the Paint Bucket tool. Be aware that the border extends an equal amount from either side of your original selection.

Smooth removes the kinks and wrinkles from the line of your selection. It’s useful when you’re selecting smooth-edged objects, but it will round off the corners of any irregular shapes. The larger the value of Smooth Selection, the smoother and less detailed the selection becomes.

MODIFYING SELECTIONS

Select and Mask is very easy to use. Starting with a Magic Wand or Polygonal Lasso selection as close as possible to the edge of the hair, or any other soft edge, click on the Refine Edge button on the tool options bar. In the dialog window that opens, in Edge Definition, check the box marked Smart Radius and use the square brackets keys to set the brush size so that it’s large enough to cover the hazy edge area around the hair. Then simply paint around the edge, overlapping both the model and the background.

When you’ve been around all the edge area that you want to refine, click OK and then wait a few seconds while the program recalculates the edge. As you can see here, the result is a good improvement over the first attempt.

As you can see, the edge around the model’s hair looks terrible. The automatic Magic Wand selection has produced a very jagged edge, because it can’t distinguish between the fine edge of the hair and the background. Fortunately the latest version of Photoshop has a feature called Select and Mask, which is capable of making much finer distinctions.

Expand Contract Feather

Expand, as the name suggests, expands the size of the selection by the specified number of pixels. The larger the value you expand the selection by, the more the detail and shape of your original selection will begin to decrease as it enlarges outwards.

Contract is the opposite of Expand. It shrinks the size of the selection by the specified number of pixels. As with the Expand option, the more you Contract the selection, the more the original selection shape’s detail will become less well defined.

We’ve looked at Feather before. It softens the edge of the selection by the radius set in the dialog box. It’s perhaps the most useful option here, particularly if you’re trying to copy and paste the selection into a background. Unlike Smooth, this creates a soft vignette effect.

Gradient Fill & Paint Bucket

Fill layers and selections with colours, textures and gradients

One very useful facility that Photoshop provides is the Gradient tool. It can fill an area of a layer with a gradual blend between multiple colours. You can choose from a selection of pre-set gradient fills or create your own. It’s a great way to add gradient filters for enhancing photographs, or to create effects

such as vignettes and centre-spot soft-focus. Let’s take a closer look at how it works.

You’ll find the Gradient tool about halfway down the Tool Palette. It has its own unique set of options in the Tool Options bar, the main one being the Gradient Picker, which lets you choose from a list of pre-set gradients.

Like the Brush tools the Gradient has blend modes that let you mix the gradient colour fill with the layer below it in various ways. This is a great way to enhance landscape shots, by using an orangeto-transparent gradient fill in Color mode, as in the example seen here.

Paint Bucket Tool

Photoshop comes with a selection of default pre-set gradients loaded, but there are other packs of gradients available. You can load in these other packs via the Gradient menu. If you open the Gradient Picker you’ll see a list of standard gradient packs beneath the standard presets available to use displayed at the bottom. You can expand each pack to see what is available

Other Gradient tool options include the overall layer opacity, reversing the direction of the gradient colour mix, changing the “dither” of the colour mixing and toggling the transparency.

Below are the main gradient types that you can choose from the tool options bar at the top left of your screen.

If you click and hold on the Gradient tool you’ll find that one of its options is the Paint Bucket tool, which is used to fill an area, a layer, or a selection with a solid colour. In combination with layer transparency and blend modes it’s a great way to add a colour tint or filter to a whole image.

If you use the Paint Bucket on the background layer of your image it will fill in an area of contiguous colour in much the same

way as the Magic Wand tool. To add a tint to a whole image, create a new layer then fill it with the colour. It will fill the whole layer and you can then use layer transparency and blend modes to achieve the effect you’re looking for.

To get this vintage photo effect, we used a sand brown colour, at 100% opacity and a Colour blend mode, which combines the fill colour with the tones and colours of the background image.

USEFUL TIP

Remember that the Paint Bucket uses the same edge detection as the Magic Wand tool. If you want to fill the whole screen, use a new layer.

Next to this is a row of buttons that create different gradient shapes. The default setting is a straight Linear Gradient, but other options include Radial, Angle, Reflected and Diamond shapes. AFTER

The StampCloneTool

USEFUL TIP

Vary brush size by using the open and close square brackets keys and vary brush hardness with the curly brackets.

Remove unwanted elements from your photos

The Clone Stamp tool (also known as the Clone Brush in some programs) is one of the most useful items in your image editing tool kit. Despite recent developments such as Photoshop’s Spot Healing tool and Content-aware fill, it is still the most precise and reliable way to retouch photographs, allowing you to remove unwanted

elements such as dust spots, skin blemishes, lens flare, telephone lines and other intrusive objects from your pictures. Because the process is entirely manual it can be somewhat time-consuming, but the results are often superior to the output of the more modern automatic tools.

BEFORE AFTER

The Clone Stamp works by copying (“cloning”) pixels from a selected target area and placing them over the unwanted objects. Using the Clone Stamp, it is relatively straightforward to remove even quite large unwanted objects from a photo. Our example, taken on a sunny day, is a photo on a beach, deserted except for a lone figure wandering away from camera.

We decided it would be a good demonstration of the power of the Clone Stamp tool to remove the lone figure from the image leaving a pure landscape photograph uncluttered by any sign of human life. This means not only removing the figure, but also her shadow and the footprints that lead out of the bottom of the shot.

Go to your toolbar and select the Clone Stamp Tool (S). For the image we’re working on, a brush Size of about 75 - 100 pixels will be fine. You can make the brush Hardness anywhere between 0% - 20%. We’re going to start with the flag in the lower right corner.

Now move your cursor over the top of the figure, level with your target area from the last step. It is shown as an overlay so you can see what you are about to clone on top of your figure. If you click and drag your mouse across her legs, the sand and sea adjacent to it will be cloned over the top, removing her legs.

Now you can continue to remove her body by sampling an area of the cliff to the left of her and cloning that over the top of the figure’s midriff. Finally, we can remove her shadow and the footprints in the sand using the same techniques we’ve just learned.

Make sure that you have the Aligned option ticked. This means that the sampling area of your brush moves as your brush does, otherwise you will clone the same sampled area repeatedly until you alter it.

You can now choose another target sample to the left of her legs and clone sand from that side over the remaining area of her legs and feet. If you notice any repeated areas that stand out as being cloned, you can choose a new target area and clone in some new sand to keep the pattern random.

The random fractal nature of the sand texture is actually quite useful. Sample an area directly below the long shadow and then clone the sand texture sample on top of it. You can also click on the sand either side of each footprint and use that sampled pixel data to clone out the footprints leading up the beach.

Find an area of sand or sea next to the figure and then press your Alt key. A small target icon will appear. Anything under this target will be your sample to be used as the starting point of the cloning. Left-click your mouse to confirm this as your sample area.

You can now move to her head and body and create a new sample from the cliff and sky to clone over her, as you did with her legs. Again, watch out for obvious repeat patterns as you clone clean areas on top of her body.

Once complete, you can assess the result and if you see any obvious repeating patterns that give the game away, you can simply clone new areas over the offending repeated parts using random sea, sand and sky as needed.

This is your clean target pixel sample.

Sampledpixels Sampled pixels are copied here

Tools Techniquesand

StitchingPanorama

Get the whole of the landscape into one ultra-wide picture

Many digital cameras have a feature known as “Panorama Stitching” or “Panorama Assist” mode. It’s there to help with a particular type of photograph, or rather series of photographs, in which successive shots are taken as the camera is panned across a scene. After you take the first shot, the camera shows the edge of that shot superimposed on the monitor so you can match up the position of features in successive shots, producing a long continuous photo showing an entire panoramic scene. You can also shoot your pan sequence manually, especially if you have a tripod handy to keep the camera level. When it’s done well the results can be breathtaking, but getting a satisfactory result isn’t as easy as it looks.

We’ll use this example of a five-shot sequence taken at a sweeping beach location.

Having downloaded our panorama pictures from the camera into a folder on the PC, it’s time to fire up Photoshop and stitch them together into a panorama. Locate the files on your hard drive and open all of them in Photoshop. If you go to the Window > Arrange menu you can view them all at once in various arrangements. Not essential, but it gives you a chance to make a lastminute exposure check.

In Photoshop you’ll find Photomerge in the File menu under Automate, along with several other automatic processes.

The Photomerge window offers a number of options for how to arrange your panoramic shots. For a simple landscape panorama like this the Auto option should work fine. Click on the Add Open Files button to add the five shots to the Photomerge list and check the top two options and the bottom option to attempt to fill blank areas with the Content Aware tool.

Once you click OK the merging process starts and it is completely automatic. It will take a while to complete, possibly quite a long while if you have a slow computer and/or very large image files.

Once the Panorama has been rendered, you’ll see that there are areas where the program has had to warp the pictures to correct for perspective. This is where the Content Aware Fill tool will have attempted to add something that looks a bit like sky and sea. Depending on how well the fill works, you can always crop out these areas.

USEFUL TIP

If shooting a panoramic sequence manually, always make sure that you have a large enough overlap between each shot you take. For best results, it is advisable to have about 25% of the previous frame visible each time.

You can also use the Crop tool to straighten out any slight tilt in your horizon, but hopefully you won’t need it. The finished result should look something like this.

Soft TechniqueFocus

Adding a soft focus effect gives your portraits a romantic feel

Soft focus is an effect used widely in television and in the movies, as well as in many commercial and advertising photographs, for producing a dreamy romantic look. It’s also a big favourite with wedding photographers. In traditional photography the effect is achieved with a special filter fitted over the camera lens. Many digital cameras now include soft focus as a digital effect, but we can produce the same results in Photoshop with ease, using blur and layer transparency.

The first step is to turn the picture into two identical layers. To do this, go to the Layer menu, and select Duplicate Layer. Don’t worry about naming this layer, it’s the only one we’re going to make.

SOFT

In the Layers palette, set the transparency of the blurred layer to around 60 percent. This lets the still-sharp lower layer to show through, mitigating the effects of the Gaussian blur. If you feel it is too blurred, you can drop the Opacity down to about 70% if you like.

Next, go to the Filter menu, move down to Blur, and select Lens Blur. This is a special type of blurring that can be adjusted to produce certain effects which look more like true photographic lens blur.

YOu may need to experiment with the amount of blurring to produce the soft-focus effect. A radius of 75 pixels is used here. You may need a smaller radius for smaller images, but keep it subtle.

Next, select Inverse from the Select menu to change the selection so that everything outside the ellipse is selected.

We can further enhance the look of the picture by adding an elliptical vignette of further blurring around the subject. This is a technique that portrait photographers have been using almost since the invention of photography. First, select the Elliptical Marquee tool.

Drag an elliptical marquee selection around the portrait subject. This may take a few tries to get right, so use Cmd+D to deselect if you get it wrong. When you’re happy with it, go to the Select menu and click on Feather. Set a radius of about 50-60 pixels.

Now add a Lens blur filter to the selection, giving it a much bigger radius than before; around 100 pixels should do the job.

One final option is to use a soft eraser and erase areas of the blurred layer around your subject’s face to keep it sharp if you prefer.

The Pen Tool and Paths

Draw smooth curved paths with the versatile Pen Tool

The quickest and most common way to make selections is to use the Polygonal Lasso Tool but since that only draws straight lines from point to point it isn’t ideal for making accurate selections around curved edges. Photoshop does have a tool for making smooth curves though, and it’s called the Pen Tool (keyboard shortcutRatherP).than

creating a selection directly like the Lasso Tool, the Pen Tool is used to create a Work Path. A Work Path in Photoshop is a vector graphic outline which can be used for several functions, including shaped text, outline strokes and of course selections. A path consists of straight and curved lines segments connected with points. You can leave a path open to form a straight or curved line, or close a path to form a shape.

Curved path

Bezier control Tangent lineAnchor point

Paths are independent of any particular layer, so you can use the same path to create shapes on more than one layer of an image, and you can copy a path from one image to another.

Using the Pen Tool and Paths effectively is a complicated process that takes a lot of practice to master, but it’s worth the effort, because once you crack it you’ll be able to make smooth curves and selections around almost any shape. If you want to use Photoshop in a professional capacity it’s an essential skill to learn.

USEFUL TIP

If you need to repeat the same selection on multiple layers, save your selection as part of the image. You can then load it in again to save repeating work.

THE PEN TOOL AND PATHS TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

Using the Pen Tool

01 The Pen Tool works by using anchor points which are connected by lines. To draw a curved line, first select the Pen Tool from the Tool Palette.

02 Click with the Pen Tool at three or four points on the line you wish to draw; these are called anchor points, and you’ll see that there are straight lines connecting them.

03 Next, click and hold on the Pen Tool icon, and select the Convert Point Tool. You use this to manipulate the anchor points and control the curvature of the line.

04 Click and hold on any of your anchor points, and drag away from the point. You should see two lines with handles on the ends extrude from the anchor point. This is called a tangent line.

05 If you move the cursor around you’ll see the line linking your anchor points flex and bend. You can use this to bend the line to match the curvature of the edge you’re trying to follow.

06 With practice and patience you can bend a curved line around even quite complex shapes. If you open the Paths palette you’ll see the work path you’ve created appear in the list.

Using the Pen Tool effectively takes some practice and a lot of patience. Here’s the low-down on how it works.

andContrastSaturation

Using curves and blend modes to improve colour saturation and contrast in your digital photos

When you take a digital photo of a scene, you are relying on your camera to be able to capture all the colours and tones that you see. Unfortunately most digital cameras simply aren’t capable of recording the full range of colours and shades that the human eye can see, so your photo of what was a bright and colourful scene may prove to be a bit of a disappointment when you see it on your monitor. Fortunately there are many different ways to improve both contrast and colour saturation, which might help to restore some of the sparkle to your photos. Let’s take a look at some of the alternatives.

As an example we’ll use this snapshot of a lizard. In reality the colour of the scene is much more intense than it looks here, but the digital camera that was used to take the photo was set to a neutral and flat colour mode to capture as much dynamic range as possible. This mode generally leaves images looking a bit pale and lacking contrast and vibrant colour. This shouldn’t be a problem as the shot is well exposed and contains plenty of detail that will suit the increase in saturation.

The simplest way to improve the saturation is by adding a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Like many other parts of the program, Hue/ Saturation has been improved in Photoshop, producing a smoother result than previous versions. If you were to boost the saturation by about +50, you’d restore some of the missing colour, but it’s a scattergun approach and doesn’t offer much fine control. It can also increase noise in shadow areas in JPEG images. Let’s look at more options.

A much more controllable way to adjust both saturation and contrast is to use a Curves adjustment layer. We’ve already looked at Curves in the section on adjusting exposure, but by using Blend Modes we can also use Curves to enhance saturation. In Normal blend mode the curve will change both contrast and saturation. We’re using the same S-shaped curve, which boosts brightness at the upper end of the scale and darkens shadows at the lower end.

By changing the blend mode to Luminosity, the curve will only affect brightness, so an S-shaped enhancement curve will improve contrast, lightening highlights and darkening shadows without affecting colour saturation.

Conversely, by using a Color blend mode, an S-shaped curve will alter colour saturation without affecting brightness, so shadows and highlights are unaffected. This is great to keep noise under control.

Another way to improve saturation is a Photoshop function called Vibrance, which can also be applied as an adjustment layer. Vibrance is a difficult thing to quantify. It is a saturation function, but it works on a graph, affecting the least saturated areas most, and the most saturated areas least. On a picture like this it can help, but it has to be used with contrast enhancement for best effect, which may again cause an increase in noise. This option is less intense than using Saturation. Vibrance is best used when processing a Raw image file.

theInsideEdit you ever happened across photos digital art wondered how it was done? ability to be a great digital artist is within us all thanks to Photoshop and its host of tools techniques. This section will unpick a number of artistic creations and give you a quick low-down on how they were created.

The subtle texture used around the edges has been blended in using the ‘blend if’ function in Photoshop.

SmartWork

Part of what can set you apart as an artist or image manipulator is creating images that are simple yet effective. Take this example. It only uses a couple of elements but is surreal and spooky and can be put together in 30 minutes.

A photographer has made this moody image available on Pixabay and has much promise for an edit.

This image asset has been subtly altered to make it look more alien. The glowing eyes finish it off.

This mono portrait has been coloured quite subtley and a starburst brush used on her forehead.

CreativePhotoshopZone

We start this issue’s creative zone with a couple of water-based projects. Create an underwater scene that you can populate with denizens of the deep and learn how to make some serious liquid droplet effects. We also show you how to add drama to portrait photos and a neat little tip on how to make non-destructive lens flares.

Some lucky people are able to take a camera underwater and capture the beauty of the seabed with all its life and colour. Most of us however, are not able to grab a wetsuit, camera and pressure housing, before diving into crystal clear, blue seas to photograph what’s around us, we can only dream of what it must be like. Fortunately, Photoshop give us the tools to create an underwater scene

from scratch and you don’t even have to get your feet wet. This fun little tutorial will show you how to set up the basic environment into which you can add your favourite marine life. There are a number of websites that offer free images for personal and commercial work so you’ll have plenty of choice. Let’s dive in. BEFORE

How to construct an underwater scene from scratch with Photoshop Create SceneUnderwateran

First, open Photoshop and go to File > New (Cmd + N) to create a new document. In our example, the scene will be 3000 pixels wide by 4000 pixels high, but you can work with whatever size suits you. Next, you are going to need some ocean.

Next, choose the Gradient Tool from the toolbar and click the Gradient Editor in the top left of your screen to open it. Confirm that you have the Foreground to Background option selected as your gradient colour type and then click OK to continue.

Left-click and hold your cursor at the top of the document then drag downwards to the bottom of the page, a vertical line indicates the direction of the gradient. If you hold Shift, you can constrain the cursor to 45-degree increments, if you wish.

Click on your foreground colour in the toolbar and it will open the Colour Picker. Select a nice light blue for your foreground, then click on the background colour in the toolbar and choose a strong, deep blue that contrasts well with the lighter colour.

When you have the start and end point of the gradient ready, let go of the Mouse button to create a gradient that runs from the foreground colour to the background colour. This is your basic ocean and it should be light blue at the top and dark blue at the bottom.

Hit the D key before you proceed to the next step. This will reset your foreground and background colours to the defaults of black for the foreground and white for the background. You will need this for the next step in the process.

Keep the selection you just made active and go to Filter > Render > Clouds. This will fill the selection with a random mottled cloud pattern in black and white. This pattern can be used to mimic the texture of the water’s surface.

In the top File menu, go to Filter > Filter Gallery then choose Plastic Wrap from the Artistic range of filter pre-sets displayed in the righthand panel. From here, make Highlight Strength 20, Detail 1 and Smoothness 15, then click OK to apply the effect to the mottled texture.

Click on the Create New Layer button at the bottom of the layer palette. The new layer will appear in the layer stack where you can name it ‘surface’. We are going to use this layer to create the illusion of the water’s surface as seen from below.

Make sure the ‘surface’ layer is active before you go to the next step. Go to your toolbar and select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), then click and drag to create a selection on the ‘surface’ layer that roughly covers the entire top half.

Your mottled cloud pattern should now have a rippled highlight effect that can be used to emulate the water’s surface. Go to Edit > Free Transform (Cmd + T) and scale the texture so that it occupies approximately one quarter at the top of the document.

If you right-click on the texture whilst the Free Transform tool is still active, you can access a set of additional tools that allow you to shape, alter, rotate and scale the texture. For this tutorial, choose Distort from the Context menu.

Press Cmd + D to clear any active selections then click on the Add Layer Mask button, at the bottom of the layers palette, to add a layer mask to the ‘surface’ layer. We can use this mask to blend out the hard edge of the surface texture.

Go to the toolbar and select the Brush Tool (B), choose a large, soft black brush. Make sure the ‘surface’ layer mask is active (not the image) and paint with your black brush on the mask along the hard bottom edge of the surface texture to blend it out. sure that the ‘surface’ layer is active and then go to the Blend Mode at the top of the layer palette. on it and Dodge (Add) as your blend from the menu. Then the about per

The ’surface’ layer texture you’ve made can also be used to create the seabed. Press Cmd + J to duplicate the ‘surface’ layer and name the resulting copy ‘seabed’. Make sure this is at the top of the layer stack and that it is the active layer.

Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical, to flip the layer upside down. Press V to activate your Move Tool or select it from the toolbar and then drag the ‘seabed’ layer down to the bottom of the image. Feel free to scale and stretch it until you’re happy with it.

Go to Filter > Render > Clouds, then fill the selection with the random black and white cloud texture, as done previously in step 9. Next, we can use a quick, simple little trick to create some convincing atmospheric light rays.

Go to the File menu and choose Image > Adjustments > Threshold, the texture will be reduced to black or white with no grey tones, now adjust the Threshold Level slider until you have a roughly equal amount of black and white areas.

Now, for the addition of some lighting: Create a new layer called ‘sun’ and make sure it is the top layer. Set your foreground colour to white, press B to activate your Brush Tool and then use a large, soft white brush to paint a bright glow on the water’s surface.

Next, create another layer called ‘rays’. From the toolbar, select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and use it to click and drag a selection area that covers the entire top half of the ‘rays’ layer, this is where we’re going to add some more light effects.

First, click and drag the ‘rays’ to the top of the layer stack it the sea creatures. that they are everything in the document, the rays with aquatic friends as they slant the surface of their bodies.

Another little trick to a feeling of on a simple blue as this, to the ’whale’ layer its Opacity 30 per cent. the ‘dolphin’ layer Opacity about 50 per cent. out for the creature’s outlines overlapping.

Next, create a new layer called at the top of the layer bubble You can some brushes to at Just search for ‘bubbles Photoshop’ and install them by clicking their ABR file.

Go to your toolbar foreground colour your Brush Tool and your bubble. set the brush to bubbles for convincing, effect.

From the Brush Settings fly-out palette, click on the Shape Dynamics option and make the Size Jitter value about 70 per cent. Click on Scattering next, then check the Both Axes button and make the Scatter 1000 per cent. foreground have layer Opacity cent. This simple trick creates the feeling that the dolphins are receding into the murky depths of the water and helps blend their colours into the watery scene around them.

Now click on Brush Tip Shape and make Size about 30px and Spacing about 100 per cent. You will see a preview window that shows how your bubbles will be spaced when you use the brush in your scene. You can obviously tweak these settings to your own taste.

Finally, you can now add a scattering of bubbles to the ‘bubbles’ layer, simply set the ‘bubbles’ Blend Mode to Overlay and blend them in. If you add too many bubbles, you can always press Cmd + Z to undo your brush strokes and with that, your scene is complete.

Photoshop

W

hether it’s droplets of water on a bathroom mirror, rain spattered windows or even just condensation on the side of a cold glass of beer, there’s something appealing about those little drops of liquid and the way they catch the light. Recreating water effects can be a bit of a challenge to get right. Water catches the light in

various ways and then there is the

issue of opacity and making the drops appear to have depth and substance to them. We have a tutorial for you that can create a lovely water droplet effect and you can use it on surfaces to create a condensation look.

Add a drop of liquid realism to your images EffectsLiquid

The tutorial image

Use the Rough erodible texture and make the Blend Mode Normal, Opacity about 30 per cent and the Scale about 200. You should now have a grey/blue mottled texture. This is our interpretation of frosted glass. Click OK to continue.

With your ‘glass’ layer still active, go the top of your layer palette and choose ‘Overlay’ as your blend mode. The ‘glass’ layer will blend into the image below, creating a mottled surface.

Keep ‘drops’ active and go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and make the Amount 400 per Set Distribution to Gaussian and make sure that the Monochromatic button is checked. Click OK and a heavy noise pattern will be created.

Next, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and make the Radius value about 5-10 pixels. This slight blur turns the sharp noise pattern into a soft, mottled pattern that will the basis of our water droplets. the ‘drops’ layer active and go to Edit > (Shift + F5) and choose Black as your colour. Click OK and you’ll the layer with solid black, once again obscuring your background image for the moment.

The tutorial image is 2000 pixels wide x 3000 pixels high. The effects based image this If image is different adjust settings appropriately to keep the effects at the right scale.

Colour Overlay next. the Blend Burn the click Glow

EffectDraganThe

The Dragan effect is named after Andrzej Dragan. He is actually a Polish physics teacher in Warsaw, but he does also have a widely praised reputation for producing surreal and compelling portraits. He employs high contrast and saturation in his images, along with rich detail that gives his subjects a highly

emphasised look. Some would say it’s an almost pseudo HDR appearance. It is a technique that is used to great effect on male portraits in particular, where the extra detail is not considered detrimental to the subject. Our tutorial will take you through some easy steps that can give your images a dramatic twist.

01 Choose a relevant image and open it in Photoshop. We have an image of a chap called Dom, who is a musician. For your reference, the image size we are working at is 2667px wide x 4000px high.

02 Any effects we add are based on this size. If you have a different size image, just be aware that your values may need to change to suit the dimensions you are working with.

03 To start, we need to create a duplicate of our original image, just so we have an original to go back to if needed. Press Cmd + J and rename this layer ‘dom’.

04 Next, we need to boost contrast. Press Cmd + L to bring up the Levels dialog box. Move the leftmost slider to the right to deepen the shadows and the rightmost slider to the left to brighten the highlight areas.

05 Additional adjustments will be made afterwards, so try not to be too heavyhanded. Click OK to apply the Levels adjustment.

06 With your ‘tim’ layer still active, go to the top menu and select Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (Cmd + U). This will bring up the Hue/Saturation panel.

07 Move the Saturation slider to the left to desaturate the image slightly. A value in our example of -40 is enough to take the edge off the vibrance of the original.

08 Now move the Hue slider a small amount to the right (+10 in or example). This will shift the image colours to make it slightly more yellow. Click OK when you are happy with your choice.

09 Now we are going to add more contrast by using a basic ’S’ curve. With the ‘tim’ layer still active, go to the top menu and select Image > Adjustments > Curves (Cmd + M) to bring up the Curves panel.

10 Click on the curve line 3 times to add anchor points, one in the middle and one equidistant on each side in the shadow and highlight areas. Drag the anchor points and adjust the contrast and brightness.

11 What you are looking for is what resembles a flattened ’S’ shape. This classic curve boosts overall contrast. Don’t make the shadow areas too black. Click OK when you are happy with the result.

12 Next, press Cmd + J to create a duplicate of the newly adjusted ‘dom’ layer. Name this copy ‘high pass’. Make it the topmost active layer. We are going to use this layer to bring out much greater detail.

13 From the top menu, select Filter > Other > High Pass. The High Pass panel will appear and you can set the amount of filtering applied to that layer by changing the Radius value.

14 Smaller values produce less sharpness, but keep the image clean, whereas higher values create sharper images at the expense of halo artefacts.

15 In this example, a value of about 3 pixels produces a clean, sharp image. When you hit OK, the ‘high pass’ layer will now look similar to a greyscale image.

16 With the ‘high pass’ layer active, go to the Blend Mode button at the top of your Layers Palette and select Overlay. The layer is blended into the ‘tim’ layer below and the sharpness is boosted.

17 Press Shift + left-click on both the ‘high pass’ and ‘tim’ layers. Select them both and then right-click on them to call up the context menu and select Merge Layers and combine the two layers into one.

18 Now to add drama to this portrait by using the Dodge and Burn Tool to enhance detail still further. This means changing the colour mode of the image while these enhancements are being made.

19 Firstly, go to the top menu and select Image > Mode > Lab Color. You will be asked at this point if you want the image flattened. Be sure to click Don’t Flatten.

20 Lab Color is used because we want to work solely on light and dark parts of the image, but we don’t want to damage the colour values. Lab Color lets us do this.

21 It creates a channel that is dedicated only to the lightness values of the image. It is a much more controlled and subtle way of Dodging (lightening) and Burning (darkening) parts of the image.

25 Because we’ve selected the affected range as Highlights, none of the other darker tones will be modified by this action.

23 Click and hold on the Dodge and Burn icon where you can choose either Dodge or Burn. Click on the Dodge Tool icon. In the top menu area, a context menu lets you choose the Range you will affect when using the Dodge Tool.

24 We are going to lighten just the Highlights. Set the exposure to about 30% and choose a medium sized, soft-edged brush and begin ‘painting’ where you want to amplify areas of white (or near-white) tones.

26 Brushing over the hands, eyes, hair and facial features will bring up the brightness of just the areas closest to white. Take your time and try not to be too heavy-handed and destroy any detail.

27 If you overdo it, you can always press Alt + Cmd + Z to step back through your actions. When you are happy with the Highlight areas, go back and click on the Range button in the top context menu and select Midtones.

22 In your Layers Palette, click on the Channels tab. Make sure all channels are on and select the Lightness channel to activate it. This is the channel we will work on.

28 We will now affect the Midtones and gradually begin working on the facial areas and hands once more as we emphasise the tone and detail of our subject.

29 The next step is to select the Burn Tool, set the range to Midtones and, using the same soft medium-sized brush, paint over mid-tone and darker areas of the face and hands to emphasise those areas.

30 The wrinkles around the eyes, facial stubble and the pores of the skin become quite strongly defined. When you are happy with the work you’ve done, you need to convert your image back to standard RGB mode.

31 From the top menu, select Image > Mode > RGB Color. If you are asked if you want to flatten the image, make sure you click Don’t Flatten.

32 There is an additional step we’ve added that is not necessarily part of the standard Dragan Effect procedure, but we feel it is useful for further enhancement of the look we’ve established.

33 With your ‘high pass’ layer active, go to Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights. Here you can fine-tune the effect of shadow and highlight areas on your image.

34

35

Add FlareOwnYourLens

Lens flare is one of those peculiar lighting effects that people either love or loathe. It is quite ironic that photographers will do whatever they can to avoid getting lens flare in their shots, whereas it is now very common to see it added back in for dramatic effect. If you’ve ever watched any television show or movie by J. J. Abrams, you’ll be aware that you can’t go 30 seconds without some form of post-worked lens flare punctuating a scene. So, let’s have a quick look at how to add lens flare, but more importantly, how to do it non-destructively.

AFTER BEFORE

A quick guide to creating a non-destructive lighting effect

We’ll begin with an appropriate image. It will, of course, need to have the sun in it or at least a very bright light source that will appear to create the lens flare we are seeking to add to the image. We’re using a sunset photo with the sun peeking out from behind a tree.

Normally, to add the lens flare effect you need to go up to the File menu and choose Filter > Render > Lens Flare. This will open up the Lens Flare dialog box from where you can choose the various settings you prefer to create your lens flare effect on your photo.

Here, you can choose precisely where the flare appears in your image by clicking with your cursor on a thumbnail of your photo and selecting where to place the centre of the effect. You can also choose the brightness and lens type from the options below.

We’ve used the 50-300mm Zoom type as it gives a particular flare effect that we like, however you can experiment with the other options as you wish. We’ve also set the brightness to 125% and placed the centre of our flare over the sun as it appears in the sunset image.

When

Press Cmd flare effect. the a button to above the scene. this

Click can image as by the button at the of the palette and the below.

The benefit of doing it this way is that you can move the layer around and rotate it if you want, you can also apply adjustments to the ‘flare’ layer, such as levels to control the brightness and contrast of the lens flare effect, to suit your preferences.

A bright idea for dramatic lighting

Another

MegaMore Tips section offers up a few more mega tips to help you and your image editing workflow step up a gear. Get to grips with some advanced cropping techniques and upgrade your skin retouching skills with some simple, yet useful, tips to make your spot healing even more effective. There’s even a fun easter egg tip to play with.

Bananas, Monkeys, Coffee and Toast

Yes, you did read that title correctly. This is not going to revolutionise your workflow, but with a little luck, these Easter eggs, hidden in Photoshop, might make you and your work colleagues smile.

If you go to Photoshop CC > Preferences > Interface, you can change the Color Theme under the Appearance section by clicking on one of the four colour chips, ranging from dark grey to light grey, to alter the workspace appearance. Not terribly exciting, but you can inject a little humour.

If you hold the Shift + Alt keys and then click on one of the colour chips, you won’t change the Color Theme effects, but the colour chips are replaced by pieces of toast, ranging from very dark toast up to white toast. Choose your preferred toast to alter your workspace brightness.

While the toast is visible, press Shift + Cmd and then click on a piece of toast, it will change to cups of coffee of varying strengths to represent the colour theme choices. You can hold Shift + Alt again and click on the colour chips to change it back to the original grey.

Next, on the toolbar are three small dots representing the Edit Toolbar function. Click and hold over this icon and the small fly-out menu will appear. Click on it to open the edit panel. Hold the Shift key and click Done and where the three dots were before, a banana will appear.

The banana will stay there until you use Edit Toolbar again, press Shift and click Restore Defaults. Now we just need the monkey to go with the banana. Open or create a Photoshop document with layers in it and then go to Window > Layer Comps. This opens a small Layer Comps panel.

Click the Menu icon and choose New Layer Comp. Name the new layer ‘Layer Monkey 0’ and click OK to add a new layer comp. It might require a click to activate, but when you do, the icon on the left of the panel will turn into a cheeky monkey! Rename it anything else to return to normal.

Front CroppingImage

There is a Crop Tool option that has a very useful function, but you might not have seen it. If you need to match a series of images with the same, cropped sizes and dimensions, then Front Image cropping is for you.

AFTER

The peacock photo photo.

Improve Your Spot Healing

Retouching skin effectively can be a challenge. Photoshop’s Spot Healing Tool is very effective at removing blemishes, but it can still introduce more issues than it eradicates. Here is a way of ensuring better results.

AFTER BEFORE

We have an example image of a teenager with some acne on her face. We want to be able to remove the blemishes without having too many obvious indications that retouching has been used. Because there are many areas of clean, natural-looking skin, the Spot Healing Tool is a good choice here.

For non-destructive retouching, create a new layer above the main image and name it ‘retouch’. Any work done will appear on this layer. Choose the Spot Healing Tool from the toolbar and use a medium hardness brush of about 70 pixels. Make sure the Sample All Layers box is checked.

Make sure the new ‘retouch’ layer is active. This way, any cloned pixels will be added to the ‘retouch’ layer only, preserving the original image underneath. Since you have checked Sample All Layers, pixel data from the main image will still be incorporated on the new layer.

As you start brushing over the blemishes by her eyebrow, the results may very well look mottled and the healing process may remove parts of the brow. Alternatively, if you go to the options menu in the top left of the screen and choose Lighten, from the Mode panel, you can be more precise with your healing.

If you undo what you’ve done and try the tool, with the Lighten Mode now active, you should see that the darker blemishes are removed, but more of the hair detail is left intact. In this case, the Lighten Mode targets the darker pixels of the blemish, not the lighter pixels of the hair.

You can now continue to target the darker blemish pixels around the face. If you view the ‘retouch’ layer on its own, you can see that you have cloned new pixel data on this layer, preserving the original image underneath with a non-destructive edit.

One Image, Two Windows

Here’s another very handy hint for you in the shape of a two-screen window. Sometimes, it is useful to be able to view a part of your photo in extreme closeup, while still being able to see the effect you’re having on the overall image.

AFTER BEFORE

This detail the entire image

With photo. the handy technique. Selection small balloon the of duplicated layer the new layer the Move Tool to the copied balloon to part of the sky. the balloon in the 300% window the wider view on the left also performs the same move. You can even between windows if you like. You can close one window when you are done. the photo vertically, in the workspace. magnification window the other. this window Shift spacebar, image and the other at the same time.

FromTransparencyBlend

Blend modes can help you achieve a number of effects by controlling how one layer’s colours interact with another. Take Blend Modes even further with handy tips on adding transparency to the blend you’ve created.

In this example, we have a grungy, peeling paint texture that we would like to blend into some text. However, we only want to use the darker cracks in the paint and add that to our text so it takes on a more weathered feel. Fortunately, Blend Modes can help us here.

We’ve added some large bold text, which is currently on a layer above the background texture. We need to start by clicking on the Background layer’s lock icon to convert it to a layer as well. This allows us to click and drag the Background layer so it is above the text layer.

If you make the texture layer invisible for a moment, you can doubleclick the text thumbnail, change its colour to something appropriate and then make the texture visible again so it covers your text. If you double-click the texture layer, you can open the Layer Style panel.

If you look down at the Blend If section, you can use the sliders to hide light pixels or dark pixels. Slide the white tab to the left and you will see the lightest parts of the image start to disappear, leaving the dark cracks and the text layer underneath.

Examine the texture thumbnail and you will see the entire image. Rightclick the layer and select Convert To Smart Object. If you now right-click the thumbnail and choose Select Pixels, you can actually make a selection of the dark cracks and not the entire peeling paint texture.

You can scale the transparent cracks to better fit your text. Now add a Clipping Mask, so it only covers the text and then double-click the texture layer again to bring up the Layer Style menu once more and perhaps add some Bevel And Emboss to really make those cracks stand out on your text.

Introducing the Develop Module

The Develop module is where the tools that let you fully realise the potential of your photographs lie. Enhancing and improving them, removing blemishes, noise and distortion and applying a range of impressive effects and filters.

Like the Library module, the Develop module window is divided into three main areas, the left sidebar, the main viewing area and the right sidebar. The filmstrip view is also available at the bottom of the screen. The filmstrip and both sidebars can be permanently in view or set to auto-hide by clicking on the arrow symbols on the edge of the screen.

The left sidebar holds the Navigator thumbnail, a list of available Presets, the Snapshot and History views and the Collections. The right-hand sidebar holds all the actual editing and enhancement tools, as well as the Histogram.

1 Navigator

This shows you a view of the whole image, useful if you zoom in when using the spot correction tool and need to navigate around the frame.

2 Presets

This list shows the preset adjustments that can be applied with just one click. Lightroom comes with dozens built-in and you can add and edit your own user presets.

3 Snapshots

If you’re experimenting and making adjustments to an image as you go, you can save a snapshot of your progress at any point. It’s like a save point in a video game; you can go back to that point by clicking on the snapshot in the list.

4 History

This shows each alteration that you’ve made to your image in chronological order.

If you decide that you don’t like the last few changes that you made, you can revert to an earlier point by clicking the step in the history list.

5 Collections

We covered these in the Library module section. You can also access your collections from the Develop module by opening up this tab.

6 Copy and Paste

Rather than copying the active image, as you might expect, the Copy button copies certain adjustments that you’ve made to the image. You can open another image and instantly apply the same corrections by clicking the Paste button. You can choose which parameters are copied.

7 View Window

As with the Library module, there are a number of viewing options available, including split-screen and the beforeand-after view.

8 Histogram

The histogram shows you a graph of the number of pixels of a given tone in three colour channels, vital for setting the best optimum exposure.

9 Tools

Here’s where you’ll find the Crop Overlay tool, Spot Removal and Red Eye Correction tools. Linear filters, Radial filters, the Adjustment Brush and new tools to automatically select subject and sky are all under the Masking tool. Masking is the latest additional to the editing arsenal after the 2022 update and amalgamates a few key tools under one heading.

10 Developing AdjustmentandTools

In each of these panels you’ll find more tools to improve your images, such as lens distortion correction, noise reduction, grain and filter effects and more.

11 Previous and Reset Buttons

As the names imply, the Previous button takes you back one editing step, while the Reset button removes all effects and restores the image to its original state. Since Lightroom edits nondestructively this involves no loss of original image quality.

12 Done Button

The Done button applies any adjustments you’ve made in Lightroom. Clicking it will close the current adjustment window and make the alterations to the image. If you clicked it too soon, you need to start again and re-apply any adjustments.

The Adjustment Panel

The Adjustment Panel offers a range of tools tailored to the Module you’re currently on, in this case the Develop Module. Here you can find a wealth of features to help tweak your photo to perfection.

Basic

The Basic panel holds the essential adjustments for white balance, exposure, contrast and tone, as well as clarity, vibrancy and saturation. This is probably where you’ll spend most of your time when using the Develop module.

Calibration

Some cameras have unique colour balance profiles that are embedded in the metadata along with the image file. You can use these profiles to ensure absolutely accurate colour reproduction in your photo if you require it.

Lens Corrections

Lightroom can automatically apply preset corrections that compensate for known distortions in many popular lenses from most manufacturers. You can also choose to make manual adjustments yourself.

Detail

The Detail panel is where you can find the controls for adjusting sharpening and noise reduction. It includes a small preview window for judging the effects of your image adjustments.

Using the Crop & Straighten Tool

Even the most careful photographer will sometimes rush a shot and take a photo that’s not quite level, with either a sloping horizon or a leaning building. Fortunately, Lightroom offers several effortless ways to correct those faults.

1 The main tools that you’ll need to straighten your shots are found in the Crop & Straighten tool, located on the editing tools panel that we looked at before. Click on the tool and you can see a grid with corner handles appear over your image, as well as a panel of other tools and options appear below the panel. Note the icon change in the 2022 update.

3 A quicker and more precise way to straighten a tilted horizon or leaning vertical is to use the Straighten Tool. You’ll find this on the left-hand side of the options panel below the edit tool bar when you click on the Crop & Straighten tool. It’s the circular icon with a picture of a spirit level in it. Click on this icon to activate the tool.

2 If you place your mouse cursor anywhere on the grey border of the workspace outside the image, you can see that it changes to a double-ended curved arrow, indicating rotation. Click anywhere in this area and you’ll see a grid appear over your image. You can simply drag the image around until your horizon lines up with the grid.

4 To use the Straighten Tool on a tilted horizon, simply click on one end of the horizon line and drag a line along it. As soon as you release the Mouse button Lightroom will automatically rotate the image to make the line horizontal. Note that it also constrains the rotated image within the original size of the frame.

5 The Straighten Tool also works on leaning verticals. To save a toppling building, activate the tool by clicking on the icon and then click and drag a line up or down a line on the image that should be vertical, such as the side of a structure. Again, as soon as you release the Mouse button the image will automatically be straightened.

8 Cropping your image to improve composition is very simple. When you open the Crop & Straighten tool it defaults to the crop tool straight away; but if you’ve previously been using the Straighten tool you’ll need to click on the round icon with a picture of a darkroom crop-frame tool to switch the tool back into cropping mode. TOOL

6 The Crop & Straighten tool offers a third option for rotating your image. Next to the Straighten Tool you’ll see a slider. If you drag this slider right and left, you’ll see that it rotates the image clockwise and anticlockwise. This is useful if you want to tilt an otherwise level shot. You can also enter the degree of tilt numerically.

9 You’ll see a crop frame grid overlay your image, with drag points in each corner and in the middle of each side. When you click on and drag one of these points in any direction you’ll see the cropping frame move, with the areas outside it slightly greyed out. It also includes a “rule of thirds” grid to help with classical composition.

7 There is yet another option for levelling your shots. If you open the Transform tools you’ll see a panel of buttons in the options panel, including one marked Level. If you click on this button, Lightroom will attempt to automatically straighten your image. Note that this is based on pattern recognition and is therefore not 100 per cent reliable.

10 You can crop to a specific aspect ratio or image size by clicking to the right of where it says Aspect to open the context menu. You can select a preset ratio or size or enter your own manually. Note that the padlock icon next to the menu changes, to indicate that the aspect ratio is now locked to the dimensions that you’ve set.

Removing Spots and Red Eye

Even the latest digital cameras can sometimes get dust inside and contaminate the sensor, leaving black spots on your images; and there’s also the problem of flash Red Eye and indoor photography. Luckily Lightroom offers tools for dealing with these problems.

1 If you scan film photos or use an older DSLR, you may have problems with dust and blemishes on your images. Fortunately, Lightroom includes a handy tool to get rid of them. It’s the Spot Removal tool and you use it by clicking on the icon in the editing tools panel or by using the keyboard shortcut Q. Note the icon change in the 2022 update.

3 As you click on dust spots you’ll see the position from which the replacement sample is being taken displayed on the image and you can adjust the position and size of the sample location by dragging on the visible circle. You can turn this feature off from a pop-up menu on the lower tool bar; this can help if your image is heavily spotted.

2 The Lightroom Spot Removal tool operates in the same way as the matching tool in Photoshop. You can adjust the brush size by using the slider in the control panel or by using the square brackets keys [ and ]. Simply click on a spot and it will be replaced by a matching background colour sampled from elsewhere on the image.

4 If you make a mistake or if you simply don’t like the result of one of your spot removal operations, you can undo any of them by holding down the left Alt button and clicking on the offending circle. As well as the heal function, the Spot Removal tool also offers a Clone option. If you hold the CTRL key you can move the sampling point to wherever you want.

Removing Spots

1 Red Eye is caused when light from your camera flash reflects off the blood vessels at the back of the eye and is most visible in low light when the pupils are widely dilated. Even if your flash has anti-Red Eye pre-flash it can still be a problem. You can remove Red Eye from your shots using the Red Eye Removal tool.

4 Repeat the same procedure with the other eye. If you’re not happy with the result, reset the image and try again; the automatic process isn’t perfect and a second try may do better. You can also manually adjust the size and darkness of the fake pupil that it superimposes by adjusting the two sliders in the tool options panel.

2 The Red Eye Removal tool is very simple to use. When you activate the tool you’ll see a cross-shaped mouse cursor. Simply place this over the centre of an affected eye and drag an elliptical shape outwards until it covers the entire eye. Release the Mouse button and the tool will automatically detect and correct the redness.

5 The Red Eye Removal tool also works with pet’s eyes, although due to the nature of cat and dog eyes, they’re usually green or yellow rather than red. Click on the Pet Eye button on the tool option panel and then use the same procedure that you did for a human eye; click and drag outwards from the centre of the eye.

3 As noted above, make sure the elliptical shape covers the entire eye, not just the pupil. You may think you just need to cover the red area of the eye, but the tool works by using the shape of the iris and the pupil. If you drag the ellipse over the pupil alone, you will see that the redness reduction is confined to a very small area. Adjust the ellipse accordingly.

6 As with human eyes you do have the option to manually increase or decrease the pupil size but there is no option to darken, since it will set to maximum darkness automatically. There is an option to add catchlights in the eyes though, which is strangely missing from the tool options for human eyes. The results are usually excellent.

Removing Red Eye

Adjustments Using the Basic Panel

After cropping and straightening, the most common adjustments made are white balance, exposure, tonal balance and colour saturation. Lightroom’s Basic panel is where you can find these features, with an easy-to-use slider interface.

1 You’ll find the Basic panel in the right-hand sidebar of the Develop module. Click on the title bar to open the panel and you’ll see an array of sliders for things like colour temperature, tint, exposure and contrast; also a panel of Tone controls and another one for Presence controls that adjust Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation.

3 To the left of the White Balance selector you’ll see another tool with an icon shaped like an eyedropper. If you click on this the eyedropper will become the mouse cursor and you can use it to select a white-point to manually set the white balance. If you’ve ever used Adobe Camera Raw you’ll be familiar with this operation.

2 Near the top of the Basic panel you’ll find the White Balance controls. This will usually show As Shot by default, indicating that Lightroom is using the white balance setting determined by your camera. If you click on this, you’ll see a context menu with more options. We’ll look more closely at correcting white balance elsewhere.

4 Immediately below the White Balance selector you’ll see a pair of sliders for Temp, or colour temperature, and Tint. These controls allow you to make manual adjustments to the white balance and colour cast, which is useful if you’re shooting under unusual artificial lighting conditions that are not covered by any of the white balance presets.

5 Moving further down the panel, we come to the Tone controls, which are divided into two sections; Exposure and Contrast, and Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks. Exposure and Contrast work in exactly the same way that they have done in Adobe Photoshop and most other editing suites for years.

8 If you just want to quickly optimise a photo but aren’t sure in which direction to take it, the Basic panel offers an auto-tone option that will instantly analyse your image and attempt to adjust the tone to bring it closer to an idealised average by equalising the histogram. It’s not likely to be perfect but can be a good starting point.

6 The Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks section of the Tone panel is a more recent addition for Lightroom and not found in previous versions of Photoshop. It offers more precise manual control over the relative density of light and dark tones and lets you take advantage of the greater tonal range of raw files.

9 The Basic panel can also be used to turn your colour image into monochrome. At the top of the panel you’ll see Colour and Black & White. If you click on the latter you’ll see that the Vibrance and Saturation slider will be greyed out and the image will turn monochrome. You still have full control over the other sliders.

7 The Presence controls are another new Lightroom feature and replace the old Hue, Saturation and Lightness controls that feature in Photoshop. Clarity improves the contrast in the mid-tones of the image by sharpening the edge detail, while Vibrance increases the saturation of only the least saturated colours.

10 Auto-tone also still works in Black & White mode and just like in colour mode it will attempt to equalise the exposure, contrast and distribution of tones to produce an idealised histogram with no clipping. You may find that the results look a little flat though, so use it as a starting point rather than relying on it to finish your images.

ElementsPhotoshop

Welcome to our introduction to Photoshop Elements, you have an easy and affordable means to find all those elusive images, organise them and manipulate your favourite ones to make them even better. Let’s begin with a few basics. This will gradually build into a comprehensive guide to this very capable image editing package.

What is Elements?Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a great option for those who want an extensive toolset that can take on most of their image editing needs, without the requirement of highly advanced features such as you would find in Photoshop CC. It is also a great choice for those who only need oneclick solutions to their image editing needs, or perhaps want to start to learn how to take on the more involved techniques and tools that Elements has to offer. Another big plus point in its favour is that it is one of the very few remaining Adobe products that can be purchased outright, without the need for subscription.

A Worthy Alternative

There was a time when, in certain quarters, Elements was considered a dumbed-down version of Photoshop with a limited toolset, that was only meant for beginners with no aspirations to advance to the more technically advanced techniques seen in Photoshop. However, recent versions of Elements have shown that it is a worthy standalone alternative to using Photoshop. It is a focused image editor and cataloging application that is more than capable of taking on any image editing task you care to send its way.

In its current form, Adobe Photoshop Elements is comprised of two main components. One is the image editing module of the software where you can touch up your photos or even manipulate and transform them beyond recognition. The Edit section is broken down into three sections. The first is the Quick Edit mode, then comes the Guided Mode section and finally there is the Expert mode.

Make the Most of Modules

Each module has its own set of tools and preset options that can quickly get the job done. Quick Edit, as the name suggests, contains the basic editing

Let's take a moment to get to know a little more about the software and how it can help you with your day to day image editing.

The Adobe Photoshop Elements and Organiser interfaces are designed to be as intuitive as possible with plenty of options for beginners and experienced users alike.

WHAT IS PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS

tools such as colour correction, cropping, quick selection, spot healing, sharpening and lighting fixes. You can also apply some oneclick presets such as Smart Fix, Exposure and Lighting.

Helping Hand

The Guided module is also fairly selfexplanatory. Here you can make any number of popular image adjustments to your photos, with guided step-by-step tutorials, such as altering brightness and contrast, resizing photos, rotating and straightening your images and adding vignettes. It also has a number of specialised and fun options for restoring old photos, creating your own frames and replacing backgrounds.

More Advanced Options

Finally comes the Expert mode. This has more of the feel of its big brother, Photoshop to it. It has a toolbar ranged down the left hand side of the workspace and on the right is the layers panel that behaves much in the same way as Photoshop's layers palette. Here you also have access to a number of photo colour presets such as Faded Photo, Glow and Monotone Color. There are also a number of filters for more artistic effects such as coloured pencils, watercolours, distortion effects and sketch filters. You can also add Bevels, Patterns, Strokes, Photographic Effects and much more by accessing the icons in the lower right of the taskbar at the bottom of your workspace. Expert mode is the most hands-on of the three modes you can employ and gives you access to all the tools, so you can apply all your own advanced edits to your photos.

Getting Organised

The second main component of the latest Adobe Photoshop Elements is the Elements 2019 Organiser. At its heart, this is a cataloguing and photo organising program that lets you import, sort, tag and rate your photos. If you wish, you can create albums and use names, locations, date, time and GPS data to sort them. The program can even employ face recognition to find and sort photos of people and tag them much as you would in Facebook. Indeed, you can actually import your list of Facebook friends as an aid to tagging the people in your photos. If

it detects a similar name being entered as a tag, it will display those existing names similar enough as a match to be an option for tagging.

The two components of Photoshop Elements and Elements Organiser are separate programs, which can be a bit of nuisance if you need to keep switching between them but you have at your disposal a set of powerful

editing tools that will keep beginner and expertOverhappy.thepage we'll begin to delve deeper into the workspaces offered by the Editor and Elements Organiser. It is best to consider the Editor module as your digital darkroom and design studio and to think of Elements Organiser as your library, where you keep all your media items such as photos and videos.

The HomeElementsScreen

We start the journey by becoming more familiar with all the module environments you will be working with.

Welcome Home

When you open Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019, you are presented with a Home screen. This simple screen is your gateway to the Photo Editor program or the Organiser. The third option available is to activate the Adobe Premiere Elements Video Editor, if you have purchased that as well. If not, it will ask if you want to download a trial version.

You also have the option at the top of the Home screen to search for help on things you want to achieve in the programs or to click on any of the featured Try This guides and What's New items and Inspiration articles ranged across the screen.

On the extreme top right of the page are buttons for Facebook and Twitter and a Help button that takes you to Adobe Customer Support.

Search Option

From the home page you can can search for things you need to learn more about. If you want to learn how to make a calendar for instance, type that in the search bar and it will show you links to help files that can tell you more.

Featured Guides

Ranged along the top of the home page are a number of clickable guides and inspirational media that gets you into the heart of what Photoshop Elements 2019 is all about. There are several themes you can access. Try This are guided tutorials that help you create exciting media and art. What's New highlights all the step-by-step features that are new to this version. Inspiration is a collection of stories and articles to get you in a creative mood.

Auto Creations

When you open the home page for the first time, you will be prompted to add media for Auto Creations to make a series of personalised creations, such as slide shows that use your own photos and videos.

Add Media

Auto Creations are created with media (photos or videos) that you've imported. If you haven't imported any media yet, click Add media under Auto Creations on the Home screen and relaunch the app. You can open and edit any Auto Creation and instantly share it with your family and friends.

Program Chooser

To the right of the home page are the icons for Organiser, Photo Editor and Video Editor. You can click on these to activate the relevant program. If you do not have the Adobe Premiere Elements video editor program for instance, it will ask you if you want to try if for free with the option to purchase later if you wish.

Recent Files

Any images you have been working on recently will be displayed here for quick access. Click on the image you want to continue working on and it will be opened within the relevant program.

Facebook Button

Click this button to go to the Adobe Photoshop Elements Facebook page.

Twitter Button

When you click this button, it will take you to the Photoshop Elements Twitter feed where you can view, reply to, retweet and like tweets.

Help Button

If you need further assistance, you can click this button to be directed to the Adobe Customer Support webpage.

Explore the Guides

For those who are in need of more guidance, or just some creative inspiration, go ahead and click on any of the featured guides and articles to explore more of the online world of features Adobe Photoshop Elements has to offer.

The ModeQuickWorkspace

One-click Power

Although this mode is designed to be quick and simple to use, it is still a powerful method to rapidly improve your photos with easy one-click presets that give you instant feedback on how your image will look with the new adjustments applied. There are many filters to choose from and many ways you can adjust your image to make it perfect, so you can share it with the world.

The File Menu

Although a number of file menu option will not be accessible, the main ones that you need will be available. All the Enhance options are there as well as the Filter Gallery presets.

Mode Selector

Here can you can exit the current mode and choose to enter the Guided or Expert modes.

3

The Open Button

This is a simple button to specify a new project to work on. Click it to create a new document at the size you want. When you click OK, the document will be created and can be worked on in either Quick mode or Expert mode.

The Toolbar

The Quick mode toolbar has a core set of tools to get your image looking great with minimal effort. You can make quick selections to specific areas of the photo, crop it, straighten the horizon, whiten teeth and fix eyes as well as adding text and a number of varied filters, textures and adjustments.

The Tool Options Bar

For every tool you activate in the toolbar, you have another panel called the Tool Options bar that gives you many more choices as to how that tool can be modified and controlled. There are also additional tools that can be accessed in the Tool Options bar.

The Taskbar

The taskbar is situated at the bottom of the workspace and contains all the most frequently used actions, which are displayed as buttons. Click each one and you can see all the images you are working on at that time, display or hide the Toolbar Options bar and Undo or

redo any steps you have performed on your image. You also have the option to rotate the image and activate the Elements Organiser if you need to.

View Options

Clicking on this button reveals the View options. This is useful if you want to compare a before and after view of your currently active image, to see how much the image has changed from its original untouched state.

Active Image Area

The image you are working on is displayed in this area. It will either be as a single image or, if you have chosen a

different view option, as two images that represent the before and after state of the photo.

Zoom Slider

This slider lets you quickly zoom your image from 1% all the way up to 3200%.

Create and Share

These two dropdown menus display options for creating slide shows, photo books, greetings cards, calendars, Facebook Covers and much more. You can also share your works of art on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

The Panel Bar

This panel changes content depending on what adjustment or effect you are using. If you are using the Adjustment tools, then they will be displayed in the right hand panel bar. Items such as Smart Fix, Exposure, Lighting and Colour will be available here and each can be clicked to reveal its available options. The Effects menu, Textures and Frames are also available to be accessed here.

Create and Share

Don't forget to check out the Create and Share options. Whether you want to share your creation online and on social media or make prints of your photos or even calendars, click the buttons to explore further.

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