Photoshop Basics

Tips, Tricks, and Basics (or, Photoshop in a hat ☺)

George Chen

1. Basics: Layers

Photoshop is a layers based graphics program. What does that mean? It means that Photoshop gives you the ability to divide your artwork up into layers, so you can isolate what you do to an image. See the following image:

Table of Contents: 1. Basics…1 Layers Toolkit Filters Layer Modes Layer Masks 2. Improving Color…6 Color Balance Levels Curves 3. Retouching…8 Clone & Heal Smooth & Soften 4. Sharpen…12 Sharpen Unsharp Mask High Pass 5. Light…13 Screen/Multiply 6. Art & Experiment Red Eye Special Effects

© 2004 George Chen. All rights reserved. All lefts ignored. All images are copyright George Chen unless otherwise noted.

See how each layer on the Layers Palette marks off a different part of a picture. The eye icon on the left of each layer makes the layers visible or invisible. Observe.

See how by making layer 5 invisible, the dark blue becomes invisible. Layers may seem tedious at first, but once you get the hang of them, you’ll be able to see how helpful they are.

1. Basics: Toolkit

In Photoshop and all Adobe programs, you have a toolkit/toolbar for easy access to all your tools. In Photoshop 7, it looks like the image on the right. Note how most of the tools have a small arrow at the bottom. Selecting that arrow will bring up more tools. Quickly, here are the tools and their functions, going left to right: Marquee Tool: Selection of items for deletion or moving Move Tool: Self explanatory Lasso Tool: Select a portion of an item to manipulate Magic Wand: Auto select a portion of an image with the same color Crop Tool: Self explanatory Exacto Knife: Cut shapes Heal Tool: Used with cloning tool Brush Tool: For painting Clone Tool: Clones portions of the image to place elsewhere History Brush: Reverses last action in certain parts of the image Eraser: Self explanatory Gradient Tool: Self explanatory Blur Tool: Self explanatory Dodge Tool: Lighten a certain area Path selection tool: Select paths drawn by the pen Text Tool: Self explanatory Pen Tool: Draw paths, curves, etc. Polygon Tool: Draw vector shapes Notes Tool: Make notes Eyedropper: Selects color on an image Hand Tool: Move objects Zoom Tool: Self-explanatory Color selection: Color on top (blue) is foreground, Color on bottom (white) is background The rest of the menu you really don’t need to know. We will only be using about 10 of these tools frequently.

1. Basics: Filters

Filters are fun, fast ways to get exciting effects, however, novices often overuse them. Therefore, try to limit your usage of filters, and blend them into the image appropriately. We’ll be using filters later, especially in enhancing images, so right now this will be a quick introduction. Note that there are far too many filters for me to give you examples of each, just experiment with them when you have free time. When we get to modes you’ll be able to see ways in which you can blend your filtered layers to get better effects, as well as playing with their transparency.

Now for the filters menu. Note how the filters are divided into sections, and within each section, the filters are listed. Some filters create whole new images while others only modify the image that you are working on. Once again, experiment with them to see what they can do. Often, these filters will have preview images so you can see the result before you apply the filter. Warning, some of these filters use up a lot of memory, especially on large images. This means that they will slow the computer down and may sometimes freeze it. Watch what you’re doing carefully, and save often.

1. Basics: Modes

Modes are ways in which layers can be placed on top of each other to create some pretty interesting effects. The modes menu is found on the top of the layers palette (in this image it says ‘Normal’). There are several modes you can chose from, some of the most common ones are demonstrated below.

(credit: PhotoshopGuru)

Note: One of the best things to do with Modes is use them in combination with transparency (opacity). Thus you can minimize the effect as needed. Often, a layer mode at full opacity provides too harsh of an image. So, what can you do with layers modes? Here’s a sample:

1. Basics: Layer Masks

Layer Masks are very simple tools to master but can also be very effective. Essentially, a layer mask is a cover that specifically reveals only parts of an image. This is excellent when you want to fade two images together. Note that in the mask mode, you may only use grayscale. Depending on what mode you pick (Reveal All or Hide All), the areas that are white or black will be the areas revealed. Most often, gradients are used. Example time:

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How is this accomplished? Step 1. Find your images:

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Step 2. Apply Layer Mask

Step 3. Apply Gradient

It’s as simple as that.

2. Improving Color: Color Balance

When a photo is shot, sometimes the colors do not come out the way you wish, perhaps too much red and not enough blue. With Photoshop, there’s no need to retake the photo. The image on the right has too much red in it. So much in fact, that the leaves are colored red. You may want to use the image like this. But for the purposes of this exercise, let’s look at the color balance tool. By simply altering the color values for

Cyan, Green, and Blue, you can see how the image has changed. The leaves become clearer, the petals less red in color. By balancing the color, you can more accurately portray an image as in real life.

2. Improving Color: Levels

Levels are Photoshop's method for stretching the contrast of an image. The RGB levels are a measure of how light or dark a pixel is, additionally the Red, Green, Blue, channels separately have their own levels of how red green or blue a pixel is. The graph that is displayed when adjustment levels shows the number of pixels in the image relative to the level. Adjusting levels can change higher saturation and more contrast. Levels are something that provides a quick fix for brightness and clarity in images, but can make the picture incredibly dirty and unusable. Therefore, use levels at a minimum, instead, try the techniques discussed later in this handbook. (See Section 5: Light) So what do levels do? Let’s take image one on the right

(yeah that’s Jeff). To it we’ll apply auto Levels, which automatically balances out the RGB levels in the image. The result: There you can see the problems with levels. A little speck of dust on the camera lens becomes highly visible. In addition, the screen at the back of the auditorium was supposed to be crème colored, instead it’s blue. Note that Jeff’s shirt becomes a pure white. This is essentially what levels do; they take the brightest object in an image and make it white while adjusting all other parts to the same levels. If you need to use levels, do it manually. Bring up the levels menu (Image > Adjustments > Levels) By moving the sliders toward the peak, the image becomes lighter. Moving it towards the low end will darken the image. Remember, Levels are good for small adjustments. If you overdo it you’ll get images like the image below,

making it unusable.

2. Improving Images: Curves

Curves are yet another way Photoshop allows the user to adjust light balance in an image. Curves can enhance shadows with little influence on the highlights, making it very useful to perfect photos. Note that curves can be saved if you find that a particular shape worked for you, but also know that each time a curve is loaded you should probably play with it a bit to make sure it works for your image. Example time: See the image without a curve above (It’s Orly!)

By applying a positive curve, the image becomes lighter. See image.

A negative curve, then, would make the image darker. Correct.

Altering the curve can produce some very interesting effects. Experiment with curves, but also note that these can also damage your photo like levels do. However, if you combine the use of curves, levels, and lightening techniques, you can take almost any photo and make it useable.

3. Retouching: Clone/Heal

One of the things that takes a good photo and makes it bad is an excess of distractions in the background. One way to remove distractions from the backgrounds of photos is the cloning and healing tools. However, these tools can be difficult to master, so be sure to have plenty of practice. Say we take this image to the right. The red coke cup detracts from the image’s focus of the student. Therefore, we can use the clone and heal tools to try and remove it. The clone tool, or rubber stamp tool, is found on the toolkit. First, find an area to clone, or copy, that is about the same color and lighting of the

area you’re trying to cover. Hold down the “ALT” key and select that area. Then, start painting over the image. Note that if you keep painting, the object you are trying to remove seems to reappear. This is caused by the object getting in the way of your cloning path. Thus, you must continuously “ALT + Click” to select areas and painting.

This may be time consuming, but if done correctly; your image will appear like the image on the left. But now it’s time to heal the image, because, if you look closely, the area we have cloned over looks rather rough.

Select the healing brush from the toolkit (It looks like a bandage) and use the brush to paint over the small awkward area. Done repeatedly, the shadow becomes more natural looking, like in this image.

3. Retouching: Smooth and Soften

This chapter should be subtitled: how to give a digital makeover. In this chapter you’ll learn how magazines make celebrities look their best without covering them with makeup. Now, this skill won’t be needed a lot in what we do, but it’s good to know. Also, don’t overdo it. There will be a point where the person will look just plain fake. That’s a good sign that it’s time to stop trying to retouch the image. This section is divided into subsections: skin, eyes, and mouth. Note that in retouching, you should be patient. It takes a long time to do a good retouching job. Let’s take a casual school image:

Skin:

1. Go to Layer > Duplicate Layer. Now you have two copies of the picture, one on top of the other. 2. Go to Filter > Noise >Dust & Scratches. Play with the radius settings until the imperfections in the image start to disappear. Don’t worry about the fact that the background also begins to appear blurry. Select ok. 3. Note how everything has become blurry. So now, let’s bring the details back out. Use the eraser tool to erase the areas where details should be showing (clothing, eyes, mouth, hand, etc.) Tip: Use the feather brush for this. Adjust the brush size as needed. 4. Now, reduce the opacity of the layer to about 50-80%, depending on how strong you want the skin retouching to be. Now we’re done with the skin, so let’s move on to the eyes.

Eyes:

1. To work most effectively with the eyes, zoom in to about 300% or so. 2. Say you wanted to change the eye’s color or enhance it. Create a new layer and select the color you want to use. Paint in the area of the eye. Set your Layer Mode to Hue. 3. Create another layer on top and paint white in the areas where reflections (or the ‘sparkle’) would be. Set the layer to ‘Overlay’. 4. Zoom all the way out and look at the result. If you’re not satisfied, do it over or play with the opacities. We’re done with the eyes; let’s move on to the lips.

Lips:

Now, you shouldn’t need to fix the lips unless in extreme situations, but here goes. First, let’s take a look at the picture after the skin and eye retouch. 1. Zoom in on the lips in the image, once again, about 300%. 2. Find the proper color you want (try using the Eyedropper), and begin painting it on a new layer with a small feather brush. 3. Set the layer to ‘Overlay’ or ‘Hard Light’ and set the opacity to around 1030%. Any more and the image looks fake. 4. Zoom out and look at the result. There you have it. A digital makeover. Let’s do a before and after shot. The before is on the left half, after on the right half (the red line divides the two). Note how subtle the changes are. Makeovers don’t have to completely change the image, just try to improve it. Now, if you really wanted to do something crazy, apply the same techniques and change the hair color and more!

Next, let’s look at how to try and clean up a blurry image.

4. Sharpen: Sharpen Filter

The sharpen filter is only good for small blurs. Do not try to use it on fairly blurry images; it will only screw up the image and leave a lot of artifacts (pockmarks). Let’s use this image for the section: Now, the sharpen tool is located under Filters > Sharpen > Sharpen. Using the sharpen filter too much will result in an image looking like this: Note how artifacts have appeared in the image, thus rendering it unusable. The maximum amount of times you should use the filter is about 2 to 3.

4. Sharpen: Unsharp Mask

One technique for sharpening images is the Unsharp Mask Filter, which is found in the Filters Menu > Sharpen >Unsharp Mask. By playing with the settings on its menu, you can slowly bring out the image. By using the filter to enhance the image on the right, the highlights have been improved and the minimal blurring around the subject.

4. Sharpen: High Pass

This technique is by far my favorite and the newest one that I’ve learned. To do this trick, duplicate the image (Layer > Duplicate Layer). Now run the High Pass filter and adjust the layers so you see the bare outlines of the image. When you’re done with that, it should look like the gray image. Give the filtered layer a mode of ‘Overlay’ and you’ll be all set. What’s great about this technique is that it can be applied to images that already seem sharpened to bring out the details even more. This makes for the best quality picture you could create. Let’s take a look at this in action.

Take this image of Julia. Already, it looks pretty clean and crisp. In fact, you could probably use the picture right now. But when we apply the High Overpass technique we can see the improvement in the details. Before the filter:

After the filter: See how all the details have been pulled out of the image. The only problem is that some other details that we don’t want have also been pulled out. To fix that, simply erase the parts you don’t want on the layer with the High Pass.

5. Light: Screen/Multiply

So in addition to using Levels and Curves, there are a few other ways to brighten an image without totally destroying it. These techniques is the same thing for both screen and multiply, though screen is for lightening images, while multiply is for darkening images. I’ll just give one example. Take this image; it’s a bit too dark. Lightening the Image: 1. Duplicate the image layer 2. Set duplicated layer to ‘Screen’ 3. You’re done! To darken the image, simply change the layer mode to ‘Multiply’ instead of ‘Screen.

6. Art and Experiment: Red Eye Removal

By now, you should be able to accomplish the basics in Adobe Photoshop. In this last section, I’ll present a small tutorial on removing red eye, and then provide a few links to get you started. 1. Zoom into the eye of the image that has red eye. 2. Create a new layer. Use the eyedropper to pick up a color from the iris of the eye. It should be a fairly gray tint with a hint of the eye color.

3. Paint over the red part of the eye on the new layer, being careful not to paint over the eyelids. Be sure to paint with a feathered brush. Set the layer mode to ‘Saturation’ 4. If that leaves the eye looking flat and hollow, duplicate the saturation level and set it to ‘Hue’ 5. Extra tip: If you need to enhance the colors of the eye, go ahead and do so. See the ‘digital makeover’ section if you need to review. The final product should look something like the image on the left.

6. Art and Experiment: Special Effects

Virtually any photo trick you can imagine can be done with Adobe Photoshop. In addition, the methods I have given you here are the methods that I have found best to work for me. You may find a better way for yourself. Photoshop allows you the flexibility to come up with so many ways to achieve the same result. Here are a few links to help you get started in special effects. http://www.planetphotoshop.com http://myjanee.home.insightbb.com/tutorials.htm http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Photoshop/1 http://www.n-sane.net/tutorials.php

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