Photoshop

Download Free Professional Twitter Background

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Would you like a good looking Twitter Background for your business? Would you like a Twitter Background that lets you show more information than the mini profile, like the URL of  your website, Linkedin and Facebook details, maybe your Flickr account and your email and telephone number?

Well you can!

Download our free Twitter backgound template PSD file, fill in the blanks and you will have a twitter background just like ours @SBTtraining.

How to create your Free Twitter Background

If you are good with Photoshop you can fiddle with the colours by creating your own styles for the box and line at top. I have made them grey to go with most colour schemes. I think that patterned backgrounds can be quite distracting, so I chose black and white for ours. Desaturating and fading images can also work if your design is looking too garish. You can find ideas for your free Twitter background by looking for free desktop wallpaper.

To improve your Photoshop skills you could try our Photoshop training courses for beginners and advanced Photoshop users.

Download your free twitter background template here.

Download free twitter backgound

1. Open and unzip the PSD file called twitterbackground.zip
2. Find or create a backgound image and paste it into the layer called “put your backgound image here”
3. Find an image, portrait, logo or whatever you like and paste it into the layer called “Put an  image or your logo here”
4. Fill in your contact details
5. Save as jpg around 75% quality
6. Log into Twitter
7. Click on Settings from the top menu
8. Click on Design from the submenu
9. Click on Change Background Image ( bottom left of page) and a browse for files dialog box will appear
10. Find and select your new twitter backgound jpg
11. Save
    

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop, Social Media on February 8th, 2010 | No Comments »

Adobe Photoshop Workspace

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Welcome to our Free Photoshop Resources Section.

We also offer hands on Photoshop Courses led by experienced photographers, graphic designers and web-designers. However these tutorials, how-tos and tips will help you to get started!

You can work through these sections one by one, or just dip in to individual sections for a reminder.

Let’s kick off with a look at the Photoshop CS4 workspace:

When you first open Adobe Photoshop the work area below is revealed.

It contains:

• The Menu bar at the top of the desktop
• The Tool options bar immediately below the Menu bar
• The Toolbox floats on the lef
• Any open document appears in its own window
• Any open palettes float on the right.

You will not use all of the palettes often, when you know which ones you need the most often you can close the rest and save your workspace the way you like it. From the Menu choose:

• Window> Workspace> Save Workspace.

To return to the Photoshop default layout. From the Menu choose:

• Window>Workspace>Reset Palette Locations.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on February 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Marquee tools

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Marquee tools are used to select or mark out areas of an image. You can learn more about the various Photoshop Tools on our Photoshop Training Course.

The four Photoshop marquee tools are grouped together in the toolbar. To pick the one you want, click on the icon showing in the toolbar, and select the one you want from the pop-up menu.

• Holding shift when you drw a rectangle or ellipse will constrain the selection to a perfect square or circle.
• Holding down Alt as you drag a new selection, will allow you to draw outward from that point.
• Pressing the Shift key while a selection is already active will allow you to add more areas to the existing selection.
• Pressing Alt while a selection outline already exists will allow you to subtract areas from the existing selection.

To move a selection outline after you have completed it, make sure you have the New Selection option selected on the options bar. Then place the pointer inside the selection outline, and drag. You can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge the selection outline into place. To move the contents of a selection, use the move tool.

The keyboard shortcut for these tools is the letter M. Holding down the Shift key while pressing M will toggle between the rectangular and elliptical marquee tool.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on February 27th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Tools

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Photoshop tools are found in the Toolbox, which appears on the left side of the screen when you first start Photoshop. When you see a little arrow in the bottom corner it means that you can reveal other tools by clicking on the arrow. You can learn more about all the Photoshop tools and how they are used on our Photoshop Course.

Apart from the photoshop tools listed below you can select your foreground and background colours here. Double clicking on foreground or background squares will bring up the colour picker.

Clicking on the small black and white squares will bring the colour well back to black and white. Some useful keyboard shortcuts to remember and get used to are the X key to swap the foreground and background colors, and D to set the colors to their default settings.

You can also create masks (though it can be easier through the layers pallete), change workspace view or go to image ready.

Button	Tool Name	Action
	Rectangular Marquee	Rectangular Marquee – Makes a rectangular selection and provides access to the Elliptical, Single Row, and Single Column Marquee Tools
	Move	Move – Moves selections, layers, and guides (rulers)
	Lasso	Lasso - Draws free-hand segments of a selection’s border and provides access to the Polygonal Lasso Tool and Magnetic Lasso Tool
	Magic Wand	Magic Wand – Selects consistently colored areas without requiring you to trace the outline
	Crop	Crop - Removes unwanted portions from an image.
	Eyedropper	Eyedropper - Allows you to get colors from an image to designate as a new background or foreground color. It also provides access to the Color Sampler and Measure Tools
	Spot Healing Brush	Spot Healing Brush – Corrects imperfections in an image by making them disappear into the surrounding image. It also provides access to the Healing Brush Tool, Patch Tool, and the Red Eye Tool
	Brush	Brush – Paints brush strokes onto an image and provides access to the Pencil Tool and Color Replacement Tool
	Clone Stamp	Clone Stamp – Paints a clone of an image or area of an image you have already selected. It also provides access to the Pattern Stamp Tool
	History Brush	History Brush - Paints a copy of one image state or snapshot of an image into your current image’s window. It also provides access to the Art History Brush Tool
	Eraser	Eraser – Erases pixels wherever the mouse is clicked. It also provides access to the Background Eraser and Magic Eraser Tools
	Gradient	Gradient – Creates a gradual blend fill between colors and also provides access to the Paint Bucket Tool. For more information, see Working with the Gradient Tool
	Blur	Blur - Softens the edges of an image. It also provides access to the Sharpen and Smudge Tools
	Dodge	Dodge - Allows you to darken or lighten areas of an image. It also provides access to the Burn and Sponge Tools
	Path Selection	Path Selection – Makes shape or segment selections that show anchor points, direction lines, and direction points. It also provides access to the Direct Selection Tool
	Horizontal Type	Horizontal Type – Allows you to insert text onto an image. It also provides access to the Vertical Type, Horizontal Type Mask, and Vertical Type Mask Tools
	Pen	Pen - Allows you to create, edit, or smooth lines and shapes. It also provides access to the Freeform Pen, Add Anchor Point, Delete Anchor Point, and Convert Point Tools
	Draw Rectangle	Rectangle - Allows you to draw different shapes. It also provides access to the Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line, and Custom Shape Tools.
	Draw Rectangle	Rectangle - Allows you to draw different shapes. It also provides access to the Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line, and Custom Shape Tools.
	3D Rotate Tool	3D Rotate Tool - Allows you to rotate the document canvas. It also provides access to the 3d Roll View, Pan View, Walk View and Zoom Tools.
	3D Orbit Tool	3D Rotate Tool - Allows you to change the position or scale of a 3D model.. It also provides access to the 3d Rotate, 3D Roll, 3D Pan, 3D Slide and 3D Scale Tools.
	Hand	Hand – Moves an image within its window
	Zoom	Zoom - Magnifies or reduces the view size of an image

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on February 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

Creating realistic Water Reflections with Photoshop

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In this Photoshop tutorial, we are going to learn how to add a realistic water reflection to any photo using the displacement filter. You can learn more great filter techniques on our Advanced Photoshop Training course.

Below is the original photo and below it is what the final image will look like:

1.Duplicate the Background Layer

With your image open in Photoshop we can see that the image is in one layer – the Background layer:

Duplicate the Background layer by right clicking your backgoround layer and selecting duplicate layer. You now have two layers – the original Background layer on the bottom and your  new duplicate layer – Layer 1

2. Add More Canvas Space To The Bottom Of The Document

To add more space for the water reflection go to the Image menu at the top of the screen and choose Canvas Size. This brings up Photoshop’s “Canvas Size” dialog box. We want to add twice as much canvas space as we currently have, but we want the space to appear at the bottom of the document so you to tell Photoshop exactly where we want this extra canvas space to go see below.

Enter 100 for the Height and set the measurement to percent, as circled in red below. Leave Width option set to 0. Make sure the Relative option is checked, this tells Photoshop to give 100% more canvas space than we have already. Then click inside the square below in the top middle position as circled below. Photoshop will now  place the extra canvas space below the document:

The height of the document has doubled.

3. Flip The Top Layer Vertically

We now need to flip our image upside down.

With the top layer selected in the Layers palette, go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen, choose Transform, and then choose Flip Vertical.

Photoshop will flip the image so it now looks like this:

4. Drag The Flipped Image To The Bottom Of The Document

The flipped image needs to be at the bottom of the document, so use the Move Tool from the Tools palette, or press V on your keyboard:

5. Add Another Blank Layer

To create our water ripple effect we need to add a new blank layer at the top of the Layers palette, so with Layer 1 still selected, click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.

Fill the new blank layer with white. Either select all CTRL+A and choose edit>fill from the top menu making sure you have white selected or make sure the backgound colour in your tools pallete is set to white and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Backspace (Win) / Command+Delete (Mac)  to fill the new layer with the Background color (white).

6. Create Black And White Horizontal Lines by Applying The “Halftone Pattern” Filter

From the Filter menu at the top of the screen, select Sketch, then select Halftone Pattern. This brings up Photoshop’s Filter Gallery set to the “Halftone Pattern” filter options on the right. This filter adds a series of black and white horizontal lines to the image. The more lines you have the more ripples you will create. Select  the Pattern Type option to Lines.  To adjust the number of lines use the Size option. Lower numbers make more lines and higher numbers less but thicker lines.  The Contrast option determines how sharp the edges of the lines are. Lower numbers make soft lines,  higher numbers make harder lines.

7. Apply The “Gaussian Blur” Filter

Next we need to smooth out the lines. – Go up to the Filter menu , choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur. Use  preview to get the required effect, drag the slider at the bottom of the dialog box to increase the Radius value until the lines have a soft edge to them:

8. SaveThe Lines Layer As A New Document

In order to use our lines as a displacement map for our water ripples,  we have to save this layer only as new document. With the lines layer selected, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and select Duplicate Layer- in the dialog box find the “Destination” options, and using the arrow to the right of the Document option set it to New and give it a name, this will create a new Photoshop document out of the layer with the name that you gave it.

9. Save and Close The New Document

This new document will be used as a displacement map, when you click the close button top right Photoshop will ask you if you want to save the document.. Click Yes.

Make sure you save it as a Photoshop .PSD file so that Photoshop can use it as a displacement map. Save the document to your Desktop as we’ll need it again soon.

10. Delete The Lines Layer

Now you can get rid of the lines layer in your original document. To do that, simply click on it and drag it down onto the Trash Bin icon at the bottom of the Layers palette or right click and select delete layer.

11. Merge The Two Image Layers in to a New Layer

Before you can use the displacement map, you’ll have to merge the 2 image layers onto a new layer above them. First, select Layer 1. Now hit Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E (or Shift+Command+Option+E on a mac). It looks like nothing’s happened, but if you look in the layers palette you’ll see that the two layers have been merged in to a new one at the top.

Step 12. Create the Water Ripples with the Displace Filter.

You can now use the displacement map you’ve just created to make the water ripples.

Select the new merged layer in the Layers palette. Now go to the Filter menu (in the main menu bar) and select Distort > Displace .

In the “Displace” dialog box that opens, you need to change Horizontal Scale option at the top. You can choose whatever value you like, but a value of 4 should give a realistic effect.

For a water ripple we don’t need vertical distortion so set the Vertical Scale value to 0. Stretch To Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels should also be selected:

When you hit OK in the dialog box you’ll be asked which file you want to use as a displacement map. Choose the file that you just saved, and hit Open. Photoshop will apply the displacement map to the whole image.

Step 13. Hide the Top Ripples Using a Layer Mask

Obviously you only want ripples on the bottom half of your image (the water!), so you need to hide the top part with a layer mask. First, Ctrl-click (or Command-click for mac) on “Layer 1″ in the Layers palette. This places a selection around the flipped image you created at the bottom.

Make sure you still have the merged layer selected, and click on the Layer Mask icon in the Layers Palette like so:

This will add a mask to the merged layer, and only the bottom half of the merged layer will still be visible. The unwatned ripples from the top of the image are gone!

Step 14. Apply “Gaussian Blur” to the Layer Mask

At the moment there’s quite a harsh line dividing the top of the image and the bottom (the water). To soften it, you can apply a Gaussian Blur.

First slecet the Layer Mask by clicking on the thumbnail in the Layers palette:

From the main menu, select Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. The same settings you used previously will be in the dialog box, so just hit OK to apply it.

Step 15. Colour the Water with an Adjustment Layer

At the moment the water at the bottom of the image is perfectly clear, so it would be good to add a hint of blue to it. You can do this with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

To do this, hold down  Alt (or Option for mac) and select New Adjustment Layer on the Layers palette. Now select Hue/Saturation from the list.

Because you’re holding “Alt/Option”, you’ll now get the New Layer dialog box. Select the Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask check box

Now, photoshop will only apply the adjustment to the layer directly below it (which is the water ripples) so only these will be coloured by the adjustment layer. Click OK.

The Hue/Saturation dialog box will now open. Select Colorize (bottom right corner). Select  your preferred colour (perhaps blue!) using the Hue slider.

Click OK – the water has been coloured blue, but it’s much too blue – so….

Step 16: Reduce the Opacity of your Hue/Saturation layer

This is simple – simlpy select the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette and adjust the value accordingly until the colour looks about right.

And that’s it! The end result should look something like this…

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on June 18th, 2008 | No Comments »

How To Create Photoshop Actions

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Photoshop actions save time and make you more productive. They speed up repetitive tasks. Learn how to save yourself time on Advanced Photoshop Course

1. OPEN THE PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS PALETTE

The actions palette typically shows up as a tab on the history palette, but this may vary depending on how you have set up Photoshop. If you cant see it you you can activate it under the “Window” menu. If you haven’t made any photoshop actions yet it will just show default photoshop actions.

While you are practising making new photoshop actions we will begin by creating a new set (folder) in which to save your new photoshop actions.

Click on the little arrow at the top right of the actions palllete and select new set.

Give it a name eg. web graphics and click ok. Your new set will appear in the actions pallete. You are now ready to create your first photoshop action.

2. CREATE A NEW ACTION

For the purpose of this photoshop tutorial we will prepare an image for flikr. Before we can record a photoshop action we need to create a new one in the actions pallete.

Pull down the action menu and click on “New Action…”. Give it a name (I have chosen flikr) and you have created an empty photoshop action.

Note you only have the option here to cancel or record. We are not ready to record until we have an open image so for now click record and then stop recording by clicking the stop button at the bottom of the pallete. You have now created an empty photoshop action.

3. CREATE A FOLDER IN WHICH YOU WISH TO SAVE YOUR WEB GRAPHICS

This will save you time looking for the exported graphic later!

4. CREATE YOUR FLIKR ACTION

Open an image you want to save for the web.

5. BEGIN RECORDING THE ACTION

To begin recording the action, simply select your action in the palette and click on the “Record” icon in the lower action menu or select “Start Recording” from the pull-down menu.

Once you click this button, every event you perform will be recorded. This includes menu items, adjustments, layer selections, and any of the Photoshop tools.

I. If neccessary flatten the image, – choose> layers> flatten image, if not go to step 2

II. Resize image, from main menu – choose > image> image size – fill in width 800, tick constrain proportions and choose Bicubic Sharper – click ok

III. Next choose ‘Save for Web and divices’ from the file menu, and make sure the preset is ‘jpg high’ and click save – navigate to the folder you made earlier for your images and click save.

IV. Stop recording your action.

5.REPLAYING ACTIONS

Open another image. Select the action called flikr in the web graphics set of your actions pallete and click play. – MAGIC

For a really comprehensive course covering how to create web graphics with Photoshop, check out our Photoshop for Web Graphics course.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on September 1st, 2008 | No Comments »

Replacing a Bland Sky Using Photoshop

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Sometimes we see a great image in the foreground but the sky is less inspiring. Sometimes we see a fantastic sky without foreground interest. Here we will learn how to match up sky and foreground from two different images in Photoshop. Learn even more techniques for lifting your images on our Advanced Photoshop Training course.

It is a good idea to take pictures of a variety of skies, not just sunsets, for later use.

Below is an image with potential -  find something similar in your stock and follow the instructions to transform your image. The detail around the skyline will need preserving.

1. Open your image and open the sky image you wish to use for the sky detail.
2. With both images open, you can click on the background layer in your sky image and drag it onto your foreground image, or you can chose Edit > Copy in your sky image and Edit > Paste onto your foreground image. Your layers palette should look like this:



Select the sky layer and set the Layer Blend to Multiply. Layer Blending Modes can be changed by locating the horizontal dropdown menu at the top of your layers palette. It is set to normal by default. We want to change it to multiply.


3. The best way to get rid of the sky from the foreground area is to use a layer mask. With a layer mask it is easy to tweak your cut out to perfection as the underlying detail in your image will still be there if you need it.

I like to think of a mask as a cardboard cutout. It appears as a black and white icon to the right of the layer that is being masked. The black bits are like a cutout (you can see through this to the layer underneath) the white bits are like the cardboard you can’t see through this it the image underneath is being obscured by the image on top).

4. With your sky layer selected click on the Layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

   

5. Select a brush from the tool palette and set your brush size at the top left of the Photoshop workspace.
6. Make sure the colour picker at the bottom of the tool palette is set to black and white (if not click on the little black and white icon in the bottom left corner see below:

   

7. With the foreground colour set to black, paint out the areas of the sky that overlap your foreground. Should you wish to restore an area, swap the foreground colour to white and paint the area on your mask to reveal the image on this layer.

It is important that you paint on the mask only, and not the image. When painting on the mask, the mask icon will appear next to the eye icon and there will be a blue line around your mask.



When your image is selected a brush icon will appear next to the eye icon and a blue line will appear around the image



PAINT ONLY ON THE MASK NOT ON THE IMAGE



8. Paint over the edges of the sky. Varying the brush opacity may help and will not leave an obvious line. Reduce the opacity over the fine details will help to preserve them.

   

9. When you are happy with your mask you can play with the opacity.

Adding Drama to the sky using Photoshop Gradients

Adding a gradient can add drama to a sky similar to burning in the sky in a darkroom.

1. Create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer icon at the base of the Layers Palette
2. Select the ‘Gradient’ tool from the tool bar
3. Choose the ‘Linear gradient’ option
4. Set Foreground colour to black
5. Set the Gradient option to Foreground to Transparent
6. Set the Gradient Opacity to around 30%
7. Tick the ‘Reverse’ box and drag the gradient line towards the area you wish to make darker
8. If necessary, the opacity of the gradient layer may be reduced to suit

Below is the finished image:

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on October 30th, 2007 | No Comments »

Using Photoshop Lighting Effects

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Advanced topics, including lighting, are covered on our Advanced Photoshop course

Using the render filter you can produce great lighting effects with Photoshop. This can be particularly useful for portraits. In this Photoshop tutorial you will learn how to use different lighting effects

1. Open a portrait image

2. Create a duplicate layer, the easiest way is to select the layer in the layers palette and drag down to the layer icon at the bottom of the layer

From the Filter menu at the top of the workspace choose Filter > Render > Lighting Effects.

We will use the spotlight, so select spotlight in the drop down menu, paly with the sliders to change the effect, play with the points of the circle on the image icon to change directiona nd size of light beam. You can change the colour of the light by double clicking the white squares to the right of the window.

The final image

You can use the other lighting styles to achieve different lighting effects.
Experiment by turning off your first lighting effect layer by clicking on the eye icon

Make new duplicate backgound layers and play with the different syles of lighting using the drop down menu, changing the sliders, colours (clicking on the colour squares and selecting new colours)

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on April 17th, 2007 | No Comments »