Advanced topics, including lighting, are covered on our Advanced training course on Photoshop in Brighton, Sussex.

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, play with the sliders to change the effect, play with the points of the circle on the image icon to change direction and 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 background layers and play with the different styles 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 Training on April 17th, 2007 | No Comments »

Looking for a training course on Photoshop? We offer beginners to advanced workshops in Brighton, Sussex.

Options / Brushes (across the top of the screen)

• Select a new brush size/type for the tool in current use
• Make a new brush using options
• Used in conjunction with tools, provides modifiers for tool operation

Navigator

• Magnify or de-magnify using big and small hill icons (uses fast, pre-calculated magnifications)
• Move viewing area by dragging navigator rectangle
• Precisely adjust magnification using slider, or type in using zoom value field

Info

• Width and height of selections
• RGB and CMYK values
• Measurements when measuring tool selected
• X and Y positions of cursor

Colours

• Use sliders to modify foreground or background colours (select the appropriate square in the palette)
• Pick a colour from the blended picker below the sliders (cursor becomes an eyedropper)

Swatches

• Get a new colour for foreground (click swatch) or background (ALT-click swatch)
• Store a new, sampled, foreground colour in an empty area (cursor becomes paint bucket)
• Delete a colour using CTRL-click

History

• Move backward and forward through the changes made in the document
• Create a snapshot/s of a current satisfactory state as a place to come back to

Actions

• Record a series of modifications that can be played back on many different images (effects, scan corrections etc)
• Assign a particular command or set of commands to a function key as a personalised shortcut

Layers

Consider layers as sheets of acetate layered one upon another

• Each layer can have its own opacity setting
• Each layer can show only the selected part of its image by using layer masking
• The way in which layers combine with each other can be altered
• Layers may be locked to each other so that they can be moved in perfect registration

Channels

• Channels are the areas in which photoshop stores image information
• The information relates, in the first place, to the RGB  or CMYK channels that comprise the image
• Other images may be stored in the channels, most often these are the masks used

Paths

• The pen tool produces paths which are stored in the paths palette
• Paths may be created from selections and vice versa
• Path options provides ways in which the path may be incorporated into an image

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

Adobe Photoshop has some great tools to put a portfolio on the web…

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

The Metadata Tab

1. Open Adobe Bridge (or File Browser in older versions) and navigate to the folder of images that you want to include in your Gallery.
2. Select an image and view the metadata tab. Some fields have a pencil next to them which means the fields are editable. Fill in the description (this will be the caption on the Web Page). Fill in the credits for the image.
3. Check the apply (tick) box at the bottom of the window to apply the custom fields to the image they will now be attached to the image and travel with it.

Working With your Photoshop Gallery

Note – to use this feature in Photoshop CS4 you will need to download the Optional Plugins from the Adobe website

1. Choose  Tools> Photoshop> Web Photo Gallery in Adobe Bridge (in CS2 use Automate> Web Photo Gallery from the file browser’s menu) and select a style.
2. The preview is visible on the right – some options are not available for certain styles. Fill in your email address. The Source Images section is where you choose the images and decide where to save the gallery.
3. To choose a folder, select an entire folder of images to be processed or Selected individual Images From File Browser (Or Bridge) You need to do this before opening the Web Photo Gallery dialog box.
4. Hold down Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) and click on your chosen images to select them.
5. Click on Destination and either create or select a folder to save the gallery.

Naming your Photoshop Gallery

1. Under options, you will see a drop down menu.
2. Choose Banner. This is where you will enter the title of the gallery and personal information.

Select your Compression Settings

1. Select “Large Images” from the drop down menu
2. You can choose the default or increase the size if you wish. There is a slider that says “File size.” This sets the jpg compression. Moving the slider to the right will increase quality, but it will take longer for images to download.If you are unsure, a setting of 5 is a compromise between high qulity and fast loading.

Security Settings

This allows you to watermark your images.

1. Choose “Security” from the drop down menu.
2. Select “custom text” can type in any message you like for a watermark.
3. Choose the font size and placement of the watermark.
4. Select a color and opacity. If unsure use White and opacity 38%.
5. Hit OK.

When Photoshop has finished, it launches your gallery in your browser.

Upload Your Photoshop Gallery To The Web

You will need to find a web hosting company if you don’t already have one. You can then upload all the files in your chosen folder (the one we exported to) to the internet via FTP.

There are many easy-to-use ftp programs available such as cuteFTP for windows or Fetch for Mac.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop Training on November 11th, 2009 | No Comments »

A smart object is basically a shortcut or a reference to some original data so you have an external file which appears in a layer in your photoshop document but remains in its original place. If you subsequently change the original image any references to it in you new photoshop document will reflect the changes. Smart objects will be covered in our Beginners Photoshop Training training course in Brighton, Sussex.

You can convert one or any number of layers into a smart object in your active photoshop document.

Smart objects are created automatically when you place an Illustrator, raw or another Photoshop image into your document.

If you double-click the thumbnail for a Smart Object, the embedded (original) file opens.

Any edits you make on the open file will update automatically in your new document when you save the external or referenced file. You can reference the original file many times in your psd and all instances of it will update.

To create a Smart Object, do one of the following:

• Select one or more layers from the Layers panel
• Right-click (Mac: Ctrl-click) the while the layer or layers are selected and choose Convert to Smart Object

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop Training on April 27th, 2009 | No Comments »

The first thing that you will need to do is to have the image in front of you, so before you do anything else make sure that you have the opened the image.

Learn a range of ways to improve the impact of your pictures on one of our workshops for beginners or advanced.

After you have it open create an adjustment layer but do not make any adjustments, only click O.K. When you have done this then choose the layer adjustment mode and then multiply. This will cause your image to get much darker as its density becomes greater. If you feel that this is not enough then you can always redo this again until you are satisfied.

If however you find it too dark then you can make it lighter by sliding your opacity bar to the left until you are happy. When you have achieved the effects that you require you can now repaint the second adjustment layer parts that you wish to alter with your paintbrush.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop Training on April 20th, 2009 | No Comments »

We offer a comprehensive Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Training course in Brighton, Sussex.

Traditionally software for digital imaging serves two purposes:

1. applications for cataloging and organizing your photos
2. powerful applications for editing individual images.

Photoshop Lightroom does both, it is a powerful way to organize, export, print and develop RAW images – the default file format for most modern DLSR cameras.
Photographers use the RAW file format to capture image data in its least processed form. Most consumer cameras compress or slightly tweak a photo as soon as it’s shot, and RAW skips this step. The file sizes of RAW images are larger and the photos don’t look as “finished,” but working with RAW files also offers more control over the final product.

Lightroom is designed to make it easy to quickly organize all your image files, RAW or otherwise, highlighting, ranking and tagging the ones you like. You can also apply enhancements and corrections to the photo before exporting it to another application or directly to the web or print.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Lightroom Training, Photoshop Training on April 17th, 2009 | No Comments »

Below are a few quick tips on how to make photoshop easier. Check out about our Photoshop workshops to learn more.

The Reset Button

If you have ever been in a situation, and if you haven’t you probably will one day, where you’ve tweaked and twiddled with your settings so much that you’ve completely lost track of your original settings?

Despite all seeming lost, however, salvation is never far from hand in the form of the reset button. When you select a tool, regardless of which one it is, the reset button is the first one in the row of options, at the top left hand side of the screen. When you click on this icon, you will be given two options: these are to either reset all your tools or just the one you are using.
With the reset button at your side you need never again fear getting hopelessly lost and feel free to muddle about with the settings as much as you like.

A Straight Line

Drawing a straight line with a pencil or brush is not as easy as one might expect, however here are some tips that might help achieve this more easily.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give you is to hold down shift when you try to draw your line. That way the computer will have any marks you make become a straight line relative to your original point. To help you get a feel of how this works it is perhaps worthwhile just to practice with it for a few minutes, pressing and releasing the shift button randomly and making different movements with your mouse. (However bare in mind that you can only use this method if your line only goes vertically or horizontally.)
An alternative method that you can use, one which is not just restricted to going up and down, is called the point to point method. You do this by instead of drawing the line by dragging you mouse where you want the line to appear you, as well as holding shift, click where you want your line to end and begin, leaving the computer to fill in the blanks.

Switching From One Document To Another.

It is not uncommon, when using Photoshop, for images and documents to pile up and can quickly become a burden or unmanageable. Never fear though, with these tips you should soon by finding it easier.
One way Photoshop tries to help you manage with the document load is by having what is called a “photo bin.” What this does it to display thumbnail pictures of any documents that you may have open. This then allows you to more easily decipher which document you are looking for. The photo bin can be found at the bottom of the editor window.
Another method is to hold the “ctrl” and tab key at the same time, much like in windows, were the buttons are shift and tab, Photoshop will cycle through any open documents, and, if you press shift also, you will cycle the other way.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop Training on March 16th, 2009 | No Comments »

Here is a list of some the most useful adobe photoshop keyboard shortcuts

You can discover more on a training course for Adobe Photoshop.

Most computer users will already know cut, paste and select all, but if you are a beginner learn these first you will use them in almost any application

Ctrl C – copy
Ctrl V – paste
Ctrl A – select all, this is useful for selecting all files in a folder or selecting the whole image area in a document

Zoom In/Zoom Out/Fit to Window

Ctrl + – zoom in
Ctrl - – zoom out
Ctrl 0 – fit to window

Undo, Multiple Times

Ctrl Alt Z - Most programs allow you to press Ctrl + Z multiple times for multiple Undo’s, but with PS you need to hold down the Alt key otherwise you’ll keep undoing then re-doing!

Hand/Move Tool

Spacebar

To select the hand (move) tool just hit the spacebar

Switch Document Windows

Ctrl + Tab

To switch quickly between windows, useful when having multipal documents open

New Layer

Ctrl + Shift + N – with dialog
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N – without dialog

Duplicate Layer

Ctrl + J – without dialog
Ctrl + Alt + J – with dialog

You can duplicate an entire layer, or, if you have a selection, the selection will be duplicated to it’s own layer

Re-run Filter/ Fade Filter

Ctrl + F – run filter again
Ctrl + Alt + F – run filter again, with dialog
Ctrl + Shift + F – fade filter

If something goes wrong, you can quickly undo, then go back and try again without having to go through the hassle of moving your cursor. Or, if your filter effect is too intense, you can fade it down

Making Your Own Shortcuts

Photoshop allows you to custom create your own Keyboard shortcuts to suit your needs, press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + K or go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts.

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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop Training on February 20th, 2007 | No Comments »