I have just come across the Photoshop Disasters blog. there is some great stuff on there. It is really interesting to see how much the view of the world we are presented with has been manipulated. My current favourite is this headless sportsman:

Labels: Photoshop

Danny Boyle has produced 3 rather fun video tutorials for Photoshop. Well worth a view:

• You Suck at Photoshop #1
• You Suck at Photoshop #2
• You Suck at Photoshop #3

You never know, you might even learn something :)

Labels: Humour, Photoshop

Here is a little Photoshop technique I developed the other day to make shiny metal really shiny (click on any image to view a large version).

First duplicate the layer:


Run the High-Pass filter with a large number of pixels so that the shiny areas get emphasised.



Finally then just change the layer blend mode to soft-light ( or hard-light) to make it all shiny:

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Related Posts
Beginners guide to Photoshop Layers:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Labels: Photoshop, Workflow

I'm running out of space in my brain, every day more and more trivia fills it up, I'm worried that if I keep learning stuff it'll push out the important stuff and I'll forget where I live or my wife's name!

It's amazing the complete tosh in there, from my days (many years ago) working in PC support I still remember such trivia as how to get a pound sign on lotus 123 release 1 (Alt + F1 L = if you are interested...I know your not) and what all the error numbers on an HP Laserjet 4 mean! With rubbish like that in there it won't be long before my brain just packs up from storing too much useless information.

The thing is, a large complicated product like Photoshop is just much easier to use if you know the shortcut keys. But you have to remember those keys and there is just no space left in my head to remember them all. So I decided I needed a photoshop keyboard to save on all that brain space and leave me room to remember where I left the car keys! The problem with this idea is that these are really only aimed at desktop PCs or Macs and I wanted to use them on my Dell Laptop.

So I decided to try EditorsKeys which is a set of sticky labels you can put on the top of your existing keyboard - ideal for laptop users. The stickers cost nine of the queens pounds, so I placed my order and the goods arrived the next day...brilliant!


Well the good news is that the stickers work well, this is not the cheap or shoddily made product that the word "stickers" conjurers up. Application is easy: first clean the keyboard with the supplied cleaner and then with the help of their neat little applicator thingy stick the labels on to your keyboard.

One small issue occurs if you have a laptop: many of the laptops functions are accessed by various special key combinations which are usually marked on the key tops. If you put a sticker over them you lose the indicator of how to change those laptop functions. So you need to decide if the laptop functions are more important than the Photoshop functions...looks like you can't get away without remembering something!

In use, they do exactly what they say on the tin and speed things up as you can find keys really quickly and easily.

As for downsides, first all your keyboard colours have changed - it's still taking me a while to get used to the shock when I look down at the keyboard! To be fairyou should really expect that though! Occasionally the edges of the stickers slightly catch my fingers as I am typing which is a bit irritating but is already starting to disappear with a bit of use.

The thing I have realised I would want from EditorsKeys is an extra sticker/card covering a lot of the other commonly used shortcuts that are got at via the ctrl & alt keys. There is not room on the keyboard to show them all but I would like to have them readily to hand as these are even harder to remember.

I would recommend EditorKeys as they work well and are a great talking point when you open your laptop.

If you would like to try to remember some useful Photoshop shortcuts why not take a look at these two links:
Photoshop Shortcuts
More Photoshop shortcuts

Labels: Equipment, Keyboards, Photoshop

Adobe have released a new version of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.

Mainly it seems to be just a bug fix update but there is now raw support for the following cameras:

Canon	EOS 40D
Fuji	FinePix IS-1
Leaf	Aptus 17
Leaf	Aptus 54s
Leaf	Aptus 75s
Olympus	EVOLT E-510
Panasonic	DMC-FZ18
Pentax	K100D Super
Phase One	P 20 +
Phase One	P 21 +
Phase One	P 25 +
Phase One	P 30 +
Phase One	P 45 +
Sony	Alpha 700

Labels: Lightroom, Photoshop

Things are looking up:

I finally got my camera back from the menders, I'm a £170 lighter! Lucky it was only minor damage. And I have sorted out my laptop colour matching problems....I uninstalled all the colourPlus software and gave up!

In the mean time I have had a chance to play with some pictures, I revisited this picture:



and decided to convert it to black and White. I used The Lights Right Studio B&W conversion actions to convert it to B&W. The thing I like about these actions is they are based on representations of different coloured filters, they also have the option to put all the filters on the image then switch between them.

I ended up with this image:


I feel both images work, the first emphasises the lovely warm evening light, whilst the second is more about the shape of that lovely tree. Which do you prefer?

Labels: Photoshop, Taking Pictures

Over at The Luminous Landscape is an interesting discussion about the curves that are used by Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.

Having gone to the trouble of learning how curves work in photoshop and Capture 1 I have always foud the system used in Lightroom and Camera Raw rather confusing. I look forward to working out how its all supposed to be used.

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Related Posts
Creating Web Galleries in Lightroom
Controlled Vocabulary and Lightroom

Labels: Lightroom, Photoshop

Yesterday I posted this shot on ephotozine and received the comment that, on the lower landing the floor appears a bit messy and would be improved by a bit of cloning.


I agree entirely that as an image, the shabbiness of the landing rather distracts from the repeats and curves. But should I get out the clone tool and produce perfection?

The subject of the picture is the Nelson Stairs in Somerset House. The stairs are a very fine piece of architecture, but when I visited them they had quite a worn look and it was really rather difficult to see any part of it that didn't have a bit of damage to them. I composed this shot very carefully to avoid bringing in any of the distracting modern elements - electric lights, fire exit signs and people using the stair case.

But I still could see some of the damage to the staircase in my shot and for me this is the deciding factor on whether to clone out elements of a picture or not. If the image represents what I saw or felt about the image at the time I took the shot then I am happy to leave it as it is. If I take a landscape shot and on examining it later, I notice a coke can in the corner of the shot I am happy to clone it out as it doesn't represent what I saw at the time. For me photography is about capturing a specific moment or feeling and not creating something in the computer afterwards - though if that is what people enjoy doing I have no problem with that.

As another example here is a shot by the great portrait photographer Martin Jordan:


OK, it's a prepared studio shot with a model but to me the fact that there is one stray hair on the side of her face destroys our perception of this being a "perfect shot" yet at the same time roots the shot in reality rather than simply being a "painted mask of ugly perfection"*.

It is so easy to produce a photoshopped version of reality that many photographers become seduced by it but I urge you to think before you reach for the clone tool next time.
What is your personal limit when it comes to manipulation? I'd love to hear some other opinions on this - please use the comments option to add your take on the nature of photoshop & reality.

*Crass - Berkertex Bribe

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A New Years Resolution

Labels: Black and White, London, Photoshop, Taking Pictures

The next stage in my image processing workflow is to output to my chosen media. the actual process depends on my intended target.

Web Site
I often display my work on websites like Ephotozine to get feedback on my work. To prepare for a web page I do the following in Photoshop.

• Add a border.
• Select Image>Mode and convert to 8bits per channel.
• Use Image>Image Size to reduce the size of the so that maximum height is 800 pixels and the maximum width is 1000 pixels. I ensure that bicubic sharper is selected.
• Then I convert to SRGB using Edit>Convert to profile.
• Finally I add an unsharp mask of around 40%, 1 pixel threshold 1.
• use Save For Web to reduce the final image size to around 200K.

All of this has been recorded as an action in Photoshop so it is actually a matter of clicking and waiting for a few seconds.

My Web Galleries
I will cover part 4 of my workflow (archiving) soon but for the moment trust me when I say it relies on iView Media Pro quite heavily. My web galleries are generated directly from iView.

A catalogue set for the gallery is created and all items selected for the gallery are added to it. Each picture has the comments updated and a title added. The Gallery is then generated and uploaded through Dreamweaver.

Print
For Print output the image is resized to the required output size at 300dpi with bicubic-smoother selected. I then use the professional sharpening toolkit from The Lights Right Studio to sharpen the image with specific settings for ink-jet at 300DPI on matte paper.

Finally the prints are produced on an Epson 2100 printer on to Epson archival matte paper using genuine Epson inks. Prints are left to dry for 24 hours then checked and signed in pencil and mounted using acid free mountboard.

Part 4 covers the final part of the workflow - Archival.


My Workflow

• Capture
• Processing
• Output
• Archiving

Labels: iView Media Pro, Photoshop, Web, Workflow

In Part1 I covered capture and getting the images on to the PC

Having downloaded all my files to my PC, Downloader Pro then launches straight into Breezebrowser Pro for the initial sort out of images. Breezebrowser Pro is a great tool for handling batches of raw images, it makes it easy to email proofs, generate webpages, edit metadata and sift through a group of images in slideshow mode.

Sorting the wheat from the chaff

The first thing to do with my images is to delete the duff shots from the shoot. First I check that BBPro is in the "High Quality" mode (Ctrl+Q) which applies screen sharpening to each image which makes it very easy to see the sharpness of an image.

I then select all the images in the shoot (Ctrl+A) and display them as a slideshow (Ctrl+S). I move through the slide show using the right arrow key and tagging any images for deletion using the up arrow key. At the end of the slideshow I select only the tagged items (f6) and send them to the recycle bin (del).

The number of images I delete on this first pass varies with the type of shoot: on a carefully measured landscape shoot there would only be one or two deletions but if I was trying to shoot dogs running about on a windswept beach over half the shots can be rejects due to the conditions and the models not being too co-operative!

The reason that I can be quite harsh with these deletions is that my download procedures make sure I always have a backup of every image. If I delete an image then the backup becomes the only copy of the image, so that’s why I use the recycle bin – just in case I decide that I shouldn’t have deleted it.

Deciding what to process

I could use the built in raw converter in BBPro or the converter built into Photoshop – both of which could be started automatically from BBPro but unfortunately I find that Capture One (from Phase One) produces the best results. The current version of Capture One doesn’t support a way to start it in a particular directory, so I have to start C1 and then navigate to the right directory and file to do my more detailed viewing and raw processing.

I now use the full screen view in C1 to work through the images tagging those which will be worth running through the raw converter.

Processing in C1

The raw processing in Capture One consists of the following:

• Adjusting the White Balance
• Adjusting the Exposure
• Outputting as a 16bit tiff

The processed file then opens automatically in Photoshop.I won’t detail the whole process as Keith Henson has done a great job in his Capture One Tutorial.

Photoshop

The first job in Photoshop is to view the image at 100% and clone out any dust spots using either the clone tool or the spot healing brush tool.

Usually I like to keep my images close to what comes out of the raw convertor but the extra processing depends on the images but may consist of:

• Colour adjustments
• B&W conversion
• Digital Velvia

All adjustments are done on layers then the image is saved back to the tiffs sub directory.

For security, all the files mentioned in this part of the workflow (raw, tiffs & web-ready) are backed-up using the Microsoft Synctoy tool, which is set to backup the machine from a scheduled batch file.

In part 3 I will be cover Outputting the image to web and print.

If you are getting a sense of Deja-vue that is because this blog was originally in the Articles section of the site...but I'm having a tidy up!

My Workflow

• Capture
• Processing
• Output
• Archiving

Labels: Breezebrowser Pro, Photoshop, Workflow

Following on from yesterdays colour enhancment tutorial. I thought I would show the different methods of boosting colour and their effect. It seems that LAB colour enhancement works well on images with a low range of tones, for images with a larger range of tones then Digital Velvia works better in my experience.

	Original Image
	10/90 Curve on A&B channel
	20/80 Curve on A&B channel
	30/70 Curve on A&B channel
	Digital Velvia Colour Boost - Normal
	Digital Velvia Colour Boost - Medium
	Digital Velvia Colour Boost - High

Labels: Photoshop

In an earlier blog I mentioned that one of my Christmas presents was Photoshop Lab Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace which, as it goes, is a very long title for a book.

Well I have finally finished it and I have to say it is really rather good. The easy writing style helps, the tutorials clear and there is a CD of images so that you can try it all out yourself on the images in the book.

The LAB colour space is designed to work in a similar way to the human eye and as such allows us to do things that are almost impossible in other colour spaces. When we view a scene we often perceive it as much more colourful than the film/sensor records it.

Anyway whilst on ephotozine the other day I uploaded a modification to this picture of Filey beach by Neil Davis.


I enhanced the colours with a simple LAB move that I learnt from the book, I promised to explain what I did to Neil, so here's how to do it.

The image has a very slight blue cast so we need to fix this before we enhance the colours otherwise we will end up with a bluer cast.


I Selected Image>Adjustments>Colour Balance and moved the yellow/blues slider towards Yellow a little (about -5) and repeated this with Shadows, midtones & highlights selected down the bottom.

Now its time for the lab magic.

Select Image>Mode Lab Colour. The Image>Adjustments>Curves.

First alt-click on the background of the graph thingy till it shows a series of fine grids like this:


We will ignore the lightness channel - you'll have to get the book to see what that's for, and select A from the channel drop down at the top of the screen.

Now slide the bottom point across to the first grid-line (the input box should read 10). Then slide the top point across to the first grid-line (the input box should read 90). You should get a curve that looks like this:


Now select channel B at the top and do the same with that. Click OK.

For a further colour boost you can use steeper curves so that they run from 20 to 80 instead of the 10 to 90 in the example. or even 30/90 as I have done here:



In the next blog posting I shall show a comparison of the different colour boost methods for you to compare.

Labels: Books, Photoshop

On ephotozine the other day I suggested a modification to this picture by Joline Frazier:


The modification is to use levels to help fix the underexposure of the shot. Generally it is best to get the exposure right in camera by adjusting the exposure compensation using the histogram. But sometimes its not possible, especially with a fully automatic camera, then it is time to reach for the levels tool in Phootoshop.

Select Image>Adjustments>Levels and you will see something like this:


The important bit is the graph in the middle. What this is showing is the range of the tones in the image from pure black on the left to pure white on the right with the midtones marked by the pointer in the middle. But hang on a second! this is a colour image why am I talking about Black and White?

Well as far as the levels are concerned everything can be represented on a scale of Dark to Light. A very dark blue being a little to the right of black and a very pale blue appearing just to the left of white. Looking at the graph (histogram) we can see that the image has most of its tones gathered to the left (dark) end of the scale with very little happening in the light end of the image.

If we desaturate the image we can see that there is a lot of gray tones in the image but few pure whites..which is basically what the histigram is telling us:


So how do we improve the exposure?

Simply grab the pointers under the histogram and drag them in to the edge of where the graph starts. I have done this for both the white and black pointers. This repositions the definition of black & white to the extremes found in the image:


Clicking OK, should produce a much better exposed image:



A quick look at the levels dialogue again shows that the images are much more evenly distributed:



Just for fun I ran a Digital Velvia action to boost the colours:

Labels: Photoshop

Sandra Myers has supplied some actions to help with sharpening of digital images in Photoshop.

As Sandra was kind enough to make them available to people for free - we have been kind enough to host them here for here.

Description

The sharpeners file contains 2 actions (do not try to open it - it will just open up your photoshop program)

1. Traditional sharpener works by first blurring a layer and then sharpening a layer. With this sharpener you control which edges you want to sharpen by tweaking the levels. (Until you get the idea of how it works just “OK” and “continue” your way through until you get to the unsharp mask bit at the end and use the slider to set the sharpening to your taste.

2. The High Pass sharpener works by the High Pass method described in many books and guidance instructions are given during the action.

Instructions

How to Install

The files go in the "photoshop actions" folder which is inside the "presets" folder in the photoshop program folders

To Do This

Download the file from hereto somewhere handy like the desktop. Then copy and paste it into the photoshop actions folder.

The route to this should be something like this depending on your version of photoshop :----

1. My Computer – Local Disk C (usually) – program files – Adobe – photoshop cs (or whatever version) – presets – photoshop actions

When you have pasted it into the actions folder close everything up again and then open photoshop.
Go to the arrow icon at the top right hand corner of the actions palette and when the drop down menu appears choose "Load action" Highlight the Sharpeners action and load it

Open an image – highlight your choice of sharpener and press play

For those of you with Photoshop Elements - How to Run Actions in Adobe Photoshop Elements 3, 2 and 1

Labels: Actions, Photoshop

A while back there was a discussion on Ephotozine about reproducing the effect of Fuji Velvia film in Photoshop.

Terence Irons came up with a very detailed description of how to produce the effect, I have since made them into a set of Photoshop actions which work rather well.

I have now made them available here for download.

Description

The actions are based on layers so they are not distructive to your images and can be easily undone. The velvia file contains 7 actions, which are in three groups that should be run in this order:

1. Cleanup - removes noise from the image. Use if you don't have neatimage or Noise Ninja.

2. Contrast - comes in 3 varieties (Normal,Medium & Strong)

3. Colour Boost comes in 3 varieties (Normal,Medium & Strong) .

Instructions

How to Install

The files go in the "photoshop actions" folder which is inside the "presets" folder in the photoshop program folders

To Do This

Download the file from hereto somewhere handy like the desktop. Then copy and paste it into the photoshop actions folder.

The route to this should be something like this depending on your version of photoshop :----

1. My Computer – Local Disk C (usually) – program files – Adobe – photoshop cs (or whatever version) – presets – photoshop actions

When you have pasted it into the actions folder close everything up again and then open photoshop.
Go to the arrow icon at the top right hand corner of the actions palette and when the drop down menu appears choose "Load action" Highlight the Velvia action and load it.

For those of you with Photoshop Elements - How to Run Actions in Adobe Photoshop Elements 3, 2 and 1

Labels: Actions, Photoshop

Adobe Lightroom has just been released (I refuse to add "Photoshop" in the title as its just plain confusing). Version 1.0 is now available as a 30 day trial download.

Lightroom promises a great simplification of the digital photographers workflow. I intend to download the trial and give it a try out. I wasn't too happy with the beta releases but I intend to look at the entire thing afresh and take the time to work through some tutorials too.

I will let you know how I get on and what I learn. Why not try it out yourself and let me know how you get on, I would love to hear from you.

Labels: Equipment, Lightroom, Photoshop

Occasionally its required to create a 1:1 sized image i.e. its the same size printed as it is in real life.

This is fairly easy to do in Photoshop by utilising the power of the crop tool. For example if we take this picture of a diskhead the length of the dashed area in real life is 2cm, we want it to still be 2cm when printed at 300ppi.


The first thing to do is to unlock the background layer so that it becomes a normal layer. Then take the crop tool and select the hide option on the toolbar. Now crop the image to just show the piece we have an exact measurement for.


Now we resize our file based on the size of this image. Go to Image>Image Size and enter the size this part of the picture should be.



Now all we need to do is select Image>Reveal All and our image is life size.

Labels: Photoshop

There are still a few folk around who are old enough to remember film, and many of them miss the characteristics of their favourite film stock.

Petteri Sulonen has a good blog showing how to create different film types using curves and has the curves available for download too. Worth playing with if you have a few moments.

If you are missing the saturation and contrast of Velvia, you might want to try the Digital Velvia action set.

Labels: Photoshop

Michael Reichmann has recently produced an excellent article on cropping. It has always seemed strange to me that many photographers would not be seen dead using the automatic modes on their cameras yet somehow see it as cheating to break away from the aspect ratio that their camera manufacturer provides.

Cropping is all about finding the shape an image wants/needs to be. As an example lets look at an image I took on Friday at Limehouse Basin in Docklands. Looking at the image as it came off the camera the first thing I did was to use a LAB move to boost the colours and increase the contrast:

Labels: London, Photoshop, Taking Pictures

So in the previous episodes we learnt quite a bit about layers, but now we will use them to improve a photograph. In this exercise we are going to look at improving the shadow detail.

In this example I will use a couple of shots I took of The Wibbly/Wobbly bridge which links St.Pauls to Tate Modern in central London. Standing under the bridge in bright sunshine it was obvious that the exposure range from the dark underneath of the bridge to the bright blue sky would be far too much for the camera, so I auto-bracketed my shots +/-2 stops. An alternative to bracketing would be to produce 2 different exposures of the same shot, through the raw converter or duplicate the shot and adjust the brightness/levels to give the effect of two different exposures.

Bracketing took me from having one picture that doesn't look like the scene I saw, to having 2 or 3 that don't! What I need to do is add the light bits from the overexposed shot to the bits of the underexposed shot that have no shadow detail...this is a job for layers....

Open both images and layer them.

Now click on the darker one with the move tool and drag and drop it on the lighter one - if you hold the shift key down whilst doing the move the 2 layers will centre on top of each other.

You now have the 2 layers in the same image, look at the layers pallet if you don't believe me, so you can close down the image you just dragged from as we no longer need it.


Erase through from top to bottom.

Make sure you have the top layer selected and select the eraser tool. Now you can select the darker areas of your image and erase through the top layer to show the brighter layer underneath.

To do this properly you will need to take your time and vary the brush size (use the [ and ] keys on the keyboard). Also its handy to remember the undo key (ctrl+Z) and step backward (alt + ctl + z)can help you here a lot.


As you work, switch the layers off and on and you will see how you are cutting a hole through the top layer to reveal the layer underneath.


In this shot I felt the brightness was too much so I added a small levels tweak to make it look more natural.

Now the bottom of the bridge is revealed in all its glory yet we still have a blue sky...marvellous.


There has to be a better way

If you have tried this technique out you will soon realise that using the eraser tool is destructive. Its a bit of a pain, as if you make a mistake you might have to use undo half a dozen times to get back to where you were. Even worse if you save the file and realise you have erased a bit that you didn't want to you will have to start all over again.

A much better way is to use masks - which we will cover in the next thrilling installment.

Labels: Photoshop

So now we understand that layers work like clear acetate and can be stacked on top of each other, what uses can we find for them? Well in this example we will create a simple frame around our picture for display on a website. First open an image file that deserves a frame.

Create a new layer
We have already learnt about creating a new layer in the previous lesson. So lets add one now by clicking on the new layer icon or selecting Layer>new>layer from the menus. By default this new layer will be called "Layer 1".

Unlock the base layer
We want to place this layer underneath the background layer, but as the background layer is locked, we need to first unlock it. Once it is unlocked it becomes "layer 0". Now we are ready to get creative.

Slide the new layer under the picture layer
We want our picture to sit on the new empty layer (layer 1) . to do this we need to change the layer order by sliding layer 1 under layer 0 in the layers pallet so that it looks like this:

If we go back to the idea of layers being sheets of acetate then the ones at the top of the palette are at the top of the stack. So it doesn't matter what I paint onto layer 1 - you won't see it as it is hidden by layer 0.



Resize the canvas
So now we need to create some space round our image for the border. Select Image>Canvas size from the menu.
First select relative, this means the numbers are in addition to the to the current document size.
Then enter the size of border you require and click OK.

There can be quite a bit of trial and error with this so try out different numbers and if you don't like the size simply select Edit>Undo and try again.

In my case I have opted for a 4cm border all round the picture.


So now your image appears surrounded by an area of empty transparent space (the chequerboard pattern means its transparent).



Fill with colour
So, that's not too bad if we are printing onto paper, as the transparent stuff will come out white. But in this case we want a black border.

First make sure that the bottom layer is selected then chose Edit>Fill and select Black in the top drop-down box. Click OK and we get a nice black border round our image.


Add a layer style
Now I think it would look better with a small white line separating the border from the picture. to do this, we first select the image layer (layer 0) and then select Layer>Layer Style>Stroke from the menu.
Select the position as inside and then chose the colour and width you prefer. If preview is clicked you should be able to see the changes straight away.

You can do the same thing with layer 1 as well if you like, which gives us the final effect.







Next time, in part 3, I'll show how layers can help making "exposure" adjustments easy.

Labels: Photoshop

It always surprises me how many people are scared of using layers in Photoshop, they seem to be labelled as "Advanced" when they are really much simpler to understand than a lot of other things in Photoshop.

What is a Layer ?

A layer works like a piece of acetate placed over your picture....that's it really. Whatever you do on that layer will sit on top of the layers below, delete the layer and everything on it goes but the other layers are unaffected.

For example, open up a picture in Photoshop then take a look at the layers palette:




Your picture has come in to Photoshop as a layer called "background", this is a special layer that is locked. We will get round to how to unlock it later, but for the moment believe me when I say the padlock to the right means its locked. now we will add a new layer on top of this.

Adding a new layer

Click the new layer icon at the bottom of the pallet


and a new layer is added to the document. Because this is transparent (like clear acetate) you won't see any change to your document except that the layers pallet now looks like this:



So we have a new layer, layer 1, the fact that it is highlighted tells us this is the active layer so that anything we now do will only affect this layer, and the eye symbol tells us it's visible. Now take a brush tool and paint all over the image with it:



Now that's pretty - "but what's the use in that?", I hear you ask. Well if you click on the eye symbol next to layer 1 you can switch this off and on. So at any time you can see what the picture looks like with & without your changes.

A popular use for this would be when cloning out an element in the picture. First add a new layer then select the cloning tool and make sure sample all layers is selected. Now all the cloning is on this new layer and doesn't affect the background layers at all. Should you decide that the cloning doesn't work you simply drag it to the new layer to the bin at the bottom of the page.

If you save the image in Photoshop (psd) or tiff format your layers will be preserved for use next time you open the file.


Working with the Background Layer

The only thing that is special about the background layer is that it is locked. This means that we can't add layer effects, or change layer order and a whole host of other things. In order to unlock it simply double click on the little lock symbol. A dialogue box appears:



If you click OK you end up with the background layer renamed to layer 0, now it is exactly the same as any other layers in the document.

To change a layer into the background layer either:

• Select Layer > Flatten Image, which will condense all the layers into the background.

or

• Select the layer you want as a background and chose Layer>New>Background From Layer.

Deleting a Layer

To delete a layer simply highlight it in the layers pallet then either:

• Right click and select Delete Layer.

or

• Drag it to the little bin icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

Next time we'll look at using layers to create a simple border effect.

Labels: Photoshop

One of my Christmas presents was Photoshop Lab Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace which, as it goes, has to be one of the longest book titles I have come across in a long time.

It's a long and detailed book that takes some reading, I found it was best to work through about two pages then work out what disk that comes with it was talking about with photoshop and the example disk that comes with it.

But once you get used to the LAB colour space and using the curves to modify it, then it does start to make a lot of sense. The book is cleanly written with lots of examples and the accompanying CD provides just the sort of example images you need to understand the concepts involved.

When would I use LAB? Well I'm only halfway through the book but the advantages seem to be that the LAB colour space separates contrast from colour information. Tweaking the curves (ohh listen to me, I didn't understand curves at all till I read the book!) allows you to boost contrast in areas that would normally be impossible in other ways.

The other use seems to be to provide a real differentiation on groups of similar colours, which would be very difficult to do in any other way, even with the raw processor.

A recommended read for those of you who really want to get into the guts of photoshop. Here is a quick "before and after", I've been playing with (click on the images to view large..it's quite subtle and only really works big):

Labels: Books, Photoshop