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Compositing in Adobe Photoshop: Time-Saving Tips - Smashing Magazine

Compositing in Adobe Photoshop: Time-Saving Tips - Smashing Magazine
Advertisement Compositing is a skill and process that spans the entire spectrum of creative industries. At the high end, compositing boasts its own specialized profession in film and television post production and visual effects. Dedicated software such as NUKE and Shake have taken the craft to powerful levels of its own, leaving behind the relatively basic compositing toolset of Adobe Photoshop. In this article, I’ll share some of my own time-saving tips for compositing in Photoshop. Tip 1: Matching Tones, Channel by Channel One of the challenges we face when compositing is matching the colors and tones of various images to produce a realistic and convincing composite. 1These are the three images we will composite together In the following example, we will composite three people into one shot and address the differences in lighting, tone and color balance. 2Masked images placed on background In the above image, I have masked out the images and placed them together on a background. 1. 2.

Mastering Photoshop: Noise, Textures, Gradients and Rounded Rectangles - Smashing Magazine Advertisement Often, it’s the little details that turn a good layout into a great design; details such as subtle textures, shading and smooth shapes. Photoshop contains a vast array of tools for embellishing a design, but choosing the right one isn’t always easy. Noise and Textures Subtle noise or texture on UI elements can look great, but what’s the best way to add it? Number of layers used: fewer is better.Ability to scale: if the document is resized, will the effect maintain its quality? 1. Probably the most obvious method for adding texture to a shape is to create a normal bitmap layer, fill it with a color, select Filter → Noise → Add Noise, then apply a mask or Vector Mask to match the element you’re adding noise to. Using a high amount of noise, setting the layer blending mode to Luminosity and reducing the opacity will yield the most control over the noise with the least disturbance to the underlying layers. 2. 3. 4. Which Method Is Best? Download the PSD (.zip) Rounded Rectangles 1.

Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time-Savers 4 Ways to Remove Problem Areas With Photoshop Elements 13 - Photoshop Master Every photographer has experienced the frustration of having a great photo marred by a small problem. Perhaps it's a piece of litter on the grass, a speck of dirt on the lens, or a distracting figure in the background. You'll be surprised by how seamlessly many of these problems can be eliminated with Photoshop. Removing areas from photos is a task all photographers should master. 1. Photoshop's most impressive tool for removing unwanted elements is the Content Aware Move Tool. The Content Aware Move Tool is fairly smart. 2. Removing small flaws is simplest with the Spot Healing Brush. If you don't get an effect you like on your first few tries, tweak the settings of the Spot Healing Brush. 3. With the Cloning Tool, you can cover a problem area by copying over it using an unaffected portion of your photo. Two locations on a photo which appear to match may look very different when placed near one another. Photomerge Scene Cleaner

An Explanation of Photoshop Blend Modes The definitions used here are from the Photoshop help files, with a few bits of added explanation where I saw fit to add them. The Blend Modes specified in the options bar control how pixels in two separate layers interact with and effect each other. It’s helpful to think in terms of the following colors when visualizing a blending mode’s effect: The base color is the original color in the bottom layer.The blend color is the color being applied by the upper layer.The result color is the color resulting from the blend. I decided to use two different examples for this demonstration. Remember that to get better results you can also adjust the opacity of the upper layer. Download Texture | Download Image Download Texture | Download Image Basic Modes Normal Normal edits or paints each pixel to make it the result color. Dissolve Dissolve edits or paints each pixel to make it the result color. Darken Modes Each of these blend modes gives the effect of darkening the image. Darken Multiply Color Burn Screen

GuideGuide: Free Plugin For Dealing With Grids In Photoshop Advertisement This article is the fourth in our new series that introduces the latest, useful and freely available tools and techniques, developed and released by active members of the Web design community. The first article covered PrefixFree; the second introduced Foundation, a responsive framework; the third presented Sisyphus.js, a library for Gmail-like client-side drafts. Today we are happy to present Cameron McEfee’s Photoshop extension GuideGuide which provides a tool to create pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints and baselines. Take a moment and think about creating a multi-column grid in a Photoshop comp. Have your palms started to sweat? (siteWidth - (gutterWidth × (numberOfColumns - 1) ) ÷ numberOfColumns = columnWidth I was sitting at my desk one day doing this exact equation when I thought, “Man, this looks just like code. Enter: GuideGuide Columns and Rows Designing a site that needs multiple columns and gutters? Midpoints Save It For Later The Fun Part Measure Navigation (il)

Best Photoshop Tutorials 2014: 10 inspiring step-by-step guides to creating amazing art, illustrations and graphics in Photoshop - Features - Digital Arts The 10 most popular Photoshop tutorials from 2014 by leading illustrators, designers and photographers. Over the past year, we've had the pleasure of publshing some amazing Photoshop tutorials created by some of the most talented visual creatives in the world. While easy to follow step-by-step, these aren't the usual 'how to remove red-eye' and 'how to turn a photo into a terrible painted artwork' tutorials that you'll find all over the Internet. They're not for beginners and don't waste your time teaching you things you already know - but instead for talented people like you who know their way around Photoshop and want to learn how to make your art better. So here's our top 10 Photoshop tutorials of 2014. Photoshop tutorial: Create a low-poly portrait (picture above) Here Brazilian designer Breno Bitencourt shows you step-by-step how to create a stylish low-poly portrait in Illustrator and Photoshop. Photoshop tutorial: Create powerful lighting effects with clouds and lightning

Photoshop Tutorials & Adobe Photoshop Plugins Useful Photoshop Tips And Tricks For Photo Retouching Advertisement When it comes to designing in Photoshop, there is a myriad of ways one could use to achieve a certain result, especially when it comes to photo retouching. Designers use technique they are most confident as well as comfortable with, which is great because it’s always useful to peek into the workflow of our colleagues and learn new design approaches. We have had articles on cloning1, compositing2, masks3 and obscure Photoshop time-savers4 in the past. I’ll be covering some of the useful techniques and tricks which I’ve learned from my experience. Here is a short overview of the techniques we’ll be covering: Naturally Increased Light The light of the sun creates texture. Increase light on a separate layer. Then use the brush tool with a soft brush, and hold the Alt/Option key to pick up colors from the area that you want to brighten. The blending mode “Color Dodge” creates realistic results. Simulate Infrared Images It’s almost like an infrared image. Levels Sunset Gradient Map

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