Here are 5 video tutorials covering fashion and beauty photography retouching

I’ll go through the standard RGB curves adjustments in both Photoshop and Lightroom.

How to create a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image. We’ll not only explain exactly what an HDR is, but how to merge and edit one using adobe CS5′s full line up of fantastic photographic tools.

This Photoshop tutorial by SweetBeat will show you how to design and use your own background brush

Making the brush

-Make a new document 60x37cm and make sure that the foreground and background colours are set to black and white.

- Create three new layers by clicking  3 times on the new layer icon underneath the layers palette.

-Select layer2 and go to FILTER –> RENDER –> CLOUDS and click it.

-Select layer3 and do the same thing.

-When layer3 is selected we change the blending options to color burn.

-The same thing with layer2 but here we choose overlay.

-Select the brush tool en choose the soft edge brush of 300pixels.

-Now select layer1 and put your brush in the middle of the ‘image’ and  click 1 time. You can also adjust your opacity or brush to your wishes.

-Select layer3 and go to FILTER-SHARPEN-UNSHARP MASK and set the amount to 176, the radius to 31,7 and the threshold to 0 and click ok

-Lower the opacity of layer1 to 75%

-Now duplicate layer1 and go to filter-distort-wave and put in the next settings: number of generators 43, wavelength min48 max120, amplitude min1 max 24, scale horiz100 vert100, type=sine and click ok.(foto5)

-By pressing ctrl+f we are repeating this step. do this 2more times.

-Now lower the Opacity of layer1 copy from 75% to 60%

-Select the crop tool and draw a rectangular around the spot and double click.

-Go to EDIT-DEFINE BRUSH PRESET and call it “sweetbeat” of your name of choice.

We are almost there. Now you have a simple ‘grunge’ brush but with some effects added, like in my rainbow tutorial, we will get a cool brush.

-Now open a new document big enough for your brush.

-Select the brush tool and choose the sweetbeat ( or how-you-named-it ) brush. Then go to the brush panel.(foto8)

-Put the settings like you see in the following images. (foto9-10-11)

-When you have done that click in the bottom right corner on the create new brush icon.

-Now you will have 2 brushes one with the effect en one without the effect.

By changing some of the settings in this tutorial you will get other effects. Just play with it and you will find out.

Using the brush

Here you can see what my endresult is by playing around with one brush. (fotobackground)

I used 2 colours of green 54c442 for the background and 49c334 for my brush. You almost can’t see the difference but when you change the blending mode it gives a cool effect.
Some of the layers I’ve sharpen with unsharp mask or I’ve put a wave effect to it and erased some of it to make it look clean.

Here are the layers

-Layer background

I used 54c442 as a backgound color.

-Layer 4

I used my brush to paint a bit and used the same brush with the eraser tool to clean it up a little. I used 49c334 for the color.

- layer5

I did the same thing like layer4 but set the blending mode to overlay.

- layer6

the same like layer 4.

- layer7

Here i have drawn  a little and I’ve put an unsharp mask filter  to it.

- Layer7copy

I’ve dulpicated layer 7 and put a wave effect to it. then I erased some of it with the eraser tool but with the same brush to make it look clean.

© SweetBeat

More tutorials

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

Color – Black and white – sepia mixing photoshop tutorial.

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

In Photoshop CS5 New Features, author Jan Kabili introduces new features and productivity enhancements that include reshaping images with Puppet Warp, turning photographs into paintings, and content-aware fill options.

The Liquify filter lets you paint in distortions so you can perform digital nips and tucks. You can slim people down, edit their posture, and make them look exactly how you want them to. See how in this video.

One of the oldest, most abstruse, downright incomprehensible commands in Photoshop, Calculations lets you merge two channels to create a new alpha channel. Learn it: It’s the backbone of masking.

Between grayscale and color is split toning. Add this slight change for a dramatic effect. This Photoshop technique can also be used to create retro or abstract results.

Using Camera Raw and Alpha channels for masking in photoshop.Much can be said of masking: Masking is the art of using the image to select itself. Masking lets you apply the entire weight of Photoshop to the task of editing a selection. And masking, thy name is alpha channel.

Setting sking color and tones with photoshop

Using the Replace Color command with photoshop video tutorial

Creative ways to create a multi toned image using custom gradient maps, masking and blending modes in Photoshop

If you are frustrated with images that look bright on screen but dull when printed, watch this video to understand a bit about Color Profiles and Color Numbers. The basics are that when using a Convert command you are preserving the appearance and in order to do that you must convert the Color Numbers.

When you use the Assign command you are preserving the original color numbers but the Appearance will change in the assigned profile. ALL CONVERTS AND ASSIGNS should only be done on a flattened file. The instructions in this video will show you why your images may come back from the printer looking dull and how to correct this.

Intense tutorial on more extraction methods, replacing background, refining masks, and creating density shadows.

Using Photoshop to make hair patches video tutorial.

Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone, recently released on Oct. 9, 2009, is now available worldwide in all countries with iPhone App Stores, providing users with a quick and easy way to edit, upload, view and share photos directly on their iPhones. Holding the No. 1 position for all “Top Free” applications for nearly three weeks and remaining the “Top Free” spot in the Apple App Store Photography category, Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone has been downloaded over 3 million times in the U.S. and Canada. Essential editing tools, such as crop and rotate along with creative one-touch effects and filters, are now available in supported countries. In addition, the application gives users access to their entire online collection of photos from Photoshop.com and allows them to share them directly within the application.

Availability
The Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone application is now available as a free download in all countries with iPhone App Stores. The application is initially available in English only. For more information, visit: http://mobile.photoshop.com/iphone. Users can also connect with Adobe via Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/photoshopdotcom) or Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/photoshopdotcom). To join the conversation, follow @photoshopdotcom on Twitter.

The difference between Vibrance and Saturation in Photoshop CS4!

Using the Shadows/Highlights adjustment in Photoshop CS4. This adjustment is available in earlier versions as well.

Smart Objects are just that, but how, when and why would you want to use them?

Adding Fireworks to a Digital Photo with PhotoShop

One of the great new improvements of Auto-Blend Layers in Photoshop CS4 is that you can now take a range of shots with different points of focus and Photoshop will composite them together with amazingly precise layer masks to give you a single image where everything is in focus.

In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at this ultra-cool capability, as well as check out some simple batch-processing steps for working with RAW images.

This technique is for those times when you need extended depth of field in a scene, but for some reason you can’t quite get what you need in a single shot.

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Open the image that you want to work with and also open any image of a sunset.

Choose Image>Adjustments>Match Color

The Match Color dialog box will open.  We will only need to use 2 settings for the task at hand.

Under Source, click the drop down menu and select the image of the sunset. There will be a thumbnail for you to check that you have selected the correct image.

Turn on the preview option if it isn’t already. The working image will now take on the color attributes of the sunset image. Most probably the effect will be a bit too much.

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How to use and understand the warp tool morphing and tweaking parts of an image.

” Each of the ads featured a surreal representation of a different region of Colombia and was created by compositing various stock images and photos Richard shot for the job. The challenge with this one was to wrap an accordion around the palm tree like a giant snake.

It was while adding the diamond pattern that the Warp Tool really started to make sense to me and so transitions us into the tutorial. What we’re going to do is pick the image up from the part where we have the accordion sections in place with the red coloring applied to the sides.

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The Photoshop curves tool is perhaps the most powerful and flexible image transformation, yet it may also be one of the most intimidating.  Since photographers effectively paint with light, curves is central to their practice because it affects light’s two primary influences: tones and contrast.  Tonal curves are also what give different film types their unique character, so understanding how they work allows one to mimic any film– without ever having to retake the photograph.

If you follow two spaced input tones, note that their separation becomes stretched as the slope of the curve increases, whereas tones get compressed when the slope decreases (compared to the original diagonal line).

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The trick with local contrast enhancement is that it increases “local” contrast in smaller regions, while at the same time preventing an increase in “global” contrast– thereby protecting large-scale shadow/highlight detail.  It achieves this feat by making some pixels in the histogram cross over each other, which is not possible when enhancing contrast using levels or curves.

Local contrast enhancement works similarly to sharpening with an unsharp mask, however the mask is instead created using an image with a greater blur distance.  This creates a local contrast mask which maps larger-scale transitions than the small-scale edges which are mapped when sharpening an image.

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In this tutorial Lindsay Adler will show you how to add an extra dimension to your images in Photoshop– texture. Adding texture to images can help create the appearance of an image being old, tattered or worn. Texture can also add an emotional dimension to a photograph, making it moody and more expressive. Watch this tutorial to see how easy it is to add textures to your images.

Advanced Photoshop Starburst Filter Effect in Photoshop Video tutorial

Remove Glasses Digitally with Photoshop

Change the colors of eyes with photoshop video tutorial

10 free Wood Textures

In this tutorial, we’re going to create a fantasy photo manipulation mixing different images and learning to use and modify the stock images in a creative way. The idea is to get a compact image that looks absolutely real, and at the same time, absolutely impossible!

Start with an empty document (mine is 40cm by 50cm at 240 dpi) and one beautiful sky pic for the background.

Apply Color Balance (Image > Adjustments > Color Balance) to add blue and cyan using the settings shown below.

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Stitching Photos for Panoramas in Photoshop Video

In this tutorial I’ll retouch this girls portraits by enhancing the skin, eyes and lips.

For the start i type Ctrl+j to make a copy of the layer ..to see at the end what we`ve done..
We see she has some imperfection..so we use the Healing brush tool ..to make the skin smooth ..

I  select the nose,i copy layer, type Ctrl+T,and then Warp to make it smaller,after that we took the eraser tool (hardness=0) to erase the parts that don`t belong there.

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Creating a surreal scene in photoshop.

In this tutorial, I will show the steps I took to design this absolutely magical, floating Eiffel Tower scene in Photoshop. The inspiration of this tutorial came from this wonderful design done by matu02 in PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Along the way, we will be using a lot of layer masking techniques, blending options, selection technques, pen tool and dynamic brushes. Hope you enjoy it and find it useful and inspirational!

We can see the overall image become darker a little bit and the colour contrast increases comparing with the original image

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Using the refine edge option in photoshop cs3 and cs4

Photoshop Clipping Mask – Putting an image into text tutorial

Split Toning with Gradient Maps

15 High Resolution Rusty Textures available here

Combining body parts with Photoshop

How to create reflections in sunglasses with photoshop tutorial

How to remove flaws and retouch skin with portraits in photoshop.

Learn how to retouch skin tones and hair for a glamour portrait; includes airbrushing techniques

In this tutorial we’re going to make custom 3d artwork in photoshop that we can implement in our logo’s, banners, flyers … any custom design

- Open new document 20×20cm

- Change foreground color to black. select the paint bucket tool and paint the background in black.

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In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a crazy explosion, like a mix of Magneto’s ability with Peter Petrelli’s power. We will use images and filters to produce this wave explosion effect. Even though it may look like a difficult tutorial, it’s really not that hard.

Now we need a photo of a person.Once you have your photo, it’s time to extract the guy from the background. Using the Pen Tool(P) create a path like in the image below. After that go to the Paths Palette and create a selection from that path. Then go to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection. Lastly, I named this layer “dude.”

Go to Edit>Transform>Scale and reduce the size of the guy. Then go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal. We do that to match the light direction.

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In this masterclass, Craig Shields shows you how to turn these little outbursts of creativity into artworks. You’ll learn how to spirit your doodles off the Post-It note and into a digital illustration, using them to add a very personal touch to an image.

We’re going to insert some layers behind the figure later on, so we need to create a layer mask. First, select the Pen tool, and create a path around the edge of her face, hair and arms. Then right-click (Ctrl + click) your path, and pick Make Selection.

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Lighting effects are a versatile set of techniques that have recently come back into vogue in advertising and the fashion press. Lights and tracing motion effects can become part of the composition, adding brightness and motion to an image.

They’re an excellent trick to have up your sleeve because of the flexibility they offer and if you’ve got a few different methods in your toolbox, you can easily create a dense, detailed effect to use as a focal point, or simply add some subtle highlight touches to an existing traditional or digital illustration.

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In this tutorial I will complete a professional photographic retouching from start to finish. Before watching please note that there is a lot of information in this video to absorb, so watch and re-watch areas that you find more advanced.

This is a 40 minute video, I’d recommend pausing it at regular intervals before continuing so that you fully understand all the processes. Some of the areas covered in this video are:

– Colour Correction
– Reshaping Features (Figure, Eyes, Lips, Cheeks, etc)
– Adjusting tonal values
– Grading the image
– Simulating a Realistic Depth of Field Simulation
– Selective Enhancement of areas

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Now, let me say this up front: From the research I’ve done, I don’t believe photographer Dave Hill actually uses a Photoshop plug-in; I believe he creates his look without a plug, using a series of layer blend modes, High Pass Sharpening, Skin Smoothing, and Dodging and Burning (and I am working on that whole Photoshop-only workflow as we speak, and will do a post on it when I’m finished), but since I needed to get this job done fast; I used the Lucis Art Pro 6.0 plug-in, and I feel like it got me pretty close to the look (a mini-review of the plug-in is coming up tomorrow in the 2nd and final part of this post).

Before you run the Lucis Pro 6.0 plug-in, you’ll need to do something to soften your subject’s skin, because the hyper-sharpening the plug-in adds will greatly magnify every blemish, spot, or skin irregularity and it looks pretty bad. So, I started by using the Healing Brush. I Option-clicked [PC: Alt-clicked] in a nearby area that didn’t have a blemish (to sample that skin texture), then I chose a brush size just slightly bigger than the blemishes I wanted to remove, then I moved over the blemish and just clicked once to remove it. So, I went through the image and did that first.

part one

part two

The Lucisart plugin has been quite popular and still emerges daily on photos pushing the hdr-effect look beyond its boundaries.It’s a very handy plugin in order to recover detail from your images.

When applying this filter to selections or separate layers, the white-background-syndrome appears, leaving you with a mess to clean, so here is a way around it allowing you to work with this filter on selections with more comfort.Tip came in from SweetBeat

Ok so let’s say we only want to apply the lucisart plugin/filter to the water below this ship, leaving the sky etc out of the manipulation.

So, select the water with the selection tools and feather ( Edit —> feather ) that selection in order to have smooth edge transition.

Now we make a new layer from this selection ( layer –> new –> layer via copy or simply control+J )

If we apply the filter now to this selection/layer we encounter this problem, the white-snowman-syndrome :

As you can see the water has gotten richer details, but an avalanche has set in.Here’s a way around it.

BEFORE applying the Lucisart filter, add a LAYER MASK to your selection ( Layer —> layer mask —> reveal all – or go to the ‘add layer mask icon in the layers palette below )

After adding such Layer Mask it remains selected ( check the white border on the mask ).You don’t want that, so, select the layer again now it has a mask.

NOW it is time to load the selection/layer and apply the filter !

As you can see the problem is gone.Now you can apply this filter at ease on parts of the image / separate layers.

Here is the photo without and with the filter applied to the water :

Photoshop Curves video tutorial

from Yanik

In this Photoshop tutorial I’ll show you how to create realistic reflections on water already present in your favorite photographs.

Secondly, if you plan to show or print photos using this technique, make sure you go the distance to make the photo completely convincing. Any small inconsistencies will immediately give you away as an imposter, and lets face it, none of us want that.

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Chroma Keying : Color Range in Photoshop

Portrait Retouching in photoshop video tutorial

• Document Business card size:
  • 3.43″ x 1.93″
  • 87mm x 49mm
  • 1028 x 579 pixels
• Create rounded rectangle using Rounded Rectangle Tool.

• Fill it with light color. In order to create volume effect I used Gradient Overlay Layer style effect in this image.

• Make a new small rounded rectangle and apply Distort transformation to the right bottom corner.

• Draw small rounded shapes just like in the previous example using distort transformation.
• Load selections for these shapes (ctrl+click)
• Cat out selected areas from grey shape. You may remove layers with selected shapes after this.

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Explosions are cool. Seriously cool. So when I received some e-mails asking about how to create a break-apart, explosion effect, I knew it’d be worth making a tutorial on. Read on to find out how to break apart a body, then add some awesome lighting and glow, and nopattern style, to finish the image off.

Create a new document, any size. I used 800x600px. Fill the background layer with black. After that, place your photo in the center of the document.

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In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to learn how to take a single photograph and turn it into a collage of polaroids, with each polaroid containing a small section of the overall image. You can use this effect with lots of different types of images, whether it’s a photo of one person or several people. It’s great for photos of family or friends, vacation photos, or even as a creative effect for wedding photography.

This is a very easy photo collage effect to create, and as we’ll see later in the tutorial, much of the work is simply repeating the same few steps over and over again until you’re happy with the results.

The first thing we need to do for this effect is duplicate our Background layer. With our image open in Photoshop, we can see in the Layers palette that we currently have just one layer, the Background layer, which contains our original image

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Fantasy art scenes are usually handled with a liberal sprinkling of Photoshop plug-in fairy dust – but you don’t have to slavishly follow that route. By creating your own brushes in Adobe Illustrator, and using scanned elements with Photoshop, it’s a simple process to create otherworldly scenes that are alive with glow effects and shafts of virtual light.

Obviously, the final result is down to you, but you should also experiment with colours and blends once you’ve mastered this technique to create your own look. The best thing is you can create images like this without using a single plug-in.

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How to Extend the Height of a Building with Vanishing Point

Curves for advanced lighting control photoshop video tutorial

How to set up a business card in photoshop tutorial

Here’s a video tutorial about retouching lips techniques in Photoshop

For most folks, curves is the weapon of choice, and for good reason. Curves is one of the easiest way to dial in just the right amount of contrast to make photograph “pop”. Today though I’m going to share 5 simple ways to make your photos pop without curves. Each provides a slightly different look to your photograph, and I present them only as potential tools in your arsenal of tricks. In general I use some combination of all them in almost all my work, in addition to curves to take my photographs to higher levels.

I know I said no curves, but this is curves in Lab mode, and it’s a very different beast than RGB curves. Everything about it works differently, and it’s a topic worthy of it’s own post or posts even. I’m not going to get into the hows and whys now, but Lab provides some beautiful color transitions, and a distinctly unique look. For now though, as before convert your image to lab color.

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How to remove objects from a photo photoshop tutorial

How to Reduce the Age of people and de-age in Photoshop

Making a logo using photoshop

Adobe Photoshop Tutorials – Color Space

Photo Restoration of Black and White Scans

Photoshop Video Tutorial: Advanced Selecting Hair

Alpha channels are basically specialized selection processes. Alpha channels are used to make, store or edit selections made using tools such as Lasso, Magic wand or Pen tool.

Alpha channel is another type of image masking. When we say mask, it is an 8-bit channel using 256 levels of Gray, ranging from 0(black) to 255(white). With that being said, alpha channel is a masking technique which defines a selection in black, white, and varying shades of Gray pixels. White acts as the selected pixels; black acts as the unselected area and the levels of Gray define what is partially unselected or selected depending on your view point.

Here you will learn how to mask out hairs or in this case fur using the Alpha channel technique. Let’s begin:

Open the image of your choice, select the pen tool and make a clipping path on the part of the image you want to edit. If you’ve noticed, I have two images with the labels “1” and “2”. This represents the two clipping paths I’ve made for this image. For the image with the label “1”, I did a clipping path on the inner part of the hood. (Notice the faint clipping path line).

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Have you ever had difficulties making selections and thought there was a better way? Let’s review both quick solutions, and on the other side, comprehensive and details techniques for making selections. Each approach has it’s place in your workflow. The more methods you know how to use, the faster and more effectively you’ll move in Photoshop.

1. Chroma: is the color of the pixel. Color of a pixel is the level of RGB values and color based select tools like the Magic Wand. Select by color uses the RGB% as a criteria to group pixels based on the set tolerance values.
2. Luma: is a selection based on Illumination levels. Illumination levels are whiteness of the image, which is nothing but higher values for all the three R, G and B channels. Photoshop doesn’t have a native interface for a Luma based selection, but many existing tools can be hacked to get a similar result.

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This Photoshop tutorial is written for experienced Photoshop users and will show you unique techniques for retouching photos. You’ll learn how to enhance backgrounds, dodge and burn, brighten eyes, and add hair shine while keeping a low count of layers. The techniques you learn from this tutorial can be used for other portrait photos.

The first step is to isolate the model from the background. I used the extract and color range tool to create this. First I used the extract tool (Filter > Extract) but it didn’t work very well for the hair.

With the mask created, I can add a gradient to the background. Adding a gradient to the background is a simple and effective way to enhance a boring background. Here is a preview of what the layers will look like in the end.

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Welcome to the prerelease of Adobe® Configurator. Configurator is an open source utility that enables the easy creation of panels (palettes) for use in Adobe Photoshop® CS4. Specifically, Configurator makes it easy to drag and drop tools, menu items, scripts, actions, and other objects into a panel design, then export the results for use inside Photoshop. These panels leverage the support for Adobe Flash® built into Photoshop, making it possible to drag and drop audio, video, images, and even other SWF files into a panel design.

Configurator is great for any Photoshop user who’d like to customize the application interface, without having to learn Flash/Flex/ActionScript. It’s particularly suited to authors, trainers, and other experts who’d like to create panels that make Photoshop easier to use, and who’d like to share those panels with others.

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” Adobe’s pen tool works pretty much the same across Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Yet, as important as this ubiquitous tool is, many people get confused with how to handle certain tasks, and the differences between the various pen symbols. ”

CreativeTechs’ resident Adobe Certified Expert, Jason Hoppe, has put together a quick Adobe Pen Tool cheat-sheet to help keep some of the basic techniques straight. Download the PDF, and pass it along to a friend.

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We love cheatsheets. Those handy quick-reference guides that keep all sorts of vital information right at your fingertips.

In fact, we’re dedicating one issue each month to provide a growing collection of creative and technical cheatsheets.

This month’s creative cheatsheet covers the Photoshop Lasso tool. We’ve distilled the basic functions of this widely used tool into a concise format that fits on a standard 3×5 index card.

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“ This month’s tiny cheatsheet contribution covers shortcuts and tricks for Photoshop’s Brush Tool:”

On there own, these small quick-reference guides are handy to have around. But stay tuned as we add more each month. Soon you’ll have your own small 3×5 flipbook with the best shortcuts and tricks for all of Photoshop’s tools.

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“First, open an image that needs some work. Now make a copy of your background layer by dragging its layer thumbnail from the Layers palette to the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Since Shadow/Highlight doesn’t work as an adjustment layer, having a copy will let you put some of the original back later if you find you prefer it. All your adjustments will be done to the copied layer. You can ignore the original background layer for now.”

“Photoshop Shadows/Highlights settings windowNow go to Image >> Adjustments >> Shadow/Highlight. The basic dialog has only two sliders, one for Shadows and one for Highlights. If that seems too simple, it is. Click on “Show More Options” to access to the real power of Shadow/Highlight. This will give you three sliders each for Shadows and Highlights plus several bonus sliders and controls in a section labeled “Adjustments.” More sliders means more control.”

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Photoshop Video Tutorial : Learn the Basics of Curves

When I think of the perfect sunset photo, my mind immediately fills with lots of warm reds, oranges and yellows as the sun gently sets across the water or beyond the hills. Sunsets are one of the most commonly photographed aspects of nature, and yet photos rarely manage to capture their intense beauty. What was once a sky filled with rich, golden hues often ends up looking cooler, less vivid, and ultimately less interesting.

In this case though, we’re going to be using one of Photoshop‘s adjustment layers, and one of the great things about adjustment layers is that they allow us to work non-destructively

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Content Aware Scaling with Photoshop CS4 video

Most traditional photographers will be familiar with the range of aesthetically pleasing toners available in the wet darkroom, as well as their ability to infuse images with subtle, and more evocative moods. Traditional photographic prints have been toned since their beginnings for archival stability purposes and creative interpretation. Selenium, sepia, brown, copper, gold and blue toners are but a few of the time honored chemical processes for achieving tonal variations in prints.

With the dawning of the digital age, we can now not only emulate the toning of traditional processes, but also utilize a whole new spectrum of toning possibilities never before possible; creating unique and wonderful new effects in the print-making process.

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One of my favorite techniques for removing (i.e. make transparent) dark or light areas of an image is to use the blending sliders available inside the Layer Style dialog box within Photoshop. These blending sliders are easily overlooked in pursuit of the more commonly-used Layer Styles available in this dialog box.

To demonstrate this technique, I am going to combine the water image on the left with the shell image on the right. I want the end result showing the splash and runoff of the water over the shells – giving it more of a ‘being on the beach’ feel and almost hearing the waves going in and out.

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Open your photo in Photoshop and press CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-B to enter the Black and White conversion window. You can also select Image from the main menu and go into Adjustments. Once the window opens, you are given 6 colors that will affect how your photo is converted. There is no fixed rule on what amounts you place in the different colors since it depends on your picture. For the photo that I used as an example, I selected 103% for Red to lighten the man’s face. I lessened the Yellows and Greens to darken the background to make the subject more prominent in the photo.

Next, we will apply Curves to the photo to increase contrast. This is a very important step for me since I find low contrast mono photos soupy. If you want your photo to have that dreamy effect then you can skip this step but for the most part, good black and white photos should have all the gradations from almost white to almost black. Press CTRL-M to bring out the Curves dialog box. For this photo I used the setting in the photo below.

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from Yanik Chauvin

Peachpit TV: Photoshop CS4 Camera Raw Vignette Tip – The top video clips of the week are here

from Yanik Chauvin

Here’s a tutorial in order to be in control of a lens flare and be able to make adjustments at will after the implementation of it :

Get an image you wish to add a lens flare to, click on ‘new layer’ or go to Layer –> New —> Layer

Fill that layer with a solid black color.Go to EDIT –> FILL or press Shift + F5 and choose BLACK

Now it’s time to add our Lens Flare

Go to FILTER —> RENDER —> LENS FLARE ( Kai Power ToolsPlugin Series have  a nice lens flare collection as well )

Now we’re going to change the blending mode of this layer, set it to SCREEN

This will hide all the blacks and keep the lighter values , your flare.Now you can move the flare at will, adjust the opacity , transform/distort or erase some areas with a layer mask.This gives you better control of your lens flare.

Photoshop Tutorial: Face shaping

from Yanik Chauvin

Photoshop Actions are extremely useful in both saving time as well as learning new features that you may not know. They can be used to help standardize your final project better, cut down on repetitive tasks, and to assist you in a bit of creative inspiration.

We have collected a handful of great (and free) downloadable PS Actions in this article and also included a nice tutorial on creating your own Actions.

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from Yanik Chauvin

Whereas Photoshop Express began life as an experimental, web-based offshoot of the Photoshop brand, Adobe’s new strategy to automatically sync photos from desktop to web to phone and back again now gives Photoshop Express a starring role on the Photoshop playbill, albeit using a different alias.

Although the product will now be Photoshop.com, it will retain its editing features and the ability to post photos to Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa. The bigger difference is that the new Photoshop.com will sync with the two Photoshop Elements applications and the new mobile software.

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Adobe® Photoshop.com Mobile is the easiest way to upload, view, and share your photos online from your phone. All you need is a supported Windows Mobile® phone and your Photoshop.com account ID. Photoshop.com Mobile beta will be available as a free download in September.

continue to Photoshop.com Mobile

In this tutorial you will learn how to use a variety of filters and techniques to produce an image in an experimental style. It’s a flowing work technique, and things will always change and blend into the image in different ways, so don’t expect to recreate the exact image I have created here.

Finally, you will look at Layer Masking as an effective means of separating areas of each layer, creating different ways to combine colours. This tutorial will teach you techniques that can then be applied to other images and help you realise some of your ideas in other ways. It is good to experiment and think of new ways to blend, using different Displacement Maps and Layer Styles, for example. Most importantly of all, be creative and have fun.

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from Yanik Chauvin

Fixing over exposure in photoshop video tutorial.

Noise is the bane of digital photographers. The best way to deal with noise is to try and avoid it in the first place. But sometimes you’re faced with shooting in available darkness and the only way to get the shot is to crank up the ISO. In this tutorial we’ll take a look at various techniques for dealing with noise.

One way to avoid noise, even if you’re forced to shoot with a high ISO setting, is to make sure your shots are well exposed. Underexposed shots are much more likely to suffer from objectionable noise than properly exposed images. Consider the images in this example: Both were shot in low light at 3200 ISO, yet the one on the left is underexposed and the noise levels are dramatically higher. Good exposure matters.

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In this tutorial I will show you how to remove hair in front of someone’s face, retouch skin and apply makeup using Photoshop (any version).

To remove blemishes, acne, scares etc. I suggest you to be moderate when doing this as we don’t want to make an alien face, just to improve the look of the skin.

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In photography, timing is everything. Light changes often throughout the day, with the early morning or late afternoon lighting giving landscape photographs a soft appearance, without the harsh light of midday but with the edge definition that makes photos “come alive”. However, when traveling, you cannot always view landmarks when the light is best, and you often have to settle for hazy view that never appears as well in a photo as you remember it.

With Photoshop, however, you can clean up your landscape images and remove the blue tint from the atmosphere seen most during over long distances at mid day.

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We all love Photoshop and its effects, but sometimes it’s great to get your hands dirty when creating elements for your graphics. Ink drops can add a creative and energetic element to your designs. This tutorial demonstrates techniques to creatively work ink drops into your compositions.

Tips: Constantly take pictures while the ink drops, as the shapes will change considerably over time. Photograph the ink drops in front of a white background to produce clearer pictures. Experiment with dripping the ink using pipettes and any other device you can get your hands on.

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There are many ways to soften skin inside Photoshop; some methods are more effective than others, but each method typically gives you different results, however slight they may be. It can be confusing and frustrating to try out each of these techniques to find out which works best with your particular photo or photographic style.

This tutorial will walk you through an easy way to setup and compare three of the most popular skin softening techniques inside one Photoshop document while maintaining realism and skin texture. This not only gives you insight into what each softening technique has to offer, but also gives you more flexibility with your images.

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In this tutorial we will apply the same effect as dodging and burning but with more control and options and in my opinion better effects on the highlights.This works for isolating a subject, bring out more detail in certain zones, apply slight vignettes, etc …

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to transform a fairly typical road-trip image – with a big blue sky and wide-open spaces – into an apocalyptic battle scene, complete with tanks, guns,parachutists and a hail of incoming missiles.

In Photoshop, open your landscape image. Search for images of guns and tanks similar to those I’ve used here, and place them onto new layers. Duplicate the tank layer and make the new one smaller, as though they’re in formation.

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This tutorial will show you how to take an image and split it into two personalities. One side will be dark and evil, the other light and sparkly.

This is a very trendy form of artwork and the tutorial should take about 20 to 45 minutes to complete.

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There are quite a few trends in web design right now. Some still use a lot of twirly flowerly ornaments, others, following the trends dictated by psdtuts.com and abduzeedo.com have proceeded to glowing lines and starry psychedelic effects but the problem remains with creating the shape in the first place. While some designers, like myself, prefer working with Photoshop shapes, it looks like brushes are still a far more popular and accessible tool for many, so here are the top 10 brushes releases for Summer 2008, which can help you greatly in your artwork or web design.

Twirly Glowing Lines Photoshop Brushes

Abstract Glowing Lines Photoshop Brushes

Scanlines Photoshop Brushes

Da Vinci Tarot Cards Photoshop Brushes

Old Maps Texture Photoshop Brushes

Victorian Botanical Photoshop Brushes

Enchanting Flowers Ornaments Photoshop Brushes

Slightly Oriental Ornament Photoshop Brushes

Halftone Grungy Photoshop Brushes

Bubbles Brushes for Photoshop

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Add Eyelashes in photoshop video tutorial.

In this tutorial we’re going to recover detail from the skin area and have it on a separate layer for full control

The brush engine of Photoshop is a powerful tool and can be the key to simulate real paint. But in the wrong hands it can create awful things, making your pictures not look like painted, but just like they were done in Photoshop really bad. Especially when using prefabbed brushes, where you don’t understand how they are working. So it’s always better to build your own brushes that suit your needs as best as possible.

The Photoshop brush engine allows you to create your own brushes, starting from a brush tip shape that can be just a circle or a sampled image. This shape is repeated along the stroke. To avoid this looking boring, Photoshop gives you some tools to vary these shapes along the line to get a more complex look.

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Giving photos and old and sepia look photoshop video tutorial.

One of the best free stuff Graphic Designers can find on the Web for free are high resolution backgrounds and textures. Long gone are the days when you had to buy very expensive CDs in order to obtain good quality backgrounds for your design projects.

By that time, marble and granite textures were all the rage. But now it seems that paper is becoming the new king. Lots of Web Designers are embracing the delicate look of a piece of paper with a subtle shadow. And if it is torn or folded, much better.

This gallery shows some paper backgrounds I collected from different sites. If you would like to add some nice effects to some of these textures, you can read a tutorial I wrote about creating paper folds and creases to paper textures in Photoshop.

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Learn the Basics of Curves Photoshop Video Tutorial.

Enhance your photos with Highlights, midtones and shadows photoshop video

One heavenly body, let at be the moon – is too stereotyped. We will make our collage more interesting, and we will add on the sky one more “body”, but smaller.

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An other approach to PS from the you-suck-at-photoshop guys :

I’ve been receiving more and more emails asking for information about the softbox I use with the speedlites.

Several brands offer this package, I opted for the Chimera set as it was complete and had a larger box than the other brand at the time of purchase.

So, here are some details about what I’m using.

As you can see it is the Chimera PRO II XS softbox that I’m using.

Nice adapter ring is within the package I bought.FIrst time you might need to get the hang of it but after a few shoots you’ll be used to it and able to set the box up in less than 5 minutes.

It has an extra reflective screen for the inside, you can attach it via velcro :

A different approach compared to your average PS video :

Distort, Warp, Layer Effects Photoshop Video Tutorial.

In this tutorial, we’re going to take this image :

And make it look like the following one thanks to a texture, blending modes and layer masks :

This process works best for images with a grayish neutral background, so I took one shot during a cloudy day.

I’m going to use the following texture :

This image was created shooting old canons, the rusty, green/brownish structure / texture is just what I wanted.

Take the texture ( you can find them on stock sites, shoot your own, license an image, etc … ) and place it above your original image.Hold your SHIFT button while dragging one layer into an other for a smooth centered drop.

With the new layer in place, go to the blending modes menu on top left of the layers palette, and choose OVERLAY.

This will give you this result :

Now we’re going to ease on down the opacity of this layer on specific areas of the face with a layer mask, so we can always go back and forth :

Go to LAYER —> LAYER MASK and choose REVEAL ALL , a new icon will appear next to your layer now.

Now select a standard brush, not too ‘hard’ ( right click your button to choose the hardness when the brush is selected ), and make sure your FOREGROUND COLOR is set to BLACK and your BACKGROUND COLOR is set to WHITE.The BLACK color is now chosen, when painting now with the layer mask selected ( click the icon, though the layer mask is selected automatically right after creation ) you will erase part of the texture layer, if you switch the color to WHITE you will bring back the layer.Play with the opacity of your brush to get the result you are looking for.

I cleaned most parts of the face and tux for this image :

The part of the image you erase will show black on the layer mask icon, as showed above.

You can now make the image more dramatic with more contrast layers and curves :

More tutorials :

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

Color – Black and white – sepia mixing photoshop tutorial.

Rumours about the new Adobe PhotoShop CS4 – codename Stonehenge are out.

“The compilation date of this build is November 1st, 2007 meaning it is a little dated already, and it was likely an early release sent out to key testers. Rumors have it that this build of Photoshop CS4 only contains Vista compatibility fixes, and not really anything else.”

“Release data of photoshop CS4 : at this point of posting this article, there here is no word on a release date, but in the past Adobe has released new versions of their Creative Suite every 18 to 24 months. That would mean Adobe CS4 will be available somewhere between October 2008 and April 2009.”

“I’ve been playing with Photoshop CS4 Extended version, code name Stonehenge (Version 11.0) for a couple of days but, so far, couldn’t find to much differences between CS3 and CS4. “

“Maybe this version hasn’t got any new features except for the name changes and some hidden improvements.”

Other rumour is that there will be an addition to easily create ‘gigapixel panorama’s’ featuring ‘Xrez’

[youtube]http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=VGvKLL3SF20[/youtube]

This photoshop tutorial will show you a fast technique to enhance eyes and make them stand out.

Let’s start with a typical flat image.This technique works best for light-colored eyes.

first off go to the DODGE tool and choose MIDTONES, Let’s set the exposure not too high, I choose 26 percent with this image.

Hover your dodge tool over the iris for a few times up and down and let the eye lighten up a bit.

After dodge tool application on midtones :

Now discard the setting ‘midtones’ and choose the HIGHLIGHTS at the dodge tool panel, and apply the same process to the iris.

Dodge tool applied at higlights setting after midtones :

If you go too far you can always go to EDIT —> FADE and have a smoother transition to choose from, I tend to put a lot and then ease on down via a FADE after the application.

Now select the burn tool, choose midtones, and go over the black border of the iris for more contrast.I set the exposure not too high, choosing for a 21 percent value. :

After the burn tool is applied on the borders of the iris :

Now make use of the selection tools available and select the iris / eye color, after your selection is made, right click the mouse and choose ‘feather’ of roundabout 5 pixels for a smoother transition of the selection you just made.

Go to LAYER —> LAYER VIA COPY in your navigation menu.Now your selection is a new layer and stands alone above the rest.

Get to the blending options menu and choose the blend mode SCREEN

If the result is overdone you can always change the opacity of the layer in the layer palette and adjust the transition with the layers below.

Here’s the original compared to the process above.You can always choose to what extent you apply this modification.

More

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

e tutorials : Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

“The selection tools are used to facilitate the process of making selections of shapes, colors, and objects inside of Photoshop, and positioning them in the working image area. With tools like the magnetic lasso and magic wand, Photoshop packs a powerful array of selection gadgets!”

“In Photoshop, selections are used to work in a specified area, while not altering any of the area around it. In many regards, a selection is a lot like a stencil.You basically are enabling yourself to only paint in one area while the rest of your canvas is left unaffected.”

“There are a variety of tools to help you draw out specific sizes and shapes of selections in Photoshop.”

continue at Tutorial9

Change eye color in photoshop tutorial.

Change face structure photoshop video.

“Unlike Healing brush, Patch Tool gives you the ability to replace a large amount of skin in one operation.

To use Patch tool you must be sure that you have a good skin area on your photo. This skin area will be your replacement pattern.

If you don’t have any “good skin” areas on photo, please follow the skin patterns tutorial, to learn how to prepare a skin pattern.”

continue at Roge.ru

“This tutorial shows you a quick and effective way to change eye color. This technique can be used to change other aspects of an image as well as the eyes”

“This tutorial will show you one of many ways to change eye color.”

continue at MetaCafe

“If you have a nice photo of a model, but she or he wasn’t smiling and you want the photo to feature a smiling face, or vice versa, you can use Photoshop to slightly tweak the facial expressions.

The key is to be subtle in your approach, unless you are creating a caricature or cartoon. With the Liquify tool, we can create some subtle changes to model photos that can affect the overall mood of the face and therefore affect the mood of the photo.”

continue at PhotoShopTutorials

Bram from SweetBeat shows you how he drew the arrows on this image :

- Open a new document at for example 20×20 cm

- Create a ‘new layer’ by going to LAYER —> NEW LAYER or clicking the ‘new layer’ icon in the layers palette

- Select the pen tool

- Make sure that PATHS is selected,on the top left-end corner of the screen, and draw an arrow like you see on the picture.

- When you are finished click your right button, choose FILL PATH (the color used doesn’t matter) and click OK.

- Once again click your right button an choose DELETE PATH. Now you must have something like in this image :

- Copy the layer pressing CONTROL + J or going to LATER —> DUPLICATE LAYER in the menu on top and select the first one.
- Now set the foreground color to BLACK and the background color to GREY. I used 9b9b9b for grey.

- Double click on the first layer or right click the layer in the layers palette and choose the second option to open the blending options. select gradient overlay and use the foreground to background gradient.select reverse and click ok.

- Now select the other layer and place him like you can see in the next image :

- Again, change the background color. this time I used cdcdcd as color.

- Open the blending options of the last layer. choose gradient oerlay and again select the foreground to background color gradient select reverse and click ok.
- Now select the pen tool again . to make it look 3d we need to conect the ‘open corners’.

- The best way to do this is to zoom in and start from point 1 to point 2 like you can see on the picture :

Make sure that you cover the complete ‘open corner’.
- When finished with every corner like on the picture

Make sure that the last layer is selected.

- Now right click, choose FILL PATH and click ok

- again, click your right mouse button and choose DELETE PATH

There you have your custom arrow

Photoshop tutorial by SweetBeat

More :

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

“What you need:
1. A digital camera that allows you to set exposure manually.
2. A sturdy tripod.
3. A subject (i.e., what you’re taking the picture of) that does not move.
4. A computer with Photoshop CS2 or higher installed.”

“If you have a camera that supports it, it also helps to have a “cable release”, which is basically a little shutter button that attaches to your camera via a wire, so when you push the button to take the picture, you don’t nudge the camera at all.”

continue at BackingWinds

Ever compose a great landscape shot only to realize that when you expose for the land, the shy becomes a pure white? This is a a common limitation photographers have to deal with when shooting landscapes in sunny conditions. You can either expose for the sky or the land?

There are ways to tackle the problem: shoot in RAW or shoot multiple exposures and combine them later. But sometimes you just can’t plan for these things.

continue at NYfalls

” In this tutorial I will show you how to repair some image noise from a low quality shot and I will show you an extremely quick and easy way to smooth out a person’s face.”

“The technique can be applied to a beauty shot as well, you would just have to adjust the settings on some of the steps to get a more extreme smoothing effect.”

Facial skin smoothing and retouching photoshop tutorial at PsdTuts

“When we last saw our friend’s head you remember he was plagued by that problem of residual color from his original background. If I used the lasso to un-select these areas, I’m afraid we’d lose too many hairs and his hair would look too much like a helmet.”

“We need those stray hairs to make his blend into the new background look more believable. But how do I get rid of the yellowish color you see in some of the pixels?”

continue at TeamPhotoShop

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop tutorial by SweetBeat : -open a new document 5cmx10cm 72dpi -select the rectangular marquee tool and draw a rectangular of 4cm width and 5cm height. -go to paint bucket tool and fill in the selected rectangular with black.

“There are many methods for using hair extraction. Some are more perfect than others of course. The colour range tool for example can often be used, but it gives an overall amateurish effect.”

“For this tutorial, we will take this cropped picture of a woman, who has obviously just been sky diving.”

continue at DevCustoms

related tutorial :

Deep Etching 1: Removing an Image’s Background

“This Photoshop CS3 video tutorial is the first in a series demonstrating methods of separating an image from its background. The image is separated via use of a vector path, using the pen tool and the path selection tool to create a selection that matches the edge of the image very closely, whilst retaining a very smooth and crisp edge. ”

continue at GraphicsDistrict

This tutorial will show you how to transform a standard color photo into a mix of colors, black and white and sepia in a fast and easy process.

Start with your original and add an adjustment layer of channel mixer.

Layer —> New adjustment layer —> Channel mixer.

Choose ‘monochrome’ and play with the sliders until you are happy with the black and white version.This gives you more options than a plain desaturation with CRTL+SHIFT+U .For portraits I personally like the blue channel most quite often.I let the total set to 100.

Change the ‘opacity’ of this layer to 50 %.You can re-adjust to personal taste later.

Now come the sepia tones.

go to Layer —> New adjustment layer —> Hue/Saturation.

check ‘Colorize’ and add your wished sepia values.I tend to use 30 Hue and 20 Saturation as values.

Adjust the opacity of this layer to 50 percent as well or adjust to personal state later when you have the final overview.

Now duplicate this sepia layer ( CTRL + J or Layer —> Duplicate Layer ) and set the blending mode to Soft Light to add more tone and get more contrast.Set the layer’s opacity and fill both to 50 % or adjust to personal taste.

For the final contrast, add a ‘curves’ layer, it will give more control than a ‘contrast’ layer.

go to Layer –> New adjustment layer —> curves

I add a little s-curve with three points.

Which gives a final result of :

compared to the original :

[ --> Download the small .psd with layers version here <-- ]

Other example :

More Tutorials

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

How to draw custom rainbows in photoshop.

How to draw an ‘Asian sun’ with photoshop.

Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

“This tutorial will show you step by step on how to create a “Badass Bling Effect” using layer styles in Photoshop. Once you create the layer style, you can easily  ” blingify” any layer.

click here for this golden and bling effect in photoshop tutorial in step-by-step text page

“In this Photoshop tutorial we will explore how to use the pen tool.

First, we will look at the pen tool’s basic controls. We will examine creating paths, curvature modification and anchor point adjustments.”

“Next, we will use our new pen tool skills to cut out an image. This skill is so essential to know when using Adobe Photoshop, and it really illustrates the power behind the pen tool.

Finally we will see how a path created with the pen tool can be used to create custom shapes. Custom shapes are vectors so they will never pixelate or lose quality. Again this is such a handy skill, you’ll end up using it all the time! ”

continue at MelissaClifton

• How to Use the Pen Tool in Photoshop: A Tutorial on Outlining Objects

“Using the pen tool can be kind of weird the first time (even downright confusing) but it’s a great tool for artists to know how to use.

For instance, if you’re a sculptor, jewelry maker, or any type of 3D artist and you want to have clean, professional images of your work, it’s often best to remove everything BUT your artwork from the picture.”

continue at EmptyEasel

• Photoshop Tutorials: Making Selections With The Pen Tool

“Most people put off learning how to use the Pen Tool for as long as possible, while others never get around to learning it, believing it’s just too confusing, too complicated, and just plain unnatural. Ultimately, their work in Photoshop suffers for it, since they’re stuck relying on the Lasso Tool for just about everything they can’t select with the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee Tools. In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to put an end to the suffering. We’re going to learn just how easy it really is to make selections with the Pen Tool.”

continue at PhotoshopEssentials

“In this article I will guide you through a series of steps to improve skin tones, modify shadow and light patterns to increase the impact, and enhance the eyes and hair to create a striking portrait.”

“Our first step will be to improve the skin tones – make the skin look better or even give it some tan. Women know that before actually putting on a makeup you would put the base – even the tones, and openly after that you can apply the makeup. And here we will do the same – do the base first.”

continue at RomanZolin

“Get the book you need to succeed in any Photoshop endeavor — Photoshop CS3 Bible. In this totally updated edition to the international bestseller, the authors show you how to master every aspect of Photoshop — from image-editing basics to new techniques for working with camera raw images. You’ll learn how to retouch, color correct, manipulate, and combine images using Photoshop. You’ll discover how to create cutting-edge special effects for digital or film-based images, and use them on the Web or in print. And you’ll find out how to use the File Browser, histogram palette, Lens Blur, Match Color, the color replacement tool, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and more. The authors’ easy and approachable writing style demystifies even the most complex Photoshop tasks. Order today and master Photoshop CS3.”

Photoshop CS3 Bible

“Photoshop and Elements allow for layer blend modes that change the way layers react with each other. Some of them you will use in every day work. If you have a photo that is too dark, for example, many times a quick fix is to duplicate the photo layer in the layers palette and change the duplicate layer mode to Screen. If a photo is too light it can sometimes be corrected by duplicating the photo layer and changing the layer mode to Multiply. ”

Photoshop Blending modes at Northlight

Blend modes at DigitalArtForm

Blending modes tutorial at PhotoshopGurus

Blend modes at Arraich Photoshop tips

Give skin a cracked or peeling look with this tutorial.

Dave Hill look at Flickr

Beers with Dave Hill at Strobist

Creating that Dave Hill look at DIYPhotography

Cool gritty look in camera raw photoshop and lightroom by Scott Kelby

Lucisart Photoshop plugin review at Scott Kelby

Dave Hill Photographer

How to make Photoshop actions at Epicedits

Digital Foundation – skin retouching and make up in photoshop video tutorial.

Firstly, we need to adjust the levels; So Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels.
Rather than manipulating the layers together as RGB, we’ll do them one at a time to create the desired effect.
Here are the settings I’ve used for each and a small picture of the result at that stage.

In the layers window – Right click on the original picture layer and select Duplicate. Then move this above the levels adjustment layer

Now – with the duplicate layer selected, Ctrl + U to open the Hue/Saturation controls. Increase saturation to around 55-65 to accentuate the colours.

Cross Processing Photoshop tutorial.

Bram from Sweetbeat.be tells you how he got the rainbow in the photo above using photoshop :
- Open new document 20x20cm.
- Make a new layer and select it.
- Select the pen tool en draw a bowed line.Make sure when you have the pen tool selected to have the paths icon selected and not shape layers or fill pixels

- I select the brush tool and on the top right-end corner of the window I open the brush menu (brushes).

- Select a hard basic brush of 28px and at the lower part of the window you put spacing on 1%.

- On the top left-end corner in same the window I choose ” Shape dynamics “.

- I ensure that the size jitter, angle jitter, roundness jitter stands on 0%.

- At size jitter I put the control on fade, give in the number 400 and choose 10% minimum diameter (dependent of the size of the document you must play with this).

- Now I select the pen tool.
- Click rightbutton and choose stroke path.

- As tool I take the brush and click on ” ok “.
- Click your right button again and choose ” delete path ” and voila.

Now you can change the colour with the blending options and for a rainbow duplicate the layer, rotate them a bit but make sure that they start all from 1point if you put them under each other

Repeat the process with a colorful approach, cut the layers borders.

© SweetBeat

More tutorials :
Add textures to an image for a dramatic effect in photoshop tutorial.

How to draw an ‘Asian Sun’ with photoshop.

How to draw custom 3-D arrows in photoshop

Get the color – black and white – sepia mixing look

Photoshop video tutorial on using layers for effects.

This Photoshop tutorial will show you how to beautify a face. The corrections that we’re going to do will make the face look different, but at the same time we avoid to make the results look unnatural like we tend to see in other Photoshop tutorials.

Of course, the face we’re going to work on is not going to look the same when we’re done, but we will only make necessary and subtle changes. We will use Photoshop to fix skin, remove blemishes and wrinkles, whiten and fix teeth, fix hair, fix eyebrows, increase definition in the eyes and crop and sharpen the image in the final steps.

“Beautify a face” tutorial at Lunacore.Eyes,eyebrows,wrinkles,teeth,skin,tones, etc …

Basic model retouching.

Shadowy, sultry eyes retouching.

Soft desaturated colors.

Photoshop fashion tutorial.

Here’s a list of the most popular photoshop-gone-wrong effects / ‘techniques’ !

As reference, the original image :

Let’s start :

10 -  Black and lots of  white with a vengeance for the Neo-Warhol look :

9 – Let’s set the saturation higher than the Everest :

8-  More Gaussian blur than Mr Gaussian had in his basement :

7 – Dropping a S-curve / contrast layer so extreme Red Bull takes the bus :

6 – Schlinder’s list attempt with a good ole Color and Black and White Mix gone wrong :

5 - Liquify it until it becomes corn syrup :

4 – Lame brushes as foreground, everywhere = super fashion

3 – Super-neato background copy-paste :

2 – Design-your-own-’magazine’-cover :

1 - No car without gas, no photoshoppin’  without three gallons of diffuse glow :

Welcome to the official, Russell Brown tips & techniques page. This is your one-stop shopping location for the latest in hot new tips from the one, and only, Dr. Brown. Beware, these QuickTime movies are large and will take time to download with a slow connection.

Also, if you are viewing them using Internet Explorer, the movies may take several minutes to appear. For best results, Dr. Brown recommends that you use the Safari, or Firefox browser. These tutorials have been provided to you as a free service from Adobe Systems and Russell Brown.

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GetBrushes.com is free Adobe Photoshop brushes directory, featuring handpicked collection of the best brushes for Photoshop on the net, all free to download and use.
Here you’ll find PS brushes for every style and taste, ranging from always popular decay & grunge brushes, over abstract and tech, to gothic, coffee spills, hair, or fractal inspired brushes for photoshop. Have a look around.. and, well, have fun

Free Photoshop brushes at GetBrushes.com

More brushes at Brusheezy.com

Lunacore Smooth Skin tutorial

PhotoShop Skin at TutorialBlog

Quick Skin Tone retouching

Texturing Skin

Learn how to sharpen an image on the edges only with this Photoshop tutorial. Ordinary sharpening methods sharpen the entire image including the areas that you don’t want sharpened such as the skin, clouds, etc. But with this tutorial, you’ll learn how to sharpen only on the edges so that artifacts don’t appear.

We begin by duplicating the layer. The top layer will have the sharpened version of the image and the bottom (Background) layer will have the original untouched image with its default sharpness. To duplciate the layer, press Ctrl+J or go to Layer> Duplicate Layer.

continue

Post Processing HDR images – Tone mapped HDR images are rarely perfect when the HDR program finishes with them. They can look flat, lack overall contrast, and can suffer from artifacts, ghosting and halos. Ferrell McCollough of www.beforethecoffee.com explains how to correct such problems.

Many problems can be corrected in post processing using:

* Levels/Curves
* Simple cloning
* Blending of the tone mapped image with another image to restore realism.

1. Blend the RAW single image with the HDR image. You can blend the 0EV, -2EV or +2EV.
2. Tone map the RAW image and then blend with the HDR. A pseudo-HDR with the HDR image.
3. Blend two HDR’s each processed with a different tone map setting.
4. Blend an HDR image created with a local operator such as Details Enhancer (Photomatix) with an HDR image created with a global operator such as Tone Compressor (Photomatix).
continue

light : monoblock in large softbox close to model, no reflectors

post : mix of desaturations, colorizations and contrast boosts.

I really love the lion Bram put up there.The original photo was taken outdoors during a semi-overcast day with a slave speedlite pointed at the model directly as primary light.

I’m going to start this essay with a provocative statement: Anyone who is, or wants to be doing image editing at a professional level needs to be as comfortable with Curves as they are with breathing. Is that bold enough? Do I have your attention now? If I were forced to give up all but one image adjustment tool, the one I would keep would be Curves. Think of Curves as your one shopping source for improving images the way the pros do.

Let’s clear up some misconceptions right away:

• Curves are not a filter
• Curves are not hard to understand
• Mastering Curves will make you dramatically more productive

read article

© TheGoldenMean.com

Devoted to the exchange of Photoshop actions among users as a service to the image editing community.

check : AtnCentral.com

Fashion White Skin (video tutorial)

Hide Cover Title (video tutorial)

Correcting Yellow Photos Quickly (video tutorial)

Very happy with Bram‘s graphics on Stefanie’s photo.

Light on the model in a monoblock flashead in the Octalite softbox.Sealed and covered for the softest spread of light and some shadows playing with the distance of the source.Light was reflected on the other side with a foam board.

How to match the dimensions of your photos and your prints

Aspect ratio has a technical name, but is really pretty straighforward. It can be tricky getting your photos set to the right aspect ratios to print properly, but there are many software programs that will help you do it.

Aspect Ratio Definition

The aspect ratio of a digital photograph is the relationship between the width and height of the photograph. There are two common aspect ratios produced by digital cameras: 3:2 and 4:3.

read more : http://www.digicamguides.com/print/aspect-ratio.html

© Digicamguides.com

Teamed up with SweetBeat.be for some graphic design mixture with digital photography :

The Art and Science of Printer Profiling, part I

Why Use the ProPhoto RGB Color Space?

GretagMacbeth Eye-One Display

The Color Management Wave

Eye-One Match: An Eye for Color

Learn how to use the amazing black and white conversion tools in Photoshop CS3. This new tool makes turning a color photo into a stunning black and white photo easy. Learn how to make the right adjustments so that your pictures look perfect @ PhotoShopSupport

In this Photoshop CS3 video tutorial you will learn the following:
How to call up the black and white adjustment conversion tool.
How to control the black and white conversion sliders.
How to create various effects using the sliders.
How to add a tint to your photo.

PhotoShopSupport

Definitions

What is Dynamic Range?

What is the unit of Dynamic Range?

What is an HDR image?

But aren’t we confusing dynamic range with bit-depth here?

Shouldn’t 24-bit be higher than 16-bit? I’m lost with all those bit numbers!

High Dynamic Range Images

How do I shoot an HDR image?

Can’t I just create the exposures from one RAW file?

Why doesn’t my HDRI have the details of the exposures I created it from?

What are HDR images used for in 3D rendering?

Do HDR images have a gamma?

Are HDR images color managed?

Processing HDR images

What do you mean by dynamic range increase?

What is Tone Mapping?

Is RAW conversion related to tonemapping?

© hdrsoft.com

High Dynamic Range on Wikipedia

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