Content Site System

Want to get rid of that nasty shine that you get taking pictures? Well now you can, follow these easy steps: Let’s start with a great, overlooked trick. After opening the image, open the same image again in a new window. In Photoshop, choose Window ->Arrange -> New Window. In Elements choose View->New Window. This allows you to view one window zoomed in for detail work and the other window at 100% so you can judge the effects. Using the magnifying glass tool draw a box around the area of shine. Make the box big enough to also show a fair amount of un-shiny skin. Select the Clone tool. At the top of the page select Mode: Darken and use the slider to set Opacity at 50%.Using the Clone Tool, select an area of un-shiny skin by putting the circle over the area and holding down the Alt button while left-clicking the mouse. To best match skin tone try to select the area of skin closest to the shine. Quick tip, to easily resize the Clone Tool circle simply use the bracket keys, [ and ] - much easier than moving your cursor back and forth between the photo and the Size slider. Now simply click on the shiny area and watch the magic happen. You’ll have to experiment a little for best effect, and for larger areas be sure to resample the un-shiny skin frequently. In the zoomed-in image the effect might look too obvious, so you’ll need to keep an eye on the 100% image to track your progress. Notice the difference on the tip of the nose, the cheek, and above his eye.

Color Model: When you hear the term color model we are referring to the method from which we define or classify the color we are to work with. Examples of such are RGB, LAB, CMYK, etc. Color Space: A color space is simply a variation of your color model. For instance, within your RGB framework some common variations are, sRGB, Adobe RGB, and so on. Some of these spaces are better for display e.g. sRGB and Wide Gamut RGB while other color spaces are more suited to printing e.g. ColorMatch RGB and Adobe RGB. Now, it is important to note that every device in our workflow utilizes it’s own unique color space. Meaning, while your monitor, scanner, and printer will base their color spaces basically on what we can see their actual gamut (range of colors) will differ. This is where we lose our consistency across devices. This is the problem we must attend to.

News photographers routinely process images using Adobe Photoshop software. But there has been a basic premise in the world of photojournalism that what was allowed in making prints in the pre-digital days of darkrooms is all that is acceptable today. Back in the days of the darkroom, we used very basic tools to develop prints. In black and white printing, the contrast of a picture was controlled by a paper’s grade. The higher the number of the paper, the higher the contrast. In the wire agency darkooms I’ve worked in, we typically used grades 3,4 and 5. We allowed “dodge and burn” to lighten or darken areas. A dodge tool was made by taping a small piece of cardboard the size of a quarter onto a paper clip. A burn tool was a piece of cardboard the size of an 810 sheet of paper with a hole in the center.

The burn, and sponge tools are hidden under the dodge tool in the toolbox. If one of these was used last, it will be on top, and the dodge tool will be hidden. To find it, click on the tool which is showing, and choose the one you want from the pop-up menu. The dodge tool will lighten the pixels dragged over according to the percentage chosen in the tool’s options bar [see below]. You can choose to lighten highlights, midtones, or shadows. Each must be worked on separately; the tool does not work on all three at once.

The spot healing brush made its debut in Photoshop Elements 3, but now an enhanced version of it is available in Photoshop CS2. The spot healing tool is different from the existing patch and healing tools in that it does not require you to make a selection or define a source point before using it. As you can see in the screen shot above, Photoshop CS2’s spot healing tool has more options than the version in Photoshop Elements 3. You can select a blending mode for the healing, and choose between proximity match or create texture. You can also sample all layers which allows you to use the spot healing tool on a new layer for non-destructive editing.

The easiest way to make teeth whiter in a photo is with your Dodge Tool. (Among your tool icons, it’s the 7th down on the right hand column. If you don’t see it there, right click on the icon and you’ll find two hidden choices; one will be your Dodge Tool.) On the horizontal Tool Options Bar under the Menu, choose “Midtones” for Range, and 40% for Exposure. Also on the Tool Options Bar, choose the appropriate brush for this particular retouching job. Use your Magnifying Glass Icon in Tools to zoom in to the area you want to affect. Then run your brush over the teeth you want to whiten several times, slowly, without releasing your mouse. If you find that the Dodge tool whitened too much, you can either click “Edit,” then “Step Backward,” (to start over), or “Edit”, then “Fade Dodge Tool,” which will allow you to fade the whitening enhancement to your exact preference.

Digital photographers use photoshop so much that sometimes they don’t realize that they could be doing something they didn’t think they could in photoshop. Adding Graphics to Videos. It’s a little known fact, but many domestic and professional nonlinear editing systems (especially the Mac based ones like Avid or Final Cut) enable you to import Photoshop .psd files directly into the timeline. Creating Text Effects for Print and Web. There’s an almost unlimited amount of things you can do with text in Photoshop. Use the Type Mask Tools to create picture filled text, then upload the results to your web page - or print them out for a one of a kind T-shirt.