Photoshop Software…Quick and Easy techniques for Photoshop
A fun idea to do is create an abstract picture, you can do anything you want to it. One fun idea is the add a fire look to a picture, here is a step by step way to do it: First thing’s first, get a nice stock photo. I used a stock photo of an eye from deviant ART.First of all I opened the photo and resized it to 75% of it’s original size. 1. After you’ve opened your photo up, duplicate the background layer then apply Filter > Distort > Twirl and use the default setting. That should have just distorted it slightly. Now change the layer mode for your duplicated layer to Lighten. That will have made the eye look a little bit alien-like. 2. Now brighten up the picture a little bit by adding in a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast…) Now this is the part where you choose the fiery color for your photo. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map. I changed the layer mode for this layer to Linear Light and lowered the opacity to 85%. 3.Ok, here are some nice optional effects.Before adding effects like these, you’ll probably need to flatten your image (Layer > Flatten Image) then duplicate the one remaining layer. First, I applied Filter > Artistic > Rough Pastels with the default settings. Now change the layer mode for this layer to Lighten and maybe lower the opacity if you see it need sit. I lowered the opacity to 70%. 4. To finish this tutorial off, I flattened all the layers, applied Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen, faded the sharpen to about 40% (Edit > Fade) then I added in a little bit of tech and grunge.
Photoshop CS2 is able to create an Automated Task. When you have a whole bunch of repeated tedious task to do on a whole sets of photos. Eg: resize a whole stack of photos to a specific resolution. It is easy enough to do: First, open up the desired photos with Photoshop or simply just drag and drop the photos onto the Photoshop main stage. This is the photo which I will be using. It is actually a 20001333 resolution photo and now the view is actually 25% of the actual size. Now is to open up the Action Window. Go to Window > Action or simply press the shortcut key Alt + F9. The Action window will looks like what it is in the above image. We have everything ready and now is to do the trick. Click on the “Create New Action” button as where is shown on the above image A New Action window will come out, the Name of course is the name of your this Automated Task, here as I am doing photo resizing so I will give it the name “Resize”. Everything just remain as it is and click on Record Just for your information, the Function Key is actually for you to set the shortcut key to this Automated Task. Anyway, I will not set anything here. Now the Record button has turned active (red color), and from now on whatever action you do will be recorded. I will start doing the resizing now. Go to the Image > Image Size or with the shortcut key Ctrl+Atl+I. Here I will resize to the above figures. Click Ok. The image has now been resized. What I need to do has actually finish. In actual tedious task of course it won’t be that short but here it will be enough as an example. Click on the Stop Recording button as where is shown on the image. Now you have your Automated Task set! .To show on how it works. Simply open another photo or drag other photo onto the Photoshop main stage. In the above image I am now using another image. Now on the Action window, select on the “Resize”(or the name you gave for this Automated Task), then click on the “Play Selection” button as where is shown on the image.
What we want to do is create a fractal. I use Apophysis but you can use any fractal program. Once you have a fractal you like open it up in Photoshop. To start off what we want to do is duplicate our fractal layer. So take your fractal layer and drag onto the new layer button. Then go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur and insert any settings between 4 – 9. Each fractal is different so it will take some experimentation find the right one for your fractal. Then set your blurred layer on Linear Light. This will make the colors more vibrant and will make it brighter and seem to glow. Your fractal should look something like this now. Now duplicate your blurred layer. And take the layer settings and put it on Soft Light. This should add to more of the glow feeling. Yours should look something like this: Now I wanted to make my fractal look even brighter because its an angel and angels are known to be very bright. So make a new layer. Fill it black. Now go to Filter> Render> Lens flare. Then blur your Lens Flare. Finally set your Lens Flare layer on Color Dodge and move it so the Lens Flare is in the middle of your fractal. Your fractal should look something like this: If you have ugly green heads take a white soft brush and brush over it. And you are done!
While you are running though photos you may find one that you absolutely hate because of the acne, well there is a way to cure that by touching up your photo. First open your photo which you want to cure the acne on. Next, click on your “Healing Brush Tool” and set your brush to the size of 5px for this tutorial. When selecting your brush size, set your “Hardness” to 100% and your “Spacing” to 25%. Now press Alt+Click The Mouse over a non-blemished area and then clicked over the blemished area to replace it. To clear up areas where two distinct colors of acne are near, set your “Hardness” to 66% so you can blend the areas more naturally. Next, click on Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation to balance the colors. I increased the Hue slider by 12 points to even out the reddish blemishes.
While texturing you can add cool looking scan lines to your picture. This is easy enough: Open Photoshop and click on File > New and set the width to 1 pixel, the height to 3 pixels and set the “Contents” section to “Transparent” for this tutorial. You will have to click on View > Zoom In a few times so you can see the palette.Now, right click on the “Brush Tool” and select the “Pencil Tool” and at the top of the screen set your “Brush ” to 1px, your “Mode” to normal and your “Opacity” to 100 percent. Take your “Pencil Tool” and click in the center of your new palette so the top and bottom third are still transparent. Go to Edit > Define Pattern and save your new image as a scan line pattern like the example below. Next, open any photo you want to add scan lines to. Click on the “Rectangular Marquee Tool” and drag it over the photo. Now right click on the photo and click on “Fill” and set your properties to the image below. The “Custom Pattern” will be the one you just created. You can set your “Blending” options to what appears best for your photo.
Adding texturing and smoothing texture out is helpful to photos. To add a seamless texture you would start with a simple ground texture here – 320×320 big. As you can see when we try to make a horizontal pattern an ugly seam is visible. We’ll try to fix that. Go to the filter menu and choose filter/other/offset.. Our texture is 320 wide so +130 value for horizontal -that will move our image 130 pixels to the right. After that we can notice seam -place where ends of image meet. What we have to do know is make seam invisible by over painting cloning parts of image and so forth. I covered seam mostly with 1px brush picking colors with eyedropper tool When done, we have to move image to its base position by moving it 130px to the left -choose filters/other/offset.. and write “-130″ value. Now we can see how it works. Repeating texture gives us nice pattern without seams. We can of course do the same thing vertically when needed. Ok, hope it’s good enough for doing some textures…
Want to create a web 2.0 label? This is easy enough just follow the steps: Step 1) Create your canvas, I suggest a large size so you create lots of detail, the final image can be scaled down later. Step 2) The next step is to draw your shape, this can be any shape. Use the preset shapes in Photoshop or download some new ones off the internet. It doesn’t matter what colour it is. Step 3) Next apply a layer style to the shape, I recommend using the Web 2.0 layers and gradients pack, here. Although you can make your own. Step 4) As well as this I suggest using a bevel and emboss. Use are large size and reduce the opacity of the shadow. Step 5) Add you text. I’ve used Trebuchet MS. Use the character palette to move the letters into a good looking spacing. Step 6) Again, use one of the white layer styles in the pack and apply this to the white text. Step 7) You now have a cool looking Web 2.0 label to add to your web pages. Step 
One optional step that I suggest adding is a drop shadow, this adds a lifted effect to the label. Step 9) Flatten and remove the background and save as a .png. This can now be added to any web page.