Final Image Preview

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Tutorial Details

• Program: Photoshop
• Version: 7 and up
• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Estimated Completion Time: About 4 to 5 hours

Step 1 – Open and Prepare Image for Editing

You can download the source image for this tutorial here. Open the image in Photoshop. Right click on the background layer and select “Duplicate Layer…”

Double click the new layer and rename it “Restoration”. Either lock or hide the background layer so that you can reference it later. Save often.

Step 2 – Apply a Levels Adjustment Layer

Select the Adjustment Layers pallet, then select Levels. Use the settings in this screenshot. Black point at 7, white point at 243.

Step 3 – Set the Eyedropper Tool Sample Size

Select tool (i) and set to a 5 px by 5 px average sampling area.

Step 4 – Retouch the White Spots and Scratches

Using a Soft Round Brush (B) of about 21 pixels, with a hardness of 0, and blending mode set to darken, start filling in the voids in the photo.

This step is more art than science. Those of you with a Wacom Tablet will have a definite advantage. Option + Click on an area right next to the void to pick up the adjascent tonal values. If you are using a tablet you can vary the pen pressure to build up values gradually. Using a mouse, set the opacity of the brush to about 50%. Work over the complete image, filling in all of the white voids with adjascent values trying to maintain natural contours.

Increase and decrease the brush size as needed. You can use the blur tool with the blending mode set to darken to touch up small specks and blemishes. When you are finished the photo should look something like this.

Step 5 – Lighten the Dark Areas

Use exactly the same techniques in reverse.

Set the brush tool to the lighten overlay mode, and to clean up dark specks, set the Blur Tool to lighten. Rework the shadows and highlights again to catch flaws missed the first time. When you are finished the photo should look something like this.

Step 6 – Correct the Uneven Background

To not destroy detail in the current painted backdrop, we will work on a new layer to correct the background.

Create a new layer and name it “background corrections”.

Use a relatively large brush of about 400 px to 500 px, with the blending mode set to normal, and a 50% to 80% opacity, begin to even out the background tones.

If you make a mistake, just use the eraser tool with the same settings to correct. Take your time and rework until you are satisfied with the results. Your results may look something like this.

Step 7 – Focus on Jenny Lind’s Face

Zoom in and make the final corrections on Jenny’s face with a 25 px brush, blending mode normal, opacity 70%. Here are the areas of concern, smooth these out to the best of your ability.

Since Jenny Lind was a famous performer, there will be an abundance of reference photos to assist in filling in some of the detail. In this case we are lucky to have another photo of Jenny available from the Library of Congress. This photo is almost identical in pose, expression, and lighting; so we will paste a copy of Jenny’s face from the reference photo onto the restoration.

Align the photo directly over the face. You will need to scale the picture up and rotate a little to get the correct alignment.

Using the layers mask tool delete most of the reference photo except for the eyes, nose, and mouth. Here is how that might appear.

Now I will merge this layer down to the restoration layer, and finish the final details. Here’s the result.

Step 8 – Add Noise

Merge the background corrections layer and the levels adjustment layer with the restoration now. Then Right-Click on your restoration layer and select “Duplicate Layer…”.

Select “Filter > Texture > Grain” and apply these settings. You can rename this layer “Grain” if you like.

Play with the opacity and blend modes on this until you get a nice grain texture throughout the photo. This step masks the smoothness of the restoration and blends it seamlessly into the original photo.

Step 9 – Save a Copy

Save a copy for output to a printer of your choice.

Conclusion

You’re finished! Bask in the warm glow of the praise you will receive for your new found photo restoration skills!

Before Getting Started

We are living on the golden age of 3D technology, we can see art pieces, architectural models, biological simulations, fantasy creatures, futuristic machines, and almost realistic objects everywhere. Most of those graphics have been through Photoshop, from texture editing to final mock-ups; making it a must know tool for anyone interested in 3D design.

Photoshop CS3 Extended allowed users to open their 3D files and edit directly some features like textures and lights, but CS4 takes 3D editing into another level where you can actually work with the 3D file just like most of the commercial 3D editing software. Even though Photoshop can’t edit the model itself, it works absolutely well with textures, materials and lights allowing you to even paint directly over a surface using the Brush Tool. This is a very basic guide but some elemental knowledge of 3D geometry is needed.

Tutorial Details

• Program: Photoshop CS4 Extended
• Difficulty: Basic
• Estimated Completion Time: 2 – 3 Hours

You will need some 3D models to play with, I’m using a boat from telias.free.fr and a free-to-use model of a space shuttle that I’ve downloaded from the NASA website. Feel free to use any model that you want. Let’s get started!

Part I – Creating and Editing 3D Layers

Photoshop handle 3D files through 3D layers, which work just like Smart Objects. Each 3D layer contains a unique 3D scene that can be created five different ways: from a 3D file, from a layer working as a Postcard (Plane), from a layer making it a 3D basic Object, from a grayscale layer and as a Volume combining two or more layers.

This tutorial will cover the first four, since Volume based on layers is a little bit different than the others and we will leave it for another occasion.

New Layer from 3D File

The first way and maybe the most known way to work with a 3D layer in Photoshop is creating a 3D layer from an existing file. For this go to 3D > New Layer from 3D File, then chose a file on your file system and open it. Photoshop allows you to open .3DS, .DAE, .KMZ, .U3D and .OBJ files. A new Layer with the object’s name will appear in the Layers Panel. You can add as many 3D layers as you want.

Working with the Basic 3D Tools

In the Tools Panel click on the active 3D Tool (K) and then on top, in the Options Panel, you will see several different options for you to edit the 3D layer. At any time you can go back to the default values by clicking on the tiny House Icon in the Options Panel.

Rotate

The default tool and the first one in the list is Rotate, Click on the 3D model and Drag up or down to rotate it around its X axis, or side to side to rotate it around its Y axis. A diagonal Drag will rotate the model on both the X and Y axis. You can control the rotation by setting numerical values in the Orientation fields over the Options Panel, by default all of them are set to 0.

Roll

Drag side to side or up and down to Roll the model around its Z axis. You can do the same by using the previous tool, but holding the Option key on a Mac or the Alt key on the PC. You can control the rotation by setting numerical values on the Orientation fields.

Drag

This tool moves the model in the 3D space. Drag side to side to move the model horizontally, or up or down to move it vertically. Hold the Alt key to move it in the X/Z direction. This tool is very different than the standard Move Tool (V) because this works over a 3D environment meanwhile the Move Tool works only in 2D. You can control the position by setting numerical values on the Position fields over the Options Panel all values are set in 0 by default.

Slide

Drag side to side to move the model horizontally, or up or down to move it closer or farther away from your perspective. You can control the position by setting numerical values on the Position fields, which is 0 by default.

Scale

This change the model’s size. Drag up or down to scale the model larger or smaller. By setting the Scale values in a numeric format you can scale the model over any of its 3 axis, stretching it up or enlarging it. By default the numeric values are set to 1.

Position Presets

In the Position drop down you will find several position presets to chose from. Besides you can save a customized Position by clicking on the tiny Save icon or delete a custom preset from the drop down box.

3D Axis

You must have Open GL enabled, go to Edit > Preferences > Performance and in the GPU panel check the box named Enable Open GL Drawing. Then when you create a 3D file, you’ll see a 3D axis handler to work with, it does exactly the same as the standard 3D tools, but working directly on the axis instead of clicking on the canvas. Below there’s a list of the hotspots of the 3D axis.

Camera

The 3D camera tools are used to move the camera view, while leaving the position of the 3D object fixed. This is very useful when you want to merge 3D objects into a single scene (we will see that shortly).

Click on the 3D Camera default tool (N) to activate them. Most of the tools work pretty much the same as the Position Tools: Rotate, Move and Drag. You can switch between Perspective (Vanishing point) and Orthographic (Parallel lines) cameras, and zoom them up to 180. You can save Camera View Presets as well.

New Shape from Layer

Photoshop allows you to create a bunch of built in shapes from 2D layers. Select a Layer in Layers Panel, it can be any kind of layer, then go to 3D > New Shape From Layer …There you will find several presets to chose from. As you can see at the bottom of the image below you can create nice pieces using only built in shapes.

Postcard from Layer

Another way to create a 3D layer is by converting any layer into a 3D Postcard. For this select any layer (vector or bitmap), then go to 3D > New 3D Postcard from Layer. Then you can handle each layer as a 3D object.

New Mesh from Grayscale

Finally another way of creating a 3D layer is from a Grayscale layer. Select any grayscale gradient, shape, or text layer and go to 3D > New Mesh From Grayscale > … and chose one of the following options: plane, two sided plane, cylinder and sphere. Below there’s an example of 3D layers based on a gradient layer.

Merge Meshes

You can easily merge two or more 3D layers into a single scene. For this you need two 3D layers in the same file. In the following example there is a cube and a cylinder. Select one of the layers ("Cube" in this case), then using the Camera Tool set the View drop down to the other 3D Layer ("Cylinder"). Finally in the Layers Panel Options Menu go to Merge Down. This way you will have a unique 3D layer. Each mesh still can be edited separately on the 3D Panel.

Part II – Working with the 3D Panel

Go to Window > 3D to show the 3D Panel. There you will find several options to take your models into another level (you must have a 3D layer selected in order to show all the options on it).

On top there are four buttons that filter the viewing of the components of the Scene: Scene (All in one), Meshes, Materials and Lights. Below there are the Scene objects, first there’s the Scene itself, then a list of all the meshes ,each one with its respective material, and below a list of the lights. You can toggle the visibility of a mesh, material or light anytime you want.

Below the Scene explorer there’s a panel where you can change the settings of the selected object (we will dig into this later). Finally, there are four little buttons: Toggle Ground Plane show/hide a ground plane, Toggle Lights show/hide the lights controls, New Light shows a list of lights to add into the scene, and Delete, which removes the component from the scene.

Scene Render Settings

Anti-Alias

Select the Scene on the object’s explorer in the 3D Panel. We will begin with the Anti-Aliasing of the render. In the settings area of the 3D Panel there’s a Drop Down with three anti-aliasing options: Draft, Better and Best. You can change this setting anytime you want. Just remember that a better anti-aliasing means more time for the system to render the image.

Render Presets

On the Preset drop dow you will find a lot of render presets. Below are some examples.

Global Ambient Color

The Global ambient color is a global color, which is visible on reflective surfaces (we will see more about reflectiveness shortly). By default the global ambient is set to black.

Cross Section

This setting creates a planar cross section that intersects the model trough an axis at the angle you choose. It’s pretty useful in order to see through a model and view interior content. You can change the color and opacity of the intersecting plane and define a color for the lines. Besides you can change the Offset and Tilt values as you wish.

Working with Meshes

Each scene may have several meshes. You can select them one by one in the top section of the 3D panel. Once you select a mesh the Settings area will show a miniature of the Scene and a red rectangle delimiting the mesh. Each mesh can be handled as any 3D object (rotate, roll, scale, etc.) but with the tools in the bottom of the 3D Panel, by clicking in the little Home icon the mesh will go back to its original position and scale.

Part III – Materials

A material is a complex group of texture layers: Diffuse, Bump, Glossiness, Shininess, Opacity, Reflectivity, Environment and Normal. Each one with its very own characteristics. Combining them in a proper way results in an outstanding or even realistic result. To edit a material click on the mesh’s material and see the Settings on the bottom of the 3D Panel.

Diffuse

This texture is the color of the material. You can either select a color from the swatch or create a New Texture (or Open an existing one) by clicking on the Texture Map Menu as shown in the third screenshot below.

Once you create a texture layer, it will appear in the Layers Panel. You can Double-click to edit it. A new document with a .PSB extension will be open there. You can design anything you want. When you save the document, the 3D layer will be updated.

On the Texture Map Menu there’s an option named Edit Properties. By clicking on it, you will be able to chose which layers you want to include in the texture or the entire composite, besides setting the scale and offset of the texture layer. This can be made on every single texture of the material.

Bump

This texture creates bumps in the material’s surface. A bump map is a grayscale image in which lighter values create raised surface areas and darker values create flatter surface areas. In the following example there’s an irregular grayscale image created with a simple Brush and its respective result. The Bump Strength field is set to an amount from 1 to 10.

Tip: In order to make a texture layer almost perfect, go to Filter > Other > Offset, change both horizontal and vertical offset and use a clone tool to polish the edges.

Glossiness and Shininess

Glossiness defines the amount of light from a source that reflects off the surface and back to the viewer. Shininess defines the dispersion of the reflected light generated by the Glossiness setting. It’s harder to explain than it is to try. Change both values and see what happens. Don’t forget that you can add a texture to any of those settings.

Opacity

Increases or decreases the opacity of the material (0-100%). It’s useful for creating glass textures for example.

Environment and Reflectivity

One of my personal favorites textures on a material is Environment, which stores the image of the environment surrounding the 3D model. In the following example I’m adding a clouds texture to the Environment option, and voilá, a nice reflection on the ring’s surface, you can hide the environment by toggling the eye icon of the Environment texture in the Layers Panel.

Reflectivity here is very important, since increases the reflection of other objects in the 3D scene, and the environment map, on the material surface. The lower the percentage of reflection the less environment is reflected.

Normal

Another personal favorite, a normal map increases surfaces details. It’s based on a multi-channel (RGB) image and helps to smooth the surface. Below there is an example of an orange circle dawn on a normal texture. You can see the circle zone looks smoother on the 3D model. If the RGB layer covers all the document, then the entire surface will look smoother.

Look at the example below, with a Normal map and a Diffuse texture you can create a nice 3D flag in less than 1 minute!.

Part IV – Lights

3D lights illuminate models from different angles, adding realistic depth and shadows. You can add three types of lights in Photoshop: Infinite Lights (like sunlight), Spot Lights like reflectors, and Point lights like bulbs.

You can change the position of lights, also color and intensity. You can see them at the bottom of the scene explorer, most of models have at least two Infinite Lights that you can edit, or delete. To create a new layer click on the New Light button on the bottom of the panel and chose the type of light that you want to create.

Infinite Lights

Once you created or when you’re editing a, Infinite Light, you can customize its Color, Intensity and the ability to Create Shadows. It’s pretty useful to toggle the Light Guides on the bottom of the 3D panel. An Infinite Light can only be Rotated or by clicking on the tiny Camera icon set the light on the focal point. You can add as many Lights as you want.

Point Lights

This light works as if you are putting a bulb light somewhere in the model. You can edit the Position, Intensity, Color, Create Shadows and Softness as well as Infinite Lights, but you can Drag, Move and Rotate this light.

Spot Lights

As well as the other lights, you can change the Intensity, Color and Shadows ability, move it trough the scene and change the Softness. Besides you can configure the position (in degrees) of the Hotspot and the Falloff.

Finally you can check Use Attenuation (how fast light intensity decreases as distance from objects increases) and change the Inner and Outer attenuation values. No matter how detailed the screenshot may be, the only way to see how it works is giving a try.

Part V – Some Extras

Paint On

Last but not least the Paint On… Photoshop enables paint directly over any texture layer of the Materials, Select the Paint On… texture on the 3D panel (you must select the scene first) and from the Tools Panel select the Brush tool and customize the settings and colors as you want.

In the following example you can see how to paint over the Diffuse Texture using a couple of brushes and even the Eraser Tool. At the bottom of the image below there’s the result of painting on the Bump texture with a soft black brush.

Save Materials and Lights Presets

Since creating a material sometimes is a long process, it’s very practical to create presets of Material and Lights to re-use them later. Select a Material, then on the 3D Panel’s Options Menu click on Save Material/Lights Preset…, type some name for it and save it somewhere. To Apply a preset on another mesh select Replace Material/Lights…

Conclusion

This is only a little sample of what can be done with 3D Layers and the advanced 3D Panel, it’s up to you to try these tools and explore its full potential. Good Luck!

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Source Files

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Introduction

Brushes are incredibly useful when it comes to grunge effects, silhouettes, paint effects, bubbles, stars and more uses. Sometime ago a friend of mine asked me how can I have such a huge collection of Brushes and Shapes in my Photoshop. I thought of the time I spend in saving a PSD or a Layer as a Brush.

Well I don’t spend much time on this. This is because I created an Action which transforms a Layer into a Brush and does the job for me, which saves a lot of time.

First, I’ll explain to you how to create the Action we’re talking about through an example and then I’ll show you another sweet application.

For this tutorial I used this nice photo of a set of buttons (thanks nkzs), and some really cool silhouettes uploaded by a mzacha at sxc.hu.

Let’s start by opening the buttons set in Photoshop and visualize the Actions Panel via Window > Actions (Alt + F9). This panel allows you to record some events and then to apply them by pressing a Shortcut: that’s what is called Action (IMO that’s awesome). Think of all the work you must do frequently: you can record that process and repeat it…the software does the job for you. Let’s see how the Actions Panel works (look at the image below):

1. Stop button: stop the playing or recording of an action.
2. Record button: records the actions.
3. Play button: plays an action
4. New Folder button: create a new folder to group the same types of actions.
5. New Action button: creates new action layers.
6. Delete button: delete an entire action or a step of an action.

There are some Default Actions in Photoshop: if you never opened this Panel do some experiments by just pressing the Play button on an Action. Notice that everything the Action does is also recorded in the History Panel. That could be dangerous because if the Action is very long and includes numerous events, then it’s possible that you can’t restore your original PSD file to the previous status. Just some suggestions to avoid this:

• Save the PSD before playing the Action so you can always close the document without saving and reopen it.
• Duplicate the Layer and apply the Action on that Layer Copy.
• Create a Snapshot in the History Panel.

These last ones are just useful suggestions to know about Actions, but not really necessary for this particular tutorial.

Step 1

After this short introduction to the Actions Panel, let’s begin the real tutorial. Let’s suppose that we have a document with many Layers or, such in this case, an image on which we want to create new Brushes. Now, rarely would we need these buttons as Brushes, but I thought this source image was perfect for the exercise and as a demonstration. In this situation the usual path which should allow you to create a New Brush Preset is:

• Select a button using the Elliptical Marquee Tool.
• Command + C (to copy it).
• Command + N (to create a New Document of the same size of the area you just copied).
• Command + V (to paste it).
• Go to Edit > Define Brush Presets…
• Finally close the document without saving (or yes it’s up to you ).

Well, let’s say you need about one minute to do this procedure for every single Layer that you want to Save as a Brush: it’s too much time! In the next steps we will record this definition of a new Brush and we’ll be able to apply it to every Layer we’ll want now and in the future.

Step 2

Before recording our Action we need to isolate one button, just as a dummy object, nothing more (you could also use a white Layer). Using the Elliptical Marquee Tool select one button, then Command + J to duplicate it here in this document directly on a New Layer.

Step 3

Now in the Actions Panel create a New Set (Special Actions) click on New Action, name it Auto-Brush and choose your favorite shortcut (I choose F11) and then click Record in this Dialog Box. From now on take care with what you’re doing since everything is being recorded: if you make a mistake press the Stop button, Delete the unwanted step(s) and then click the Record button again to restart recording the Action. Proceed carefully!

Step 4

Right-click on the Layer’s thumbnail (button) and Convert it To Smart Object. Yes that is a Smart Object: we can Open it a New Document which is the exact Size and Resolution of the button’s Layer by Double-Clicking on its thumbnail. The opened document is “button.psb”. Often check if you’re really recording!

Step 5

Now this step is optional: apply an Auto Levels adjustment to adjust the contrast pressing Command + Shift + L. Since the Brush will be in greyscale, it’s important to have the maximum contrast to obtain a better definition of the stroke and the image details.

Step 6

Now go to Edit > Define Brush Preset… and call it Auto Brush, then click OK. Why Auto Brush? Because we’re recording an Action which is generic so also the name of the Brush has to work with that. Finally close “button.psb” without saving (Just click NO in the Dialog Box). If you applied the Auto Levels it’s very important not to Save because we don’t want to modify the original Layer.

Step 7

Right-Click on the Layer’s name and choose Rasterize Layer. The Layer is exactly as it was before. Finally Click on the Stop button in the Actions palette.

Step 8

We have a new Brush in our set! Now imagine a normal situation which you’re working on a document full of dozens of Layers. Let’s imagine that we want to Save as Brushes some of those Layers. Now with this Action it becomes quick and easy.

Step 9

For example let’s suppose we’re working on these gears and chains and we want to save some of these gears and elements as brushes because we think they can be useful in the future. So we should: Create a New Document of the same size of the gear we want to save, drag it inside the New Document, save it as a Brush, name it, and close the Document.

Do you really feel you want to do that more than once? I’d skip and not save anything as a Brush because it’s time consuming. But with this new Action we just created just press F11 and a Layer become a Brush! Perfect and so fast! Think about all the Layers you just touch during a project: everything can be saved as a Brush quickly.

If you’re asking yourself: “Why not just going to Edit > Define Brush Preset? Why do I need this Action?” Well it’s because everything behind it will be saved within the Brush…and that’s bad! It is absolutely necessary to isolate the Layer or you’ll just have a big Brush with all your document inside and not the Layer alone!

Step 10

We created these gear Brushes in seconds. If we change our mind we can always erase a Brush from the set by Alt-clicking on the unwanted Brush. A pair of mini scissors appears and we can erase one. I strongly suggest to do this frequently to keep your library clean. If you get used to this Action you’ll have an outstanding set of Brushes in a very short time, without any waste of time while working on your projects.

Step 11

Another advantage of using an Action is that we can apply it to a Batch of stuff. Let’s suppose that we have some of mzacha’ silhouettes opened in Photoshop. Each one in a single document. Let’s see a fast way to Save them all as Brushes in a few clicks, while avoiding clicking F11 for every document. Yes, because we’re lazy (I mean efficient).

Step 12

The fastest way is to use the Automate Tool is to go to File > Automate > Batch.

Step 13

We just need to apply these settings and…

Conclusion

done!! A lot of new Brushes added to our collection!! But I want to underline that this Action is mostly useful while working: saving new Brushes is so fast and easy! By just opening images in PS, and then Automating the Auto Brush Action, it will save you a lot of time.

If you want to apply actions to other activities you do in Photoshop, then review the tutorial “Batch Editing and Automated Processing in Photoshop” here on Psdtuts+

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In this guide, you’ll learn how to use the brush presets, create your own brush from scratch and modify its properties, play with blend modes and pressure controls, besides some useful tricks. How much do you know about Photoshop’s Brushes?

Psd Plus Membership

Want access to the full PSD files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Psd Plus for just $9/month. Below is one of the brushes we’ll be creating in this tutorial.

What is it?

The Brush tool is a basic painting tool. It works like a traditional drawing tool by applying the color using strokes. It’s located in the standard Tool Bar and its default shortcut is the letter B.

The Brush Tool works by adding a shaped mark on a layer, and if you continue pressing the mouse button or the pen on a tablet, several marks will be added creating a stroke until you release the pressure. The essentials options for the brush tool are: Brush Tip Shape, Blending Mode, Opacity and Flow. You must understand those concepts before moving forward with the advanced settings.

Photoshop includes several built-in presets, that are in fact pre-made brushes ready to use.

Part 1 – Basics

Brush Tip

This is the most basic option for any Photoshop User, the Brush Tip settings allow you to modify the way to add colors on a Photoshop document using the Brush Tool. By clicking on the Brush Preset Picker in the default Options Panel you will see several built-in presets. On many of the presets you can easily adjust two very important values:

• Master Diameter increases or decreases the size of the brush tip. The default shortcuts to increase or decrease are the Left Bracket key and the Right Bracket key respectively. Photoshop CS4 enables a dynamic way of doing it by Ctrl + Option (Mac) + Click or Alt + Right Click (Win) and Drag.
• Hardness increases or decreases the brush tip’s border strength, 0% means a really soft border (color fades out) and 100% a precise border. The shortcuts to increase or decrease hardness percentage are the Left Bracket key and the Right Bracket key respectively. In CS4 you can dynamically modify this value by Ctrl + Option + Shift (Mac) + Click or Alt + Shift + Right Click (Win) and Drag.

You can even combine Foreground and Background colors (we will see this feature forward). Most of the time the color that is applied by using the brush tip is the Foreground Color.

Preset Picker Contextual Menu

There are many useful tools at the Brush Preset Picker menu including Create a New Preset, Edit it, and Delete. Then there are some options to display the list of brushes in the Preset Picker panel, below there are several examples of this. Besides, you can easily Manage the Brush list by loading, saving and replacing brushes in the list, or Append one of the existing Brush collections. We will see more about preset creation shortly.

Brush Blending Modes

Each time you paint something using the Brush Tool you can chose a Blending Mode for the stroke. A Blending Mode is a way to mix the colors with the object(s) behind them using several mathematical formulas working over the RGB values of each pixel. Let’s try some of them.

Modes: Normal, Dissolve, Behind and Clear

Let’s review some of the basic Blending Modes.

• The first on the list is the Normal Mode, which paints the color as is without applying any transformation to the color pixels.
• The Dissolve Mode adds some noise at the edge of the brush stroke.
• Behind Mode paints behind an existing stroke even if they are both on the same layer.
• By using the Clear Mode you can delete a section of an existing stroke.

More Blending Modes

The Following Blending modes are just the same that can be applied to the Layers, below you can see some examples of blending modes, and some applications. They are fairly useful for adding color to objects (Darken, Multiply, Overlay) or add some lights (Lighten, Color Dodge). You have a lot to experiment with here, no matter how many years you have been using Photoshop, you never stop learning about Blending Modes.

Opacity

The Opacity Value is a percentage of transparency, 100% means a full color stroke, a small percentage means a more transparent painting.

3. Flow

The Flow value is a percentage that sets the rate of color applied. Each time you press the mouse button the amount of color applied is controlled by the Flow percentage, besides it cannot exceed the Opacity percentage unless you click again in the same place.

Brushes Panel

The Brushes Panel is the right place to create, edit, save and load a particular brush behavior or Brush Preset. You can customize several things here like the brush tip shape, scattering, opacity jitter, flow jitter, Background/Foreground jitter, configure controls for each variation and more.

To show the Brushes Panel go to Window > Brushes, or press the F5 key. You need to select the Brush Tool on the Tools Panel to enable the Brush Preset options.

As you can see, as soon as you show the Brushes Panel you can click over the Brush Presets option on the left and then in the main area a list of all the active brushes. Try them before moving forward in this guide, paint some random strokes using different presets and see what happens. Next we’ll create a Custom Brush, and apply several variations to it.

Creating a Brush Tip from an Image

One of the most powerful features of Photoshop is the ability to create custom brushes from scratch using any image as a source. This time we’ll make a brush using this image of a nice leaf.

Step 1

Open your image in Photoshop, and double-click on the "Background" Layer in the layers palette to make it editable. Then Go to the Channels panel (go to Window > Channel) and duplicate any of them (you can duplicate a channel by dragging the layer over the Create New Channel button at the bottom). I’m choosing the Green this time, then hide the other channels for awhile.

Then, With the "Green copy" channel selected hit Command + I to invert the colors, Then adjust the levels a little bit to make the leaf whiter. Finally, hit Command (Ctrl) + A to select the entire image, hit command (Ctrl) + C to copy the "Green copy" channel to the clipboard and then delete it. Remember to turn on the visibility of the RGB channel before moving forward.

Step 2

Go back to the Layers Panel, select the only layer and go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All. Switch to the Channels panel again and select the Layer Mask channel added at the bottom. There hit Command (Ctrl) + V to paste the clipboard, and that’s it. Now go back to the Layers panel to see how it looks.

Step 3

Now add some adjustments to the leaf, go to Window > Adjustments to show the Adjustments panel. First add a Black and White > High Contrast Red Filter, and then a Levels adjustment using the values shown in the image below. Finally, select the three layers, and merge them by pressing Command (Ctrl) + E.

Then using the Transform Controls, resize and rotate the leaf as you wish, the only restriction is that the image cannot exceed the 2500 by 2500 pixels in size. Finally, Command (Ctrl) + Click on the merged Layer miniature to select the leaf contour, and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset, type some name and voilá a brand new brush tip ready to customize.

Step 4

Once you’ve created the tip shape, you will see it in the Brushes Panel. You can select the brand new brush and paint some spots to see how it actually looks.

Create a Brush Preset

Now we’ll review all the possible variations of a brush preset, from the brush tip to color jitters and pressure controls. The first thing that you should do by creating a Brush preset is select a brush tip from the library or, as in this case, start working with a custom brush tip. The Lock icon next to a brush attribute retains the setting even when you change your tip or preset.

Brush Tip Shape

The first thing that you can customize is the brush tip.

1. The Diameter value is a pixel measured size of the Brush Tip, cannot be bigger than the tip image.
2. The Flip Axis checkboxes flip the tip on its respective axis, X or Y (Horizontally or Vertically) or even both.
3. The Angle value rotates the brush by the desired degrees.
4. Roundness defines the elliptical roundness of the brush tip where 100% is a perfect circle.
5. The Spacing is the percentage of space between images when you draw a stroke on the canvas, using a mouse or a pen tablet. The larger the percentage, the bigger space between color spots.
6. Finally, you can edit the Hardness value of the tip. Anyway custom Brushes created from an image cannot modify its Hardness value, but it will work with the default round tip for instance.

Shape Dynamics

Shape dynamics enables several options to handle randomness of Size, Angle, Roundness and Flip Axis values. The larger the percentage, the more random the result. Every Jitter can be controlled using a proper hardware device like a Graphic Tablet.

Control

Many brush behaviors like Jittering and Scattering can be controlled by setting one of the options of the Control drop down. There are five Control options that you can use:

1. Off means no control will be applied.
2. Fade Control fades the brush stroke from the initial diameter to the minimum value in a custom number of Steps (i.e. 25 steps in the image below).
3. Pen Pressure Varies the brush diameter by using the pen pressure values provided by the external device (a graphic tablet). Pen Tilt and Stylus Wheel works the same way but using the hardware’s tilt and stylus wheel values.

Scattering

Scattering (1) determines the amount and placement of brush marks in a stroke. The higher the scattering percentage the more distribution of marks. The Both Axes checkbox enables the scattering in both X and Y axis, deselecting this option means the scattering will be perpendicular to the stroke direction.

The Count slider (2) specifies the number of brush marks, a large number means many marks. Count Jitter (3) adds some Randomness to the amount of marks on a stroke. Remember you can apply the Control options for Scatter and Count Jitter as well as in Shape Dynamics.

Color Dynamics

This option controls how the color of paint changes across a stroke. The way it works is pretty simple, it just adds some random color marks in a range between both Background and Foreground colors.

1. The Jitter Percentage defines the randomness between the colors. There you can define a Control for the Jitter, Pen pressure, Fade, Pen Tilt or Stylus Wheel.
2. The Hue Jitter controls the difference between the Front Color Hue and the Foreground Color Hue, the larger the percentage the bigger the difference.
3. Saturation Jitter defines a percentage by which the Saturation of a stroke varies between Foreground and Background colors, a larger percentage means a lot of variation of the Saturation.
4. Brightness Jitter is pretty much the same as the previous, but this works over the Brightness value. A higher percentage means a darker color increases the difference between front and back colors.
5. Purity increases or decreases the saturation of the color.

Dual Brush

Let’s change the brush tip for this one. In the following example I’m creating a peculiar brush (1) for an easy explanation of the Dual Brush. This one combines two tips to create a mixed mark. The second brush texture is applied within the brush stroke of the primary brush, only the areas where both strokes intersect are painted. You can choose a blending mode to combine the primary tip with the second, and all the common brush tips variation shown before.

Texture

Textured brushes use a pattern to make strokes look as if they are painted on a textured surface. To paint with a texture, grab one of the textures from the pop-up panel and set a percentage for the pattern Scale. You can Invert the pattern colors as well. Let’s review some variations of the ways to use a texture brush.

If the Texture Each Tip checkbox (1) is selected, then each time you paint a mark a new instance of the texture will be applied (consider a brush stroke as many marks). If this is unchecked the texture will remain flowing through the stroke as a whole.

The Blending Mode option (3) blends the texture with the brush tip color and Depth (4) will increase or decrease the texture’s contrast creating a depth sensation.

At last some textures enable the Depth Jitter with a variation between Depth and Minimum Depth percentages using a Control (rarely used, but you can experiment with it).

Other Dynamics

There are two options here. Opacity Jitter adds randomness to each mark’s Opacity, and Flow Jitter will vary the Flow of the stroke. You can add a Control for any of them (Pen Pressure, Fade, Pen Tilt or Stylus Wheel).

More Dynamics

There are five more dynamics on the list:

1. Noise will add some noise at the borders of the brush mark.
2. Wet Edges creates an illusion of watercolor painting, where the borders of the stroke seem darker than the center.
3. Airbrush simulates traditional airbrushing, so a long time pressing the click button means a bigger mark. The Airbrush option corresponds to the Airbrush option in the options bar.
4. Smoothing, pretty useful wen you’re painting in a rush, as it produces smoother curves in brush strokes. Great when you’re drawing with a mouse.
5. Finally, Protect Texture applies the same pattern and scale to all brush presets that have a texture no matter if they have different settings.

Create a New Preset Brush

Before or after modifying the brush options, you can easily save it by going to the Panel Menu and selecting New Brush Preset or clicking over the New Brush Button at the bottom of the Panel. Type a name for it and that’s it!

This Brand new brush will appear now in the Brushes Panel, but if you reset the brushes library (you’ll see this next) or if there’s a problem with the default Photoshop’s Preferences file, your brush will be lost.

Save and Load Brushes Libraries

1. In order to keep your very own custom brushes you can save as many brush libraries as you want. Click Save Brushes in the Brushes panel to save the actual set of brushes as an ABR file (you can delete the unnecessary brushes before saving the library by clicking on the Delete icon in the panel).
2. To Load a previously saved brush library, click on Load Brushes in the Brushes Panel menu, or double-click on the ABR file itself in your file system. Either way will append the library at the bottom of the brushes list active in Photoshop.

Besides you can click on Reset Brushes to load the default brushes list, or Replace Brushes to override the active list of brushes with a new one.

Conclusion

Even though the Brush Tool is one of the more basics features of any version of Photoshop, there is always room to experiment. Try to discover something new and exciting. I hope this guide will be useful for you!

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Introduction

Learn how to harness Photoshops automated processing power. Want access to the full PSD files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Psd Plus for just $9/month. You can view the final image preview below.

Tutorial Details

• Program: Photoshop CS4
• Difficulty: Beginner
• Estimated Completion Time: 20 minutes

Step 1

OK, fire up Photoshop (get a coffee if your computer is slow as) and open up any old picture file (Command + O) that you have or one you just shot on a camera. I chose this one right here: Tree.

Step 2

As you may have guessed, the levels in this photo are average at best. What we need to do is to fix this with one click. First, create a new adjustment layer for levels (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels). If you are using CS4 then you will have the adjustment parameters in a box above the layers, if not, double-click on the levels icon in the adjustment layer to bring up the properties box.

Step 3

Now we know that we move the sliders to clip to the end of the blacks and the end of the whites. If we want to batch process these though, this would not really be a solution. Click on the Options box under Auto box to bring up the Auto Color Corrections Options. In CS4 for an adjustment layer, they are found if you click on the tiny options box, as shown below.

Step 4

Now that the box is open, we want to change two settings. Change the Algorithm to Enhance Monochromatic Contrast and change the clipping levels to 0%. This changes the contrast but not the color balance unlike the standard settings that bring the Black and White level points to the end the range. We don’t want to change the color in the levels.

Note: Try both ways and see the difference, we to leave that as a separate step so we have complete control over what we do. Also check the save as defaults button.

Step 5

Right, now that’s the default, every time you hit Auto, the Levels will be fixed and you don’t have to worry about losing data and as it’s on an adjustment layer, its completely reversible (You: 1, Photoshop: 0).

Step 6

This next step is much cooler than level adjustments, as most cameras now are good at taking pictures and get the levels fairly good. Contrast can add amazing definition to your photos in a second. Most people including myself use the standard S curve. That’s fine, but it also affects the colors of the picture which we don’t want.

Keep working on a picture of a tree…or open up this Leopard image – smile because there is probably someone still working on that tree. Select the Background Layer. Go to the Channels and Command-click on the layer RGB. You should now have a selection on your image.

Step 7

Go back to the layers tab. Make a new adjustment layer for the curves (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves). Rename the layer Highlights. You should now have a curves adjustment layer with a mask on it. This mask makes it so that we only adjust the highlights and leave the shadows as they are.

Step 8

OK, this is where the changes start to happen. Go to your curves adjustment box and go to Curves Display Options. Where it says Show Amount Of, change it to Pigment/ink%. Stay with me here you and will see why in a minute (yes I know that’s for print work). CS4 users you will have to click on that little box and scroll down to Curves display options.

Step 9

Click in the middle of the curve. Its not critical to get this dead accurate but I personally prefer it because of what we are about to do. Oh and I changed it to Pigment as if you notice the boxes Output and Input now read 50, 50. You can leave the display on Light and it will read 128, 128.

Now click inside the Output box. Now press the Down Arrow key. The number should go to 49. Keep pressing down until you get to 45. I usually move in increments of 5. If you hold Shift + Down Arrow key, then you move in increments of 10. Or you can type 45 which is easy.

If you look at your photo now, you have successfully increased the highlights and left the shadows alone thanks to the mask. Note: The leopard photo may need numbers like 40—35 to notice a worthwhile difference.

Naturally you have probably grabbed the point and yanked it all the way down to 0 (if light 256), which is good as you can see how this effects the photo. I usually move in increments of 5 for reasons you will see later. Its also easier to work out of a range of 100 than 256 as for simpler math. Hence I use Ink% display. You can work in light though, just remember to increase the number to 150 or so. This is how I work, if you like to just rip the curve around and don’t care about numbers that is fine.

Step 10

Now we will modify the Shadows. First, Duplicate the layer Highlights, Command + J. Rename this layer to “Shadows.” Click on the layer mask to select it and then press Command + I to invert it or go to Image > Adjustments > Invert. Now click on the curves point at 45 and move it to 55. Now we are affecting the shadows only.

Rule of thumb is to go with what looks good by eye. I find that if I adjust the highlights by 10, the shadows need to be adjusted by 5. Depends on your camera, and it depends on your photo conditions. Tr what works for you or move the curve until it looks good.

Depending on your picture, sometimes you may want to tighten the masks on the Curve Adjustment layers up. Click on a mask and open the levels (Command + L). Now click on options. I use about 5% so the mask is better. It doesn’t matter if you lose a bit of detail here, as its only as mask. If you want to automate all this, keep reading.

Step 11

If you want, group the two (three if you did a levels layer) layers together by selection them all (Command click each one) then Command + G. And be sure to name the group.

So far this process demonstrated takes way too long. You may be thinking: “how can I batch process this?”

Step 12

Now we get into the realm of Action scripts. These are great for saving time by automating simple tasks, or if you invent a cool process that you may want to reuse.

Open the Actions window, Window > Actions, or Alt + F9. You should get a box like that shown below.

This is where we are going to make an Action Script so that when we press a button, all that work in steps 8—12 are done instantly.

Click the Create New Set button and name it. Then select that folder and click the Create New Action Script button. Name it “5% Highlights.”

Now Press Record. Here is the fun part. Go and do Step 9 again and set the Curve output at 45. If you want to clip the mask, Press Command + L on the mask and go to Options. Where it says Clipping change that to 5 in Black and 5 in White. These numbers I find work, but experiment. Don’t check save as a default though! Photoshop will record what you do and save it as a sort of list. When you’re finished, press Stop.

You should now see a list of actions. If you want to see if your script works, delete the layers on your image and press the Play button (next to record) with the background selected. You should now have an adjustment layer with 5% boost on the highlights.

Make a New Action Script. Name it “10% Highlight.” Repeat Step 12, but instead make the Curves Output 40. Remember to clip the mask if you want to be consistent with your looks. Go thought this process, each time starting from scratch and increasing the Output amount until you get to something like 40% Highlights. I’d say it would be rare to go above that, but its up to you.

Do the same with the shadows and remember to invert the mask and clip it as you did for the highlights. Make an Action Script for Auto Levels as well.

Soon you should have a folder that is full of scripts that add adjustment layers to adjust the contrast by a certain amount, and fix the levels. If you accidently made a mistake in one step in your script, then go to the action you messed up and click on the trash can icon (located next to the Create New Action Script button). You can press Play and Record from any point in the script.

Now you never have to do that again and can just press Play or click on a button to add contrast and fix the levels. If you want to see the difference in your image, hide the layer group and turn it back on again. Also, make a new Curves Adjustment Layer, then make the standard “S Curve.” Turn the layer on and off to see how the two methods compare.

Step 13

Now is the batch process part. Make an action script that includes the Auto Levels adjustment, Highlights at 10% ,and Shadows at 5% all in one script. You can change these to whatever you’re happy with or you can make multiple scripts for different situations.

While you are building your Batch Processing Action Script, keep recording once you’ve finished and save it as either a PSD or a JPEG or whatever you want to save your processed files as. With PSD, changes are easy and non-destructive, it just takes more space on your hard drive. Finally, Save you actions where you choose.

To make a droplet simply go to File > Automate > Create Droplet. The dialogue below will come up.

Name your droplet, Then choose which folder the action will be found in. Then move down and select the action you want to make a droplet for.

Select a folder you want to save your files in and then select the naming scheme you want. Check the Override Save As box unless you want photoshop to pause on every photo with the Save As dialogue box. Then save it somewhere that you will use it. I chose the desktop.

Drag and drop your file or folder onto the .EXE droplet and then run out of the room as Photoshop should open each file and run the action script on it and then save it to wherever you specified. Test if before batching a large number of images. This makes your computer look smart doing work without anyone touching it.

Conclusion

Great, that’s it. Now you should know a better way to add contrast to photos, as you don’t effect the color and can control the highlights without affecting the shadows and visa versa.

The Auto button is now useful on levels and you can make an action script that can batch process files. Bare in mind that this method is not designed to create the final look of a high quality photo, but it’s a start. While the method demonstrated in this tutorial takes time to set up, once it’s Action Scripted it becomes really fast to use.

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Introduction

Adobe Bridge CS4 is a very powerful media manager letting you browse, organize, locate, relocate or view different images or files from different Creative Suite products like Photoshop, Illustrator and any other application. Besides wonderful preview options, you can additionally alter images or files directly inside of Bridge or switch between your Creative Suite applications using Bridge as a “bridge.”

At first, I wasn’t sure why I should use Bridge and how it should speed up my workflow, but after experimenting with it, I realized what Bridge is capable of. Is there a difference to the Finder or the Explorer? Yes! There’s a huge difference and this tutorial covers all the features and will help make you an efficient Bridge user in future!

First Glance

When starting Bridge for the first time, Bridge asks you, if you want it to start at login so it is instantly available when needed. You can skip this option and come back to the preferences to change it later if you want.

If this isn’t the first time you’ve started Bridge, but nevertheless want to check your settings, go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced to turn on or turn off the Start Bridge at Login option. I recommend starting Bridge at login, since it doesn’t require that much speed and works fine in the background. You can then open it much faster and use it instantly.

Preferences

Similar to other Adobe Products, there is a wide range of options you can enable or disable in the Preferences panel inside of Bridge. I would like to shortly mention some of the settings which I changed. Go to Edit > Preferences or use the keyboard shortcut Command + K.

General

The first place to start is the General section including the Appearance, Behavior and Favorite Items settings. Most of the Adobe products let you alter your interface colors. In Bridge, we can change the User Interface Brightness and the Image Backdrop, sliding from white to black or vice versa. I prefer working with a darker interface, since it emphasizes the actual images and relaxes the eyes, but that’s up to you. You can additionally choose between different accent styles which you can see below.

Cache

The next step is the Cache section where you can increase the display performance by changing your Cache size and how Bridge handles your Cache. Keep in mind, the higher the values, the more hard disk space and performance you’ll need to display your thumbnails and image previews. Again, experiment with the settings to find what fits your system best. You should definitely compact and purge your Cache once in a while for better performance.

Advanced

Another important section which you already know is the Advanced section, where you can change the preview settings like rendering or size. I enabled Bridge to start at login and activated Software Rendering and Monitor-size Previews.

Well that’s it for now, we may or may not come back to change some options in the Preferences panel throughout this tutorial, but the best thing to do is spend some time with the preferences to make sure you utilize the full potential of your application.

User Interface, Options and Workspaces

Now, we are ready to jump into Bridge to get to know the interface, different options, task based options and much more. We’ll skip the standard application menus for now and start with the options in the upper area inside of Bridge.

Go Back and Go Forward

Bridge works just like the Finder on your Mac or the Windows Explorer on your PC. These two buttons will go back or go forward one step in your file structure. You can see your file structure in the Folder panel which we’ll talk about shortly.

Go to the Parents or Favorites

This little triangle, which points down, opens up a drop-down menu where you can instantly jump to the parent folder, where the currently displayed images, files or folders are located in or jump to your favorites from the Favorites panel.

Reveal Recent File or Go to Recent Folder

This little icon opens up a drop-down menu where you can select recently viewed files from all your applications or recently viewed folders from your system.

You can either clear both lists by simply choosing the appropriate option in the drop-down list or change the number of the recently viewed files or folders in the list by going to Preferences > General > Number of recent items to display. There’s a little difference between displaying the recently viewed files and opening the recently viewed files. I’ll show you the icon which opens up the files and folders shortly.

Get Photos from Camera

If this is the first time you are using the Photo Downloader, Bridge will ask you, if you want to download your images as soon as Bridge detects a connected device like a camera or a scanner. I recommend choosing yes. Again, you can change this at a later time. This feature is very useful and speeds up the work for Photographers or Designers who work a lot with cameras, scanners and other similar devices.

By clicking on the icon, the Bridge Photo Downloader will open, providing a few settings which you can change prior to downloading your images to your system. For example, you can choose your different devices, set the location where you want the images or files to be saved, rename them while importing them or converting them to other formats.

What I like about the Photo Downloader is the nice preview of the images, which can be enabled by clicking on the Advanced Dialog. By doing that, you’ll be able to additionally assign metadata from templates or by entering metadata manually.

Refine Options

This drop-down menu reveals the task based options in Bridge, which we’ll talk about shortly and skip for now. The options are: Review Mode, Batch rename and File info.

Open in Camera RAW

This little icon will open up your images in Camera RAW where you can edit the image directly inside Bridge. By clicking on Done, Camera RAW will return the altered image to Bridge. The nice thing about the new Camera RAW option is that you don’t have to change any settings in the preferences prior to opening your files. Whether it is a .dng, .tiff or .jpeg file type, you’ll be able to open them up simply by clicking on this icon or using the proper keyboard shortcut.

Output to Web or PDF

I really like this built-in Output module, where you can simply create PDF files or nice Flash galleries similar to the ones from Lightroom. You can choose from different formats, colors, layouts and much more. We’ll talk about the Output section later in this tutorial where you’ll learn how to export your favorite images, collections or selected files to PDF or the Web.

Workspaces

Similar to other applications from Adobe, Bridge CS4 is made up of multiple panels and toolbars each composing a specific Workspace. Workspaces vary depending on the tasks they were built for. Staying at the top, but moving to the right, you’ll soon discover the Workspace section where you can choose from different workspaces, each prepared for a specific task.

Depending on your screen size, there could be space to display all of them, by simply dragging the double-dotted line to the left, but if your space is limited, you can either click on the little triangle on the right to choose another workspace from the drop-down menu or right-click on the name of a workspace to replace it with another one. Depending on your task in Bridge, you’ll often change the workspace for better control.

In case you don’t like the default workspaces and want to arrange the workspace to your needs, you can do that by dragging and sliding the edges of the panels to create more space. After you’re done, simply save your own workspace by clicking on the little triangle choosing New Workspace, giving it a name and saving it. It will then appear in the workspace list.

Search

To the right of the Workspace list, you can find the Search bar. The search functionality is improved and offers a variety of options besides working much faster and more efficient. You can now search your current folders and subfolders in Bridge or use Spotlight or Windows to help find your files on your system. Applying Keywords, Ratings and other Metadata will help you find and filter your files much faster. We’ll talk about that shortly.

Another very nice feature is the functionality to add other search criteria besides the name or keyword. By clicking on the New Search button, the Find window will pop up. You can now add other search criteria, change the folder and matching of the results.

Compact Mode

I really like this feature and it speeds up my work. By clicking on this icon, Bridge will change its size to compact mode which is big enough for good view, but small enough to reveal most of your screen and other applications running in the background.

You can then simply drag and drop any image from Bridge to the appropriate application you like. Although you can open up files by double-clicking, right-clicking or opening them through the Tool menu at the top of bridge, I prefer dragging and dropping the images or files since it is more comfortable and faster to me.

Breadcrumb List

As you can see, Bridge provides a nice breadcrumb list, where you can simply switch back one or more folders just by clicking on the name. By clicking on the triangles pointing to the next folder, you’ll be able to view subfolders in the same folder or files from the subfolders. This listing speeds up the navigation and gives you a nice file hierarchy to look at.

Browse Quality

When working with a lot of images, you wouldn’t necessarily want high quality images for thumbnail preview, since it would slow down your system. What you can do in Bridge, is choose to browse quickly by preferring embedded images, which you can activate by clicking on the first icon beneath the workspace list.

In case you want to preview your images in high quality for a more accurate preview, you can simply click on the little triangle next to the second icon which is the icon for the thumbnail and preview generation options. You’ll now be able to change your preview quality from fast preview to high quality preview.

Filter by Rating

This little icon, displaying a star, helps you filter your images by their rating. This isn’t the only way you can filter your files. You can additionally use the Filter panel which provides a lot more options you can use to filter your files and folders. We’ll take a look at the Filter panel shortly.

Sort

Right next to the Filter by Rating option you’ll find a drop-down menu where you can sort your files by different criteria like filename, type, date and more. The bigger triangular arrow represents the sort order. You can choose between ascending and descending order.

Rotate

You can rotate your images directly inside of Bridge without using Photoshop or any other application. Just click on the direction you want your image to rotate and Bridge will cover the rest. You can choose between clockwise and counterclockwise rotation.

Open Recent Files

This is the other option, referring to recent files, I mentioned earlier. This icon will open up your recently viewed files and folders in the proper application, while the reveal option displayed the recently viewed files and folders inside of Bridge. You can clear this list too.

Create and Delete Files or Folders

These two icons should be familiar to you and their function is very simple. The left one creates a new folder where you can store your images or any other files, while the right one deletes all selected files and folders.

Panels

At this point we covered all the features at the top of the Bridge interface and now it’s time to take a look at the different panels and how they work. As you already know, you can arrange your panels the way you want by dragging the different panel edges. By double-clicking on the Panel name, the Panel will collapse to open up more room for other panels and previews.

Favorites

The Favorites Panel is visible by default, but you can close it or at least that’s what I did, because you can simply use the Go To Parent Or Favorites drop-down menu at the upper-left corner right next to the Go Back and Go Forward icons to select a Favorite. The cool thing in Bridge is, you can simply add a folder to your favorites by dragging and dropping to access it much faster at a later time without having to search for it in your file structure.

Folders

The Folders Panel is a nice extension to the breadcrumb list and helps you see where you are at and what other folders you can access from there. I’m using both, because sometimes it’s faster to work with the Folders panel.

Content and Preview

These two panels are the most important panels you’ll use inside of Bridge. The Content panel displays all the images, files and folders inside of the current directory. By selecting one of the images, Bridge will instantly display a more accurate preview on the right side of your screen where the preview panel is located by default.

There are multiple ways of working inside the Preview Panel like using the loupe or zooming in or out using the proper Keyboard shortcuts. Additionally you can review the rating, any assigned labels and the file name. When selecting multiple images, you’ll be able to view multiple images in the preview panel and using multiple loupes for each of them.

Filter

Bridge offers you a wide range of options to filter your images and files by enabling different options. For example, choosing only images based on their orientation, aspect ratio, specific rating, exposure time, ISO setting and much more. If your space is limited, take a look at the fly-out menu to see what else you can choose from.

Collections

The collection Panel is a very nice feature and similar to setting your favorites. By selecting multiple images you can create a collection which will later contain the images. There are two types of collections. On the one side there’s the User defined collection which is marked red and the smart collections on the other side marked blue. The difference between them is the way they work after you alter or delete your images.

Both collections are created on a virtual basis which means no files are getting copied, deleted or moved physically from your hard disk drive. While User defined collections are based on the selection of the user, smart collections are based on search criteria. You can always review the current number of files in the folder or collection at the bottom left corner.

For example, if you only want to create a collection containing the images with a rating of two stars or more, you’ll approach this similar to searching your files. By clicking on the Create Smart Collection icon and entering your criteria, Bridge will create the smart collection, ask you for the name and save it in the collection panel. That’s it!

Now the cool thing about this is what happens now. When we go back to our Los Angeles folder and change the rating of one of the images which is not rated yet, Bridge will automatically add it to the smart collection, in case the criteria is met. This is the reason why it is a called smart collection.

Additionally you can change the folder where Bridge is searching for the images or tell Bridge to consider subfolders too. Just click on the Edit Smart Collection icon on the top right corner of the Content Panel to change or add other criteria. Rerun the search to update your collection.

To create a User based collection, simply create a collection and drag and drop your images to it or select the images first and then click on the Create a User defined collection icon.

Stacking and Batch Processing

This is another very important feature in Bridge which saves a lot of time and hard work. It’s the possibility to stack images which are similar to each other. To do that, simply select a few images which you want to stack, go to the Stacks menu and click on Group as Stack. You can also use the keyboard shortcut.

But the nice thing is that Bridge can take over. It automatically detects and later stacks Panorama and HDR images. Go to Stacks and select Auto-Stack Panorama/HDR. Bridge will then search, stack and return perfect image stacks based on these image types.

After that, you can select an image stack, go to the Tools menu and open it in Photoshop to batch process it, merge it or let Photoshop create a nice Panorama by processing it. Photoshop will automatically start, do the work and return the final image or images. You can also send the files to other Creative Suite applications like Illustrator.

Metadata

So far, we’ve learned how to filter our images using the Filter Panel and filter options from the tools at the top, but there’s another way of filtering images and files: it’s using Metadata. There are two types of Metadata: descriptive Metadata and additive Metadata.

Descriptive Metadata is the one which you can see in the Metadata panel beneath the Preview panel on the right side. It contains information which describes the image, like the type of camera used, date created, size, color mode, ISO setting, exposure time and much more. Additionally you can insert extra information directly by clicking on the Info name, instead of using the File Info option which is the way to add additive Metadata.

The additive Metadata can be found, changed or added through the Refine icon by selecting the image, then clicking on the Refine icon and choosing File Info. The File Info Window will open up revealing a lot of input boxes where you can type in all kind of information you want the image to carry around with it.

You can use the arrows at the top and the drop-down menu to reveal further panels. From this window, you can additionally create different metadata templates; export them to other applications or just save them to use them again at a later time or while downloading your images using the Photo Downloader.

Another very nice feature which surprised me, is the Metadata workspace which you can choose from the workspace list at the top. Inside of the Metadata workspace, you can concentrate on working with Metadata and gather a lot of information about your images or files.

The cool thing is, you can slide to the left and right, but the image itself will stay at its position. Thanks to this, you don’t have to move back and forth to make sure you are reading the right information.

Keywords

Assigning Keywords to your images will help you find them faster. There are several default Keywords which you can choose from, but you can create your own Keywords by clicking on the fly-out menu and choosing New Keyword.

There are two types of Keywords in Bridge: Keywords and Sub-Keywords. I personally assign Keywords rarely, since I’m not using the search form that much, but it is easy to use. After creating your Keywords or Sub-Keywords, you must select them from the list.

Preview Options

Now with the Interface, Tools, Panels and Workspaces covered, let’s take a look at the task based options and the preview possibilities.

Basic Full Screen Preview

The easiest way of previewing your images at a larger size is by selecting one or multiple images and hitting the spacebar. Selecting one or multiple images and clicking the Spacebar opens up a Full Screen Preview of the images. By using the left and right arrow keys, you will be able to navigate to each image’s full screen preview. Additional features like zooming in or out or moving around the current image at any time help you pre-select your images before moving into Photoshop.

Review Mode – Carousel View

The nice Carousel-style preview is accessible by selecting multiple images and hitting Command + B or going to the Refine icon and choosing the Review Mode. Again, use the left and right arrow keys to move the focus to the next or previous image. The best part is the ability to remove an image with a simple tap on the down arrow key. Note, the image won’t be deleted, it’s just removed from the slideshow.

This type of preview allows you to use the loupe and the zoom options. By hitting Command + R you’ll be able to instantly access the Camera RAW, whether it’s a TIFF, JPEG or any other format. Camera RAW will then return the altered image back to the preview. Other than the basic full screen preview, this review mode requires a bit more power from your computer and GPU.

If you are more comfortable using the mouse or tablet just tab on the little icons at the bottom of the preview to achieve the same effects.

Staying inside of this Preview, I would like to introduce another tip which will save you a lot of time while pre-selecting. It’s the possibility to rate and label your images using your keyboard. Depending on your settings, you only need to hit the keys from 0 through 5 for rating your images and 6 through 9 for the labeling.

If that doesn’t work, add the Command key while rating or labeling. Go to Preferences, choose Labels and you’ll see which label color indicates which meaning and where to enable or disable the additional Command key.

By clicking on an image in the background, Bridge will automatically bring it to the front which is very nice and saves the carousel spinning and time. A second click on the image will bring up the Loupe Tool.

Slideshow

Last but not least, I would like to show you the Slideshow inside of Bridge. The Slideshow is similar to the full screen preview, except the images switch automatically. If the standard settings are to slow or not what you are looking for, just tab the H key or go to View and select the Slideshow Options for more control. Hit Escape to quit the Slideshow.

Thumbnails

Before coming to our last point, let’s look at the Bridge Output options. I would like to mention some of the best enhancements in Bridge CS4. Looking at the bottom right inside of Bridge, you’ll see additional options which are responsible for thumbnail preview and how the Content panel displays the files and folders.

First, there’s the good old Slider which allows a smooth and fast magnification of our thumbnails. You can either click on the small and big icons on each side or move the Slider dragging the triangle.

By increasing the thumbnails, you not only have a better preview of your images, but unfortunately some of the images get cut off at the bottom. There was no solution for that in previous versions, but now the only thing you need to do, is click on the Click to lock thumbnail grid icon next to the Thumbnail Slider. Isn’t that cool?

At last, take a look at the View Content area which is also located at the bottom-right corner. These three options let you choose how the Content panel should display your files and folders. You can choose from thumbnail view, detailed view and list view.

Each one displays your files in a different way. While the detailed and list view add additional information and metadata, the thumbnail preview is the simplest and fastest. At this point, I want to remind you of the nice feature which locks the file in place and allows better scrolling through the additional list information.

Output Module

This is one of the best features and makes the end of this tutorial perfect. In this section, you’ll learn how to create your own PDF files or Web Flash galleries for your clients or co-workers. Select your images and click on the Output icon.

PDF

To create a PDF file from your image selection, simply choose PDF from the Output panel and start applying your specific changes to the document format, layout or any other available option which you can see below. Preview your PDF in the Preview panel and Save it, that’s it!

But there’s something I don’t like about this Output panel, it is the fact that it doesn’t refresh automatically as you might have noticed. Remember to click on the Refresh Preview button each time you change your settings.

Flash Gallery

To create a Web gallery, the only thing you need to do is choose Web Gallery from the Output panel. After that, you only need to apply your specific settings and give it a design you like. Bridge will then create the Flash gallery and even code a nice HTML Browser ready file for you.

But one of the coolest features is the possibility to upload your final product directly to your server by giving Bridge your FTP connection information. Most of these Settings are self explanatory, so the best thing to do is going through them thoroughly by yourself.

Conclusion

Well that’s it for now and I hope this tutorial was useful for you and informative. Feel free to leave a comment. I’ll try to answer your questions, should there be any. Thanks.

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Final Image Preview

Take a look at the line work we’ll be creating. Want access to the full PSD files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Psd Plus for just $9/month.

Step 1

We’ll start by desaturating the rough drawing. Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. The reason to desaturate the image, is so that no colors interfere with the following steps.

Step 2

Play around with the levels until the image has little to no midtones. Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels. Leave the outline fully intact.

Step 3

Next we’ll be selecting the outline. Make sure that the foreground color is the darkest color in the outline. Go to Select > Color Range to select the outline. Adjust the settings to match the image below. This will affect everything that is the foreground color. Make sure to hide all the layers except the layer the outline is on.

Step 4

We will now take the selection and make it it’s own layer, press (Command + J.) At this point, it’s good to delete the layer that has the original line drawing on it, and replace it with a white background.

Step 5

Now double-click the “Outline” Layer and go to Color Overlay. Adjust the settings to match the image below, you may choose whichever color you like though.

At this point, you’re ready to color in your outline in whichever way you prefer to. However, if you choose to read on I will show you
how to do an effect that makes your outline look like a vector outline.

Step 6

The first step in making the outline look more smooth and vector like, is to select the outline layer. To do this Command-click on the layer thumbnail beside the layer’s name. The hand curser will have a dotted box on top of it.

Step 7

Choose the Paths tab located beside the Layers tab. Click on the icon to the left of the New Layer icon. If you hold your curser over the icon, it should read Make work path from selection. After creating a path go back to the layers tab and make a new layer.

Final Line work

Click on the Pen Tool, then Right-click anywhere on the canvas. Choose Fill Path. Adjust the Settings to match the image below. Click OK, then Right-click anywhere on the canvas and choose Delete Path.

Things To Know

We’ll delete the previous outline layer to show the end result. You can see we cleaned up the drawing, and are left with black line work on a white background to color in, we’ve also preserved the sketchy feel of the line quality.

The image you are using to do this effect with should be drawn, painted, inked, etc… on a contrasted background to what you are using to draw with.

Clean lines equals a more clean, smooth end result. If the image is too small the vector effect will simplify lines to the point where you will lose detail. If the image is too large the vector effect will not smooth out imperfections.

Now Color Away!

You are free to color the outline as you please A tablet was used to create the color image below. You could also consider taking the results of this line work into Illustrator and Live Tracing. The techniques shown here are a great way to add some varied line to your vector work as well. These quick tips are open for experimentation. So, have fun with it!

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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.

Introduction

As we started to work on the image we quickly realized that accordions just don’t do what we wanted and so we had to shoot it piece by piece and then warp, morph and tweak each piece into position to create the illusion. This was challenging enough, but after we had accomplished this the client then said “Oh, did we tell you it has to be red? And there needs to be a diamond pattern on the side?” Oh Boy!

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. Then we’ll go step by step through adding the diamond pattern to the side of the top wrap. By the end you should have a pretty good understanding of how the Warp Tool works and will be a Warping Master as well.

Final Image Preview

Take a look at the image we’ll be creating. Want access to the full PSD files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Psd Plus for just $9/month. You can view the final image preview below.

Step 1

To begin open the file “Tree-Accordion_Part1.psd located in the “source” files for Psd Plus members. As you can see, this image has a few layers in place already, such as the background, palm tree and the five accordion rings with the top section needing to have the diamond pattern added.

The Layer Groups used here help to keep all the layers organized and easy to find. Some very complex composite images can have over a hundred layers so it’s important to keep them organized. A side benefit to using the Layer Groups is that if we use the Normal Blending Mode, then any Adjustment Layers we create within that Layer Group will only affect the Layers inside the Layer Group, something we’ll use as a last step to adjust the lighting of the tree and accordion so it fits better into the background.

Step 2

Open the file “Diamond_Pattern.psd,” located in the “source” files for Psd Plus members. Copy the Layer named “Diamond Pattern” to the first file we opened.

Step 3

Position this Layer at the top of the Layers in the Layers Palette. Then make another copy of the Layer by clicking on it’s Thumbnail in the Layers Palette and dragging it down to the icon at the bottom of the Palette that looks like a page with its corner folded over, as shown below. This will make a copy of the Layer that will be named “DiamondPattern copy.”

Step 4

Now drag this Layer in the Layers Palette to the position that is just above the Layer named “End Accordion.” We’re just about ready to start warping the pattern on the accordion section at the top of the tree. To make sure you have the right layer chosen click the Eyeball icon on and off for the “End Accordion” Layer. You should see the accordion piece at the top of the tree and can turn it on and off.

Use the Move Tool to roughly position the Layer named “Diamond Pattern copy” over the accordion piece at the top of the tree.

Since we shouldn’t need all eight diamonds for the side of this section let’s simplify things a bit by deleting four of the diamonds from the copy of the Layer we just made. Do this by choosing the Marquee Tool (M), then click-drag over the first four diamonds, and hit the Delete key to get rid of the extras.

Step 5

Now the fun begins. Make sure you have the “Diamond Pattern copy” Layer chosen in the Layers Palette, then bring up the Warp Tool by going to Photoshop’s menu and choosing Edit > Transform > Warp. That should give you something that looks like the image below.

The grid of lines and dots you see imposed over the diamond pattern are the control lines and handles for this tool. These lines and handles are what we’ll be using to manipulate the diamonds into place on the accordion. At each corner there is a control point as well as a control handle that is somewhat similar to the control handles used by the Path Tool.

Then each of the other lines and points represent the places where we can grab the image to push or pull it into place. Pretty easy, eh?

Before we jump in though, there are a few things to keep in mind. The grid formed by these lines and points determine how the layer we’re working with will be warped. In many ways, the Warp Tool is all about the lines here. If we want the pattern to look correct, then we’ll have to pay careful attention to how these lines and points are placed.

So in the case of warping our diamond pattern, this means making sure the lines on the ends of the grid stay fairly straight and that the lines on the inside follow the plane of the accordion, while staying fairly straight to each other as well.

Step 6

The first thing we need to do is get the diamonds closer to the right position on the accordion. In this case, it’s really helpful to know that we can easily switch from the Warp Tool to the Free Transform Tool on the fly just by holding down the Control Key (on the Mac) and clicking anywhere in the image. This brings up a submenu that shows the various options for the Transform Tool. Simply choosing Free Transform here allows us to then drag the diamonds roughly into place without worrying about any unwanted warping happening along the way.

Once we’ve dragged the pattern and given it a little rotation so the left edge roughly follows the left edge of the accordion bellows we should have something that looks similar to the image below.

Step 7

Once again Control-click to bring up the submenu and choose Warp. That should give you the result shown below.

By doing this without applying any of the steps yet, we keep the placement of the control grid aligned with our diamond pattern in such a way that makes it easier to work with. Note that the lines follow our pattern and now all we need to do is make the lines follow the surface of the accordion we’re placing this on. If we had applied any of the transform steps before this, the lines would line up straight to the borders of the image, not the layer we’re working with.

Step 8

Starting with the corners for the left side, position each corner’s Control Point along the left edge of the accordion bellows. Pay attention to the Handles that come off each corner. These Handles affect two things: the Bend of the line and the placement of the two lines in between the outer edges. You want to be sure the left edge is straight, not bent and that the two lines in between the corners are evenly placed.

Step 9

Now go to the right edge of the Diamond Pattern and do the same thing there. Again pay attention to the Handles and the placement of the lines in between. Just dragging the points to the corners of the accordion will give you something like this (you do need to guess a little about just where the far corner of the accordion lies).

Step 10

See how the Handles at the corner of the Diamond Pattern hang out and make the pattern look bent and distorted? Dragging each one so that it points straight at the other corner will straighten that out.

Note that we have not yet worked on the long sides, this part is just about getting the corners placed correctly.

Step 11

Now we’ll work on those long sides. First grab the top line somewhere around the middle and drag it up so it roughly follows the top curve of the accordion’s side, as shown.

Step 12

Repeat this for the top line that runs down the middle pattern and pull it roughly into position on the accordion. Keep in mind that this line should follow along the curve of the top line. Since it controls the placement of the upper-middle part of our pattern, it’s relationship to the top line is very important to keeping our pattern looking correct.

Step 13

Now take the lower-middle line and move that up into place. Again keep in mind its relationship to the other lines controlling the warp. As you adjust this line you may need to also nudge the line we just moved as well, as shown.

Step 14

The next line we’ll move is the line along the bottom. This should follow the bottom line of the accordion’s side. As you do so you’ll need to move the other lines as well to keep everything looking straight. With a bit of tweaking and nudging you should see something like this.

Note: I want to take a moment here to remind you that the secret to getting this work right is all about paying attention to the lines
for the Warp Tool. If all the longer horizontal Control Lines follow the same curve and keep the right relationship to each other, also the shorter vertical Control Lines stay straight and pretty much parallel to each other, then the diamond pattern should look correct.

Step 15

If necessary shift the positioning of the lines and the diamonds to get the diamonds to lie just right on the accordion. Moving the short lines closer to each other will make the diamonds look more squeezed and moving them farther apart will stretch them out more. You want to make it look like the diamonds are the same size keeping in mind the changing perspective of the accordion as it wraps around the tree.

Here is an example of what it looks like when the diamonds are not positioned correctly.

When you’re satisfied with the positioning of the pattern hit Enter to apply the transformation. Since we just finished a complex move with the Transform Tool, it’s probably a good idea to save the file right now. I like to save versions as I go along so I can go back if necessary. To do this use Photoshop’s Save As command and change the name to something like: “Tree-Accordion Part2.”

Step 16

Now that we have the diamonds positioned on the accordion, we’ll need to let some of the accordion show through so it looks like it’s really a part of the accordion and not just sitting on top of it. To do that we’ll add a Layer Mask to the layer we just warped. Next use the Brush Tool to carefully paint black in the Layer Mask where we want the accordion to show through.

Add the Layer Mask by clicking on the Add Layer Mask Button at the bottom of the Layers Palette, as shown below.

Step 17

We want the dark ribs on the side of the accordion to show through so we’ll paint black in the Layer Mask along those areas. One trick that can make it easier to see where you need to apply the black paint is to lower the opacity of the diamond pattern to something like 70%, just enough to let you see through the diamonds.

Since the ribs are straight lines, we can get Photoshop to do most of the work of painting the lines for us. To do this first choose a Brush that’s about 5 pixels wide, this should match the width of the ribs pretty closely. Then with the Brushes Palette open, make sure the button for Other Dynamics is turned off. This turns off the Pressure Sensitivity for the Brush.

Now all we need to do is click on one end of a rib, then while holding down the Shift Key click on the other end of the rib. Photoshop will automatically draw a straight line from the first click to the next one. Be sure to let go of the Shift Key in between ribs and work your way across the side of the accordion. Change the size of the Brush if necessary as you work, just make sure to keep Other Dynamics turned off.

After the ribs are done, you may need to paint out any areas where the diamonds extend past the side of the accordion. When you’re done painting set the Opacity of the layer back to 100% and it should now look like the following image.

Step 18

We’re almost there now. For the accordion this is looking pretty good, but we could add a little sense of lighting to the diamonds to really make it look like it’s in the environment.

To do this, add a Curve Adjustment Layer and then Clip that Layer to the “Diamond Pattern copy” Layer we just worked on. To Clip this Adjustment Layer to the Diamond Pattern, first be sure you have the “Diamond Pattern copy” selected in the Layers Palette, and then go to the Photoshop Menu and choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves. Also, make sure the Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask option is checked.

Step 19

Since the Diamond Pattern is white, we can darken it down a bit by opening the Curves Window, clicking on the White Point in the Curve Window and then pulling it down a little bit as shown.

Step 20

Now choose a large, soft Brush – something around 120 pixels. Set the Foreground Color to Black and make a diagonal stroke in the Layer Mask for the Curves Layer we just made. This will hide the effect of the Curve making the ends of the pattern darker than the middle creating the illusion that it is catching the light in the scene. It should look like the image below.

Step 21

Zooming out to look at the whole image we should now see all the bands of the accordion have the diamond pattern applied.

All that needs to be done now to finish off our image is to selectively darken the tree and the accordion so it looks more like something being backlit by the sunset. To do that we’ll add another Curves Adjustment Layer to the top of the Layer Group named “Accord-Wrapping.”

Again you can do this by going to the Menu in Photoshop and choosing Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves. Since the Blending Mode for the Layer Group was set to Normal, we don’t need to worry about the Adjustment Layer affecting the rest of the image.

With the Curves Dialogue open, grab a spot on the Curve and drag it down as shown.

Step 22

Don’t worry that the whole tree and accordion look too dark. Just like we did with the Adjustment Layer that darkened the pattern we just placed on the accordion, we’ll selectively brush this darkening out to keep it mostly off the accordion. Doing this will also help give the image a little more sense of lighting, which is critical to making everything look just right.

Here is a shot that shows the Layer Mask and the image at the same time so you can see how the Mask I painted looks. The green shows the areas where I painted black in the Layer Mask to hide the effect of the Adjustment Layer. This is a great time to experiment with your own sense of lighting so go ahead and paint away!

Conclusion

When you’re all done you should have something very similar to the final image shown below.

So with this exercise we’ve worked with Photoshop’s Free Transform Tool to rough the diamonds into place, switched to the Warp Tool and used that to twist the diamonds so they fit just right, (remember it’s all about the lines), and then we’ve used a couple of Curves Adjustment Layers to
add a sense of lighting to our elements bringing them all together in the
scene. Looking at the position of the sun, I’d say it’s not a bad day’s work.

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OpenGL/GPU Features

Some of the brand new features benefit from the graphics display card’s GPU, instead of the computer’s main processor which speeds up the screen redraw in Photoshop. Obviously there are some requirements to make sure Photoshop has full access to the GPU. The main technologies which are required are: OpenGL 2.0 and Shader Model 3.0. You should check out your graphic card’s manufacturer website, to make sure your graphic card supports these technologies, before buying Photoshop CS4.

• Nvidia Graphic Drivers
• ATI Graphic Drivers
• DirectX Update
• List of tested Graphic Cards

Photoshop should automatically detect your graphic card and enable the OpenGL features, but you can manually enable or even disable them by opening the Performance section of Photoshop’s Preferences. I recommend taking a look at our article featuring professional tips for improving Photoshop’s performance for further information. Now that the graphic card is up and running perfectly, we can proceed with the interesting part of this tutorial.

Smooth Display at All Zoom Levels

In CS4, Photoshop not only displays smooth images at 100%, 50% or 25%, but also at all other zoom levels. Zooming in or out using the Zoom Tool will result in much smoother zooming than before. Take a look at the zoom level of 82,61%!

Animated Zoom tool

Select the Zoom Tool and click and hold on the image. That way, you’ll be able to continuously zoom in or out smoothly until you release the click. Press Alt to reverse the direction of the zoom.

Animated transitions for One Step Zoom

When you zoom in using Command + Plus key or zoom out using Command + Minus key, the image animates slightly between the zoom levels which gives us a nice smooth effect. It’s a nice subtle distinction to the previews halting zoom. Since both of these features are difficult to demonstrate using still images, select the Zoom Tool and try it yourself.

Pixel Grid

Photoshop CS4 now displays a pixel grid when zooming in to a zoom level of 600% or greater. The nice thing about this is the possibility to work pixel for pixel, which makes it much easier to create icons, small extras or any changes which require precision.

Birds-Eye View

To enter the Birds-eye View, you need to zoom in on an image, then press and hold down the H key and then click and hold your mouse somewhere in the image. A rectangle will be displayed which indicates the current zoom level and location. Reposition the rectangle and release the mouse and H key. Photoshop will then zoom back to the previous zoom level and reposition the view. The ducks are very close to each other, but this example should visualize how it works.

Hand Toss Image

This feature is also known as the flick panning which is cool, but not necessarily useful to improve one’s workflow. This is something you could leave enabled to have fun, but you should disable it when performance is limited.

To use it, select the Hand Tool and flick the image to the sides. The image should slide and slowly come to a stop. You don’t have to wait until it comes to a stop, simply click whenever you want it to stop sliding. Note, this only works if the image doesn’t fit the screen or while zoomed in.

Move Color Matching to the GPU

Color conversion in Photoshop CS4 has become faster because the processing is now done by the GPU rather than by the CPU. It’s not noticeable at first, but it’ll pay off at a later time when working with multiple, huge images.

Draw Brush Tip Editing Feedback Via the GPU

One of the best features is the ability to resize your brush and change the edge hardness of your brush by dragging your cursor. In addition, you’ll get a nice feedback in the form of a red overlay color which displays the new brush while you change the size or hardness.

And this is how you do it for Windows: Alt+Right click and drag to resize the brush, or Use Alt+Shift+Right-click to change the hardness of the brush. And for the Mac: use Control+Alt/Option and drag to resize the brush, or use Control+Alt/Option+Command and drag to change the hardness of the brush.

Rotating the Canvas

In order to rotate the image, click on the Rotate Canvas Tool, which you can find under the Hand Tool in the Tool’s panel, or at the top Menu bar next to the Hand Tool and Zoom Tool.

Click and drag on the image to quickly rotate the canvas. Notice how the rulers change immediately. Note: only the canvas moves, not the image itself.

You can additionally use the spin control in the Tools Option bar or enter a degree manually. I recommend using this feature to align the image to the movement of your hand for better flow. Don’t forget to reset the view.

Clone Stamp Source Preview

This feature helps you work much better with the Clone Stamp Tool, since it previews your selected source area. By looking at the preview inside the brush, you’ll know as soon as you reach an inappropriate areas where you should not clone anymore.

Spring Loaded Tools

This feature makes it much easier to switch between the tools. For example, after making a selection using the Lasso Tool, hit and hold down the B key to select the Brush tool. Color the selection and release the B key to switch back to your Lasso Tool. You can now make a new selection, switch to the Brush, paint it out and come back again.

Another good example is the Zoom Tool, hit and hold down the Z key to select the Zoom Tool, zoom in or zoom out by additionally hitting the Alt key and then release the Z key to switch back to the previous tool. The cool thing is, this works with all tools and saves you a lot of time.

Canvas Drop Shadow

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Photoshop now creates a nice shadow around the canvas to highlight the image. A great tip you should know is the possibility to change the background color from the default gray color to a custom color. This isn’t a new feature, but it assists the workflow by giving you the chance to set a different ambience.

Advanced GPU Settings

There are some additional features which you can’t see without a second look. We’ll take a look at three of them shortly. You can access the Advanced settings by going to Photoshop/Edit > Preferences > Performance > Advanced Settings.

Vertical Sync

Sets vertical sync to the refresh rate of the monitor. This should reduce tearing of the image while dragging your images. If it doesn’t bother you, feel free to disable this feature which will speed up the interaction. Note, the images will start tearing though.

3D Interaction Acceleration

I’m not that much into 3D imagery in Photoshop, but this turns off the 3D Direct to Screen accelerated interaction. I will talk about it shortly.

Force Bilinear Interpolation

Make sure you take a look at the tested graphic cards to see if your graphic card supports a shader program which works with Photoshop. By enabling this features, Photoshop will force the use of a shader program to guarantee filtering is taking place. You can disable this feature if you don’t necessarily need it.

Bridge GPU Features

Photoshop is not the only application which gets the chance to use the power of the GPU. Bridge, one of the most neglected tools with enormous power and usability, is one of the other applications which takes advantage of the GPU.

As the name says, Bridge is a bridge over between the single applications, which is mainly used for searching, arranging, browsing and pre-processing different files like images or other footage. I would like to touch on some of the new Preview features below.

Preview Panel

After finding and selecting an image, a preview of the image is displayed in the Preview panel which is located at the right. Simply, click anywhere on the preview of the image to enable the Loupe tool. You can later zoom in or out, inside of the Loupe tool, which is very cool.

Fullscreen preview

Selecting one or multiple images and clicking the Spacebar opens up a Full Screen Preview of the images. By using the left and right arrow keys, you will be able to navigate to each image’s full screen preview. Additional features like zooming in or out or moving around the current image at any time help you pre-select your images before moving into Photoshop.

Carousel-style view

The nice Carousel-style preview is accessible by selecting multiple images and hitting Command + B. Again, use the left and right arrow keys to move the focus to the next or previous image.

The best part is the ability to remove an image with a simple tap on the down arrow key. Note, the image wont be deleted, it’s just removed from the slideshow. This type of preview allows you to zoom in or out too. By hitting Command + R you’ll be able to instantly access the Camera RAW, whether it’s a TIFF, JPEG or any other format.

3D GPU features

Last but not least, I would like to mention the new 3D GPU features which come with the Photoshop CS4 Extended version. Since I’m not that much into working with 3D objects in Photoshop, I can’t really tell you much about them at this moment, but I listed them below with some additional links which should help you get started and show you what the extended version is capable of in terms of 3D imagery.

• 3D Acceleration
• 3D Basics, 3D Axis, 3D in Photoshop
• 3D Lights Widget
• Accelerated 3D Interaction via Direct To Screen
• Adobe Press – 3D in Photoshop

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this tutorial. Although these are very nice features, keep in mind that they will take up alot of RAM and Video RAM. Make sure you check out our related tutorials here on the site to keep an eye on your performance while having fun with these cool features!

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Final Image Preview

Take a look at the image we’ll be creating. Want access to the full PSD files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Psd Plus for just $9/month. You can view the final image preview below.

Step 1

Well, to get things started off right, let’s make a new document with the dimensions of 2304 pixels by 1708 pixels, and 300dpi. These dimensions worked great while creating this tutorial, so let’s stick with them!

Next we’ll set some guides. Be sure your snap feature is turned on View > Snap (Command + Shift + Colon key). Unfortunately there is no visual aid to show that it is turned on. Press Command + R to display your rulers, then use the Selection Tool (V) to drag a guide from the left and top rulers, ensuring they snap to the center of the artboard. Press Command + Colon key to hide any Guides at any time.

Don’t worry, if you make a mistake, just press Command + Z to undo. If you make a few mistakes, just press Command + Option + Z to step back to where you were. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff!

Here’s an interesting trick. Change the background of your artboard by selecting your favorite color, grabbing your Paint Bucket Tool (G), then Shift-clicking on the artboard. Cool right?

Step 2

Lets work from the bottom up, kinda like a painting. First lets create a nice blue gradient for the background. Select the Gradient Tool (G), select radial from the gradient choices. When choosing your colors, you can use #3e5198 for the foreground, and #222d53 for the background.

The effect we want is a lighter center, and a slightly darker outside. This creates more visual interest, rather than just a plain solid color. Once you have your colors selected, simply click and drag from the center of the artboard to the right edge and release.

Step 3

For Psd Plus members, Drag in the supplied “concreteTexture.jpg” image that is found in the “source” file in this tut’s member download, or grab a texture you prefer off the net. Make sure it is on a layer above the “background.” Scale (Command + T) and adjust as needed. Set the color mode to Overlay (V, then Shift + or -), and reduce the Opacity of the layer to 30% (V, then 3). This will give us a nice subtle effect.

Here’s a quick note on Opacity and Fill. The number pad (1 = 10%, 2 = 10%……0 = 100%) will change the Opacity or Fill (press Shift and number to change Fill) to whichever tool is selected. If the Selection Tool (V) is active, then it will adjust the layer. If the Brush Tool (B) is selected, then it will adjust the brush. The same goes for the Gradient and Paint Bucket Tool (G).

Step 4

Create a new layer and name it "Main Clock." Select the Circular Marquee Tool (M), and drag from the center of the artboard out towards the edge. The trick is to press Option+Shift while dragging. This will constrain proportions and create a marquee from the center, out.

Leave some free space on the top and bottom. Press (D) to change to the default colors. Next, press Option + Delete to fill the marquee with your foreground color. Deselect the marquee (Command + D). Don’t like the color you just filled the circle with? Pick a different color and press Shift + Option+ Delete and see what happens! The transparency is preserved!

Select the Main Clock Layer and the “Background” Layer by Command-clicking each layer (if a marquee appears, that means you clicked on the layers thumbnail. Oops!) Press (V) for your Selection Tool, then align the circle by pressing the Align Vertical Centers, and the Align Horizontal Centers. This is a precautionary measure to make sure everything lines up later down the road.

Filling Note: If you press Command + Delete, the marquee will fill with the background color. An easy way to remember which one does which is to observe on the left side of your keyboard, the Option button is on the left of the Command button (just like the foreground and background colors).

Step 5

Now we get to add some effects. Double-click on the “Main Clock” layer to open up the Layer Style dialog box. Enter the following adjustments (everything else can remain as the default setting):

• Drop Shadow: Opacity = 65%, Angle = 90 (make sure Global Light is checked), Distance = 49, and Size = 79.
• Inner Shadow: Opacity = 65%, Distance = 0, Choke = 12, and Size = 38.
• Inner Glow: Blend Mode = Color Burn, Color = #a32025, Size = 111
  Bevel: Technique = Chisel Hard, Size = 81, Soften = 14, Highlight Mode Opacity = 45, and Shadow Mode Opacity = 45.

Step 6

Here comes the fun part! Let’s create the numbers for the face of the clock. Select your Type Tool (T) and click anywhere to make a text field. Type in the number 00 (a nice round number to help us align everything) and make sure the text is center aligned. The size should be approximately 40pt (to increase or decrease the size of the font use Shift + Command + < or >). Helvetica Neue Font was used, but almost any font will work. Click your check mark box to accept the changes.

Now let’s align this text to the background, the same way we did in the previous step. Command-click the text layer and the background layer , then use the align tools to ensure we are directly in the center.

Step 7

Next, Shift-drag the text box to the top of the circle, and let it snap into place. It should be half on, half off of the top edge of the “Main Clock.” Aligning it this way will give us a nice visual, letting us know that everything aligned properly.

Once in place, press Command + T for the Free Transform Tool. Your anchor will be in the center of the transform box. Shift-drag it down to the center of the circle. Zoom in (Command + Plus key) if you need to be more precise. Change the angle to 30 degrees and click the check box to accept the changes.

Now press Command + Option + Shift + T eleven more times to repeat the transform and make a new layer via copy. Wow, that’s amazing!

Step 8

Adjust the number to read correctly by selecting the layer, then pressing Command + T. Grab the bounding box corner and rotate it into place while holding Shift. Edit the text by double-clicking the text layer and entering the appropriate number.

Note: Using the bounding box to rotate the numbers into place is the quickest way, but you have other options as well. Try rotating it 30 degrees, then click the check box to accept the changes. Now press Command + Shift + T to repeat the transform. Keep doing this until the number is in place. Now you can select a different number layer and use the same keyboard shortcut. Neat!

Once all of the numbers are correct and can be read properly, select all of the numbers by Shift-clicking the entire set of numbers. Press Command + G to group all of the numbers together. Name the group “Numbers.”

Step 9

Now we want to make a copy of all of the numbers to one layer. Option-click the eye on the “Numbers” group. This will turn all of the other layers off. Press Command + Option + Shift + E to stamp everything visible to a new layer via copy. Name this layer “Merged Numbers.”

Now turn on the other layers by clicking on each layer eye. You can keep the group “Numbers” turned off. The reason we made a copy is to keep an editable copy of the numbers, to apply the effects to only one layer which reduces file size, and to learn a great shortcut!

Step 10

Resize the Merged Numbers layer (Command + T), so it fits inside the clock as shown below. Be sure to hold Option + Shift while dragging to constrain the proportions to the center.

Apply effects to the “Merged Numbers” layer. Use the settings indicated below. Don’t be afraid to choose your own settings either. Make it your own!

Here are the settings used:

• Outer Glow: Opacity = 56, Color = #a32025.
• Bevel: Style = Pillow Emboss, Size = 24, Soften = 8, Highlight Mode Opacity = 30, and Shadow Mode Opacity = 30.
• Gradient Overlay = #ffffff, #c8c8c8, #ffffff, #c8c8c8, #ffffff (refer to image below) Click New to add this gradient to the presets field because it will be used in Step 13).

Step 11

Create a new layer and name this "Hour Hand." Use your Custom Shape Tool (U) and choose the pencil shape from the drop down menu at the top. This looks most like a clock dial. Drag out a shape to make it look like a short, thin hour hand. Press Command + T, then hold Shift while rotating the hand so it is straight up and down. Position it towards the center to help you measure the next hand.

We need a longer minute hand now. Duplicate the layer by pressing Command + J. Rename this layer “Minute Hand.” Select the Square Marquee Tool (M) and drag a square around the upper part of the hand. Now press Command + T and drag the hand so it is a little longer than the other one. Doing this will keep our pointed area proportional between the two hands.

Step 12

Turn off the visibility of the “Minute Hand.” Drag the “Hour Hand” up so the end is within the center guides. Press Command + T, rotate it holding Shift, then move the anchor point to the center guides (zoom in if necessary). Rotate the hand to the location of your choice (sometimes the anchor can’t be edited until the object is rotated). Now do the same with the “Minute Hand.”

Step 13

Use the settings below to style both hands. The “Minute Hand” will have slightly more distance in the drop shadow, so it appears to be above the “Hour Hand.” Here are the settings:

• Drop Shadow: Opacity = 55, Distance = 11 (14 for the “Minute Hand”), Size = 13.
• Inner Shadow: Opacity = 42.
• Bevel: Technique = Chisel Hard, Size = 9, Highlight Mode Opacity = 55, Shadow Mode Opacity = 55.
• Gradient Overlay: Use the same color of gradient that was saved in Step 10, Angle = 96.

Step 14

Adding some light spots to the clock hands will make our effect even more realistic. Create a new layer and name it "Highlights." Press (D) for your default colors, then (X) to switch to white.

Press (B) and from the brush menu (if you are using CS4 you can use the following shortcuts) select a brush diameter of 150 (Control + Option-click-drag), and a hardness of 0% (Control + Option + Command-click-drag). Set the Opacity to 30% (press 3). For earlier versions of PS, use the Bracket keys to adjust the diameter, and Shift + Bracket keys to adjust hardness.

Paint the white spot anywhere you can see it. Now select a Brush Diameter of 50, with 0% Hardness. Set the Opacity to 60% (press 6). Click once in the center of the previous highlight.

Now select your Circular Marquee Tool (M). Drag a circle around your highlight. Press (V), now click inside the marquee to cut it and reposition it. Find a white part on the “Hour Hand” and try to center your highlight to the upper edge of the hand (it depends on where you put your hands, but remember the light source is coming from the top).

Before you deselect, Option-click and drag a new copy to a highlight on the “Minute Hand,” and the upper edges of the numbers 7 and 12. Now you can deselect, and pat yourself on the back for making it this far!

Step 15

Add your company logo if you would like. Just drag it into your document, making sure the logo layer is below both hand layers. Position it, then use Command + T to resize it.

Copy the layer style of the numbers by right-clicking and selecting Copy Layer Style, then right-click on your “logo” layer and select Paste Layer Style. Decrease the bevel effect until it looks more realistic (Bevel: Size = 5, Soften = 0).

Step 16

Hold the hands together by creating a center piece. Create a new layer and name it "Center." Command-click on the “Main Clock” layer thumbnail to create a marquee. Fill it with any color (Command + Delete), Deselect the marquee (Command + D), resize to the center (Command + T). Don’t forget to hold Shift + Option to constrain the proportions to the center.

Now copy the “Main Clock” layer style, and paste it onto the “Center” layer. Make a few minor adjustments as shown below. The drop shadow distance should be a little more than the “Minute Hand” layer because it is above both hands:

• Drop Shadow: Distance = 19 and Size = 13.
• Inner Glow: Uncheck this effect.

Step 17

Let’s create the cover now. Create a new layer and name it "Cover." Command-click on the “Main Clock” layer thumbnail to create a marquee. Press (D) for default colors, then press Command + Delete to fill it with white. Deselect the marquee (Command + D). Lower the layer opacity to 20% (V, then 2).

Resize (Command + T, then hold Shift + Option-drag) the “Cover” layer to fit a little inside the beveled edge of the “Main Clock.” See the image below.

Create a Layer Mask by clicking on the button at the bottom of the Layer Panel, select your Gradient Tool (G), make sure Linear is selected, then choose the same gradient from Step 10. Now click on the Layer Mask to select it. Zoom out if necessary, and drag a gradient from the upper left corner of the image, down to the lower right corner. This effect will had some variation to the cover and make it appear to be a more reflective surface.

Step 18

Now we need to continue to build up the glare effects to make the “Cover” look more realistic. For those of you who have watched my Glass Ball Tutorial on YouTube, this step will be a breeze.

Create a new layer and name it "Glare." Command-click on the “Cover” layer thumbnail to create a marquee. Press (D) for default colors, then press Command + Delete to fill it with white. Deselect the marquee (Command + D). Lower the layer Opacity to 40% (V, then 4)

Transform the “Glare” layer by pressing Command + T, then Shift-dragging from the bottom and bring it above the center line. Shift + Option-drag from the right side to squeeze the layer, then Shift-drag from the top to squeeze it down into place. Use the image below for reference. Make sure the glare is covering the number 12, as shown.

Step 19

Create a Layer Mask for the “Glare” layer. Select your Gradient Tool (G) and make sure the Linear Gradient is selected from the gradient field above. Choose default colors (D). Select the Layer Mask, then drag a gradient from the bottom of the circle to the top. Instant Glare! We still have some polish to add though.

Default Colors Note: If you are on a layer, the letter D makes black the foreground, and white the background. But, if a Layer Mask is selected, and D is pressed, then the default colors are reversed. Just press X if you need to swap them.

Step 20

Create a new document by pressing Command + N. Let’s make this a square document. The size should be 7 inches by 7 inches at 300dpi.

Double-click on the background layer,then press OK to unlock the layer. Fill the layer with black (try to use those shortcuts you learned in the previous steps). Go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare, then select the 105mm Prime option at 110%, and press OK.

Lets Fade the Filter we just applied. Press Command + Shift + F. Lower the Opacity to 90%.

Fade Filter Note: This shortcut is only accessible directly after a filter is applied. It’s great for lowering the Opacity or changing the blending mode of a filter without affecting the pixels it is sitting on top of.

Step 21

Go to Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates. Select Polar to Rectangular, and press OK. Whoa, what happened! Don’t worry, it’s going to look great I promise!

Now flip it vertically. Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertically. Now go back to Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates. This time select Rectangular to Polar, and press OK. Wow, now look at that! Did I keep my promises or what!

Step 22

All you have to do now is cut out the fat. Create some quick center guides like we did earlier. Choose your Circular Marquee Tool (M), then drag a circle from the center out to the edge of the glare. Be sure to hold Shift + Option while dragging.

Now press Command + Shift + I to inverse the selection. Press Command + X to cut out the fat.

Step 23

Shift-drag your creation into your clock document so it is centered.

Resize the reflection by pressing Command + T and Shift + Option dragging it to the same size as the “Cover” layer. Rotate the reflection so the beads of light are at the top, and aligned to the center. Accept the changes by pressing the Check Mark.

Rename this layer to “Flare,” and make sure it is above the “Glare” layer. Press (V), then hold Shift and press the Plus or Minus keys to cycle through your layer modes. Soft Light works best in our case.

Step 24

We need to add more pop to the glare at the top. Command-click on the “Glare” layer thumbnail to create a marquee. Select the “Flare” layer, then press Shift + F6 to bring up the Feather Selection dialog box. Type 100 pixels and click OK. This will fade our flare and blend it more.

Now make a new layer via cut by pressing Command + Shift + J. Now set the Blending Mode to Screen (V, then Plus or Minus keys). Rename the layer to "Flare2."

Step 25

We better add one more lens flare for good measure. Create a new layer and name it "Flare3." Command-click on the “Cover” layer to get a marquee. Fill it with black and don’t deselect the marquee yet. This will confine our lens flare to the pixels inside the marquee.

Go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare. This time choose 50-300mm Zoom, and position the flare crosshair on the left side so all of the reflections are aligned from left to right. Select 110%. Press OK.

Deselect the selection (Command + D) and press Command + T to rotate it so the brightest part is centered at the top. Accept the changes. Now set the layer mode to Soft Light.

Step 26

A few more lighting effects and we are done. Create a new layer above all of the others and name it "Inner Rim." Command-click the “Main Clock” layer thumbnail to create a marquee. Fill the marquee with white (D, then Command + Delete). Deselect the marquee (Command + D). Press Command + T to reduce the size to meet the inner edge of the “Main Clock” Bevel as shown.

Let’s cut out the fat. Command-click on the “Cover” layer (make sure the “Inner Rim” layer is still selected). Press Command + X to cut out the center.

Reduce the layer Opacity to 70% (V, then 7). Create a Layer Mask. We need to fade the effect now. Select your Gradient Tool (G), Default Colors (D), (X) to inverse default colors, and Shift-drag a Linear Gradient from the center of the clock down to the bottom of the clock.

Step 27

Create a new layer and name it "Outer Rim." Command-click on the “Main Clock” layer to create a marquee, and fill with white (D, then Command + Delete). Deselect the marquee (Command + D).

Now select the “Inner Rim” layer and Command-click on the layer thumbnail. Press (W) for your Wand Tool, and Shift-click the center of the marquee. This will get rid of the middle part that we don’t need. Now click back on the “Outer Rim” layer and cut out the fat (Command + X). Set the layer Opacity to 80% (V, then 8).

Select your Gradient Tool (G), and choose Radial Gradient. If the layer mask is selected, press (D) for your default colors. Shift-drag up from the top of the “Outer Rim.” You will have to drag about 3-4 inches above the clock. Zoom out if necessary. This will give us a nice hot spot on the top of the clock, which is closer to the light source.

Step 28

Create a new layer and name it "Shadows." Fill it with black. Set the layer mode to Soft Light (V, then Shift and use the Plus or Minus keys). Now create a Layer Mask, choose your default colors (D), select your Gradient Tool (G), then Shift-drag a Linear Gradient from the bottom of the image to the center of the clock. This will add a little more depth to our image by fading the light.

Conclusion

Wow, you did it! Great Job! Hopefully this tutorial has helped you and will make you a quicker, more efficient Photoshop designer.

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