Introduction

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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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An understanding of this will also allow you to adjust your photos to create natural looking depth of field effects in Photoshop when needed. Let’s look at seven such principles and techniques that will help you with adjusting depth of field to focus the subject in your photos.

Step 1 – Understand Depth of Field and Aperture

Depth of field is important to understand before jumping in and using it as a tool to create different images. Depth of field is created in the camera through the differing use of aperture. Aperture is the setting that controls how far open the lens gets when an exposure is taken. If the lens opening is small, the camera is able to bring many things into focus, even if one is significantly further behind another. However, when you shoot with the aperture wide open, the field is reduced and the camera can only bring a narrow depth of field into focus.

The first photograph below was taken with a small aperture opening (although that’s represented as a large number in your settings) and the second is taken with a wide-open aperture with a limited depth of field.

Aperture is used throughout photography to establish focus in a photograph. For instance, if you’d like a photograph of a single individual, but the background is full of other people, it will distract from the focus of the photo. A larger depth of field is used when all the details in the photograph are important to the viewer.

Step 2 – Set an Appropriate Distance

One way to ensure that you’re using depth of field to differentiate between your subject and the background is to allow ample room between them. That may mean placing your subject further away from a solid background, like a curtain, wall or studio backdrop, or creating more distance between them and any other object behind them.

A commonly-used example of this is to make sure that your subjects don’t have trees or other vertical objects coming out of their heads when they’re directly behind the subject. You can obscure objects like trees with a shallow depth of field. Also, the more space you put between your subject and the background, the easier it will be to blur everything behind them. Five to ten feet is usually plenty, but if you have a lens that shoots at a very open aperture, like a f/1.2-f/2.0 range, you can be closer and still obscure the background.

Step 3 – Use Selective Focusing

It’s often the goal when shooting with a wide-open aperture to obscure the background and not the subject, but you can also use a very open aperture to obscure parts of the subject. For instance, you can focus very closely on an eye and blur out the subject’s hair, hands, or feet. In the example below, a sharp focus was attained on the hair, but the rest of the face is in soft focus. Keep in mind that it’s often necessary to use manual focus mode with this technique since you’re doing precision focusing.

Step 4 – Delineate Background From Foreground

If your goal is to create a crisp, clean portrait with an in-focus subject and an out-of-focus background, you should be shooting wide-open with your lens, but probably not go below f/1.8. Below that aperture, you’ll start to lose focus on one side of the face if the head is at all tilted.

Here are examples of how to achieve an ideal depth of field for a crisp portrait. Notice in the first photo there is an even focus across the face, but in the second photo only the front of the face is in crisp, clean focus.

Step 5 – Understand the Difference Between Lenses

The numbers discussed above are all relative depending on what lens you’re using to photograph your subject. Depth of field changes based on the lenses you’re using and based on how far your camera is from the subject when you take the picture. When using a lens with a longer focal length (for instance, 85mm vs. 50mm) your depth of field will be deeper. This means you’ll be able to bring more into focus when shooting. When you shoot closer, with a 50mm lens, your depth of field will become shallower and will grow shallower still as you move toward your subject.

Step 6 – Keep Subjects on the Same Plane

When blurring the background with a wide-open aperture and shooting a group of people, it’s important to make sure their faces (and especially eyes, where focus should always be spot-on) are on the same plane. This means they’re all the same distance from the camera, or else some faces will be more in focus than others and distract. It’s tough to shoot a wide-open portrait with more than about three people because of this factor, and remember that if you’re involving more people in a group photo, it’s usually wise to adjust your aperture closed a bit so that you can pick up all the faces in a sharp way.

Step 7 – Enhance Background Blur in Photoshop

If you were dealing with a group, a difficult subject or a situation that didn’t allow you to blur the background as much as you wanted to, there is a way to enhance that background blur in Photoshop.

Step 8

After opening your photo, use the magnetic lasso tool to select your subject, making sure to match very closely the edges of the subject without grabbing chunks of the background.

Step 9

Select inverse, so you have the entire background selected.

Step 10

Use the Gaussian blur function on the background to adjust the background to a fuzzier state. Don’t crank up the blur too hard, however, or you’ll get a halo around your subject and the photo won’t look natural. For this photo, the Gaussian blur is adjusted to a radius of 5.0.

Step 11

Choose Deselect to see the finished product

Conclusion

Understanding these principles and techniques will improve your results. Have fun shooting and prepping your photographs in Photoshop!

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There’s nothing worse than being detained from your workflow because of performance deficit. That’s why you should check out this tutorial to work more efficiently without wasting your time and improve your workflow and designs!

What you’ll learn

First, we’ll take a look at the Photoshop requirements and the basics on how to increase performance without touching Photoshop. Later we’ll jump into Photoshop and take a look at the Preferences and how to set them up wisely. Since I’m currently working and experimenting with the new Photoshop CS4 version, all settings or images apply to the latest version. There could be some minor differences to other releases, but most of these tips are all-purpose. Let’s take a look at what you’ll learn:

Table of Contents:

• Basics – update your drivers, improve your OS by defragmenting and optimizing your system.
• Photoshop Requirements
• Which version should I choose
• Photoshop Preferences
• Tips and links
• Conclusion

Basics

The first thing which comes to one’s mind is the CPU, Memory and Hard disk, but with the current release Adobe designed new features to additionally take advantage of your display card’s GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to accelerate performance. New features like: Smooth display at all zoom levels, Animated Zoom tools, Rotating the Canvas, the Pixel grid or the possibility to move colors matching to the GPU, require additional performance and adjustments.

• Photoshop GPU features

Preparation

The first thing to do, is to update your display card’s driver and DirectX since we are working with images, motion graphics or 3D objects. Unfortunately, we don’t have much control over the Video-RAM, but we can update the drivers to help the system utilize the given power.

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

A clean and ideal system and up to date operating system is a must-have. The second step is to defragment your hard drive and close all unnecessary processes other than Photoshop. Most of the time you can’t even see any difference or increased performance, but you can use the built-in monitoring tools (MAC: Activity Monitor, Windows: Task Manager) to experiment, control and understand what happens.

Making sure the basics are properly processed, should give us a good foundation before jumping into Photoshop. You can take a look at the different tools and resources which I think should help you get started.

• Tune-Up Utilities
• Improve PC Speed
• Restore PC Performance
• Tuning Mac OS X
• Improve Mac OS X Performance
• Apple Support
• Microsoft Support

Photoshop Requirements

It is obvious, that your PC or Mac should definitely meet the standard requirements. This tutorial won’t help you increase performance where no performance is available. Instead, we’ll try to allocate memory, set scratch disks, change the properties in different sections and monitor our processes to make use of wasted performance. Nowadays, it shouldn’t be a problem to find, buy and work with a decent system, so we won’t talk about hardware and what system to choose. But feel free to leave a comment, if you have any questions.

With different Photoshop versions to choose from, you should think about why you are using the current version or why you want to upgrade to a specific version. If you are only working with still images and don’t plan or need to integrate 3D objects or any other special features, you should think about getting the standard version. On the other hand, users who work in these areas should consider buying or upgrading to the extended version. Each version has special requirements besides the general requirements, which will later affect the performance on your system.

• Photoshop CS4 Features
• Photoshop CS4 Requirements
• Photoshop CS4 Extended Features
• Photoshop CS4 Extended Requirements

Photoshop Preferences

Now it’s time to jump into Photoshop. The default configuration are neither bad, nor perfect. Each one of us has different needs and a different workflow, that’s why we’ll take a look at all the different settings to make sure each one of us is happy.

Since some features are not necessarily required like the Zoom or smoother Hand moving feature, we’ll try to disable different features or plug-ins to reduce the launch time, optimize other preferences and make the most of our RAM and even more. Open the Preferences by going to the Photoshop menu (Mac) or Edit > Preferences (PC) and let’s start.

After the Preferences Window opens, you’ll find a simple and easy to choose list on the left side. These are the different sections that we’ll work off. You can access these sections from the General Preferences Window as we did or by selecting them directly by going to Edit > Preferences > Section (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences > Section (Mac).

General

The first General section helps you configure some of the more common features that affect the workflow. You should spend some time experimenting with these settings to find the best solution for you. The flick panning is a good example. Although it’s a cool feature, it’s not necessarily speeding up your work. You can simply disable the features and later enable them whenever you want to use them. Note, that the changes take effect the next time you start Photoshop.

Color Picker

Let’s you choose between Windows, Mac or Adobe Color.

Image Interpolation

Let’s you choose between Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear or Bicubic, which focus on different ways of constructing new data points within the current range.

Options

Some of these features heavily rely on RAM. Try to experiment with the options to keep a little dynamic while disabling unimportant features, which are intended to catch one’s eye instead of being useful.

History Log

History Log is disabled by default, but it could be useful in some cases. By enabling it, Photoshop will log all your steps while working and save them in an external file. This could be interesting for tutorial writers or anybody who wants to track one’s workflow. Note, that this feature will require additional RAM.

Interface

This section provides different options for interface style and management. By playing with these settings, you can style, dynamically open, close or move different panels or palettes.

General

These options help visualize the interface for easier navigation and better understanding.

Panels & Documents

If screen size doesn’t permit you to display all needed panels at the same time, you should choose to remember panel locations and close or collapse your panels when clicking away. That way you’ll increase your workspace. Note, Photoshop needs to store the information in the RAM which will affect the performance.

UI Text Options

Let’s you choose your Interface language and font size.

File Handling

File Saving Options

Each time you save a file, Photoshop adds additional information or even small thumbnails for better compatibility and preview. The more information you add to your file, the bigger it will get. You can set the options to Ask for better control. Photoshop will then ask you what to do before saving your file.

File Compatibility

You can additionally experiment with the options for RAW-files and Version Cue. The Camera RAW Preferences provide useful options like the RAW-file Cache size or TIFF / JPEG Handling. You should spend some time experimenting with these settings considering your Camera and workflow.

Version Cue

If you want your projects to be compatible to Version Cue, you should enable the feature, otherwise disable it for smaller file size.

Recent Projects

At the bottom of this section, you’ll find an option to set the the number of projects you want to be listed in the recent file list (File > Open Recent).

Performance

Our main focus in this tutorial is the performance. So far, we were able to increase performance slightly. This is the place where we can boost our performance dramatically. Setting everything to the maximum isn’t the best solution. Therefore, read the following paragraphs which should help you decide.

Memory Usage

The first and easiest way of increasing Photoshop performance is allocating more memory to Photoshop by moving the slider to the right. RAM is one of the main requirements besides your processor speed and hard disk space. Depending on your system, Photoshop will be able to work with up to ~1,6GB Ram (32-Bit) or up to ~3,2GB (64-Bit).

Most of the modern PC Systems are 64-Bit ready, so if you ever wondered why you can only use ~1,6GB (32-Bit) or 3,2GB (64-Bit), though you have 4GB or more, you should consider an upgrade to a better OS and the 64-Bit version of Photoshop. As you can see, upgrading your RAM only increases performance when working with the proper OS and Photoshop version. When planning an upgrade, always remember that your OS and other processes need RAM too.

History & Cache

By default, Photoshop saves 20 history states. It is difficult to weigh whether you should decide in favor of history states or performance. If this is the first time you’ve heard about the history states or rarely use them, you can set it to 5 or 10. Other users should keep an eye on their workflow to find the best level.

You should consider Image-cache, when working with high-resolution images. Caching Images decreases time needed for updating the image while working in different zoom levels. Photoshop creates images with lower resolution which are used to update quickly. The higher the Cache level, the more levels Photoshop will create for you to display. Which will require more RAM. You can set your value between 1 and 8. I recommend using this feature when working with high-resolution images. When working with smaller images, it’s not necessarily required.

Scratch Disks

When your computer doesn’t have enough RAM to perform an operation, Photoshop uses free space on any available drive to save special files. Photoshop provides the functionality to set up to four scratch disks, which are similar to virtual memory.

By default, Photoshop uses your primary hard disk as the scratch disk. You should change that, because it can slow down performance if your operating system uses it to for its virtual memory needs or space is limited. You should prefer internal hard disks instead of external or removable drives, but make sure you set the scratch disk to a defragmented hard disk which has plenty of free space and high revolution.

Photoshop requires at least 1GB of free disk space, but more is better. With a maximum of 64 EB you should be able to boost your Performance using scratch disks, that’s for sure. In most cases one or two extra drives should be sufficient, but investing in a powerful RAID systems should definitely increase your performance when working on bigger projects with huge file sizes.

GPU Settings

Photoshop automatically detects your display card. If it is OpenGL compatible, Photoshop will give you the option to enable OpenGL Drawing. By clicking on Advanced Settings, you’ll have additional options for better OpenGL control.

Advanced Settings

The Advanced Settings window should give you an insight on what the GPU is capable of and what its tasks are.

Cursors

I’ve never touched this section and I think I’ll never change the appearance of the cursors. I don’t think this will affect the performance, instead this is just an extra option Adobe offers designers to customize their Photoshop appearance.

Transparency and Gamut

Transparency Settings

Allows you to select a transparency grid size and to choose a color scheme for the transparency grid which shines through your layers.

Gamut Warning

As soon as an image moves out of the CMYK color space, this color will mask the specific areas.

Units and Rulers

Units and Column Size

This section allows you to change the different measurements for units, types, rulers or column size. For example, change your type measure from points to pixel or vice versa. Depending on the final output, you should prefer pixels for screen output or pica, inches or points for print.

New Document Preset Resolutions

When creating a new document, Photoshop asks you what resolution to work with. You can set the default values here.

Point / Pica Size

Choose between PostScript or Traditional.

Guides, Grids and Slices

You can’t create high quality designs and layouts without using guides, grids or slices. They help you align and measure your designs perfectly. Different Images with different colors could cause problems detecting the guides in the image. This sections gives you some options to customize your guides, grids and slices for better visualization.

Plug-Ins

Each time you launch Photoshop, it loads Plug-Ins and presets with it. Some of them are useful, some not. We can temporarily disable Plug-Ins which we rarely use and enable them at a later time whenever needed. To disable a plug-in, navigate to the Plug-Ins folder inside the Photoshop install folder and then insert a ~ in front of the plug-in name.

Plug-Ins Folder

By organizing your Plug-Ins in folders, and adding them to this section will, it will ensure better control and better performance. You can later disable the whole folder instead of searching for the single Plug-Ins.

Extensions

Adobe Kuler is one of the cool extensions integrated into Photoshop. By disabling these options, Kuler won’t be able to connect and download the color schemes from the Kuler network. If you aren’t using any of the extensions, you can disable this feature and save some RAM in the background.

Type

This sections of no importance for any notable increase in performance, but offers options for Quotes, Text types and Preview sizes. This is another section where I wouldn’t change anything. You could change the size of the Font Preview Drop-down menu, but that could cause delays.

Tips and Links

Thumbnails and Snapshots

Each layer has its own Thumbnail to preview what’s on the layer. You can change the size of the thumbnails or even disable them. I wouldn’t disable them, but if you are working on a slow system with less RAM you should definitely consider smaller thumbnails.

In addition to the History states, Photoshop offers Snapshots which are very useful, but they are stored in your RAM which makes Photoshop slower. Again, if you’ve never used this feature, then you can disable it.

Layers and Channels

The number of layers and alpha channels in your file can also impact on the size of your file or the time needed to save it. By deleting empty layers or merging them together, you can minimize your file size and the time needed for saving and opening the files.

Fonts and Styles

If you like to add hundreds of Fonts to your library, Photoshop will require more time to load all the fonts while it starts. It’s better to clear out unused fonts. You should try out some font management utilities like Suitcase (Windows and Mac OS) or Font Agent (Mac OS). This also applies to brushes, gradients, custom shapes, styles, patterns and other freebies you download. Clearing your lists will definitely help shorten launch time.

• Suitcase
• Font Agent
• Font Case

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial was useful for you. Feel free to leave a comment, if it helped increase performance on your system. I’ll try to answer your questions, should there be any. Thanks.

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The Basics

Type is the Photoshop tool to create vector outlines and mathematical shapes to define the symbols of a typeface. It’s located on the standard Tool Bar as a tiny T. The keyboard shortcut of this is the letter (T), and if you hold click over that tool (or Shift + T several times) you’ll see four options: Horizontal Type, Vertical Type, Horizontal Type Mask and Vertical Type Mask.

• Horizontal Type Tool: This enables the tool to create horizontal standard text (left to right and top to bottom).
• Vertical Type Tool: Enables the tool to create vertical text (top to bottom and right to left), useful to write in oriental languages like Japanese or Chinese, or if you want to experiment with typographic design.
• Horizontal Type Mask Tool, Vertical Type Mask Tool: Creates a Quick mask using the Type shape as a Selection. We’ll see more application of these modes shortly.

Once you’ve select your desired Type Tool, you’ll notice the mouse cursor changes into the standard Type cursor, something like an I, this means the document is ready to put text on it.

Creating a Type Layer

There’s two ways to create a text layer, which are Point and Paragraph Type:

• Point Type: This option will create a Type layer into a single line, the break lines must be placed by you hitting Return or Enter in the keyboard.

  To create a Point Type layer select your desired Type Tool (Horizontal or Vertical text), and click one time with the cursor anywhere you want to put the text in. Then just start writing, when you have finished to add the text you can either click the tiny Commit button on the Option bar, hit the Enter key on the numeric pad of your keyboard or just hit Command + Enter.

• Paragraph Type: This option will create a Text layer with text wrapping into a bounding box. Is pretty useful for both print and web design. To add a Paragraph layer you must create the bounding box first. You can Click and Drag the cursor diagonally until you’ve got your desired size.

Doesn’t matter if there’s a background image, or any other object, the Type tool will create a new layer for the new text. Besides, you can easily switch between Point to Paragraph type or vice versa by going to Layer > Type > Convert to Paragraph Text / Convert to Point Text.

Resize and Transform

Obviously, you can resize and transform each text layer as any other, do it by using the Move Tool (V), selecting the layer and Showing Transform controls. Anyway this kind of transforming will stretch, enlarge, or badly distort the type shape.

If you really want a good result on a Paragraph Type layer, you must do the following: Select the Type tool, and click over the Paragraph text, then go to one of the transform handles and click and drag to resize the box, the text will automatically reflow inside the new box. Shift-drag to preserve the proportion or keep a constant rotation increment, Command-drag to scale the type, Command-drag on a center handle to skew the type box, and Option-drag to resize the box from its center.

Character Options

Basic Formatting

It’s time to move forward. After typing some text, you obviously want to change the font face, color and more, this is really simple. First show the Character window by going to Window > Character. The Character window has several Options to format characters, following there’re some examples about formatting Font Family, Style, Size and Color (you must double-click on color sample to see the color picker). After committing the type, you can either click on the text miniature in the Layers panel and change the entire text layer format or with the Type tool selected, click on the text layer you want to edit, make a selection and change the character format of the selected text.

Kerning and Tracking

You can easily customize both Kerning and Tracking in Photoshop. Select a text layer or make a text selection and look in Character window for the Kern and Track values.

You’re able to customize the kern (space between specific pairs of characters) by selecting between Metrics Kerning or Optical Kerning. Metrics will automate adjust kern using the included pairs of the font you’re using. Optical will adjust the kern based on the font shape. Besides you can customize the kern values by typing a numeric value (positive or negative) in the Kerning field or select one of the presets.

Tracking is very similar, just set a numeric value (positive or negative) to increase / reduce space between the letters. Besides you can combine both Kern and Track to obtain a nice result.

Vertical and Horizontal Scaling

Scale the text layer both horizontally and vertically by changing the Scale values in the Character window. Just as advice, I almost never use those scaling values because when you distort a typeface you’re distorting the shape itself, and sometimes creating an undesirable result, look at the image below, the nice Century Gothic’s ‘O’ character is a perfect circle without scaling it, and it turns into an oval when you change the scaling values. Besides notice the shapes aren’t regular, i.e. the line width is wider at top and bottom of the ‘O’ character when you change the vertical scaling.

Baseline Shift

This is very useful when you want to make your text layer fit somewhere, such as around an image. Change this value to move the baseline of a text selection above or below the baseline of the rest of the text layer.

Faux Bold and Faux Italic

Photoshop has the option to auto create a Faux Bold and Italic variation for any typeface, pretty useful sometimes, but you must take special care in order to distort the type shape as little as possible. Below there are examples of Faux Bold on the Arial typeface, which isn’t distorting the type shape that much, but applying Faux Italic on Myriad Pro actually distorts the original italic style of the typeface (look at the ‘a’ character for example).

Font Variants and Text Decoration

You can easily customize the font variant, Capitalizing all the characters, or convert it to Small Caps. To do so, just select a text layer, or make a text selection, and click on the respective button in the Character Window. Besides, you can edit the text decoration as Underline or Strikethrough.

Anti-aliasing, Where and When

Anti-aliasing produces smooth-edged text making the text borders blend into the background layer/image. There’re four anti-aliasing options: Sharp, Crisp, Strong and Smooth, and obviously the option None. Often, you must apply some anti-aliasing to every text layer in your design for easily reading in particular into Serif typefaces. There’re some exceptions when you should set None as anti-aliasing value, i.e. when you’re adding sample text for web design content, when using a pixel typeface, etc.

Leading

Either in both Point or Paragraph text layer you can adjust the leading (vertical space) between lines. Leave it as an automatic value by selecting (auto) for the Leading value, or type a custom value to adjust the space by yourself.

Paragraph Options

Basic Alignment

Since a Paragraph Text Layer can contain multiple lines, formatting them is very important for the quality of any design, that’s what the Paragraph window is about. Open it by going to Window > Paragraph. Create a paragraph text layer, type something, commit the text and click on the layer miniature to activate the options for the entire text. Alternatively, you can make a text selection by using the Type tool, and apply paragraph formatting only into the selected lines of your text layer.

Of course, the basic feature on Paragraph text is Align. You can easily customize the alignment (Left, Center, Right or Justify) by clicking on the icons in the Paragraph window, besides there are three more options for Justify Alignment, changing the alignment of the last line of the text layer or the selected text (Left, Center, Right).

To customize the Justify alignment, go to the Paragraph palette menu and click on Justification, there you’ll be able to configure Word and Letter Spacing, Glyph Scaling and Auto Leading percentages.

Hyphenation

The settings you choose for hyphenation affects the horizontal spacing of the paragraph, making it wider or stretching it, depending on the words of each line. To apply hyphenation into a Paragraph Text Layer, just choose the language in the Character Window, and activate Hyphenation in the Paragraph window. To disable Hyphenation, just uncheck the option box in the Paragraph window.

Most of time the automatic Hyphenation will work just fine for you, but sometimes you’ll need to customize it. To enable advanced Hyphenation options click on the Paragraph panel menu and select Hyphenation. You’ll see the following options:

• Words Longer Than # Letters: set the minimum number of characters for your hyphenated words; i.e. if you set a value of 5, the word ‘photo’ will be not hyphenate, but if you set the value ‘3′ you’ll get ‘pho-to.’ The default value is ‘2.’
• After First # Letters and Before Last # Letters: specifies the minimum number of characters at the beginning or end of a word that can be broken by a hyphen, i.e. if you set any of those values as ‘1′ you could have an undesirable hyphenation, such as "h-ello" or "actio-n." By default both values are set as ‘2.’
• Hyphen Limit: set the maximum number of consecutive lines on which hyphenation may occur.
• Hyphenation Zone: set a distance from the right edge of a paragraph.
• Hyphenate Capitalized Words: prevents hyphenation of capitalized words.

Indent and Space Between Paragraphs

Indenting is quite easy. Just select a text layer, or make a text selection, and write or slice both left or right Indent values. You can indent a text selection left or right, or indent the first line of a Paragraph as shown in the second image below.

Besides, you can easily add space between paragraphs (before or after) in the Paragraph window, just type a custom value in the Space Before or the Space After paragraph.

Warp Text

One of the most powerful features of the Type Tool is the capability to Warp any text layer according to your particular needs. To Warp a type layer double-click on the Text Layer Miniature and click over the Create Warped Text button in the Options Menu. You’ll be prompted to select a Warp Style orientation (Vertical or Horizontal), then you’ll have three sliders to increase or decrease the values of Bend, Horizontal and Vertical Distortion. Below is a single example of how to warp Point text by using Arc Warp and different values of Bend and Distortion.

Of course you can Warp a Paragraph Text Layer as well, see the image below. It shows a simple way to get the famous “Star Wars” intro effect just by increasing the Vertical Distortion and with the help of a small Gradient Layer Mask.

Warping text is really funny, try it with different warp options. There’re a few restrictions though, you cannot Warp a Text Layer if you applied previously Faux Bold, or Faux Italic styles in the Character panel.

Type on a Path

You can create a type layer that flows along a work path created by using the Pen Tool or Vector Shape Tool. To create a Type on a path, first draw a path by using the Pen Tool, then select the Type Tool and place the cursor anywhere on the path, you’ll see the shape of the cursor changes the baseline for an S shaped line. Click on the path and write some text.

Path on a Shape

The process to add a text layer on a vector shape is the same. First, ensure the vector shapes is selected, do this by using the Path Selection Tool to select the shape. Once the path is visible, select the Type Tool and click anywhere over the path and write something. You can edit any Character option, a good example is increasing the Baseline Shift a little bit to create a space between text and shape.

Edit Type on a Path

Sometimes you’ll need to change the orientation and position of the type on a path. For this, select the Path Selection Tool, place the cursor over the text until you get a little black arrow on the type cursor, then Drag the cursor below the baseline to flip the type. Use the same method to flip the text and place it inside a shape. Obviously, you can add any layer style to the text layer and this will continue being editable.

Convert Type into Shape

Several times we’ll need to be able to change or modify the shape of a character, for several purposes, like logo design, Photoshop makes this easy. Just create a text layer or select one and go to Layer > Type > Convert to Shape. This tool will convert the type into a Vector Layer Mask, which can be edited as any other vector shape. You can also create a Work path by going to Layer > Type > Convert Work Path.

Type Mask Tool

Finally, you can do most of the described features of the type tool, but using Selections instead type shapes. For this click and hold on the Type Tool until more options appears. There select Horizontal (or Vertical) Type Mask. By selecting this tool you’ll be able to create a quick selection with the shape, which is pretty useful on either Layer Mask or Quick Mask mode. Below is a small example of a word written using the Type Mask Tool. I used that selection to create a Layer Mask over a picture.

Conclusion

Type tool is one of the most powerful features of Photoshop. With practice you’ll become a master after playing with characters and paragraphs. There are no limits of what you can create with this wonderful tool.

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Introduction

Since the release of the Content-Aware-Scaling feature, I’ve always wondered where and how I could use this feature in my projects. After experimenting with it, I realized how useful it is. As mentioned above, Content-Aware-Scaling automatically recognizes important areas of an image, protects them from being squeezed, and does the opposite to unimportant areas by cropping and retouching these. Of course there are limitations, but overall it’s a great new feature added to Photoshop. Let’s take a look at the details!

Preparation

First, you need to import an image. In order to use the Content-Aware-Scaling, we need to convert this Background layer to an independent layer. Double-click on the layer, give it a name, and hit OK.

How you can find it?

Make sure your layer is selected. Go to Edit > Content-Aware-Scaling or use the shortcut Command + Shift + Alt + C. The image should now be framed, providing transform handles for adjustments.

Scaling

As soon as you move the handles, Photoshop will recognize important areas automatically and transform the image properly without distorting the image. There is a limit to this ability though and you’ll have to use your eye with this feature. You can protect specific areas better by just using the Marquee-Tools before selecting Content-Aware-Scaling, and we’ll review this shortly.

Let’s Review the Difference this Makes

Using the Free Transform Tool

This is how an image looks after resizing it to 60% using the Free-Transform-Tool.

Content-Aware-Scaling & Difficulties

As you can see, the mountain and some other areas look good, but there’s a problem starting to happen with the boat – it’s looking distorted. To a certain point, Photoshop does a great job, but you have to be careful, because sometimes you’ll see distortion in your images. If you want to secure specific areas in your images, you can use an alpha channel to help protect content during resizing. In the next steps, we’ll take a look at masking.

Masking

As mentioned above, there’s a simple solution to protect important areas in the image, and that’s using Masks. There are several ways to create masks or selections and save them as an Alpha Channel. We’ll take a look at two of them and we’ll tell Photoshop to use these selections to protect image areas from distortion.

Quick Masking

Click on the Edit In Standard Mode button or use the Shortcut (Q) to enter the Modus.

Selecting the Sail Boat Using the Brush

I chose a simple brush, used different sizes and painted out the Boat. You can switch between black, gray and white colors to paint or erase your selections. The masking doesn’t have to be perfect, but you should make sure the object is selected.

Close the Standard Mode

Photoshop creates a selection using the information from above. We need to invert the selection since we want to keep the boat area. Go to Select > Inverse (Command + Shift + I).

Inverted Selection

This is how the selection should look now. It’s ready to be saved to use it later as an alpha channel. The Content-Aware-Scaling feature uses Channels to protect specific areas in your images.

Polygonal Lasso Tool

Here’s another selection I created using the Polygonal Lasso Tool. It’s not as accurate as the selection above, but that’s OK. There are several ways to create Masks for protecting specific areas in your images. Just experiment with it, until you have a good selection.

New Channel

Save New Channel

After creating and optimizing our selection, it’s time to save the selection as a new channel to later use it for protection. Go to Select > Save Selection.

Save Selection Window

The Save Selection window should pop up. Make sure the Document is set to the current document and the Channel is set to New. Give it a name and hit OK.

Channel Panel

New Alpha Channel

As you can see in the image below, Photoshop added a new Channel to the Channels Panel. We can now tell Photoshop to use this Channel as a mask to protect the important area. Make sure you deselect the image area by going to Select > Deselect (Command + D).

Protect Option

Select Channel

Photoshop identified our new Channel and lists it in the Protect drop-down menu. It’s set to None but since we want to keep the information of the Sail Boat, choose the Sail Boat Channel. Additionally, you can save multiple selections, which will be later listed in this drop-down menu.

Mask Result

Protected Content-Aware-Scaling

The boat looks fantastic. We resized our image to 60% and preserved the information, but now there’s another problem. As you can see in the image below, the island looks distorted. At this point, you should be able to solve this problem yourself. Create and combine multiple Masks to solve this problem. In most cases, you don’t even have to create Masks. Let’s take a look at other options of the Content-Aware-Scaling.

Content-Aware-Scaling – Option Bar

The option bar provides some additional features like positioning, skin-tone-protecting and more. We’ll use some of these options to make sure we keep important objects untouched. Here are a few details on these options:

1. Reference Point Location

   By choosing one of the squares on the reference point locator, you can set the fixed point, which the image will be scaled around. We’ll leave it at the center position.

2. Use Relative Positioning For Reference Point

   Activating this button allows you to specify a new position of the reference point in relation to its current position. In most cases, you can go with default settings.

3. Scaling Percentage

   Photoshop maintains the Aspect Ratio by default, but if you want to change the percentage for the width and height, input your values here.


4. Amount

   This option specifies the ratio of Content-Aware-Scaling to normal Scaling (100% Content-Aware-Scaling and 0% Normal Scaling.)

5. Protect

   Here you can choose an alpha channel that specifies an area to protect.

6. Protect Skin Tones

   The little person on the far right is the protect skin tones button, which tells Photoshop to pay attention to skin tones in the image.

7. Cancel Transformation

   After resizing your image you can of course Cancel the operation.

8. Commit Transformation

   Or, Commit the operation.

Compatibility

You can use Content-Aware-Scaling on images in RGB, CMYK, Lab and Grayscale color modes. As far as I know, Content-Aware-Scaling doesn’t affect adjustment layers, layer masks, Smart Objects or layer groups. As mentioned above Content-Aware-Scaling is a new feature available in Photoshop CS4 only.

Conclusion

This tutorial reviewed Content-Aware-Scaling feature: how it works, and how it can save you time when working on your future projects. Here is an excellent video that reviews Content Aware Scaling as well. You should definitely give it a try if you are using Photoshop CS4. You may also want to check out the links below for more information about new features in CS4.

• Top New Features
• All Features
• Version Comparison
• Adobe Kuler

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