All articles copyright 2007 Jeff Coleman
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Photoshop tips.
I can't go into great detail without posting screen shots. There are some great books that can teach you every aspect of photoshop. If you're about to learn photoshop study the following topics in this order.
Layers and layer masks. These two things are absolutely essential.
Clone stamp and the band aid tool. (They allow you to remove things like blemishes.)
Curves, white point and black point. (fix exposure, contrast, color balance and more.)
Once you learn the basics it's time to learn how to get things done faster. Study the shortcuts by clicking edit, keyboard shortcuts in photoshop. Memorize the important ones. Eventually you should have enough shortcuts memorized that you don't need to use your mouse on the menu any more.
Next make actions. Let's say at the end of your editing process you resize your images to 800 pixels at 72dpi and you add your copyright information to the images meta tag, then you add a visible copyright watermark to the image. You can make an action for that and just click a single button, or program your action to a keyboard shortcut. Actions record a lot of things but they can not record things that are different on every image like brush strokes etc.
Never use the Eraser tool. You can accomplish the same thing with a layer mask The difference is, with a layer mask you can bring back the part you erased at any time. With the eraser that information is lost forever.
When retouching skin or any part of the image that requires the clone stamp tool. Magnify your image to 200%. Also use a soft edge on your brush.
Buy a pen tablet from Wacom. I can't even imagine photoshopping an image without one of these pressure sensitive pen tablets.
Amateurs tend to over photoshop images, the result is a fake look. Plastic looking skin or repeating patterns from improper use of the clone tool are most common. The photoshopped parts of your image should be indistinguishable from the rest of the image. |
