Digital Photography Guide

Photoshop CS4 Extended

There appears to be no dramatic changes to this widely used app. However a number of aids will make any image work much easier: a tabbed interface should make the work area much simpler to get around. And noticeable is the attention given to purely photographic tasks.

Vibrance

In using the Adjustments panel you don’t have to fight your way through a dialog box and its options: the new Vibrance adjustment allows increased control over colour saturation but still preserves such sensitive tones such as skin colours. There’s now a wide variety of modifiable presets for each type of change, plus more than 20 new preconfigured, customisable starting points.

Masks

With the Masks panel and working with pixel and vector masks it is now much easier to apply effects to precisely defined image areas. Using simple sliders the density and feathering of a mask can be adjusted, so you can control both the sharpness of the mask edge and how degree of adjustment you’d like to expose.

Dodge, Burn and Sponge

There have been many times I have needed to vary the exposure of an image, with a need to fix specific areas, such as unevenly lit flash shots. It has often been a pain to fix. Now you can enjoy natural results with the Dodge, Burn and Sponge tools. Tonal quality can be preserved while exposure and colour saturation can be spot-corrected.

After Effects’ new Cartoon effect stylises video sequences to impart a CGI look.

Panos

There are plenty of panorama stitching programs, some even bundled with compact digicams. Until now, Photoshop’s Photomerge (is it called that?) feature did work better than most of these, but in my opinion, not quite get there.

The upgraded Photomerge feature now blends with new vignetting and geometric distortion corrections.

Adobe has now built in enhanced blending actions along with new vignetting and geometric distortion corrections; a new option can create 360 degree panoramas. Plus there is a way to find and fix fisheye lens distortion … that is, if you wanted to correct fisheye shots!

Swings, Shifts

Ostensibly in an attempt to remove the need for the need to make shifts and swings, only available in high end cameras or perspective control lenses, Photoshop CS4 can now enhancement a scene where lighting and depth of field are limited. This appears to be a feature which leans heavily on the technology used in the Photomerge function in that it stitches separate shots and bends together their exposure variations. So, if you’ve shot a series of images that have correct focus and exposure — in parts — Auto-Blend Layers can merge these together into one acceptable single image.

Want to fix depth of field and exposure outages? Head for Auto-Blend.

Up, Down

Not all of us like to work on an image with the picture straight up and down, especially when using a graphics tablet. The new fluid canvas rotation action lets you work almost as though you were working at an easel. You can drag the image to turn the canvas to any orientation; a compass guide graphic can even be used to help you orient the image to a specific angle.

Following a similar track you can now zoom in or out smoothly and not by fixed enlargement degrees … 125 per cent, 300 per cent etc.
Integration

It’s obvious that the separate application Lightroom has bolted from the stable and won many friends for its ability to polish and improve photographic images. There is now improved and tighter integration with Photoshop. You can even open images from Lightroom directly into Photoshop CS4 as a layered Photoshop document, high dynamic range (HDR) image, panorama, or Smart Object. This means the nondestructive changes you make in one application will be recognised when you open the image in the other.

Vector Photography

Recently I discovered that much of the high end photography of cars is being displaced by vector art, which allows dramatic angle changes as well as major lighting tweaks, working with original data files.

Edit 3D Layers

Now, with Photoshop CS4 Extended, you can work with 3D models in similar fashion to dealing with 2D images, without no need to navigate through dialog boxes and special layer contents.

Merging pixel and vector art is a new trick for Illustrator — the Blob Brush extends and embellishes a Bezier-drawn object much as you would use a paint program.

Intelligent Scaling

A wow of a feature is Intelligent Image Scaling or Content-Aware Scaling. It may be of more interest to designers or photographers who have to prepare material for press in multiple formats but nevertheless it is an impressive feature.

Let’s say you have a nice picture, horizontal in format and you need to re-purpose it for a vertical page layout. Content-Aware Scaling lets you resize and recompose images simultaneously. What happens is that this feature automatically analyses the image as you adjust it and intelligently recomposes it to preserve the most visually interesting areas. It doesn’t just squeeze the image laterally; it uses an understanding of the image contents, then lets you convert a horizontal layout to a vertical.

Intelligent Image Scaling Illustrated

Using no cropping as such, the feature automatically identifies and protects important image elements, such as people, from unwanted distortion, even though the overall aspect ratio is changed.

If you need even more precise control, you can use a simple alpha channel to preserve selected image areas during scaling.

As indicated earlier, there appears to be no dramatic changes as many of the new features are layout oriented and don’t delve into an image at pixel level, which is the way that Photoshop has worked before. Is this the sign of a trend? Will it be the practice that any new tricks Adobe’s team conceives will appear in Lightroom instead?

Maybe.

Photoshop CS4 Extended Screen Shot

System Requirements

Mac OS: PowerPC G5 or multicore Intel processor. Mac OS X v10.4.11–10.5.4.
Windows: XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit Windows XP and Windows Vista).

Pricing

Photoshop Extended CS4: $999.00 USD (price currently at Amazon) (or $349 for an upgrade pack).

Need an excuse to go music shopping? I love to browse the CD covers at my local secondhand music store – the cover images are a great resource when I’m looking for new ways to showcase my photos. As an added bonus, when you copy an effect you’ll find yourself developing new Photoshop skills along the way.

My most recent inspiration came from the album Synchronicity by The Police. The album shows three black and white collages stacked down the cover each covered with a splash of paint. Check it out to the right so you know what we’re aiming for.

While my solution does away with the collages – they really deserve a post of their own - it does mimic the basic design philosophy of the CD cover. Here’s how to create this effect – the key to getting the project done fast is some smart cropping, some layer alignment tricks and the Multiply blend mode.

Step 1

Start by creating a square image the size of the final project. Mine is 1800 pixels x 1800 pixels at 300 pixels per inch in resolution and it has a transparent background.

Step 2

Open the three images to use. You want photos that you can crop to a wide rectangle and which have good detail in the cropped area. Convert your images to grayscale using your favorite tool – I used the Black & White adjustment in Photoshop CS3 – in earlier versions use the Channel Mixer – enable the Monochrome checkbox and adjust the sliders to get a good grayscale.

Step 3

Instead of simply cropping the images to size, we’ll adjust the cropped image resolution to match the final image at the same time. To do this, click the Crop tool and set the width to 5 inches, the height to 1.5 inches and the resolution to 300 pixels per inch. Drag a crop rectangle over the area of image to use and double click to crop it. Repeat for the other two images.

Step 4

Flatten each image if it is not already flattened. Then drag and drop the three image layers into your main image. Position the layers in roughly in position. Add a new layer, fill it with white and drag it below the image layers.

Step 5

Control + Click (Command + Click on the Mac) on the layer thumbnail for the white filled layer so its contents are selected. Control + Click on the other three layers (not the thumbnails, just the layers) so the layers are selected and not their contents. Choose Layer > Align Layers to Selection > Horizontal Selection – this aligns the layers with the images on them so they are centered in the image.

Step 6

To distribute the layers vertically, select all three layers that have the images on them and choose Layer > Distribute > Vertical Centers so the spacing between the images is evened out.

Step 7

Add a new layer (or drag the empty one from the bottom of the layer stack to the top). Select a bright yellow as the foreground color. Select the Brush too, add the Wet Media brushes and select the Oil Heavy Flow Small Tip brush. Adjust the brush size to around 400 pixels, set the Flow and Opacity to 100 each. In the Brushes palette, adjust the angle of the brush using the Brush tip shape options so it is aligned vertically and not at an angle.

Paint unevenly over the middle image. Repeat and paint cyan on the top image and red on the bottom one.

Step 8

Set the blend mode for the paint layer to Multiply so you can see the image under the paint. Add some text using the same blue and red colors and you’re done.

Here’s the finished result:

A duotone is an image made up of just two colors. It’s often used in the printing world where a photograph is included in a publication and where the publisher wants to use some color on the page but not pay for full color printing. As a duotone, the image is created as a mix of two colors - hence its name duotone. Typically the colors are black and a spot color but they can be any two colors.

You can convert a photo to a duotone in Photoshop using its Duotone feature and you can customize the duotone and determine just how much of each color is applied to the image.

Here’s how to convert your photo into a duotone in Photoshop:

Step 1

Open your photo in Photoshop and apply any desired adjustments to it – concentrate more on developing pleasing contrast in the image than on the colors because in the next step you will be removing the color.

Step 2

Create a black and white version of the image. Typically this is done by selecting Image > Mode > Grayscale. The problem with this conversion method is that you don’t get the chance to determine how the image is converted and it is often a lackluster result. You can do better by converting the image yourself.

I recommend using a specialist black and white conversion tool – in Photoshop CS2 you can use the Channel Mixer and in Photoshop CS3, choose the Black & White tool. To do this, choose Image > Adjustments > Black & White and drag the sliders to create your custom black and white image. Then choose Image > Mode > Grayscale and click Discard to discard the color.

Step 3

Choose Image > Mode > Duotone to display the Duotone Options dialog. From the Type list select Duotone. The first Ink color defaults to Black and you can now add a second ink color by clicking in the swatch box.

Because duotones are typically used in commercial printing, you are offered a choice of colors from a Pantone color swatch. If you aren’t printing commercially and if you prefer to use the color picker, click the Picker button and select a color this way – type a name for it in the text area.

Step 4

Click the curve icon to the left of each of the color in turn to adjust how the color is applied to the image. The highlights are on the right of the chart and the shadows on the left. Drag upwards on the curve to apply more color in that area of the image, or drag down to apply less color. This feature lets you add more of your second ink color, for example, to the highlights.

Step 5

You can save the Duotone settings by clicking the Save button and type a name for it. Later you can load those colors and the curve into the dialog to use for another image. When you are done, choose Image > Mode > RGB Color to convert back to color mode so you can continue to work on the image or to save it.

The Duotone on the right was created from an image converted to a monochrome image using Image > Mode > Grayscale. The one on the left uses a custom Black and White conversion first – notice how the differences in how the duotone colors are applied.

One of the exciting new features in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is the adjustment brush which lets you to make spot fixes to your image in Lightroom. These fixes apply to only the area you select rather than the entire image. This means you can make local adjustments for contrast, saturation, exposure, brightness, clarity and sharpness without having to take the image to Photoshop to do this.

In this post I’ll show you how to get started using the adjustment brush in Lightroom. 2

Step 1

Open Lightroom and click the Develop module. Locate the Adjustment Brush and click it to select it. Hold the brush over the image to check its size. The inner circle is the hard part of the brush and the outer circle shows the edge of the feathering. To adjust the brush size use the [ and ] keys or adjust the Size and Feather using the sliders.

Step 2

Select the adjustment to make, such as Brightness or Saturation by clicking its + symbol to increase its value or the – symbol to decrease it. Then start painting on the image to adjust that part of the image. When you start painting the effect onto the image, Lightroom places an identifying marker on the screen. Here I have Brightness selected and the marker is visible.

Step 3

If you don’t know where you have painted – and it’s often very hard to know exactly - press the O key to view or hide a mask which shows the area you have painted on. If you prefer to, you can display the mask as you work. The mask also appears if you hold your mouse over the marker.
To erase the brush strokes, click the Erase option in the brush area and erase over the area to remove the strokes. To return to painting click brush A which is the default brush and continue to paint over the area. You can also use the brush with the Alt (Option on the Mac) to remove the painted areas rather than switching between the brush and eraser.

Step 4

If the effect is too much or too little you can adjust the intensity of the effect using the slider.

Step 5

If another area of the image requires fixing, click the New option and then repeat the steps to select a fix and then paint it onto that part of the image. Later on you can adjust either of the fixes by first clicking the Adjustment Brush tool to select it and then click on the marker for the area to change – you will see that the word Edit is now highlighted - and you can now adjust the painted area or adjust the amount of the fix.
In a future post I will look at some more advanced functions of the Adjustment Brush.

Step 1

Open a new image and duplicate the background layer by right clicking it and choose Duplicate Layer. Click this new top layer and choose Filter > Noise > Median and set the radius to around 4 – 5 pixels. You want to see a general softening of the image with the beginnings of loss of detail. Click Ok.

Step 2

Duplicate this layer you’ve been working on. Set the blend mode of this new top layer to Color Dodge.

Step 3

Now invert the top layer by selecting it and choose Image > Adjustments > Invert. The image should now be white.

Step 4

With the topmost layer still selected choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Adjust the blur radius until the lines begin to appear in the image. What you’re looking for is a balance between the lines that you want and the image detail that you don’t want. Click Ok when you have an acceptable balance.

Step 5

Create a composite of the current image by clicking on the topmost layer and press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac) to create a new layer which is a composite of the layers below. This command is handy because it does this but without destroying them which would happen if you chose to flatten the image.

Step 6

If you want black lines, desaturate this top layer by choosing Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. You can now duplicate this layer a number of times and each time set the Blend Mode of the duplicate layer to Multiply. This will give you increasingly thicker and darker lines in the image. Merge these layers down to a single layer when you’re done.

Step 7

As an alternative to Step 6 you can use the Apply Image command to thicken up the lines by selecting the layer that you created in Step 5 and choose Image > Apply Image, set the blending to Multiply and click Ok. Repeat this step a number of times and you will repeatedly apply the image to itself in multiply mode each time thickening up the lines but without creating a new layer each time.

Step 8

To color the image, duplicate the background layer and drag it to the top of the layer stack. Set its blend mode to Linear Light (or Linear Burn, or something similar), and reduce the opacity to color the line drawing.

Tip: If desired, at the end of Step 5, place a new white filled layer below the new composite layer and you can remove unwanted lines or shading from the composite layer using the Eraser tool. Merge the top two layers before continuing. It’s often easier to remove unwanted lines earlier in the process than later on.