Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements for Teens

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Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements for Teens ®

®

®

Marc Campbell

© 2007 Thomson Course Technology, a division of Thomson Learning Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from Thomson Course Technology PTR, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. The Thomson Course Technology PTR logo and related trade dress are trademarks of Thomson Course Technology, a division of Thomson Learning Inc., and may not be used without written permission. Adobe and Photoshop are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Important: Thomson Course Technology PTR cannot provide software support. Please contact the appropriate software manufacturer’s technical support line or Web site for assistance. Thomson Course Technology PTR and the author have attempted throughout this book to distinguish proprietary trademarks from descriptive terms by following the capitalization style used by the manufacturer. Information contained in this book has been obtained by Thomson Course Technology PTR from sources believed to be reliable. However, because of the possibility of human or mechanical error by our sources, Thomson Course Technology PTR, or others, the Publisher does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of any information and is not responsible for any errors or omissions or the results obtained from use of such information. Readers should be particularly aware of the fact that the Internet is an ever-changing entity. Some facts may have changed since this book went to press. Educational facilities, companies, and organizations interested in multiple copies or licensing of this book should contact the Publisher for quantity discount information. Training manuals, CD-ROMs, and portions of this book are also available individually or can be tailored for specific needs.

Publisher and General Manager, Thomson Course Technology PTR: Stacy L. Hiquet Associate Director of Marketing: Sarah O’Donnell Manager of Editorial Services: Heather Talbot Marketing Manager: Heather Hurley Acquisitions Editor: Megan Belanger Marketing Assistant: Adena Flitt Project Editor/Copy Editor: Cathleen D. Snyder Technical Reviewer: David Rivers Teen Reviewer: Parker Hiquet PTR Editorial Services Coordinator: Erin Johnson Interior Layout Tech: Bill Hartman Cover Designer: Mike Tanamachi Indexer: Sharon Shock Proofreader: Gene Redding

ISBN-10: 1-59863-379-1 ISBN-13: 978-1-59863-379-5 eISBN-10: 1-59863-761-4 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006940093 Printed in the United States of America 07 08 09 10 11 BU 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Thomson Course Technology PTR, a division of Thomson Learning Inc. 25 Thomson Place ■ Boston, MA 02210 ■ http://www.courseptr.com

Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the following people: Megan Belanger, who dreamed up this project, brought me on board, helped me to develop it, and became a mommy; Cathleen Snyder, who kept my verb tenses straight, taught me how to spell humongous, and showered me with uncommon kindness, all while preparing for her wedding; David Rivers, who had the unenviable task of finding every last reference to main menu in the text and who offered sage technical advice throughout; Parker Hiquet, who read like crazy and asked some really good questions; Stacy Hiquet, who gave me time in the schedule when I needed it the most; and the fine folks at Course PTR whose names I don’t know but whose efforts I appreciate, whose contributions I respect, and whose talents I admire. Thanks to Dave Long, whose photos are my favorite part of these books but who doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of haggling. Thanks also to Neil Salkind, Lauren Johnson, Linda Thornton, and the rest of the team at Studio B, without whom I’d still be in a slush pile somewhere.

About the Author Marc Campbell is a technology author, graphic designer, and instructor. His popular guides to computer graphics have appeared around the world in five languages. He spends altogether too much time at his computer. When he isn’t trying to beat a deadline, you can find him out and about in Center City Philadelphia or at home with the lights down and the phone ringer off, his nose in a story about Robin Hood. This is his eleventh book.

Contents Introduction

x

Part I On Your Mark… 1 Meet Photoshop

3

What Is Photoshop?

3

So Then What Is Photoshop Elements? Which Photoshop Do I Need?

Trying It Out Opening a New Canvas Getting around the Interface Working with the Tools Saving Your Work

4 7

8 9 10 16 21

2 All About Pixels

23

Meet the Pixel

23

All About Resolution

25

How Resolution Works Adjusting Resolution

25 30

vi

Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements for Teens

All About Color

32

How Color Models Work Exploring Other Ways to Choose Colors About Color Modes

34 37 39

3 All About Layers

45

What Are Layers?

45

Creating New Layers

51

Rearranging Layers

60

Locking Layer Content

64

Merging Layers

65

Part II Get Set… 4 Editing Images

71

Making a Selection

71

Selecting with the Marquee Tools Selecting with the Magic Wand Selecting with the Lasso Tools Selecting with the Selection Brushes in Photoshop Elements Selecting with the Quick Selection Tool in Photoshop CS3

73 75 77 79 82

Contents

Working with Selected Pixels Moving the Pixels Transforming the Pixels Transferring the Pixels to a Different Layer

Changing the Canvas Cropping and Expanding the Canvas Scaling the Image

vii

82 82 85 91

92 93 96

5 Painting and Retouching Images Using the Brush Setting the Tip Setting the Blending Mode Setting the Opacity Using Airbrush Mode Setting Other Options

Adding Fills Using the Paint Bucket Using the Gradient Tool Creating Fill Layers

Erasing

101 101 106 107 111 112 113

115 116 118 120

123

6 Doing More with Special Layers

129

Drawing Shapes

129

Working with Type

137

Creating Clipping Masks

146

Using Adjustment Layers

151

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7 Applying Special Effects

157

Setting the Blending Mode and Opacity of a Layer

157

Applying Layer Styles and Filters

162

Working with Layer Styles in Photoshop Elements Working with Layer Styles in Photoshop CS3 Working with Filters in Photoshop Elements Working with Filters in Photoshop CS3

165 168 170 173

Part III Go! 8 Making Image Files and Prints Making Image Files Downsampling the Image to Screen Resolution Resizing the Width Saving the Image File

Making Prints Determining the Optimum Resolution Resampling the Image to the Optimum Resolution Printing

179 179 180 182 184

191 192 194 195

9 Dressing Up Your Digital Lifestyle

199

Designing Avatars

199

Making Desktop Wallpaper

212

Contents

ix

10 Creating Animation

221

Looking at Animated GIFs

221

Animating with Layers in Photoshop Elements

225

Animating with Frames in Photoshop CS3

238

Exporting the Animation

243

11 Designing Websites

247

Looking at Websites

247

Laying Out the Design

251

Slicing the Layout

262

Exporting the Layout

266

12 Putting Out a Line of Merchandise 269 Looking at Logos and Branding

269

Putting Your Logo on Gift Items and Clothing

276

Index

285

x


Introduction I’m happy to report that wishes come true. Maybe not all of them, maybe not all the time, but every now and then, when you least expect it, you turn around to find that your wish has been granted. I came to this conclusion from personal experience. Last year I was working on a book for Thomson Course Technology PTR called Digital Photography for Teens. The truth be told, I was having a blast. I got the chance to work with my photographer pal, Dave Long, or the Australian, as I call him in front of the publisher. The people at Course turned out to be super-professional as well as superfriendly, which is always a plus. But most importantly, I got to talk about digital photography, which was a nice break from the web design stuff that my books have been about lately. And I was able to work in another favorite topic of mine: Adobe Photoshop. I hadn’t done a book on that since 2002. As you might expect in a book about digital photography, the digital photography had to come first. Whenever I mentioned Photoshop, I made sure that I did it in the context of whatever was going on with the camera. And while plenty of Photoshop topics came up, there were just as many that didn’t seem to fit, no matter how hard I tried to make them. I was able to sneak a few of them in through the back door, but really, how much can you say about the Brush tool when you’re taking pictures instead of painting them? (Not much, as it turns out.) It became all too apparent as Dave and I were writing that book that, given the slightest opportunity, I simply would not shut up about Adobe Photoshop. After a while, I got tired of keeping my mouth in check. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I said to myself, “if I could do an entire book just like Digital Photography for Teens but about Photoshop instead?” That must have counted as a wish, and it must have been my turn for a wish to be granted, because not long after Dave and I handed in the last revisions, I received an email from our editor, Megan Belanger. “Adobe Photoshop for Teens,” she said, among a bunch of other things that I didn’t pay attention to. She had said the magic words. I had to play it cool, though. It would do no good to appear too eager. So I replied with something like, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Introduction

xi

Maybe I’ll think about it, and maybe I won’t.” Meanwhile I was making a mental list of all the topics I wanted to cover. So that’s my story about how a wish came true. This book isn’t so much a sequel to Digital Photography for Teens as it is a companion volume. For those of you who’ve read our digital photography book, Uncle Frank sends his regards, although he doesn’t appear in these pages. The Australian’s schedule was likewise spoken for, so he wasn’t able to come along as a co-author on this one, but he did offer up a pleasing heap of photos, which I’m sure you’ll enjoy as you flip through the chapters. In planning what to talk about, I decided to focus on all the Photoshop topics that missed out the first time around, so if you have read Digital Photography for Teens, you’ll find that I kept the repetition of topics to a bare minimum. If you haven’t read it, and if you’re eager for more, some of the features and options that I mention in passing in this book receive a more thorough treatment in the previous one. The outline for this book went through a couple revisions before Megan’s and my thinking clicked. We decided to up the number of hands-on projects, which Dave and I had packed into one or two chapters in the last book. As usual, we tried to pick the projects that would be of the most interest to you. But before I could set you loose on them, there was a certain amount of background information that I absolutely had to cover. With software as powerful as Photoshop, there’s just no getting off the learning curve, which can be a bit steep in places. We ended up deciding on a three-part breakdown: •

Part I: On Your Mark. This part includes Chapters 1, 2, and 3. In it, I talk about the Photoshop fundamentals, such as using the interface, working with pixels, and creating and managing layers. Dave and I covered all this material in the digital photography book, but I have the luxury of going into more detail here.

•

Part II: Get Set. This part stretches from Chapter 4 to Chapter 7. It builds on what you’ve learned in Part I to show you how to tackle design and production. This part is where you make selections, edit images, paint with the Brush, draw shapes, add text, and apply special effects and filters.

•

Part III: Go. This part starts with Chapter 8 and sees you through to the end of the book in Chapter 12. It contains the hands-on projects that Megan and I were eager to include. You draw on the topics of the previous chapters to do things such as make prints, create avatars for your online profile, dress up your computer desktop, build animation, lay out websites, design logos, and prepare images for print-on-demand services.

xii


The sidebars from Digital Photography for Teens are back, but in a modified form: Tips are for handy tricks, bits of advice, the occasional reminder, and other assorted Photoshop goodies.

In Depths give you more information on the subject at hand. They’re there for you if a particular topic catches your interest. Otherwise, feel free to skip them.

CS3 Alerts provide alternate instructions for those of you using Photoshop CS3 as opposed to Photoshop Elements. (See Chapter 1 for more information.)

Cautions warn you about potential snags or drawbacks and offer suggestions for fixing them or working around them.

As far as previous technical experience goes, this book assumes very little. If you have access to a computer (Windows or Mac; it makes no difference), and if that computer has Photoshop installed, and if you have an interest in using it to design and edit digital images, then you already have everything you need. You can enter this book as an absolute beginner and come out of it as a seasoned photoshopper, with skills enough to do almost anything that your projects for home, friends, and school require. Also, you’ll be in great shape to further your Photoshop journey, because while this book gives you all the essentials plus a healthy dose of the extras, there’s plenty more about Photoshop to discover and learn. This book is hardly the last word on the subject. Where your journey will eventually lead you, who knows? But every journey needs a place to start, and I thank you for bringing this book along with you on yours. It’s my sincere hope that you’ll enjoy yourself while you’re at it. That might even count as a wish, and if it does, look out! Lately I’ve had good luck with those.

Part I On Your Mark…

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1 Meet Photoshop Are you a Photoshop newbie? This chapter is for you. It tells you what Photoshop is and gives you a taste for what it can do. In this chapter I define some terms, explain some concepts, and then set you loose on a doodling exercise. Even if you’re an old pro, you might want to take a gander here anyway, just so we’re all on the same page when the fun begins.

What Is Photoshop? Photoshop is an image editor—that’s software for working with computer graphics. You use it to touch up digital photos, prepare images for all kinds of printing, and design and create original artwork. Photoshop isn’t just another image editor, though. It’s the image editor. As in the best in the world. It’s the first choice for pros in all kinds of fields, from photographers and architects to advertisers and cartoonists. Take almost any media image—the airbrushed supermodel in a glossy magazine, the idiotic billboard by the highway, a movie poster, a greeting card, the cover of your favorite CD, a page from a comic book, the special effects in a summer blockbuster, the textures in a video game, the animated characters in a cartoon, the pictures in a newspaper, the pictures on a website, even the graphics on your cell phone and the TV

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news. The chances are extremely good that it’s been through Photoshop at least once in its digital lifetime. If you plan on working anywhere in the media, you’ll use this software on a daily basis. Photoshop plays a part in creating most digital images, but sometimes it takes a supporting role. For example, the graphics in a 3D video game come from special modeling software, such as Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya, or NewTek LightWave 3D, not Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t have the capability to render 3D images and environments. But the skins or textures that the 3D models wear are regular old two-dimensional graphics, and these very often come from Photoshop. Likewise, although some line artists create their work directly in Photoshop, it’s more common for them to work in a dedicated drawing application such as Adobe Illustrator. After they’ve gotten the basic image down, they transfer it into Photoshop for the finishing touches. Other pros, including web designers, often work in Photoshop exclusively. They create, edit, and produce all of their images without the assistance of any other software.

Photoshop is so popular that it has become a verb. To photoshop means to edit a digital image, as in, “I’m photoshopping these pictures for the yearbook.” Photoshopping can be a simple procedure, such as changing the color of the sun (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2), but it can also describe something more complex, such as merging a couple of American presidents (see Figures 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5). In 2008, Photoshop turns 18, so the software might be older than you are! Photoshop version 1.0 came out in 1990. When it launched, it was for Macintosh computers only. Version 2.5 was the first that worked on the Windows platform; that was in 1992. The most current Photoshop is version 10, also known as Photoshop CS3, which shipped in the spring of 2007.

So Then What Is Photoshop Elements? The industry-standard image editor comes with a price: $649 U.S., to be exact. This is more than many people are willing to pay, especially when they’re just starting out. Because Photoshop is essential equipment for any kind of modern media production, and because creative types are almost always dirt poor, Adobe decided to produce a stripped-down version of the software and offer it at a stripped-down price.

Chapter 1: Meet Photoshop

Figure 1.1 This is the sun. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Figure 1.3 This is President George W. Bush. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

Figure 1.2 Change it to green in Photoshop with a couple easy mouse clicks.

Figure 1.4 This is President Richard M. Nixon. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

Figure 1.5 Use Photoshop to make a portrait of President George M. W. Nixon.

5

6


Baby Photoshops have been around since the early days, but it took a while for the concept to catch on. Adobe’s first two commercial attempts were PhotoDeluxe and Photoshop Limited Edition (or Photoshop LE). PhotoDeluxe was easy to use but extremely restricted in its feature set, while Photoshop LE delivered on the features but seemed overly complex and daunting to use. Not surprisingly, neither application appealed to consumers. Then, in 2001, Adobe introduced Photoshop Elements 1.0. It had the robust capabilities of Photoshop LE but the user-friendly interface of PhotoDeluxe, along with special features unavailable in the full version of Photoshop. It struck the right balance between power and price, and it turned out to be a major hit. The most recent version of Photoshop Elements, version 5.0, came out in the fall of 2006. It sells for $99.99, which is substantially less than the full version of Photoshop, yet it’s more than enough Photoshop for most people’s needs. In fact, Photoshop Elements might be a little too good, because some professionals use it instead of its older sibling. Compare the magenta sun in Figure 1.6 with the green one in Figure 1.2, and you’ll be hard-pressed to see any difference in quality, but the magenta sun comes from Photoshop Elements, while the green one comes from the full version of Photoshop.

Figure 1.6 This magenta sun from Photoshop Elements is virtually identical in quality to the green one from Photoshop CS3.


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How exactly are Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements different? In a nutshell, the full version of Photoshop offers a complete set of features for preparing images for press, while Photoshop Elements doesn’t. What this means is that if you need to create art for a professionally published book or magazine, Photoshop Elements doesn’t take you all the way. You can edit the images with a great deal of precision, but you can’t format them for output to a printing press. You also lose some of the more advanced functions on the editing side. You’ll encounter some of these over the course of this book. What you do get in Photoshop Elements is all the essential editing tools, more than enough to do plenty of photoshopping. You might not be able to prep your work for press, but you can easily print it out on a desktop printer or export it as an image file for display onscreen. And if you’re creating stuff for your own enjoyment or to share with your circle of family and friends, you don’t need to worry about mass production anyway. You’re dealing strictly with very limited runs. If you don’t require a printing press, you don’t require Photoshop CS3. Photoshop Elements gives you everything you need.

Which Photoshop Do I Need? It’s up to you. The vast majority of projects and examples in this book work equally well in Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements. Sometimes the steps aren’t exactly the same, but I’ll alert you to those instances as they come up. From this point on, I’m going to assume that you’re using Photoshop Elements. If you’re in Photoshop CS3, you should be able to follow along easily enough. When there’s a difference between the two, I’ll give you a CS3 Alert and supply alternate instructions. I should also point out that when I say Photoshop, you can take that to mean either the full version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements—whichever one you’re using—because what I’m talking about applies to both equally. If I want to make a specific point about one or the other, I’ll say Photoshop CS3 for the full version and Photoshop Elements for the stripped-down one.

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Trying It Out Whenever I sit down with a new piece of software, I like to take it out on a trial run. I don’t get too productive right away. I click buttons and peek in menus and see what the software has to offer. Basically I goof off. This section steps you through one such orientation exercise. If you’re using Photoshop Elements, you probably get the Welcome screen when you launch the application (see Figure 1.7). Photoshop Elements comes with two distinct components: Organizer and Editor. The Organizer helps you to catalog your library of digital images, while the Editor provides all the photoshopping tools. For the purposes of this book, you want to go into the Editor. The Editor component itself has two modes: Quick Fix and Full Edit. There’s nothing wrong with Quick Fix mode, but Full Edit gives you more of a complete Photoshop experience (and it provides the most editing options), so that’s the one that I’ll use throughout this book. To go into Full Edit mode, click the Edit and Enhance Photos icon at the top of the Welcome screen. Don’t click Quickly Fix Photos; that one takes you to Quick Fix mode. Once you’re in the Editor, you can switch between Full Edit and Quick Fix modes by clicking the tabs at the top of the interface.

Figure 1.7 The Welcome screen in Photoshop Elements takes you to either the Organizer or the Editor.


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If you want to start in the Editor whenever you launch Photoshop Elements, choose Editor from the Start Up In menu at the bottom of the Welcome screen. To go back to the Welcome screen at startup, choose Window > Welcome from the main menu and pick Welcome Screen from the Start Up In menu.

Opening a New Canvas A canvas is a document in Photoshop. To open one, either you can load an existing image file by choosing File > Open from the menu bar or you can create a blank canvas from scratch. For the sake of testing Photoshop out, go with a blank canvas. Choose File > New > Blank File from the main menu, and the New dialog box will appear (see Figure 1.8). Figure 1.8 Create a blank canvas from the New dialog box.

To open the New dialog box in Photoshop CS3, choose File > New from the menu bar.

In the Name field, type a name for the document. Test is as good a name as any, so type that. From the Preset menu, choose Default Photoshop Elements Size. This sets the dimensions of the canvas to 6 inches wide by 4 inches tall at a resolution of 300 dpi. Surely you’ve heard of inches before, but resolution might be something new. I’ll talk about this concept at length in Chapter 2, “All About Pixels.” For now, just make a mental note of it. Choose Default Photoshop Size from the Preset menu in CS3, and you get a canvas that is 7 inches wide by 5 inches tall at a resolution of 72 dpi. You don’t have to change these numbers to match the ones in Photoshop Elements. The Photoshop CS3 defaults are fine.

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From the Color Mode menu, choose RGB Color. I won’t get into exactly why just yet; that’s coming in Chapter 2 also. From the Color Mode menu in CS3, choose RGB Color. Then pick 8 Bit from the menu immediately to its right.

Finally, from the Background Contents menu, choose White. This will set the initial color of the canvas. Click OK, and Photoshop will open the canvas in a new document window (see Figure 1.9).

Figure 1.9 Photoshop opens a blank canvas to your specifications.

Getting around the Interface Allow me to take you on a brief tour of the interface. Photoshop might appear complicated when you see it for the first time, but it’s really not so bad once you know what you’re looking at.


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Using the Toolbox The Toolbox appears on the left side of the screen (see Figures 1.10 and 1.11). This is where you’ll find the various painting and editing tools that Photoshop has to offer. If you don’t see the Toolbox, choose Window > Tools from the main menu. Figure 1.10 The Toolbox in Photoshop Elements contains tools for all your photoshopping needs.

Figure 1.11 The Toolbox in Photoshop CS3 is similar.

Each icon in the Toolbox corresponds to a tool. To select a tool, click its icon with the mouse button. Options for the currently selected tool appear in the bar along the top of the interface (see Figure 1.12).

Figure 1.12 Options for the currently selected tool appear in the bar along the top of the interface.

If you look closely at the icons in the Toolbox, you see that some of them have a small black arrow in the lower-right corner. This tells you that there’s a group of related tools hidden under that particular icon. Click the icon and hold down the mouse button, and a context menu will appear, showing all the hidden tools in

12


the group (see Figure 1.13). When you select one of the hidden tools, its icon replaces the one you started out with on the button in the Toolbox. Figure 1.13 Hold down the mouse button on a marked tool icon to reveal a menu of hidden tools.

Using the Palette Bin in Photoshop Elements On the right side of the screen in Photoshop Elements, you’ll find the Palette Bin (see Figure 1.14). It contains Photoshop’s palettes, which are like control panels. They enable you to review the structure of your document, adjust properties, tweak tool settings, and so on. Figure 1.14 Photoshop Elements’ palettes appear in the Palette Bin.

Photoshop gives you many different palettes, but only a few of them are visible by default. They’re designed to be opened or expanded when you need them, and then closed or collapsed. To expand or collapse a palette, click the arrow icon to the left of its name (see Figure 1.15).


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Figure 1.15 Expand or collapse a palette by clicking the arrow icon to the left of its name.

To add a palette to the Palette Bin, look under the Window menu in the menu bar and choose any palette that doesn’t already have a check mark next to it. (Checked palettes are currently open and expanded.) The palette that you selected will appear as a separate window next to the Palette Bin (see Figure 1.16). Click the More button toward the top of the palette on the right, and a context menu will open. Choose Place in Palette Bin When Closed to enable this option. Now, simply close the palette. You can also drag the window directly into the Palette Bin and drop it into place. Either way, Photoshop Elements will add the new palette to the Palette Bin, where you can collapse and expand it with a mouse click (see Figure 1.17). Figure 1.16 Open a new palette and it will appear in its own window next to the Palette Bin.

Figure 1.17 Drag and drop the window into the Palette Bin.

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To remove a palette from the Palette Bin, click the More button to open the palette’s menu and deselect the Place in Palette Bin When Closed option. Then drag the palette out of the Palette Bin and click its orange X button in the upperright corner. To hide the entire Palette Bin, click the arrow icon at the bottom-right of the screen. Click the arrow icon again to bring the Palette Bin back.

Using the Palette Docks in Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3 has palettes very much like the ones in Photoshop Elements, but they appear in palette docks along the right side of the screen (see Figure 1.18). There are two docks. The dock on the left is collapsed by default, so all you see are its palette icons. To open a palette, click its icon (see Figure 1.19). Click the icon again to close the palette.

Figure 1.18 Photoshop CS3’s palettes appear in palette docks along the right side of the screen.

Figure 1.19 Open a palette in a collapsed palette dock by clicking the palette’s icon.


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You can expand or collapse the entire dock by clicking its arrow icon, which appears along the top (see Figure 1.20). Collapsing both docks reduces the amount of clutter onscreen while keeping the palettes at your fingertips (see Figure 1.21).

Figure 1.21 Collapse both palette docks to reduce onscreen clutter.

Figure 1.20 Expand or collapse a palette dock by clicking its arrow icon.

When a palette dock is expanded, the individual palettes appear under various tabs instead of icons. Click a tab to show the palette (see Figure 1.22). You can expand or collapse rows of tabs by clicking the minimize/maximize icon in the upper-right corner of the row (see Figure 1.23). To remove a palette entirely, select it and click its X icon. To bring the palette back again, choose it from the Window menu.

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The context menu for the selected palette will appear when you click the menu icon just below the minimize/maximize button (see Figure 1.24).

Figure 1.24 Open the context menu for the palette by clicking its menu icon. Figure 1.23 Minimize or maximize rows of tabs.

Figure 1.22 When a palette dock is expanded, click the tabs to show the palettes.

Working with the Tools There’s your orientation. Now it’s time to give the tools a try. You’ll start by painting into your new canvas, and then you’ll adjust the view.

Painting Remember when I told you that some of the tools in Photoshop are hidden by default? The Pencil is one such tool. Move the mouse pointer into the Toolbox, and click and hold on the Brush tool—this is the one between the Eraser and the Paint Bucket. Wait for the context menu to appear, and choose the Pencil tool.


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Don’t let me throw you if I say painting here instead of drawing. Drawing would seem to make more sense, but painting is actually more accurate. The reason has to do with the type of computer graphics that you’re creating. There are two main kinds of graphics: raster or bitmap graphics and vector graphics. Technically speaking, these two are worlds apart. Raster graphics are grids of small colored rectangles called pixels, as you’ll see in Chapter 2. Vector graphics, on the other hand, are mathematical models that describe the shapes or outlines of the elements in an image. Rasters and vectors are so different that if you want to work with both, you need two different pieces of software. Photoshop and other image editors are all about raster graphics (although the better ones such as Photoshop also do some basic vector stuff on the side). Applications such as Adobe Illustrator and Microsoft Expression Design specialize in vector graphics (but do a little bit with rasters, too). Somewhere along the way, the process of creating raster graphics became known as painting, while creating vector graphics became known as drawing. You’re about to create a raster image in Photoshop, so painting is the word that best describes what you’re doing, even if it feels more like drawing when you do it.

In Photoshop CS3, the Brush tool is between the Spot Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp in the Toolbox.

To paint, move the mouse pointer onto your blank canvas. Position it wherever you want to start doodling, and hold down the mouse button. Drag the mouse, and you paint with the Pencil. Release the mouse button to lift the Pencil from the canvas. Easy, right? Don’t worry about producing a great work of art. Scribbles are fine. Have a look at mine (see Figure 1.25). I cheated a little; I increased the thickness of the Pencil by dragging the Size slider in the tool options along the top of the screen. To change the thickness of the Pencil in Photoshop CS3, open the Brush menu in the tool options along the top of the screen, and then drag the Master Diameter slider.

There’s a lot more to say on the subject of painting, but it can wait until Chapter 5, “Painting and Retouching Images.” Squiggles with the Pencil are good enough for now.

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Figure 1.25 Paint some squiggles in the canvas with the Pencil tool.

Setting the View of the Canvas Sometimes when you’re photoshopping, you want to get in really close so that you can see what you’re doing. Other times, you want to step back and look at the canvas as a whole. The Zoom tool enables you to make these kinds of adjustments. It doesn’t actually change the size of your canvas, but it does increase or decrease the canvas’ magnification level. To swap the currently selected tool with the Zoom tool, hold down Ctrl+spacebar (Windows) or Command+spacebar (Mac). If you want to zoom out instead, hold down Ctrl+Alt+spacebar (Windows) or Command+Option+spacebar (Mac).

Go to the Toolbox and click the Zoom tool. It’s between the Move tool and the Hand tool. Move the mouse pointer onto the canvas and click anywhere to increase the magnification (see Figure 1.26). Continue clicking to zoom in further. To zoom in on a particular region of the canvas, hold down the mouse button and drag a rectangular marquee or a selection rectangle. When you release the mouse button, Photoshop will fill the canvas with the selection.


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In CS3, the Zoom tool is the bottommost tool in the Toolbox, right beneath the Hand.

Figure 1.26 Increase the magnification level of the canvas using the Zoom tool.

To decrease the magnification level, hold down the Alt key (Windows) or the Option key (Mac) and click the canvas. You can also click the Zoom Out icon in the tool options along the top of the screen. There are many other ways to set the magnification level of the canvas. ✦ Choose View > Fit on Screen from the menu bar to make the document

window as large as possible. Photoshop will set the magnification level so that you can see the entire canvas. ✦ Choose View > Actual Pixels to set the magnification level to 100 percent. ✦ Choose View > Print Size to make the canvas the same size onscreen as it

will be when you print it out. Photoshop will adjust the magnification level accordingly.

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✦ The Actual Pixels, Fit Screen, and Print Size buttons in the Zoom tool’s

options along the top of the screen work exactly like the corresponding menu commands. ✦ To set the magnification level to a specific percentage, type the percentage

in the field in the lower-left corner of the document window and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac).

Very often, when you’re zoomed in, you can’t see the entire canvas at once. You can always drag the scrollbars along the sides of the canvas to reposition your view, but for better control, go for the Hand tool. That’s the one between the Zoom tool and the Eyedropper. Hold down the spacebar to swap the currently selected tool with the Hand.

To use the Hand, grab it from the Toolbox and move the mouse pointer anywhere onto the canvas. Hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse to push the canvas in any direction (see Figure 1.27).

Figure 1.27 Reposition the canvas in its document window using the Hand tool.


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The Navigator palette makes zipping around your canvas a breeze. It gives you a slider for setting the magnification level of the document window. It also shows a thumbnail, or a miniature picture, of your document. The red rectangle on the thumbnail represents the current view of the document window. Drag the red rectangle on the thumbnail to reposition the view. Choose Window > Navigator from the main menu to open this palette if you don’t see it onscreen.

Saving Your Work When you’re finished editing the canvas, it’s time to save your work to disk. But why wait until you’re finished editing? Saving is one of the few ideas that’s never bad. Save your stuff regularly and often, and you protect it from crashes, glitches, outages, and meltdowns, no matter when they choose to strike. Photoshop provides a couple special commands for saving and exporting your document, which you’ll explore later in this book. But for good old-fashioned save-the-document saves, your choices are two: File > Save and File > Save As. The first time you save the canvas, these commands work exactly the same— more on that in a moment. For each subsequent save, File > Save overwrites the current file, while File > Save As enables you to create a new version of the file by choosing a new file name or save location. Save As is safer, so it’s usually the better bet. Use File > Save only when you’re absolutely sure that you don’t need the original file. Your canvas is brand new and as yet unsaved, so choosing File > Save or File > Save As from the menu bar opens the same Save As dialog box. Navigate to a convenient folder on your hard disk, such as the My Pictures folder under My Documents (Windows) or the Pictures folder in your home directory (Mac). If you want, you can click the Create New Folder icon on the Save As dialog box and make a folder inside My Pictures or Pictures especially for your Photoshop documents. Photoshop pre-fills the File Name field with the name of the canvas that you supplied when you first created it. Use this name if you like, or change it to something else. If you’re saving a new version of an existing canvas, try keeping the file name the same and attaching a number to the end of it, with or without an underscore character, like this: Test_01 or Test01. Putting a zero before a singledigit number ensures that your computer’s operating system will keep all the versions of Test in chronological order when it alphabetizes the files. Just don’t put a

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zero before a double-digit number, or this trick will backfire. You want Test_12 or Test12, not Test_012 or Test012. From the Format menu, choose Photoshop (*.PSD, *.PDD) if it isn’t already selected. PSD format is the standard for Photoshop saves, much like DOC is the standard for Microsoft Word. It’s the best possible format for your production files—the versions of your work that you keep on your computer and store in your archives. Unfortunately, it isn’t the wisest choice for files that you want to share with friends and family. Unless your peeps have Photoshop or some other Photoshop-friendly image editor, they won’t be able to open your files. But if that’s an obstacle, it’s easily overcome. All you have to do is save copies of your PSD files in a shareable image format, as you’ll see in Part III of this book. For now, go with the PSD option. Click the Save button, and Photoshop will save your canvas as a PSD file. You can safely close the document window or you can continue editing. Don’t forget to choose File > Save As the next time you save; otherwise, Photoshop will overwrite the original PSD file. When you save in PSD format, Photoshop CS3 will display a dialog box that contains the Maximize Compatibility option. Check this option to improve the chances of another application being able to open and read your PSD file. If you don’t plan on opening the file with any other software besides Photoshop CS3, you can save a little storage space on your hard disk by unchecking this option.

In this chapter, you became acquainted with Photoshop. You learned about what Photoshop does and how professional graphics people use it to edit and produce digital images. I gave you a quick tour of the interface, and then you got down to business with opening a canvas and playing around with the Pencil tool. Your Photoshop journey is just beginning, so when you’re ready to continue, I’ll meet you in Chapter 2.

2 1 All About Pixels Pixels and Photoshop go hand in hand. When you paint, select from, and edit an image, you’re painting, selecting from, and editing pixels. You met pixels in passing in Chapter 1, but now it’s time for a proper introduction. In this chapter, I present these humble but noble bits of data and explain how your computer makes pictures from them.

Meet the Pixel Pixels are very small colored rectangles. Put enough of them in a grid of rows and columns, and you get an image—a raster or bitmap graphic, to be precise. Because the pixels are so small, the human eye blends them, and you see a continuous image instead of the individual pixels that make it up. If you zoom in close enough, though, the shape of the pixels becomes more obvious, which makes the image that they carry harder to discern (see Figure 2.1). Newspaper photos work on a similar principle. When you see the photo from normal reading distance, it looks like a photo. Maybe it’s a little grainer than usual, but at least you know what you’re looking at. Get out a magnifying glass, and you see quite easily that the photo is made up of hundreds if not thousands of individual dots. Up close, it’s hard to tell exactly what the image is supposed to be. Each pixel in a raster graphic has one and only one color value. You can have a red pixel, a blue pixel, a yellow pixel, an orange pixel, and so on, but you can’t have a pixel that’s both red and blue. Further, all the pixels in a particular image are exactly the same size; one pixel isn’t bigger or smaller than another.

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Figure 2.1 Zoom in close on a raster graphic, and you begin to see the grid of pixels that make up the image. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The word pixel is short for picture element. It first appeared in 1965 in a couple of articles by Frederic C. Billingsley, an engineer at Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Billingsley worked on digital image processing for the United States space program. Nobody seems to know whether he originally coined the term. A competing term, pel, appeared around the same time. For a while, pixel and pel were used interchangeably, although pel has since gone the way of the Apollo moon landing: ancient history. Many of the photos in this book come courtesy of the archives at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a tribute to Billingsley, Caltech, the space program, and, of course, pixels.

However, that’s not to say that pixels are always the same size from one raster image to the next. Given 10 different raster graphics, the pixels could very easily be 10 different sizes. In one image, the pixels might be larger, in which case their rectangular shape is more obvious to the human eye (see Figure 2.2). In another image, they might be smaller, which makes them harder to pick out (see Figure 2.3).

Chapter 2: All About Pixels

Figure 2.2 The pixels in this image of the planet Saturn are fairly large—1/16th of an inch each—so the rectangular shape of the individual pixels is easy to see. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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Figure 2.3 The pixels in this image of Saturn are much smaller—1/300th of an inch each! You can look all day, but you’d need a microscope to see the rectangular shape of the individual pixels. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

All About Resolution Because pixels come in countless sizes, some larger, some smaller, the concept of resolution is an important one in the world of Photoshop. It’s also one of the most confusing concepts. This section will help you to make sense of it.

How Resolution Works Resolution is the pixel density of an image. It tells you how many pixels are packed into a given amount of space, which in turn tells you the size of each pixel. Highresolution or high-res images contain more pixels per inch than low-resolution or low-res images, so the pixels in a high-res image are smaller. Glance back at Figures 2.2 and 2.3 for a moment. The pixels in Figure 2.2 are 1/16th of an inch in size, which means that you can fit 256 of them into every square inch on the image. One-sixteenth of an inch might seem miniscule, but for a pixel, it’s humungous. The resulting image is so blocky and low-res that nobody would want to look at it.

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By contrast, the pixels in Figure 2.3 are 1/300th of an inch in size, so you can fit 900 of them into every square inch. With a resolution this high, the individual pixels are invisible at normal magnification, so the image that they convey is continuous and smooth. You measure the resolution of a raster graphic in pixels per inch (ppi) or dots per inch (dpi). Pixels per inch is the more accurate measure for onscreen images, while dots per inch is better for images in print, but many designers use these terms interchangeably. Even though the images that you see in these pages have been printed out, I’ll talk about them as if they were still onscreen. So Figure 2.2 with its 16 pixels per inch has a resolution of 16 ppi, while Figure 2.3 has a resolution of 300 ppi. Higher resolution also means finer detail and more nuances in color and shading. If you zoom in on the image of Saturn from Figure 2.3, you see one of its moons—but just barely (see Figure 2.4). In Figure 2.2, the pixels are larger than the moon itself, so the image can’t resolve it, and it vanishes from view (see Figure 2.5). This is what graphics people mean when they say that high-res images contain more visual information or have better image quality than low-res ones. So high-res images give you more pixels per inch (and therefore smaller pixels overall), and they contain more visual information. Does this mean that high-res is always better than low-res? Here’s where it starts to get tricky. Every output device, whether it’s a monitor screen, a cell-phone display, a desktop printer, or a printing press, has an effective resolution cap. In other words, there’s a point at which the pixels can’t get any smaller for a very good practical reason: That’s as small as the device can make them. Take a typical computer monitor. Most Windows monitors display at a resolution of 96 ppi, which is on the low side, all things considered. (Mac monitors display at an even lower resolution of 72 ppi.) So what happens if you open a highresolution, 300-ppi image in Photoshop? The resolution of the image file is more than three times the resolution of the output device, so the computer does the only thing it can do in this situation: It displays the pixels at more than three times their actual size (see Figures 2.6 and 2.7). This is why high-res images from your digital camera or scanner look so big onscreen but print out at their proper dimensions.


Figure 2.4 Zoom in on the high-res Saturn to see one of the planet’s moons. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

Figure 2.5 Zoom in on the low-res Saturn, and the moon is nowhere in sight because the pixels of the image are larger than the moon itself. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

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Figure 2.6 This photo of Uranus in crescent at 300 ppi should be 3 inches wide by 3 inches tall, but your computer makes it look much larger than that at 100percent magnification because it can’t display resolutions higher than 96 ppi. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Figure 2.7 You have to reduce the magnification level to 24 percent to get the image to appear onscreen at its proper dimensions. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)


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By contrast, when the image has a resolution of 96 ppi—the same resolution as the output device—its onscreen dimensions and actual physical dimensions are exactly the same (see Figure 2.8). Figure 2.8 When the image has a resolution of 96 ppi, its onscreen dimensions and actual dimensions are exactly the same on a 96-ppi monitor. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It stands to reason, then, that when you create an image for display onscreen, say for your blog or webpage, a lower resolution of 96 or even 72 ppi is what you need. Anything higher than that goes to waste because it’s more resolution than the monitor can handle. As you’ve seen, the excess resolution can very easily cause mischief by making the image appear larger than it really is. On the other hand, when you print out an image at 96 or 72 ppi, it usually looks terrible. Onscreen it’s fine, but get it on paper, and it turns grainy or fuzzy. This happens because your printer works at a higher resolution than your computer monitor, and good old inexpensive paper soaks up the visual information much better than the most costly and sophisticated digital display. In other words, the lack of resolution becomes more noticeable in print, so you want to use higherresolution images. Determining the very best resolution for your images is something of a scavenger hunt, especially when it comes to print, as you’ll see in Chapter 8, “Making Image Files and Prints,” although a couple standards have emerged. These aren’t

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perfect; they’re more like rules of thumb, but they give you a pretty good place to start. For onscreen images, the standard resolution is 72 ppi—72 instead of 96 to account for the Mac users among us. For images that you intend to print, the standard resolution is 300 ppi. Remember in Chapter 1 when you created a new canvas from scratch? I asked you to make a mental note of the Resolution field in the New dialog box, and now you know the reason why. When you create an image for onscreen use, set the resolution of the canvas to 72 ppi, but when you create an image that you intend to print out, you want a higher-res canvas of 300 ppi. Of course, you don’t always know what you want to do with an image when you first sit down to create its canvas. You might start out by designing a logo for your website and then decide that it would look great on a coffee mug. To give yourself the most flexibility, work with high-res PSD files—300 ppi should do it. This way, you can print out the files at high resolution when the need arises, and if you need copies for posting on the web, you can easily create lower-res, 72-dpi versions. But now I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll come back to this topic again in Chapter 4, “Editing Images.” There’s another downside to high-res images: Your computer has to work harder to display them. High-res images contain more pixels and therefore more visual information than their low-res counterparts, so high-res image files take up more space on your hard disk and consume more of your computer system’s resources. If you open a lot of high-res images in Photoshop at the same time, your computer might begin to respond sluggishly. And if you need to send the high-res files across the Internet, it takes you longer to upload them, and it takes your recipients longer to download them. Then again, if that’s the way it has to be, then that’s the way it has to be. Images that you print out need to be high-res, or they’ll look awful. But if you don’t intend to print them, you can safely jettison the excess resolution and spare your computer and your Internet connection from too much heavy lifting. I’ll show you how in Chapter 4.

Adjusting Resolution Adjusting the resolution of a Photoshop canvas—that is, changing the size of its pixels—is a breeze. To try it out, all you need is a canvas, so load any image file from your computer. Your Test.psd file from Chapter 1 is perfect. For the sake of comparison, choose View > Print Size from the menu bar before you begin. This displays the image at its proper dimensions.


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To adjust the resolution of the canvas, follow these steps: 1.

Choose Image > Resize > Image Size from the menu bar. The Image Size dialog box will appear (see Figure 2.9). You can also press Ctrl+Alt+I (Windows) or Command+Option+I (Mac) to open this dialog box.

In Photoshop CS3, choose Image > Image Size from the menu bar for the Image Size dialog box.

2.

If the Resample Image option at the bottom of the dialog box is checked, uncheck it. This is very important! You’ll get into resampling in Chapter 4. For now, you want to turn off this option.

3.

Type the desired resolution in the Resolution field. So if you have a 300-ppi image that you want to change to 72 ppi, type 72 in the Resolution field. Notice that the values in the Width and Height fields will change (see Figure 2.10). I’ll talk about this momentarily.

4.

Click OK. Photoshop will adjust the resolution of the image.

Figure 2.9 Use the Image Size dialog box to adjust the resolution of the canvas.

Figure 2.10 Type a new resolution for the canvas, and Photoshop will automatically adjust the values in the Width and Height fields.

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You might be wondering what happened, because the image looks exactly the same onscreen. But choose View > Print Size from the main menu again, and you’ll discover that something has happened indeed. If you decreased the resolution of the canvas in Step 3, say from 300 ppi to 72 ppi, the actual dimensions of the image are now much larger than they were originally. Likewise, if you increased the resolution of the canvas, say from 72 ppi to 300 ppi, the dimensions of the image are now much smaller. What’s going on? This is an easy one if you think about it. When you change the resolution of the canvas, you change the size of its pixels. Going from a higher resolution to a lower one makes the pixels larger. Therefore, the pixels take up more physical space, and the dimensions of the canvas expand. But when you go from a lower resolution to a higher one, the pixels get smaller. They take up less physical space, so the dimensions of the canvas shrink. Either way, print size changes when you adjust the resolution, which is why the Width and Height values do exactly that when you type in the Resolution field of the Image Size dialog box. It’s important to note that when you make this type of change, you don’t affect the quality of the image in the least. In other words, you don’t lose any visual information. All the pixels are still there in exactly the same order. They’re simply bigger or smaller in size. What if you want to adjust the resolution of the canvas without affecting the print size? This, too, is possible, as you’ll see in Chapter 4.

All About Color At the beginning of this chapter, I said that pixels are very small colored rectangles. You’ve looked at resolution, so you know all about the “very small” part, but what about the color? Photoshop keeps track of two colors at a time: the foreground color and the background color. These appear in the squares or swatches just below the Toolbox (see Figure 2.11). The upper swatch shows the foreground color, while the lower one shows the background color. By default, the foreground color is black, and the background color is white. Figure 2.11 Find the swatches for the foreground and background colors immediately below the Toolbox.


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To swap the current foreground and background colors, click the arrow icon near the swatches. To set both colors to their defaults (foreground black and background white), click the miniature swatches icon.

The foreground and background colors determine how certain tools work. Remember in Chapter 1 when you painted squiggles with the Pencil? Your squiggles were black—the foreground color. If the foreground color had been orange instead, you would have gotten orange squiggles. To change the foreground or background color, click its swatch, and Photoshop will open the Color Picker dialog box (see Figure 2.12). The Color Picker gives you a large pane on the left filled with tones, plus a slider immediately to its right. The slider determines the hue or the base tone of the color. Drag the slider to change the tone, and you change the range of tones in the large pane (see Figure 2.13). Now click anywhere inside the pane to choose a color (see Figure 2.14). Click OK, and the selected color will go into the foreground or background color swatch, depending on which one you initially clicked.

Figure 2.12 Find the swatches for the foreground and background colors immediately below the Toolbox.

Figure 2.13 Drag the slider to change the hue, which changes the range of colors in the pane.

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Figure 2.14 Click anywhere in the pane to choose a color.

The chances are extremely good that when you pick a color from the pane, Photoshop will display a cube icon toward the right side of the dialog box. This cube tells you that your selected color isn’t web-safe. A web-safe color is one that looks the same on just about all computer equipment. These colors are called web-safe because they are of particular importance to web designers, whose color choices need to look consistent across a wide variety of browsers and devices. Of the nearly 17 million colors your computer is capable of producing, only 216 of them are web-safe. Web-safe colors were a big deal back in the late 1990s, but these days they’re pretty much obsolete. Feel free to ignore Photoshop’s warning icon. For the sake of the two or three legacy computers still in service out there somewhere, you can nudge your selected color so that it’s web-safe by clicking the color swatch that appears beneath the cube icon. If you want to avoid non-web-safe colors altogether, you can check the Only Web Colors option at the bottom of the Color Picker.

How Color Models Work Bring back the Color Picker for a moment, and have a look at the fields to the right of the slider. You see two sets: HSB and RGB. These stand for the HSB and RGB color models.


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The Color Picker in Photoshop CS3 shows four sets of fields to the right of the slider: HSB, RGB, Lab, and CMYK. I’ll talk about Lab and CMYK color later in this chapter.

A color model is a method of reproducing color. Each of the nearly 17 million colors on your computer can be defined in HSB and RGB. When you drag the slider and click inside the pane, Photoshop will determine the chosen color’s HSB and RGB values and put them in the fields. If you’re the sort of person who prefers the precision of numbers, you can type directly in the fields to create a foreground or background color. It’s not hard once you know what the fields stand for, and it’s kind of fun once you get the hang of it. It takes you right back to mixing different shades of colored water in kindergarten or daycare.

About HSB HSB stands for hue, saturation, and brightness. ✦ Hue is the base tone of the color. You measure it in degrees (0 to 360) after its position on a color wheel. For reference, 0 degrees (or 360 degrees) is red, 30 degrees is in the oranges, 60 degrees is yellow, 120 degrees is green, 180 degrees is cyan, 240 degrees is blue, 285 degrees is in the purples, and 300 degrees is magenta. ✦ Saturation is the purity of the color. You measure it in percent (0 to 100). A low percentage mixes more gray into the color and desaturates or washes it out, while a higher percentage gives you less gray and therefore a more pure, vivid tone. ✦ Brightness is the level of lightness of the color. It’s also in percent (0 to 100). Low brightness makes the color darker, while high brightness makes it lighter. To create a color with this color model, type values into the H, S, and B fields on the Color Picker. You can ignore the RGB fields; Photoshop will automatically determine the corresponding RGB color values.

About RGB RGB stands for red, green, and blue. In this color model, you create a color by mixing varying levels of red, green, and blue. Each of these component colors has a value between 0 (none of that component) and 255 (the maximum amount of that component).

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The slider in the Color Picker sets the hue by default, but it can just as easily set the saturation, the brightness, or the level of the color’s red, green, or blue component. Click one of the radio buttons to the left of the fields, and the slider will take control of that particular property. (The default field is H, which is why the slider determines the hue by default.) When you do this, Photoshop will change the configuration of the range of tones in the pane.

For example, the bluest blue that your computer can produce has a red value of 0, a green value of 0, and a blue value of 255. For convenience, graphics people use this shorthand: R0, G0, B255. Change the color to an intense magenta by mixing in the highest level of red: R255, G0, B255. For a bluer magenta, make the blue component higher than the red one: R127, G0, B255. For a redder magenta, make the red component higher than the blue one: R255, G0, B127. Adding a healthy amount of green to the mix pushes the tone into the mellow oranges: R255, G191, B127 (see Figure 2.15). Figure 2.15 Type values into the HSB or RGB field to mix a color mathematically.

The RGB color model is an additive one, which means that the final color is the combination of its three components. Pure white is R255, G255, B255, while pure black is R0, G0, B0. In a subtractive color model, the final color is the difference of the combination of its components. Photoshop Elements doesn’t offer a subtractive color model, but Photoshop CS3 does. CMYK, which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, is one such subtractive color model.


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CMYK is the standard color model for printed art. Your desktop printer uses it (or something like it) when you print out color images. Printing presses definitely use it. All the art in this book appears courtesy of the CMYK color model. It’s often said that CMYK is the mirror image of RGB, and in many ways that’s true. In RGB, you get pure white from a mixture of all three components at full intensity, but in CMYK you get pure white from the complete absence of the components: C0, M0, Y0, and K0. Interestingly enough, in color theory, the opposite of red is cyan, the opposite of green is magenta, and the opposite of blue is yellow.

Exploring Other Ways to Choose Colors The Color Picker isn’t the only way to choose foreground and background colors in Photoshop. This section looks at some of the other methods.

Using the Eyedropper The Eyedropper tool samples the color of any pixel on the canvas and sets the foreground or background color to match it. To use the Eyedropper, follow these steps: 1.

Grab the Eyedropper from the Toolbox. You’ll find it between the Hand and the Rectangular Marquee tools.

In Photoshop CS3, the Eyedropper appears between the Notes tool and the Hand tool in the Toolbox.

2.

Move the mouse pointer anywhere on the canvas. The mouse pointer will become an eyedropper icon.

3.

To set the foreground color, click the mouse button; to set the background color, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) and click the mouse button. The Eyedropper will sample the color of the pixel underneath its tip. Photoshop will use this color for the foreground or background (see Figure 2.16).

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Figure 2.16 Set the foreground or background color by using the Eyedropper to sample the color of any pixel on the canvas. (Photo by Dave Long)

Choosing from Premixed Colors If dragging sliders or mixing colors in the Color Picker isn’t your thing, Photoshop provides a palette of premixed colors. All you have to do is open the palette and choose a color, and you’re good to go: 1.

Figure 2.17 Choose a premixed color from the Color Swatches palette.

Open the Color Swatches palette if it isn’t already onscreen. Choose Window > Color Swatches from the menu bar, and the Color Swatches palette will appear (see Figure 2.17).


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This palette is called the Swatches palette in Photoshop CS3, so choose Window > Swatches from the main menu.

2.

Choose a swatch category from the palette’s drop-down menu. You have several choices, so feel free to browse through them all if you don’t find the color you need under Default.

In Photoshop CS3, the Swatches palette doesn’t have a drop-down menu, so open the palette’s context menu instead by clicking the menu icon. Photoshop CS3 offers many more sets of swatches than Photoshop Elements does.

3.

Move the mouse pointer onto a color swatch. The mouse pointer will become an eyedropper icon.

4.

To set the foreground color, click the mouse button; to set the background color, hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) and click the mouse button. Photoshop will sample the color of the swatch and set the foreground or background color accordingly.

Photoshop CS3 gives you a Color palette with sliders for mixing up colors using RGB, HSB, CMYK, or any of the other color models. To open this palette, choose Window > Colors from the menu bar. There isn’t a corresponding palette in Photoshop Elements, at least when you’re in Full Edit mode. If you switch to Quick Fix mode, though, a Color palette appears along the right side of the screen. It’s similar to the one in Photoshop CS3, but it gives you Saturation, Hue, Temperature, and Tint sliders, so when you use this palette, you’re not mixing strictly in HSB or RGB.

About Color Modes Every Photoshop document has a color mode, which determines how Photoshop handles the colors of its pixels. When you created a blank canvas in Chapter 1, you might recall the Color Mode drop-down menu in the New dialog box. At the time, I told you to set it to RGB and I promised that I’d talk more about it in Chapter 2. That time has now come, and I always make good on my promises. (At least I try to.)

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It’s worth having another look at the New dialog box, so open it up. The Color Mode drop-down menu is right below the Resolution field. Pop open this menu for a moment and take a look at the choices. You see RGB Color, Bitmap, and Grayscale: ✦ RGB Color. In this color mode, Photoshop uses the RGB color model to display the colors of the canvas (see Figure 2.18). This is a good default color mode for general-purpose photoshopping. Figure 2.18 A canvas in RGB Color mode uses the RGB color model to display its colors. (Photo by Dave Long)

✦ Bitmap. In this color mode, Photoshop uses two colors only: black and white (see Figure 2.19). You won’t use this color mode very often because it’s so limited, although you might want to experiment with the stipple-like or halftone effect that it gives you. Any gray on a Bitmap canvas is the result of an optical illusion called dithering, where black and white dots in close proximity blend together in the eye to produce the appearance of gray. When you convert an existing color canvas to Bitmap mode, Photoshop enables you to choose whether to use automatic dithering.


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Figure 2.19 A canvas in Bitmap mode has two colors only: black and white. (Photo by Dave Long)

✦ Grayscale. In this color mode, Photoshop uses black, white, and in-between shades of gray (see Figure 2.20). Grayscale is a more accurate term for what most people call black and white. It retains the continuous tone of an image, unlike Bitmap mode. Photoshop CS3 offers two additional color modes: CMYK Color and Lab Color. You already know about the CMYK model. It’s subtractive, and it has cyan, magenta, yellow, and black components. The Lab color model stands for luminance, a-axis, and b-axis. The Luminance value determines the blackness or whiteness of the color, and it’s in percent (0 to 100). The aaxis gives the position of the color on a 256-step green-to-red scale, with green at one end and red on the other. The b-axis gives the position of the color on a 256-step blueto-yellow scale, with blue on one end and yellow at the other. Canvases in CMYK Color and Lab Color modes appear in full color, much as they do in RGB Color.

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Figure 2.20 A canvas in Grayscale mode uses black, white, and in-between shades of gray. (Photo by Dave Long)

The color mode that you choose here determines the color mode of the canvas. You choose foreground and background colors normally using any of the color models at your disposal, but when you go to paint in the canvas, Photoshop automatically converts the color to whatever the canvas’ color mode can handle (see Figure 2.21). To change the color mode of an existing canvas, choose Image > Mode and pick a color mode from the menu. In this chapter, you learned about pixels. You saw how they go together in a grid to create a bitmap or raster graphic. First you looked at resolution, which determines the size of the pixels in an image, and you used Photoshop to change the resolution, which also changed the size of the pixels and therefore changed the physical dimensions of the canvas. Next you looked at color. I talked about color models and color modes, and you saw a bunch of different ways to choose colors in Photoshop. Now that you have pixels under control, you’re in good shape to tackle layers, which are coming up in Chapter 3.


Figure 2.21 The foreground color should be red, but because the canvas is in Bitmap mode, I can paint with black only..

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3 1 All About Layers You don’t get very far in photoshopping before you run smack into layers. It’s one of the single most important concepts in this whole book, so I’m taking an entire chapter to talk about it. By the time you’re through, even if you’ve never heard of layers before, you’ll be creating and manipulating them with ease.

What Are Layers? Layers are like cellophane overlays that stack on top of your canvas. You can paint in them, paste pixels from other images in them, rearrange them, and move them around. The layers themselves are perfectly transparent, so you see through the blank spaces in them to the layers below. Here’s a quick example. At first glance, Figure 3.1 looks like an image of the Apollo XVI moon landing. You see an astronaut and a lunar rover on the moon’s surface. But open up this image in Photoshop and have a look at the Layers palette, and you see that this image is made up of three separate components: Moon Rover, Astronaut, and Background (see Figure 3.2). If you temporarily hide the contents of the Moon Rover and Astronaut layers, you discover that this photo was doctored, probably by someone at NASA to throw off the people in the red states (see Figure 3.3).

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Figure 3.1 At first glance, it looks pretty darn irrefutable that the Apollo XVI moon landing happened in 1972. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Figure 3.2 Check the Layers palette in Photoshop, and you see that this canvas has three separate layers. (Courtesy NASA/ JPL-Caltech)

Chapter 3: All About Layers

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Figure 3.3 Hide the Moon Rover and Astronaut layers, and you unmask yet another conspiracy by the Federal government. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

What looks like a flat canvas, to use the technical jargon, is actually layered. The pixels on the Astronaut layer (see Figure 3.4) and the Moon Rover layer (see Figure 3.5) stack on top of the Background layer to make the final composite image. The gray and white checkerboard pattern represents transparency in Photoshop, so you see where the Background layer shows through. The pixels on each layer are completely editable, and more importantly, they’re totally independent of the pixels on the other layers, which makes it extremely easy to put the astronaut in another location on the lunar surface (see Figure 3.6). And by creating a couple copies of the Astronaut layer, you give the lonely guy some friends (see Figure 3.7). By now, you’re probably chomping at the bit to make some forgeries of your own, but before I get in too much trouble with my publisher, let me take you through the process of creating and organizing layers for something a bit less subversive. Let’s say that you’re doing a paper for school on the only sensible thing to do papers about: the planets of the solar system. You want to spice up your text with a cool visual, so you turn to Photoshop. Grab some planet photos from the web and open them up by choosing File > Open from the menu bar (see Figure 3.8).

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Figure 3.4 Here are the pixels of the Astronaut layer. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

Figure 3.5 And here are the pixels of the Moon Rover layer. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)


Figure 3.6 You can freely move the pixels of the Astronaut layer to another location on the canvas. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Figure 3.7 Copy the Astronaut layer to make additional Apollo XVI mission members. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

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Figure 3.8 Prepare to make a layered canvas by opening up a bunch of planet photos. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

To select more than one image file from the Open dialog box, hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) as you click the files.

If you’re using Photoshop Elements, notice the Photo Bin at the bottom of the screen (see Figure 3.9). The Photo Bin displays thumbnails of all the currently opened canvases. Switch to any canvas by clicking its thumbnail. The Window menu also lists all the open canvases, and you can switch to any of them by choosing the name of the file. Photoshop CS3 doesn’t have a Photo Bin, so use the Window menu instead.

Figure 3.9 The Photo Bin at the bottom of the Photoshop Elements interface keeps track of all the currently open canvases. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Temporarily hide the Photo Bin by clicking its arrow icon.


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Now that you have the components or elements for your illustration, you need a canvas to put them on. You think about it for a minute, and you decide that you want something like this: ✦ Solar System for the name ✦ Physical dimensions of 4 inches wide by 6 inches tall ✦ Printout-quality resolution of 300 ppi ✦ RGB Color mode, because it’ll be a color image ✦ A background color of black You know how to set the background color in Photoshop from Chapter 2. Click the background color swatch under the Toolbox and choose black from the Color Picker. The rest is a simple matter of opening the New dialog box and filling out the fields (see Figure 3.10). Click OK to create the canvas. Figure 3.10 Create a canvas to your project’s exact specifications.

Creating New Layers Whenever you work with layers, it’s a good idea to keep the Layers palette handy. If you don’t see it onscreen, choose Window > Layers from the menu bar. Switch to your Solar System canvas and look at the Layers palette. Right now, the canvas has a single layer called Background. This is the default layer for all Photoshop canvases. Yours is filled with black pixels because that’s what you specified in the New dialog box. There are eight planets in the solar system, and you have eight planet images, so it makes good sense to add eight layers to your Solar System canvas, one for each of the planets. There are a couple different ways to do this.

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One way is to click the Create New Layer button at the top of the Layers palette (see Figure 3.11). This button has the icon of a dog-eared page. Click it eight times for eight layers. Photoshop will automatically name them Layer 1 through Layer 8, but you can change the names to something more specific once you add the planet images. I’ll talk about how to rename the layers shortly.

In Photoshop CS3, the Create New Layer button is at the bottom of the Layers palette.

Figure 3.11 Click the Create New Layer button eight times for eight layers.

Another way to add the layers, which makes more sense for this particular project, is to copy the pixels of each planet image and then paste them as a new layer into the Solar System canvas. Here’s how: 1.

Switch to an open image file. Click its thumbnail in the Photo Bin or choose its file name from the Window menu.

2.

Choose Select > All from the menu bar. Photoshop will select all the pixels in the image.


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There are many other ways to select pixels in Photoshop. For a sneak peek, see the “Making a Selection” section of Chapter 4, “Editing Images.”

3.

Choose Edit > Copy from the main menu. Photoshop will copy the selected pixels to the clipboard.

4.

Switch to the canvas in which you want to paste the pixels. Once again, use the Photo Bin or the Window menu.

5.

Choose Edit > Paste from the main menu. Photoshop will paste the copied pixels into the canvas as a new layer (see Figure 3.12). Once you’ve pasted the image, you’re finished with it. To reduce the number of document windows onscreen, feel free to close its canvas by clicking the X button in the upper-right corner, choosing File > Close from the menu bar, or pressing Ctrl + W (Windows) or Command + W (Mac).

To delete a layer, select it in the Layers palette and click the trashcan icon or press the Delete key.

Figure 3.12 Paste the copied pixels as a new layer.

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For even faster results, use the Move tool: 1.

Grab the Move tool from the Toolbox. This is the one at the very top of the Toolbox, right above the Zoom tool.

In Photoshop CS3, the Move tool is above the Rectangular Marquee tool in the Toolbox.

2.

Pull up the image that you want to move—the target—as well as the canvas that you want to move it to—the destination. Make sure they’re both onscreen. It doesn’t really matter where; as long as you can get to them both, it’s good.

3.

Move the mouse pointer onto the target image. Click once and release to switch to this canvas.

4.

Hold down the mouse button and drag the target image to the destination canvas. Look for the mouse pointer to change into a gray rectangle with a plus sign (see Figure 3.13).

5.

Release the mouse button to drop the target into the destination canvas. Photoshop will place the target image as a new layer on the destination canvas (see Figure 3.14).

Have you ever transferred pixels from one canvas to another, only for the pixels to appear much larger or much smaller than you were expecting? This is a common photoshopping snag, and resolution is the likely culprit. Remember that the resolution determines the size of the pixels in an image. Two different images with two different resolutions have two different pixel sizes. So whenever you combine images, you want to make sure that all your elements have the same resolution, and the pixel-size problem is solved. You know how to adjust the resolution of a canvas from Chapter 2. Just go through the Image Size dialog box, and don’t forget to uncheck the Resample Image option. Do this for all the elements before you start moving images around, and you’re golden. To use the Solar System example, you’d want to check the resolution of all the planet photos and adjust them to 300 ppi to match the Solar System canvas. Even after all the images are at the same resolution, the pixels might seem to change size when you make the transfer, but that’s just because the target and destination canvases are at different magnification levels. Set all the canvases to the same magnification level—say 100 percent—and you’ll see that the pixels are indeed the same size.


Figure 3.13 Use the Move tool to drag an image from one canvas to another.

Figure 3.14 Drop the image into place, and Photoshop will add it to the destination canvas as a new layer.

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When you’re finished, your canvas will look something like Figure 3.15. Figure 3.15 You now have eight planets on eight layers on the Solar System canvas.

If you had created the eight layers by clicking the Add New Layer button eight times, you would need to fill the layers with the planet images separately. First, switch to a planet image and choose Select > All from the main menu. Choose Edit > Copy to copy the pixels. Then switch to the Solar System canvas and click one of the blank layers in the Layers palette to select it. Choose Edit > Paste from the menu bar, and Photoshop will paste the copied pixels into the selected layer. Make sure you select a different layer the next time you paste, or you’ll get two planets in the same layer.

To rename the layers, go to the Layers palette and double-click each one of their thumbnails in turn. Double-clicking the thumbnail will call up the Layer Properties dialog box for that layer (see Figure 3.16). Type a name for the layer in the Name field and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac), or click the OK button.


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Figure 3.16 Rename a layer from the Layer Properties dialog box.

Another way to rename a layer is to double-click its current name in the Layers palette and type a new name in the text field that appears.

To create a duplicate of a layer, drag it from the Layers palette to the Create New Layer icon.

Now is a good time to do a little cleanup on the elements. Go to the Layers palette and click the eye icon to the left of the Background layer—this hides the contents of the background. Notice the black field of space around the individual planet images (see Figure 3.17). You don’t need it, so you should get rid of it. Probably the easiest way to remove a solid field like this is to use the Magic Wand, which selects regions of an image based on color. Figure 3.17 Hide the contents of the Background layer to reveal the black fields around the individual planet images.

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1.

Grab the Magic Wand from the Toolbox. It’s between the Lasso and the Magic Selection Brush tool.

In Photoshop CS3, the Magic Wand is one of the hidden tools under the Quick Selection tool, which is between the Lasso and the Crop tools in the Toolbox.

Figure 3.18 Select the field of black around Jupiter using the Magic Wand.

2.

Select a layer in the Layers palette. Assume that you want to start with Jupiter, so go to the Layers palette and click its layer.

3.

Move the mouse pointer over the field of color that you want to remove. To get rid of the black field around Jupiter, move the mouse pointer into that region.

4.

Click the mouse button to select the field of color. The Magic Wand will detect the contiguous region of black pixels and select them all (see Figure 3.18).


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Sometimes you don’t get the entire field of color with a single click of the Magic Wand. When this happens, you can easily modify the selection. See Chapter 4 for details.

5.

Choose Edit > Delete from the main menu. Photoshop will delete the selected pixels (see Figure 3.19). Pressing the Delete key does the same thing.

Figure 3.19 Delete the selected pixels.

In Photoshop CS3, choose Edit > Clear from the main menu or press the Delete key.

Repeat this process for each of the planets, and then unhide the Background layer by clicking the empty box where the eye icon was. Notice that the Background layer shows through the areas that you just removed.

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Rearranging Layers Your Solar System canvas is starting to live up to its name, but you’ll notice that the layers are out of planetary order. You have Jupiter at the bottom of the stack where Mercury ought to be. Switching the order of the layers is simplicity itself. All you have to do is go to the Layers palette and drag the layers up or down in the stack (see Figure 3.20). Figure 3.20 Reorganize the layers by dragging them around the Layers palette.

The only layer that you can’t move around in this way is the default Background layer, although you can convert it into a regular layer easily enough. Just double-click it to call up the New Layer dialog box. Rename it if you like, or go with the name that Photoshop automatically gives it. Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac) or click OK, and Photoshop will convert the Background layer to a regular layer. Now you can move it around the Layers palette just like the rest. To convert it back to the Background layer—or to set a different layer as the background—select the layer from the Layers palette, and choose Layer > New > Layer From Background from the menu bar if you’re using Photoshop Elements or Layer > New > Background From Layer if you’re using Photoshop CS3.


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Photoshop composes the image from the top down; that is, a layer farther up in the stack superimposes all the layers beneath it. Right now, it doesn’t make much of a difference because none of the planet images overlap, but you’ll see overlapping in action very shortly. When you have the layers in proper order—from bottom to top: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—you can adjust their physical positions on the canvas using the Move tool. Drag and drop the planets into a rough line (see Figure 3.21). Normally, you have to go to the Layers palette and select each layer before you try to move its pixels around the canvas, but if you check the Move tool’s Auto Select Layer option in the tool properties along the top of the screen, Photoshop saves you the trouble. To fine-tune your layout, use Photoshop’s grid (see Figure 3.22). Call it up by choosing View > Grid from the menu bar. (You can also use Photoshop’s Align and Distribute commands, but for the sake of keeping things nice and focused, I won’t discuss those until Part III of this book.) Figure 3.21 Drag the planets into a rough line using the Move tool.

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Figure 3.22 Use Photoshop’s grid to help you align the planets.

In Photoshop CS3, call up the grid by choosing View > Show > Grid from the menu bar.

Now take a minute to assess the canvas. Your illustration shows all the planets and their relative sizes, but it’s a little bland looking. You decide that you could use a couple background elements to spice it up, maybe the sun and a field of stars. So you grab some more images, open them in Photoshop, and drag them into new layers in the Solar System canvas (see Figure 3.23). But because the background elements are at the top of the stack in the Layers palette, they superimpose the planets. You can fix that in a hurry. Just drag the Sun and Stars layers to the bottom of the stack (see Figure 3.24). Because you got rid of the black fields around the planet images, the stars and the sun show through the layers as they should.


Figure 3.23 Drag some background elements onto the Solar System canvas as new layers.

Figure 3.24 Reposition the Sun and Stars layers to put them in the background of the image.

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Locking Layer Content Looking good! It’s time to lock down the content of the layers so that you don’t inadvertently bump an element out of alignment. Locked layers can’t be deleted. Unlock them first, and then you can delete them.

Go back to the Layers palette and select a layer. At the top of the palette, you’ll notice two lock icons: ✦ Lock Transparent Pixels. This is the square icon with the checkerboard pattern. Click it, and Photoshop will prevent you from editing any of the empty areas on the layer, although you can edit the filled portions of the layer normally. ✦ Lock All. This is the black padlock. Click it, and Photoshop will prevent you from editing anything on the layer. Photoshop CS3 has two additional lock icons: Lock Image Pixels (the paintbrush icon), which locks the filled regions of the layer but not the empty regions; and Lock Position (the crossing-arrows icon), which prevents you from moving the layer contents but permits you to make all other edits.

Lock All makes the most sense for this particular project. Locking the transparent pixels on a layer still lets you move around the filled portions, which you’re trying to avoid in this case. So click the Lock All icon to lock the layers down (see Figure 3.25). Photoshop will display a black padlock icon on the right of the layers to let you know their status. If you had clicked the Lock Transparent Pixels icon, Photoshop would show a silver padlock icon instead. To unlock a layer, select it in the Layers palette and click the appropriate padlock icon. Photoshop will remove the lock status icon on the right side of the layer and make the layer pixels editable again. You can’t lock or unlock hidden layers.


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Figure 3.25 Lock down the layers to prevent you from inadvertently nudging the elements out of alignment.

Merging Layers It isn’t hard to stack a canvas with so many layers that you have difficulty keeping track of them. To reduce some of the clutter, you can merge layers: 1.

Hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) and select the layers from the Layers palette that you want to merge. Say that you want to combine the Stars, Sun, and Background layers. Hold down Ctrl or Command and select these layers (see Figure 3.26).

2.

Choose Layer > Merge Layers from the menu bar. Photoshop will combine the layers into one (see Figure 3.27). The composite image looks exactly the same, but you now have fewer layers to manage.

You can merge locked layers, but Photoshop unlocks them first. You also can merge hidden layers, but Photoshop deletes the pixels on these layers.

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Figure 3.26 Select the layers that you want to merge.

Figure 3.27 Photoshop merges the layers.


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You can find a couple other handy merge commands under the Layer menu. Layer > Merge Visible combines all the currently visible layers but keeps all the hidden ones as separate layers, while Layer > Flatten Image combines all the visible layers and discards the hidden ones. Guess what? You’re finished! Save your work and print out your illustration, and you’re on your way to an easy A (see Figure 3.28). Just don’t forget to write your paper. Figure 3.28 Your illustration is ready to print.

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In this chapter, you saw firsthand the power of layers to make your photoshopping more productive. You learned that layers are like cellophane overlays that stack on top of your canvas. You can put pixels on a layer for easy manipulation later without affecting the pixels on any other layer. I showed you a couple different ways to create layers, and then I showed you how to manage them in the Layers palette once you’ve created them. And that brings the first part of this book to a close. You now have the basics of Photoshop. It’s time to build on that foundation in some interesting and maybe even surprising ways. All you have to do is turn the page.

Part II Get Set…


4 1 Editing Images Editing images is synonymous with photoshopping, so if you suspect that this chapter is an important one, you’re right on the money. This is where you learn how to make a selection, how to manipulate the selected pixels, and how to make changes to the canvas itself. There’s plenty of ground to cover, so I’ll forego the usual top-of-the-chapter chatter and get right to it—right after a quick explanation. I could’ve spent this entire book talking about editing images in Photoshop, but instead I’m boiling it down to the most important elements and putting them in a single chapter. You get everything you need for the purposes of this book (and then some), but just be aware that there’s more. A lot more. So if you like what you see here, by all means, please don’t shy away from exploring on your own, using what you’ve learned so far.

Making a Selection For a human, the people and objects in a digital image are easy enough to pick out. If you look at Figure 4.1, you see that it’s an illustration of a planet. The sun is in the upper-left corner, and there’s a pleasing array of stars in the background. Astronomers believe that planets in other solar systems might look like this. For Photoshop, this picture is a completely different story. The software has no idea what it’s supposed to be looking at. To it, the image is nothing more than a grid of different-colored pixels. It can’t discern the individual shapes in the image. It can’t even tell which pixels belong to which object. All it knows is that some pixels are black, some are yellow, some are red, and so on.

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Figure 4.1 It’s easy enough for a human to see that this is a picture of a planet. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

When you work with an image in Photoshop, before you can do much of anything, you need to tell the software exactly which pixels you want to edit. Unfortunately, you can’t just click on the planet or click on the sun to select its respective pixels. Remember, Photoshop can’t see the planet or the sun. All it sees is the pixels that make them up, so it leaves it to you to select the proper pixels using your own good judgment (see Figure 4.2). What Photoshop does provide is a small arsenal of selection tools for almost any situation. I’ll run down the lot of them in this section and tell you when to use each. The selection tools in Photoshop select from the current layer. If you want to select the pixels on a different layer, be sure to click that layer in the Layers palette.

Chapter 4: Editing Images

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Figure 4.2 Photoshop has no idea what it’s looking at, so you must manually select the pixels of the planet before you can edit them. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Selecting with the Marquee Tools A marquee in Photoshop is a selection zone. It’s usually rectangular, although it can be elliptical, too, as well as any other shape. There are two marquee tools in Photoshop Elements: ✦ Rectangular Marquee. This tool creates a rectangular selection. When you hold down the Shift key, you constrain the marquee’s proportions to get a perfect square. ✦ Elliptical Marquee. This tool creates an elliptical selection. Hold down Shift to constrain the proportions and get a perfect circle. Photoshop CS3 has two additional marquee tools: the Single Row Marquee tool and the Single Column Marquee tool. Click on the canvas with these tools, and they will select either a single row of pixels (from the left all the way to the right) or a single column of pixels (from the top all the way to the bottom).

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To use a marquee tool, follow these steps: 1.

Grab one of the marquee tools from the Toolbox. You’ll find them between the Eyedropper and the Lasso tools. By default, the Rectangular Marquee is the one in the Toolbox, so if you want the Elliptical Marquee instead, hold down the mouse button on the Rectangular Marquee to pop open the context menu for the hidden tools.

In Photoshop CS3, you’ll find the marquee tools between the Move tool and the Lasso tool in the Toolbox.

Figure 4.3 Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select a rectangular region of pixels. (Photo by Dave Long)

2.

Move the mouse pointer into the canvas. The mouse pointer will become a crosshair.

3.

Hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse to select a region of pixels. You can adjust the size and shape of the marquee as you go (see Figure 4.3).


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Choose Select > Deselect from the menu bar to get rid of the current selection marquee.

The marquee tools aren’t that good at extracting objects from the background of an image unless the objects are rectangular or elliptical in shape. They’re better for pulling out specific regions, such as the tower in Figure 4.3. The marquee tools, the Magic Wand, and the lasso tools give you options for making multiple selections. Look for these options in the bar along the top of the screen when you select one of these tools from the Toolbox. Click the Add to Selection option to combine a new selection marquee with the current one. Click the Subtract from Selection option to deselect an area within an existing selection marquee. Click the Intersect with Selection option to select the area where two or more selection marquees overlap. Click the New Selection option to scrap the current selection marquee and create a new one. In addition, the Select menu offers a number of commands for modifying or transforming your selection. Choose Select > Modify > Border to change your selection marquee into a hollow frame instead of a solid shape. Choose Select > Modify > Smooth to make the edges of the selection marquee less jagged. Choose Select > Modify > Expand to make the marquee larger, or choose Select > Modify > Contract to make it smaller. You can also feather or blur the edges of a selection marquee, which often helps the selected region to blend in better with the rest the image after you finish editing it. In Photoshop Elements, choose Select > Feather. In Photoshop CS3, choose Select > Modify > Feather. And there’s more still! Feel free to poke around the Select menu for other handy commands.

Selecting with the Magic Wand You worked with the Magic Wand in Chapter 3, but it’s worth repeating that this tool selects pixels based on color. You move the Magic Wand onto the canvas and click the mouse button. Photoshop will sample the color of the pixel under the Magic Wand’s tip and then select all the touching or contiguous pixels that have the same or a similar color.

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You used this tool to extract the disc of a planet from the black field of space around it, so you know from experience that the Magic Wand is good for separating objects from their backgrounds. The only drawback is that the background needs to be pretty much the same color, or the Magic Wand won’t do a thorough job (see Figure 4.4). You can improve your results by increasing the tolerance of the Magic Wand in the tool options along the top of the screen. By default, the tolerance is 32. Increase it, and the Magic Wand will select a wider range of colors (see Figure 4.5). Decrease it, and the Magic Wand will select a narrower range. After you select the background of an image using the Magic Wand, you can invert the selection to grab the object in the foreground. This is often easier than trying to select the foreground object directly, especially when the object contains several different colors. To invert a selection, choose Select > Inverse from the menu bar.

Figure 4.4 This cloudy sky has too wide a range of color, so the Magic Wand doesn’t select it all. (Photo by Dave Long)


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Figure 4.5 Increase the tolerance of the Magic Wand from 32 to 128, and you select the entire sky—plus the water and the mountains! (Photo by Dave Long)

Selecting with the Lasso Tools Use the lasso tools to draw an outline around the object or area that you want to select. There are three lassos: ✦ Lasso. This is the standard tool for rustling up a region of pixels. Drag the mouse with the Lasso to draw a freehand outline around an object or area. When you release the mouse button, Photoshop will select the outlined region. ✦ Magnetic Lasso. This tool detects the edge of the object that you’re trying to select, or at least it’s supposed to. Position the Magnetic Lasso along the edge of the object, click the mouse button, and trace the object as carefully as you can (see Figure 4.6). You don’t have to hold down the mouse button as you go. To finish, double back to the place where you started. Photoshop usually does a pretty good job, but because it doesn’t really perceive the objects in the image, the selection can go awry.

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Figure 4.6 Use the Magnetic Lasso tool to select an object in the image. (Photo by Dave Long)

✦ Polygonal Lasso. This tool enables you to select a polygonal or multisided region of the image, much like the marquee tools, only the shape of the marquee can have as many sides as you want. Don’t drag the mouse with the Polygonal Lasso; move it instead from point to point and click to draw a side of the polygon. To close the shape, click again on the place where you started. You’ll find the lassos in the Toolbox between the marquee tools and the Magic Wand. In Photoshop CS3, the lassos are between the marquee tools and the Quick Selection tool or the Magic Wand (whichever is currently showing in the Toolbox).


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Selecting with the Selection Brushes in Photoshop Elements The selection brushes enable you to paint your selection directly on the canvas. There are two: the Selection Brush and the Magic Selection Brush. The standard Selection Brush works very much like a painting tool. Drag it across the canvas, and Photoshop will select whatever the mouse pointer touches. Imagine that you’re scribbling with the Pencil, but instead of painting color, you’re painting a selection marquee. The Magic Selection Brush combines the Selection Brush with the Magic Wand. You paint with it on the canvas, and Photoshop analyzes the color and texture of the painted pixels and determines the object that you’re trying to select. Here’s how it works: 1.

Grab the Magic Selection Brush from the Toolbox. It’s between the Magic Wand and Horizontal Type tool.

2.

Move the mouse pointer into the canvas. The mouse pointer will become a paintbrush icon.

3.

Drag a streak of paint across the object that you want to select. You don’t have to be super precise, although precision doesn’t hurt, either (see Figure 4.7).

4.

Click the Indicate Foreground icon in the tool properties along the top of the screen, and continue to paint the object. Doing this will give Photoshop a clearer idea about which pixels belong to the object (see Figure 4.8).

5.

Click the Indicate Background icon in the tool properties, and drag a streak of paint across the background. This is the region of the image that you don’t want to select (see Figure 4.9). After this, Photoshop doesn’t have much of an excuse if it can’t figure out what you want.

To scratch your current Magic Selection Brush paint job and start fresh, click the New Selection icon in the tool properties. 6.

Repeat Steps 4–5 as often as necessary to select the object. When you’re finished, you’ve isolated the foreground from the background (see Figure 4.10).

Try either the Selection Brush or the Magic Selection Brush when you want to select a complex, multicolored object, especially if it would be too difficult to select the background with the Magic Wand.

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Figure 4.7 Use the Magic Selection Brush to paint the object that you want to select. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 4.8 Continue painting the object with the Indicate Foreground option of the Magic Selection Brush. (Photo by Dave Long)


Figure 4.9 Use the Indicate Background option of the Magic Selection Brush to mark the region of the image that you don’t want to select. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 4.10 Finetune the selection, and you get exactly the pixels that you want. (Photo by Dave Long)

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Selecting with the Quick Selection Tool in Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3’s Quick Selection tool is much like the Magic Selection Brush in Photoshop Elements, only it’s a bit more intuitive to use. 1.

Grab the Quick Selection tool from the Toolbox. It’s between the lasso tools and the Crop tool.

2.

Move the mouse pointer into the canvas. The mouse pointer will take the shape of the current brush tip. You can change the shape and size of the tip in the tool properties along the top of the screen.

3.

Drag the mouse over the area that you want to select. As you paint, Photoshop will detect the edge of the object.

4.

Click the Subtract from Selection icon in the tool properties along the top of the screen, and drag the mouse over the area that you don’t want to select. Photoshop will fine-tune the selection.

5.

Click the Add to Selection icon in the tool properties, and continue to define the selection by dragging the mouse. Again, Photoshop will fine-tune the selection.

6.

Repeat Steps 4–5 as often as necessary to select the object. It doesn’t usually take too many passes before the object is selected (see Figure 4.11).

Use the Quick Selection tool to pick up complex, multicolored objects, just like you would use the selection brushes in Photoshop Elements.

Working with Selected Pixels Good news! Selecting pixels was the hard part. The rest of this chapter is a breeze. When you’ve made the selection, you can move the selected pixels around the canvas, transform them, and even transfer them to new layers, among other things. This section shows you how.

Moving the Pixels You know from Chapter 3 that you can use the Move tool to position the contents of a layer all at once, but this tool is also good for moving selected pixels within a layer. Just grab the Move tool from the Toolbox and drag the selection (see Figure 4.12).


Figure 4.11 Use the Quick Selection tool to grab a complex, multicolored object in Photoshop CS3. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 4.12 Drag the selection with the Move tool. (Photo by Dave Long)

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To move the selection marquee itself instead of the selected pixels, move the mouse pointer inside the marquee and drag it with whatever selection tool you happen to be using. Don’t use the Move tool unless you want to move the selected pixels.

When you move the selected pixels, Photoshop leaves a hole in the canvas. On a regular layer, the hole is completely transparent, so you can see through it to the layers beneath. But on the canvas’ default Background layer, the hole is opaque. Photoshop fills it with the current background color of the canvas. Further, when you drop the selected pixels in a new location and then deselect them, you completely erase the pixels underneath. So if you select the same pixels again and move them to a new place, you get two holes in the canvas (see Figure 4.13).

To duplicate the selected pixels instead of leaving a hole in the canvas, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) as you drag with the Move tool.

Figure 4.13 If you reselect the same pixels and move them again, you get two holes in the canvas. (Photo by Dave Long)


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Sometimes the cookie-cutter look is fine, but most of the time, you’d rather avoid it. If so, you can transfer the selected pixels to a new layer instead of keeping them on their original layer. Once they’re on a new layer, you can move them around the canvas freely without creating a bunch of new holes. See the “Transferring the Pixels to a Different Layer” section later in this chapter for more information.

Transforming the Pixels If you’ve been playing around with the Move tool, you’ve probably noticed a rectangle around your selection or layer contents. This is called a bounding box. If you don’t see a bounding box when you use the Move tool, go to the options along the top of the screen and click the Show Bounding Box option. To see the bounding box in Photoshop CS3, select the Move tool and click the Show Transform Controls option.

Look closely at the bounding box, and you see eight square handles along it—one in each corner and one in the middle of each side. There’s also a reference point in the middle of the bounding box, and if you’re working in Photoshop Elements, there’s a round rotation knob that comes off the bottom handle. Photoshop CS3 bounding boxes don’t have a rotation knob.

By manipulating these controls, you can perform all kinds of transformations on your selection (see Figure 4.14). ✦ To scale the bounding box—that is, to make it proportionately larger or smaller—drag any of the corner handles (see Figure 4.15). The mouse pointer will become a diagonal arrow. To scale the bounding box in CS3, hold down Shift and drag a corner handle.

✦ To stretch or squeeze the bounding box, drag any of the side handles (see Figure 4.16). The mouse pointer will become a straight up-and-down or left-to-right arrow.

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Figure 4.14 Manipulate the bounding box to transform the selected pixels. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 4.15 Drag a corner handle to scale the bounding box. (Photo by Dave Long)


Figure 4.16 Drag a side handle to stretch or squeeze the bounding box. (Photo by Dave Long)

✦ To distort the bounding box, hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) and drag a side handle (see Figure 4.17) or a corner handle (see Figure 4.18). Either way, the mouse pointer will become a gray arrowhead. ✦ To skew the bounding box, hold down Shift+Ctrl (Windows) or Shift+Command (Mac) and drag a side handle (see Figure 4.19). The mouse pointer will become a gray arrowhead with a straight up-and-down or left-to-right arrow beside it. ✦ To apply perspective to the bounding box, hold down Alt+Shift+Ctrl (Windows) or Option+Shift+Command (Mac) and drag a corner handle (see Figure 4.20). The mouse pointer will become a gray arrowhead, just like it does when you distort. ✦ To rotate the bounding box, move the mouse pointer just outside the bounding box. You know you’re in the right zone when the mouse pointer changes into a curved arrow. Hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse (see Figure 4.21). Pressing Shift constrains the angle of the rotation to multiples of 15 degrees. If you’re using Photoshop Elements, you can also rotate the bounding box by dragging the handy rotation knob. The mouse pointer will change into four curved arrows.

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Figure 4.17 Hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) and drag a side handle to distort the bounding box like this. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 4.18 Hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) and drag a corner handle to distort the bounding box like this. (Photo by Dave Long)


Figure 4.19 Hold down Shift+Ctrl (Windows) or Shift+ Command (Mac) and drag a side handle to skew the bounding box. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 4.20 Hold down Alt+Shift+Ctrl (Windows) or Option+ Shift+Command (Mac) and drag a corner handle to apply perspective to the bounding box. (Photo by Dave Long)

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Figure 4.21 Drag outside the bounding box to rotate it. (Photo by Dave Long)

To commit the transformation, click the check mark button at the bottom of the bounding box. To scrap the transformation, click the cancel button. When you commit the transformation and deselect the pixels, Photoshop will write the transformed pixels into the current layer, replacing whatever’s behind them, so you might want to think about moving the transformed pixels to a new layer before deselecting them. I’ll show you how in the “Transferring the Pixels to a Different Layer” section, which is coming up momentarily. The buttons for committing and cancelling the transformation appear in the bar of tool options along the top of the screen in Photoshop CS3.

The reference point in the middle of the bounding box is the point around which the transformation takes place. Move the reference point to a different location on the bounding box, and you change the way Photoshop applies the transformation (see Figure 4.22). To change the location of the reference point, choose Image > Transform > Free Transform from the menu bar and then click anywhere in the locator icon in the tool options (see Figure 4.23).


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Figure 4.22 Move the reference point to change the way that Photoshop applies the transformation. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 4.23 To move the reference point, click anywhere in the locator icon.

Photoshop CS3 gives you much more freedom in changing the position of the reference point. Choose Edit > Free Transform from the menu bar and click anywhere in the locator icon, or simply drag the reference point anywhere in the document window. You can even place the reference point outside the bounding box or off the canvas itself!

Notice that Photoshop leaves a hole in the canvas when you make a transformation. Unfortunately, that’s unavoidable.

Transferring the Pixels to a Different Layer When you move the selected pixels from their original layer to a different one, you make things easier for yourself in general. You don’t have to worry about creating holes in the original layer whenever you reselect the pixels and move them around. In fact, if you put the pixels on a new layer of their own, you don’t even

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have to worry about reselecting them. Click that layer in the Layers palette and then manipulate the layer contents using the Move tool, just like you did in Chapter 3. To transfer pixels from one layer to another, follow these steps: 1.

In the Layers palette, click the layer from which you want to select. Call this the target layer.

2.

Make a selection. Use any of the editing tools or menu commands at your disposal.

3.

Choose Edit > Cut or Edit > Copy from the menu bar. Cutting leaves a hole in the layer, while copying does not.

4.

Go back to the Layers palette and click the layer to which you want to move the pixels. This is the destination layer.

If you don’t have a destination layer, you can make one by clicking the Create New Layer icon in the Layers palette.

5.

Choose Edit > Paste from the menu bar. Photoshop will paste the cut or copied pixels into the middle of the destination layer.

If you haven’t created the destination layer yet, here’s a quicker procedure: 1.

In the Layers palette, choose a target layer. As before, click this layer to select it.

2.

Make a selection.

3.

Choose Layer > New > Layer Via Cut or Layer > New > Layer Via Copy from the menu bar. Photoshop automatically will cut or copy the selected pixels, create a new layer, and paste the pixels into it. As a bonus, instead of dropping them in the middle of the new layer, Photoshop will keep them in their original position relative to the rest of the pixels, so your image will look exactly the same.

Changing the Canvas Selecting pixels on a layer and then manipulating them is one thing, but what if you want to change the canvas itself? That’s an excellent question and one that I’m happy to answer in this section.


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Cropping and Expanding the Canvas When you crop the canvas, you change its physical dimensions by taking away from its edges. Likewise, when you expand the canvas, you change its physical dimensions by adding to its edges.

Cropping the Canvas There are a couple different ways to crop the canvas in Photoshop. Foremost among them is using the Crop tool, which appears between the Horizontal Type tool and the Cookie Cutter tool in the Toolbox. The Crop tool isn’t perfect, though—it can reduce the quality of your image. (The reason? Resampling. See the “Scaling the Image” section of this chapter for more information.) The Crop tool in Photoshop CS3 is between the Quick Selection tool and the Slice tool in the Toolbox.

To prevent Photoshop from making this sort of mischief, use the Rectangular Marquee tool for all your cropping needs: 1.

Grab the Rectangular Marquee tool from the Toolbox.

2.

Move the mouse pointer onto the canvas and drag a selection marquee. The selection represents the portion of the image that you’re keeping (see Figure 4.24). Everything outside the selection will get chopped off in Step 3.

3.

Choose Image > Crop from the menu bar. Photoshop will crop the canvas (see Figure 4.25).

To crop the canvas to a specific set of dimensions, follow these steps: 1.

Grab the Rectangular Marquee tool from the Toolbox.

2.

In the tool options along the top of the screen, choose Fixed Size from the Mode drop-down menu. Doing this prevents you from resizing the selection marquee once you create it in Step 5.

3.

In the Width field, type the desired width of the canvas. Don’t forget the units! Use in for inches, mm for millimeters, cm for centimeters, or px for pixels. For instance, to crop the canvas to a width of 3-3/4 inches, type 3.75 in.

4.

In the Height field, type the desired height of the canvas. So to crop the canvas to a height of 2-1/2 inches, type 2.5 in.

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Figure 4.24 Drag a rectangular marquee around the portion of the canvas that you want to keep. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 4.25 Photoshop crops the canvas. (Photo by Dave Long)

5.

Move the mouse pointer onto the canvas and click the mouse button. You don’t have to drag the mouse because you already established the dimensions of the marquee in Steps 3 and 4.

6.

Position the selection marquee around the portion of the canvas that you want to keep. To do this, move the mouse pointer anywhere inside the marquee, hold down the mouse button, and drag.

7.

Choose Image > Crop from the menu bar. Photoshop will crop the canvas.


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Expanding the Canvas To increase the size of the canvas, follow these steps: 1.

Choose Image > Resize > Canvas Size from the menu bar. The Canvas Size dialog box will appear (see Figure 4.26).

Figure 4.26 Increase the size of the canvas using the Canvas Size dialog box.

In Photoshop CS3, choose Image > Canvas Size from the menu bar for the Canvas Size dialog box.

2.

In the Width field, type the desired width of the canvas. Set the units from the drop-down menu immediately to the right of the field.

3.

In the Height field, type the desired height of the canvas. Again, set the units from the neighboring drop-down menu.

If you check the Relative option in the Canvas Size dialog box, you can type the amount by which you want to increase the width or height of the canvas instead of doing the math in your head. So to increase the width by 3 inches and leave the height alone, check the Relative option, type 3 in the Width field, type 0 in the Height field, and set the units of both to inches.

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4.

In the Anchor diagram, indicate where Photoshop should add the extra space. Click any of the nine boxes to set the anchor. To add the space equally around the entire canvas, set the anchor to the middle box.

5.

From the Canvas Extension Color drop-down menu, pick a color for the canvas. Because you’re making the canvas larger, it’ll be partially visible.

The color swatch immediately to the right of the Canvas Extension Color drop-down menu shows you the color that the canvas will be. Click this swatch to open the Color Picker.

6.

Click OK. Photoshop will increase the size of the canvas (see Figure 4.27).

Figure 4.27 Photoshop expands the canvas. (Photo by Dave Long)

Scaling the Image Scaling an image makes it physically larger or smaller without changing its resolution. When you adjusted the resolution of an image in Chapter 2, Photoshop changed the size of the image’s pixels, which in turn changed the physical dimensions of the canvas. Going from a higher resolution to a lower one made the pixels larger, which increased the print size of the canvas, while going from a lower resolution


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to a higher one made the pixels smaller, which decreased the print size of the canvas. Yet when you scale an image, the canvas size changes, but the resolution stays the same. Photoshop pulls off this trick by manipulating the quality of the image itself. Scale the image down, and the canvas becomes physically smaller, but the pixels remain the same size. There isn’t enough room for all of them on the smaller canvas, so Photoshop throws out some of them. Scale the image up, and the canvas becomes physically larger, but the pixels remain the same size. Now there aren’t enough pixels to fill up the space, so Photoshop creates new ones. This process of analyzing the image and tossing out unwanted pixels or creating new ones is called resampling. There are two kinds: downsampling and upsampling. Downsampling happens when you make the image smaller by getting rid of excess pixels. Upsampling happens when you make the image larger by filling in the gaps with brand-new pixels. Great, right? Well, sort of. Every time you resample an image, you lose some image quality. Downsampling isn’t usually as much of a problem, because even though you’re losing pixels, you’re also making the image smaller, so you don’t tend to notice the loss of visual information. Upsampling, on the other hand, adds new pixels to the image, but it also makes the image larger. The new pixels don’t improve the level of detail in the image. They’re basically just filler. And because the image is now physically larger, the filler is easier to see. As a result, upsampled images tend to look hazy or grainy. In extreme cases, you can even begin to see the blocky shapes of the pixels. Photoshop offers five different methods of resampling: ✦ Nearest Neighbor. This resampling method helps to preserve the hard edges in an image, but if you use it for upsampling, it also makes the inherent blockiness of pixel-based graphics more obvious. It merely adds or removes pixels from the image on a one-forone basis. Upsampling a red pixel always gives you extra red pixels, in other words. ✦ Bilinear. This resampling method tends to work well for upsampling, although it doesn’t always do justice to fine details. It works by looking at each existing pixel and averaging the color values of the four surrounding pixels to determine the colors of the new pixels. Upsampling a red pixel might not always give you pure red. You might get pink or purple pixels instead, depending on the colors of the surrounding pixels.

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✦ Bicubic. This is the default resampling method. It’s best for downsampling, especially when you want to maintain smooth gradations in color. It works by dividing the image into 4-pixel-by-4-pixel zones and basing the colors of new pixels on the color properties of each zone. ✦ Bicubic Smoother. This resampling method works best for upsampling. ✦ Bicubic Sharper. This resampling method works best for downsampling. To scale an image, follow these steps: 1.

Choose Image > Resize > Image Size from the menu bar. The Image Size dialog box will appear (see Figure 4.28).

In Photoshop CS3, choose Image > Image Size from the menu bar to access the Image Size dialog box.

Figure 4.28 To scale an image, use the Image Size dialog box and check the Resample Image option.

2.

Check the Resample Image option at the bottom of the dialog box.

3.

Choose a resampling method from the Resample Image dropdown menu. If you’re scaling the image down, try Bicubic Sharper or Bilinear. If you’re scaling the image up, try Bicubic Smoother or Bicubic. To preserve the hard edges of the image, try Nearest Neighbor.


4.

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Check the Constrain Proportions option. Constraining the proportions will keep the image in the same aspect ratio, or the relation of its width to its height.

To stretch or squeeze the image instead of maintaining the original aspect ratio, uncheck the Constrain Proportions option.

5.

Under Pixel Dimensions or Document Size, type the desired width or height of the image in the Width or Height field. Because you’re constraining proportions, Photoshop will automatically calculate the other value.

In Chapter 2, I told you that there was a way to adjust the resolution of an image without changing the print size of the canvas, and resampling is the answer. To do this, leave the Width and Height fields as they are and type a new value in the Resolution field. Going from a lower resolution to a higher one is the same as upsampling, while going from a higher resolution to a lower one is the same as downsampling.

6.

Click OK. Photoshop will scale the image.

You might want to sharpen your image after scaling it. I’ll talk about sharpening in Chapter 7, “Applying Special Effects.”

In this chapter, you learned about editing images. I talked about how Photoshop perceives a bitmap graphic and how it’s completely different from the way that a human perceives it, which makes your life as a photoshopper a little more challenging than it might be otherwise, because you can’t just click on an object in the image to select it. Instead, you need to tell Photoshop exactly which pixels you want to select. I gave you a rundown of the selection tools, and I showed you where to use each one. Then, with your pixels selected, I gave you a taste of what you can do with them: moving them, transforming them, or transferring them to a different layer. Finally, I talked about editing the canvas itself. You learned about cropping and scaling it to whatever dimensions you want, and I showed you how to use resampling to get around the problems of resolution and print size. You’ve been through four chapters now, and you haven’t done much about image creation. That’s an oversight that I plan to correct starting in Chapter 5, “Painting and Retouching Images.”


5 1 Painting and Retouching Images Another mission-critical task in the wonderful world of photoshopping is creating images from scratch or touching up existing ones. That’s what this chapter aims to show you how to do. In it, you’ll reacquaint yourself with your old buddy the Pencil tool, and you’ll step up to its more powerful sibling, the Brush. You’ll work with a couple different kinds of fills, and you’ll end the chapter with the Eraser and its ilk. I hope you’re feeling creative, because it’s time to paint some squiggles.

Using the Brush The Brush is the all-purpose standard painting tool in Photoshop. It’s really easy to use, and it comes with so many options that it spoils you rotten. It’s a rare thing indeed when the Brush doesn’t give you exactly what you want. What makes the Brush so versatile is that you can change or tweak its tip. This applies to its size as well as its shape. You can also change the way that Photoshop handles the color of the paint for a variety of effects.

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Before I get into the specifics, let me say a few words about painting in general. Imagine for a minute that your bedroom walls are white (see Figure 5.1). You want to make them red, so you get out a brush and apply a thin coat of red paint. That’s how it works in the actual world at least, but in the digital world it’s a different story. When you grab the Brush tool and paint into your canvas, you get what looks very much like a coat of paint (see Figure 5.2), but this isn’t really the case. The Brush doesn’t add anything to the image the way that you would add a real coat of paint to a real wall. All it does is change the colors of the pixels that are already there. So the pixels in Figure 5.2 are exactly the same ones as the pixels in Figure 5.1. The only difference is that the wall pixels are white in Figure 5.1, while some of them are red in Figure 5.2. This might sound like a picky distinction to make, but it has its practical consequences. In the real world, if you want to go back to white walls, you can always strip the red paint, but in the digital world, that isn’t an option. The red from the Brush tool didn’t go on top of the pixels, so the original white color isn’t still underneath it. Instead, the Brush permanently changed the color of the pixels

Figure 5.1 Imagine that your bedroom walls are white and you want to paint them red.

Figure 5.2 Drag the Brush tool across the canvas, and you get what looks like a coat of paint.

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from white to red. In other words, once you’ve painted the pixels, it’s as if they had always been red. So when you erase them, you’re not erasing the paint pixels—you’re erasing the wall pixels themselves. What’s underneath is the color of the canvas or a splotch of transparency, not the original white of the walls, because the original white is long gone (see Figure 5.3). Figure 5.3 Strip the paint, and you take the wall with it.

If you’re lucky, you might be able to revert to the original colors of the image by choosing Edit > Undo from the menu bar or by opening the History palette in Photoshop CS3 and stepping back to an earlier version of the canvas. However, once you’ve saved your canvas and closed it, your paint is permanent in every sense of the word. Not even Undo or the History palette can help you.

Painting the red into a new layer solves this problem completely. The image in Figure 5.4 looks exactly the same as the one in Figure 5.2, yet in Figure 5.4 I painted the red into a layer of its own instead of in the default Background layer. The pixels of each layer are independent of each other, so I can erase from the Paint layer to reveal the pixels of the Background layer underneath, just as they were before the paint job (see Figure 5.5).

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Figure 5.4 You can always paint into a new layer instead of the Background layer.

Figure 5.5 This way, erasing the red pixels reveals the original layer underneath.


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But whether you paint into a brand-new layer or a layer that already exists, the Brush tool works the same way. It doesn’t actually paint over the pixels of the image, but instead it changes their color. When you get right down to it, painting probably isn’t the best metaphor, yet painting is what this process is called, so if I ask you to apply a streak of paint in the pages and chapters to come, you’ll understand that to mean, “Change the color of these pixels,” and hopefully you’ll let me slide. To restrict the area where the paint goes, make a selection on the canvas using any of the selection tools, and the Brush will work only inside the selected region. This trick is helpful when you’re trying to paint a specific object in the image coloring-book-style and you don’t want to scribble outside the lines.

You paint with the Brush much like you did with the Pencil. (In fact, the Pencil is just the Brush with a basic tip.) First, grab the Brush tool from the Toolbox. It’s between the Eraser and the Paint Bucket. Next, set the options for the Brush— more on these in a moment. Then move the mouse pointer onto the canvas, hold down the mouse button, and drag the mouse to paint. In Photoshop CS3, the Brush tool is between the Spot Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp in the Toolbox.

The currently selected layer is where the paint goes. If you want to paint into a specific layer of the canvas or if you want to create a brand-new one especially for the paint, be sure to take care of this in the Layers palette before you use the Brush tool. Don’t be stingy about creating new layers, especially when you’re painting your image from scratch. Say you’re creating something as simple as a smiley face. It isn’t unreasonable at all to paint the head in one layer, the left eye in another layer, the right eye in a third, and the smile in a fourth. Add a background, and that’s five layers total, just for a single smiley face! Why so many? In Chapter 4, you saw just what goes into selecting a particular object or element. The same applies to the elements that you paint into the canvas. Photoshop doesn’t know how to separate the individual pixels on a layer, but it does know how to distinguish between different layers.

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So if you paint each element of your smiley face into a separate layer, the composite image looks exactly as it would if you had painted all the elements into a single layer, yet you don’t have to mess around with the selection tools just to move the eyes closer together. You just go to the Layers palette, select the layer called Left Eye, and use the Move tool to reposition the entire contents of the layer. Do the same for the Right Eye layer, and your job is done. The worst that can happen is that you end up with more layers than you can manage easily, but you can always merge some of them once you’re happy with the way they look.

Setting the Tip The options for the Brush tool appear in the bar along the top of the screen, just where you’d expect to find them. Most importantly, you want to choose the correct Brush tip for your needs. The tip determines the shape, thickness, and quality of the stroke. Photoshop gives you a number of preset Brush tips in the dropdown menu in the tool options (see Figure 5.6). Pop open this menu, and then choose a category of tips under Brushes. The Brush tips for this category appear in the large pane at the bottom of the drop-down menu. Select one by clicking it. The shape of the mouse pointer will change to reflect the shape of the Brush’s tip. Figure 5.6 Choose a tip for the Brush from the drop-down menu in the tool options.

In CS3, the drop-down menu for Brush tips that appears in the tool options along the top of the screen is fine if you’re in a hurry, but the Brushes palette is a better bet overall because it gives you complete control over all the tip’s properties. If you don’t see the Brushes palette onscreen, choose Window > Brushes.


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Once you have the shape of the tip that you want, you can adjust its size by dragging the Size slider or typing a value directly in the Size field and pressing Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac). The effective size of the tip depends upon the resolution of the canvas. For example, a 72-pixel tip is precisely one inch wide on a 72-ppi canvas (72 pixels divided by 72 pixels per inch), but it’s only 0.24 inch wide on a 300-ppi canvas (72 pixels divided by 300 ppi). In CS3, there isn’t a Size slider in the tool options along the top of the screen. Instead, there’s a Master Diameter slider, which you can find inside the drop-down menu of Brush tips. If you’re using the Brushes palette instead of the tool options, look for the Diameter slider.

Set the color for the Brush using the foreground and background color swatches. Usually, Photoshop uses the foreground color as the color of the paint, but depending on the Brush tip, it might alternate between the foreground and background colors. By editing the properties of a Brush tip, you can change the rate at which Photoshop swaps the colors. See the “Setting Other Options” section later in this chapter for more information.

Setting the Blending Mode Photoshop also enables you to set the blending mode of the Brush. The blending mode determines what kinds of pixels the tool affects or how Photoshop processes the color of the paint (see Figures 5.7 and 5.8). Table 5.1 lists the various blending modes for the Brush and gives a quick description for each one. Many of the blending modes involve mathematical calculations of color values, so unless you’re a computer, you probably won’t be able to visualize what they do. Most professional designers can’t either, so you’re in good company. Getting the hang of how a particular blending mode will look in a given situation is one of the gifts that Photoshop gives you with practice and experience. Choose the blending mode for the Brush from the Mode drop-down menu in the tool options. In most cases, you want to go with Normal mode, but feel free to experiment with the others.

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Figure 5.7 Paint with the Brush in Multiply mode to retain the texture of the original image.

Figure 5.8 Paint with the Brush in Color mode to change the hue and saturation (but not the luminance) of the original pixels. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)


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Table 5.1 Blending Modes for the Brush Blending Mode

Description

Normal Dissolve

Paints with the current paint color Similar to Normal mode, but tends to produce grainier results Paints transparent pixels with the current paint color; doesn’t work on the Background layer Makes pixels transparent; doesn’t work on the Background layer Paints pixels that are lighter than the current paint color and ignores darker ones Paints with the current paint color times the original colors of the pixels Increases the darkness of the original colors of the pixels based on the current paint color Reduces the lightness of the original colors of the pixels based on the current paint color Paints pixels that are darker than the current paint color and ignores lighter ones Paints with the inverse of the current paint color times the original colors of the pixels Increases the lightness of the original colors of the pixels based on the current paint color Reduces the darkness of the original colors of the pixels based on the current paint color Either multiplies or screens the current paint color and the original colors of the pixels, depending on the lightness of the original colors Either darkens or lightens the original colors of the pixels, depending on the lightness of the current paint color Either multiplies or screens the current paint color and the original colors of the pixels, depending on the lightness of the current paint color Either burns or dodges the original colors of the pixels, depending on the lightness of the current paint color Either increases or decreases the level of lightness of the original colors of the pixels, depending on the lightness of the current paint color

Behind Clear Darken Multiply Color Burn Linear Burn Lighten Screen Color Dodge Linear Dodge Overlay

Soft Light Hard Light

Vivid Light Linear Light

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Table 5.1 Blending Modes for the Brush (continued) Blending Mode

Description

Pin Light

Tints pixels, depending on the lightness of the current paint color Changes the original colors of the pixels to white, black, red, green, blue, cyan, yellow, and magenta, depending on the current paint color and the original colors of the pixels Subtracts either the current paint color from the original colors of the pixels or the original colors of the pixels from the current paint color, depending on which calculation creates the brighter shade Similar to Difference mode, but tends to produce less contrast Paints with the hue of the current paint color and the luminance and saturation of the original colors of the pixels Paints with the saturation of the current paint color and the luminance and hue of the original colors of the pixels Paints with the hue and saturation of the current paint color and the luminance of the original colors of the pixels Paints with the luminance of the current paint color and the hue and saturation of the original colors of the pixels

Hard Mix

Difference

Exclusion Hue Saturation Color Luminosity

The blending mode of the Brush is permanent. The only way to change its effects is to repaint the image with a different blending mode. As you’ll see in Chapter 7, “Applying Special Effects,” layers also have blending modes. It’s often preferable to set the blending mode for the layer instead of the Brush itself, especially if you don’t know what to expect from the various blending modes. This way, you can review the effects of several different blending modes before you commit to one of them, and you can always change it later—no repainting required. To make the most of this trick, always add the paint to a new layer of the canvas, never to the default Background layer.


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Setting the Opacity The opacity of the Brush determines the level of transparency of the paint (see Figure 5.9). Photoshop measures opacity in percent. An opacity of 100 percent means that the paint is completely opaque and not at all transparent, so you can’t see through it to the original colors of the pixels. As opacity decreases, the level of transparency increases, and you begin to see more and more of the original pixel colors under the paint, until you get to 0 percent, which means that the paint is completely transparent and therefore invisible. Figure 5.9 Setting the opacity of the Brush to 50 percent makes the paint 50percent transparent. (Photo by Dave Long)

To set the opacity of the Brush, drag the Opacity slider in the tool options or type a value directly in the Opacity field and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac). You can set the opacity for an entire layer, just like you can with blending modes. See Chapter 7 for more details.

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Using Airbrush Mode Switch on the Brush’s Airbrush mode, and the longer you hold the mouse pointer over the same area of the canvas, the more paint you will get in that area (see Figure 5.10). Airbrush mode works best with Brush tips that have some texture or softness to them. Toggle Airbrush mode by clicking the Airbrush icon in the tool options. Figure 5.10 In Airbrush mode, the longer you hold the mouse pointer over the same area of the canvas, the more paint you will get in that area.

The standard Brush and the Pencil aren’t the only brush-style tools in Photoshop. There’s also the Impressionist Brush, which simulates various painting techniques on a variety of textures. Find it hiding under the standard Brush tool in the Toolbox. In Photoshop CS3, this tool is called the Art History Brush, and it hides under the History Brush. Then there’s the Color Replacement tool, which hides under the Brush in both Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS3. The Color Replacement tool is like the standard Brush, except it attempts to determine the object that you’re painting and then prevents the paint from going outside the boundaries of this object. It’s a nice idea, but


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the implementation is far from perfect, because Photoshop stinks at figuring out which pixels belong to what objects in the image. Finally, there’s the History Brush. Photoshop CS3 has one, but Photoshop Elements doesn’t. This tool enables you to paint with previous versions of your image! It’s a little weird at first, but many designers swear by it. You might have noticed the History palette in Photoshop CS3, which records every edit that you make to the canvas. (Call up this palette by choosing Window > History from the menu bar.) To use the History Brush, set the History palette to a specific edit in the list, and then drag the tool across the canvas. Photoshop will swap the current pixels of the image with the pixels as they were at that earlier stage of editing. So if you turn the sun green in Photoshop, you can set the History palette to when the sun was still orange and restore the original orange pixels by painting with the History Brush.

Setting Other Options So far you’ve looked at tips, blending modes, and opacity, and you’ve still just scratched the surface of what the Brush can do. Check out some of the advanced options by clicking the More Options icon (see Figure 5.11). Figure 5.11 Tweak even more Brush parameters by clicking the More Options icon.

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In CS3, you don’t have a More Options icon. Look instead in the Brushes palette for all the editable parameters in Photoshop Elements, plus many others besides.

Here’s a quick rundown: ✦ Fade. This option determines how long it takes the paint on the Brush to run out, kind of like a permanent marker that’s dying on you. Lower values make fading happen more quickly, although setting this value to 0 turns the effect off altogether; in essence, the paint on the Brush never runs out. In Photoshop CS3, find the Fade parameter in the Brushes palette under Color Dynamics. Open the Control drop-down menu, choose Fade, and type a value in the field.

✦ Hue Jitter. This option determines how long it takes Photoshop to swap the foreground and background colors for the color of the paint. Lower values make the jitter happen less frequently, while a value of 0 turns off the effect. In CS3, find the Hue Jitter parameter in the Brushes palette under Color Dynamics.

✦ Scatter. This option determines to what degree Photoshop disperses the Brush stroke. Increase the Scatter value to spread out the stroke to a greater degree. In CS3, find the Scatter parameter in the Brushes palette under Scattering.

✦ Spacing. This option determines how far apart Photoshop places the Brush marks as you drag the mouse across the canvas. Increase Spacing to spread the Brush marks farther apart, or decrease Spacing to pack them closer together.

In CS3, find the Spacing parameter in the Brushes palette under Brush Tip Shape.


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✦ Hardness. This option determines the sharpness or blurriness of the Brush stroke. Increase Hardness to make the stroke less blurry. The Pencil tool’s tip always has a Hardness value of 100 percent, no matter its shape or size. In CS3, find the Hardness slider in the Brushes palette under Brush Tip Shape or in the drop-down menu of Brush tips in the tool options along the top of the screen.

✦ Angle. This option sets the angle of the Brush tip. In CS3, find the Angle field in the Brushes palette under Brush Tip Shape.

✦ Roundness. This option sets the roundness or flatness of the Brush tip. Higher values make the Brush tip rounder. In CS3, find the Roundness field in the Brushes palette under Brush Tip Shape.

Adding Fills A fill in bitmap graphics is a region of color. It can cover the entire canvas, or it can be inside a specific closed area. Photoshop gives you two tools for making fills: the Paint Bucket and the Gradient tool. You can also create special layers called fill layers that serve the same function. I’ll talk about each of these options in this section. In technical terms, there’s really no difference between painting with the Brush or Pencil and painting with the Paint Bucket and the Gradient tool. The fill tools don’t do anything special to the canvas, in other words. They simply change the colors of the pixels that are already in the image, just like the Brush and the Pencil. The only real difference is a practical one. When you need to cover a large area with color, the fill tools save you time. But if you were to paint the area by scribbling with the Brush or the Pencil, you’d get exactly the same results in the end. It would just take you longer.

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Using the Paint Bucket Use the Paint Bucket tool to fill an area of the canvas with a solid color or a predefined pattern (see Figures 5.12 and 5.13). 1.

Select the area that you want to fill using any of the selection tools. If you want to fill the entire canvas, choose Select > All from the menu bar.

You can skip Step 1, but then the Paint Bucket will act like the Magic Wand tool when you create the fill in Step 6. The paint from the Paint Bucket spreads out wherever you click to cover an area of color within the tool’s tolerance. Increase the tolerance to cover a wider range of colors, or decrease the tolerance to restrict the paint to a smaller range. To adjust the tolerance of the Paint Bucket, type a value in the Tolerance field in the tool options along the top of the screen anytime after Step 2.

2.

Grab the Paint Bucket from the Toolbox. It’s between the Brush and the Gradient tool.

In CS3, the Paint Bucket is a hidden tool under the Gradient tool in the Toolbox.

3.

Choose a solid fill or a pattern fill from the Fill drop-down menu in the tool options. Select Foreground, and Photoshop will use the current foreground color as the color of the paint. (If you need to change the foreground color, make sure you do so before you get to Step 6.) Select Pattern, and Photoshop will fill the selected area with the image in the Pattern drop-down menu. These patterns tile, or repeat to cover the entire selection.

To load additional patterns, open the context menu by clicking the arrow icon in the upper-right corner of the Pattern drop-down menu.

4.

Set the blending mode and opacity as needed. The blending mode and opacity properties of the Paint Bucket are just like those of the Brush.


Figure 5.12 Use the Paint Bucket tool to fill this circular selection with a solid color…

Figure 5.13 …or a predefined pattern.

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5.

In the Layers palette, select or create the layer into which you want to paint the fill. This does not have to be the same layer that contains the pixels you selected in Step 1. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be, unless you want to paint over the original colors of the pixels. It’s often easier in the long run for you to put the fill in a layer of its own.

If the selection contains a wide range of color, you might not have a choice but to create the fill in a layer of its own. Otherwise, the tolerance of the Paint Bucket tool will kick in, and Photoshop won’t change the colors of all the pixels inside the selection. You could also try cranking up the tolerance of the Paint Bucket to 255, but even then the fill might not blanket the entire area. 6.

Move the mouse pointer into the selection and click the mouse button. Photoshop will fill the selection.

Using the Gradient Tool Use the Gradient tool to fill an area of the canvas with a blend of two or more colors (see Figure 5.14). Gradients are especially helpful for creating a sense of depth and shading. Figure 5.14 Use the Gradient tool to fill an area of the canvas with a blend of two or more colors.


Photoshop gives you five different types of gradients: ✦ Linear. A linear gradient blends the colors along a straight line. ✦ Radial. A radial gradient blends the colors in bands of concentric circles. ✦ Angle. An angle gradient blends the colors counterclockwise from the starting point. ✦ Reflected. A reflected gradient gives you identical linear gradients on either side of the starting point. ✦ Diamond. A diamond gradient blends the colors in a diamond pattern. To use the Gradient tool, follow these steps: 1.

Select the area that you want to fill using any of the selection tools. Skip this step to fill the entire canvas.

2.

Grab the Gradient tool from the Toolbox. Find it between the Paint Bucket and the Rectangle tool.

In Photoshop CS3, the Gradient tool is between the Eraser and the Blur tool in the Toolbox.

3.

Choose a gradient pattern from the drop-down menu in the tool options. By default, Photoshop will blend the current foreground and background colors. However, you may also choose from several gradient presets.

4.

Choose the type of gradient by clicking the icon buttons next to the drop-down menu. From left to right, these are Linear, Radial, Angle, Reflected, and Diamond.

5.

Set the blending mode and opacity as needed.

6.

In the Layers palette, select or create the layer into which you want to paint the gradient. Once again, it’s usually smart to paint the gradient into a brand-new layer.

7.

Move the mouse pointer onto the canvas. The mouse pointer will become crosshairs.

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8.

Position the mouse pointer where you want the gradient to start. This is the point at which the changeover from one color to the other will begin. The starting point can be anywhere on the canvas, whether outside, inside, or right on the edge of the selected region. If the gradient starts somewhere inside the selected region, Photoshop will fill the space between the starting point and the edge of the selection with the beginning color, which is the foreground color by default.

9.

Hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse to where you want the gradient to end. This is the point at which the changeover from one color to the other will end. Like the starting point, the ending point can be anywhere on the canvas. If the gradient ends anywhere inside the selection, Photoshop will fill the space between the ending point and the edge of the selection with the final color, which is the background color by default. Pressing Shift as you go constrains the angle of the gradient to multiples of 45 degrees.

10.

Release the mouse button. Photoshop will fill the selected region with the gradient of your choice.

Creating Fill Layers A fill layer is a special type of layer that contains a solid, pattern, or gradient fill plus a built-in boundary or mask that determines where the fill appears on the canvas. A fill that you create with a fill layer looks identical to the ones that you paint with the Paint Bucket and Gradient tools. However, the great advantage to using a fill layer is that the fill is much easier to edit. In fact, to edit the fill, you don’t have to use a single selection tool. The mask on the fill layer enables Photoshop to perceive and remember the shape of the fill. In the world of raster graphics, this is nothing short of revolutionary. As I’ve said a hundred times already, Photoshop doesn’t recognize shapes in the image itself. All it sees are pixels. But on a fill layer, it sees the shape of the fill as plain as day. To add a fill layer to your canvas, follow these steps: 1.

Select the area that you want to fill using any of the selection tools. If you want to fill the entire canvas, skip this step.

If filling the canvas is your goal, you don’t really need a fill layer. Either the Paint Bucket or the Gradient tool is the better choice, because it isn’t necessary for Photoshop to remember the exact shape of the fill.


2.

Choose Layer > New Fill Layer from the menu bar. Then, from the submenu that appears, choose Solid Color, Gradient, or Pattern, depending on the kind of fill layer that you want. The New Layer dialog box will appear (see Figure 5.15).

3.

Type a name for the layer in the Name field. If you’re happy with the generic name that Photoshop supplies, you can skip this step.

4.

Choose a blending mode for the layer from the Mode drop-down menu. Under most circumstances, just go with Normal.

5.

Set the opacity for the layer with the Opacity slider. The slider appears when you click the arrow button to the right of the field. (If you’d prefer to type in the field directly, be my guest.) The lower the value, the more transparent the fill layer.

6.

Click OK. Photoshop will add the fill layer to the canvas.

7.

Choose the color, gradient, or pattern for the fill. Depending on your choice in Step 2, Photoshop will give you the Color Picker, the Gradient Fill dialog box (see Figure 5.16), or the Pattern Fill dialog box (see Figure 5.17). Pick your poison and click OK, and you will get the finished fill layer (see Figure 5.18).

Figure 5.15 Create a fill layer with the New Layer dialog box.

Figure 5.16 Define a gradient using the Gradient Fill dialog box.

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Figure 5.17 Choose a pattern using the Pattern Fill dialog box.

Figure 5.18 The finished fill layer appears on the canvas.

Not happy with your fill layer? Not a problem. You can edit it at any time. Go to the Layers palette and double-click the thumbnail for the fill (see Figure 5.19). Don’t double-click the thumbnail for the mask; that doesn’t do anything special. But double-clicking the thumbnail for the fill calls up the Color Picker, the Gradient Fill dialog box, or the Pattern Fill dialog box, whichever corresponds to your particular kind of fill layer. Choose a new color, gradient, or pattern and click OK, and Photoshop instantly will make the change (see Figure 5.20). No selection required! You can also change the position and transform the shape of the fill layer’s mask. Just grab the Move tool from the Toolbox. Drag the mask anywhere on the canvas to reposition the fill, or manipulate the handles of its bounding box to change its shape.


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Figure 5.19 To edit the fill, double-click its thumbnail in the Layers palette.

Figure 5.20 Photoshop instantly changes the color of the fill.

Erasing Need to clean up or get rid of some pixels? Try the Eraser tool. It’s worth mentioning that when you erase pixels with the Eraser, you’re not really erasing them, as in scrubbing them out of existence. They’re still on the canvas; they’re just a different color. If this sounds suspiciously like what happens with the Brush, it should. Both the Brush and the Eraser work by changing the color of the pixels on the canvas, although the color that you get when you erase depends on the layer. On the default Background layer, erased pixels become the

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current background color, as shown in the color swatches just below the Toolbox (see Figure 5.21). On any other layer, erased pixels become transparent (see Figure 5.22). So if the Eraser gives you an unexpected streak of color when you drag it across the canvas, it means you’re on the Background layer, and the current background color is different than the color of the canvas. The similarities with the Brush tool don’t stop there. You can also change the shape and size of the Eraser’s tip, as well as the opacity of the erasure (see Figure 5.23). To use the Eraser, follow these steps: 1.

Grab the Eraser tool from the Toolbox. It’s between the Clone Stamp and the Brush.

In Photoshop CS3, the Eraser is between the History Brush and the Gradient tool.

2.

Figure 5.21 The Eraser tool changes the color of the pixels on the default Background layer to the current background color… (Photo by Dave Long)

Select an Eraser mode from the Mode drop-down menu in the tool options along the top of the screen. There are three modes: Brush, Pencil, and Block. In Brush mode, you can change the shape and size of the Eraser tip, and soft-edged tips produce soft-edged erasures.


Figure 5.22 …while it makes the pixels transparent on any other layer. Notice the difference in the eyes; I erased part of Mr. Nixon’s George W. Bush mask. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

Figure 5.23 Adjust the opacity of the Eraser for a fade effect instead of a complete erasure. (Photo by Dave Long)

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That is, Photoshop blends the pixels along the edge of the erasure with the surrounding pixels of the image to produce a more gradual effect. (This property is the same as the Hardness attribute of the Brush tool.) In Pencil mode, you can change the shape and size of the Eraser tip, but Photoshop ignores its Hardness value and gives you a hard, unblended erasure every time. In Block mode, you get a standard hard Eraser tip that’s always 16 pixels square. You can’t change its size or shape. 3.

Choose a tip for the Eraser. This works just like it did for the Brush. Pop open the drop-down menu of tips in the tool options along the top of the screen and make your choice. If you chose Block mode in Step 2, you can’t choose a tip for the Eraser. If you chose Pencil mode, Photoshop will treat the tip as having a Hardness value of 100 percent, no matter its actual Hardness value.

In CS3, you can choose a tip for the Eraser from the drop-down menu along the top of the screen, but the Brushes palette gives you more options.

4.

Adjust the size of the tip. Drag the Size slider in the tool options. If you chose Block mode in Step 2, you can’t change the size of the tip.

To adjust the size of the tip in CS3, drag the Master Diameter slider in the drop-down menu in the tool options or the Diameter slider under the Brush Tip Shape category of the Brushes palette.

5.

Set the opacity of the Eraser by dragging the Opacity slider. The lower the value, the less of the original color the Eraser will erase.

6.

In the Layers palette, select the layer from which you want to erase.

You can restrict the area in which the Eraser works by making a selection on the canvas using any of the selection tools. Anything inside the selection is erasable; everything outside it is not.


7.

Move the mouse pointer onto the canvas. The pointer will change to the shape of the tip that you chose in Step 3.

8.

Hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse to erase. Remember, the pixels on the Background layer become the current background color, while the pixels on any other layer become transparent.

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Photoshop comes with a couple other special-purpose eraser tools that are worth a quick mention at least. These are the Background Eraser and the Magic Eraser. The Background Eraser tool samples the colors of nearby pixels and determines whether they’re part of the background or the foreground of the image. If it decides they’re in the background, it makes them transparent. If it decides they’re in the foreground, it does nothing to them. In theory, this tool makes it easier for you to scrub out the background of an image, leaving the foreground pixels untouched and in pristine isolation. In practice, Photoshop isn’t terribly good at telling which pixels are which, as you’ve seen time and again, so the tool often backfires or does a sloppy job. If you have a relatively consistent background to remove—say a cloudless blue sky—the Background Eraser might save you time. On a complex background, such as a heavily wooded forest, don’t expect miracles. The Magic Eraser is like a combination of the Eraser tool and the Magic Wand. Click in a region of the image with the Magic Eraser, and Photoshop will make the pixels of this region transparent based on their color. The Magic Eraser has a tolerance value just like the Magic Wand. The higher the tolerance, the wider the range of colors that the Magic Eraser affects. If you use either the Background Eraser or the Magic Eraser on the default Background layer of the canvas, Photoshop automatically will convert it into a standard layer. Remember that the Background layer can’t have transparent pixels, so Photoshop needs to change its type before the Background Eraser and the Magic Eraser can do their thing. Find both the Background Eraser and the Magic Eraser as hidden tools under the standard Eraser in the Toolbox.

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In this chapter, you learned how to paint in Photoshop. I started out by showing you the Brush tool and going through its many options, including the tip, the blending mode, and the level of opacity. Then I talked about creating fills with the Paint Bucket and the Gradient tool, and I demonstrated the flexibility of using fill layers instead. I wrapped up the chapter by discussing the Eraser. The whole way through, I impressed on you the importance of working on multiple layers. If you liked the convenience of fill layers, then I have some good news for you. There are several other types of special layers just waiting for you to discover them, which is where your Photoshop journey takes you next.

6 1 Doing More with Special Layers So far in this book, you’ve used layers to separate the different sets of pixels on your canvas for all kinds of interesting and helpful effects, such as perpetrating a moon-landing hoax. But layers aren’t just for pixels. Photoshop provides several types of special layers that enable you to add geometric shapes, pieces of text, masks, and even editing data to your canvas. This chapter takes you on a tour of some of the possibilities.

Drawing Shapes While you can use the painting tools, such as the Brush and the Pencil, to create simple shapes, it’s often quicker and easier to draw them with Photoshop’s shape tools (see Figure 6.1). You may have noticed that I said draw just now instead of paint, and if you did, let me commend you on your careful reading of this book. Remember that paint is the word that you use when you’re talking about pixels. I didn’t say paint because Photoshop’s shape-drawing tools aren’t for pixel-based bitmap graphics. Instead, they’re for outline-based vector graphics, not unlike those that you create in applications such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Macromedia Flash, or Microsoft Expression Design.

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Figure 6.1 Draw highly editable, outlinebased shapes using Photoshop’s shapedrawing tools.

I’ve mentioned before that the difference between vectors and rasters couldn’t be starker, but it’s worth pointing out the difference again, just for the sake of clarity. When you drag the Brush or the Pencil across the canvas, you know that you aren’t really creating new pixels. What’s really happening is that Photoshop is changing the colors of the pixels that are already there. You’ve also seen that Photoshop “forgets” where the streak of paint is, because it isn’t a real object on the canvas. You can’t just click it and select it, in other words. You have to grab one of the selection tools and pick out the pixels that make up the streak. If you edit or transform the selected pixels, Photoshop might resample them, and you end up losing image quality. But with the shape-drawing tools, you can throw that explanation right out the window because it doesn’t apply in the least. When you draw a shape, you add a new outline object to the canvas. (An object is just a set of data that go together. The computer treats the object as a single unit.) Photoshop perceives the contour, size, and location of the outline and keeps track of its color or appearance. To select the shape, simply click it—Photoshop knows its boundaries and properties, so you don’t have to use the Magic Wand or the Lasso to spell it out. And when you edit or transform the shape, Photoshop doesn’t resample it because it isn’t made out of pixels. You can make the shape as large or as small as you like, and

Chapter 6: Doing More with Special Layers

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you can stretch it or squeeze it indefinitely, and you lose absolutely no image quality whatsoever. By default, the shape-drawing tools in Photoshop CS3 give you outline-based objects, but you can set them to paint pixels instead, which makes these tools work just like the Brush and the Pencil. To do this, choose any drawing tool and click the Fill Pixels button in the tool options along the top of the screen. Just keep in mind that you’re painting now, not drawing, so all the same precautions about painting apply. Photoshop paints the pixels in the currently selected layer, so be careful not to paint over pixels that you want to keep. Also, as before, it’s wise to paint each shape into a brand-new layer unless you have a specific and very good reason not to.

There are six shape-drawing tools in all: ✦ Rectangle tool. Use this tool to draw rectangles. Hold down Shift while you draw to make a perfect square. ✦ Rounded Rectangle tool. Use this tool to draw rectangles with rounded corners. Hold down Shift while you draw to make a perfect square. To set the amount of roundness, type a value in the Radius field in the tool options along the top of the screen. Be sure to do this before you draw, because after you draw, you can’t edit the Radius value of the shape directly. In general, the higher the Radius value, the rounder the corners of the rectangle, but the actual level of roundness depends on the resolution of the canvas. High-res canvases require larger Radius values than lower-res canvases do. The Rounded Rectangle tool is good for designing button shapes, such as the navigation buttons of a website.

✦ Ellipse tool. Use this tool to draw ellipses. Hold down Shift as you draw to make a perfect circle. ✦ Polygon tool. Use this tool to draw multisided shapes: triangles, pentagons, hexagons, and so on. Hold down the Shift key to constrain the polygon’s angle of rotation. To set the number of sides,

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type a value in the Sides field in the tool options. Once again, be sure to do this before you draw, because you can’t edit the number of sides after the fact. ✦ Line tool. Use this tool to draw simple straight lines. Hold down Shift to constrain the line’s angle of rotation to multiples of 45 degrees. Set the thickness of the line in the tool options by typing a value in the Weight field—do this before you draw. The higher the weight, the thicker the line, although the actual weight depends upon the resolution of the canvas. Higher-res canvases call for higher Weight values than lower-res canvases do. ✦ Custom Shape tool. Use this tool to draw a variety of preset shapes, including word balloons, starbursts, hearts, and arrows. For additional shape-drawing options, such as making stars with the Polygon tool or adding arrowheads to the ends of lines with the Line tool, pop open the menu of geometry settings and adjust the controls accordingly. To see this menu, go to the tool options along the top of the screen and click the small black triangle immediately to the right of the Custom Shape icon. The available geometry settings will change, depending on the shape tool you’re using.

Find the shape-drawing tools in the Toolbox between the Blur tool and the Gradient tool. The Rectangle tool is the one that shows by default; the others are hiding underneath it. In CS3, the shape-drawing tools are between the Path Selection tool and the Notes tool in the Toolbox.

To draw a shape, follow these steps: 1.

Grab a shape-drawing tool from the Toolbox. Choose any of the six.

2.

Set any special properties in the tool options along the top of the screen. Now’s the time to specify the roundness of a rounded rectangle, the number of sides of a polygon, or the weight of a line. Also, if you want to adjust the geometry settings of the tool, do so now. If you don’t want or need to make any special adjustments, skip this step.


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Photoshop CS3 enables you to create shapes in three different ways: as shape layers, as paths, and as pixel fills. Under most circumstances, and for the purposes of this book, you want shape layers, so be sure to click the Shape Layers button in the tool options. However, as I mentioned before, click the Fill Pixels button if you want to paint instead of draw.

3.

Set the color of the shape. Choose a color from the Color menu in the tool options along the top of the screen, or set the current foreground color as you normally do directly under the Toolbox.

4.

Choose a layer style from the Style menu in the tool options. We haven’t talked about layer styles yet, but they’re basically simple effects that add visual interest to otherwise flat graphics. See Chapter 7, “Applying Special Effects,” for a complete discussion of layer styles. Browse the available styles in the Style menu. Change to a different set of styles by clicking the triangle button at the top of the menu and picking a new category. If you don’t want a style, skip this step.

You can always add a layer style to the shape after you draw it. In fact, it’s probably smarter to add the style later unless you already know what you want. See Chapter 7 for more information about applying layer styles.

5.

Move the mouse pointer onto the canvas. The pointer will become crosshairs.

6.

Hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse to draw the shape. Press the Shift key as you go to constrain the proportions or the angle of the shape, depending on the tool.

7.

Release the mouse button to stop drawing. Photoshop will add the shape to your canvas.

Take a look at the Layers palette, and you’ll notice that Photoshop has created a new layer for the shape (see Figure 6.2). This isn’t an ordinary layer. It’s a special sort called—wait for it—a shape layer. It contains the outline and position of the shape, along with its color and whatever style you applied to it. You can add to or subtract from the outline of the shape on a shape layer by selecting the shape layer in the Layers palette, grabbing any shape-drawing tool from the Toolbox, and clicking Add To, Subtract From, Intersect, or Exclude in the tool options along the top of the screen.

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Figure 6.2 Photoshop adds the shape to a special kind of layer called a shape layer.

To move or transform the shape, click the shape with the Move tool (see Figure 6.3). Don’t worry about selecting the shape with the selection tools. That’s completely unnecessary, and in fact, it’s counterproductive. If you try to use a pixelselection tool such as the Magic Wand, the Rectangular Marquee, or the Lasso on a shape layer, Photoshop assumes that you want to turn the shape layer into pixels. I’ll have more to say on that in a moment. The shape on your shape layer is a mathematical outline, not a collection of pixels, so you can edit the shape like crazy without losing any image quality (see Figure 6.4). There is literally nothing that you can do to the shape to damage it, so don’t hold back. Figure 6.3 Use the Move tool to reposition and transform the shape.


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Figure 6.4 Because the shape is a mathematical outline, not a collection of pixels, you don’t lose any image quality by editing it. Look at that razor-sharp edge!

You can also change the color of the shape at any time, again without affecting image quality. To do this, double-click the shape’s thumbnail on the shape layer. Photoshop will call up the Color Picker. Choose or mix a new color, and click OK to make the change (see Figure 6.5). In CS3, double-click the thumbnail of the color on the shape layer, not the thumbnail of the shape itself.

Changing or removing a layer style from the shape is a slightly different procedure. I don’t want to get into it just now, but you can skip ahead to Chapter 7 for complete instructions if you’d like. What I want to talk about instead is simplifying or rasterizing the shape, which means converting the contents of the shape layer from outlines to pixels. The main (and perhaps the only) reason for doing such a thing is to make the shape compatible with Photoshop’s painting tools and filters—see Chapter 7 for more about those. Keep in mind, though, that once you change the shape into pixels, you lose all the special advantages that come from shape layers. Before you can

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Figure 6.5 Change the color of the shape, again without affecting image quality.

Figure 6.6 When you simplify or rasterize a shape, you convert it into pixels. Its layer becomes a normal layer.


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edit the shape, you must select it using the pixel-selection tools, and if you transform the selected region, you run the risk of losing image quality. To rasterize a shape, select its layer in the Layers palette and choose Layer > Simplify Layer from the menu bar. Photoshop will convert the outline information into pixels and turn the shape layer into a normal one (see Figure 6.6). You can also rasterize the shape by selecting its layer, choosing any shape-drawing tool from the Toolbox, and clicking the Simplify button in the tool options along the top of the screen. To rasterize a shape in Photoshop CS3, select its layer in the Layers palette and choose Layer > Rasterize > Shape from the menu bar. Also, there is no Simplify button in the tool options, although you can choose to paint the shape instead of drawing it by clicking the Fill Pixels button.

Working with Type Photoshop’s type tools enable you to add text to your canvas and edit it as text rather than as pixels. There are four different type tools available: ✦ Horizontal Type tool. This is the standard type tool. It gives you lines of text that flow from left to right and top to bottom, exactly like written English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, and so on (see Figure 6.7). ✦ Vertical Type tool. This tool gives you lines of text that flow top to bottom and right to left, just like traditional written Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (see Figure 6.8). ✦ Horizontal Type Mask tool. This tool gives you horizontally oriented type, only the characters take the form of selection marquees, not text (see Figure 6.9). ✦ Vertical Type Mask tool. This tool gives you vertically oriented selection marquees in place of text. Look for the type tools in the Toolbox between the Magic Selection Brush and the Crop tool. In Photoshop CS3, the type tools are between the Pen tool and the Path Selection tool in the Toolbox.

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Figure 6.7 Horizontal type flows from left to right and top to bottom. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 6.8 Vertical type flows from top to bottom and right to left. (Photo by Dave Long)


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Figure 6.9 With the type mask tools, you get selection marquees instead of text. (Photo by Dave Long)

All four tools work more or less the same way. You use them in two slightly different ways for two different kinds of text: ✦ Single-line text. This kind of text is great for short bursts of wordage, anything from a single letter to about a sentence’s worth (see Figure 6.10). To add single-line text, grab a type tool and position the mouse pointer anywhere on the canvas. Click the mouse button and type away. The text appears on a continuous horizontal or vertical line, so that as you type, the length or the height of the line increases. Single-line text doesn’t have to stay on the same line. Just press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac) to start a new line. Keep in mind, though, that if you’re writing a longer passage, paragraph text is usually the better choice. Single-line text makes more sense for the short stuff.

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Figure 6.10 Use single-line text for labels, headlines, captions—basically any short burst of wordage. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 6.11 Use paragraph text for longer blocks of type. (Photo by Dave Long)


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✦ Paragraph text. Paragraph text appears inside a rectangular area. It’s good for longer passages (see Figure 6.11). To create paragraph text, grab one of the type tools and position the mouse pointer on the canvas, but instead of clicking once and releasing, hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse to set the boundaries of the rectangle. As you type, Photoshop automatically will jump to the next line when you come to the right or the bottom margin. The tool options along the top of the screen enable you to set the properties of the type (see Figure 6.12):

Figure 6.12 Use the tool options along the top of the screen to set the properties of the type. (In Photoshop CS3, your choices appear in a different order, and some of them aren’t in the tool options at all.)

✦ Font Family drop-down menu. This determines the typeface of the text. ✦ Font Style drop-down menu. If the font family comes with different styles, such as bold or italic, you’ll find them here. ✦ Font Size drop-down menu. The pt abbreviation here stands for points, a common measurement in typography. (Assuming that monitor resolution is 72 ppi, as it is by default on Macintosh computers, then one point is just about equal to one pixel.) Make the characters larger by increasing the font size, or make them smaller by decreasing it. ✦ Antialiasing button. Antialiasing is a graphics trick that makes type appear smoother than it actually is (see Figure 6.13). Click this button to turn antialiasing off and on. In CS3, there is no Antialiasing button, but there is an Antialiasing drop-down menu. Choose your preferred style of antialiasing from this menu, or pick None to turn off antialiasing altogether.

✦ Faux Bold and Faux Italic buttons. Not all font families come with built-in bold and italic styles. If your font doesn’t, you can fake it easily enough by clicking the Faux Bold or Faux Italic button. The Faux Bold setting makes the letters appear heavier, while the Faux Italic setting slants them (see Figure 6.14). When

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Figure 6.13 The top word is antialiased, while the bottom word isn’t. Notice how much more jagged the bottom one is. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 6.14 The top words are in the font’s built-in bold and italic styles, while the bottom words are in faux bold and faux italic styles. (Photo by Dave Long)


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you have the choice, you’re usually better off using the bold and italic styles that come with your font family because they tend to look more authentic. The Faux Bold and Faux Italic buttons aren’t in the tool options in Photoshop CS3. Look for them in the Character palette instead. To open the Character palette, choose Window > Character from the menu bar.

✦ Underline and Strikethrough buttons. Click the Underline button to underline the text, or click the Strikethrough button to draw a line through the middle of the text. In CS3, the Underline and Strikethrough buttons are in the Character palette, not the tool options.

✦ Alignment buttons (Left Align, Center, and Right Align or Top Align, Center, and Bottom Align). Click these buttons to align the text. For single-line text, alignment changes the starting position of the line of type. For paragraph text, Left Align and Right Align or Top Align and Bottom Align move the text to the left and right or top and bottom of the rectangle, while Center positions each line in the horizontal or vertical middle of the rectangle. ✦ Leading drop-down menu. Leading is the amount of space between lines of type. (Back in the day, before the printing world went digital, typesetters inserted pieces of lead between lines of type to increase the amount of space between them, which is where this measurement gets its name.) The default value is Auto, which means that Photoshop calculates the correct amount of leading based on the font family, font style, and font size. Choose a different value to make the leading whatever you like. As a rule of thumb, setting the leading to double the font size gives you the equivalent of double-spaced lines. So if the font size is 12 points, make the leading 24 points for double-spaced type, 36 points for triple-spaced type, and so on. In CS3, the Leading drop-down menu is in the Character palette.

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✦ Text Color drop-down menu. By default, the color of the text is the same as the current foreground color. Choose a different color from this drop-down menu. ✦ Text Warp button. Click this button to change the shape or flow of the text (see Figure 6.15). Figure 6.15 Warp the text for a variety of effects. (Photo by Dave Long)

✦ Text Orientation button. Click this button to change normal, horizontal text (where the lines read from left to right) into vertical text (where the lines read from top to bottom). Click again to revert to horizontal text. In CS3, the Text Orientation button is to the left of the Font Family drop-down menu.

Adjust these options freely as you type. Different pieces of text can have different formatting, although antialiasing, warping, and orientation always apply to the entire line or paragraph, not just the current character.


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The Character and Paragraph palettes contain many additional formatting options for text, including all-caps and small-caps styles, subscripts, superscripts, justification, hyphenation, and margin control. To see these palettes, choose Window > Character or Window > Paragraph from the menu bar.

When you use the Horizontal or Vertical Type tool, Photoshop adds the text to a special kind of layer, which is very much like the shape layers you worked with in the last section, only this sort of layer is called—wait for it—a type layer. The text on a type layer remains completely editable, just like the shape on a shape layer. Likewise, you can simplify the text, which changes the characters into pixels, but then you lose the ability to edit it as text. However, once the text has been simplified, you can touch it up with painting tools, such as the Eraser or the selection tools (see Figure 6.16), whereas normal, unsimplified text on a type layer is completely invisible to the painting and selection tools. Figure 6.16 Simplify a type layer to touch up parts of the letters with the painting or selection tools. (Photo by Dave Long)

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With the Horizontal or Vertical Type Mask tool, the selection marquees appear on the current layer; you do not get a special type layer when you use these tools. Before you do anything with the selections, make sure you choose the right layer from the Layers palette. You might also want to create a brand-new layer for whatever you’re planning.

You simplify a type layer exactly the same way that you simplify a shape layer: Select it in the Layers palette and choose Layer > Simplify Layer from the menu bar. To simplify a type layer in CS3, select it in the Layers palette and choose Layer > Rasterize > Type.

As I mentioned previously, normal, unsimplified text remains completely editable as long as it’s on a type layer, although how you go about editing it is a little different, depending on whether you have single-line or paragraph text: ✦ Editing the wording, format, or spelling (single-line or paragraph text). With the Horizontal or Vertical Type tool, click inside the text or drag the mouse to highlight a string of letters. ✦ Changing the dimensions of the text area (paragraph text only). With the Horizontal or Vertical Type tool, click inside the text, and the borders of the text area will appear. Drag any of the square handles to resize the rectangle and cause the current text to reflow. To reposition or transform the text, use the Move tool. Text that you create with the Horizontal Type Mask and Vertical Type Mask tools is not editable. Once you type it, the only way to change it is to retype it from scratch.

Creating Clipping Masks A clipping mask is a special kind of layer that acts as a frame for the contents of other layers (see Figures 6.17 and 6.18). Taken together, the clipping mask and the layer or layers that it frames are called a clipping group. The filled areas of the clipping mask determine what you can see of the other layers in the clipping group, while the transparent areas of the mask determine what you can’t see.


Figure 6.17 This photo sits on top of a shape layer and completely conceals it. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 6.18 Turn the shape layer into a clipping mask, and the filled portion of the shape layer acts as a frame.

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The opacity and blending mode of the clipping mask determine the opacity and blending mode of the entire clipping group, so set these values on the clipping mask. Also, to add a layer style to the clipping group, apply it directly to the clipping mask. (See Chapter 7 for more information about layer opacity, blending modes, and layer styles.)

The clipping mask itself is usually a shape layer or even a type layer (see Figure 6.19), but it can also be a regular old layer with painted pixels (see Figure 6.20). The colors of the elements on the clipping mask don’t really matter. Any colored area becomes see-through in the mask, while any transparent area becomes opaque. To create a clipping mask, follow these steps: 1.

Figure 6.19 Use a type layer as a clipping mask. (Photo by Dave Long)

Arrange the order of the layers in the Layers palette. All the layers in the clipping group need to be next to each other. The clipping mask itself should be at the very bottom of the group. The layers that you see through the clipping mask are visible from the bottom up. That is, layers higher in the group superimpose layers lower in the group.


Figure 6.20 A clipping mask can also be a regular old pixel layer. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 6.21 Move the mouse pointer between the layer to use as a clipping mask and the first layer to mask.

2.

Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac).

3.

Move the mouse pointer between the layer to use as a clipping mask and the first layer to mask. The mouse pointer will change into two superimposed circles (see Figure 6.21).

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4.

Click the mouse button. Photoshop will turn the lower layer into a clipping mask and put the upper layer into its clipping group (see Figure 6.22).

You can edit the clipping mask itself by selecting its layer in the Layers palette.

5.

Continue adding layers to the clipping group. Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac), position the mouse pointer between the layers in the Layers palette, and click the mouse button (see Figure 6.23).

You can reorder the layers in a clipping group by dragging them around the Layers palette. To remove a layer from a clipping group, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac), position the mouse pointer directly underneath the layer that you want to remove, and click the mouse button. Photoshop will remove that layer from the clipping group, as well as any layers above it. The layers below it will remain in the group. Figure 6.22 The lower layer becomes the clipping mask, and the upper layer becomes part of its clipping group. (Photo by Dave Long)


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Figure 6.23 Continue adding layers to the clipping group. (Photo by Dave Long)

Using Adjustment Layers An adjustment layer just may be the strangest sort of layer yet, because it doesn’t contain any image elements! It doesn’t have pixels on it, nor does it have shapes, text, or clipping masks. Instead, it contains editing data for adjusting image properties, such as brightness and contrast and tonal levels (see Figures 6.24 and 6.25). If you’ve been playing around with the adjustment menu commands, such as Enhance > Adjust Lighting and Enhance > Adjust Color, in Photoshop Elements, or Image > Adjustments in Photoshop CS3, you already know that Photoshop enables you to make these sorts of adjustments directly on the pixels of a layer. Why would you want to put the adjustment itself on a layer of its own? The answer has to do with editability. When you process the pixels of a layer with an adjustment command from the menu bar, the edit is permanent. Let’s say that you’re adjusting the brightness level of a digital photo. If you do this through the menu commands (Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Brightness/Contrast in Photoshop Elements and Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast in Photoshop CS3), you can’t go back later and make the brightness less bright. Whatever you do to the brightness of the digital photo is a permanent edit, in

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Figure 6.24 This image is too washed out. It could use a little work in the midtones. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 6.25 A Levels adjustment layer does the trick. (Photo by Dave Long)


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other words. But if you put the brightness adjustment on an adjustment layer, Photoshop will remember the precise amount by which you increased the brightness. You can go back into the adjustment layer and increase or decrease the brightness level at any time. And if you decide to start from scratch, you can just trash the adjustment layer, and the original digital photo will be exactly as it was before you messed around with the brightness. An adjustment layer affects all the layers beneath it in the Layers palette. If you don’t want a particular layer to be processed by the adjustment layer, you must move this layer anywhere above the adjustment layer in the stack.

There are many kinds of adjustment layers, as Table 6.1 shows. Just like with blending modes, the textual descriptions of some of the adjustment layers might sound like gibberish. Probably the best way to see what they can do is to test them out for yourself. Table 6.1 Adjustment Layers in Photoshop Adjustment Layer

Description

Available In

Levels

Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3

Channel Mixer Gradient Map

Adjusts highlights, shadows, and midtones Adjusts color channels Adjusts the balance of colors and tone Adjusts the level of lightness and darkness as well as the vividness or mutedness of colors Changes color to grayscale Adjusts hue, saturation, and lightness Adjusts the levels of specific colors Mixes color channels Tints with a gradient

Photo Filter

Applies a lens filter effect

Curves Color Balance Brightness/Contrast

Black & White Hue/Saturation Selective Color

Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3 Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3 Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS3 Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS3

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Table 6.1 Adjustment Layers in Photoshop (continued) Adjustment Layer

Description

Available In

Exposure Invert

Adjusts exposure level Inverts colors

Threshold

Produces one-color bitmap images; the threshold determines the cutoff point between white and black Adjusts the number of tonal steps or bands

Photoshop CS3 Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS3 Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS3

Posterize

Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS3

To add an adjustment layer to your canvas, follow these steps: 1.

Select a layer in the Layers palette. This layer and any layers beneath it will be processed by the adjustment layer. Any layers above it will not be processed by the adjustment layer.

If you want to restrict the adjustment to a particular selection instead of applying it to the entire layer, make the selection using any of the selection tools before you create the adjustment layer in Step 2.

2.

Choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer from the menu bar. Photoshop will show you a submenu containing the various adjustment layers. Choose an adjustment layer type, and a dialog box for that particular adjustment will appear. For this example, I created a Levels adjustment layer (see Figure 6.26). If you create a different kind of adjustment layer, your dialog box will look different.

If you choose to create an Invert adjustment layer in Step 2, you don’t get a dialog box, because this sort of adjustment layer comes with no editable options.

3.

Drag the controls to edit the image. When you’re happy with the results, click OK to close the dialog box and add your adjustment layer to the image.


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Figure 6.26 A dialog box for your chosen adjustment appears.

To edit the adjustment, double-click the layer thumbnail in the Layers palette. This is the thumbnail with the two rectangles and the little slider icon beneath it. Photoshop will call back up the dialog box for your particular adjustment. Tweak the controls and click OK. To remove the adjustment entirely, drag the adjustment layer in the Layers palette and drop it on the trashcan icon. In this chapter, I showed you how to create a bunch of special layers. You learned about shape layers and how they’re much kinder than pixel-based layers when it comes to editability. You moved on to type layers, and I talked about setting the various options for creating all kinds of text. Next came clipping masks, which enable you to create frames for the content of other layers. Finally, you looked at adjustment layers, which store editing data for safekeeping and easy changing later. There’s just one more stop on this leg of your Photoshop journey, and it’s a fun one, so turn the page and let’s go!


7 Applying Special Effects In Photoshop, you can take an idea from the very beginning of the inspiration stage all the way to post-production. Adding special effects usually comes toward the end of this process, after you’ve nailed down the basic layer structure of the canvas and the general layout of the elements, but before you add the finishing touches and print or create an image file. This is Photoshop, so as usual, there are dozens of options and editing parameters. The goal of this chapter is not to exhaust the topic (or you, for that matter), but to present the most important ideas and to have a bit of fun while we’re at it.

Setting the Blending Mode and Opacity of a Layer In Chapter 5, you set the blending mode and opacity of the Brush and other painting tools. This isn’t the only way to work with blending modes and opacity. In fact, sometimes it isn’t even the better way. Setting the blending mode or the opacity of the paint itself is fine if you know exactly what you’re doing beforehand, but many times you don’t. It isn’t always easy to predict what a particular blending mode is going to do when you use it. It’s just as tricky trying to decide whether 33 percent, 50 percent, or 66 percent opacity is right without actually seeing the results.

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To give you more flexibility in composition and editing, Photoshop enables you to set the blending mode (see Figures 7.1 and 7.2) and opacity (see Figures 7.3 and 7.4) of the individual layers in your canvas. Your choices don’t permanently change the colors of the pixels on the layer, so your document remains completely editable. If one blending mode doesn’t do the trick, simply try another. Of course, if you’re the type of designer who’s stingy with layers, this strategy might not work out for you so well. When you set the blending mode and opacity of a layer, all the pixels on the given layer are affected. You can’t pick and choose, so if you put several different elements on the same layer, they all change according to the layer’s blending mode and opacity. But even still there’s hope. Just transfer all the unwanted elements to different layers using the methods in Chapter 3, so that what’s left on the layer in questions are only those pixels that you want to blend or make partially transparent. Then set the blending mode and opacity on the layer, and you’re good to go. You can set the blending mode and opacity of any layer except the default Background layer. Convert this layer to a standard one, though, and you can set its blending mode or opacity like any other.

Figure 7.1 You won’t convince too many people of your space voyages this way. The planet Jupiter has clearly been plopped into a digital photo. (Photo by Dave Long; Jupiter courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Chapter 7: Applying Special Effects

Figure 7.2 Change the blending mode of the Jupiter layer to Lighten, and the photographic evidence could persuade even a Nobel Prize winner. (Photo by Dave Long; Jupiter courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Figure 7.3 Grab some animal pixels from one canvas… (Photo by Dave Long)

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Figure 7.4 ...Then just paste them into another canvas and adjust the opacity of the layer. You’ve now documented an authentic ghost sighting. Notify the press. (Photo by Dave Long)

The controls for the blending mode and opacity of a layer are along the top of the Layers palette. The blending modes are in a drop-down menu, while the opacity has a slider. By default, the blending mode for a layer is Normal, and opacity is 100 percent. To change the blending mode of the layer, choose a new value from the drop-down menu. To set the opacity, drag the slider. Opacity is easy to visualize. The element on the current layer becomes more transparent as you reduce the Opacity value, and you begin to see through to the layer or layers underneath. If an element on a lower layer is also transparent, you begin to see through both layers. Blending modes are a little trickier to talk about without getting super-technical, but here are the general guidelines. When you change the blending mode of a layer, that layer’s pixels are the ones that change, not the pixels on any other layer. However, the blend reaches from that layer down, all the way to the bottom of the canvas. In other words, Photoshop blends the current layer with whatever’s visible on all the lower layers, not just the layer immediately beneath it. So if your canvas has five layers, and you set the blending mode of Layer 2, Photoshop blends this layer with the visible pixels of Layers 3, 4, and 5, since all three layers are below Layer 2 in the stack. Layer 1, which is above Layer 2 in the stack, is completely unaffected.


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Explaining the effects of the blending modes always comes out sounding like a load of babble to these ears, but Table 7.1 gives it a shot. A far better way to see what the blending modes can do is to experiment with them yourself. Table 7.1 Blending Modes for Layers Blending Mode

Description

Normal Dissolve

Displays the layer’s pixels with their original colors Similar to Normal mode, but tends to produce grainier results Displays pixels that are darker than the ones on lower layers and ignores lighter ones Multiples the colors of superimposed pixels and displays the product Increases the darkness of the colors of the layer’s pixels based on the colors of the pixels on lower layers Reduces the lightness of the colors of the layer’s pixels based on the colors of the pixels on lower layers Displays pixels that are lighter than the ones on lower layers and ignores darker ones Multiplies the colors of the superimposed pixels and displays the inverse of the product Increases the lightness of the colors of the layer’s pixels based on the colors of the pixels on lower layers Reduces the darkness of the colors of the layer’s pixels based on the colors of the pixels on lower layers Either multiplies or screens the colors of the layer’s pixels and the colors of the pixels on lower layers, depending on the lightness of the colors of the lower-layer pixels Either darkens or lightens the colors of the layer’s pixels, depending on their lightness Either multiplies or screens the colors of the layer’s pixels and the colors of the pixels on lower layers, depending on the lightness of the layer’s pixels Either burns or dodges the colors of the layer’s pixels and the colors of the pixels on lower layers, depending on the lightness of the layer’s pixels

Darken Multiply Color Burn Linear Burn Lighten Screen Color Dodge Linear Dodge Overlay

Soft Light Hard Light

Vivid Light

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Table 7.1 Blending Modes for Layers (continued) Blending Mode

Description

Linear Light

Either increases or decreases the level of lightness of the layer’s pixels, depending on the lightness of the colors of the lower-layer pixels Tints the pixels of lower layers, depending on the colors of the current layer’s pixels Changes the colors of the pixels on lower layers to white, black, red, green, blue, cyan, yellow, and magenta, depending on their original colors and the colors of the pixels on the current layer Subtracts the colors of superimposed pixels; which color gets subtracted from which depends upon whichever one creates the brightest shade Similar to Difference mode, but tends to produce less contrast Blends the hue of the layer’s pixels with the luminance and saturation of the lower-layer pixels Blends the saturation of the layer’s pixels with the luminance and hue of the lower-layer pixels Blends the hue and saturation of the layer’s pixels with the luminance of the lower-layer pixels Blends the luminance of the layer’s pixels with the hue and saturation of the lower-layer pixels

Pin Light Hard Mix

Difference

Exclusion Hue Saturation Color Luminosity

Applying Layer Styles and Filters For as useful as blending modes and opacity can be, they’re basically specialty tricks. They’re good for what they do, but what they do only gets you so far. Most special effects in Photoshop come from two other, more versatile departments: layer styles and filters. The distinction between layer styles isn’t as clear as it used to be, and it gets blurrier with each new Photoshop upgrade. You work with both types of effects in pretty much the same way, applying them to individual layers in your document. But in general, layer styles are for adding little effects, such as shadows and glows, to elements in your image (see Figures 7.5 and 7.6), while filters are for more


Figure 7.5 Ho, hum. Just another Go button for a website. Maybe I’ll click it, and maybe I won’t.

Figure 7.6 Add a couple layer styles to the elements of the image, and I can’t wait to click.

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drastic effects, such as making a digital photo look like a pencil sketch (see Figures 7.7 and 7.8). I wouldn’t say this too loudly around some designers, though. You can easily use layer styles for big effects and filters for more subtle ones. It all comes down to how you work with them. The actual difference between the two has to do with the way that Photoshop applies them to the image—and even then the distinction is fuzzy. Until very recently, filters were destructive, while layer styles were not; destructive in this sense means permanent. In other words, when you apply a layer style to a layer, the effects are non-destructive, so the pixels of the layer don’t permanently change. You can easily tweak or even hide the effects of the layer style with a mouse click or two. But when you apply a filter, Photoshop processes the pixels on the layer and permanently changes their properties. You can’t turn off the effects of a filter once you’ve applied it, and the only way to tweak the effects is to start from the original layer again and reapply the filter with different settings. But notice I said until very recently in the last paragraph. Photoshop CS3 introduces Smart Filters, which make Photoshop’s filters behave very much like layer styles. You can tweak their effects and temporarily hide them without permanently changing anything. Unfortunately, Photoshop Elements 5.0 doesn’t have Figure 7.7 Start with a photorealistic image. (Photo by Dave Long)


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Figure 7.8 Apply the Fresco filter, and you have a newly discovered Monet. Sell your find to a museum. (Photo by Dave Long)

Smart Filters, so if you’re in Photoshop Elements, my previous explanation stands. You can also use filters the traditional, destructive way in Photoshop CS3, although you might not want to once you get the taste for the smart kind. Because Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS3 differ on these points more than they usually do, I’m going to talk about each application separately in this section.

Working with Layer Styles in Photoshop Elements Photoshop Elements files the layer styles in the Artwork and Effects palette. If you don’t see this palette onscreen, choose Window > Artwork and Effects from the menu bar. Not everything in the Artwork and Effects palette is a layer style, though. The layer styles are actually a subcategory of Special Effects, which is only one of five main divisions in the palette, so it takes a bit of a hunt to get to them. The styles themselves span 14 distinct categories, as Table 7.2 shows.

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Table 7.2 Categories of Layer Styles in Photoshop Elements Category

Description

Bevels Drop Shadows Inner Glows Inner Shadows Outer Glows Visibility Complex

Adds ridges to the layer elements Adds a shadow underneath the layer elements Makes the layer elements appear to glow from within Adds a shadow to the interior of the layer elements Makes the layer elements appear to give off light Sets the visibility of the layer elements Applies a combination of effects to layer elements for various looks and textures Glass Buttons Adds a glassy effect to layer elements; especially good for button shapes Image Effects Adds color or environmental effects to layer elements Patterns Applies predefined patterns or textures to layer elements Photographic Effects Tints layer elements with various tones Wow Chrome Applies chrome-like effects to layer elements Wow Neon Applies neon-like effects to layer elements Wow Plastic Applies plastic-like effects to layer elements Here’s how to apply a layer style in Photoshop Elements: 1.

In the Layers palette, select the layer to which you want to apply the style. To select more than one, hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac).

2.

In the Artwork and Effects palette, click the Apply Effects, Filters, and Layer Styles button. This is the middle icon at the top of the palette.

3.

Choose Layer Styles from the drop-down menu on the left.

4.

Choose the style category from the drop-down menu on the right.

5.

In the Artwork and Effects palette, click the style that you want to apply. If you don’t see anything to your liking, go back to Step 4 and choose another style category.

6.

Click the Apply button at the bottom of the palette. Photoshop Elements will apply the style to the contents of the layer.


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If you look at the Layers palette, you’ll see that the layer with the style now shows a blue starburst icon. That’s to remind you that there’s a layer style on the layer. Remember, layer styles are non-destructive, so you can edit them and get rid of them as the need arises. To change the attributes of the layer style, go to the menu bar and choose Layer > Layer Style > Style Settings. The Style Settings dialog box will appear (see Figure 7.9). Use the controls in the dialog box to make your adjustments, and click OK. Figure 7.9 Adjust the properties of a layer style with the Style Settings dialog box.

You can also double-click the blue starburst icon in the Layers palette to call up the Style Settings dialog box.

To turn off a layer style temporarily, choose Layer > Layer Style > Hide All Effects. Choose Layer > Layer Style > Show All Effects to turn it on again. To remove the layer style permanently, choose Layer > Layer Style > Clear Layer Style.

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Working with Layer Styles in Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3 doesn’t have an Artwork and Effects palette, so you can’t exactly call it up to apply layer styles to your layers. Instead, Photoshop CS3 gives you the Layer Style dialog box (see Figure 7.10). To see it, choose Layer > Layer Style from the menu bar and then choose one of the 10 layer styles from the submenu—more on those in a moment. You can also click the fx icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and pick a layer style from the context menu that appears.

Figure 7.10 Use the Layer Style dialog box in Photoshop CS3 to add and edit layer styles.

The layer styles in Photoshop CS3 are similar to the style categories in Photoshop Elements, but there aren’t as many of them (see Table 7.3). Also, each layer style is its own thing; you don’t get a set of preset styles within the main category from which to choose. At the same time, Photoshop CS3’s layer styles are more editable, which means that you can design exactly the effect that you want.


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Table 7.3 Layer Styles in Photoshop CS3 Layer Style

Description

Drop Shadow Inner Shadow Outer Glow Inner Glow Bevel and Emboss

Adds a shadow underneath the layer elements Adds a shadow to the interior of the layer elements Makes the layer elements appear to give off light Makes the layer elements appear to glow from within Adds ridges to the layer elements; you can adjust the contour and texture independently Applies a satin-like effect to layer elements Applies a solid, blended, or partially transparent color fill to the layer elements Applies a gradient fill to the layer elements Applies a pattern fill to the layer elements Applies a visible outline to the contour of the layer elements

Satin Color Overlay Gradient Overlay Pattern Overlay Stroke

To apply layer styles in Photoshop CS3, follow these steps: 1.

In the Layers palette, select the layer to which you want to apply the style. To select more than one layer, hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac).

2.

Call up the Layer Style dialog box. Either choose Layer > Layer Style from the menu bar and pick a layer style from the submenu or click the fx icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and pick a layer style from the context menu. Whichever way you go, you get the Layer Style dialog box. Photoshop will automatically check the layer style that you chose from the submenu or context menu.

3.

Modify the properties of the layer style using the controls in the main pane of the dialog box.

You can adjust the blending behavior and other general properties of the layer styles by choosing the Blending Options category in the Layer Style dialog box.

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4.

Add more styles to the layer if you like. To do this, check the check box on the left side of the dialog box to activate the corresponding layer style. Then click the name of the style to call up its controls and adjust them as needed. Repeat this step as often as you like to stack multiple styles. If you need only one layer style, skip this step.

5.

Click OK. The Layer Style dialog box will close.

Notice that the Layers palette lists the individual layer styles for the layer (see Figure 7.11). Double-click the layer style’s entry in this list to call back the Layer Style dialog box and edit the effects. To hide the effects, click the layer style’s eye icon. To remove the effects altogether, choose Layer > Layer Styles > Clear Layer Style from the menu bar. Figure 7.11 The Layers palette lists the individual layer styles for the layer.

Working with Filters in Photoshop Elements As I mentioned earlier, filters in Photoshop Elements are destructive in the sense that once you’ve applied them, they’re permanent. You can’t edit their effects or turn them off temporarily after the fact. To get around any potential problems that the destructive nature of filters might cause you, it’s never a bad idea to make a copy of the layer that you want to filter before you filter it. Keep the original version of the layer in your document; you can even hide it by poking out its eye icon in the Layers palette. Then go to town with filters on the copied version of the layer. This way, if anything goes wrong or


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if you decide to change your approach later on, you haven’t lost any of the original pixels. To make a copy of a layer, go to the Layers palette and drag the layer to the Create New Layer icon. Like layer styles, filters come in several different categories. Table 7.4 lists them. Table 7.4 Filter Categories in Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS3 Filter Category

Description

Artistic Blur Brush Strokes Distort Noise Pixelate Render Sharpen

Applies fine-art and pop-art painting styles Softens the layer contents or adds motion effects Applies traditional brushing techniques Bends or molds the shape of the layer contents Adds or removes grain Applies dot patterns Applies depth, shading, and lighting effects Increases the perceived sharpness or definition of the layer contents Applies illustration techniques and paper textures Applies edge and tiling effects Simulates cracks, tiles, and panes Processes or prepares video captures Applies miscellaneous effects

Sketch Stylize Texture Video Other

All digital data, whether music, video, or static images, have problems with definition. The keen listener, watcher, or viewer can often discern little gaps in the tonal range. Sometimes these gaps are really obvious, such as when you listen to a poorly made MP3 file or you look at a low-res image. In a better recording or image file, the gaps are smaller or more cleverly hidden, but they’re still there. There’s just no getting around it. Because of these gaps, most digital images benefit from a little sharpening. Sharpening makes the outlines in an image appear to be more distinct and focused, although what you’re really doing is adding a bit of an optical illusion. Lack of sharpness comes from the little gaps in the digital data. When you sharpen, you aren’t getting rid of the gaps. You’re just hiding them better from the human eye. It’s a trick, but the trick works.

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If you look under the Sharpen filter category in Photoshop Elements, you find the Unsharp Mask filter. An unsharp mask blocks out everything in the image that is soft or unsharp, leaving you with sharpness. Unsharp masking is fine, although you generally get better results with the Adjust Sharpness command. To use this command, choose Enhance > Adjust Sharpness. Photoshop CS3 offers several different sharpening filters. Unsharp Mask is there, along with a set of basic sharpening functions, but the crown jewel is the Smart Sharpen filter. It’s the older sibling of the Adjust Sharpness command in Photoshop Elements, and it’s an excellent first choice for all your sharpening needs.

To apply a filter to a layer in Photoshop Elements, follow these steps: 1.

In the Layers palette, select the layer or layers that you want to filter. Don’t forget, it’s better to filter a copy of the layer instead of the original.

Normally the filter processes the entire contents of the layer. However, if you select any portion of the layer using any of the selection tools, the filter will process only the selected pixels and leave the rest of the layer alone.

2.

In the Artwork and Effects palette, click the Apply Effects, Filters, and Layer Styles icon.

3.

Choose Filters from the drop-down menu on the left.

4.

Choose a filter category from the drop-down menu on the right.

5.

Select a filter from the Artwork and Effects palette. The little thumbnails in the palette are rough guides only, but they’re generally pretty accurate. You’ll be able to edit many of the effect parameters in Step 7, so your final results might differ somewhat from the thumbnail pictures.

6.

Click the Apply button. The preview dialog box will open. Depending on the filter and the resolution of the canvas, it may take a few seconds for the preview to appear.

7.

Adjust the attributes of the filter. Drag the sliders in the dialog box or type new values directly into the fields.

8.

Click OK. Photoshop Elements will apply the filter to the selected layer. Remember, this is permanent!


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If you’re looking for a more authentic Photoshop CS3 experience in Photoshop Elements, choose your filters from the Filter menu instead of from the Artwork and Effects palette. The downside is that you don’t get to see the various thumbnails of the filter effects, so you have less of an idea what to expect from any given filter, but welcome to the way the pros have been doing it for years—by trial and error. (And luck.)

Working with Filters in Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3 includes the same filter categories as Photoshop Elements, so see Table 7.4 in the previous section for a reference, but many of the categories contain additional filter choices unavailable in the Elements version. What Photoshop CS3 doesn’t have is the Artwork and Effects palette, so you need another way to apply your filters. Probably the most common, and certainly the most familiar to longtime Photoshop users, is to pop open the Filter menu and browse the choices. The disadvantage to applying filters like this is that you have only the name of the filter to go by. You don’t see the effects of the filter until after you choose it from the menu. To browse in more of a visual way, try the Filter Gallery dialog box, which opens when you choose Filter > Filter Gallery from the main menu (see Figure 7.12). Collapse and expand the filter categories in the middle of the dialog box to reveal thumbnail images for the various filters. Choose a filter by clicking its thumbnail and adjust the properties of the filter using the controls on the right side of the dialog box. Keep your eye on the preview pane on the left. When the effects are as you want them, click OK to close the dialog box and apply the filter. When you work in the Filter Gallery, you can stack the effects of multiple filters or apply the same filter more than once. Click the new-page icon at the bottom right of the dialog box, and Photoshop will give you a new filter slot in the stack. Photoshop applies the filters from the bottom up, so the bottommost filter is the first one fired. If you need to change the order in which the filters fire, you can drag them up or down in the stack. To remove a filter, select it in the stack and click the trash icon.

For as handy as the Filter Gallery is, it isn’t the perfect solution. For one thing, it doesn’t show all the filters or filter categories available, so if you don’t find what you’re looking for in the Gallery, try the old faithful Filter menu. For another

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Figure 7.12 Browse filters visually (and stack their effects) with the Filter Gallery.

thing, if you apply a filter through the Filter Gallery non-destructively (which I’ll explain how to do momentarily), the list of filters in the Layers palette says Filter Gallery, not the name of the filter or filters that you used—a minor point, but one worth mentioning, especially if your memory is leaky like mine. The Filter Gallery isn’t just for Photoshop CS3 people. Photoshop Elements has this feature, too. To use it, choose Filter > Filter Gallery from the menu bar. The Elements version looks and works just like the CS3 version.

To apply a filter the old-fashioned, destructive way, just make a choice from the Filter menu or the Filter Gallery. As long as the filter’s dialog box is onscreen, you can still back out of the effect without changing anything, but once you click OK, Photoshop CS3 processes the pixels, and you’re done. Hopefully you’re working on a copy of the layer instead of the original, just in case you change your mind later.


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You can attempt to undo a destructive filter by choosing Edit > Undo from the menu bar or by opening the History palette in Photoshop CS3 and stepping back to an earlier version of the canvas. After you’ve saved and closed the canvas, though, the destructive filter is permanent.

But why work destructively when non-destructive, completely editable Smart Filters are at hand? To apply filters as Smart Filters instead, you must first convert the layer into a Smart Object. Smart Objects are like special containers for large chunks of data that Photoshop doesn’t usually support. It may seem silly to treat a layer of pixels as something foreign to Photoshop when layers and pixels are about as true-blue as it gets, but hey, if that’s how you end up with non-destructive filters, then long live Smart Objects. To covert a layer into a Smart Object, follow these steps: 1.

Go to the Layers palette and choose the layer that you want to convert.

2.

Choose Filter > Convert for Smart Filters from the menu bar. A dialog box will appear, explaining what’s going on (see Figure 7.13).

3.

Click OK. The dialog box will close, and Photoshop CS3 will convert the layer into a Smart Object.

Figure 7.13 When you convert a layer into a Smart Object, Photoshop CS3 displays this dialog box.

Now apply filters to the Smart Object through the Filter menu or the Filter Gallery, just as you would if you were working destructively on a standard layer. But now when you apply the filter, Photoshop CS3 will make an entry for it underneath the Smart Object in the Layers palette (see Figure 7.14). Click the controls icon to the right of the entry to call up the dialog box for the filter and edit its effects. To hide the filter’s effects temporarily, toggle the eye icon. The filters fire from bottom to top, just like they do in the Filter Gallery. To change the order in which the filters fire, drag them up or down in the list. To remove the filter entirely, drag it to the trashcan icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.

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Figure 7.14 The filter appears in the Layers palette underneath the Smart Object. Click the controls icon on the right to tweak the settings of the effect.

If you haven’t converted the layer into a Smart Object, Photoshop CS3 will apply the filter destructively without warning you, so be sure to look before you leap. Smart Objects have a special new-page icon in the lower-right corner of their thumbnails in the Layers palette. If you don’t see this icon, you don’t have a Smart Object, and you don’t get non-destructive filters.

In this chapter, you learned about special effects in Photoshop. I started out by talking about blending modes and opacity again, this time in the context of entire layers. Then came the main course: layer styles and filters. I explained how layer styles are non-destructive and how filters are destructive, but then I hedged because Photoshop CS3 introduces non-destructive Smart Filters. In any event, I showed you how to use layer styles and filters in Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS3. With that, your Photoshop primer is complete. It’s time to take the training wheels off the bike and get busy with some actual Photoshop projects.

Part III Go!


8 Making Image Files and Prints Playing around with layers, effects, and filters is all well and good, but you can’t be a serious photoshopper until you get your work out there for the world to enjoy. An obvious place to start is by creating some image files to send out or making some physical prints. If that sounds easy, it is—maybe a little too easy, because it’s just as easy to get mediocre or even shoddy results. This chapter helps you to avoid the most common pitfalls so that your work always comes out looking its best.

Making Image Files When you display your work onscreen—on a website, on a blog, in e-mail, as desktop wallpaper, and so on—it takes the form of an image file. If you want to get technical about it, you’ve been making image files since Chapter 1, when you saved your Pencil scribbles as a PSD file. As I mentioned at the time, the PSD format isn’t the wisest choice for image files that you plan on sharing, because only those people with Photoshop or similar graphics software will be able to open and view your work. Also, your PSD files show the structure of the canvas, with all the pixel layers, layer styles, blending modes, and adjustment layers that you used to create the final image. Your graphics-minded friends might enjoy having a little glimpse into your trade secrets and photoshopping

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techniques, but most people don’t especially care. They don’t necessarily want to know how you did something. They just want to enjoy the final product. So the trick in creating image files for popular consumption is giving your audience an image that they can open, view, and use without having to deal with all the behind-the-scenes stuff that went into creating it. Probably the best way to create these sorts of image files is to use Photoshop’s extremely useful Save for Web command. Despite the name, you don’t have to use the resulting image file on the web if you don’t want to. The image file works just as well for any onscreen use that you can think of. For as helpful as the Save for Web command is, though, it doesn’t enable you to save in some of the common image formats that you’re likely to want to use from time to time. For these exceptions, the Save As command makes an excellent alternative. I’ll be talking about both commands in the pages to come. Before you get there, though, there are a couple other things that you need to do first. I’ll step you through the whole process in this section.

Downsampling the Image to Screen Resolution In Chapter 2, I told you that screen resolution is generally considered to be 72 ppi. I also recommended that you work on a higher-res canvas, say 300 ppi, so that you have the most flexibility for your final image file. Assuming you took me at my word, you now have a 300-ppi canvas that you need to convert to 72 ppi for onscreen display. You made similar sorts of resolution changes in Chapter 2, but if you think back, the print size changed drastically when you did. Going from 300 ppi to 72 ppi made the pixels larger, which in turn increased the physical dimensions of the canvas. But the print size is already where you want it. How do you prevent the physical dimensions from changing on you? The answer lies in resampling. You played with this technique in Chapter 4, when I showed you how to scale an image. You made the canvas physically larger or smaller without changing its resolution, but to pull it off, Photoshop had to add new pixels to the canvas—upsampling the image—or toss out unneeded ones—downsampling the image. Preparing a high-res image for onscreen display requires resampling, too, although the net result is a little different. In this case, you’re not scaling the print size of the canvas. In fact, you’re keeping the print size exactly the same. At the

Chapter 8: Making Image Files and Prints

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same time, you’re going from 300 ppi to 72 ppi, which means that the pixels have to get bigger in size. The only way that you can increase the size of the pixels while maintaining the current print size is to toss out a certain amount of visual information—downsampling again. Here’s an example. Say that your canvas is 6 inches by 8 inches at 324 ppi, and you want it to be 6 inches by 8 inches at 72 ppi. The print size stays constant, but the resolution goes down, and as a result, the total number of pixels changes drastically. In the high-res version, you have 1,944 pixels (6 inches times 324 ppi) by 2,592 pixels (8 times 324), but in the low-res version, you have 432 pixels (6 inches times 72 ppi) by 576 pixels (8 times 72). You have far fewer pixels at 72 ppi, even though the print size doesn’t change. To downsample to screen resolution, follow these steps: 1.

Choose Image > Resize > Image Size from the menu bar. The Image Size dialog box will appear.


2.


3.

Choose a resampling method from the drop-down menu. You’re downsampling, so go with Bilinear or Bicubic Sharper.

It doesn’t matter whether you check or uncheck the Constrain Proportions option because you’re not changing the print size of the canvas.

4.

Type 72 in the Resolution field, and choose Pixels/Inch from the drop-down menu. Even though Windows computers display at a higher resolution of 96 ppi, the Macintosh default of 72 ppi has emerged as the standard for onscreen images (see Figure 8.1). For slightly better quality images, feel free to type 96 instead.

5.

Click OK. The Image Size dialog box will close, and Photoshop will adjust the resolution of the image without changing the print size.

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Figure 8.1 Downsample to screen resolution by typing 72 in the Resolution field of the Image Size dialog box.

There’s an extra added benefit to downsampling like this. A lower-res canvas contains fewer pixels and therefore takes up less memory, so the file size becomes dramatically smaller. A smaller file size means less waiting around when you e-mail the image or post it to your blog.

Resizing the Width Because you aren’t literally printing out the image, you might not think that the print size matters so much, but this isn’t actually the case. An onscreen image still has physical dimensions—it takes up space onscreen, right? In fact, what seems small and unobtrusive in the actual world tends to be large and unwieldy in the virtual one. By way of example, assume that your canvas is 6 inches by 4 inches. That’s a standard snapshot size that would look good in any photo album. When you downsample this image to screen resolution, the dimensions become 432 pixels (6 inches times 72 pixels per inch) by 288 pixels (4 inches times 72 pixels per inch). If your computer’s display is 1,024 by 768, your 432-by-288 image takes up nearly half of the available width and more than a third of the available height! Unless that image is the only thing that your audience is seeing onscreen, those dimensions are probably too big.


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Further, onscreen images usually appear inside an application window—an e-mail document, a web browser, and the like. If the height of the image is larger than the height of the window in which it appears, you get vertical scrollbars. These can be a minor irritant, but they’re no biggie. People are used to scrolling down. But if the width of the image is larger than the width of its window, you get horizontal scrollbars, which are a major no-no. Nobody likes to scroll sideways. Some people don’t realize that they can scroll sideways. So after you’ve gotten rid of the excess resolution, the next step is to scale the image by width: ✦ For images that you share by e-mail, scale down to a maximum of 400 pixels wide. Larger widths are more likely to cause horizontal scrollbars. ✦ For images that you post to a website or your blog, scale down to a maximum of 300 pixels wide. This number is smaller than the one for images to e-mail because there are usually more elements on a webpage to take into account. You might have text, animations, navigation buttons, or other images, all competing for the same precious screen width. And don’t be shy about going lower than 300. A width of 200 pixels is plenty big for the web. Depending on the photo, 100 or even 50 pixels might be just right. ✦ For desktop wallpaper, scale down to a maximum of your current screen width. So if your display setting is 1,024 by 768, the width of the image should be no greater than 1,024 pixels. I’ll talk more about this in Chapter 9, “Dressing Up Your Digital Lifestyle.” When you’re making desktop wallpaper, you have the added advantage of knowing the exact height of the screen as well as the exact width. After you scale the image to the proper width, use the Canvas Size dialog box to adjust the height of the canvas to be the same as the screen. This way, your image is a perfect fit for the desktop. For more on desktop wallpaper, see Chapter 9.

Use the Image Size dialog box to scale down the dimensions, just like you did in Chapter 4. Check the Constrain Proportions option to maintain aspect ratio, and check the Resample Image option. You’re downsampling, so choose Bilinear or Bicubic Sharper as the resampling method (see Figure 8.2).

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Figure 8.2 Scale the width to 400 pixels for an e-mail-sized image.

You can combine width-scaling with resolution-dumping in the same procedure. In fact, it’s smart to do this because every time you resample, you lose a little image quality. Between Steps 4 and 5 in “Downsampling the Image to Screen Resolution,” insert Step 4 1/2: Check the Constrain Proportions option in the Image Size dialog box, and then set the width to 400 pixels for images to e-mail or set the width to 300 pixels (or smaller) for images to post on the web. It’s important to dump the excess resolution before you scale the width. If you scale the width first, say from 1,944 to 400 pixels, reducing the resolution from 324 dpi to 72 dpi makes the width even smaller—89 pixels, to be precise.

Saving the Image File The last step in preparing your image for the screen is saving it in a format that your audience can enjoy. There are dozens and dozens of computer image formats, but some are more useful and popular than others. The most useful ones are the ones you’ve probably heard of already. Table 8.1 summarizes them.


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Table 8.1 Popular Image Formats File Type

Extensions

Stands For

Good For

Command

JPEG

Joint Photographic Experts Group

PNG

*.PNG

Portable Network Graphics

BMP

*.BMP

Windows Bitmap

TIFF

*.TIF, *.TIFF

Tagged Image File Format

Digital photos, digital scans, images with a wide range of color or tone Line art, diagrams, sketches, images with relatively few colors or tones Line art, diagrams, sketches, images with relatively few colors or tones Any onscreen image (but not for use on the web) Any onscreen image (but not for use on the web)

Save for Web

GIF

*.JPG, *.JPEG, *.JPE *.GIF

Graphics Interchange Format

Save for Web

Save for Web

Save As Save As

Most of the formats in Table 8.1 are compressed. A compressed image format is one in which the computer packs the visual information into a smaller file size than you’d normally get. There are two main types of compression: lossless and lossy. In lossless compression, the computer organizes the visual information more efficiently, sort of like when you move the stuff around the shelves of your closet without getting rid of anything. In lossy compression, in addition to organizing the information more efficiently, the computer also tosses out a certain amount of it, like when you throw away your old tennis shoes and sweaters. Usually this information is too subtle for the human eye to notice, but when the level of lossy compression is too high, image quality takes a visible hit. Table 8.2 summarizes the types of compression for the most popular image formats. Table 8.2 Compression Methods for Popular Image Formats File Type

Compression

JPEG GIF PNG BMP TIFF

Lossy Lossless or lossy Lossless Uncompressed (or lossless in some cases) Uncompressed, lossless, or lossy

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Choosing the right format for the image file is probably the hardest part of this entire process. If you need to post your image to the web, then you can rule out BMP and TIFF right off the bat because web browsers don’t read these file types. Even if you’re e-mailing your image to a friend, BMP and TIFF probably don’t make much sense, since these formats tend to give you larger files that take longer to transfer across the Internet. (Although if you need the higher image quality that only lossless or uncompressed formats provide, then BMP and TIFF become more appealing.)

You don’t have to anything special to the canvas to create a flat JPEG, GIF, PNG, or BMP. These image formats are already flat. That is, when you save your canvas as one of these formats, Photoshop automatically combines all the visible layers and gets rid of any hidden ones. Your PSD file—which you saved, right?—retains the original, unflattened layer structure of the canvas. TIFFs are the exception. These files can have multiple layers, but most graphics software will ignore the layers and treat the images as flat.

If you can narrow down your choice to either the web formats (JPEG, GIF, and PNG) or the non-web formats (BMP and TIFF), then the hard part is over. I’ll talk about saving in the web formats first, and then come back to the non-web ones. Too many choices? Make it really easy on yourself. For digital photos and other images with lots of color or tone information, go with JPEG. For line art, diagrams, and other images with relatively little color or tone information, go with GIF.

Using the Save for Web Command Photoshop’s Save for Web command is ideal for creating JPEGs, GIFs, and PNGs, whether you actually use these files on a website or not. Even if you don’t plan on posting the final image file online, you’ll find the Save for Web command is so handy that you’ll want to use it anyway. Saving for the web is all about getting the smallest possible file size while maintaining overall image quality. Computer graphics people call this process crushing or optimizing the image. Crushing, done properly, is a balancing act. When compression goes up, image quality goes down. The trick is to find the comfortable


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middle. It’s no good crushing the daylights out of an image, because while you get a very small file size, the image quality is often so poor that no one would care to look at it. On the other hand, not crushing the image enough is a waste of memory and bandwidth because the image quality isn’t that much better in the end. The Save for Web command helps you to strike the perfect balance. It gives you a high degree of control over the compression level, and it shows you the crushed version side by side with the original for quick and accurate comparisons. It also enables you to choose the specific file format—JPEG, GIF, or PNG—that makes the most sense for your particular image. Crushing is great for onscreen photos, but you should avoid using it for photos that you plan to print out. The little defects and imperfections that come with compression are more obvious in print than they are onscreen. Besides, the main reason you crush images is to make them easier to transfer over the Internet. Since you’re sending your prints to your printer, not to your friend’s e-mail address, you don’t need to worry so much about large file sizes.

To save an image for the web, follow these steps: 1.

Choose File > Save for Web from the menu bar. The Save for Web dialog box will appear.

In Photoshop CS3, choose File > Save for Web & Devices from the menu bar, and click the 2-up tab in the Save for Web & Devices dialog box. This will enable you to compare the optimized image side by side with the original.

2.

Choose a file format from the Optimized File Format drop-down menu. This menu doesn’t have a label, but it’s right below the Preset menu. Choose JPEG, GIF, or PNG. If your image has a lot of color or tone information, such as a digital photo, try JPEG. If not, try GIF or PNG. You can always pick another format if you don’t get the results that you want.

In addition to JPEG, GIF, and PNG, Photoshop CS3 enables you to save in WBMP format. This format stands for Wireless Bitmap. It’s mainly used for one-color images for display on mobile devices, such as cell phones.

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3.

Adjust the level of compression with the format-specific controls. Your goal is to pick the setting that best meets your needs, balancing file size with image quality. As you test each one, keep your eye on the image preview and compare the crushed version to the original (see Figure 8.3). For JPEGs, you have five main quality settings: Low, Medium, High, Very High, and Maximum. At the Low setting, compression is high, which crushes the file size tremendously, but in all likelihood, the image quality will degrade too much. At the Maximum setting, compression is low, so you don’t crush the file size nearly as much as you might like, but in terms of quality, the image looks virtually identical to the original. For GIFs and PNGs, you determine the maximum number of colors allowed (up to 256) and the method of reducing the number of colors in the original image. More colors means a larger file size. If you choose GIF, you can also increase the level of lossy compression.

Feel free to compare the other file formats by going back to Step 2 and making another choice. You just might find that a GIF makes more sense than a JPEG (or vice versa) for your particular image.

Figure 8.3 Balance file size with image quality in the Save for Web dialog box. (Photo by Dave Long)


4.

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Click OK. Now the Save Optimized As dialog box will appear.

In CS3, click Save for the Save Optimized As dialog box.

5.

Choose the location and file name for the crushed version of the photo. If you’re happy with the name that Photoshop automatically supplies (either a generic Untitled name or the name of the canvas), you don’t have to give a different file name.

6.

Click Save. Both dialog boxes will close, and Photoshop will save the crushed version in the format that you chose in Step 2.

The GIF and PNG formats provide a maximum of 256 colors per image. This may seem like a lot—who wouldn’t want a crayon box with 256 choices?—but when you consider that your computer is capable of displaying nearly 17 million distinct colors, you realize that those 256 colors are just a drop in the bucket. So what happens if your original image is a digital photo with far more than 256 individual colors (and probably a lot more than 256 separate shades of red, for instance)? Or what happens if you paint with a lot of gradient fills, where the colors blend from one to another with all those intermediate shades? In a nutshell, Photoshop uses one of several methods of reducing the number of colors in the image. It looks for similar shades and then fudges their values so that they’re all the same. To many people, this sounds an awful lot like lossy compression. After all, you’re losing some of the original color information. However, fudging color values isn’t technically lossy. Photoshop isn’t tossing out pixels; it’s simply tweaking their colors. Nevertheless, digital photos and other images with large amounts of color or tone might end up looking blocky or overprocessed if you try to save them as GIFs or PNGs, so stick with good old JPEGs, lossy as they are, at least as far as your photorealistic images are concerned.

Using the Save As Command Photoshop’s Save As command enables you to save your work in any of the image file formats that Photoshop supports, including, by the way, the web formats of JPEG, GIF, and PNG. But since the Save for Web command has you covered as far as the web formats go, Save As is more useful for the non-web formats, such as BMP and TIFF.

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To use the Save As command, follow these steps: 1.

Choose File > Save As from the menu bar. The Save As dialog box will appear.

2.

Type a file name in the File Name field. If you’re happy with the name that Photoshop automatically supplies, skip this step.

3.

Choose a file format from the Format drop-down menu. For instance, choose BMP or TIFF.

4.

Navigate to a convenient location on your hard drive. This is where Photoshop will save the file. Since you’re not using PSD format, you can save your file in the same folder as the PSD file without worrying about writing over the original.

5.

Click Save. The Save As dialog box will close, and a special dialog box will open, showing options for your format of choice (see Figures 8.4 and 8.5).

6.

Set the options for the save. When in doubt, go with the default choices.

7.

Click OK. The dialog box will close, and Photoshop will save your image in the format that you chose in Step 3.

Figure 8.4 The BMP Options dialog box shows options for the Windows Bitmap format.

Figure 8.5 The TIFF Options dialog box shows options for saving in TIFF.


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For BMPs, you can choose the file format and bit depth of the file. The file format determines the computer operating system for which the image is formatted. Go with Windows unless you’re specifically designing something for the (completely obsolete) OS/2 operating system. The bit depth of the file determines how many colors it supports. In most cases you want 24-bit, although you might experiment with 16-bit files if your original image is light on color and tone. For TIFFs, you can choose the compression method, the pixel order, the byte order, and layering options. The LZW and ZIP compression methods are lossless, while JPEG compression is lossy. The None option gives you no compression at all. Interleaved pixel order is the Photoshop default, but Per Channel might give you better compression. The byte order prepares the image for display on a particular operating system, either Windows or Mac. Both operating systems have been able to read images in both byte orders for years now, although really old systems might give you problems. As for the layering options, most graphics applications treat TIFFs as flat image files, even if they have layers. Photoshop and a few others can distinguish the individual layers in a TIFF file. You can preserve the layers on the canvas if you like by compressing them, or you can just flatten the image and be done with them. If you choose to keep them, though, your audience might be able to see how you built the image—not good for a moonwalk hoax!

Making Prints It might seem strange in this increasingly virtual world, but some people still enjoy looking at images in print. You might be one of them, seeing as how you’re reading a book. Putting your digital image on paper is an easy prospect in Photoshop. You don’t even need a printer of your own (although having one definitely makes it easier). All you need is access to a printer. If your home computer isn’t equipped for printing, you can always pop your Photoshop canvases on an optical disc, a jump drive, or a memory stick and take them to the computer lab at school. You can even seek out an outside printing service. No matter where you live, there are probably at least a couple not too far away. If you prefer, you can conduct your business entirely by e-mail. You send them computer files, and they send you prints. Of course, doing it like this usually calls for a credit card, so you’ll have to get the parents involved.

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When you print at school, at a friend’s house, or at a commercial printing provider, you should always check to see what is the best format for your files. Your school or your friend might not have Photoshop, in which case your PSD files won’t do much good. And although it’s almost inconceivable that a print shop won’t have Photoshop, I suppose stranger things have happened. For files that you intend to print, uncompressed or lossy formats tend to work better than the web ones. For instance, the publisher of this book asks me to submit art files in TIFF format. Depending on the provider, though, and depending on the format of the original images, a lossy JPEG file might be completely fine.

Getting your images ready for onscreen display required a little work upfront, and getting them ready for print is no different. I take you through the steps in this section.

Determining the Optimum Resolution In the last section, you downsampled your image to screen resolution, which by convention is 72 ppi. Throughout this book, you’ve been operating under the assumption that 300 ppi is the standard resolution for print-quality images, and while this is a safe assumption, it isn’t always entirely accurate. The truth of the matter is that different printers have different optimum resolutions. Inkjet printers, for instance, often do better with images in the neighborhood of 200 ppi. Older printers—especially older, cheaper models—sometimes prefer resolutions as low as 150 ppi. So what happens if you send a 300-ppi image to a printer that does better with 150-ppi image files? Fortunately, nothing bad. The printer driver processes the image file and gives it to the printer in an acceptable format, and you get a print that looks pretty good. At the same time, the print isn’t as good as it could be. The printer driver doesn’t have the benefit of eyes or a brain, so when it processes the image, it can’t see the effect that this has on quality. As a result, the print might be a little blurry or blocky. Unlike the printer, you do have eyes and a brain. More than that, you’re the designer, and you know what you want your prints to look like. If your printer prefers image files at 150 ppi, you can resample your canvas to this resolution exactly. You’re free to choose the method that gives you the best results, and if you need to sharpen the image or touch it up afterward, you’re free to do that, too. It’s not uncommon for your handmade 150-ppi version to look better than the printer’s interpretation of 300 ppi, in spite of the fact that the 300-ppi version has four times as many pixels.


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So what is the optimum resolution for your printer? Unfortunately, that’s not always easy to say. The whole issue of resolution is enough to give anyone a headache, and printer manufacturers don’t help matters when they brag about specs. Consult your printer manual, and you may find that your printer prints at a much higher resolution than this book has led you to expect. Your printer resolution could very easily weigh in at 600 dpi, 1,200 dpi, 1,440 dpi, 2,880 dpi, and upwards. Based on this information, you might assume that the optimum resolution for your image files should be 600 ppi, 1,200 ppi, and so on, which is way more than the 300 number that I’ve been throwing around. What gives? The difference lies in the ways that a monitor and a printer reproduce color images. Onscreen (especially in the case of an LCD monitor), each pixel is a single dot, but in print, each pixel is a combination of several dots of different colors. For instance, a red pixel on your LCD screen is just a single red dot, but to get the same shade of red in print, the printer creates at least two dots: one colored cyan and one colored magenta. So while your printer may indeed print out at 1,200 dpi, it has to put more dots on the page, which drastically brings down the optimum resolution of your image files. So if your printer resolution is out, what’s in? ✦ Look for the manufacturer’s recommended image resolution. Some printer manufacturers come right out and tell you the optimum image resolution for the printer, so check your manual or the manufacturer’s website and use that measure as the target resolution for your photos. Just don’t confuse the printer resolution for the optimum image resolution, because as you’ve seen, they’re two different things. ✦ Look for your printer’s lines per inch (lpi). While you’re checking in your printer manual and the manufacturer’s website, see whether you can find the specs for lines per inch (lpi). Multiply the lines per inch by 1.5, and that’s the optimum resolution on the low end. Multiply by 2, and that’s the optimum resolution on the high end. So if your printer prints at 133 lines per inch, the optimum resolution for your images is anywhere from 200 ppi (133 times 1.5, rounded up) to 266 ppi (133 times 2). Try printing out versions of the image at 200 ppi and 266 ppi and maybe something in the middle to see which resolution gives you the best results. ✦ When in doubt, go with 300 ppi. That’s the magic number. It’s one to live by, but it’s not one to die by! So print out a couple sample canvases at 300 ppi and compare them with versions at 200 ppi and 150 ppi. If you find that a lower resolution looks better on your particular printer, by all means, go lower.

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If you use the printer at school or a professional printing service to make your prints, you might not be able to do too much testing as far as the optimum resolution goes. Whenever your circumstances rule out any sort of testing, just go with 300 ppi. If you are using a printing service, you can always ask about the optimum resolution for your files. Nine times out of ten the answer is 300 ppi, but you never know, so it never hurts to ask.

Resampling the Image to the Optimum Resolution Once you have the optimum resolution for your printer, all you have to do is resample the image to that resolution. Here’s how: 1.

Choose Image > Resize > Image Size from the menu bar. The Image Size dialog box will open.


2.


3.

Choose a resampling method from the drop-down menu. You’re downsampling, so you want either Bilinear or Bicubic Sharper.

4.

Type the optimum resolution for your printer in the Resolution field, and choose Pixels/Inch from the drop-down menu. Assuming 300 ppi is the optimum resolution, type 300 (see Figure 8.6).

5.

Click OK. The Image Size dialog box will close, and Photoshop will resample the image to the optimum resolution of your printer.

When you’re finished, be sure to save the resampled image. This way, the next time you need to make a print, you don’t have to bother with resampling. Just don’t overwrite the original file! If you ever print the image on a different printer, you’ll want to go back to the original file and resample it according to that printer’s optimum resolution.


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Figure 8.6 Resample the image to the optimum resolution of your printer.

Printing With your resampled image file in hand, you’re ready to print. Here’s how it works in Photoshop: 1.

Open the file that you want to print. If it’s already open, make sure that it’s the currently active document window. Remember, the resampled version is the one that you want, not the original!

2.

Click the Print button, or choose File > Print from the menu bar. The Print Preview dialog box will appear (see Figure 8.7). This dialog box warns you if the image resolution is less than 220 ppi. You’re already well in control of the resolution situation, so this message shouldn’t come as a surprise. Also, depending on your printer, a resolution below 220 ppi might be perfectly fine, so don’t let Photoshop rattle you.

There is no Print button in Photoshop CS3, so choose File > Print from the menu bar. You get the Print dialog box, not the Print Preview dialog box, which is similar to Photoshop Elements’ Print Preview, although it’s more complex.

3.

Click the Page Setup button at the bottom of the Print Preview dialog box. The Page Setup dialog box will appear (see Figure 8.8).

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Figure 8.7 Set options for printing from the Print Preview dialog box. (Photo by Dave Long)

Figure 8.8 Get into the printer settings with the Page Setup dialog box.


4.

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In the Page Setup dialog box, choose the size of the paper from the Size drop-down menu. If the print size and the paper size aren’t the same, use larger paper, not smaller paper. You can cut off the excess later.

There is no Size drop-down menu in CS3, so click the Advanced button and look for the paper size in the Advanced Options dialog box. Click OK to close this dialog box.

5.

Choose the orientation of the print. That’s either portrait or landscape. A portrait print is tall, (6 inches by 4 inches, for example) while a landscape print is wide (4 inches by 6 inches).

6.

Click OK in the Page Setup dialog box. The dialog box will close.

7.

Back in the Print Preview dialog box, choose Actual Size from the Print Size drop-down menu. This way, you don’t get any unwanted resampling.

There is no Print Size drop-down menu in CS3, so make sure the Scale field shows 100 percent.

8.

If the paper size in Step 4 is larger than the print size, review the position of the print on the paper. Reposition the print by unchecking the Center Image option and then dragging the image’s thumbnail in the preview pane. To add crop marks to your print, check the Print Crop Marks option. (Crop marks make it easier for you to cut the paper just right.)

To see the options for crop marks in Photoshop CS3, choose Output from the dropdown menu in the upper-right corner of the dialog box.

9. 10.

Click Print. The Print Preview dialog box will close, and the Print dialog box will open (see Figure 8.9). Review the printer settings and click OK. The Print dialog box will close, and Photoshop will send the image to your printer.

In CS3, click Print instead of OK to send the image to your printer.

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Figure 8.9 Get ready to print from the Print dialog box.

In this chapter, you learned how to create image files and make prints. First up were image files. I showed you how to resample an image to screen resolution, and I talked about scaling the image to a convenient width. I also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the most common image formats, which I divided into web and non-web types. You learned how to use Save for Web to create web formats and how to use Save As to create non-web ones. Next came printing. I talked about optimum resolution and how to find it (or how to guess at it when all else fails). I showed you how to resample your image file to this resolution, and then I took you through the steps for sending the canvas to a printer. I hope you liked creating image files because you’ll be doing it again in the next chapter, when you give yourself a digital makeover.

9 Dressing Up Your Digital Lifestyle Tired of that shabby profile pic on Facebook or MySpace? Sick of looking at some greedy corporation’s logo all over your desktop? Maybe it’s time that you considered a digital makeover. In this chapter, I show you how to make the virtual you look (and feel) like a million bucks.

Designing Avatars An avatar is an image that you use to identify and personalize yourself on a community website. It appears in your posts and instant messages, and it’s on your profile page and maybe a dozen other pages besides. It’s the representation of you in the virtual world. Different sites call them different things, so don’t be thrown if your favorite social network talks about profile images or userpics. Making cool, creative, or just plain silly avatars is entertaining all the way around. For one thing, it’s fun to do. Photoshop gives you all the tools you need, and the job is a breeze, although it presents just enough of a challenge so that it doesn’t get boring. Even better, you get to share a little bit of your personality for the enjoyment of friends both old and new.

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So what makes a good avatar? Here are some of the most important elements: ✦ The image should be simple and direct. Avatars aren’t meant to be stared at or contemplated. They’re visual shorthand for your signature, face, or voice. One quick glance should be enough to distinguish your avatar from the hundreds of thousands of others out there. A good rule of thumb is to show exactly what you want to show and as little else as possible. Not surprisingly, the face works wonders, especially when it’s just the face (see Figure 9.1). ✦ The image should be all about the foreground. Because most avatars are quite small, you don’t have much elbow room to experiment with composition and design. The subject of the image should be front and center, and it should take up most of the available space. The background should be simple and toned down, and it shouldn’t blend in too much with the subject. It needs to provide a good contrast for the foreground. A striking contrast is even better—that helps the subject to stand out or pop, to borrow a term from the advertising world. Those digital photos of the planets in Chapter 3 are great examples. Neptune with its vivid blue against the stark black of space pops so well off the screen that you feel like you ought to pin it down (see Figure 9.2). Figure 9.1 The faces by themselves are easier to see at a glance, and they seem to have more personality.

Chapter 9: Dressing Up Your Digital Lifestyle

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Figure 9.2 Great contrast! The planet Neptune pops out at you. It should do well on MySpace. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

✦ The image file should be very light. That means it should have a very small file size. Why? Because lighter files transfer more quickly across the Internet. There’s no sense in posting a heavy file that’ll just bog down your online traffic. Along the same lines, you should always optimize the image for the rigors of the web, which means downsampling to screen resolution and choosing a web format such as JPEG, GIF, or PNG, just like you did in Chapter 8. So how light is very light? If your file weighs in under 12 kilobytes, say, when all is said and done, you’re doing great. Your avatar will transfer in a couple seconds at most, even over the slowest, most congested dial-up connection. With the skillful application of the Save for Web command, it’s quite possible to get that avatar down to 4 or 5 kilobytes, if not lower. As far as the content of the image, that’s entirely up to you. The obvious place to start is with a photo of you, whether serious, semi-serious, partly silly, mostly silly, or entirely ridiculous. Your avatar should convey something of your personality, and as far as that goes, it doesn’t get much more personal than the face you were born with. At the same time, you shouldn’t feel like you absolutely have to use your own picture. There are plenty of good reasons not to. Once you put something out there in digital form, whether it’s a blog, an e-mail, or your portrait, you can count on it existing on some computer somewhere pretty much forever, or at least until digital technology is replaced by something completely different in the far future. In light of that, maintaining a little privacy is never a bad idea. Maybe you’d rather show a picture of your interests: a soccer ball, your pet orangutan, the planet Neptune. These say something personal without getting too specific. Maybe you’d just prefer to travel incognito. There’s no harm in creating a virtual identity for yourself. As long as you’re not trying to impersonate somebody else,

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and as long as you’re not going around deliberately tricking people, it’s perfectly acceptable online behavior. Also, the Internet is a vast, worldwide community, and while most of the people online are friendly, there are a few bad apples, just like there are in every crowd. (Maybe you’re one of them?) Saving your personal likeness for the people that you’ve come to know and trust isn’t a bad policy. If you plan to use an image of yourself as your avatar, you probably ought to run it by the parents. You know how it works. Do something on your own, and it’s like the end of the world. But give them the chance to say no, and they’ll probably say yes.

The only downside to using an image that already exists is that you really shouldn’t unless you created it yourself. In most cases, the person who originally created the image owns it, even if that person can’t control the way it gets distributed. It’s kind of like owning a bike and then leaving it in the middle of a busy sidewalk without chaining it up. Eventually someone’s going to come along and take it, and when they do, you’d call it stealing. Then again, stealing somebody else’s image doesn’t feel like stealing, and maybe it won’t be considered as such for much longer. In our lifetimes, we’re likely to see some pretty significant changes to the way people think about the products of their creativity, or what lawyers like to call intellectual property. The legal eagles might eventually decide that grabbing a piece of intellectual property—an image, a song, a movie, an electronic book—is more like borrowing it and nothing at all like stealing a bike. But for the time being, stealing is what it is. You can get around the whole knotty issue by using only those images that you create yourself. Snap some pics with your webcam or digital camera and be done with it. If you don’t have a way to take digital pictures, you can look for images in the public domain. These are images that anyone is free to use. Their creators have either willingly placed them in the commons for all to enjoy or allowed their claim of ownership to lapse. The public domain is full of fantastic images, everything from deep space photos, to photos of the natural world, to the portraits of famous and historical people, to scans of priceless works of art. To find images in the public domain, do a search with your favorite search engine. If you’d like something more personal than a public domain image, you do have Photoshop, so why not show off your artistic talent? Get out the Pencil or the Brush and do a caricature or cartoon of yourself. You don’t even need to be an illustrator. Design a personal logo instead! If it was good enough for the legendary pop musician Prince (ask the parents), it’s good enough for anyone. I’ll talk a little more about logos in Chapter 12, “Putting Out a Line of Merchandise.”


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So let’s say you’ve settled on an image. I’m going to use the one in Figure 9.3. This is me at my work area, writing these words. I snapped this shot just now with my webcam. As you can see, I’ve come up with a low-tech solution for protecting my privacy online. In 500 years, when all that’s remembered of English literature are the plays of William Shakespeare, your blog, and my computer books, posterity will recognize me as the one with the red bag over his head. First things first: Save a copy of the image as a PSD file. This will be the file that you work with from here on out. Doing it like this, there’s no chance that you will write over the original, and you can always start again fresh if everything goes wrong. So choose File > Save As from the menu bar, select Photoshop (*.PSD, *.PDD) from the Format drop-down menu of the Save As dialog box, and save to a convenient place on your hard drive. I’ve created a special folder for avatars for just this purpose (see Figure 9.4). Next, downsample the image to screen resolution. An avatar is strictly an onscreen image, so it makes no sense to post a high-res, print-quality graphic. My webcam captures images at 96 ppi, which is screen resolution for Windows computers, but the online standard is 72 ppi. Choose Image > Resize > Image Size from the menu bar. Check the Resample Image option in the Image Size dialog box, and since you’re downsampling, select Bicubic or Bicubic Sharper from the drop-down menu. Now type 72 in the Resolution field and click OK (see Figure 9.5). Figure 9.3 I’ll use this webcam image as my avatar.

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Figure 9.4 Before you do anything else, save a copy of the avatar image as a PSD file.

Figure 9.5 Resample the avatar image to screen resolution.


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Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, have a look at the image itself. You’ll almost certainly crop it later, but for now pretend that this is the way it’s going to appear online. In my image, the subject in the foreground is nice and clear, but the background is a little distracting. As you can see, I have some storage boxes stacked up in the back of my work area, and it would be nice to clean these up. Photoshop gives you any number of ways to do this, but they all begin by isolating the foreground from the background, and you know what that means: Time to get out the selection tools. Because I’m a multicolored, complex shape, the Magic Wand and the marquee tools don’t really help me out. I’ll use the Magnetic Lasso instead and trace my shape (see Figure 9.6). As you do yours, don’t be shy about zooming in with the Zoom tool so that you can see what you’re doing. Figure 9.6 Select the foreground pixels with a selection tool such as the Magnetic Lasso.

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When you’re finished, you know that you don’t want to go through the selection hassle again, so the next step is to transfer the foreground pixels to a layer of their own. You can go two ways with this—cutting the pixels from the Background layer or copying them. Cutting leaves a hole in the canvas, while copying doesn’t, so I usually go with copying, but you can do whichever seems better to you. From the main menu, choose Edit > Copy or Edit > Cut, depending on your preference, and then choose Layer > New > Layer via Copy or Layer > New > Layer via Cut. Photoshop will create a new layer from the copied or cut pixels. Rename the layer in the Layers palette, and you’re looking good (see Figure 9.7). You might also hide the Background layer temporarily to see how well you selected the foreground. If the selection is sloppier than you’d like, trash the new layer and have another go with the selection tools. Figure 9.7 Copy the selected pixels and paste them in a new layer.

Now that the foreground is safe in a layer of its own, you can get creative about what to do with the background. The sky’s the limit. You can put yourself against a solid color, pattern, or gradient by deleting the contents of the Background layer and then filling it with the Paint Bucket or the Gradient tool. Add a layer style such as an outer glow or drop shadow to the foreground layer to help your image pop (see Figure 9.8). If you’re after something a bit subtler, try softening the background by applying a blur filter (see Figure 9.9). Blurring the background usually works better when you’ve cut the foreground from the background as opposed to copying it. When you copy, the original foreground pixels remain on the Background layer, and they get blurred along with the rest of the background. Your new layer superimposes the original pixels, but nevertheless, you get a blurry haze around the foreground element.


Figure 9.8 Fill the Background layer with white and add a layer style to the foreground.

Figure 9.9 For a subtler photographic effect, try softening the Background layer with a blur filter.

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If a zanier avatar would suit you better, try filtering the background with something in the Artistic or Brush Stroke category. If the effect is too distracting, convert the Background layer to a regular layer and adjust its opacity against a simple white fill layer (see Figure 9.10, and see Chapter 3 if you’ve forgotten how to convert the Background layer to a normal layer). You can also pop a layer style onto the foreground to help call it out. Figure 9.10 I put myself into a comic book panel by filtering the Background layer with Artistic > Poster Edges, converting it to a regular layer, and then turning down its opacity against a white fill layer.

After you have a look that you like, be sure to save your work progress. You’re not quite ready to post your avatar yet, though. You need to crop and resize it for the website on which you intend to use it. Most websites automatically resize your avatar image to fit their preferred dimensions, which is usually all right. Occasionally, though, your image comes out looking stretched or distorted. You might also observe a loss of image quality from too much compression and resampling. But when you scale and crop the image yourself to the website’s precise specifications, you get better results all the way around. Losing a little image quality might be unavoidable, but at least you get to control it. If you look in the FAQ pages of the website, you might find the preferred image dimensions spelled out for you. Then again, you might not. Running a couple


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experiments of your own is usually quicker and more reliable anyway. The simplest thing to do is to upload a sample image, the larger the better, and then check the dimensions of it as it appears on the site. In your browser, move the mouse pointer over the image, and then right-click and choose Properties from the context menu. Look for the image dimensions in the dialog box that appears. If you have trouble viewing the image properties online, you can always drag the image from the browser window to your desktop and then inspect the image offline in Photoshop. In Table 9.1, I’ve done some of the legwork for you. Table 9.1 Avatar Dimensions for Popular Websites Website

URL

Avatar Dimensions

Blogger Facebook Flickr Friendster LiveJournal MySpace WordPress Windows Live Spaces Yahoo! 360°

www.blogger.com www.facebook.com www.flickr.com www.friendster.com www.livejournal.com www.myspace.com www.wordpress.com spaces.live.com 360.yahoo.com

No fixed dimensions Maximum 200 pixels wide 48 pixels by 48 pixels 110 pixels by 110 pixels 100 pixels by 100 pixels Maximum 170 pixels wide 128 pixels by 128 pixels 96 pixels by 96 pixels Maximum 190 pixels wide

If your avatar appears in more than one size on different pages of the site (as it does on most of the sites in Table 9.1), go with the biggest, and know that some automatic scaling of your avatar is going to happen despite your best intentions.

Notice that all the sites in Table 9.1 call for different dimensions. Unfortunately, there isn’t one image size that works equally well on all sites, so if you belong to three social networks, you need three custom-made avatars. By way of example, let me make a custom avatar for Facebook. On this site, the avatar works best when it’s 200 pixels wide at most. Right now, my avatar is 480 pixels by 360 pixels. But before I get into cropping and scaling, let me save a new PSD file specifically for my Facebook avatar. This way, I can always come back to the original image if I make a mistake or if I want to make a different custom avatar for a different site.

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Many websites turn your uploaded images into links. You click the thumbnail, which the site creates, to see the full-sized image that you uploaded from your computer. When you submit an image precisely at the dimensions that it will appear as a thumbnail, the full-sized image that you get when you click is exactly the same size as the thumbnail itself. If you’d rather show off your image at a larger-than-thumbnail size, don’t worry about resizing the image to fit your profile page. When your avatar is looking the way you want it to look, save it for the web at its original dimensions. Many sites also enable you to post multiple pictures. If so, you might decide to scale your main profile image to precise specifications but post the rest of your pics at full size and allow the website to make thumbnails for you. No matter what you decide about the dimensions, make sure that you downsample all of your online images to screen resolution.

With my new PSD file saved, I’m ready to crop. I want my avatar to be as effective as possible, so I want to make sure that I use only the most important area of the image. I grab the Rectangular Marquee tool, make a selection (see Figure 9.11), and choose Image > Crop from the menu bar. Figure 9.11 Select the most important area of the image to use as the avatar.


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If your avatar is supposed to be square, such as those on sites like Flickr, don’t forget that you can hold down the Shift key while you drag the Rectangular Marquee. Holding down Shift constrains the proportions of the selection, so that when you crop the image, you get a perfect square. Scale the square image to the website’s dimensions and upload.

After cropping, the dimensions of the canvas are 328 by 273—still a bit too large for Facebook, so it’s time for some scaling. Choose Image > Resize > Image Size from the menu bar and downsample to 200 pixels wide in the Image Size dialog box (see Figure 9.12). In CS3, choose Image > Image Size from the menu bar for the Image Size dialog box.

The Facebook avatar is ready to be saved as a JPEG. Choose File > Save for Web from the menu bar, adjust the level of compression, and save to your computer. Now all that’s left to do is upload the avatar to your Facebook profile (see Figure 9.13). Figure 9.12 Scale the cropped image to the website’s dimensions.

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Figure 9.13 Upload your avatar to your profile page. A perfect fit!

Choose File > Save from the menu bar to save the custom avatar PSD, and keep the file in a safe place in case you ever need to create a fresh copy of the JPEG version. To make another custom avatar for a different site, load the original avatar file, save it as its own PSD, and crop and scale the image to fit. Easy!

Making Desktop Wallpaper You’ve got the online, public you well under control, but what about the private, offline you, the one who stares at a computer screen for hours and hours at a time? You might be in the market for some custom desktop wallpaper—another fun and relatively painless Photoshop project. You can forget all about researching websites and running tests for the right dimensions of the image, because the correct dimensions are literally right in front of you. They’re exactly the dimensions of your current display settings. So if your display is 800 pixels by 600 pixels, your desktop wallpaper image should be 800 by 600. If your display is 1,024 by 768, your desktop wallpaper should be 1,024 by 768. You get the idea.


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When your desktop wallpaper image isn’t the same size as the desktop itself, your computer does one of three things: ✦ The computer centers the wallpaper image on the screen. You get a visible border around the image, unless of course the color of the desktop is the same as the background color of the image itself. ✦ The computer scales or stretches the image to fit. But because scaling and stretching are involved, you lose some image quality. ✦ The computer tiles the image. Tiling means repeating it as many times as necessary to cover the available space. If your image is a pattern, tiling makes an interesting effect, but what about digital photos or your personal logo? Images like that are often tacky and distracting when they tile across the desktop. Most people choose the least of three evils and live with the results, but you’re a photoshopper, so you don’t have to settle. You can make perfectly sized desktop wallpaper from any image. Any image means any image, too. In the last section, I talked about intellectual property and how you shouldn’t steal images to use as your avatar. Your desktop is a different matter entirely. With desktop wallpaper, you’re not broadcasting or distributing the image across the Internet; you’re simply posting it on your private computer for your personal enjoyment. It’s like listening to music or watching movies that somebody else produced in the privacy of your bedroom or family room. Your computer screen belongs to you, and you can put whatever you want on it, whether you created the image yourself or you got it from someone else. Of course, if you decide to share your desktop wallpaper with other people, especially if you post it on a website somewhere and encourage people to download it, you’re moving into territory that makes the original content creators (and their lawyers) uncomfortable. For desktop wallpaper that you plan to share, restrict yourself to images that you create yourself or raid the public domain, just as you would for your online avatar. To begin, check your current display settings for the dimensions of the screen. (In Windows, launch the Control Panel, open the Display options, and look under Settings.) Make a note of these dimensions, because you’ll need them soon. Mine are 1,280 by 1,024. Next, select the image that you want to use and open it in Photoshop. You can use a photo from your digital camera or webcam, a digital scan, an image that you found on a website, or anything else. I’ll go with two examples: one of the Milky Way (see Figure 9.14) and one from my photographer pal Dave Long (see Figure 9.15).

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Figure 9.14 This image of the Milky Way would make sweet desktop wallpaper. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

Figure 9.15 So would this digital photo from Dave Long.

Save the image as a PSD file before you do anything else, and adjust the canvas to screen resolution if you need to. Screen resolution in this case depends on your particular monitor settings. You can always fall back on the 72-ppi standard, but if your monitor displays at 96 ppi or even higher, feel free to use this value instead. (On Windows computers, you can check the current screen resolution by opening the Display control panel, looking under Settings, and clicking the Advanced button.) My screen resolution is 96 ppi. The Milky Way image is currently 600 ppi, while Dave’s photo is 150 ppi, so both could benefit from some resolution manipulation, although I’ll go about it a bit differently for each file.


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The dimensions of the Milky Way image are 7,002 pixels by 5,050 pixels, which is much larger than the dimensions of my desktop (1,280 by 1,024). My goal here is to match either the width of the image with the width of the desktop or the height of the image with the height of the desktop. If I resize the image to be 1,280 pixels wide, then the height becomes 923 pixels, which is smaller than the 1,024-pixel height of the desktop, so I’d need to add a little space around the top and the bottom of the image to make it fit snugly on the screen. On the other hand, if I resize the image to be 1,024 pixels tall, then the width becomes 1,420 pixels, which is larger than the 1,280-pixel width of the desktop. I’d need to chop off the excess width to make it 1,280 pixels exactly. What you do is up to you, but for this particular image, cropping makes more sense, so I’ll resize the height to 1,024 pixels (see Figure 9.16). Notice that I’m not adjusting the resolution just yet; that’s the next step. Now that the width is closer to where I want it (and the height is exactly where I want it), I can convert the resolution from 600 ppi to 96 ppi—no resampling required (see Figure 9.17). Then to finish, all I have to do is crop the image to the size of the desktop using the Rectangular Marquee tool in Fixed Size mode (see Figure 9.18). Figure 9.16 Resize the width or the height of the image to match the width or the height of the desktop. In this case, I’m matching the height. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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Figure 9.17 Now just convert the resolution from 600 ppi to 96 ppi without resampling. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Figure 9.18 Crop the canvas to the exact size of the desktop with the Rectangular Marquee tool in Fixed Size mode. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)


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What about Dave’s photo? That one is smaller than the size of the desktop, so I don’t need to adjust its width or height. I can convert the resolution from 150 ppi to 96 ppi, again without resampling so that I don’t lose any pixels (see Figure 9.19). Figure 9.19 The pixel dimensions of this image are already smaller than my desktop. I don’t want to lose any pixels, so instead of resampling, I convert the resolution from 150 ppi to 96 ppi. (Photo by Dave Long)

But if the image is smaller than the desktop in at least one of the dimensions, you need to add some space around the image. The best way to do this is to use the Canvas Size dialog box. 1.

Choose Image > Resize > Canvas Size from the menu bar. The Canvas Size dialog box will open (see Figure 9.20).

In Photoshop CS3, choose Image > Canvas Size from the menu bar for the Canvas Size dialog box.

2.

From either the Width or the Height drop-down menu, choose Pixels. This way, you’re comparing like with like. Photoshop automatically will change the other drop-down menu to pixels as well.

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Figure 9.20 Adjust the dimensions of the canvas with the Canvas Size dialog box. (Photo by Dave Long)

3.

Type the dimensions of the desktop in the Width and Height fields. My desktop dimensions are 1,280 by 1,024, so that’s what I type for the width and height of the canvas.

4.

In the Anchor diagram, determine where Photoshop should add the extra space. If you want Photoshop to add the space equally around the entire image, click the middle box. Otherwise, choose a different location.

5.

From the Canvas Extension Color drop-down menu, choose a color for the canvas. Because the canvas will be larger than the image itself, the color of the canvas will be visible. I’ll go with white.

To call up the Color Picker dialog box in Photoshop CS3, click the color swatch to the right of the Canvas Extension Color drop-down menu or choose Other from the menu itself.

6.

Click OK. The Canvas Size dialog box will close, and Photoshop will resize the canvas to match the dimensions of the desktop (see Figure 9.21).


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Figure 9.21 Photoshop adds space all around the image. Notice the white canvas. (Photo by Dave Long)

Your canvas is now the exact size of the desktop. If you like your wallpaper as it is, you’re ready to save, although feel free to jazz up the image beforehand with layer styles, filters, and anything else you can think of. I thought some tasteful lettering on Dave’s wallpaper would be in order; plus it would help to fill the empty space around the photo (see Figure 9.22). To save, all you need is a convenient place on your hard drive. Save in one of the web formats if you like, although since you don’t have to transfer the image across the web, you can afford to splurge on an uncompressed BMP. For desktop wallpaper, Windows supports all but the TIFF format. Once saved, you can right-click the image file in Windows and choose Set as Desktop Background from the context menu, and your wallpaper is as good as hung (see Figures 9.23 and 9.24). In this chapter, I showed you how to make avatars and desktop wallpaper. I talked about what makes a good avatar on the web, and I explained what happens to avatars and wallpaper images when they aren’t precisely the dimensions that you need. Then you put the Image Size and Canvas Size dialog boxes to good practical use as you resampled, scaled, and changed the dimensions of the canvas to make your avatar or wallpaper fit perfectly in the available space. The next stop on this leg of your Photoshop journey is animation, so if you’re ready to get into the motion picture business, proceed at once to Chapter 10.

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Figure 9.22 Add a couple type layers to help fill the space on the canvas.

Figure 9.23 Here’s the Milky Way image as desktop wallpaper… (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Figure 9.24 …and here’s Dave’s photo. Both perfect fits! (Photo by Dave Long)

10 Creating Animation A recent survey suggests that, of all the teenagers in the Western hemisphere, only 17 of them don’t care for animation. Unless you’re one of these 17, I think you’ll find this chapter of particular interest. It shows you how to take a static Photoshop canvas and transform it into a moving picture. The process isn’t hard, but it is a little tricky, especially when you’re working in Photoshop Elements, so I’ll take care to explain myself clearly and thoroughly.

Looking at Animated GIFs When you create an animation in Photoshop, you save the image file as a special kind of GIF called—wait for it—an animated GIF. Surely you’ve seen these things blinking at you on the web. They’re less common these days than they used to be, though. Much of the animation that you find on high-profile websites is in Adobe Macromedia Flash format, which has the extension SWF. Flash is a vectorbased format, not a pixel-based one, so you don’t do much Flash design in an application such as Photoshop, but animated GIFs and Photoshop are a perfect match. So what do you know about GIFs so far? From Chapter 8, you know that they’re one of the two biggie formats for images on the web, the other being your old friend the JPEG. You also know that they have a maximum of 256 colors, so they

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aren’t usually the best format for digital photos or other sorts of images with lots of color or tone information. When you have a choice between JPEGs and GIFs, my earlier recommendation still stands. But when you’re talking animation, there’s no such thing as an animated JPEG, so it looks like GIF is the format to use, whether or not you’re working with digital photos. Nine times out of ten, whatever color information you lose is so subtle that the human eye doesn’t even notice it’s gone. You’d have to compare the GIF side by side with a JPEG, and maybe even then you wouldn’t see a difference. But back to the animated GIF format. An animated GIF is nothing more than several separate GIF images packed together into the same file. Each image or frame of the animated GIF is complete unto itself, just like the frame of a movie. When you string the frames together, you see that each one is slightly different than the one before (see Figure 10.1). Nothing is actually moving in the image file itself; that’s just an illusion. It works exactly like those flipbook sketches that you draw in the corners of the pages of your math book, only instead of you flipping the pages to bring the sequence to life, the computer takes care of it on your behalf. The still frames in the animated GIF appear one after the other in relatively quick succession. The human eye smoothes out the transitions, and you get what looks like a red bouncing ball (see Figure 10.2), a flying saucer buzzing Washington, DC, or whatever else you can imagine.

Figure 10.1 An animated GIF contains several complete images or frames, each slightly different than the one before.

You can control the amount of time that each frame appears onscreen. You can also set the animated GIF to loop or play continuously, or you can set it to play all the way through and then stop at the final frame. The frames can be absolutely anything, too. There’s no law that says they have to be similar. In fact, if you increase the amount of time per frame to something nice and slow, say 10 seconds each, you can create a kind of automatic slideshow that displays a sequence of completely different images (see Figure 10.3). Watch out that the frames don’t run too quickly, or you’ll give your audience an information overload. While animated GIFs give you a lot of flexibility, all the frames in the file draw from the same palette or set of colors, the most of which you can have is 256.

Chapter 10: Creating Animation

Figure 10.2 The computer displays the frames in sequence, and you get the illusion of motion.

Figure 10.3 Put unrelated images in the frames of an animated GIF and increase the amount of time between the frames to create a kind of slideshow. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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I’m probably all right for the outer planets in Figure 10.3, since the photos use many of the same colors anyway. Jupiter and Saturn are golden and orangey brown, while Uranus and Neptune are in the blues and grays. Plus, the basic black background is the same in all four shots. But for frames that are in completely different color territories, you might begin to notice the computer making some substitutions in order to get the total number of colors within 256. Also, because each frame is like a separate image file, it doesn’t take too many frames before your animated GIF file starts to get heavy. Animated GIFs are always onscreen images, and you usually post them on a website or send them as e-mail attachments, so the weight of the file becomes a consideration. If it’s too heavy, it takes too long to download, and your audience loses interest in a hurry. For this reason, it’s smart to be judicious about the number of frames that you use. Unfortunately, there is no magic number here, although the dimensions of the canvas and the number of colors involved both play a part. Smaller canvases and canvases with fewer colors can afford more frames than larger ones or ones that use all 256 color slots. But in general, anywhere from 6 to 12 frames is a good target. Go with fewer if you can get away with it, but don’t go too much larger without keeping a close eye on the weight of the file in the Save for Web dialog box. (See the “Exporting the Animation” section later in this chapter for more information.) If the image gets heavier than, say, 75K, then think about putting it on a restricted frame diet, or consider scaling down the dimensions of the canvas using the Image Size dialog box. In your quest to keep the number of frames down, be sure to adjust your expectations for your animated GIF accordingly. The benefit of using more frames is that your animation will play more smoothly. When the object moves too far between one frame and the next, or if the motion path is too complex, the result is a flickering or strobing effect that can cause a killer headache if you look at it for too long. But frames are expensive in that each one adds to the overall weight of the file. It’s better to simplify the path that the object takes in the animation or to spread out the positions of the object between frames as much as possible. You can also decrease the dimensions of the canvas itself to cut down on strobing.


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Animating with Layers in Photoshop Elements As you’ve probably already guessed by looking at the figures in the last section, the method of creating animated GIFs in Photoshop Elements is by putting each frame of the animation in its own layer. The very first frame goes in the bottommost layer of the canvas, while the very last frame goes in the uppermost layer. Everything else appears in sequence between these two. When you invoke the Save for Web command and choose the option for creating animated GIFs, Photoshop compiles the layers so that each one acts as a frame in the animation instead of as a regular old layer of pixels. In the next section of this chapter, “Animating with Frames in Photoshop CS3,” I will show you a better method of creating animated GIFs that Photoshop Elements unfortunately doesn’t support. If you’re in Photoshop Elements, animating with layers is as good as it gets. If you’re using Photoshop CS3, you might want to skim this section or just skip ahead to the part about frames, because you can’t animate with layers anyway.

But there’s a problem with this approach, which you might have already worked out for yourself. Any canvas that you decide to animate almost always contains multiple layers already. For example, the canvas that I used to create the Red Ball animation consists of three layers: the default Background, which is just a plain white field; Ball, which is a shape layer; and Gradient, into which I painted the highlight effect using the Gradient tool in Radial mode (see Figure 10.4). If I sent this exact canvas to the Save for Web dialog box, Photoshop would not animate a bouncing ball. Instead, I’d get a slideshow, just like I would with the Outer Planets example in the last section. The white Background layer would appear by itself, without the ball or the gradient. Next, the shape layer would appear by itself, and finally, the gradient would appear by itself. That’s not much of a slideshow, and it’s certainly not much of an animation. Remember, each layer on the canvas becomes a frame in the final file, and each frame is a separate image, so when you’re building an animation, you can’t rely on the layers for image composition. Each frame has to be complete unto itself. Yet if you know anything about photoshopping, you know that you can’t compose much of anything unless you do it with multiple layers.

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Figure 10.4 Problem: Each layer on the canvas becomes a frame in the animation, yet you almost always need multiple layers to create the composition. This simple Red Ball canvas calls for three layers.

Very few situations in this book have called for the word predicament, but I think this one qualifies. On the one hand, you can’t use layers for composition. On the other hand, you can’t not use them. So what do you do? The answer is to work in two different canvases of identical dimensions. The first canvas is your work file—it’s the one with multiple layers for composition, such as the one in Figure 10.4. This is not the canvas that you ultimately animate. Rather, it’s the canvas that you use to set up the shot for each frame. It’s the stage, so to speak, on which your red bouncing ball or UFO does its thing. The second canvas is the one that you send to the Save for Web dialog box. It contains the sequence of frames. Each layer on this canvas is its own complete image, just like in Figure 10.2 and Figure 10.3. Here’s how it works. You adjust the positions of the elements on the work canvas the way you want them to appear in a frame. Then you capture the composition using a special variation of the Copy command, and you paste the resulting image into the animation canvas as a single new layer. When you’re finished, you


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save both versions of the canvas as separate PSDs. If you want to edit the animation later, you load both versions of the canvas back into Photoshop, rearrange the elements on the work canvas, shoot a new frame, paste it into the animation canvas, and send it off to the Save for Web dialog box for Photoshop to compile as an animated GIF. I’ll use an extended example to show you how it’s done. Let me create an animation of planet Earth rising above the lunar horizon. For this one, I need two different elements: an image of the earth and an image of the lunar surface. I grab images from NASA and open them in Photoshop (see Figure 10.5). Figure 10.5 Creating an earthrise animation calls for two elements: an image of the earth and an image of the lunar surface. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

To create an animated GIF, I need two canvases. I need a work canvas, in which I compose the animation, and I need an animation canvas, which contains the actual frames. I’ll start by setting up the work canvas, which calls for three layers: one for the background, one for the earth, and one for the lunar surface. The earth needs to rise up from behind the moon, so the earth layer needs to sit underneath the moon layer in the Layers palette but above the backdrop of space.

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This won’t take much work at all. I use the Magic Wand tool to select the black background of space, and then I choose Select > Inverse to grab the lunar surface (see Figure 10.6). Now I choose Edit > Copy from the menu bar, followed by Layer > New > Layer from Copy to create the new layer, and then I rename the layer to Moon so that I don’t forget which layer is which (see Figure 10.7). Figure 10.6 Select the black background of space with the Magic Wand, and then invert the selection to grab the lunar surface. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

Figure 10.7 Create a new layer from the copied moon pixels. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)


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So much for the moon. I switch to the image of the earth, grab the Move tool from the Toolbox, and drag the earth pixels into place on the moon canvas. Photoshop adds the earth as a new layer, which I rename as Earth (see Figure 10.8). I’ll also close the canvas with the earth alone because I don’t need it anymore. Remember that the earth needs to sit behind the moon, not on top of it, so I rearrange the order of the layers in the Layers palette (see Figure 10.9). Figure 10.8 With the Move tool, drag the earth onto the work canvas as a new layer. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

Figure 10.9 Rearrange the order of the layers so that the earth sits behind the moon. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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Finally, the Background layer currently duplicates the pixels of the Moon layer when all I really need from it is a solid black background, so I click the Background layer in the Layers palette, choose Select > All from the menu bar, and fill the selection with black (see Figure 10.10). In Photoshop Elements, choose Edit > Fill Selection. In Photoshop CS3, choose Edit > Fill. (It isn’t absolutely necessary to make this change, but it helps me to remember which layer is which if I ever need to load the work canvas again.) Figure 10.10 Fill the Background layer with black. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

My work canvas is in pretty good shape, so before I do anything else, I’ll save it as a PSD file under the file name Earthrise (Work). Before I think about the animation canvas, though, let me work through what I want to do in the animation. Obviously, I want the earth to come up behind the moon, and I decide that six frames are all that I can afford, given the dimensions of the canvas and the fact that I’m using photographic images. Plus, the earth doesn’t have to move very far, so six frames should be enough to prevent too much strobing.


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Six frames means six distinct positions for the earth, but how do you set them up so that the earth appears to move at a constant pace in the animation? Here’s a handy trick for doing just that: 1.

In the Layers palette, select the layer that contains the object to move. So if I want the earth to move, I select the Earth layer.

If more than one layer needs to move, select all the layers. If the layers need to behave as a single object, such as the red ball and its gradient highlight, link the layers by clicking the Link Layers icon in the Layers palette.

Figure 10.11 Create one copy of the layer for each frame in the animation. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

2.

Create one copy of the selected layer for every frame in the animation. For six frames, I need six copies. Drag the selected layer to the Create New Layer icon in the Layers palette six times, or choose Layer > Duplicate Layer from the menu bar six times.

3.

Rename the layer and its copies. I choose the name Earth (Frame x), where x is the number of the frame (see Figure 10.11). If you’re happy with the generic name that Photoshop gives, then feel free to skip this step.

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4.

Using the Move tool, position the objects in roughly the positions they should occupy on the canvas in each frame of the animation. You don’t need to be exact. Just get the objects sort of where they need to be, and feel free to hide the any layers that you don’t need. For instance, I’ll hide the Moon layer so that I can see what I’m doing (see Figure 10.12).

5.

Select all the animation layers in the Layers palette. Hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) to select multiple layers.

6.

Click the Align button in the tool options along the top of the screen, and choose an alignment setting from the menu that appears. In this case, I want to align all the earth layers by their horizontal center points, so I choose Horizontal Centers from the menu (see Figures 10.13 and 10.14). If you don’t want to align the objects, skip this step.

In Photoshop CS3, there is no menu of alignment commands in the tool options along the top of the screen. There are, however, individual buttons for the various alignment settings. Click the one that you prefer.

Figure 10.12 Position the objects roughly where you want them in the animation. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)


Figure 10.13 Use the Align command to line up the objects. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

Figure 10.14 Much better! (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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7.

Click the Distribute button in the tool options along the top of the screen, and choose a distribution setting from the menu that appears. Distributing the objects means spacing them out evenly. In this case, I want the earth images to move up the same amount of space in each frame, so I choose Vertical Centers from the menu (see Figures 10.15 and 10.16). Again, if you don’t want to distribute the objects, skip this step.

In the tool options along the top of the screen in CS3, click the button that corresponds to the distribution setting that you want.

Now I have my frames laid out exactly as I want them, so I save my work. It’s time for the animation canvas. The work canvas is 600 pixels wide by 400 pixels tall at a resolution of 72 ppi, so I want to match these precise specifications in the animation canvas. I choose File > New > Blank File from the menu bar and fill out the New dialog box accordingly (see Figure 10.17). Then I save the canvas as a PSD file immediately afterward, out of force of habit. Figure 10.15 Use the Distribute command to space out the objects evenly. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)


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Figure 10.16 Much better! (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Figure 10.17 Create a new canvas for the animation to the precise specifications of the work canvas.

In CS3, choose File > New from the menu bar for the New dialog box.

The animation canvas will eventually have six layers, one for each of the frames in the animation. My task is to set up each frame in the work canvas, make a copy of it, and paste it in the animation canvas. I’ll start with the first frame by hiding all the layers in the work canvas that I don’t need—that’s Earth (Frame 2) through Earth (Frame 6), as Figure 10.18 shows.

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Figure 10.18 Set up the first frame in the work canvas by hiding all the layers that you don’t need. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Now I’ll copy the composed frame. I choose Select > All from the menu bar and then Edit > Copy Merged. The Copy Merged command takes a snapshot of the entire visible canvas. All I have to do now is paste the merged composition into the animation canvas. I switch to that canvas and choose Edit > Paste from the menu bar. Photoshop creates a new layer and places the frame into it. I rename this layer to something more convenient, such as Frame 1, and that’s that (see Figure 10.19). I go back to the work canvas, set up the second frame by hiding all the earths but the one in the Earth (Frame 2) layer, copy the merged composition, and paste it into the animation canvas. I do this for each of the frames, and before I know it, I’m finished (see Figure 10.20). Well, almost. Notice that I still have a default Background layer in the animation canvas. If I send this canvas to the Save for Web dialog box as is, Photoshop will treat the Background layer like a frame in the animation, so I need to get rid of it. I convert it to a regular layer and then trash it (see Figure 10.21). 0Now I save the animation canvas because I really am finished. The earthrise is

ready to become an animated GIF. If you’re following along with an example of your own, you can skip ahead to the “Exporting the Animation” section, or if you’re curious about Photoshop CS3, you can stick around to see what animating with frames is like in that program.


Figure 10.19 Paste the merged frame into the animation canvas. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

Figure 10.20 Create a layer for each frame. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

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Figure 10.21 Convert the Background layer to an ordinary layer and trash it. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Animating with Frames in Photoshop CS3 Photoshop CS3 provides a better way of creating animations that saves you from the bother of opening separate work and animation canvases. Essentially, it frees the layers of your document for composition only. You don’t have to worry about using them for the frames of the animated GIF. Instead, Photoshop CS3 gives you a separate palette where you manage the frames of the animation directly. The only time you need to touch the Layers palette is when you adjust the elements in the composition itself. This special palette is the Animation palette, which appears when you choose Window > Animation from the menu bar (see Figure 10.22). It’s similar to the Layers palette, although the objects that it holds aren’t layers, but frames. They appear filmstrip-style from left to right. The leftmost frame represents the beginning of the animation sequence, while the rightmost frame represents the ending. Recreating the Earthrise animation with frames is simplicity itself. As a matter of fact, Photoshop does most of the work for you. Allow me to demonstrate.

Figure 10.22 Use the Animation palette in Photoshop CS3 to organize the frames of an animated GIF independently of the layers in the Layers palette. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)


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Start with the Earthrise (Work) canvas as it was in Figure 10.10. As you recall, I had just finished setting up the layers of the composition, but I hadn’t yet created copies of the Earth layer for each frame. When you build the animation with frames in Photoshop CS3, you don’t need to do any of that. Open up the Animation palette instead, and notice that Photoshop CS3 pre-fills the first frame with a composite of the entire visible canvas (see Figure 10.23). What a timesaver! To exclude the contents of a layer from the frame, go to the Layers palette and hide the layer.

Figure 10.23 Photoshop CS3 pre-fills the first frame with a composite of the entire visible canvas. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

As it happens, the frame in this example is exactly the way that I want it for the first frame of the animation, but if it wasn’t, I could easily reconfigure it by dragging around elements on the canvas with the Move tool or reordering the layers in the Layers palette. Any changes that you make to the canvas are automatically reflected in the frame in the Animation palette. So if you’re following along with an example of your own, arrange the canvas so that it looks how you want it to look at the start of the animation. You don’t have to create any additional layers unless you need somewhere to put the elements of your composition.

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When you’re happy with the first frame, jump all the way to the end and create the last frame of the animation. (The in-between frames are coming shortly.) Click the Duplicate Selected Frames button at the bottom of the Animation palette. This is the button with the new-page icon. When you do, Photoshop CS3 will create a new frame with the same composition as the first frame (see Figure 10.24). Figure 10.24 Click the Duplicate Selected Frames button to create the ending frame in the animation. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

With this frame selected in the Animation palette, go back to the canvas and arrange the elements the way that you want them to look at the end of the animation. Any changes that you make to the canvas will automatically appear in the frame. In my case, all I need to do is drag the earth to its final position with the Move tool (see Figure 10.25), but if you need to make more sophisticated adjustments, go right ahead. Figure 10.25 Set up the canvas the way that you want it to look at the end of the animation. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)


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Believe it or not, you’re nearly finished. Photoshop CS3 can detect the changes between the elements in the starting and ending frames and build the in-between frames all by itself. This process is called tweening, and it means that you don’t have to deal with distributing the contents of multiple layers to get a nice and even motion path. Here’s how it works: 1.

In the Animation palette, select the starting and ending frames in the animation. Hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) to select multiple frames.

2.

Click the Tween Animation Frames button at the bottom of the Animation palette. This is the button with four circles in a diagonal line. When you click it, the Tween dialog box will appear (see Figure 10.26).

3.

From the Tween With drop-down menu, choose Selection. This choice means that Photoshop CS3 uses the frames that you selected in Step 1 as the starting and ending frames of the animation.

4.

In the Frames to Add field, type the number of in-between frames that you want. Assuming that you want six frames total, including the two that already exist, type 4 in the field.

5.

Check the parameters that you want to tween. Photoshop CS3 enables you to tween the position, the opacity level, and the intensity of the effects. In this particular example, I need to tween the position of the earth only. I don’t need to tween the opacity or the effects, since neither parameter applies. I could uncheck these options, or I can just leave them alone.

Figure 10.26 Use the Tween dialog box to create the inbetween frames in an animation.

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6.

Click OK. The Tween dialog box will close, and Photoshop CS3 will create four brand-new frames, placing the earth perfectly in each one (see Figure 10.27).

Figure 10.27 Photoshop adds the inbetween frames to the Animation palette. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

Test the animation by clicking the play button in the Animation palette. Click the stop button to halt the preview.

Now just set the delay between each frame. Below each frame’s thumbnail in the Animation palette is a drop-down menu for the delay value, which determines how long the frame appears onscreen before the computer switches to the next frame in the sequence. Click this menu to open it and choose a value (see Figure 10.28). You can set a different value for each frame in the animation to speed up or slow down certain segments or just go with the same value for smooth, consistent playback from start to finish. (To set the duration for multiple frames, hold down Shift, select as many frames as you want, and set the duration on any of the selected frames. Photoshop will automatically use this value for all the frames that you’ve selected.) When you’re finished, don’t forget to save your PSD file.


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Figure 10.28 Set the delay for each frame. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

What happens if your animation calls for two or more motion paths? Take the example of the bouncing red ball from the beginning of this chapter. The ball went in two directions: down and then back up again. How do you tween something like this, where the starting and ending positions are exactly the same? Or how do you get the object to change direction suddenly? The answer is to tween each motion path separately. Start with the first and work your way to the last. Create starting and ending frames for that particular leg of the journey—the red ball going from top to bottom, for instance. Select these frames and tween them. Then create starting and ending frames for the next leg of the journey— the red ball starting at the bottom and going back up to the top. Select these two frames in the Animation palette and tween again. Repeat this process for as many trajectories as your object takes. Just don’t go too crazy! Try to keep the total number of frames down, or you’ll end up with a humongous animated GIF.

Exporting the Animation To save your canvas as an animated GIF, use the Save for Web command. 1.

Choose File > Save for Web from the menu bar. The Save for Web dialog box will open (see Figure 10.29).

In Photoshop CS3, choose File > Save for Web & Devices from the menu bar, and click the 2-Up tab at the top of the dialog box to see the original canvas and the animated GIF side by side.

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Figure 10.29 Save your animated GIF from the Save for Web dialog box. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

2.

Select the GIF format and set the color options for the file. Remember that fewer colors might impact the appearance of your animation, but it also helps to reduce the size of the file. Keep one eye on the preview pane to see what your animated GIF will look like, and keep the other on the total file weight.

3.

Check the Animate option. This is very important! If you skip this step, Photoshop will not treat the layers as frames.

Because you built your animation with frames instead of layers in Photoshop CS3, you won’t see an Animate option in the dialog box. Skip Step 3.

4.

Under Animation, check the Loop option if you want the animation to repeat continuously. If you’d rather play the animation all the way through one time and then stop on the final frame, uncheck this option.


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Photoshop CS3 lists the looping options in a drop-down menu. Choose Once to play through one time and stop on the final frame. Choose Forever to loop the animation continuously. Choose Other, and the Set Loop Count dialog box will appear. Type any value in the field to set the number of repetitions, and click OK.

5.

From the Frame Delay menu, choose the amount of time that each frame appears onscreen. A shorter frame delay makes the animation run faster, but it increases the likelihood of strobing, so be careful. Unlike in Photoshop CS3, all the frames use the same delay value.

There is no Frame Delay menu in the Save for Web & Devices dialog box in CS3, but you already set the frame delay in the Animation palette. Skip Step 5.

6.

Click the browser icon at the bottom of the dialog box to preview your animation in a live browser window. If you like what you see, close the browser window and continue on to Step 7. If not, close the browser window, go back to the previous steps, make adjustments to the GIF file, and preview again.

7.

Click OK. The Save Optimized As dialog box will open. Navigate to a convenient place on your hard drive, supply a file name, and click Save.

In CS3, click Save in the Save for Web & Devices dialog box to open the Save Optimized As dialog box.

Your animated GIF is now ready to post to the web or send to your friends. Just make sure to post or send the GIF file, not the PSD, or your recipients won’t be able to see the animation unless they have Photoshop. In this chapter, you learned about animation—animated GIFs, to be precise. You saw how an animated GIF contains several independent images or frames that the computer displays one after another. To create these frames, you used a different technique, depending on which version of Photoshop you have. In Photoshop Elements, you created the frames by putting them in separate layers of an animation canvas while setting up the shots in a work canvas. In Photoshop CS3, you created the frames directly in the Animation panel, which saved you the hassle of

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keeping two different canvases and assisted you in building the animation with tweening. You then previewed the animation in a browser window and saved the finished file as an animated GIF. Whenever a computer book mentions animated GIFs, websites are never too far behind, and this computer book is no exception. In the next chapter, you’ll learn how to build a web design in Photoshop.

11 Designing Websites When was the last time you were on a website, had a look around the place, and said, “This design is terrible! I can’t find anything! I could do a better job than this.” The thing is, you’re probably right, and you can use Photoshop to prove it. When you started your journey in Chapter 1, you might not have guessed that you’d add a web design credit to your growing list of Photoshop skills, but you can— and you will—in this chapter.

Looking at Websites I suppose one or two of you out there might have just come out of a coma and would benefit from a definition, so at the risk of stating the obvious: A website is a collection of thematically related webpages. The designer or production team posts the pages on the World Wide Web, and anyone with a web browser such as Microsoft Internet Exploder—er, I mean Explorer—or Mozilla can visit the site and access the pages. What you might not already know is this. A webpage is itself a collection of computer files or assets. It isn’t a single document in the same sense as a Photoshop canvas or your term paper in Microsoft Word, or at least it isn’t in most cases.

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At the very minimum, a single webpage consists of an HTML document. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, which is the computer language that describes the structure of the webpage for the client—that’s the web browser. The browser takes the HTML code and displays it as a graphic design, and you get a webpage. An HTML document is basically just a souped-up text file. To see the code, you can open up the file in any text editor or word processor. (For a real-life example, point your web browser to your favorite website and choose View > Source or View > Page Source from the main menu.) Look closely at the code, and you see that the HTML file contains all the text for the page. It might also contain scripts, which are short and relatively simple computer programs for checking your data or creating interactivity, and style sheets, which tell the browser how to display particular elements, such as paragraphs or links. But you can look at the HTML code all day and you won’t find a single image or animation inside the listing. What you find instead are references to image or animation files, which reside separately on the site. The browser sees these references when it’s interpreting the code, finds the requested files, grabs them, and places them on the page accordingly. This is what I mean when I say that a webpage is a collection of assets. Incidentally, this is also why a broken image icon sometimes appears in your browser. The browser goes looking for the requested image file, but the file isn’t where it’s supposed to be. So if you want a plain-text webpage, an HTML document is all you need. But if you want a webpage that includes images, then you need an HTML document as well as a bunch of image files. If you’re like most designers and web users, this isn’t even a tough choice. Almost nobody would use the web if it were text-only. As a matter of fact, back in the early days it was text-only, and the only people who thought it was cool were scientists. It wasn’t until the web came to life with pictures that it exploded in the popular consciousness. Because images and graphic design are so important to most websites, many professional web designers use Photoshop to help them do their jobs. Photoshop can help you create your website, too. It’s important to note, though, that Photoshop only gets you so far. You know that Photoshop is an image editor, and you know from countless examples that it can save image files for the web with ease. If you’re thinking that Photoshop has you covered in terms of the images, you’re absolutely right. But you’ve just seen that the images are only part of the story. There’s also the HTML file, which on the web is the more important consideration, since this is the file that the browser opens and reads.

Chapter 11: Designing Websites

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You can build a website completely offline, but to publish it, you need a web host. The web host is the company that provides the web server, which is where you publish your site files. (Actually, the server is just software running on a heavy-duty computer, but that’s a technical distinction that you don’t usually need to make.) Visitors to your site access the web server and view the files that you’ve uploaded to it. They don’t see the copies of the files that you keep on your personal computer. Those are like your Photoshop PSDs; they’re for your eyes only. You probably don’t have a server installed in your closet, but you might already have access to a web server anyway. Check with the company that provides your Internet connection. Many ISPs (Internet service providers) include a certain amount of server space along with your network connection and e-mail address. Barring that, you can sign up for a hosting account. Looking up web hosting in your favorite search engine provides hundreds of possibilities. Go with a web host in your community, or choose one of the big multinational providers. Many web hosts offer commercial services, so to sign up online, you need a credit card. But some web hosts offer completely free accounts, which are great for personal home pages and noncommercial websites. No matter which web host you eventually choose, make sure you find out the web address or URL of your site as well as the login information for FTP. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol—it’s the method by which you transfer your site files from your computer to the server. Some web hosts require you to go to a special Internet site to use FTP, while others let you upload directly from your computer. See your web host’s FAQ page for more information.

Exactly what Photoshop brings to the table in terms of web design depends on which version of Photoshop you’re using. Photoshop Elements provides the images only—you can’t use it to generate the HTML code. So if you’re in Photoshop Elements, you can lay out the design of the page, but then you have to hand off the design to another piece of software, such as Adobe Macromedia Fireworks, to turn the layout into separate image files plus HTML code. Then you need to open up the HTML file in an HTML editor, such as Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web, to add the text, scripts, and style sheets. You come out of that process with a single webpage. Repeat for every page in your site (or use the same basic design for all the pages of your site), and you have something to post.

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Because HTML is a text-based format, you can code the HTML file yourself in any text editor or word processor. You don’t absolutely need to get an HTML editor, such as Dreamweaver or Expression Web. If you go completely DIY like this, be sure to read up on hand-coding HTML and set aside plenty of time for practice. HTML is pretty easy to pick up, but like anything else, it takes time and patience before you get good at it. Plenty of websites and computer books offer tutorials and guidance for the beginning HTML coder. Your humble author has written on this very subject.

Photoshop CS3, however, takes you one step further. It enables you to convert the layout into HTML plus images, so you don’t need Adobe Macromedia Fireworks. However, you do still need an HTML editor to polish off the content of the pages and create scripts and style sheets. If you’re looking for one software application that does everything—layout, creation of images and HTML files, and editing of HTML files—then good luck in your quest. Please contact me through my publisher if you happen to discover one, because to the best of my knowledge, such an application doesn’t exist. The best that we have are families of related apps, such as Adobe Macromedia Studio, Adobe Creative Suite (of which Photoshop CS3 is a part), and Microsoft Expression Studio. Then again, building a website is a huge project. Depending on the kind of site that you want to create, it might be too big, given school, sports, a part-time job, your reggae band, friends, Facebook, and everything else you have going on. This might be the perfect opportunity to connect with one of your computer programmer buddies and do a little creative collaboration. Most professional websites these days are built by two teams of people: designers (that’s you) and developers (the people responsible for the coding). You and Photoshop can handle the design. All you have to do is entice a developer to come on board—shouldn’t be too hard with your compelling visuals—and you can consider the HTML problem solved. Another option is to go with a ready-made website, such as the kind they give you at WordPress or Blogger when you sign up for a free account. The behindthe-scenes coding for your site is already done the moment you register. All you do is supply the images and the text. The images you can create in Photoshop; the text you can type with your computer keyboard. The downside to doing it like this is that you can’t control the layout of your design, or at least you can’t very easily. Sites such as WordPress and Blogger provide a number of ready-made


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graphical themes from which you can choose—and if you’re really good at coding, you can create your own theme—but you won’t be able to upload the design that you whip up in Photoshop to be the look and feel of your site, unless of course you draft your developer friend (and this person is coding at the pro level). The rest of this chapter assumes that you’re building the layout of your site in Photoshop and that you’ve solved the coding problem somehow—by getting hold of an HTML editor, by striking up a partnership with a developer, by doing the coding yourself by hand, or by doing whatever else you come up with. If you’ve decided to go with a ready-made blog, this chapter won’t necessarily help you out because your design is already done, but you might want to stick around anyway to get a taste for designing websites in Photoshop.

Laying Out the Design Creating the design for a webpage in Photoshop doesn’t throw you any curve balls like the frames of an animated GIF in Chapter 10. It’s more or less business as usual, but with a few important considerations to take into account. All Photoshop designs begin with a canvas, so choose File > New > Blank File from the menu bar for the New dialog box. Pay special attention to the dimensions of the canvas. Your visitors will view the pages of your site on a wide variety of computer equipment. A few will have the biggest and most expensive monitors that money can buy. Others will have middle-of-the-road screens, but much (and probably most) of your traffic will come from people running the most modest and least expensive monitors that money can buy. Your goal is to design a site that looks good on all of the above. In Photoshop CS3, choose File > New from the menu bar for the New dialog box.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible. The range of monitors and screen settings is just too vast for a one-design-fits-all mentality. Nevertheless, a couple of standards have emerged as far as screen dimensions go, just like the 72 and 300 numbers for image resolution. By following the standards, you don’t automatically make your site fit every single monitor out there, but you do maximize the impact of your design for the largest cross-section of likely users. (How’s that for equivocation? I should have been a lawyer.)

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So what are the standards? Ask Photoshop! Pop open the Preset menu of the New dialog box, and about halfway down in the list, you see the following choices (all in pixels): From the Preset menu in CS3, choose Web, and then look under the Size menu for the standard screen dimensions.

✦ 640 × 480. This is on the low end of the scale. It’s been a long time since computers have displayed at 640 pixels by 480 pixels. Even the super-cheap closeout models at the local super center do much better than this. And the truth of the matter is that these dimensions are too restrictive for most modern, design-heavy websites. Go with this option only if you’re planning something textheavy or if you want to make sure that absolutely everyone who visits your site sees the design as you planned it. Just be ready for the comments from users with typical monitors who wonder why your design seems to be floating in the middle of an endless field of space. ✦ 800 × 600. This has been the baseline standard for years now, and it’s probably in need of an update. Personally I haven’t run a computer at 800 pixels by 600 pixels since 1997. Still, this option is considered the safe one, so when in doubt, go with it. ✦ 1024 × 768. This is my personal recommendation for web designs. It’s large enough to accommodate the majority of bargain technology without looking too small on the high-end widescreen stuff. Photoshop CS3 offers three additional screen presets: 1152 × 864, 1280 × 1024, and 1600 × 1200. The first two of these should be all right for most sites, although you’re starting to push it, especially with the second one. The last one isn’t really acceptable for general-purpose websites because it’s too big for most people’s monitors.

Make a choice, and your New dialog box will look like the one in Figure 11.1. When you make a choice from the Preset menu, Photoshop might pre-fill the Resolution field with 96 ppi. If so, just reset the resolution to 72 ppi, the web standard. To prevent this from happening in the future, choose Edit > Preferences from the menu bar, look under the Units & Rulers category, and set the default screen resolution to 72 ppi.


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Figure 11.1 Set up your canvas to one of the standard screen dimensions.

You’re not quite finished with the dimensions, though. A webpage appears inside a browser window, which usually has scrollbars, buttons, fields, and other interface elements that eat into the available design space. Who knows how individual visitors have configured their browsers, so once again the design community has adopted some standards that put you in generally safe territory. Table 11.1 lists the recommended design dimensions for each of the three default screen sizes. Reference the table and adjust the values in the Width and Height fields of the New dialog box accordingly (see Figure 11.2). Table 11.1 Generally Safe Web Design Dimensions by Screen Size

Figure 11.2 Adjust the canvas dimensions to take into account the space that the browser interface takes up onscreen.

Screen Size

Generally Safe Design Dimensions

640 × 480 800 × 600 1024 × 768

600 × 300 760 × 420 955 × 600

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Now that you’ve got the design dimensions sorted, click OK to create the canvas. Next up: the design itself. Remember that you’re dealing with the graphical component of your website, so you don’t have to worry about adding the main content of the site at this stage. That comes later, after you’ve converted your layout to an HTML document plus image files. I’m not going to get into the codeediting stage in this book, because it’s a huge subject, and space is limited. Also, it doesn’t have much of anything to do with Photoshop. I’ll concentrate instead on getting you to that point, and you or your developer can take it from there. Probably the best approach to designing for the web is to divide the layout into distinct areas. Most websites—even basic, straightforward ones—present a great deal of information all at once, sort of like the contents of your desk drawer. There’s so much information that your visitors can easily get confused if it all comes at them in a seemingly random way, much like you have a hard time finding what you want in your desk drawer when it’s a mess. But when you collect the different kinds of information and organize them into compartments in the layout, you make navigating your site that much easier in the same way that organizing the stuff in your desk drawer makes it easier to find pencils, pens, erasers, loose change, and everything else. The kinds of areas that you need for your particular layout depend entirely on the kind of site that you’re building, but most sites usually have at least some, if not all, of the following: ✦ Header. This area appears at the very top of the layout. It usually contains the site logo, the current date, and maybe a couple links to important pages. If you use a header in your layout, make sure that it doesn’t take up too much room. You don’t want to make your visitors’ eyes rove too far to find the main content. A height of 100 pixels or so ought to be plenty, and don’t be afraid to go smaller if you can afford it. ✦ Navigation. This area contains the links or graphical buttons that take your visitors to the various pages on your site. It’s a very important area—the second most crucial in your layout. It can be near the top in the vicinity of the header, or it can be down the side. Depending on the amount of content on your site, you might have two or more areas set aside for navigation in your layout: one for the primary links to the main pages of the site, another for the links to subpages within each main page, and so on. ✦ Main content area. This is the single most important area in your entire design. It’s where you put the guts of the page: your text, images, and so on. The main content area should take up the most


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physical space in the layout. If it looks too small to you or if it feels crowded by the other areas, don’t hesitate to make the other areas smaller in order to give the main content area more elbow room. ✦ Footer. This area appears at the very bottom of the layout. It’s where you put things like the copyright notice and links to the site’s privacy policy. It’s also a convenient area for links. Many websites put the backup navigation here. This way, when your visitors are at the bottom of your page, they don’t have to scroll back up to the top just to get to the navigation links. Also, if you use simple text links for the backup navigation, those visitors who choose to browse the web with images turned off can still get around your site, even when your main navigation area uses button images for the links. How you arrange the areas in the layout is also up to you, but here are some general guidelines: ✦ Think in terms of boxes. Each area should fall into a rectangular section or division of the layout. This doesn’t mean that the box shape has to be obvious; you don’t have to call attention to it unless that’s the look you’re going for. Your graphical navigation, for instance, might be arranged along a curve instead of inside a rectangular bar. But the navigation area itself should be a rectangle that encloses the entire navigation design (see Figures 11.3 and 11.4). Figure 11.3 No one can accuse this site design of being too boxy. (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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Figure 11.4 Yet the areas of the layout are themselves boxes, which is just the way that you want them. (Courtesy NASA/JPLCaltech)

✦ Keep it simple. This is harder than it seems. You’re a designer, and when faced with a blank Photoshop canvas, it’s all too easy to go completely bananas, with design elements coming at you from every which way, overlapping areas, and ingenious use of space. However, what works great on a canvas doesn’t always fly on the web. You or your developer will have a much easier time getting your design online when it’s clear and straightforward, and your visitors will be able to find what they’re looking for without stopping to figure out your visual concept. ✦ Let the page content be the star of the show. Design is important, make no mistake, but the content of your site is even more important. That’s what your visitors are coming to see. Although they appreciate a strong, clear graphical approach, they’re more than willing to tolerate less-than-perfect design when the content of the site delivers. Look at a site like craigslist.org. That’s one of the most popular sites in the world, and it’s never going to win a beauty contest. It succeeds magnificently as a website because it does its job, which is providing links to opportunities. By the same token, if the content of your site doesn’t deliver, then your visitors won’t stick around, even if your design is the most brilliant ever conceived. Try to design your pages so that the interface stuff—the logo, the navigation, and so on—is ready at hand when the visitor wants it, but so that it doesn’t upstage or distract from the main content area.


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Even when you keep these things in mind, there’s still plenty of flexibility for all kinds of layouts (see Figures 11.5 through 11.7). Figure 11.5 Here’s one of the countless ways to arrange boxshaped areas for an easy-to-use web layout.

Figure 11.6 Here’s another.

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Figure 11.7 Here’s another.

For drawing the boundaries of the areas in the layout, Photoshop’s Rectangle tool is ideal. You can draw a rough rectangle to start, and then transform its dimensions using the Move tool to get it to fit perfectly into the final design. Assign each rectangular area its own color so that you can tell them apart. Keep in mind, though, that these rectangles are just to mark out the various areas of the layout. They’re there so that you know how much room you have for the logo, the navigation, and so on. You don’t have to incorporate them into the design itself (although you can if you want to). You might want to reduce their opacity, say to 50 percent, and keep them at the top of the layer stack. This way, they act as an overlay to your design space. Once you’ve defined the boundaries of areas, you can design each of their contents separately using any combination of layers, tools, effects, and filters. When you’re finished, hide the area layers so that they don’t get in the way of the final design (see Figures 11.8 and 11.9). As you’re designing, don’t forget about such aids and timesavers as the canvas grid, the Align commands, and the Distribute commands. All of these are extremely helpful in lining up and spacing out rows or columns of nav buttons.


Figure 11.8 Once you define the areas, design into them.

Figure 11.9 Hide the area layers to reveal the finished layout.

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Your design work is done, so save the canvas, but you’re not quite done with the layout in Photoshop. The next order of business is creating separate canvases for each of the areas in the layout. Why? Because in the HTML code, each area of the layout is more or less its own thing. The browser doesn’t perceive the design as a whole. What it sees are individual divisions on the page: one for the header, one for the main content area, and so on. With this is mind, you want to give the layout to your developer in chunks so that each can be coded as a separate division and then reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle in the browser. It might seem strange, but that’s the way it works! Your old friend the Copy Merged command will serve you well here, but before you can use it, you should simplify the shape layers that mark the boundaries of the areas. Simplifying, as you’ll recall, means changing the shapes from mathematical models into good old-fashioned pixels, which enables you to select them with the Magic Wand or any other selection tool. The reason why you want to simplify these shapes will become apparent soon. For now, just go with it. I promise that you won’t be disappointed. In the Layers palette, select each area layer in turn, and choose Layer > Simplify Layer from the menu bar (see Figure 11.10). To simplify a shape layer in Photoshop CS3, choose Layer > Rasterize > Shape from the main menu.

Figure 11.10 Simplify the shape layers containing the area boxes.


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Now that they’re simplified, you can select them. Choose one of the area markers in the Layers palette, and then select its pixels with the Magic Wand (see Figure 11.11). Now just hide the area marker along with any label so that all you see onscreen is the design inside the area (see Figure 11.12). Choose Edit > Copy Merged from the menu bar to place the entire merged area on the clipboard. Figure 11.11 Select an area marker with the Magic Wand.

Figure 11.12 Hide the area marker along with its label so that all you see onscreen is the design inside the area, and copy the merged selection.

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The next step is to open a new canvas for the area. Choose File > New > Blank File from the menu bar for the New dialog box. Set the dimensions of the canvas to the Clipboard preset (see Figure 11.13), which gives you the precise dimensions of the area that you just copied from the main design. Click OK to create the canvas. In CS3, choose File > New from the menu bar for the New dialog box.

Figure 11.13 Create a new canvas for the copied area by choosing the Clipboard preset from the New dialog box.

In the new canvas, choose Edit > Paste, and you’re finished with that area (see Figure 11.14). Save the canvas, and then go back to the main design and grab another area. Keep going until you have a canvas for each area of the layout (see Figure 11.15). If your main content area (or any other area, for that matter) is just a solid field of color with no other design elements, you don’t really need to create a separate canvas for it, although doing so is helpful for the developer because it shows the exact dimensions of this area.

Slicing the Layout The next step in designing for the web is converting your purely graphical design into a combination of image files and HTML code. To do this, you cut each area into sections, which is why this process has come to be called slicing. Each section represents either a separate image file or a placeholder for HTML content to be added in your code editor later.


Figure 11.14 Paste the copied area into the new canvas and save.

Figure 11.15 Repeat until you have a canvas for each area of the layout.

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You took your first step toward slicing when you pasted each area of the design in its own canvas in the last section. If you’re working in Photoshop Elements, there’s not much else that you can do, but if you’re in Photoshop CS3, you can get busy with the Slice tool and cut up the layout. Even if you don’t have Photoshop CS3, I recommend that you read through this part anyway so that you see what your developer does after you’ve handed over the design canvases. Back to slicing. I mentioned the Slice tool in the last paragraph; it’s between the Crop tool and the Spot Healing Brush in the Toolbox. To use it, grab it from the Toolbox and move the mouse pointer onto one of your canvases. It doesn’t matter which one you start with. I’ll use the Header canvas for the sake of example. I said earlier that a slice represents a separate image file or a placeholder for HTML content. Looking at the Header canvas, I have the site logo, which is an excellent candidate for a separate image file. I also have a nice amount of space to the right of the logo for page elements, such as links or the current date. This is the sort of thing for which I need an HTML placeholder, which means another slice. To create a slice, position the mouse pointer where you want to start cutting, hold down the mouse button, and drag the mouse. Release the mouse button to finish (see Figure 11.16). Notice that Photoshop CS3 creates more than just the single slice that you requested. The browser needs these to position your slice exactly where you want it in the design. For instance, just by me cutting out the logo, Photoshop CS3 makes a total of four slices: the one with the logo, plus a long one along the top, one to the left of the logo, and one to the right. Figure 11.16 Cut out the logo. When you make a slice, Photoshop CS3 adds additional slices to the canvas.

I’ve now sliced out the logo, but I still need the slice for the HTML content. I make another cut with the Slice tool, and Photoshop CS3 adds its automatic slices to preserve the layout (see Figure 11.17). Figure 11.17 Create a slice as a placeholder for HTML content. Now the current date or some links can go in this space.


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To select a slice, use the Slice Select tool, which hides under the Slice tool in the Toolbox. Once this tool is selected, you can drag the handles on the borders of the slice to change its dimensions, or you can remove the slice entirely by pressing the Delete key. Automatically swap in the Slice Select tool by holding down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac).

And that’s really all there is to slicing. Continue with the remaining canvases, extracting the individual images as well as the places where you want to put HTML content, and don’t forget to save each file when you’re finished (see Figure 11.18). You should also load the original design file—the one that shows the entire layout—and make one slice for each of the areas, again as HTML placeholders. Your developer will copy the blocks of code from the individual layout areas and paste them into these placeholders to give you a complete design. Figure 11.18 Slice the remaining design canvases.

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You can use the Slice tool to make these slices, but since you’ve already created area markers, you can use those instead. Select an area marker in the canvas (and unhide it if it’s hidden), and choose Layer > New Layer Based Slice from the menu bar. Photoshop CS3 will create a new slice based on the size, shape, and position of the element on the selected layer. In other words, you get a slice that fits its area exactly (see Figure 11.19). Figure 11.19 Finally, go back to the original design file and create one slice for each area in the layout. These will be HTML placeholders for the code from the individual areas.

Exporting the Layout To export the layout, either as a web-ready image file in Photoshop Elements or as web-ready images plus HTML in Photoshop CS3, use the Save for Web command: 1.

Choose File > Save for Web from the menu bar. The Save for Web dialog box will open.

In Photoshop CS3, choose File > Save for Web & Devices from the menu bar, and click the 2-Up tab at the top of the dialog box to see the original layout and the optimized version side by side.


2.

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Choose a web format from the dialog box and set the options. As you work, check the results in the preview pane.

In Photoshop CS3, you may set the optimization options for each slice separately. You can even choose completely different file formats. For instance, one slice can be a JPEG, while the rest are GIFs.

3.

Click OK. The Save Optimized As dialog box will open. Navigate to a convenient location on your hard drive—you might want to create a special folder for these files, especially if you’re in Photoshop CS3 and you have a ton of slices and HTML documents to keep straight. Supply a file name and click Save.

In CS3, click Save to open the Save Optimized As dialog box. Also, be sure to choose HTML and Images from the Save as Type drop-down menu.

Do this for each of your area canvases as well as the canvas that shows the entire layout, and give these files to your developer. If you’re doing your own site coding and you’re using Photoshop CS3, here’s how to paste the HTML files for the individual areas into the master HTML file of the entire layout. In your text editor or HTML editor, open the HTML file for an area. The code to generate the design for that area is everything between and including the and
tags. Highlight this block of code—it’ll be almost the entire HTML document. Copy it to the clipboard. Now open the HTML file for the entire layout. Find the line containing the slice that corresponds to the area you copied. Highlight everything between the and tags, not including these two tags. Paste the contents of the clipboard into this selection. Do the same thing for each of the area files, and save the master HTML file.

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In this chapter, you learned how to lay out a web design in Photoshop. You learned about what goes into making a website and exactly what role Photoshop plays in the production process. You started by breaking the design into different rectangular areas: the header, the navigation, the main content area, and so on. Then you got busy in Photoshop, opening a canvas, setting the dimensions to match the visitor’s screen, marking out the different areas, and designing into each of them. Finally, you created separate canvases for each of the areas. I showed you how to slice the layout to create image files plus HTML in Photoshop CS3, and then I stepped you through saving the canvases for the web. There’s just one more chapter to go in your Photoshop journey, which I hope you’ll enjoy, because it’s a personal favorite.

12 Putting Out a Line of Merchandise So far in this book, you’ve created image files and prints. You’ve designed avatars. You worked with animation, and you laid out web designs. If you’re wondering where else your Photoshop journey will take you, I can sum it up in a single word: merchandising. It’s time for you-brand clothing, you-brand posters, youbrand stickers, and you-brand books, among many other you-brand product categories. In this chapter, I’ll show you how to make the most of your brand, and then I’ll help you optimize your Photoshop canvases for total market saturation.

Looking at Logos and Branding The philosopher Nietzsche once said that image is everything. He’d do well in the marketing department of any major corporation, because the privileged status of the image in our culture is exactly what the suits are banking on when they dump millions and millions of dollars into designing the perfect brand. In marketing circles, the brand is the public personality of a product or a company. It’s the message behind the ads that you see. A certain manufacturer of

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computers, for instance, presents itself as the hip and edgy alternative to the dry and boring mainstream. (Never mind that this company wants to be the mainstream.) A world-famous fast-food chain sells not just hamburgers and chicken nuggets, but good times, fun, and laughter with friends. (Just don’t ask what’s in the hamburgers; that’s not good for the public image.) Certain brands of athletic footwear have become so associated with championship performance that you get laughed off the court if you aren’t wearing the correct ones, as if a shoe could make or break your game. As you can see, the reality of the situation is unimportant. Whatever actual qualities that a company or product possesses are irrelevant to the message that the brand conveys. The brand is all about crafting an image. It tells the public what to perceive. For a brand to be successful—that is, for it to convey the message that it’s supposed to convey—every aspect of the company’s marketing strategy needs to reinforce it. You can’t have one ad saying “hip and edgy” while another comes out with “same old, same old.” In the quest to keep everything on message, to borrow the phrase, there’s no end to the lengths to which a marketer will go. If certain colors suggest certain qualities in our culture—and they do, as Table 12.1 shows— then these colors will crop up in ads, labels, letterhead, websites, and packaging in order to associate the product or company with that quality. If certain words or phrases seem to provoke a more positive response, then you start hearing more and more about safety and security and less and less about surveillance and intrusion in the company’s advertising, at least when they’re talking about their own products! They reserve the words that provoke strong negative responses—accountant, square, conformist—for when they talk about their competition. Table 12.1 Color Associations in Western Culture Color

Associated Qualities or Emotions

Red Orange Yellow Green

Passion, intensity, heat, attention; also warning, violence Warmth, nourishment Playfulness, happiness Nature, growth, restfulness, cleanliness, plenty; also jealousy, sickness Trust, reliability, stability, loyalty, optimism Luxury, royalty, rarity; also strangeness Solidity, practicality; also boringness, ordinariness Purity, innocence, simplicity; also coldness, aloofness, rigidity Formality, authority, hipness, unconventionality, naughtiness; also darkness, mourning

Blue Purple Brown White Black

Chapter 12: Putting Out a Line of Merchandise

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One of the key components to the brand, if not the most important of all, is the logo, or the visual symbol that the company uses to identify itself or its products. Logo is an interesting term. It comes from the Greek word logos, which means word or thought. The words logic and logistics come from the same source, as do the -ologies of science and the dialog of a script. A logo isn’t just any image, then. It’s an image that does the job of language. There’s an underlying reasoning or plan behind it. In other words, it has a story to tell. It sums up and communicates the qualities of the brand. And because it speaks in pictures, not with words, it does an end-run around the consumer’s capacity for critical thinking. People respond to logos emotionally, not rationally. That’s just the way that the human brain works. It’s the same reason that, if you look up and see a baseball coming, your glove reaches out to catch it automatically. If you had to stop and say to yourself, “I say, there seems to be some manner of small, round object heading at a remarkable rate in this general direction,” you wouldn’t stop too many line drives, at least not with your glove. Here, I’ll prove it to you. Better yet, you can prove it to yourself. Open up a canvas in Photoshop, grab the Type tool, and set your name in a bunch of different type layers using a different font each time (see Figure 12.1). Look at the variety of effects! In all cases, the word is the same. The only thing that has changed is the typeface—the image of the letters. But notice that with this simple adjustment, you can present yourself as being extremely serious, totally ridiculous, or everything in between. The emotional connotation of the shapes of the letters gets attached to the meaning of the word. Suddenly I’m not just Marc anymore. I’m Marc, who’s cool because he seems to be with it; or I’m Marc, who’s fun to be with because everything’s a joke to him; or I’m Marc, who’s aloof because he seems too serious; or I’m Marc, who’s boring because he likes things neat and orderly. You’ve read nearly an entire book of my words, and you have enough of them to form some sort of idea about who I am as a person. Yet if I come out with a logo like the bottom one in Figure 12.2, your perception of me would most likely change, no matter how many words of mine you’ve read. The image has that kind of power. Most logos contain some sort of textual component to go along with the image. This is usually the name or at least the initials of the company. Even the golden arches form a letter! Very few logos can get away with an image alone, although you don’t have to look too hard to find some well-known exceptions. The aforementioned computer company happens to be named after an easily recognizable food item, so using this icon alone and bypassing the word is smart marketing.

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Figure 12.1 Here’s the same word—my name—in 11 different typefaces. Which one best conveys the image of the guy with the red bag over his head?

Figure 12.2 If I go with the bottom logo instead of the top one, your perception of me would likely change.


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Sometimes icons are too recognizable. That is, they’re such an entrenched part of our visual language that they have too many word associations, which can cause confusion unless there’s a word or a letter in the logo to make it clear which one I mean. For instance, if I were to market Heart computers, I probably wouldn’t be able to use just a heart as my logo. Consumers wouldn’t know whether I had founded the Heart Computer company, the Love Computer company, or what have you. I might be able to get away with a heart icon and the letter H, although a heart icon and the word heart would seem to make the point best.

Speaking of icons, they’re excellent choices for logo design because they already convey a great deal of information. For instance, I used a word balloon in the top logo in Figure 12.2. The word balloon suggests comic books or comic strips, which is cultural shorthand for qualities such as fun, vividness, playfulness, light entertainment, youthfulness, or even a kind of geeky coolness. It also suggests the written word, which makes it work nicely in the context of a writer’s personal logo. But there’s also the connotation of spoken words, since word balloons represent speech, which brands me as the type of writer who’s chatty with his readers. You get all that from a single glance, again in a way that goes right past your brain. As a logo, my word balloon stinks—not because it doesn’t communicate its message, but because it looks like every other word balloon you’ve ever seen. In the world of word balloons, I haven’t managed to differentiate myself. The solution is to modify the shape or style of the icon. Do a little something to personalize it. You have to be careful, though, because if you do too much, the icon becomes unrecognizable as such, and you lose the rich cultural connotations that come with it. I won’t lie to you: This isn’t easy. Common icons such as the word balloon have been done to death. You could rack your brain for weeks trying to come up with something even just slightly different to do with it. Of course, if you’re designing a personal logo to slap on some limited-run merchandise, you don’t have to worry so much about a national brand identity. An icon straight from Photoshop’s Custom Shape tool is probably perfect for your needs. If not, spend a couple minutes tweaking it and call it done.

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Icons can represent nearly any concept. An animal shape conveys the qualities that we associate with that animal, which is why the puma on certain sneakers makes one speedy on one’s feet. A lightning bolt suggests the same (see Figure 12.3), but you don’t need to call down the thunder just to find a clever icon. Common everyday objects are perfect to use. Think of the different connotations of a baseball, a football, a tennis ball, or a soccer ball, depending on which you incorporate into your personal logo. Or if you’re designing something for your friend’s rock band, do you go with the electric guitar, the acoustic guitar, the bass, the keyboard, or the drums? Each instrument suggests a certain style of music, from heavy garage rock to sensitive singer-songwriter stuff. Arrows are great for suggesting movement and direction. When they’re bold and move upward, they connote liftoff. When a couple of them curve around and form a circle, they suggest interaction and interconnectedness (see Figure 12.4). Iconic faces also strike the right chord. When a logo flashes you a playful smile, your heart warms—and your wallet opens (see Figure 12.5). As far as colors go, you’ve seen already how certain colors suggest certain qualities or emotions. An old rule of thumb in the advertising game is to design a logo that works in a single color if necessary and to work with flat color only. Effects such as gradients, blurs, glows, transparency, and blending modes were frowned Figure 12.3 An icon such as a lightning bolt suggests speed, so it works well for Zoom sneakers.


Figure 12.4 This social networking website brings people together. I know this because the arrows go around in a circle.

Figure 12.5 Hi, Allsmiles! I don’t need insurance from these people, but I want to buy some anyway.

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upon. This sort of thinking goes back to the days when print was king. These days, as more and more advertising moves online, you find more and more companies bending, if not flat-out breaking, their color rules. Even still, there’s plenty of wisdom in limiting your color palette to a handful of well-chosen solid shades. For one thing, a solid-color logo looks good everywhere: in print, online, on a coffee mug, and on a T-shirt. Logos with gradients or other color effects might look spectacular in one medium but fall flat in another. Even more importantly, by limiting the number of colors in your branding, you associate that color or colors with your brand. A certain soft drink manufacturer has appropriated a particular shade of red. Whenever you see this brand of soft drink anywhere in the world, you see this shade of red. They’ve been so successful with their association that the product name has become an adjective for that color, just like lemon yellow and lime green. This trick wouldn’t have worked nearly as well if the company had tried to claim six or seven colors. It might not have even worked with two. But it worked brilliantly with one, and now that color belongs to them. Your computer can produce nearly 17 million shades, so you shouldn’t have much of a problem finding one that’s unique to you, unlike icons, which are much more limited by comparison. So if you’re thinking about doing a logo in blue, see about finding a particular shade of blue that doesn’t look like everyone else’s. And of course you want to try for a color scheme that pops, just like you did when you created your avatar. Strong contrast never goes out of style. Vivid or glaring colors can work miracles in drawing eyeballs, but only when you use them sparingly. Doing up your logo in chartreuse and crimson is probably too much of a good thing, whereas a logo in royal blue or blue-violet with chartreuse highlights looks fantastic.

Putting Your Logo on Gift Items and Clothing In the spirit of big business, let’s forget all about philosophy and color theory and get down to the bottom line: slapping your logo on some product. This used to be a sticky proposition. In the old days, you had to hire a local print shop for the paper-based stuff. Then for clothing, you needed to hire a screen printer. Maybe one was in your vicinity, but maybe one wasn’t. For coffee mugs, who knows. Then you had to buy a certain amount of inventory, usually a lot


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more than you’d ever need, and keep it in boxes in your garage or closet and hope for eventual sell-through. It just wasn’t practical to make a one-off personalized item. It wasn’t even practical for many small businesses. The web has changed all that. A growing number of websites exist for the sole purpose of putting digital images on products. The minimum order is zero. You can buy one for yourself, ten to give out as presents, or one hundred for the band’s next big show. You can also make your product selection available on a personalized website and take orders on the side. When I was in high school, the thought of me opening up my own souvenir shop was inconceivable. But for you guys, it’s not only doable, it’s borderline crazy not to do it. I don’t want this chapter to turn into a commercial for one particular website over the rest, so feel free to do an Internet search and see what turns up, but the most popular and recognized of these web-based print-on-demand services—or PODs, as they’re called—is CafePress.com (www.cafepress.com). Through this site, you can customize a wide variety of products. You name it: They have T-shirts, baseball caps, coffee mugs, buttons, teddy bears, wall clocks, tote bags, calendars, bumper stickers, greeting cards, posters, books, audio CDs, data CDs, and even U.S. postage stamps, plus dozens of others items. CafePress.com’s terms of service state that you must be at least 18 years old to open up a virtual storefront on your own, but if you get your parents’ permission and supervision, you can be as young as 13. This is all spelled out for you when you create your account.

Every POD website is a little different, but here’s how it works in general. You sign up for a free account. You select the product or products that you want to customize, and you upload the image file that you want to use. You can specify a different image file for each item, or you can use the same one. Each customized product then becomes part of your online inventory, which is completely virtual at this point. There’s no stock sitting in a warehouse somewhere, because each item is printed as it’s ordered. When people visit your web storefront, which comes with your free account, they have the opportunity to purchase your items. The POD people collect the customer’s money, print up the requested items, and ship them off to the customer, usually within a couple of weeks. The downside to print-on-demand is that you don’t get your items for free. You have to be your own customer and place an order, just like everyone else. For that, you need a credit card, so bring the parents on board.

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Aside from controlling what image goes on what item, you can also set the price of the item, although you don’t have complete freedom here. The POD provider charges a base rate, depending on the product type, which is how they make their profit. You can’t set the price any lower than that, although you can set it higher. Anything above the base rate is profit for you. If you’re selling to yourself or to your friends, you can opt for the minimum price. That way, you’re not milking yourself for money. But if you’re selling to the general public, you can charge whatever you think the market will bear. You can even send out coupons to your customers and run specials. It’s just like owning a small business. Making T-shirts and posters is one thing, but what would have really piqued my interest as a teenager was the chance to publish my own books. If you’re a publishing magnate in the making, you might want to check out Lulu (www.lulu.com), another POD website. Lulu specializes in print-on-demand books. While you can create books at CafePress.com, Lulu’s offerings are better. Don’t have any books of your own to publish? Connect with one of your writer friends. You design the cover, they write the text, and you split the proceeds.

I’ll leave the business plan to you. What I’ll mention here is how to prepare your images for production. The process is very much like getting your online avatar ready, in that you set the properties of the image to the website’s exact specifications. However, you need to take special care that you follow their recommendations to the letter. With the avatar, you can upload almost any old thing, and the website scales the dimensions accordingly. You went through the bother of adjusting its dimensions and resolution so that it would look as good as possible. But in this case, the media involved are a lot less forgiving. A T-shirt can’t automatically resize your image to give you good-enough results. Also, money is involved—not just yours, but potential customers’. If you get a reputation for putting out shoddy products, especially at the beginning, you’ll have to work 10 times as hard to overcome it. Along similar lines, remember when I was telling you about intellectual property in Chapter 10? You’ll want to make absolutely certain that you and you alone are the owner of any image that you upload, or you could get into serious trouble. Nobody cares too much if you borrow an image for an avatar, but the minute you start charging money, you move closer into theft territory. Fines and lawsuits aren’t out of the question. Also, the POD provider accepts no liability—it’s all on you if you do something stupid. So read through the content guidelines on the


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provider’s website, and if you have any question about what they do and don’t allow, send them an e-mail asking for clarification before you go ahead with your products. Public domain images should be all right to use, but you might have to prove that they’re in the public domain. You’ll be in much better shape if you restrict your product line to images that you have personally designed and created. The first order of business is to check the POD’s website for the exact image specifications for your particular product. Different products might call for different requirements, so be sure to do your homework thoroughly. If you can’t find the specifications quickly and easily from the Help or FAQ section of the POD provider’s website, I strongly encourage you to go with another provider. There’s just too little room for error. So let’s assume that I want to create a T-shirt with my logo on the front. I’ve been dying to put out a line of This-brand products, so this just might be my chance. I check my POD provider’s website, and I learn that my target resolution is 200 ppi, while my target dimensions are 2,000 pixels by 2,000 pixels. I jot these down. Sometimes the POD provider will give a range of acceptable resolutions, such as 100 to 300 ppi for a T-shirt image, in addition to a recommended value, in this case 200 ppi. If you go with something other than the recommended value, keep in mind that the target pixel dimensions will change accordingly. If they’re 2,000 pixels by 2,000 pixels at 200 ppi, then at 100 ppi, the target dimensions become 1,000 pixels square, while at 300 ppi, the target dimensions increase to 3,000 pixels square.

Next up is determining the format of the file that you upload. Many POD providers, including CafePress.com, accept PSD files directly, or they take uncompressed formats, such as TIFF or BMP. Hit the Help or FAQ section again and get the story directly from your provider. Because you’re dealing with printing, a compressed web format, such as JPEG or GIF, might not be the best choice here, and you might come to regret your JPEG’s lossy compression later. Also, you don’t know what version of Photoshop the POD provider is using, so your best bet is probably TIFF or BMP. The image file will be pretty heavy, so it’ll take a while for you to upload it, but the time spent will be worth it in the end. For the sake of example, I’ll go with TIFF. Now that I know where I’m going, I just have to get there. I load up the canvas with my logo in Photoshop (see Figure 12.6).

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Figure 12.6 To start, load the canvas with your logo.

Notice that my logo has a white background. There’s a certain logic to creating your image file with a transparent background instead. This way, the natural color of the item shows through the transparent areas of the image—at least in theory. For this trick to work, your POD provider needs to accept images with transparent backgrounds. Also, you need to supply your image file in a format that supports transparency, such as PSD or TIFF. At CafePress.com, white areas in your image file are treated as transparent anyway, unless you choose to print on a black T-shirt.

Right now, my canvas is 1,800 pixels by 1,200 pixels at 300 ppi resolution. For a T-shirt, I want 2,000 pixels by 2,000 pixels at 200 ppi resolution. But I also have a lot of extra white space around my logo. For the best results, my logo should fill the canvas. I get out the Rectangle Marquee tool and crop (see Figure 12.7). Post-crop, my canvas is 877 pixels by 428 pixels, which is well within the 2,000pixel-square target, but my resolution of 300 ppi is larger than the recommended 200 ppi. I can adjust the resolution easily enough using the Image Size dialog box (see Figure 12.8). I’m going from a higher resolution to a lower one, which is the same as downsampling, so I choose Bicubic Sharper as the resampling method. Don’t click OK just yet, though!


Figure 12.7 Crop the canvas closely around the logo.

Figure 12.8 Downsample the resolution to 200 ppi.

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Notice that now my pixel dimensions are even smaller: 585 by 285, to be exact, while my target is 2,000 pixels square. I don’t want my logo floating in the middle of a sea of white, so I set either the width or the height of the image to 2,000 pixels. Since a height of 2,000 pixels makes the proportionate width larger than my target of 2,000, I go with a width of 2,000 and settle for a smaller height (see Figure 12.9). When I click OK, Photoshop will resample the resolution and scale the dimensions in the same step. Nearly there! The resolution is good, and the width is good, but the height is still out of whack. I open up the Canvas Size dialog box to set the height to 2,000 pixels exactly (see Figure 12.10).

Figure 12.9 Set either the width or the height to 2,000 pixels. In this case, I’m setting the width.

Figure 12.10 Use the Canvas Size dialog box to adjust the height to match the target value.

And that’s my image (see Figure 12.11). I save it as a TIFF, upload it to my POD service, and slap it on a T-shirt. To make other products, I check the image guidelines. If I can get away with using the same PSD file, then great. If not, I can open the original PSD file again, adjust the resolution and dimensions accordingly, and create another TIFF. Save your product canvas as a PSD file of its own—This (T-shirt).PSD or This (Coffee Mug).PSD—even if you don’t upload this file directly to your POD provider. You never know when you might want to tweak the design or come out with a limited-edition variant.


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Figure 12.11 My image is ready for production.

In this chapter, you learned how to turn your logos and images into custommade, personalized products. I started out talking about logos and branding, and then I explained about print-on-demand, or POD, services and how you can use them to put out a line of merchandise. You saw how to adjust the resolution and print size of your Photoshop canvas depending on the POD provider’s recommendations to get the best-looking results. This book is quickly coming to a close, and although your Photoshop journey in these pages is over, your Photoshop journey in real life is just starting. Now that you have a feel for what Photoshop does, there are tools, menu commands, and palettes awaiting your experimentation. If you get stuck, there are all kinds of free tutorials on the web—all you have to do is search for them. Never forget that practice makes perfect, and always remember that photoshopping is fun.


Index A Actual Pixels command (View menu), 19–20 Add New Layer button, 56 additive colors, 36 adjustment layers, 151–155 Airbrush mode, Brush tool, 112 alignment, text, 143 angle gradient, 119 animations continuous play, 222 exporting, 243–245 flipbook sketches, 222 formats, 221 frame delay, 244–245 frames, 224 GIF format, 221–224 motion path, 241–242 Photoshop CS3, 238–243 Photoshop Elements, 225–236, 327 strobing effects in, 224 transitions, 222 tweening process, 241 antialiasing, 141–142 area markers, website design, 260–261 arrows, as logo, 274 Artistic filter, 170 avatar images. See also image files blurred backgrounds, 206–207 cropping, 208, 210 design considerations, 199–201 dimensions for popular websites, 209

displaying personal interests in, 201 displaying personality in, 201 foreground and background clutter, cleaning up, 205–206 light versus heavy images, 201 loss of image quality, 208 print-quality graphics, 203 public domain images, 202 resampling to screen resolution, 203–204 resizing, 208 saving, 212 saving as PSD file, 203–204 scaling, 211

B background color, 32–33 Background Contents menu, 10 Background Eraser tool, 126 behind blending mode, Brush tool, 109 Bevel and Emboss layer style, 169 Bevels layer style, 166 bicubic resampling method, 98 bicubic sharper resampling method, 98 bicubic smoother resampling method, 98 bilinear resampling method, 97 Billingsley, Frederick C., 24 bit depth, 191

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bitmap color mode, 40 bitmap graphics, 17, 23 Black & White adjustment layer, 153 black and white colors, bitmap color mode, 40 blending modes, layer, 62, 158–161 Blogger website, 209 Blur filter, 170 blurred backgrounds, avatar images, 206–207 BMP format, 185–186 BMP Options dialog box, 190 bold text, 141–142 bounding boxes distortion, 87–88 perspective, 87, 89 reference point, 85, 90–91 rotation, 87, 90 scaling, 85 skewing, 87, 89 box shape considerations, website design, 255–258 brands, merchandising, 269–283 Brightness/Color adjustment layer, 153 Brush Strokes filter, 170 Brush tool, 101 Airbrush mode, 112–113 Angle option, 115 blending modes, 107, 109–110 description of, 102–103 Fade option, 114 Hardness option, 115 Hue Jitter option, 114 location of, 105 opacity settings, 111 Roundness option, 115 Scatter option, 114 Spacing option, 114 stroke selection, 106 tip options, 106–107

C canvas colors, setting, 10 creating from scratch, 9 dimensions, 9 opening new, 9 size of, increasing, 95–96 Canvas Size dialog box, 95–96 Channel Mixer adjustment layer, 153 chrome-like effects, 166 Clear blending mode, Brush tool, 109 Clear command (Edit menu), 59 clipping mask, 146–150 closing palettes in Photoshop CS3, 14 in Photoshop Elements, 13 CMYK colors, 36–37, 41 color. See also fills animated GIFs, 222 shape, 133, 135–136 smooth gradations in, 98 text, 144 Color Balance adjustment layer, 153 Color blending mode Brush tool, 110 layers, 162 Color Burn blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 Color Dodge blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 Color Overlay layer style, 169 Color Picker dialog box, 33 color swatches, 32–33 Color Swatches command (Window menu), 38 colors additive, 36 bitmap mode, 40 black and white, 40 blank canvas creation, 10

Index

CMYK, 36–37, 41 color modes, 39–42 component, 35 Eyedropper tool color choices, 37 general-purpose, 40 grayscale color mode, 41 halftone effects, 40 HSB color model, 34–35 luminance values, 41 premixed, 38–39 RGB Color mode, 40 RGB color model, 35–36 subtractive, 36 web-safe, 34 Complex layer styles, 166 component colors, 35 compression methods, 185 content area, website design, 254–255 Cookie Cutter tool, 91 Copy command (Edit menu), 53, 56, 92 Copy Merged command (Edit menu), 236 copying and pasting layers, 53 cost, Photoshop, 4, 6 Create New Layer button, 52 crop marks, printing image files, 197 Crop tool, 91 cropping images, 93–94, 208, 210 crushing images, 186–187 Curves adjustment layer, 153 Custom Shape tool, 132 Cut command (Edit menu), 92

D Darken blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 Delete command (Edit menu), 59

deleting layers, 53 desktop wallpaper images adding space around, 217–219 dimensions, 212 display settings, 213 image selection, 213 resizing, 215 saving, 219 screen resolution adjustment, 214, 216 set as desktop background, 219 shared images, 213 dialog boxes BMP Options, 190 Canvas Size, 95–96 Color Picker, 33 Image Size, 31, 98, 181–183, 194–195 News, 9 Page Setup, 195–197 Print Preview, 195–196 Save Optimized As, 189 Style Settings, 167 TIFF Options, 190 diamond gradient, 119 Difference blending mode Brush tool, 110 layers, 162 dimensions canvas, 9 desktop wallpaper images, 212 display settings, desktop wallpaper images, 213 Dissolve blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 Distort filter, 170 distortion, 87–88 dithering, 40 documents, naming, 9 downsampling, 97

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288


dpi (dots per inch), 26 drawing shapes. See also painting Custom Shape tool, 132 Ellipse tool, 131 Line tool, 132 Polygon tool, 131–132 Rectangle tool, 131 Rounded Rectangle tool, 131 shape drawing tools, 129–130 Drop Shadows layer style, 166, 169 duplicating layers, 57

E Edit menu commands Clear, 59 Copy, 53, 56, 92 Copy Merged, 236 Cut, 92 Delete, 59 Free Transform, 91 Paste command, 53, 56, 92 Undo, 103 Editor, Photoshop Elements, 8 Ellipse tool, 131 Elliptical Marquee tool, 73 elliptical selections, 73 Eraser tool Background Eraser tool, 126 description, 123 location of, 124 Magic Eraser tool, 126 modes, 124 opacity settings, 126 tip options, 124–126 Exclusion blending mode Brush tool, 110 layers, 162 expanding and collapsing palettes Photoshop CS3, 15 Photoshop Elements, 12–13

exporting website layout, 266–267 Exposure adjustment layer, 154 Eyedropper tool, 37–38

F Facebook website, 209 Fade option, Brush tool, 114 feathering, 75 File menu commands New, 9, 234–235, 262 Open, 9, 47 Print, 195 Save, 21 Save As, 21–22 Save As Web & Devices, 187, 243 File Transfer Protocol (FTP), 249 files. See image files fills defined, 115 fill layer, 120–122 gradient, 118–120 mask, 120 pattern, 116, 122 Filter Gallery, 173–174 filters Photoshop CS3, 173–176 Photoshop Elements, 170–172 Smart, 164–165, 174 special effects, 162–166 Fit on Screen command (View menu), 19–20 Flickr website, 209 flipbook sketches, animations and, 222 fonts, 141 footers, website design, 255 foreground color, 32–33 format considerations, printing image files, 192 frame delay, animations, 244–245 frames, animated GIFs, 222

Index

Free Transform command (Edit menu), 91 Friendster website, 209 FTP (File Transfer Protocol), 249 Full Edit mode, 8

G GIF format, 185–186, 221–224 Glass Buttons layer styles, 166 glass effects, 166 glow effects, 166 gradient fills, 118–120 Gradient Map adjustment layer, 153 Gradient Overlay layer style, 169 Gradient tool, 118–120 graphics bitmap, 17, 23 raster, 17, 23–24 grayscale color mode, 41 Grid command (View menu), 61

H halftone effects, color modes, 40 Hand tool, 20 Hard Light blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 Hard Mix blending mode Brush tool, 110 layers, 162 Hardness option, Brush tool, 115 headers, website design, 254 hidden tools, Toolbox, 11–12 hiding layer contents, 57 Palette Bin, 14 high-resolution images, 25–27 horizontal text, 144 Horizontal Type Mask tool, 137

289

Horizontal Type tool, 91, 137–138 HSB color model, 34–35 HTML (HyperText Markup Language) document, 248–250, 267 Hue blending mode Brush tool, 110 layers, 162 Hue Jitter option, Brush tool, 114 Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, 153

I iconic faces, as logo, 274 Image Effects layer styles, 166 image files. See also avatar images BMP format, 185–186 compression methods, 185 downsampling to screen resolution, 180–182 GIF format, 185–186 JPEG format, 185–186 PNG format, 185–186 printing crop marks, 197 format considerations, 192 landscape/portrait orientation settings, 197 optimum resolution, determining, 192–193 page setup options, 195–197 paper size selection, 197 printing services, 191 resampled images, 194 PSD files, 179 saving Save As command, 189–190 Save for Web command, 186–189 TIFF format, 185–186 WBMP format, 187 width adjustment, 182–183

290


Image menu commands Mode, 42 Resize, 31, 181, 194–195 Image Size dialog box, 31, 98, 181–183, 194–195 Inner Glows layer style, 166, 169 Inner Shadows layer style, 166, 169 Internet Service Providers (ISPs), 249 Invert adjustment layer, 154 inverting selections, 76 ISPs (Internet Service Providers), 249 italic text, 141–142

J JPEG format, 185–186

L landscape/portrait orientation settings, printing image files, 197 Lasso tool, 77–78 layer styles Photoshop CS3, 168–170 Photoshop Elements, 165–167 special effects, 162–166 layers Add New Layer button, 56 adjustment, 151–155 blending modes, 62, 158–161 copying and pasting, 53 Create New Layer button, 52 creating new, 51–52 deleting, 53 description of, 45, 47, 50 duplicating, 57 hiding contents in, 57

locking/unlocking, 64 merging, 65–67 moving, 54 opacity settings, 157–158 palette, displaying, 51 rearranging/sorting, 60–62 renaming, 56–57 shape, 133 type, 145 Layers command (Window menu), 51 leading text, 143 Levels adjustment layer, 153 Lighten blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 Line tool, 132 Linear Burn blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 Linear Dodge blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 linear gradient, 119 Linear Light blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 162 lines per inch (lpi), 193 LiveJournal website, 209 locking layers, 64 logos, merchandising, 271–283 lossless compression, 185 lossy compression, 185 low resolution images, 25, 27 lpi (lines per inch), 193 luminance values, color modes, 41 Luminosity blending mode Brush tool, 110 layers, 162

Index

291

M

N

Magic Eraser tool, 126 Magic Selection Brush tool, 79 Magic Wand tool location of, 58 selecting images using, 75–76 Magnetic Lasso tool, 77 magnification levels Actual Pixels command (View menu), 19–20 Fit on Screen command (View menu), 19–20 Print Size command (View menu), 19–20 Zoom tool, 18–19 marquee tools, 73–75 mask, 120 clipping, 146–150 unsharp, 172 merchandising brands, 269–283 logos, 271–283 merged composition, 236 merging layers, 65–67 Mode command (Image menu), 42 motion path, animations, 241–242 Move tool moving layers, 54 moving pixels, 82–85 moving shapes, 134 moving text, 146 moving layers, 54 pixels, 82–85 shapes, 134 text, 146 Multiply blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 MySpace website, 209

naming documents, 9 navigation area, website design, 254 nearest neighbor resampling method, 97 neon-like effects, 166 New command (File menu), 9, 234–235, 262 New dialog box, 9 Noise filter, 170 Normal blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161

O objects, Smart, 174 opacity settings Brush tool, 111 Eraser tool, 126 layers, 157–158 Open command (File menu), 9, 47 opening new canvas, 9 palettes in Photoshop CS3, 14 Organizer, Photoshop Elements, 8 orientation, text, 144 Outer Glows layer style, 166, 169 Overlay blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161

P Page Setup dialog box, 195–197 page setup options, printing image files, 195–197 Page Source command (View menu), 248

292


Paint Bucket tool, 116 painting. See also drawing shapes basic painting method, 16–17 Brush tool, 101 Airbrush mode, 112–113 Angle option, 115 blending modes, 107, 109–110 description of, 102–103 Fade option, 114 Hardness option, 115 Hue Jitter option, 114 location of, 105 opacity settings, 111 Roundness option, 115 Scatter option, 114 Spacing option, 114 stroke selection, 106 tip options, 106–107 undoing, 103 Palette Bin (Photoshop Elements), 12–14 palettes Photoshop CS3 expanding/collapsing, 15 opening/closing, 14 removing, 15 Photoshop Elements adding to Palette Bin, 13 checked, 13 closing, 13 expanding and collapsing, 12–13 removing from Palette Bin, 14 paper size selection, printing image files, 197 paragraph text, 140–141 Paste command (Edit menu), 53, 56, 92 pattern fills, 116, 122 Pattern Overlay layer style, 169 Patterns layer styles, 166

Pencil tool basic drawing method, 16–17 selecting, 16 thickness adjustment, 17 perspective transformation, 87, 89 Photo Filter adjustment layer, 153 PhotoDeluxe, 6 Photographic Effects layer style, 166 Photoshop cost, 4, 6 description of, 3–4 uses for, 3–4 versions, 4, 6 Photoshop CS3 animations, 238–243 description, 6 filters, 173–176 layer styles, 168–170 palettes expanding/collapsing, 15 opening/closing, 14 removing, 15 Photoshop Elements differences, 7 Photoshop Elements animations, 225–236, 327 description, 6 Editor, 8 filters, 170–172 layer styles, 165–167 Organizer, 8 Palette Bin, 12–14 palettes adding to Palette Bin, 13 checked, 13 closing, 13 expanding/collapsing, 12–13 removing from Palette Bin, 14 Photoshop CS3 differences, 7 Welcome screen, 8–9 Photoshop (LE) Limited Edition, 6

Index

Pin Light blending mode Brush tool, 110 layers, 162 Pixelate filter, 170 pixels defined, 23 description of, 23–24 high-resolution images, 26 moving, 82–85 transferring, 91–92 transformations, 85–91 pixels per inch (ppi), 26, 30 plastic-like effects, 166 PNG format, 185–186 Polygon tool, 131–132 Polygonal Lasso tool, 78 portrait/landscape orientation settings, printing image files, 197 Posterize adjustment layer, 154 ppi (pixels per inch), 26, 29–30 premixed colors, 38–39 Print command (File menu), 195 Print Preview dialog box, 195–196 print-quality graphics, 203 Print Size command (View menu), 19–20, 30, 32 printing image files crop marks, 197 format considerations, 192 landscape/portrait orientation settings, 197 optimum resolution, determining, 192–193 page setup options, 195–197 paper size selection, 197 printing services, 191 resampled images, 194 production files, saving, 22 PSD files, 179 public domain images, avatar images, 202

293

Q Quick Fix mode description, 8 Full Edit mode and, switching between, 8 Quick Selection tool, 82

R radial gradient, 119 raster graphics, 17, 23–24 rasterizing shapes, 135–137 rearranging layers, 60–62 Rectangle tool, 131 Rectangular Marquee tool, 73–74 rectangular selections, 73 reference point, bounding box, 85, 90–91 reflected gradient, 119 renaming layers, 56–57 Render filter, 170 resampling, 97, 180, 194 Resize command (Image menu), 31, 181, 194–195 resizing images, 208, 215 resolution adjusting, 30–32 desktop wallpaper images, 214 downsampling image files, 180–182 dpi (dots per inch), 26 high-resolution images, 25–27 how resolution works, 25–30 low-resolution images, 25, 27 ppi (pixels per inch), 26, 29–30 RGB Color mode, 10, 40 RGB color model, 35–36 ridge effects, 166 rotation, 87, 90 Rounded Rectangle tool, 131 Roundness option, Brush tool, 115

294


S Satin layer style, 169 satin-like special effects, 169 Saturation blending mode Brush tool, 110 layers, 162 Save As command (File menu), 21–22 Save As Web & Devices command (File menu), 243 Save command (File menu), 21 Save for Web & Devices command (File menu), 187 Save Optimized As dialog box, 189 saving how to, 21–22 image files Save As command, 189–190 Save for Web command, 186–189 images, 219 at regular intervals, 21 Save As command (File menu), 21 Save command (File menu), 21 scaling, 85, 96–99, 211 Scatter option, Brush tool, 114 Screen blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 screen resolution adjustment, desktop wallpaper images, 214, 216 Selection Brush tool, 79 selections discussed, 71–72 elliptical, 73 inverting, 76 Quick Selection tool, 82 rectangular, 73 using Lasso tool, 77–78 using Magic Wand tool, 75–76 using Selection Brush tool, 79 Selective Color adjustment layer, 153

shadow effects, 166, 169 shapes color selection, 133, 135–136 Custom Shape tool, 132 Ellipse tool, 131 Line tool, 132 moving, 134 Polygon tool, 131 rasterizing, 135–137 Rectangle tool, 131 removing layer styles from, 135 Rounded Rectangle tool, 131 shape drawing tools, 129–130 shape layer, 133 simplifying, 135–136 transformation, 134 Sharpen filter, 170 sharpening, 171 single-line text, 139–140 size of canvas, increasing, 95–96 Sketch filter, 170 skew transformation, 87, 89 Slice Select tool, 265 Slice tool, 264–266 slicing, 262–266 Smart filters, 164–165, 174 Smart objects, 174 smooth gradations, 98 Soft Light blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161 sorting layers, 60–62 Source command (View menu), 248 Spacing option, Brush tool, 114 special effects chrome-like, 166 glassy, 166 glow, 166 layer styles and filters, 162–166 layer styles, in Photoshop Elements, 166

Index

neon, 166 plastic, 166 ridges, 166 satin-like, 169 shadows, 166, 169 sharpening, 171 squeeze transformation, 85, 87, 99 stretch transformation, 85, 87, 99 strikethrough, 143 strobing effects, 224 Stroke layer style, 169 Style Settings dialog box, 167 Stylize filter, 170 subtractive colors, 36 swatches, color, 32–33 switching between Full Edit and Quick Edit mode, 8 between tools, 18

T tags, HTML, 267 text alignment, 143 antialiasing, 141–142 bold, 141–142 color selection, 144 font, 141 horizontal, 144 italic, 141–142 leading, 143 moving, 146 orientation, 144 paragraph, 140–141 single-line, 139–140 strikethrough, 143 type layer, 145 underlined, 143 vertical, 144 warp, 144

295

Texture filter, 170 thickness adjustment, Pencil tool, 17 Threshold adjustment layer, 154 thumbnail views, 242 TIFF format, 185–186 TIFF Options dialog box, 190 tiling, 213 tip options Brush tool, 106–107 Eraser tool, 124–126 Toolbox description, 11–12 tools Background Eraser, 126 Brush, 101 Airbrush mode, 112 Angle option, 115 blending modes, 107, 109–110 description of, 102–103 Fade option, 114 Hardness option, 115 Hue Jitter option, 114 location of, 105 opacity settings, 111 Roundness option, 115 Scatter option, 114 Spacing option, 114 stroke selection, 106 tip options, 106–107 Cookie Cutter, 91 Crop, 91 Custom Shape, 132 Ellipse, 131 Elliptical Marquee, 73 Eraser Background Eraser tool, 126 description, 123 location of, 124 Magic Eraser tool, 126 modes, 124 opacity settings, 126 tip options, 124–126 Eyedropper, 37–38

296


Gradient, 118–120 Hand, 20 Horizontal Type, 91, 137–138 Horizontal Type Mask, 137 Lasso, 77–78 Line, 132 Magic Eraser, 126 Magic Selection Brush, 79 Magic Wand, 58, 75–76 Magnetic Lasso, 77 Move moving layers, 54 moving pixels, 82–85 moving shapes, 134 moving text, 146 Paint Bucket, 116 Pencil basic drawing method, 16–17 selecting, 16 thickness adjustment, 17 Polygon, 131–132 Polygonal Lasso, 78 Quick Selection, 82 Rectangle, 131 Rectangular Marquee, 73–74 Rounded Rectangle, 131 selecting, 11–12 Selection Brush, 79 Slice, 264–266 Slice Select, 265 switching between, 18 Vertical Type, 137–138 Vertical Type Mask, 137 Zoom, 18–19 Tools command (Windows menu), 11 transferring pixels, 91–92 transformations canceling, 90 distortion, 87–88 perspective, 87, 89

pixels, 85–91 rotation, 87, 90 scaling, 85 shapes, 134 skew, 87, 89 squeeze, 85, 87, 99 stretch, 85, 87, 99 transitions, animations, 222 tweening, 241 type layer, 145 type tools, 137

U underlined text, 143 Undo command (Edit menu), 103 unlocking layers, 64 unsharp mask, 172 upsampling, 97

V versions, Photoshop, 4, 6 vertical text, 144 Vertical Type Mask tool, 137 Vertical Type tool, 137–138 Video filter, 170 View menu commands Actual Pixels, 19–20 Fit on Screen, 19–20 Grid, 61 Page Source, 248 Print Size, 19–20, 30, 32 Source, 248 Visibility layer styles, 166 Vivid Light blending mode Brush tool, 109 layers, 161

Index

W wallpaper images. See desktop wallpaper images warp, text, 144 WBMP format, 187 web hosting, 249 web-safe colors, 34 websites avatar dimensions for popular websites, 209 designing area markers, 260–261 box shape considerations, 255–258 content area, 254–255 footers, 255 headers, 254 navigation area, 254 page count considerations, 256 safe web design dimensions, 253–254 simplistic design considerations, 256 HTML document, 248–250, 267 ISPs (Internet Service Providers), 249 layout designing, 251–262 exporting, 266–267 slicing, 262–266 monitor and screen setting considerations, 251 webpages, 247–248

297

Welcome screen, Photoshop Elements, 8–9 width adjustment, image files, 182–183 Window menu commands Color Swatches, 38 Layers command, 51 Tools, 11 Windows Live Spaces website, 209 WordPress website, 209 Wow Chrome layer style, 166 Wow Neon layer style, 166 Wow Plastic layer style, 166

Y Yahoo! 360 website, 209

Z Zoom tool, 18–19

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