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Articles by Web Editor | Page 6
Correcting Highlights? Watch Out For Open Shadows!
If you open the Shadow/Highlight command (found in the Image menu, under Adjustments) to open up the shadows in your photo, you’re in good shape from the get-go because it automatically increases the shadow area by 50%. That’s great, if that’s what you’re after. But what if you’re trying to pull back the highlights in a photo? Shadow/Highlight doesn’t know that and by default still opens up your shadows by 50%. The way to combat this is to immediately drag the Shadows slider all the way to the left when the dialog appears, so now you can adjust (pull back) the highlights by dragging the Highlights slider to the right, which now affects just the highlights and not the shadows.
Getting More Accurate Color Using Replace Color
If you’re using Replace Color (under the Image menu, under Adjustments) to select an area within your photo and replace it with a different color, the new color is pretty much an approximation, because you’re dragging sliders, rather than inputting the exact RGB or CMYK build you’re looking for. In Photoshop CS2, there’s a way around this. Once you’ve selected the area of color you want to replace, click on the Color Swatch to the right of the sliders in the Replacement section (it wasn’t there in previous versions). This brings up the Color Picker, where you can enter the exact RGB or CMYK values for your new color.
Determining The Motion Angle In Smart Sharpen
Here’s a tip I picked up from our buddy and NAPP Help Desk Director Peter Bauer. In Smart Sharpen (under Filter, choose Sharpen), there’s a special form of sharpening that removes visible motion blur. This sharpening is called (are you ready for this?) Motion Blur sharpening, and you choose it from the Remove pop-up menu in the Smart Sharpen dialog. But here’s the catch—you have to be able to determine the angle of the blur for Smart Sharpen to remove it. So, that’s where Pete’s tip comes in. You grab the Measure tool (nested under the Eyedropper tool in the Toolbox), and drag it along the angle of the blur. Then, look in the Options Bar and you’ll see the angle degree listed after the letter A. That’s the number you enter in the Motion Blur Angle field within Smart Sharpen. Very clever, Mr. Bauer.
Ditch The Annoying Lens Correction Grid
I love the Lens Correction filter in CS2, but I dearly hate the grid that appears over every image every time I open one, and it’s on by default, so you have to manually turn it off. However, if you’re like me (and you know you are), and you want that grid off fast, there is a workaround—you can save your own custom setting with the grid turned off. But to do that, you have to change something (or the Save Settings will be grayed out). I found a workaround that has virtually no effect on your image. Open the Lens Correction filter (found under the Filter menu, under Distort), and then increase the Vignette Midpoint to 51% (a 1% increase). Then, at the bottom of the dialog, turn off the checkbox for Show Grid. Now, in the Settings flyout menu, you’ll be able to choose Save Settings.
Getting Better Shadow/Highlight Results
The Shadow/Highlight feature in Photoshop is pretty amazing, but as amazing as it is, sometimes opening up the shadows can give your photo a “milky” look to it, making it obvious that you made adjustments using Shadow/Highlight. Well, here’s a tip for getting around that. First open Shadow/Highlight by going under the Image menu, under Adjustments, then choosing Shadow/Highlight. When the dialog opens, click on the Show More Options checkbox. Then, in the Shadows area up top, lower the Amount from the default setting of 50% to something more like 20%. Then increase the Tonal Width a bit and the Radius setting quite a bit, until the shadows are opened, but it doesn’t look “milky” or over-processed. Once you’ve done this, you can slowly increase the Amount slider, but stop if it starts to look milky.
How Accurate Do You Need To Be When Removing Red Eye?
Not very. That’s right, when you’re using the Red Eye tool (Shift-J until you have it), you can click directly on the red that appears in the pupil, but if you’re afraid that you won’t be able to click directly on the red area (which can happen due to squinting, eye lashes, etc.), don’t sweat it. Just click somewhere near where the red eye appears, and it will still remove the red eye. The tool is sensitive enough to search out any red that’s even near where you clicked, so that’s why the answer to the question “how accurate do you need to be when clicking?” is “not very.”
Don’t Have Italic Or Bold? Don’t Sweat It
If you have a typeface that doesn’t have a bold or italic version available, don’t sweat it—Photoshop can make a fake bold or italic version for you. They’re called faux bold and faux italic (don’t pronounce them “fox bold” or the French will get really cranky about it. It’s pronounced “fo,” as in “Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum”). To apply a faux style to the type, highlight your type and choose Faux Bold or Faux Italic from the Character palette’s flyout menu. Here’s another tip: Don’t forget to turn off these faux styles when you’re done, because they don’t automatically turn themselves off. Vive le Français!
Removing Those Typographically Incorrect Spaces
If you’re trying to set type that looks typographically correct in Photoshop, there’s an old habit you’ll have to break, and that’s the curse of putting two spaces at the end of every sentence. This is a holdover from people who at one time used traditional typewriters, where adding two spaces was necessary, but in typesetting that’s a huge no-no. About 70% of the text I copy-and-paste from text files that people give me has two spaces, but I use this Photoshop tip to fix the problem in just seconds. First, go under the Edit menu and choose Find and Replace Text. In the Find field, press the Spacebar twice (entering two spaces), then in Change To, press the Spacebar just once. Click Change All, and every time Photoshop finds two spaces at the end of a sentence, it will replace it with just one, making you typographically correct.
Exact Sizing For Your Text Columns
We already showed you how to create a column of type by clicking-and-dragging the Type tool to create your text box so your text will wrap within that column. But here’s a quick little tip that lets you tell Photoshop exactly the width and height you’d like your type column to be (rather than just clicking-and-dragging it out visually). With the Type tool, just hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) and click in your document and the Paragraph Text Size dialog will appear where you can enter the exact size you’d like for your column.
Editing Type On A Path
If you’ve created some type on a path, highlighting that type to edit it (to change the font, color, spelling, etc.) can be kind of tricky. That’s why it’s quicker to go to the Layers palette and double-click directly on the “T” thumbnail icon. This will highlight all the type on this layer, making it easy to type in some new text, or change some of the attributes.
Making The Spell Checker Obey Your Commands
Photoshop’s spell checker isn’t just window dressing; it has a very robust spell-checking function, akin to Adobe InDesign’s own spell checker, but if you understand how it works, you can save yourself some time and frustration. Basically, if you highlight some text on a layer, it checks just the highlighted text, so if you highlight one word, it just checks that one word (even if there are dozens of words in your paragraph). If you choose to spell check but don’t have anything highlighted, it checks your entire document, regardless of how many Type layers you have. It’s also helpful to know that it only checks real Type layers (layers that have a capital “T” as their thumbnail image in the Layers palette), and it cannot spell-check any layers with text that have been rasterized (converted from a Type layer into a regular image layer).
Made To Fit: Part Two
This tip relates to a previous tip, where you created what’s called a “text box” so that your type wraps within a text block, rather than running in one straight line. The tip is this: If you’ve created some standard type by just clicking and typing rather than creating a paragraph text block, you’re not out of luck. While the Type layer is active, just go under the Layer menu, under Type, and choose Convert to Paragraph Text. Now your type will wrap within the text box boundaries, and you can edit the boundaries by adjusting the corner and center points.
The Long And The Short Of Type
Although the Character palette has numeric controls for making your type fatter (horizontal scaling) or taller (vertical scaling), it’s usually easier to do these two functions visually (rather than numerically). Here’s how: First set your type, then with the Type cursor still blinking somewhere in the text, press-and-hold the Command key (PC: Control key) to bring up the Free Transform bounding box. To make your type fatter, click on the center handle on either side, release the Command/Control key and drag outward. To make your type taller, grab the center handle on the top or bottom, release the Command/Control key, and drag upward or downward.
Bring Those Type Layers Together
How do you merge two Type layers together? Unfortunately, while they’re still editable Type layers, you can’t—you have to rasterize the layers first. Technically, you rasterize just one (the bottom of the two Type layers), and then make the top Type layer active and press Command-E (PC: Control-E) to merge these two layers together. However, when you do that, the top Type layer will automatically rasterize as the two layers are combined into one, so there’s really no way around it—with the exception of this little tip: Highlight the editable type on the top layer and choose Cut from the Edit menu. Switch to the lower Type layer, click your Type cursor once at the end of the type, press Return (PC: Enter) to start a new line, then choose Paste from the Edit menu to paste the contents of the top Type layer into the bottom Type layer. Then drag the old top Type layer into the Trash icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Although it takes a little effort, now you have both layers combined into one layer (your goal), but the type remains totally editable (the bonus).
Tell Photoshop When You’re Done With Type
As you probably know, you can jump to most any tool in the Toolbox by pressing a single-key keyboard shortcut. (If you didn’t know that, sell your copy of Photoshop. Kidding. Just turn to Chapter 2 for some essential tips.) Here’s the problem: While creating type with the Type tool (T), if you press one of those one-key shortcuts (let’s say the letter P for the Pen tool), instead of jumping to the Pen tool, Photoshop types the letter “p”. It’ll drive you nuts. Okay, you won’t go nuts, but at the very least you’ll have a lot of typos. The reason is this: You have to tell Photoshop that you’re done editing your type. You do this in one of three ways: (1) Click on the checkmark icon at the far right of the Options Bar, (2) press the Enter key, or (3) switch to another tool manually by clicking on it in the Toolbox. Any of these three tells Photoshop that you’re done and lets you use the single-key shortcuts to switch tools.
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Creating CSS Columns in Dreamweaver
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Imageready’s Supercharged Eyedropper
In previous versions of Photoshop, you could only use the Eyedropper tool to sample a color from other open images in Photoshop, but for some reason, ImageReady had a supercharged Eyedropper. If you clicked the mouse button within your image and held it down, you could leave your image window and sample colors from, well… just about anything—including your computer desktop or any other open application. Freaky! Fortunately, Adobe finally added this same power to Photoshop’s Eyedropper tool.
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