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Getting More Readouts Per Eyedropper
In Photoshop CS2, the Color Sampler tool can give you readings from up to four different places, but the Color Sampler in Camera Raw is more powerful and monitors even more areas for you. Each time you click the tool, another set of readings appears at the top of the Camera Raw dialog, and although it looks like six is the maximum number of color samplers you can add to your image (because the top of the Camera Raw dialog looks full), you can actually add three more (for a total of nine color samplers). Try it, and you’ll see the six samplers squeeze to accommodate three more samplers. Now, I have to say, if you need to monitor the color in nine different areas of your image, perhaps working with RAW images shouldn’t be your biggest concern.
How To Undo The White Balance Tool
If you used the White Balance tool (I) to set the white balance in your image, and you don’t like the results, you can undo your white balance setting by double-clicking on the White Balance tool in Camera Raw’s Toolbox.
Turning Off Auto Correction For Good
If you don’t like the Auto corrections that are applied to your RAW images by default, you can change things so that when you open photos from your camera, it will no longer perform any Auto corrections. Here’s how: Open a RAW image and press Command-U (PC: Control-U) to turn off all the Auto corrections in Camera Raw. Then go under the flyout menu (to the right of the Settings pop-up menu) and choose Save New Camera Raw Defaults. Now, when you open a photo taken with the same camera make and model, it will no longer apply any of the Auto settings.
Toggling The Preview On/Off
So, have the adjustments you’ve made in Camera Raw helped or hurt your photo? Just press the letter P and you’ll quickly find out. This turns the preview of your changes off, and shows how the original file looked before you started tweaking it. To turn the preview back on, just press P again.
Seeing Your RAW Image Without The Auto Corrections
By default, when you open a RAW image in Photoshop CS2, Camera Raw looks at the EXIF data embedded into your photo by your digital camera to find out which type of camera it was taken with, and once it knows, it applies a set of Auto corrections to the photo’s exposure, shadows, brightness, and contrast. If you’d like to see what your RAW image looked like before Camera Raw applied these Auto corrections, just press Command-U (PC: Control-U), and it turns off all the Auto corrections to give you a clear, uncorrected view. Pretty bad, eh? So press Command-U (PC: Control-U) to turn those bad boys right back on.
Slide Away The Aberrations
If you see areas of bright-colored fringe appearing around objects in your RAW photos, you’re suffering from Chromatic Aberrations (well, you’re not, but your camera’s lens is). Under the Lens tab in Camera Raw, there are two sliders (Fix Red/Cyan Fringe and Fix Blue/Yellow Fringe) that you let you slide those problems away, but seeing the problem clearly enough to eliminate the fringe is your first challenge. That’s why you’ll want to know this tip: If you hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) while you’re dragging either Chromatic Aberration slider, it will only show the two channels you’re adjusting in the preview area, making it easier to see—and repair—the problem.
Updating The Histogram As You Crop
The fact that Camera Raw has cropping built in should be cool enough, but its Crop tool (C) is smarter than Photoshop’s. For example, when you drag out a cropping border in Camera Raw, take a look at the histogram in the top-right corner—it instantly updates to show you the histogram for just the areas that appear inside your cropping border. Sweet!
Don’t Click The White Balance Tool On Something White
The White Balance tool (I) actually works best by clicking on something in your photo that is light gray, rather than clicking on something that supposed to be white. Once you’ve clicked on a light gray area, use the Tint and Temperature sliders if you want to tweak the white balance a little bit, but use the White Balance tool to do most of the work.
Black And White Conversions In Camera Raw
Believe it or not, Camera Raw is great for creating black-and-white conversions. Start by opening a RAW image, then lowering the Saturation to –100. Adjust the Exposure and Shadows sliders to create a nice contrasty image, then drag the Contrast slider to the right to give the image even more contrast. Now try all the different White Balance presets until you find the one that looks best for your particular conversion. You can even add sharpening if you like by clicking on the Detail tab and adjusting the Sharpness slider. And best of all, you can create a surprisingly good black-and-white image before it actually enters Photoshop CS2.
Instant Thumbnail Size Control
Want to change the size of your thumbnail preview in your Layers, Channels, or Paths palettes? Just hold the Control key (PC: Right-click) and click in an open area of the palette (such as the space under your Background layer, or beneath the bottom channel in the Channels palette), and a pop-up menu of thumbnail sizes will appear. For instance, in the Layers palette you can choose from No, Small, Medium, or Large Thumbnails, instantly changing your thumbnail view.
Timing Is Everything!
Want to know how long a particular Photoshop command takes? Click on the right-facing triangle toward the bottom left-hand corner of your image window. From the pop-up menu that appears, under Show, choose Timing. This starts the equivalent of a stopwatch that times your Photoshop commands in seconds. This is great for speed tests, pitting one machine against another. Which one runs the fastest Smart Sharpen? Time it and find out.
Custom Brushes: Start With A Clean Slate
If you’re going to build your own custom brush in Photoshop, sometimes it’s easier to start with an existing brush and edit it. The problem is that you may have all sorts of settings already in place (Texture, Scattering, Shape Dynamics, etc. along with all their individual options). To set everything back to their defaults could take a while. At least it would if you didn’t know this cool little trick: Click on the brush you want to use as your starting point for your custom brush, and in the Brushes palette, click on the options you want to edit (like Texture, Scattering, etc.). Then, from the palette’s flyout menu, choose Clear Brush Controls, and all the selected options will be instantly reset to their default settings.
Building A Better Background Eraser Tool
Here’s a tip for making Photoshop’s Background Eraser tool much more effective. Choose the Background Eraser tool (it’s in the Eraser tool’s flyout menu in the Toolbox), and in the Options Bar, lower the Tolerance setting to 20. Click on the Brush thumbnail to open the Brush Picker and choose a large, hard-edged brush. Then, press P to switch to the Pen tool, making sure that the Paths icon (middle one at left in the Options Bar) is selected. Draw a path just outside the edge of the object you want to isolate (you don’t have to be precise; in fact, stay just outside the edges of the object and draw straight lines all the way around the image). Go to the Paths palette (under the Window menu), and in the palette’s flyout menu, choose Stroke Path. When the dialog appears, under Tool, choose Background Eraser, and click OK. The Background Eraser will instantly trace around your image, following the path you created. Now that the edges have been erased, you can use the regular Eraser tool to erase the rest of the background area.
How To Correct One Problem Color
Let’s say you have an image, but the sky doesn’t look as vibrant as you’d like, and you want to increase the amount of blue without affecting the rest of the image. Try this on for size: Open an image that contains a daylight sky. Click on the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu at the bottom of the Layers palette. In the pop-up menu, choose Color Balance. In the Color Balance dialog, drag the Blue slider all the way to the right (it looks bad now, but trust me) and click OK. Now, press B to switch to the Brush tool. Press the letter X until your Foreground color is black, and with a large, soft brush, start painting over the areas you don’t want blue. As you paint, the blue Color Balance you added is painted away. The sky is much bluer, but you can paint away the added blue from the other areas. To really see the before/after difference, click the Eye icon next to the adjustment layer.
Change Brush Softness On The Fly
You can increase or decrease the softness of a round brush in Photoshop without changing the size of the brush by pressing Shift-Left Bracket or Shift-Right Bracket. That’s almost too easy.
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Photoshop Tutorials
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Wild West Grunge
Corey shows you how to recreate this rugged, weathered look using a couple of filters, blending modes, and layer masks.
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Wall of Text
Use a clipping group to place an image inside of a background of text, with another layer of text placed in front to create depth.
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Natural Brushes
In this tutorial Corey shows you how to take an existing image and turn it into it’s own custom brush.
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Custom Coins
In this tutorial Corey creates a realistic-looking coin effect using the channels palette and the lighting effects filter.
Text Shape Layers
Converting text into shapes allows you to distort the text as you like while retaining straight, clean edges.
Borders Under a Minute
Create really cool borders in under a minute to use on virtually any one of your photos or even video for that matter.- Custom Coins
In this tutorial Corey creates a realistic-looking coin effect using the channels palette and the lighting effects filter. - Natural Brushes
In this tutorial Corey shows you how to take an existing image and turn it into it's own custom brush.
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Creative Contrast in Photoshop CS3
In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at some interesting techniques for improving contrast using the Shadow/Highlight command, empty adjustment layers, blend modes, and the Blend If sliders in the Layer Style dialog. -
Enhanced Workflow in Lightroom 1.1
In this article, we'll focus on techniques that will strengthen your workflow skills and simultaneously reveal some of the new features in Lightroom 1.1. -
Handlin’ Photoshop and Illustrator Content in Flash
we’ll take a look at how things work across Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash-specifically, some features and techniques for getting rasterized Photoshop content and vector Illustrator content into your Flash movies. -
Understanding Channels in Photoshop CS3
Photographer Chris Alvanas wants to go over Channels, because understanding what they are and what they do is key to understanding what their potential is.
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.
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Maximum Photoshop Tour May. 30
