Photoshop Tricks

What If You Could Learn Photoshop In Under 2 Hours?

Dozens of people want to know more about how to edit images, the easiest way is to use Adobe Photoshop. Thought it may seem complicated at first with the entire 10 hour video help book adobe provides, you can learn it under 2 hours. From tools like using the layers to setting Photoshop’s undo button for easier use, Adobe is full of wonderful surprises that will impress your family and friends. This article will cover how to use 2 selection tools.

The first selection tool is called the lasso tool. It is used to select irregular areas in a photo. There are three parts to the lasso tool, they are the Lasso Tool, the Polygonal Lasso Tool and the Magnetic Lasso Tool. The polygonal lasso tool is used to select specific polygon shapes inside of the photo. While the magnectic lasso tool is used to hook onto specific areas in the photo, it will automatically “attach” itself to areas. The regular lasso tool will just lasso onto whatever you tell it to. To use these tools all you have to do is select the tool and drag it over your photo.

The 2nd selection tool is called The Magic Wand. What this tool does is it selects areas based on color patterns instead of the outside. It is easy to use it because there are no specific parts to it. All you have to do is select it then click on an area in your picture that you want to edit, the magic wand will grab the area specific to the color and you will be able to edit it to your needs.

Adobe Photoshop is an interesting and in depth tool for editing photos. You can create masterpieces with just a simple picture. Changing backgrounds became easy, editing sizes, cutting out pieces just got easier to do with Adobe. Learning it in just a couple of hours is phenomenally good for the novice user. Friends and family will love the masterpieces you can create with just the touch of a button. I anticipate that Adobe will become a lot more user-friendly over the next couple of years so that more and more people will feel comfortable using it.

10 Things You Could be Using Photoshop for But Probably Aren’t

Most people don’t use Photoshop to its fullest capabilities. Here are just ten uses to which you could put this highly versatile software.

1. Restoring Old Photographs. Have a look through that old family photo album – the really old one from up in Grandma’s attic. Inside there are probably a few photos from way back when that haven’t stood the test of time so well. They’ve got cracks and tears that really spoil their appearance. Scan them into Photoshop, and then set to work with the Clone Stamp, Healing Brush, and Patch tools. The Healing Brush in particular is a great tool for this purpose as it samples data from one part of the picture and blends it in with what’s already there.

2. Correcting Mistakes. We’ve all done it: Had an attack of “finger over the lens syndrome,” or got too close with the flash, so our subjects suffer from “red eye” and look like extras from a horror movie. Use the crop tool to salvage something usable from your obscured photo, and the enlarge wizard to blow it up to a reasonable size. For “red eye” and “pet eye,” use the eyedropper tool to sample color from around the iris, and a brush to paint away the red.

3. Adding Graphics to Videos. It’s a little known fact, but many domestic and professional nonlinear editing systems (especially the Mac based ones like Avid or Final Cut) enable you to import Photoshop .psd files directly into the timeline.

4. Creating Text Effects for Print and Web. There’s an almost unlimited amount of things you can do with text in Photoshop. Use the Type Mask Tools to create picture filled text, then upload the results to your web page – or print them out for a one of a kind T-shirt.

5. Turning a Photo Into a Work of Art. Everyone likes to have nice things to look at. Most of us like to have pictures on the wall, and something that looks different from what other people have on their walls is a definite plus. Unless you’re blessed with artistic talent, though, this can be very expensive – until now. Use one of Photoshop’s many Artistic or Brush Stroke filters to turn your photos into “new masters,” then print them out on quality art paper.

6. Designing Web Banners and Buttons. Photoshop comes with a predefined web banner sized canvas. Photoshop’s sister application, Image Ready, comes with several – and lots of tools for animating text and pictures. You can also create interactive buttons that enhance a web browsing experience.

7. Adding Text to Photographs. Impress your boss by putting the company name on the side of an airliner, building, or racing car. Use the Move Tool to skew the text to fit the contours of the picture, adjust the opacity a little, and hey presto! The text will look like it’s always been part of the photo.

8. Combining Pictures, Text, and Graphics to Make Covers for Books, Reports and CDs. Photoshop contains many of the image manipulation capabilities of high-end DTP applications that cost thousands. Use the “Layer via Cut” command to make your title text go behind part of the picture – just like on the cover of “Rolling Stone.”

9. Designing Web Pages. Did you know that Photoshop and Image Ready can turn your photograph or artwork into a web page? Use the slice tool to cut your work into easily downloadable pieces, then the rollover function to embed website URLs.

10. Combining Pictures to Make the Impossible Possible. Come on! You didn’t seriously think that Michael Moore and President George W. Bush really stood hand in hand on the White House lawn for the Fahrenheit 9/11 poster, did you? I don’t know for certain that they used Photoshop to fake that picture, but they certainly could have done. With Photoshop you can remove the background from one picture, take some elements from another, and combine them with the background from a third to create a picture that could never have been taken for real. Who says the camera can’t lie!