The Photoshop help thread!

[JonatanRaven]

Ok, seing as I do a lot of stuff in Photoshop and the fact that I'm self-taught, I thought I'd help out anybody who's starting out working with Photoshop. I will start out by posting some good links to certain photoshop-tutorial pages that I've found to be useful. I will also answer questions and give tips on how to do stuff.

The main reason I have learned photoshop is actually photo-retouching so most of these tutorials will probably be about that. I'm also administrating a forum and I needed to make some nice buttons and a logo for my forum. Bear in mind that if you just learn how to use certain functions, you can apply them to any other work you might want to do.

I will expand the General Tips as I think of them, the tutorials I refer to when answering questions will be added to this post as well. I might add further questions and their respective answers to this topic as well, if they are relevant enough.

General Photoshop tips!

1. Always work with large pictures. You can always resize them when you're done and it's a lot harder to work in low resolution pics.
   
2. There are a lot more tools in Photoshop than the ones that are visible on the tools-manu. Press and hold the mouse-button to access the drop down menus on the tool you want to use.
   

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[JonatanRaven]

Photoshop Tutorials!

First I'll provide a link to a good site with a lot of basic tutorials:
Basic Skills and Guides
If you work your way through them, you'll be a lot better of than when you started. This, however, might not be the easiest or most fun way of learning photoshop, but I'd still recommend it.
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Here's a good tutorial for creating a signature for forums:
SIG-tutorial
This tutorial does not however explain all the steps in detail, so you'll need to play around with that tutorial to learn what it is you're actually doing. Basic trial and error (which imho is the best way to learn).
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Here's a good photo-retouching tutorial:
Glamour Model tutorial
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I will expand the tutorial-section further on, but I'll get right on answering questions.

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[JonatanRaven]

Photoshop Questions!

I wanna take the girl out of this picture, and place her in annother screen.

Well, to answer that question, I will refer to the following tutorial, which is what I do to extract something from an image (the two tutorials provided ARE different, but just slightly).
Using Quickmask
More Quickmasks
Using quickmask is the best way since you aren't actually changing the image, you're just hiding the part of it that you don't want. This makes it easy to undo any changes you made.

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To be continued..

<div align="right]/Jonatan

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[JonatanRaven]

how can you create text, i know with the "T" button, but thats pretty basic mellow.gif and all over i see cool words n stuff.

Cool text can be made in several ways, so I will try to show a few techniques.

The easiset way to make text look anything other than plain black (or whatever colour you chose) is to use the layer effects available in photoshop. This way is the most basic way to add effects to your text and includes drop shadows, glow, bevel and other "simple" effects. You find the different options under the layer menu or when you right click the layer.

any combination of the above..

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The other way to make cool text that I frequently use is to use the preset filters that are included in photoshop. To do this, you need to render the text layer first so you might want to duplicate the text layer and work with the duplicate instead. Render the duplicate and start playing around with different filters. When you find a nice filter you can start playing around with the layer effects as well until you find a nice combination.

Here's a combination of the filter "plastic Film" and the layer effects I used above:

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The next thing you can do to make cool text is to instead of using the regular text toll, use the "type mask" tool. You can access this tool by pressing and holdong the "T" button. Write what you want directly on the background layer and then press "ctrl+enter" to make the selection. You can now play around with the selection by chosing "edit selection" (or something like that) under the select menu. Play around with the selection until you're satisfied. When you are, copy the selection onto a new layer. You can now play around with the settings I mentioned above to achieve some nice effects.

Here I have used the type mask tool and applied an inner shadow layer effect. To get the 3D illusion, I lowered the layer brightness a bit. To lower the layer brightness, use the Image/Adjustments/Brightness/Contrast menu.

PS: The original image was 1800x1200pxl

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For an advanced tutorial check this out:
Writing in the sand

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[Exile]

2 words.

You rule!

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[Exile]

You speak of "render" above, where can i find it?

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[JonatanRaven]

you should be able to find it if you right-click the text layer..

but photoshop should automatically ask you if you wish to render the layer when you select any filter option..

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[Exile]

Ok, this is what i got so far :



1. how can i make the osiris less dark?
2. the face has some... things sticking out, how to get rid of it.

Ex

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[JonatanRaven]

The ship and the face are different layers right? If not, make it so.

Then you can play around with the brightness/contrast setting to brighten the ship.

To remove the unwanted details from the face, use the quickmask tool. Enter quickmask mode and use a small, well defined brush to manually remove them.

EDIT: You can also use the clone stamp tool.

Here's a nice litte video tutorial that will teach you how to use it:
Clone Stamp Tutorial

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[Exile]

Ok, about the quickmask.
i allways do the lasso thingy, then press "quick mask ".
but then im not sure what to do next, i then use the brush tool. but nothing happens when i do it so i cant make my selection more exact.

ideas?


Edit: allright, ty, chekking vid.

Edit 2 : it does take a hell of a time to load...

Edit 3 : aah, now that explains it:) ty.

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