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Photoshop – I wish I’d known that earlier.

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    Photoshop – I wish I’d known that earlier.

    If I’m using Word or Excel or other ‘business’ applications there tends to be someone on the office that can help with software issues. With ‘hobby software’ we are often on our own, well I am anyway.

    Anyone got any quick tips with PS, Elements or Lightroom that perhaps they wish they’d know a lot earlier.

    For me it’s the brush circle being replaced by a crosshair (therefore difficult to use) when you have caps lock on. I struggled for ages with that one.

    - Tony
    - Tony

    6D Mk II, 17-40 F4/L 4 USM, 24-105 F4/L 4 IS USM

    www.premiumpics.co.uk

    Flickr

    #2
    Re: Photoshop – I wish I’d known that earlier.

    Photoshop tips are hard to give because there's so many different ways to do things. One big tip from me would be to do things in a non destructive way. Using layer masks helps, and uncheck 'delete cropped' pixels would be another.

    Learn the keyboard shortcuts because it makes life in PS a lot easier.

    [] changes brush size
    B - brush tool
    S - clone stamp tool
    CTRL &T - transform tool
    C - crop tool
    Z - zoom tool
    D - Restore colour defaults to black and white
    X - swap foreground and background colours

    They are just a few I use.

    Creating a new layer and filling it with 50% grey and using a white or black brush with varying opacities can be a great way to be quick with the Dodge and Burn process.

    To replace a sky it can help to add a Levels adjustment layer and make all the highlights really bright and the midtones and shadows as close to black as you can. That way you can use the colour select tool to pick out the areas of strong highlights and then once the selection is made you just hit the layer mask icon and boom the sky is gone :)

    Ok I'll stop boring everyone now lol
    Fuji X-T1 | 1D IV
    www.campsie.photography

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      #3
      Re: Photoshop – I wish I’d known that earlier.

      Thanks Paul - not boring to me!

      - Tony
      - Tony

      6D Mk II, 17-40 F4/L 4 USM, 24-105 F4/L 4 IS USM

      www.premiumpics.co.uk

      Flickr

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Photoshop – I wish I’d known that earlier.

        Originally posted by Paulstw View Post
        Photoshop tips are hard to give because there's so many different ways to do things. One big tip from me would be to do things in a non destructive way. Using layer masks helps, and uncheck 'delete cropped' pixels would be another.

        Learn the keyboard shortcuts because it makes life in PS a lot easier.

        [] changes brush size
        B - brush tool
        S - clone stamp tool
        CTRL &T - transform tool
        C - crop tool
        Z - zoom tool
        D - Restore colour defaults to black and white
        X - swap foreground and background colours

        They are just a few I use.

        Creating a new layer and filling it with 50% grey and using a white or black brush with varying opacities can be a great way to be quick with the Dodge and Burn process.

        To replace a sky it can help to add a Levels adjustment layer and make all the highlights really bright and the midtones and shadows as close to black as you can. That way you can use the colour select tool to pick out the areas of strong highlights and then once the selection is made you just hit the layer mask icon and boom the sky is gone :)

        Ok I'll stop boring everyone now lol
        And remember to change the blend mode to overlay after creating a 50% layer other wise you'll see nothing
        Alan.

        7D2, 24-105 L / 70-200 F2.8 ii L / 50 F1.8 prime / Sigma 10-20 F4-F5.6

        Website www.alanreeve.co.uk

        Please take a look https://www.flickr.com/photos/82149274@N07/sets & https://www.facebook.com/reevephotography

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          #5
          Re: Photoshop – I wish I’d known that earlier.

          I'll try a few more "out there" ones...

          It's good at handling video files, you can read them in, add layers and export them out as video. Also you can just start working with a frame as a still. (Which is handy when I have 4k video of something as that's 25x 8MP images per second, decisive moment eh!)

          Of the adjustment layers one that is often neglected is the Colour Lookup one. I've spent a while collecting 3DLUTs to go with it. (Mostly for video, but can be handy for stills, I often combine two of them.)

          Actions are really handy, think "recordable macros" if you haven't heard of them. It's well worth learning how to record them and then apply them to a bunch of images with the Image Processor. For example I can quickly de-fish a whole directory of fisheye images to see how they look.

          The Missing Manual book is worth having when you start.

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