Photoshop Tips Though the Years – taterboy
March 28th, 2009 | Filed under: Design, Digital Art, Photoshop, Tips

Can you believe Photoshop is almost 20 years old? It was initially distributed as scanner software by a company called BarneyScan in 1988 and Adobe officially released Photoshop 1.0 in 1990. A tear comes to my eye as I think about all we have been through and how much Photoshop has evolved over the years. “Our baby is all grown up! sniff, sniff.” With each new release came new features, some highly anticipated while others I still wonder what they are used for. As an artist though, is it really about the features? The art is created inside you, we use the photoshop as a tool to express our creations to the world. It was just a lot more barebones back then. I guess this is my version of the famous story, “Walking To School Barefooted, Uphill Both Ways”. That’s right, when I was a young man, we didn’t have a Navigator Palette and all those fancy Layer Effects. We still made art, and it was good. So, what if our our monitors only had 8 bit color at 640 x 480 resolution. That’s what it means to be old school! (Not to take anything away from all those really old school individuals who endured 1bit color.)

I started using Photoshop at version 2.5, though I have not adopted all the features that have come out over the years, I have learned a few things. I remember scoffing when Layer Styles appeared in version 6, everything new just seemed to be focused on filters and effects. I can do a perfectly good drop shadow from scratch, I thought; maybe even faster then it took someone to open the Layer Styles palette and enter in their settings. I did come around though and appreciate how all the styles are non destructive and adjustable.

Layer Styles (introduced in Photoshop 6, 2000):
So here’s my first tip, Layer Styles. They are every effect you could do by hand, but non-destructive and easily adjustable. The most important thing to learn about Layer Styles is, they are not the Adobe Certified Perfect Effect For All Occasions. They are just a tool to make our job of creating beautiful stuff more efficient. The default settings in each style are starting points, just something to get you pointed in the right direction. Play with them, adjust them, work your artistic magic on them. For example, the drop-shadow, the 120° lighting is so 90’s and black shadows at 75% opacity makes everything underneath it look dirty. Shadows are created by an object blocking a light source from another object. That reflecting and refracting of light can create different hues of ambient lighting that will effect the colors of shadows and everything else in the scene. So try adding some color to your shadows.

The Point:
Layer Styles were not the reason I wanted to do this post, it was just part of a the scenic route of getting to the point. The directors cut, the extended edition if you will, but still I digress. The point is, there are many blogs and sites devoted to tips and techniques of Photoshop, many are presented so much better then I can. With that said, there are a couple tips I have picked up over the years that may be helpful to some and hard to find amid the mass of resources on the subject. Plus, this is more of a walk down memory lane and how an old dog like me picked up some new tricks along the way.

Filter Tricks (Introduced when someone wants to “filterize” things in Photoshop):
If I can digress with another story. In the mid 90s Photoshop really took off, and when Actions were introduced they were all the rage. Actions really helped streamline our work as tee-shirt artists, we could create an effect and have it saved as an action, which could be applied over and over a gain. At that time, I was really reserved in my use of filters, they were only used if the art in my head called for it. We never design around a filter. I still have to laugh at the FBI Warning screen before the feature presentation on a DVD. A blue fill, craquelure filter, lighting effect, drop-shadow text and a logo. Anyway, I started making all these actions for fun that made all these cool effects. It is easier to do more automated stuff using filters, so I started messing with them a lot more. At that time I was trying to get out of tee-shirt design and into 3D animation and special effects for film and broadcast. During A interview, I was asked to show off something in Photoshop. They said do anything. I had just completed an action that produced a pretty cool flame effect which could be applied to text, photos of buildings or whatever. I tried to think of something else to do, I did not want to be seen as a Photoshop Filter Artist. I was the real deal. I knew the program inside and out, but under the pressure, that was the only thing I felt would show something completed in the time they gave me to perform. So, I manually did the sequence of my flame action and had a nice image of blazing text when they returned to check on my progress. My reservations about the effect came true and I did not get the job. Photoshop Filters are great, but they are also be a temptation, we have to ask ourselves, are we artists or a Photoshop Filter Artist?

Free Transform tool (Introduced in Photoshop 4, 1996):
I have written plenty about the Free Transform Tool in Illustrator, it is exactly the same in Photoshop and clearly one of the coolest things since sliced bread. But, I do not want to talk about the normal uses of the Free Transform Tool they are more then covered here and plenty of other places. There are a couple lesser known tricks the Free Transform Tool has to offer.

1. x and y coordinates. I have yet to find an easy way of getting x and y coordinates from objects in Photoshop document. Sure the Info palette shows you the x and y position of your curser or cross-hares, but getting an exact measurement is not easy. You can pull out some guides and draw a marque from the the top left corner and use the width and height of the marque as the x and y position, that way you will at least get a measurement that does not change with an unsteady hand. A much easier way is to use the Free Transform Tool. Select the object, then activate the Free Transform Tool. In the property panel, you will see the x and y location of your object. You can even get the coordinates of object’s center by clicking the center registration node. When the data is recorded, press Escape and all is back to normal.

2. Transform Again. Once you transform an object with the Transform Tool, you can press (Mac: Command + Shift + T),(PC: Control + Shift + T) to apply the same transform on another object. Now that’s as cool as two loaves of sliced bread.

Navigation Palette vs New Window (Introduced in Photoshop 4, 1996):
I have never found a use for the Navigation Palette. It was one of the features I taught when it when it first came out and even tried it for a while. For the screen real estate it takes up, I rather have the info palette visible instead. The key Commands (Mac: Command + 0),(PC: Control + 0) then (Mac: Command + -),( PC: Control + -) will normally get you close to 100% view anyway (or what you would consider 100% when working at higher resolutions). If you are working at screen resolution, then just press (Mac: Command + 1),( PC: Control + 1) It is better to zoom out now and then to see what your artwork will look like to the rest of the world. Ever been zoomed in so long, then zoom out to say , “What the Heck?”. Go to the menu bar and select Window : Arrange : New Window for, to pop open a second window which you can display at 100%, that way you can really see where you are and what things really look like. It does help if you have two monitors, it is a little cramped with one.

Curves (Photoshop 1, 1990):
Levels (Mac: Command + L),(PC: Control: L), Hue/Saturation (mac: Command + U),( PC: Control + U) and Color Balance (Mac: Command + B),(PC: Control + B) are some of the most used Adjustment controls, they are great for tweaking photos and finished artwork. Curves is another Adjustment control that can tweak colors similar to Levels. I normally use this after Levels for some extra fine tuning. Another use for the Curves control comes is modifying gray-scale tonal information. You can isolate tonal values and even redistribute those values. Curves are used in separating full color images into spot colors for t-shirt printing. They can apply colors to a grayscale image very much like the Overlay and Color blend modes of the Layers Palette. Curves gives you more control with richer color, as you are laying color on color instead of color on greyscale. This would be a whole post or two on it’s own, so if you are interested in learning more about Curves let me know.

Save for Web (Introduced in Photoshop 5.5, 1999):
Photoshop saves many different image formats by choosing File : Save As. If you are saving gif, png, or jpg. Use Save for Web for much smaller files. Even with “Image Previews” set to “Never Save” in the preferences, Save for Web still compresses files, even lossless files(png), noticeably better then Save As.

Actions (Introduced in Photoshop 4, 1996):
Create Actions and assign keyboard shortcuts to them of your frequently used commands and combinations of commands. Here are some that I use most that do not have keyboard shortcuts already.

Select : Modify : Expand
Select : Modify : Contract.
Select : Save Selection
Layers Palette : New Group From Layers
Layer : Layer Mask : Reveal Selection

I noticed some really old commands in my Actions Set that I haven’t used in years. Some now have their own keyboard shortcuts. The most important thing here is to save your Actions and make them available when you move to different computers.

One command that I do not use anymore is Edit : Purge : Purge All. Many new Photoshop users may not even know what that does. Back in the day with our screaming 66 mhz computer with 4 megs of ram and a whopping 80 meg (not gig) hard drive, it did not take very long for Photoshop to consume all the resources and flash the dreaded Out of Memory error. By purging your undo and the clipboard, you can free up enough memory to hopefully finish the task. Photoshop still only has 1 official undo, but the history palette will expose a few more (Mac: Command + Shift + Z), (PC: Control + Shift + Z). For most of the 90s, we had to do a lot of memory management.

It seems that Photoshop has always been on the cutting edge of technology requirements. Every-time we get faster CPUs and more RAM, Photoshop has a new version ready to use every micron of each. Did you notice the size difference between the CS2 and CS3 install packages? I guess if you are willing to spend $700 - $1000 for an application, you better be willing to spend twice that for a computer to run it on. Whoa! since when does software cost more then the computer?

Compositing (Photoshop 1, 1990):
Photoshop was built for creating and manipulating images. Over the years, many new tools have been introduced to make this job more efficient. There are many Masking plugins and selection tools to make the job of removing objects form a background take only a couple clicks. Most of them work some of the time, but not all of them work all of the time, so what do you do then? We go back to the old school ways of doing things. Out of all the methods I have tried over the years, this one is the most efficient and produces the best results. It is 100% old-school without any special tricks and extra cleanup.

This method works for objects that are not simple shapes on a colorful background that may share colors with the object you are removing. If your object is all wavy hair or fur, that will be covered at the end.

This image of an eland has white fur that is similar to the sand he is standing on, his antlers blend into the trees, he has some long fur in some areas and he is overlapping another eland with similar colors.

Start by taking a deep breath, or sighing. Duplicate your your layer. Create a new layer under the duplicate and fill it with a solid bright color that does not look anything like the object or the background you are removing (Most of the time I use a bright green). Then, select the duplicate layer again. Use curves to adjust the image’s contrast so that the edge between the object and the background is more defined. Choose the eraser tool and a small brush (3 px) with a feathered edge. Zoom in and lets get to work. Using the mouse and the the shift key held down, trace the outside edge of your object, the garbage side or side to throw away. The bright colored layer will show through displaying a nice line where you have been. Holding the shift button chains your clicks together, but also creates straight lines, so make small jumps with each click. It may seem like tedious torture but will be over before you know it.

You need to use the mouse and not a pen tablet for this part, so that you get a consistent 100% removal of the area around the edge.

Things like hair and feathers we will block in as best we can trying to capture as much as possible. We will save the fine tuning of these sections for later.

Once you have your outline, load a selection of that layer. Choose Select : Save Selection from the menu. Then, move over to the Channels Palette. There you will see a nice a black and white representation of the line you made with the eraser tool. Use the magic wand and select the inside section of the line, Choose Select : Expand and type in 1 px as the value.

The selection will grow one pixel and fit nicely in between the two edges. Now go back to the Layers and choose Select : Inverse Selection from the menu and press the delete key. This will remove the background from the object you just traced, leaving all the edges exactly as you made them. If we had not expanded the fill 1 pixel, the edge of the object would have been antialiased and junky looking. This layer is now a mask or a way to load the selection and copy the object from the original layer, after all we may have modified it to get an easier edge to trace.

To finish the hair and fur, get a clean copy of the original layer. We fine tune everything with the eraser tool and a pen tablet (if you payed so much for the app and so much for a computer to run it, hopefully you have a few pennies left for a pen tablet). Use the pen tablet to feather out the areas around the hair until it looks natural against the background. Another tip for softer edges, load a selection from the saved mask and contract the selection 1 - 3 pixels, then you can use the eraser tool some more to soften the harsh edges, Gaussian Blur may work too if you are in a hurry.

Here are some of the resources used to help recall some of the dates and specs.
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/apps/photoshop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_release_history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_IIci

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3 Comments »

  1. Excellent post! Very informative and entertaining. I definitely learned a lot about the history. I’m sure there will be more milestones in the years ahead. As we never stop exploring our options and the desire to improve and create new designs will always be there. Thanks for sharing this!

    Comment by Brochures — March 30, 2009 @ 10:28 pm

  2. very nice tricks! thanks a lot!

    Comment by Photoshop boom — April 17, 2009 @ 4:53 pm

  3. Photoshop@20
    Dont know how many lives are built upon the great software.
    Long live Adobe

    Comment by Kingston — August 20, 2010 @ 10:14 pm

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