The Clone Overlay can be a great tool to align your clone but it can also be a major annoyance. To turn it off, go to Window > Clone Source and uncheck the Show Overlay box.
Photoshop in a Minute, solving your Photoshop annoyances 😉
Nothing astronomical here, the half moon is referring to the light area of the eye directly across from the catchlight. It is caused by the light entering the eye and bouncing off the retina and reflecting back to the iris directly across from the catchlight. While it is not always visible, enhancing it gives the eye more depth. This is another Tool Preset you’ll want to make.
Catchlights in the eyes give a portrait that spark of life. But often, because of the angle of light, the intensity on one might be a bit dull, or barely visible. The quick and easy solution is to use the Dodge tool with a soft edge brush, Range – Highlights at 25% Opacity with Protect Tones unchecked. Then just stroke over the catchlight to bring it out. You will use this often so once you have it set the way you like, make a Tool Preset for the Dodge tool.
This is a little more advanced, you do need to know how o make your selection, but it’s a great way to change to color of clothing. This will not work for every color change, but with some changes to the blend mode you can get it to work most of the time. The great thing about it is you can see the color as soon as you make the change to the Solid Color adjustment layer with the Color Picker allowing you to get the color just right.
The Filmstrip view provided in Bridge uses a horizontal strip along the bottom which works great for horizontal images, but vertical images are rather small. To fix this, I like to have the Content panel on the side instead of the bottom allowing for a larger preview of the vertical images.
If you’re not using Bridge to find and open your images, you are wasting time (unless you are using Lightroom, but that’s for another blog). Don’t go to File > Open, click the Bridge icon or go to File > Browse in Bridge.
The problem is the default setup can use a little improvement, of course. So here it is. As stated in the video, there are two main workspaces I like to setup, Thumbnails, which is shown here, and Vertical Filmstrip, we’ll get that one up tomorrow.
Work efficiently in Photoshop by creating an organized workspace. By arranging and grouping you panels, you can work faster and figure out why something isn’t working. The basic idea is to have the most important panels opened, and the frequently used panels docked on the side, but minimized. Depending on the task, you can setup different workspaces as needed.
And for you Mac users, you really can’t dock your panels if there is no edge, so if you go to Window > Application Frame, it will put a gray background behind Photoshop and give you an edge to dock your panels. It also keeps Photoshop from disappearing into the dock if you accidentally click on the desktop instead of the image.
Here’s a little trick to help you align and evenly space out images on a composite that’s fast and easy. You probably saw it but didn’t know what it was. It’s been sitting on the option bar in Photoshop when you select the Move tool (V). It’s Align and Distribute. But you need to know the limitations. Distribute will only work on objects that are the same size. Align will work regardless.
Tip: In the Move tool’s option bar, check Auto-Select and then choose Layer in the drop down menu. And to select multiple layers in the Layers Panel, hold Shift and click for a range or Ctrl/Cmd and click to select random layers.
I know, we are all so busy, it’s hard to take the time to read a book, watch hours of video or attend a class, say like the ones we will be teaching, Image Explorations in Victoria, BC, July 15-19, 2012 or Georgia School August 26-31… but I digress. We are working on a video series for Photoshop, but it will take time, time to make and time to watch. So, we decided to also make a series of short videos, in the 1 to 2 minute range, to explain Photoshop, a little bit at a time. We will try and cover a full range of topics, some beginning, some advanced. We can not cover everything, but if you give us just a few minutes a week, you might learn a thing or two. And of course, if you have a request, just let us know. Our goal is to post 4 to 5 videos a week!
Thanks for checking us out:)
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