Photoshop tips please

[billflin]

Hi Guys,

This forum does produce some fantastic photos. I would be really grateful if all you talented people could explain your top 10 photoshop effects, and how to do them - then I may be able to post some of my own pics without embarassment!

Cheers,

Bill

[CVP]

Not sure about a top 10 but the all important rule is if it's not a good picture in the first place al the PS work in the world will not make it a good one (although I reserve the right to be wrong).

For me I'd say the most useful things in Photoshop are the Levels command and the colour saturation command.

Uisng levels to retouch your image to get the exposure exactly how you wanted it is a great power. After this I make my changes to the contracts control and finally if required I play with the colour saturation just a tiny bit to get what I wanted.

One of the key things I have found is that I try to use the commands in PS as little as possible as that way the image still looks original. It's easy to overdo any of the effects / controls in PS and this makes an image look very unnatural.

Hope this helps

Chris

[chim_knee]

billflin said:

Hi Guys, This forum does produce some fantastic photos. I would be really grateful if all you talented people could explain your top 10 photoshop effects, and how to do them - then I may be able to post some of my own pics without embarassment! Cheers, Bill

Off the top of my head, in no particular order:

Clone/Healing tool - why let little details/obstructions get in the way of a great photo (including skin blemishes, shiny spots etc)
For B&W from colour, use Desaturate rather than mono. Means you can add sepia/colour effects should the mood take you. Also, gentle application of the Diffuse Glow filter makes them look great
Saturation can really help make a picture striking - again use judiciously.
Rotate & Crop - nothing worse than horizons or horizontal details that are unintentionally skewed!
Brightness and Contrast - very useful again.

that's not ten is it...

>> Edited by chim_knee on Friday 24th September 14:05

[CVP]

chim_knee said:

Rotate & Crop - nothing worse than horizons or horizontal details that are unintentionally skewed! Brightness and Contrast - very useful again. that's not ten is it... >> Edited by chim_knee on Friday 24th September 14:05

Oh yes, forgot the free rotate layer to get horizons flat. Useful in deciding if you are actually flat is the grid display which can be turned on and off.

Also useful when working on pictures of buildings etc is perspective correction control. You know when you've taken a picture of a building and it appears to be falling backwards. You can turn the grid display on and then use the perspective command under "image" in the file selection menu at the top. Click and drag the top corners of your picture outwards and the side walls of your building become more vertical. of course for creative use you can just do the control the other way and make them slope inwards even more .

I must admit that I tend to use "Skew" rather than "Perspective". For skew you click and drag each corner seperately, perspective does both equally at the same time. I have found the advantage of Skew is that I rarely need exactly the same correction on either side of the image as I am rarely standing dead centre when photographing, therefore each side will need a slightly different adjustment.

Chris

[chim_knee]

CVP said:

Also useful when working on pictures of buildings etc is perspective correction control

Ooo! I've learnt something new too!

[CVP]

Glad to be of help.

Oh, bear in mind I'm using PS Elements rather than the full version. I'm sure all the same controls are there it's just that they may be called somthing different or located in a different menu. For a purely amateur photographer the full version of PS seems just too expensive.

Right, back to my lovely lovely spreadsheets.

[glue sniffing scrote voice]
So I do a bit of Excel occasionally, it's alright I can handle it, I could stop if I wanted.
[/glue sniffing scrote voice]

Chris