Create Custom Photo Brushes

When you think of creating custom brushes in Adobe Photoshop, you usually think of creating basic shapes and paths with the pen tool and then creating a brush from those shapes. But we can also use photos and convert them into brushes as well for unique designs in web sites and print designs. They also can make aesthetically-pleasing backgrounds.

Preview of Final Results

Create Custom Photo Brushes Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Open Photoshop and open a photo to use as a brush. It should be something that would work in a pattern, where the content of the photo is obvious as various sizes. I'm using this "blue angel wing" I found on iStockPhoto. IT should be relatively large, perhaps 1000 pixels for both width and height. If you create a brush at a small size, setting the brush to a larger size than originally created will cause it to lose resolution. But making it smaller is no problem, just like resizing a photo.

© ISTOCKPHOTO/DON WILKIE
Optional: You can download this file to use at http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=130023 or use a similar one.

Step 2

To first define a brush, we need to select the area. Click the Rectangular Marquee tool on the toolbar.

Step 3

Click-and-drag a selection around the photo. We don't need to remove the white pixels first because they will be transparent in a brush.

Step 4

Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset.

Step 5

Name the brush something that matches the image, and click OK.

Step 6

Now that we have the brush defined, go to File>New and create a new file at 1024 x 768. Click OK.

Step 7

Click the Brush tool on the toolbar.

Step 8

Click the arrow on the Options palette which will bring down the brush styles and size options. Scroll down and click the brush we just created. You can change the size here, or change it by pressing the left and right brackets to make the size smaller or larger. Bring the size of the brush to something much smaller, such as 100.

Step 9

Go to Window>Brushes to bring up the Brushes palette. This palette has a lot of options for the Brush tool. Change the Shape Dynamics to these settings by clicking on Shape Dynamics then sliding the sliders. The brush can rotate to a certain degree as we brush. Try various settings as the preview shows how the brush will look.

Step 10

Change the Scattering to the settings shown here. Scattering does just that—scatter the brush as we brush. Try various settings as the preview shows how the brush will look.

Step 11

Change the Hue Jitter to 12%, because we want to somewhat adjust the hue as the brush is clicked-and-dragged, but within a certain range. Setting it to 100% would cause it to include the entire color range.

Step 12

Now for the fun part: click-and-drag with the Brush tool in a curve.

Step 13

Whatever color is selected in the Foreground in the toolbar is the color of the brush. You can have a jitter between the foreground and background color as well as hue jitter from the foreground color.

Step 14

If you create a second curved brush path like this, click on New Layer on the Layers palette first, so that we can adjust the layer blending mode on the Layers palette. In this example, I adjusted the top layer blending mode to Multiply.

Step 15

Try various photos and converting them to brushes using the same steps here. Brushes with added Shape Dynamics and Scattering can help create a unique background, such as this one created with a photo of Polaroids.

Step 16

This one was created with a scan of tape. Besides creating unique paths, backgrounds are often created with such brushes.

source: photoshoptutorials.ws

Combining Two Photos for New Effect

Combining two photos to create a new look is a fun way to learn various techniques. We’ll learn how to use the Circular Marquee tool from the center, adjusting the opacity of a layer, creating a path from a selection and adding text along it in the process. Let’s get started.

Preview of Final Results

Combining Two Photos Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Open the support file in Adobe Photoshop, an image from NASA in the public domain.

Step 2

Open an image of a person holding a circular object, such as a ball. This one is by Ronald Bloom and available through iStock at http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=277310.

Step 3

Now in the earth photo, click-and-drag a ruler guide from the top and bottom, halfway across so it’s in the middle. In the earth photo, subtract the entire length by 2 to get where the cursor needs to be exactly. Note: if rulers aren’t showing, press Command-R (PC: Control-R).

After drawing the ruler guides, hover the cursor over the center of the photo, where the two guides cross. Hold Option (PC: Alt) and click-and-drag the mouse. Hold Shift to maintain proportion. Once the Elliptical Marquee tool is around the earth, release the mouse button then the keys.

Step 4

It should look like this.

Step 5

With the Move tool, click-and-drag the earth photo selection onto the other photo.

Step 6

Click-and-drag a corner of the earth layer. If there's no transform controls on the corners, make sure Show Transform Controls is checked in the Control palette. Lower the opacity of the earth layer in the Layers palette to be able to make it the correct size.

Step 7

The earth needs to be a little bit bigger than the red ball here, since the ball isn't completely round.

{mospagebreak}

Step 8

Raise the opacity of the layer back to 100% in the Layers palette.

Step 9

Click and Eye icon next to Layer 1, the earth layer to turn its visibility off for now. Use the Quick Selection tool and select the area that overlaps the earth and where we'll need to bring in front of the earth.

Step 10

Click the Eye icon next to Layer 1 again to make it visible. Go to Select>Inverse.

Step 11

Now we need to mask out the area of the earth photo where the arm is. We mask out the area instead of erasing so that if we mess up, the pixels can be brought back instead of removing them. With Layer 1 selected, click the Add Layer Mask icon on the Layers palette.

Step 12

The mask automatically masked out where we had a selection.

Step 13

Now for a few touch-ups. The levels seem off on the photo of the girl, so go to Image>Adjustments>Levels. Drag the black arrow to 34 as shown here.

Step 14

Now the color levels are a bit richer and better adjusted.

Step 15

Now let's add a text on a path to the photo. Command-click (PC: Control-click) the thumbnail preview of the Layer 1 on the Layers palette. This will create a circular selection around the pixels in the earth layer.

Step 16

Click the Paths palette tab and click the Make Work Path from Selection icon on the bottom of the Paths palette.

Step 17

With the Text tool, click on the left top side of the path we just made.

Step 18

Type in some text that matches the photo.

Step 19

With the Move tool, click-and-drag a corner of the text area and expand it so there's some room between the earth and the text. Now we have a combined photo with some text.

source: photoshoptutorials.ws

Automating Actions to Save Time

Want to save some time so you’re not doing repetitive things in Adobe Photoshop? Look no further than the Actions palette. Let’s say you to need to adjust settings, add a filter, resize, or any of the other many options in Photoshop to a large number of photos. Instead of having to go through each photo one at a time, applying effects, resizing, or adjusting levels for example, it’s much easier to edit one photo and record the actions. Then, we can apply that action to an entire folder of images.

 

 

 

 

 

Preview of Final Results

Automating Actions Photoshop Tutorials

Step 1

Go ahead and get a bunch of photos and place them into a folder. Open one of the photos in Photoshop. Select one which we’ll edit and record the changes for the action. Go to Window>Actions to open the Actions palette.

Step 2

Click the Create New Action icon on the bottom of the Actions palette.

Step 3

Name is “Black and White Thumbnail” and click Record. There are some other options, such as assigning a Function Key or changing the set of actions it’s placed, but leave those for this example as we don’t want to assign a function key and want to keep it in the default actions set.

Step 4

Everything we do next will be recorded as a step in the action. While there are many ways to convert an image to black and white, such as going to Image>Adjustments>Black and White, let’s do a simple desaturation for this example. Go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and drag the saturation to the left and click OK.

Step 5

Go to Image>Image Resize and change the Height to 200. As long as the Constrain Proportions is checked, the Width should resize automatically. Click OK.

Step 6

Now that it’s black and white and resized to a thumbnail, we need to add a border. Double-click the Background layer in the Layers palette and click OK to make it a normal layer that we can apply layer styles to. Go to Layer>Layer Style>Stroke. Change the Position to Inside, the Size to 2 and click OK.

Step 7

Now we need to save it with certain settings. Go to File>Save As and save it as a JPEG to a new folder named Thumbnails. Finally, click the Stop Playing/Recording icon on the bottom of the Actions palette. Now we have created an action that converted a color image to a black and white, resizes it to a thumbnail, adds a 2-point interior stroke, and then saves it as a JPEG. Close the file and don’t save changes so we don’t erase the original file.

Step 8

Now that we’ve created the action titled Black and White Thumbnail, go to File>Automate>Batch. Set the Action to Black and White Thumbnail. Click the Choose button near the source folder setting and find and select the folder of images to apply the action to. Click the Choose button near the Destination folder setting and find and select the folder to save the thumbnail images to. I set the source folder to one called Photos and I set the destination folder to one called Thumbnails. Also make sure to check Override Action “Save As” Commands since we already have a save command in the action.

Step 9

Now all seven photos from the source folder, originally full color and large size, have been saved as black and white thumbnails with a border in a separate folder. Remember, instead of editing photos one at time, when we want to edit many of them with the same effects, try actions instead.

source: photoshoptutorials.ws

Using Photomerge for Stunning Panoramic Photos (and some tips for shooting panoramics)

Photoshop features a powerful stitching tool to create panoramas from a series of photographs. In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to use the Photomerge tool in Photoshop CS3 to stitch a series of photos into a panorama.
My wife and I went to Crested Butte, Colorado, recently for spring break. We snowboarded for a few days and enjoyed the outdoors, taking a few photos along the way. One sure thing to do when enjoying the outdoors is to take panoramic shots. You don’t need a wide-angle lens to capture the vast expanse of outdoor landscapes photography. A technique I and many other photographers utilize is to take overlapping shots of a landscape and merge them later in Photoshop. Photoshop CS3 has a few new features and options to consider.
First, let’s go over some tips for when shooting these types of photos.

1. Hopefully, you’re using an SLR camera with an adjustable shutter speed and aperture. Don’t let the shutter speed and aperture change between shots; this would cause the resulting merged photo to not match up. Some parts of the resulting photo would have more exposure with a wider aperture and slower shutter speed. The depth of field would also differ with different aperture settings. So use manual mode, and remember what settings the shutter speed and aperture are set to and keep them the same for each shot.
2. Once you focus on the first photo, turn the lens to manual focus. This way, you control the focus of each shot, which should be the same for all of them.
3. Shoot the shots with the SLR camera held vertically, so more if covered at the top and bottom of the shot.
4. Be sure to overlap each shot about a quarter of the previous shot, so they overlap. We should avoid any blank areas in between obviously.
5. Before the first shot, take a photo of something unique, like your hand or snow glove in this case. After the last shot of the series, do that same thing. This way, you know which shot if the first in the panoramic series and which is the last, when you later browse the folder on your computer.

Photomerge Photoshop Tutorial

Support Files

Before we start, download this file that contains six images that you will use to follow this tutorial.

support-files.zip

Step 1:

Now let’s get started. For this example, I didn’t use my SLR camera, because I didn’t feel like lugging up the bigger Canon Rebel while snowboarding, especially since it’s more expensive than the one I brought, a Canon Powershot. I can put the Powershot in my pocket while snowboarding, so it was more convenient. But using an SLR is ideal for the reasons listed above. Go ahead and start up Photoshop CS3. Here’s there six images that we’ll be using from the support files.

Step 2:

Go to File>Automate>Photomerge.

Step 3:

A dialog will open that lists a few different options. “Auto” tells Photoshop to choose the best setting and apply it. It has less flexibility, but is quick and to the point. “Perspective” sets the image in a perspective that includes less barrel distortion, while “Cylindrical” has more barrel distortion. “Reposition Only” simply does that—repositions the images but doesn’t change the perspective. “Interactive Layout” allows a few more options, so let’s choose that.

Step 4:

Click Browse and select the images from the support files by clicking-and-dragging over them in the dialog. Click OK and the images will now be listed in the dialog. If we had already had the files open, they would already be listed there. Click OK to merge the photos.

Step 5:

The Reposition Only option shows how the photos would look like if they were just copied and pasted next to each other.

Step 6:

Clicking the Perspective option on the right adds perspective to the photo, rather than a “flat” look.

Step 7:

The tools on the left side let you select and move the photos (the selection tool), move the view around (the move view tool), and the rotate and zoom tools let you rotate and zoom into the photos. The other one is the set vanishing point tool, which can be used when perspective is selected. Click somewhere to set the vanishing point. This example shows moving the vanishing point to the side of the photo.

Step 8:

I pressed Ctrl-Z (Mac: Cmd-Z) to undo that tool. Select either perspective or reposition only and press OK to merge the photos.

Step 9:

Notice how each layer is a partially-masked photo.

Step 10:

Select the crop tool and crop out the empty pixels.

Using the photomerge tool is a great way to create breath-taking landscape photos. Here’s a few more examples (Click on images to enlarge).

source: photoshoptutorials.ws