Photoshop Tutorial: Type Effects with a transparent overlay
Posted by Jennifer Farley | July 22, 2008
This is a quick tutorial to show you how to use a Layer Effect in Photoshop with a little bit of a spin. As you might know, the Layer Effects allow you to easily add things like drop shadows, glows, strokes and more. This method uses the same layer effects but plays around with blending modes and the Fill Opacity.
- Open a file and add some type. I’m using a font called Base02 – quite a grungy font here. It doesn’t matter what colour you choose because we’re getting rid of the colour anyway.
- Double-click on the name of the Type Layer in the Layers palette. This opens up the Layer Style dialog box. I’ve added a drop shadow and a red stroke to the text.
- And now for the magic bit…. Click on the Blending Options Default option while still in the Layer Styles dialog box. Under Advanced Blending, reduce the Fill Opacity to 0 – this removes the colour of the text completely while holding onto any effects you’ve applied. Pretty cool.
This technique is not just for Type layers either. It works with all layers. The joy of making the fill transparent is that you don’t have to worry about background colours. Here’s a few more examples created using the steps above.
Photoshop Tutorial: Easy Arrowheads
Posted by Jennifer Farley | July 10, 2008
Photoshop has tools that allows you to quickly create an arrowhead, you just use the line tool and some options from the Options Bar. Here’s how to make an arrow;
- On the toolbar, select the the line tool. It’s may be hidden under the rectangle tool.
- Up in the Options Bar, select either a shape layer, a path or “fill pixels”. In this case, I chose fill pixels.
- Farther along the Options Bar, you’ll see icons for the six shape tools. Click on the down facing triangle beside the “gooey” star shape.
- The drop down box gives you options to click a checkbox to add arrowheads to either the beginning or end of your line, and you can choose the Width, Length, the Concavity (fancy!).
- To vary the chunky-ness of your arrow, you can set a value for the weight on the Options Bar. For this example I set the weight to 20. Then you simply click and drag out to draw whatever size arrow you need.
All of the shapes below were created using this method and by varying the width, length and concavity values. Because you’re drawing with vector tools you get lovely clean, smooth edges.
Photoshop and Bridge : Part Deux
Posted by Jennifer Farley | July 7, 2008
When you have a large number of images to work with, it can be quite time-consuming to have to browse through them. In part 2 of this series on Adobe Bridge, I’m taking a look at how to rank and sort files.
Ranking and sorting image files
Adobe Bridge has a star-ranking feature that you can use to group and sort image thumbnails. This gives you an alternative way to organize images in the thumbnail preview area. In this example, I’m using five stars to rank the best images, three stars for medium-quality images, and one star for rubbish. Star rankings are entirely up to yourself, it’s just a tool to help you sort through images you might be using for a project or a folder of photographs.
1. With Bridge open, make sure you have large, clear thumbnail previews, and then click to select one that’s of particularly good quality.
2. Click one of the dots that appear below the image thumbnail. When you click, the dot turns into a star. Click again on the fifth star to turn all five dots into stars.
3. Hold down Ctrl and click to Select a few more high-quality files.
4. Choose Label > ***** to apply the five-star ranking to all selected images at once.
5. Choose View > Sort > By Rating to rearrange the thumbnails so that the best images are grouped together. Toggle off View > Sort > Ascending Order to have the five-starred images appear at the top of the thumbnail preview area.
6. Continue to assign five-, three-, and one-star rankings to all the files in the folder, either by ranking them individually (as in Steps 1 and 2) or in multiples (as in Steps 3 and 4).
You can delete stars at any time by selecting the thumbnail, moving the cursor over the stars, and clicking the gray circle with a slash through it that appears to the left. 
7. Choose View > Sort > By Rating again to arrange the files in reverse alphabetical order of their rankings.
In addition to sorting your view by star rankings, you can filter the view to see only those thumbnails of a specific ranking.
8. Choose Show 5 Stars from the Unfiltered pop-up menu to show thumbnails of only those thumbnails with a five-star ranking.
9. Choose Filtered > Show All Items so that you can see all of your image files.
This sort of ranking is easy to apply and easy to understand. It only takes a little bit of time to do but can be helpful when dealing with folders of images. I’ve used it in the past to show clients my recommendations for pictures for their projects. The important thing to remember is that Bridge deals not only with jpegs and gifs but Photoshop files, Illustrator files, EPS, Flash files, InDesign files and PDFs, and more, all of which can be ranked using this method.
Using Adobe Bridge With Photoshop (Part 1)
Posted by Jennifer Farley | June 23, 2008
Recently I started a new class teaching digital design. Photoshop is the first piece of software that we tackle and I asked the class of 20, how many of them had used Photoshop before. Almost every single person had some experience. I also asked the class how many of them had used Adobe Bridge before. The answer was no one had used it and no one had even heard of it.
Adobe Bridge was a new feature in Creative Suite 2. It is very similar to the File Browser which appeared in previous versions of Photoshop. It allows you to search for files visually rather than just using a file name and it helps save time by allowing you to view previews of many different file types. So if you are a designer, illustrator, photographer or anyone who stores lots of images, you should be using Bridge!
Click the Go to Bridge button on the tool options bar to open Adobe Bridge.
An alternative way to open Bridge from Photoshop is to choose File > Browse)
Viewing and editing files in Adobe Bridge
The left and right hand side of the Bridge browser window displays palettes that you can rearrange, resize, and group within Adobe Bridge, using the same techniques as with Photoshop palettes.
Click the Folders tab in the upper left corner of the Bridge browser, then browse to the folder where you are storing your images.
Adobe Bridge displays previews of image files such as those in PSD, TIFF, and JPEG formats as well as Adobe Illustrator vector files, Adobe PDF files, and even MS Office documents. The Bridge preview pane displays thumbnails of your files.
At the bottom of the browser window, you can drag the thumbnail slider to reduce and enlarge the thumbnail previews.
You can also view your files in Filmstrip view;
Or in Metadata view where you can see additional information about each file.
You can select any thumbnail in Bridge by clicking on it once. Once you click on it you’ll see a larger preview appears in the Preview palette on the right hand side.
You can also enlarge the Preview palette by dragging the horizontal and vertical bars that separate it from the other panes of the browser window. The pointer appears as double lines with arrows 
when positioned over the bars. As you drag the preview palette gets larger.
You can move and adjust your palettes and thumbnails till you find the best arrangement for yourself.
To open any .PSD, .TIF, or .JPG image at any time into Photoshop from within Adobe Bridge, double-click its thumbnail preview. If you have other applications, AI files will automatically open in Illustrator, INDD files will open in InDesign and PDF files will open in Acrobat.
This is the first of several articles that I’m posting on Bridge, there’s more to follow over the next couple of weeks. If you’re using Photoshop CS2 or CS3 I would actively encourage you to use it. It is a huge timesaver when you’re working with lots of images.
Photoshop Tutorial: Extracting an image from it’s background
Posted by Jennifer Farley | May 21, 2008
The Extract command in photoshop provides a sophisticated way to isolate a foreground object from its background. Objects with intricate or wispy edges can be selected quickly in a way that would be impossible to do using the selection tools. Here’s how to do it;
1. Open an image in Photoshop. I’m using a beautiful picture of a gorilla taken by PaulMT and available on Stock Exchange for free download.
2. Choose Filter > Extract.
The Extract dialog box appears with the edge highlighter tool (
) selected in the upper left area of the dialog box.
To extract an object, you use the Extract dialog box to highlight the edges of the object. Then you define the object’s interior and preview the extraction. Applying the extraction erases the background area to transparency, leaving just the extracted object. (in theory!!)
3. Choose a brush size for the highlighter. This will vary from subject to subject, but for the gorilla image, try about 35 in the Brush Size text box. It’s easiest to start with a large brush to highlight the general selection, and then switch to a finer brush to fine-tune the selection.
4. Using the edge highlighter tool, drag over the fuzzy ends of the gorilla until you’ve completely outlined, but not filled, the gorilla. Draw the highlight so that it slightly overlaps both the foreground and background regions around the edge.
There’s no problem if the highlight overlaps the edge. The Extract command makes its selection by finding the difference in contrast between pixels. You don’t need to highlight areas where the object touches the image boundaries.
6. If necessary, select the zoom tool (
), or press spacebar+Ctrl and click to zoom in on image. You can also use the hand tool (
) to reposition the image preview.
If you make a mistake and highlight more than desired, select the eraser tool (
) in the dialog box and drag over the highlight in the preview.
7. Select the fill tool in the Extract dialog box. Then, click inside the object to fill its interior. You must define the object’s interior before you can preview the extraction.
The default Fill colour (bright blue) contrasts well with the highlight colour (green). You can change either colour if you need more contrast with the image colours, using the Highlight and Fill menus in the Extract dialog box.
9. Click the Preview button to view the extraction.
At this stage the extraction is often ok, but rarely perfect. If the extraction looks really bad, then you can refine your selection. Choose Original from the Preview dropdown box at the bottom of the Extract dialog box and make your selection again using the highlighter and fill tools.
If you are reasonably happy with your selection, click OK to apply the extraction.
11. Often the selection can be improved dramatically by simply duplicating the layer.
Photoshop Tutorial : Stroking a selection and blurring to bring focus
Posted by Jennifer Farley | May 15, 2008
A quick and easy way to focus attention to part of an image using Photoshop is to make a selection, stroke that selection, then blur outside the selection.
The stroke command can be applied to a whole image or if you use one of the selection tools, you can actually stroke the selection. And you can make multiple selections and stroke each one to get some cool results. Here’s a simple example;
1. Open an image
Use one of the selection tools to and draw out a selection around the area that you want to bring focus to. Here I’ve just used a rectangular marquee.
Choose Edit > Stroke. The stroke dialog box opens.
I want a fairly thin stroke – 4 pixels thick, coloured white and set to stroke the inside of the selection.
Click Ok and the stroke is added and importantly the selection is still there too.
5. Now inverse the selection by hitting Ctrl + Shift + I (windows) or Cmd + Shift + I (mac).
6. Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and change the radius slider until you have a strong blur on the outside.
Finally deselect everything – Ctrl + D or Cmd + D and that’s it. I just added a little bit of text to finish up with a small drop shadow to lift it slightly off the page.
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About
Hi, my name is Jennifer Farley and I am a designer and design instructor based in Ireland. Read more about Laughing Lion Design .
