Photoshop Tutorial: Extracting an image from it’s background
Posted by Jennifer Farley | May 21, 2008 | 7 Comments
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 | 2 Comments
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.
Guest Photoshop Tutorial : Make a simple logo
Posted by Jennifer Farley | February 12, 2008 | 6 Comments
Once again I’m delighted to post a Photoshop tutorial from Sherif Salah. Sherif is starting work on his own blog where he will be providing Photoshop tips and tutorials. In this tutorial Sherif explains how to create a simple logo using selections and layer blending styles.
1. Start out with a new document.
2.Create a new layer.
3. Using your new layer, Go to the toolbox, choose Eliptical Marquee Tool .
4- Make a circle selection as shown , or you can make whatever shape you feel comfortable to.
5- Select a nice foreground color that will be used to fill our circular selection, you can use #F29653 which is the foreground color used in this example.
6- Go to Pain Bucket Tool , select it and fill the selection.
7- Now, we will just add a simple blending option to make our shape looks thicker, so we will just double-click our layer or simply go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options , this will show up Layer Style & Blending Options window, we will select Bevel & Emboss , and set it as shown below, actually, you may not need to edit anything.
8- Use the Eliptical Marquee Tool again to create a small circle selection on our big circle.
9- Hit your Delete key to delete the small circle selection, see below.
10- Use your imagination to create more selections using the Marquee Tool and delete them, so that you can reach an attractive shape like the one below, we just made 2 rectangular cuts using Rectangular Marquee Tool , this will bring you to a simple attractive shape like this which can be used as an element in your logo design.
Guest Photoshop Tutorial : Stylish Metal Text Effect With Layer Blending
Posted by Jennifer Farley | February 4, 2008 | 1 Comment
I’m delighted to feature a guest Photoshop tutorial today. Here’s a few words from the author of the tutorial Sherif Salah;
“Hi, I’m Sherif Salah,
I’ve always had a love of arts & illustrations, I love designing web pages,ad posters and logos as well, i like designs that blend colors and images together smoothly in an elegant style, I totally agree with Jennifer that sometimes it is something as simple as a dotted line that can really add to a designI’ve done few different designs over the years, but I’m still learning and looking for ways to expand my skills especially in doing illustrations. “
1. Start out with a new document.
2- Set foreground color to #4F4343 & the background color to white.
3- Type any text within your canvas, choose whatever font style and size you want.
4- Go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending options or doubleclick your text layer in your layer pallete to open the Layer Style settings window.
a- Select Bevel and Emboss and set it as shown below
b- Select Gradient Overlay and set it as shown below, Click on the gradient color to set your gradient color stops as #000000 and #FFFFFF for the first and last color stops, then click OK.
c- Still in the layer style window, select Stroke and set it as shown below, click on color and set it to
#494646, then click OK.
d- Click OK to get out of the Layer Style window.
5- Finally, you get your metal text.
Rearranging thumbnails and renaming files in Adobe Bridge
Posted by Jennifer Farley | January 28, 2008 | Leave A Comment
If you’re the owner of a digital camera, unless you’re very organized I’m sure you have a HUGE number of photographs sitting on your computer with names such as “PSC1000345” and the like. Not very easy to figure out which one is which.
Adobe Bridge first appeared with CS2 and allowed you to view thumbnail previews of image files. Adobe Bridge with CS3 allows you to view thumbnails of not just photographic images but also Illustrator files, PDF files, InDesign files and more.
One of the many great ways you can use Bridge is to view, rearrange and rename the thumbnails. It’s just like moving negatives around a light table. You can use the batch-renaming process to give image files much more descriptive filenames with just a couple of clicks. This is a job that could take hours to do if you went through each photo individually to see what it contained.
1. Open up Bridge from Photoshop and browse to a folder with your photographs. To group thumbnails together, all you need to do is click and drag a thumbnail and drop it beside another thumbnail. By re-arranging them this way, it makes it easier to see what you have and what you want to keep.
In this example I have a folder which contains images that roughly break down into three different subjects – Buildings, Animals and Roadsigns. At the moment they have non-descriptive names – in fact they are just numbers.
2. Select the first sign thumbnail in the group and then Shift-click the last sign thumbnail to select the entire group.
3. Choose Tools > Batch Rename.
4. Under New Filenames in the Batch Rename dialog box, choose Text from the Current Filename pop-up menu, and type in a name that you want to assign to this group of images in the text field. In my case, I selected the three photos that feature signs.
5. Click the plus button (
) at the far right side of the New Filenames area, and choose Sequence Number from the pop-up menu. Make sure the default, 1, is selected for the starting sequence number, or type 1 now.
6. Click the plus button to create a third criterion, and then choose New Extension from the pop-up menu. Type jpg (no fullstop is necessary) into the extension text field. (This preserves the .jpg file extension in the filename.)
7. For Compatibility, select the check boxes for other operating systems: Windows, Mac OS, and Unix. (The operating system you are using will be dimmed but checked.)
8. Review the sample in the Preview area to make sure that it reads "Signs01.jpg," and then click Rename.
9. Choose View > Sort > By Filename to arrange the thumbnails in alphanumeric order.
10. Using steps 1 – 8 again, I selected and batch-renamed the remaining photographs according to the subject matter pictured: buildings and animals. When you set options in the Batch Rename dialog box, type Animals instead of Signs to name the Animal images, and type Buildings for the building images. Otherwise, use the same options as in Steps 5–7.
The Batch Rename command behaves differently depending on what is selected when you choose the command: If no thumbnails are selected, the naming scheme you specify in the Batch Rename dialog box applies the name change to all the files in the selected folder. If several, but not all thumbnails are selected, the command renames only the selected files.
This renaming tool can speed up your work flow enormously, whether you’re a photographer or a designer organising comps or designs.
Photoshop Tutorial: Using a clipping mask & blending mode to create new clothes texture
Posted by Jennifer Farley | January 8, 2008 | Leave A Comment
In this short tutorial, I’m going to take a look at using a clipping mask in Photoshop, to constrain the visibility of one layer to that of the area of the layer underneath it, and how to use a layer blending mode to add extra realism.
- I’ve opened up an image of a woman with a check style dress on.
Using the quick mask, I made a selection of just the dress.
- Copy the selection onto a new layer by pressing Ctrl + J (windows) or Cmd + J (Mac). The layers palette looks like this:
- I picked up a few textures from Image After (a great website for free images of textures) and I pasted this one - http://www.imageafter.com/image.php?image=b19metals050.jpg into my Photoshop file, so that the red garage door covered all of the dress.
- To create a clipping mask, press Ctrl + Alt + G (windows) or Cmd + Option + G (Mac). This uses the dress layer as a clipping mask for the red garage door layer at the top.
- Now, to make it a little more interesting and authentic have a play around with some of the blending modes on the Layers palette.
I liked how the linear burn looked best for this example, but it’s a good idea to run through all the blending modes as they can give very different results depending on the images used.
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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 .
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