Welcome to Photoshop 101 with kontradictions The purpose of this thread is to provide useful links to tutorials, brushes, fonts, etc. This thread will also include tutorials written by me as well as other members of this forums, if they are willing to do so. I am, by no means, a Photoshop expert. I am, however, writing this tutorial to service as a starting point and as a resource for those who are interested in learning Photoshop. For Beginners: The MOST important thing you can do when you first start learning photoshop is to familiarize yourself with the tools, filters, and functions of this program. There are many extremely useful tools that you will eventually find yourself using frequently and will make you wonder how difficult things would be without those tools. As you may or may not have noticed, the Photoshop toolbar is load with many different tools, some of which may seem very intimidating (in my case, it was the pen tool). Here is a great interactive website which explains each tool as well as its sub-tool (right click on the tool's icon to locate this) individually. [Photoshop Toolbar Interactive Guide] [Another Useful Tool's Page] [Toolbar Shortcuts] Useful Links: (Tutorials) [Good-Tutorials] [Pixel2Life] [Tutorialize] [DaTutorials] Information: [Understanding Layers] Tutorials: [Extract an Image from Its Background] Useful Links: (Fonts) [Da Font] Useful Links: (Brushes) [DeviantArt] Frequently Used Tutorials: [Installing Brushes] How to install brushes you downloaded off the net. Image Hosting Service: [ImageShack] Free image hosting service with no registration required. This site also provides thumbnail view's of your image. [PhotoBucket] Free image hosting service, registration required. Offers a great user interface system with free photo album. Tutorial: Adding borders: Borders are a simple addition to any picture. It gives a nice clean edge to not only signatures, avatars but all pictures in general. There are many ways to add a border to your pictures. You can either add it manually using the marquees/lasso tool and filling it, which is very impratical or do add the border using blending opions. I'll be talking about the blending opions method because it's my favorite tongue.gif Step 1: Create a new layer above all the others. (Positioning of this layer can be changed depending on the style of border your using, which I will go into detail in the future. As well as signature style, But for now, lets keep it on top.) Step 2: Fill the layer using the Paint Bucket tool with any color Step 3: On the layers window, change the "Fill" setting to 0%. You will notice that the filled layer will disappear. Step 4: Right Click on that layer and click on blending options. Step 5: A window should pop up and there are a few styles of borders you can choose. Stroke:[/b] You can play around with the Fill Type, COlor, Blend Mode and Size to achieve different looks but keep in mind that the position must be set to inside or the border will not show up. NOTE: Center will work but the thickness of the border will be ½ of the Chosen size. Inner Glow: Use this technique to create a gradient type look for your border. Make sure you set the Blend more or the color might not show. YOu can adjust the Choke and Size to change the thickness of the border. Examples of each: Stroke: Inner Glow:
Extracting Lets say you have a picture you like and it would be great if you could remove the background of the picture to put somewhere else. Here's how to do it. Before we can start this tutorial, we first need to understand how layers work. Layers are like sheets of paper that are stacked one on top of another. Layers may have transparent areas and will allow whatever is underneath to show through, similar to a hole in a piece of paper. Layers can be duplicated, copied, moved from one cavas to another and deleted. Frist we start off with our picture. Create a new layer (CTRL + SHIFT + N) and fill it with which ever color you choose. I decided to choose black, why? I don't know. Then duplicate the image layer (select the image layer and (CTRL + J)) and move the duplicated layer above the black layer. Moving on to extracting the image. There are many ways to do so, the most popular are Magic Wand, Lasso and Eraser. I'll go through each one of these and explain how they work and the pro's and con's of each. Magic Wand: (W) The magic wand tool is similar to the eyedropper tool in which it will select an area of similar color. So, if you have the wand tool selected and you click a dark area, it will select all the dark colors around that particular area. After you select the area simply hit delete / backspace. Pros: The Magic Wand is the quickest way to select areas. Cons: It's very sloppy. Often times it will select areas you don't want to delete or it will miss area's. Lasso Tool: (L) The lasso tool works by drawing a line around the area you want to select. There are three types of Lasso's. (The Traditional Lasso, The Polygon Lasso, and The Magnetic Lasso). Hold shift and click on the lasso tool to choose from one of these tools. You should zoom in while using this tool for increased accuracy. After selecting the area, hit delete / backspace to clear the area. Pros: Much more precise than the Magic Wand Cons: Time Consuming Eraser Tool: (E) The eraser tool is just that, it erases the areas you click on. I suggest you use the settings provided in the screenshot, the brush size may vary depending on the situation. Pros: Extremely precise. Cons: Very time consuming. Now that you understand how to cut the unwanted background off the image, keep working on it till you have everything you wanted cut out. After you have everything cut out and you're left with what you wanted. Open the background you wanted and copy and paste the image below the cut image but above the colored layer. Here is the final result:
I remember how I used to do these kind of stuff, it was so hard lol... as for the extracting I would recommend the pen tool instead of the way how you do it
I agree, the pen method is very effective but it's a difficult tool to learn. Especially for beginners.
hmm... i wish i could these, but i just reformatted my system and i lost my photoshop cs2, it was a crack version, wonder if anyone can tell me where i can get another cracked one
Understanding Layers Introduction: As you may or may not have noticed, Photoshop allows you to create multiple layers and create images on each layer individually without interfering with the other layers. You might be thinking, what's the big deal? Does it really need a dedicated tutorial specifically for itself? Yes, it is important. What is a layer? In order to use layers to its maximum potential, it is important to understand the nature of a layer. My favorite analogy for layers is a stack of papers. Layers are capable of handing invisible/transparent areas within the layer similar to holes in a sheet of paper. Layers can stack on top of each other much like sheets of paper can be stacked. Similar to its physical counter-part, layers near the top of the stack will overlap the layers near the bottom of the stack. Why are layers important? Now that you understand what layers are, the idea behind it can be applied to many subsequent projects. Layers can be used to break lengthy Photoshop projects into small, manageable chunks. By created new layers on top of your current projects and working on the new layer. With the new layer created, mistakes can easily be undone by deleting the layer. Using this method, the layers are used similar to checkpoints in a game. Create a new layer and starting with the layer resembles a check point in a game. Errors can be undone and progress can resume at the previously saved checkpoint. Layers in design Referring back to the paper analogy, this idea plays a vital role in design. The arrangement of layers in the vertical pile dictates which layers will appear and which layers will not. It is important to understand the idea behind the layer arrangement in order to achieve the desired look. Layer Properties With this feature, various of properties can be applied to different layers, each value has it's own unique feature. __________________________ Thanks I'll be sure to help to the best of my abilities. Thanks I'll try to post more stuff when time permits. Thank you.
nice thread.. keep it gg.. btw.. whats the diff between fill and opacity? refering to your first post.. i never use fill.. so have no idea when to use it. o.. another point to add to the 'extracting' tutorial is that can use mask. instead of deleting the unwanted portions, you can just paint them away. allows for future amendment.
Thank you very much Fill only affects the image/text within the layer. Opacity affects the blending option that is applied to the layer as well. That's a very good point, I never really thought of it that way. Personally I like to completely delete it because it makes things easier in the long run, especially if you plan on moving things around. Thank you very much for your insight, I greatly appreciate it.
lol could u teach us how to make Backgrounds and blah blah ^^, i wanna make my own backgrounds for sigs and etc
i h8 photoshop :x but this a great tutorial, i toke a photoshop class in h.s. totally useless, i just used the basics like layers and smudging and stuff to create effects xD
