Photoshopper

A-Live

2006-06-10T13:57:00.000+02:00

On Thursday I went to see the Adobe Live event, organized here in Barcelona (amongst some other cities around Europe).

It was definitely interesting; a marketing event, of course, but I did learn some useful things about Photoshop, Acrobat and InDesign.

I’m just about to catch a flight to Finland (Hooray! Hooray! It’s a holi-holiday!), so instead of boring you with a long story about the event, let me just publish a couple of pictures here:

I’m now a happy owner of my very own Adobe paper bag (It’s so... revolutionary, isn’t it?):

What I actually would like to own is this 21-inch Wacom interactive pen display (Cintiq 21UX):

I love it! I want to have one of those! This is what I have always dreamt about! It only has about 2 500 downsides - and they are all Euros. (I’m hoping that the guys - and girls - at Wacom see this and decide to give me one, now that I’m doing all this free marketing for them... Please?)

BTW, I photoshopped the Wacom picture a little bit; the screen is actually from my computer. If anyone is interested in knowing how it was done, please, shout and I shall explain when I get back from my holidays.

Last but not least: It was just so clear that most of the people there were Apple Macintosh users... Or whaddaya think about their lunch?

I didn’t dare to confess that I use both Mac and Windows, and that I’m OK with both. (I’m sure everybody knows that if you use a Mac, you just have to hate Windows.)

And now that I’ve confessed, I think it’s better if I get out of here... I’ll be away for about two weeks. Hopefully by then everybody has forgiven me for not hating Windows.

P.S. I like Linux, too. So, Antti, please don’t get mad at me.

Creating a Lake Postcard

2006-06-04T17:52:00.000+02:00

Original

Stage 1 (after cropping the image and adjusting the levels)

Stage 2 (Final)

Steps:

1. Straighten the image: Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary (I can’t remember the exact degrees I used here; probably just 1 or 2)

2. Crop the image by using the Crop tool.

3. New Adjustment Layer: Levels

4. Make a selection with the Rectangular selection tool.

5. Select > Feather: 15 px

6. With the selection still active, choose Layer > New > Layer via Copy (OR click the right mouse button and choose Layer via Copy)

7. Create a new layer below the new layer-via-copy layer (Layer > New > Layer).

8. Set foreground colour to white and use the Paint Bucket tool to fill the new empty layer with white.

9. Use the Eyedropper tool to choose a nice blue colour by clicking on the image.

10. Choose the Text tool (Horizontal type tool) and type the text (it should appear in the blue colour you’ve just chosen).
The font I used here was Myriad Pro Condensed.

I normally save the original ”background” layer, too, but if you are short of space on your hard disk, it’s a good idea to remove the background layer (where the original image is) after step 6.

Just Another Brick in the Wall?

2006-05-28T13:50:00.000+02:00

Original:

Problems:

Not enough contrast (the image looks grey).
Although trees are nice, this one looks ugly in the middle of the picture.

Final:

Solution:

1. Create a new layer.

2. Use the Clone stamp tool (soft round) on this new layer to remove the tree, with Sample All Layers selected.

3. Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels.

4. Crop the image with the Crop tool. (I think I should have cropped it a little bit more, but I was afraid of getting carried away - I often do.)

Passion

2006-05-20T14:18:00.000+02:00

Original:

Final:

Steps:

1. Crop the image with the Crop tool.
2. Create a new Adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast)
3. Settings for the Brightness/Contrast layer:

Brightness: -9
Contrast: +100

4. Create a new text layer with the Text tool, by typing the text directly on the image (Font: Staccato 222BT).

P.S. This picture is, again, from Sagrada Familia, like so many of my pictures. If you are interested in the building but cannot visit it for some reason, take a virtual 3D tour here. The site is in Spanish, but you can start the tour by clicking "Acceder a la visita" - and you can choose between Spanish, Catalan and English before starting the tour.

Nice Links

2006-05-14T18:55:00.000+02:00

I've added some nice links to the sidebar. They include some very nice photo blogs, so, do have a look at these blogs:

ca = in Catalan
en = in English
es = in Spanish
fi = in Finnish

Stitching Two Pictures Together

2006-05-14T14:13:00.000+02:00

Sometimes, when I’m photographing something that doesn’t really fit into one picture, I take two and then stitch these two images together in Photoshop. This is what I did when I visited La Ciutat de Les Arts i Les Ciencias in Valencia a couple of years ago.

Original 1 (with double canvas size; see steps 2 and 3 below):

Original 2 (with double canvas size):

First version, after stitching:

Final:

Steps:

Open one of the original pictures in Photoshop.
Double the size of the canvas: Image > Canvas Size: Width: 200%
Use the arrows in the Canvas Size window to define to which direction you want the canvas to expand. In this case I chose right, so I clicked the middle-left arrow. ("Original 1" above is the result.)
Open the other picture and drag it to the canvas of the first picture.
Photoshop automatically creates a new layer for the picture when you drop it to the canvas.
Use the Move tool to set the two layers side by side correctly.
(It's a good idea to use the Zoom tool, to make sure that you set the layers correctly.)
If there are differences in the lighting conditions (i.e., one side of this new image is darker than the other), create new adjustment layers for levels and/or contrast (Layer > New Adjustment Layer) for the “problematic” layer only. (Place the adjustment layer between the two layers, right above the part of the image you want to adjust. This way the layer right above the adjustment layer will not be affected.)

As you can probably see, after stitching the image I did some clone stamping as well. You might also need to use the Clone stamp tool to make the two images merge together more seamlessly.

Some day I will probably use the Clone stamp tool even more on this image, to get rid of the elements you can see in the upper right, upper left and lower left corners of the image. - They didn't annoy me before, but they do now.

EDIT: I had some technical problems publishing the images in this post. If you cannot view this post correctly, please, shout in the comment box!

Hi, My Name is Kafkakoski, I’m Addicted to Clone-Stamping

2006-05-07T18:25:00.000+02:00

These ducks were having fun at the Ciutadella park in Barcelona, and I like the way the female duck is clapping her hands... er... I mean, wings.

But who threw that paper to the pool?! And I don’t like the lid, either, so I removed them with the Clone Stamp tool. I also used the Crop tool to crop the image, just a little bit.

Details Count

2006-05-04T21:00:00.000+02:00

Today I was playing with a picture I shot at Sagrada Familia a couple of weeks ago. (Hey, I do shoot other buildings, too... Occasionally!)

I think the original was OK; all it needed was two adjustment layers: Levels and Contrast.

However, I started zooming the picture in, to see the details better (Sagrada Familia is full of interesting details!), and I liked the statue of Christ; the expression on his face, the way his wrists are crossed... And I thought this detail would deserve a little bit more attention.

So, I did the following:

Selected Christ and a part of his background with the Rectangular Marquee tool
Copied the selection (Ctrl-c or Edit > Copy)
Pasted it on a new layer (Ctrl-v or Edit > Paste); Photoshop creates the new layer automatically when you paste something on the image
Made the Christ (or the new layer) bigger by using the Move tool (If you click the Move tool, press Shift and move your pointer on top of one of the squares in the corners of the selection, you can easily resize the image by dragging the corner with Shift pressed. - If you cannot see any squares in the corners of the layer, check that ”Show Transform Controls” is selected for the Move tool.)

It didn’t really look as nice as I had hoped, so I continued editing, and here’s a quick list of the changes I made to the new layer:

Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow
Blend Mode: Multiply
Opacity: 30%
Angle 125 degrees, Use Global Light selected
Distance: 73 px
Spread: 36 px
Size: 10 px
(If these amounts surprise you, the values are so high because the original image was approx. 2600 x 3500 px. More than 120 cm high!)
Layer > Layer Style > Bevel and Emboss
Style: Inner Bevel
Technique: Smooth
Depth: 100%
Direction: Up
Size: 84 px
Soften: 0 px
(I left the rest of the settings the way they were by default.)

I think the result was OK, but I wanted it to look a little bit like a postcard, so I:

Created a new Text layer by clicking on the image with the Horizontal Type tool
Chose a font I like (Viner Hand ITC) and typed: ”Sagrada Familia”
Chose a text color very close to white (R-G-B: 246-241-241) with the Color Picker (For quick access to the Color Picker, click the foreground color on the toolbar with your text selected, or the text color icon in tool options; right below the menu bar.)
Added a drop shadow for the text: Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow
Blend Mode: Multiply
Opacity: 75 %
Angle: 125 degrees, Use Global Light selected (to make sure that the shadow has the same direction as the layer with Christ)
Distance: 24 px
Spread: 10 px
Size: 5 px

Fixing Old Images

2006-04-30T15:25:00.000+02:00

One of the things I most enjoy in digital imaging is fixing old images.

My landlady had this old photograph of her great grandfather, and as you can see, it had been broken several times and looked rather bad:

My landlady is a very nice person and this picture is very important to her, so, I asked her if I could have it for a couple of days, and did the following:

- Scan the image on my computer at 300 dpi (I should have scanned it as grayscale, but for some reason I didn’t, so I had to convert it into grayscale in Photoshop: Image > Mode > Grayscale)

- Create a new Adjustment layer for Levels: Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels

- Create a new layer (Blending mode: Normal) to fix the background

- Use the Clone Stamp tool on the new layer to fix the worst bits of the background

- Use the Brush tool to paint other parts of the background (I selected a suitable tone of gray by using the Eyedropper tool)

- Create a new (normal) layer to “fix” the grandpa

- Use the Clone Stamp tool to fix the foreground (the grandpa)

(You don’t necessarily need two separate layers for the background and the foreground, but I preferred to do it this way.)

I then printed the image on an A4 sheet and gave it to my landlady. That was the best part of the process! You can’t believe how happy she was to have a new version of her favorite picture.

Here's the result:

----

P.S. Here are the two fixed layers together, for your reference (as you can see, I could have painted the background a little bit more carefully - there shouldn't be any white spaces at all):

EDIT: When you use the Clone Stamp tool on a separate layer, make sure that Sample All Layers is selected. Otherwise you can only use the tool on the layer you are working on.

Get Out of My Picture!

2006-04-26T18:48:00.000+02:00

This image was shot at the Montserrat Monastery near Barcelona:

What’s wrong:
- Crappy cropping!
- The picture is inclined to the right
- I want that guy out of my picture! (Sorry.)

Here’s what I did:
- Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary
- Crop tool
- Clone Stamp tool (to remove the guy)
- New Adjustment layer (Levels)

It still isn't the Picture of the Year, but I think it looks a little bit better now:

The Power of Black'n'White

2006-04-25T19:59:00.000+02:00

I never shoot black’n’white images with my digital camera, because I prefer to have a color version of all the pictures I shoot, just in case. Besides, it’s very easy to convert any color image into BW in Photoshop, but it’s not that easy to paint a BW picture to make it look like a “real” color image.

I like BW pictures a lot, and I think many pictures look better in BW than in color. For example, I liked the shadows of this (color) picture:

...but to my eye, it looks better after converting it into BW in Photoshop (Image > Mode > Greyscale) and adjusting the levels:

Little Things Mean a Lot

2006-04-23T19:22:00.000+02:00

Sometimes just one single adjustment can make a picture so much better, especially when it comes to contrast and levels.

I found this letter B (for Barcelona) engraved on a stone at the Labyrinth park (Parque del Laberinto) in Barcelona. The original is not good at all, as you can see:

But here’s how it looks like after creating one single Adjustment layer: Levels:

(OK, I couldn’t resist and used the Crop tool as well.)

Angel in the Sky

2006-04-22T19:45:00.000+02:00

This image was shot at the Sant Pau hospital in Barcelona. (It’s a great building, by the way, listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, so do go and see it if you get the chance.)

What’s wrong with this image? Well, almost everything...
- No contrast
- No colors
- What’s that flagpole doing there?! I didn’t really want to shoot a flagpole, did I...

OK, so I first did this:
- Crop the image with the Crop tool (adiós, flagpole!)
- Create new Adjustment layers: Levels and Contrast
- Select the sky (Select > Color range > click on the sky)
- Create yet another Adjustment layer, with the sky still selected: Photo filter > Cooling filter (this way, the filter is only applied to the sky, not to the whole image; after all, I only want the sky to be blue, not the statue!). Photoshop automatically creates a layer mask based on my selection, and I can edit this mask later if I like.

Here’s the result:

...But, hey, what’s that white stuff all over the statue? Well, we all know what it is, don’t we... I don’t know what you think, but I think a World Heritage statue deserves something better, so I decided to remove the white stuff.

I did the following:

- Create a new layer on top of the previous layers
- Choose the Clone Stamp tool, making sure that Sample All Layers is selected
- Started cloning
- Everything else was easy, except for the chest of the statue: I had to be very careful not to mess up the texture of the chest, so I only cloned the worst bits and decided to cheat by...
- ...creating yet another layer (Color blending mode), choosing a nice brown tone by clicking on the statue with the Eyedropper tool, and started to paint with the Brush tool (I used a big soft round brush to cover the rest of the white stuff without losing the texture of the chest)

This time I was quite happy with the result, so, I (kind of) proudly present the final result:

No Contrast, No Cry...

2006-04-19T19:52:00.000+02:00

I was rather diappointed when I noticed that there was almost no contrast at all in this image I shot at Sagrada Familia some days ago:

I edited the picture in the following way:

Straighten the image a little bit: Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary...
Crop the image with the Crop tool
New Adjustment layers for Contrast and Levels
Filter Gallery > Fresco (adjusting the Brush size, Brush detail and Texture to my liking)

I'm now thinking that I should have straightened the image even more, because it still seems to be slightly inclined to the left. But, well, I suppose it's acceptable.

Fixing a "Messy" Picture

2006-04-19T19:15:00.000+02:00

This picture I took on the Gaudí Avenue (Avenida de Gaudí) looked a little bit too messy, although my original idea was to photograph Sagrada Familia's towers from a "new" angle. (Yeah, right...)

What makes this picture messy? Well, for example:

the overhead cranes behind the towers (besides, the sky is overexposed!)
the traffic sign behind the leftmost bush (I didn't notice it when shooting the picture)
the texts on the wall of the newsstand at right

I first adjusted the contrast of the image and then used the Clone Stamp tool to remove all the disturbing elements from the picture. When it started to look neater I thought it would look nicer if I made it look a little bit older. So, here's the result:

There are many ways to make a picture look old, but this time I used the Sketch filter: Filter > Sketch > Reticulation.

I was a little bit lazy, so I didn't remove the scooters behind the newsstand. Had this been a serious photomontage, I would have done that. But as this is for my personal use only, I thought it's not worth my while.

What to do with a Blurred Image?

2006-04-19T16:10:00.000+02:00

Ever shot an unsharp image? Don't have another, sharper shot of the same subject? OK, so it's just a digital image, who cares, you can always press Delete and throw it to the garbage bin, right?

True. However, I might be a little bit weird or something, but I also save many of the shots that aren't too sharp, because I like playing around with Photoshop... (I'm addicted; sorry!)

There are many things you can do with unsharp images. First of all, you can try to sharpen them (Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen). This works quite well with some images.

You could also have a go with Photoshop's Filter Gallery (Filter > Filter Gallery...) and see if you could create some interesting effects. - As you probably know, you can also change the default settings of most of the filters (Smoothness, Sharpness, Brush Size, etc.), so you're not limited to just applying the filter and see what happens.

I took this "macro shot" a couple of days ago on my balcony, and as you can guess, it wasn't quite what I expected it to be...

I first tried sharpening it in Photoshop, and the results were OK, but not quite as natural as I would have liked. So, I decided to do just the opposite: blur the image even more.
Here's what I did:

Duplicated the layer and then chose: Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur.
Changed the new layer's blending mode into Screen and set Transparency to about 50%
Adjusted Levels and Contrast by adding new layers, respectively.
Added a new Text layer and typed some text ("Happy Mother's Day" in Finnish); font Vivienne (also known as Vivaldi).
Used the Eyedropper tool to choose a dark blue colour by clicking on the image.
Added a new layer right below the text layer (above the other layers) and painted (Brush tool: Soft Round 200 px) a dark blue "shadow" behind the white text, to make the text more visible.

Here's the result. It's not the World's most amazing image, but hey, I'm sure my Mum will like it! :-D

Although I'm sure my Mum will like the picture, I wasn't very happy with it, so I tried a couple of other things:

Filter > Filter Gallery > Cutout (with a small number of levels, edge simplicity 4, edge fidelity 2)
New layer: Custom Shape Tool > Butterfly (One layer for each butterfly, so it's easier to move them around)

Crop tool: I cropped just the upper left corner of the image
Two new Adjustment layers: Contrast and Levels
New Text layer (font Monotype Corsiva; "Have a Nice Summer!" in Finnish)

I don't think any of these images will be published in the Computer Arts magazine, nor will they be praised by professional photoshoppers, but if my Mum likes the first version, my little niece the second version, and my friends the third version, I'll be happy!

Sleepless in Barcelona

2006-04-19T14:16:00.000+02:00

My original shot of Tibidabo, Barcelona, was a real failure, so I wanted to do something about it.

This is the original:

And here's the result, after some photoshopping:

What I did was the following:

Cropped the image
Adjusted Levels and Contrast
Added a new Colour Layer (blue)
Added some Gaussian blur
Combined the layers (saving the original, just in case, of course...)
Duplicated the layer + changed its Blending Mode into Linear burn, Opacity 49%
Painted the moon with the Brush tool, Soft Round 200 px (approx. 90% opacity)
Created the bats in Illustror + placed them into Photoshop (File > Place), right below the blue Colour Layer
Added the Text Layer as the topmost layer