Tutorial: Shapes

How to make the ubiquitous rectangle-with-two-square-corners-and-two-rounded-corners shape.
I've created this tutorial in Elements 9, and it's relevant to all versions of Elements and Photoshop as far back as I can remember.

I begin with a blank file:

This requires a bit of planning. It's a very good idea to use guides to map out where you want the shape to be. First, turn on the Rulers ...

... which appear at the left and top of your image window:

Something to try

I saw this question on a forum, and in an effort not to do any work this afternoon, I thought it would be fun to blog about it.

A photo covered with a coloured panel, but with the photo showing through the text, like this:

It's really easy, and a lot of fun if you haven't tried it before.  (I've done this in Photoshop Elements 9, and the method is the same for all versions of Elements and Photoshop).

Grids in Photoshop

Photoshop is full of little things that you don't need much in day-to-day editing, but it sure is handy to know where they are when you need them.

Grids are one such thing.  They're pretty self-explanatory - an overlay of gridlines on your image.

To turn on the grid, just press Ctrl ' (apostrophe), or View>Grid.  You'll get something like this:

Please be wary of CMYK

A few times in the last couple of weeks I've been on forums and noticed people who were (apparently) quite unaware or indifferent about the risks involved in CMYK conversion.

For photographers, CMYK isn't something that comes up very often.  And that's a good thing.  But now and then you'll be preparing photos for a magazine, or getting your business cards printed, or perhaps being featured in a newspaper.  In those circumstances, you might be asked to provide CMYK files.

(Note: Elements users can't convert to CMYK.  You'll just have to explain this, and submit RGB files instead.)

Too many people think that CMYK conversion is as simple as Image > Mode > CMYK.  Yes, that converts to CMYK, but it converts to the default CMYK profile that's set in your Color Settings (usually SWOP Coated v2).  And if that default CMYK profile isn't the correct one for your purpose, you'd better get a bucket ready, because you're going to vomit when you see the printed result.

Adding a scanned signature to a photo

This method will already be well known to a lot of you, but I hope it might be a little "a-ha!" moment to some.  I've done this in CS2, but it's exactly the same in all version of Photoshop and Elements.

The idea of placing your own genuine signature on your photos might seem great, but the prospect of cutting out around your scrawl to achieve a transparent background is too daunting, right?  Well, luckily you don't have to.

With a black pen (another dark colour should work too), sign a piece of white paper, then scan it.  (If you don't have a scanner handy, take a good sharp photo of it.)  Use a nice high resolution (at least 600ppi), to allow plenty of flexibility to use it at a large size if you want to.

Comparing Curves and Levels

To a degree, choosing Curves or Levels to make your tonal adjustments in Photoshop is much like choosing Coke or Pepsi to quench your thirst - it's a matter of taste. (Although neither Curves nor Levels go well with rum!)

Needless to say, Levels and Curves are the "heavyweights" of Photoshop - if you really want to be able to edit your photos, you need to be able to use one of them. They have some similarities, and some differences, and I'm going to discuss those briefly here.

I'll begin by saying that Elements users don't get this choice. Yes, there's a primitive Curves function buried in the Enhance menu in Elements, but the control it gives you is minimal, and more importantly, it's not available as an adjustment layer. Any functions that aren't available as adjustment layers should be avoided where possible, because they can't be re-adjusted, and they can't be masked. Elements peeps, you need to embrace Levels, and in some cases, Brightness/Contrast. Both of those are available via the little half-black-half-white circle icon in your Layers palette.

Ok, back to Curves vs Levels ...

Pesky pinks

I'm supposed to be doing all sorts of other work tonight, but I can't resist a good blog topic!

The lovely Rowena Field sent me a photograph that was troubling her.  In it, her daughter's pink shirt appeared quite blotchy and pixelated when viewed at 100%, despite the fact that all the other detail in the image was perfectly normal, and despite the fact that she'd got good exposure at only ISO250, which is a piece of cake for her 5D.

I know this is a problem for everyone from time to time (although not everyone examines their photos as closely as Rowena!), so she cautiously gave me permission to use the photo here.  Thanks, Ro!

Here's the shot:

Printing big

A couple of days ago I found myself with some time to kill (early for an appointment) in Brisbane's CBD.  So I went for a leisurely walk, with no particular purpose other than the faint hope of finding a bakery (mmm ... baked goods ...).

If I had found a bakery, I would have purchased a delicious danish, which may have warranted a Facebook status update, but I certainly wouldn't have written a blog post about it!  Instead of a bakery, I found something that is worthy of a post.

In the distance I noticed the premises of one of Brisbane's best-known photography studios.  They are regarded as one of the best wedding and portrait studios in the city ... heck, in the whole country!  Their work is beautiful, particularly their black-and-white stuff; just stunning.

Their premises is in a great location on a busy road in a well-to-do part of town, and they have filled their front windows with two lovely, enormous, black-and-white prints.  You can see the prints from quite some distance away, and they provide the best possible publicity for the studio.

Powerful Gradient Map techniques

The most common use of Gradient Map adjustment layers is for black-and-white conversion, but they are capable of all sorts of cool stuff.  Let me show you how to add colour and tone effects to your photos using Gradient Maps set to "Soft Light" mode.

I've used Photoshop Elements 9 for all the screenshots in this tutorial, because I never want to miss an opportunity to show Elements users how powerful their software really is.  Needless to say, these methods also work in Photoshop, as well as all older versions of Elements.

As the subject of this demonstration, I'm going to begin by applying that purply-orangey look with which the industry is saturated right now.  I know you love it, but mark my words, it's this year's version of Selective Colouring.  Remember how cool it used to be create black-and-white images with one element in full colour?  How many of those are still in your portfolio?  Anyway, I digress ...

Here's a photo of my son, to which I've done a bit of basic clean processing, using a Levels layer and a Hue/Saturation layer:

 

For best results, ALWAYS do your clean processing first.  If you don't, you'll never get consistent results from your artistic processing, and it will drive you crazy.

To begin, add a Gradient Map adjustment layer.  Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map

 

There's no such thing as a SOOC raw photo!

If you've seen any of my retouching "before and after" posts (eg), you might have noticed that I'm always very careful to explain that the "befores" are rendered using ACR's default settings.

This is because there's no such thing as a straight-out-of-camera raw photo!

It irritates me like crazy when I see this statement on a forum or a blog: "Here's what the SOOC raw file looked like".

No it's not.

Raw files aren't photos yet.  They're just data.  You need your software to turn the data into a photographic image for you.

Look what I got when I opened a Raw file in my text editor: