Retouching Images in Photoshop® is My Life

A professional photographer I am not, but a tech savvy whiz kid, that I most definitely am. I thrive on learning new computer programs and understanding the symbiotic relationships between technology and the programs we create. While yes, some programs are a bit unnecessary, in general, understanding the technology you have is one thing, but being able to understand the programs that go along with said technology, bring you to a whole new level.

Along with the general population in America today, I have a digital camera. It has changed my life. Suddenly, the world is my canvas, and no picture is too insignificant. Needless to say, I am retouching images in Photoshop on my down time. I find something therapeutic in isolating and manipulating pixels or changing lighting and generally editing images. Retouching images in Photoshop is my second life. And because I have learned so much about the program itself, my friends pay me to help them with their pictures. I can look at a picture and instantly know what needs editing. When it comes to retouching images in Photoshop, I am a master.

Now, I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but sometimes if you are good at something, you should acknowledge it! I mean, why not? Lots of people struggle with Photoshop, it is a difficult program! So what if I want to declare that retouching images in Photoshop is a walk in the park for me? I feel confident to call it from the highest peak, and hey, it might even get me some more business!

A lot of people ask me what my secret is, how do I know so much about the program and how did I learn it so quickly? The answer is, I don’t know. For the same reason a person can listen to a song and play it on an instrument, I learn computer programs without blinking or breaking a sweat. I haven’t really used this skill to my advantage truthfully speaking, I don’t work with computers, I only write with them.

This weekend I am going on a road trip. We are driving down to New Mexico for the weekend. My good friend is a photographer who is creating a portfolio of desert cacti. We convinced him to go to New Mexico because they have some amazing hot springs down there, and the sunsets are unreal. Upon our return, I have already signed a contract with him to help him with retouching his images in Photoshop. Once we finish retouching his images in Photoshop, he is submitting them to his publicist who is helping him with a book deal. And you know what, it still tickles my fancy knowing that this one skill I have acquired over the years and actually taking me somewhere! Technology, thank you for opening up my horizons, and what’s more, I can now identify 15 different types of flowering cacti. Guess I killed two birds with one stone.

Do You Need a Photoshop® Seminar? Me Too

Sometimes I like to mess around on Photoshop, and I have actually done a few projects with the program, but when it really comes down to it, I have very little idea what I’m doing. The average Photoshop user could run circles around me, and I’m not really capable of making anything that looks adequate, let alone professional. I would probably be to my benefit to attend some kind of Photoshop seminar. There are a few basic strategies that I am capable of using, but I won’t really be capable of creating anything remotely impressive without some help from a knowledgeable Photoshop authority.

The truth is that I don’t really want to do anything amazing with the program, but I probably still need a Photoshop seminar. I want to create really dumb, immature pictures that I can use for bribing people or embarrassing my friends. My mind never really evolved past my teenage years, and there will probably always be a part of my brain that wants to play childish pranks. You may think that is sad, but I don’t care. There are basically three schools of Photoshop users: professional photographers or designers who use the program at their job(dorks), semi-comatose house-wives who spent too much money on a program they use to take the red-eye out of pictures of their dogs and brighten the contrast on pictures of their kids, and people like me who just want to make funny pictures. The latter two groups probably need to take a Photoshop seminar from the former group. Back to my goal with Photoshop, here is a list of immature things I want to do with Photoshop.

To make good old-fashioned embarrassing pictures of my friends – This is the main goal of most non-nerds who use Photoshop. I want a Photoshop seminar that can help show me how to make a picture where it looks like my friend is vacuuming the house in a pink skirt. I want to make a picture of my brother with a creepy mustache and a mullet while wearing a stained tank top and then use that picture to create a profile for him on the sketchiest dating web site I can find.

I have plenty of other borderline sad ideas about what to do once I attend the right Photoshop seminar, but they all just fall into the dumb yet funny category.

Take a Photoshop® Class for Your Own Good

There are too many features to learn in the Photoshop program to ever try and learn it on your own. Aside from that, there is really no reason to learn it on your own with all the resources available to help you learn. There is a Photoshop class for everyone and every different Photoshop program. You will frustrate yourself to no end if you try and learn all the features through a trial-and-error method. You might know what it is you want to do, but there is little chance that you know how to make it happen and even less of a chance that you will be able to learn without some kind of a Photoshop class.

There are plenty of different methods for achieving the results you want, so the key is to know the fastest way. There may even be a faster way to achieve a better result than you had imagined. The point of using a Photoshop class, like the tutorial created by Video Professor, is that you will learn everything that Photoshop has to offer. By knowing all the tools, what they do, and which ones to use in each situation, you will save yourself a lot of time in the future. Photoshop is all about being creative, but you have to know how to channel your creativity, and that is where a Photoshop class comes in to show you all the tools.

A Photoshop class shows you the proper steps to take so you get the color you want from your photographs. Use color balance to create a more realistic picture or to get the color you really want from the photo. Master color samplers, hue and saturation, and adjustment layers to make easy adjustments to your pictures that make a huge difference in their appearance.

You can learn how to enhance your photographs by adding titles, shapes and graphics. A Photoshop class can show you the simple steps towards creating your first web page, Christmas card or personalized photo album. In the more advanced Photoshop class you will learn complex features like image profiles and bit depth. Learn how to work with color specifically for web sites and continue to master working with different layers.

Whether you are working with the Internet, your home printer or your camera, you will learn how to produce the best possible photos. Learn how to use the actions palette so your frequently used tools will be available much more quickly. Tap into the automating functions and cut even more time off of your work. Soon, what used to be hours of work can be cut down to a few keystrokes or clicks after a Photoshop class shows you how to fully take advantage of the program.

There are over 100 filters to create eye-popping effects for your pictures. You can now create versions of your photos you didn’t know were possible. Filters are easy to apply so you can try many different effects while maintaining the original picture. These filters can create just a slight alteration or balancing effect, and they can change your pictures drastically. Learn all the options with a Photoshop class.

Get Help with Adobe® Photoshop®

If you want to try and learn Photoshop on your own then go right ahead, but you should plan on being very frustrated early and often. It is a hard program to work with and very hard to learn. There is just too much to learn, too many features and too many ways to accomplish tasks. You have to learn the right way to perform any given task or you will spend a lot of extra time trying to figure it out. If you want to save some time and endless amounts of frustration, then get some help with Adobe Photoshop. You can get help with Adobe Photoshop in the form of tutorials both online and in CD form.

There are a lot of different Photoshop programs so there is bound to be one that fits your needs, no matter what type of photographer you are. From casual photographers to designers using more advanced programs, you can get help with Adobe Photoshop.

Starting with the most basic Photoshop programs, there are plenty of enhancements that you can give to your pictures through Elements and other basic Photoshop programs. Get help with Adobe Photoshop and do more than just take and print pictures. If you are the person who always carries a camera with you, then you could benefit from a basic program like Elements, which quickly downloads your photos onto your computer.

You can get help with Adobe Photoshop to learn how to make manual adjustments with color, sharpness and more. This program will also make it much easier to organize and share your photos with others. You can customize and get creative with your pictures by creating calendars, cards and online scrapbooks. Use different borders and other effects to make more lively pictures.

For the more skilled and advanced photographers, or even people who make a living photographing or designing, there are several programs that might be used on a daily basis. Not only can these programs help you more quickly organize and edit your photos, the enhancement features are staggering. These are complex programs, but help with Adobe Photoshop can explain the quick adjustments you can make in terms of exposure, saturation or contrast. With the digital revolution, you can make alterations in just minutes without damaging or altering the original picture. Help with Adobe Photoshop can quickly aid the professional photographer.

Photoshop is used more often and by so many different professions. The capabilities of the newest programs are excellent and more people are taking advantage of the programs in their professions and daily lives.

More advanced Photoshop programs can be a key tool for designers of all kinds. New tools have been created to be more flexible with other programs and with other mediums. The sleekest logos and advertising designs start in Photoshop, and help with Adobe Photoshop can be the starting block for many different types of design projects from web to business cards. Whatever your ambitions are, from just improving or organizing your pictures to improving your design projects, you can benefit from Photoshop.

Get Some Adobe Photoshop Help and Maximize Your Experience

I have found Adobe® Photoshop® to be one of the hardest programs to really learn. Sure, I enjoy messing around in the program and creating cool images out of pictures that I have taken, but I see what can actually be created with the program when one knows how to use it properly, I get a little jealous. I want that knowledge. So I decided to seek out some Adobe Photoshop help. There is a plethora of it, help that is, on the Internet and through methods like Video Professor’s Learn Photoshop lesson. After doing a little reading up, I found these tips on www.photoshop-help.com.

Adobe Photoshop Help: Three Frequent Problems

Make sure that you are working in the selection area because the tool will work only inside the selection. If there is no selection then Photoshop can be applied anywhere. To check if there is an active selection, go to the menu and choose Select to see if Deselect option is active.

The selection border may be hidden. Choose Select and note if Hide Edges is outlined.

 If the image has layers, then the selection can only be applied to the highlighted layer. Brushes, tools and filters will not always work as intended or will work on a layer that is not intended to be worked on.

Adobe Photoshop Help: Photoshop Painting and Editing Techniques

Press shift while dragging with any paint or edit tool to draw a straight line.

Always note the opacity in the Option palette while painting to avert mistakes.

Press a number key to change the setting of the Opacity, Pressure or Exposure slider bar in 10 percent increments.

Consider making a new blank layer and paint there. Paint separate pieces or objects. This will allow you to make opacity adjustment in the Layers palette. It’s also easier to erase unwanted areas.

Always note what your foreground and background colors are. Check the tool box near the bottom for the two large squares. Click inside one of them to access the Color Picker. Play with it awhile and get familiar how the colors can change.

You should never feel bad about getting Adobe Photoshop help because it is a very complex program with many facets. So do some research or take the Video Professor lesson, and maximize you experience with some Adobe Photoshop help from the people who are experienced in the program.

Help Yourself with Photoshop® Classes

There are several different Photoshop programs and chances are, there is one that works for what you want to accomplish with a photo editing program. Photoshop classes are available for any of the programs and they are available in many different forms. A lot of people just want to make minor alterations to their pictures and find an easy way to organize and archive their pictures. Some people want to make significant changes to their pictures or want to go into a career that involves design and learning the more advanced Photoshop programs. No matter what Photoshop program you want to use, there are Photoshop classes, whether they are on the Photoshop web site or tutorials from Video Professor.

Photoshop Classes for Elements

Elements is one of the more basic Photoshop programs and it is ideal for beginners. Photoshop classes are available for this program in order to help you with the basics of organizing, editing and sharing your pictures. With this program you can tag and label your photos and build your own creative photo album to share with your family. Photoshop classes can help you navigate more efficiently once you get all your pictures stored on your computer. Labeling, tagging and familiarizing yourself with the search features will allow you to view the photos you want and save time.

The reason you take as many photos as you do is so you can view them for years to come and share them with your friends and family. Luckily, Photoshop classes give tips revealing several creative ways for you to display and share you pictures. Photo books, slide shows, CD/DVD covers, cards, and customized layouts are all available through Photoshop classes.

Photoshop Classes for CS3

CS3 is a more advanced version of Photoshop designed for professional photographers or very advanced amateurs, and there are plenty of Photoshop classes for this version. There are incredible amounts of tasks and alterations that you can perform with this program.

The best picture editing tools are available with this program. Color balancing, drawing and painting tools, cloning, and healing tools are all useful resources to change and improve your photos. Learning these features is hard to do on your own, and ill advised when there are plenty of ways to access Photoshop classes.

If you have a series of similar photos, you can combine these into the one perfect photo using different layers. Through the use of layers, a lot is possible, so find Photoshop classes and learn how to effectively manipulate your layers. Mastering layers will open the door to learning more advanced features and avoid repeating steps.

Photoshop classes help you create improved pictures without making them look grainy, pulled or stretched. Photoshop will also help you learn about the customizable work environments that will anticipate your needs so you can create the best possible images

There is too much to learn about with any Photoshop program to not seek out some Photoshop classes. Make sure you are doing everything properly and that you are not wasting your time and taking too many steps.

Save Your Bad Pictures with Digital Editing

There is no one in the history of picture taking that has been satisfied with every picture they have taken. Whether it is poor composition, poor lighting, blurry subjects or that one person who always decides to make a really creepy face, there is a lot working against your picture turning out the way you want it to. Thanks to the advancement of digital photo-editing programs, you can do a lot more to save your pictures. You can even crop that creepy-faced person right out of your picture. Gone are the days of film when you could not immediately review your pictures to see if they turned out properly and once they were printed you had little ability to change their appearance.

Even if you review your pictures and retake them, there can always be something that you still don’t like about the picture. But if it is something that you really want to have a picture of, like a rare family gathering or a place you may never return to, consider some editing tricks rather than permanently deleting the picture. When dealing with family or portrait pictures, there are some simple ways that you can fix some common problems. If the picture was not taken close enough or if there is any other problem with the composition, you can easily use some of the cropping tools to make the composition better. Red-eye reduction is another common tool that can greatly improve your pictures.

Several editing programs have manual controls so that you can improve the lighting. If you have a landscape shot that was not as well lit as you hoped, you can adjust the levels to get the lighting better or enhance the contrast. A problem with a lot of group pictures is that not everyone is standing parallel with each other and the flash may make some people look like ghosts while others who were standing farther back appear to be in the shadows. You can use the same color balance and lighting controls to even out the difference between these extremes.

A lot of saving can be done with filters in PhotoshopÒ. One simple fix is a black and white filter, and this option is also available in many other programs. Pictures that have color problems can be easily fixed just by making them black and white while other pictures are simply more striking when seen in black and white. There are a number of other filters that can sharpen your pictures or provide an artistic effect. If your picture is a little blurry, you can try out different filters until one looks right. This can hide flaws and also create a new picture. Filters can also be used to soften a picture, which can give the right picture a better feeling.

Color samples can also be used in a number of different ways to get the right look. Fix the effects of fluorescent lights or other situations where the color is just strange. With a little practice you can crop certain items out of the picture and make it look as if nothing was taken out.

What Can You Use Photoshop® For?

Rather than talk about the many great features of Photoshop, like getting rid of red-eye, or placing yourself on the top of the pyramids, let’s talk about photo retouching, that is, making people look prettier than they are in person. It may sound, well, less than nice, but in reality, whenever you get your photo taken by a professional photographer, they get on Photoshop and retouch every blemish, wrinkle and shadow from your face so you, in turn, get photos that make you look hot.

Use Photoshop to Clean Up

I helped my cousin at her wedding by acting as the photographer. They spent all the money and the honeymoon and wanted to give me, an aspiring photographer a little blurb to put in my resume, “wedding photographer.” It sounded great and I got paid, so I figured, why not? I went around and took the photos. Cute flower girls in pink shoes holding hands, giggling bridesmaids, and handsome groomsmen. Guests in feathery hats and the bride and groom kissing and smashing cake on each other’s faces, not to mention the family group shots. So, at the end of the night, armed with my 4GB memory card I drove home and turned on my computer to use Photoshop. Read more about the relationship between Photoshop and digital photography from John W Scherer on these other pages.

It’s a good thing I know how to use Photoshop because looking through the pictures, I realized that some people, really needed a little more makeup and some people, needed a little less. Some people probably didn’t want their pimples to be immortalized and some people might want those cute little wrinkles and bags under their eyes to disappear forever. Lucky for them, I use Photoshop and got to work, fast.

Rubber-stamping and cloning into the wee hours of the morning I had de-bagged, de-wrinkled and de-pimpled half the photos in my cache. Things were looking up for my photo subjects as I continued to use Photoshop for the next couple of days.

Things Look Better After You Use Photoshop

So, it was time to make some shots look classy, and I immediately moved to black and white schemes. When I use Photoshop, I like to play with the light on a subject’s face, and since I was working with the bride’s photos, she needed to look radiant. Adjusting the saturation and changing the light source gave her a radiant glow that was proved more elegant when I changed her shot to a black and white photo. Perfect. Everything looked beautiful.

I went back to my cousin’s house about a week later with the portfolio for them to look at. My cousin cried and said everyone looked so beautiful that day. Maybe she forgot that her 13-year-old nephew actually has bad acne and that Aunt Jenna had used too much blush and looked like a tomato. Looking at the photos that I was able to use Photoshop on, I understood that the simple editing tools I had used had helped my cousin remember, for a lifetime how beautiful and magical every moment of her wedding had been. And who cares if Uncle Dan looked a little less heavy-eyed or Grandma Annette looked a little younger, everyone wants to look beautiful and see themselves as such. Because I could use Photoshop, I can help them feel as beautiful as they look in the pictures.

Take a Photoshop® Course and Save Your Sanity

By no means have I spent very much time working in Photoshop, and by no means am I any good at the program. But the one thing that I am certain about when it comes to Photoshop it is that the overwhelming majority of time I have spent working in the program, I have been rather frustrated. It is at least a five to one ratio of being mad as opposed to satisfied when it comes to my Photoshop experience, and that would be a conservative estimate. I never really considered taking a Photoshop course, partially out of stubbornness and partially because I have never worked with Photoshop all that much. But I always wish I was better with the program. It is one of those skills that can only come in handy for any number of reasons.

I almost always feel like I am doing something wrong, and I usually am. If that is not the case, there is usually a way that what I did could have been done more easily. Sometimes I feel that if I would have taken a Photoshop course, the time I spent learning the ropes would have saved me a lot of time down the road. There is usually one small step that I forgot that is preventing me from completing the task or getting something to actually look the way I want it to. I have never even wanted to do anything that advanced. I usually just want to create a certain look or effect or design a logo or background. Long story short, nothing comes easy for me in this program, and I probably should have taken a Photoshop course at some point.

For others who are just starting to learn the program and want to avoid some of the frustration that I, and many others, have experienced, there are many learning tools that can help keep you sane. A Photoshop course or an explanation of the program’s features is available on the Photoshop web site for virtually every program they offer. There are plenty of other informative sources on the Internet that you can browse through or look for solutions for certain problems.

If you want a more comprehensive Photoshop course, Video Professor has interactive CD tutorials for most of the versions of Photoshop. These tutorials play atop the Photoshop program you are working in so you can watch the Photoshop course while you work. You can also pause, rewind and fast-forward the tutorial at any time so you can skip over some of the tools that you already know or review some techniques you are having trouble with.

Whichever route you choose to take, some form of Photoshop course is better than none at all. There are programs that you can have success with if you try to teach yourself, but this is not one of those programs. Photoshop is a complex program, and you could spend an eternity learning everything that it is capable of, but for your sanity’s sake you should have some kind of learning aid.

Learning to Use a Palette Brush in Adobe® Photoshop®

Using a palette brush in Adobe Photoshop is not only a great way to fix colors and edit out mistakes; a palette brush can dramatically change the arrangement and look of your picture. Many people tend to think that tools in photo-editing programs are difficult to use and understand and will avoid them. The reality is that these tools are user-friendly and can really help bring out the best in your pictures. So, for this let’s look at what a palette brush can do you for, and how to use and understand its functions.

 

<h2>Where to Start?</h2>

 

Let’s start from the beginning and go over what a palette brush is. A palette brush is a collection of different brush shapes that can help you create different dynamics in your pictures. From large to hairline sizes you can create broad and thin strokes in elliptical, straight and skewed patterns. There are preformatted strokes to choose from, but you can also create your own to fit your personal needs.

 

<h2>A Quick Run Through On Using a Brush Palette</h2>

 

I am going to talk about using the brush palette in Photoshop, so, start with a picture and select the brush tool on the side panel. You will notice that there is a tablet and in this tablet you can choose the size, effect and dimensions of your palette brush. Choose what works for the area you want to edit and remember that if you make a mistake, you can always go back and undo it. In the palette brush, you can use other effects from the brush library. These include chalk, scatter and spray effects. You can also find designs like snow flakes, stars and squiggles to help give an extra pop to your photos!  

 

Playing around like I said is one of the best ways to learn the most, fast. Try moving around the scatter and hardness of the palette brush, by adjusting these the effect will be very different. The sharper you make the palette brush, the closer together the color will be. By playing with the sharpness on the palette brush you can sharpen and soften edges on people, scenes and edges in general.

 

<h2>Where Else Can You Get Help?</h2>

 

While looking online and reading what other people have to say about programs and their applications can be very helpful, if you are looking for an in-depth guide to a program like Photoshop, it is usually a great idea to find a tutorial. If you are interested in learning palette brushes, then chances are there is a lot you can still learn. Try looking for online tutorials or CD-ROM tutorials that you can order that will give you the information you need. Companies exist, one such being Video Professor. Video Professor offers a great Learn Adobe Photoshop tutorial and it takes only three hours. The 3-disc set is fun, easy to use and you will learn tons! From the palette brush to the most advanced features Photoshop has to offer, you can know it all.