Photography and Photoshop talks!

Please note that this handout gives only brief instructions. This is on purpose as you have to think about the various exercises from previous sessions in order to successfully complete the task.

 

 

Image warp

Putting objects onto various surfaces with applying surface and light conditions of the main canvas onto the object, which as well takes the perspective structure of the main canvas.

 

Task: Apply a Playboy bunny onto a car bonnet. (Use Google images to find appropriate images, must be jpg file format) Isolate the bunny from its background and copy it onto the destination image. (consider 2 aspects from previous sessions)

With the top layer active, go to the TM- Edit-Transform-Warp.

A grid will now be placed over your object. Adjust the object towards its space of the layer underneath by grabbing the corner points. With the now visible handlebars you correct the perspective. Confirm your edit with the ENTER key.

 

Change the layer blend mode to ‘overlay’. Finished.

 

Sharpening

via Emboss filter. Duplicate background layer. TM-Filter-Stylize-Emboss. Leave defaults, except pixel, change to “3”. Change layer blend mode to ‘Hard Light’ and if necessary adjust opacity. This technique is called ‘Edge sharpening’

 

Luminosity sharpening. Duplicate layer, then apply ‘Unsharp mask’ (85%,1 px, 4). Change layer blend mode to ‘luminosity’

BLACK & WHITE

Via keyboard shortcut, CTRL + SHIFT + U

This is a quick possibility, probably used during editing but not as final solution.

LP – Adj.layer – Channel mixer, tick monochrome, RGB set to 60 – 30 – 10. Often an additional brightness/contrast adjustment is recommended.

DUOTONE

To activate the Duotone option (TM – image – mode – duotone) we first need to convert the file into a one channelled greyscale image. TM  - image – mode – greyscale. Confirm to discard all colour information. Now the Duotone option has become active.

In the new dialog box you may as well add a second and third colour to do Tri- or Quad tones.

Ensure that each colour chosen is named. To balance the colour behaviour, click on the curve and adjust. Confirm your editing to close the dialog box and convert the image back into RGB mode.

PERSPECTIVE CROP

To line up verticals or horizontals you can use the crop tool from the toolbox.

To get the perspective option you need to tick ‘perspective’ in the lower top menu bar. Depending on the image you move to tool in the opposite direction to how you want to straighten up. The crop line and the chosen orientation of your image should be parallel. Press ENTER to confirm.

Possible problems you might experience could be that you do not find the perspective box to tick. Well, initially it must be a free crop and you need to pull the crop tool over the image first.

LENS CORRECTION

A further advanced option to correct your image is using the lens correction filter. TM – filter – distort – lens correction.

This filter opens in an interface. In preparation you should scale the image down and adjust the grid size. Remember that changes will lead to losses. The more radical you use the filter the more you need to crop the image afterwards.

Possible correction are not only vertical and horizontal perspective, as well you can tackle barrel and pillow distortion.

When you are done, click OK to get the image back into Photoshop standard canvas.