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Jumat, 13 Juli 2007

Creating a Glass Orb (the Quick Method)

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating a Glass Orb (the Quick Method)

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating a Glass Orb (the Quick Method)
By Ugur Akinci

Creating a Glass Orb (the Quick Method)

Create a new Photoshop document, about 4" X 4"in size by selecting File > New. Select the "Transparent" radio-button for "Content" to make the background transparent. Also make sure the "Mode" is "RGB Color". Click OK.

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M) and draw a circle while pressing on the Shift key. The circle should display "walking ants" around its circumference.

Select a non-white foreground color. I choose RED for this exercise.

Fill the selected circle with the foreground color by selecting Edit > Fill > Foreground Color.

Select the Move Tool (V) (the arrow with black tip).

Duplicate the Background layer by grabbing it and then pulling it over the "Create a New Layer" icon at the bottom of the Layers list.

Select the Background layer and lock it by clicking the Layer Lock check-box on top.

Select the Background Copy layer. Right-click and select Layer Properties from the pop-up menu. Change the name of the Layer to "Orb Base".

While the Orb Base layer is selected, click the "Add a Layer Style" icon at the bottom of the Layers list. From the pop-up list, select "Inner Glow."

10.

In the Layer Style dialog box that displays, select the following settings:

Blend Mode: Normal.

Opacity: 75%

Color: select a dark color close to Black.

Size: Around 100-150, to taste.

11.

Click OK.

12.

Click CTRL + D to deselect the selection circle (the "marching ants").

13.

Create a new layer on top by clicking the "Create a New Layer" icon at the bottom of the Layers list.

14.

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M) and draw an ellipse towards the top of your circle-sphere.

15.

In the tool box, click on the Default Background-Foreground Colors icon to shift the colors back to Black and White.

16.

Click on the color-switching double-arrow to make White the foreground color.

17.

Select the Gradient Tool (G).

18.

From the Properties Bar on top of your screen, select White to Transparent gradient (second from top-left).

19.

While the top layer is still selected, click and pull the gradient from top towards the bottom to create a white-to-transparent gradient on your sphere.

20.

Select the Move Tool (V) (the arrow with black tip).

21.

Click Ctrl + T to activate the Free Transform function.

22.

By pulling on the corners of the transform square, reshape your gradient to something like this:

23.

Hit Enter to register the new shape. Click CTRL + D to deselect the selection circle (the "marching ants").

24.

And you have your "Glass Orb."

BONUS STEPS -- How to Place an Object Inside the Glass Orb?

While still in Photoshop, open any picture file you want. Let's say we are using the photo of a metro train...

( Visit http://writer111.googlepages.com/creatingaglassorb-photoshoptutorial for the screenshots that accompany this tutorial.)

Make sure you have selected the Move Tool (V) (the arrow with black tip).

Click on the new photo and drag it on top of your Glass Orb window. This will import the new picture by automatically creating a new layer on top. Let's say the new photo is just too big and it needs to be resized.

While new layer is still selected, Click Ctrl + T to activate the Free Transform function.

You will see the selection square around the picture.

On the top properties bar, enter an appropriate percentage value (let's say, "50") for W (Width). Click on the chain icon to make sure the H (Height) will be scaled down by the same percentage as well. Make sure when you are finished the square picture covers the glass orb completely.

Press Enter to finalize the scaling. Click CTRL + D to deselect the selection circle (the "marching ants").

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M) and draw a circle while pressing on the Shift key. The circle should display "walking ants" around its circumference.

Center the selected circle over your square picture.

10.

Press Ctrl + Shift + I to inverse the selection.

11.

Press Delete to delete the corners of the square.

12.

Click CTRL + D to deselect the selection circle (the "marching ants").

13.

Make sure you have selected the Move Tool (V) (the arrow with black tip).

14.

Center your round picture over your glass orb.

15.

Click on the downward arrow right next to the "Blending Modes" field on top of the Layers box (which displays "Normal" by default).

16.

Select "Overlay" and Bingo! Your picture is captured inside the glass orb.

Feel free to experiment with other Blending Modes and Opacity settings.

Try for example "Difference" blending and 50% Opacity.

Your imagination is your limit. Enjoy!

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Ugur Akinci is a writer with 20 years of experience. Visit his web site http://www.writer111.com for more information.

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Adobe-Photoshop -- Imaging Editing Software

Adobe-Photoshop -- Imaging Editing Software
By John Gibb

Photoshop is widely considered the best image-editing software in the world today by a long way, and it is not difficult to see why. Photoshop offers incredibly advanced effects which would previously have taken days or weeks to accomplish, and reduces them to the level of a few settings and a few clicks.

Although it is expensive, today it is considered an essential program for anyone working with graphics, whether it’s in print, on the web, or even in television and movies. This has led to a huge number of cheaper competitors (who have been largely ignored), as well as rampant piracy of Photoshop itself. To counter this, a cheaper, simpler version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements is now available, which is especially good for beginners.

How did Photoshop get into this dominant position? Well, development started in 1987, with the first release in 1990. Since then, Adobe has been improving the software continuously, constantly taking advantage of advances in hardware power. Even now, to get the best performance out of Photoshop, you should buy as much RAM as you can afford.

It is not just Adobe’s efforts that have got Photoshop where it is today, however. The program’s plugin architecture has allowed there to be are all sorts of plugins available for more advanced work, including some plugins that actually cost more and do more than the program itself. In this way, Photoshop is often used much like Windows, as a platform – and it would be a huge effort to get these plugins to run on any other software, making competitors effectively useless to anyone who relies on a plugin.

Today, you can get Photoshop for Windows and Mac OS (both OS 9 and OS X). If you want to use it on Linux, however, you will have to use Crossover Office, Codeweavers’ program that allows some Windows software to run on Linux, but it will be quite slow.

John Gibb is the owner of Adobe Photoshop resources, For more information on Adobe Photoshop check out http://www.adobe-photoshop-resources2k.info

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Modifying Standard Shapes in Photoshop

Modifying Standard Shapes in Photoshop
By Gabriel J. Adams

Have you ever wondered how someone was able to create a logo that looked so perfect? I used to think that someone probably had to draw the logo by hand, but then I learned some very interesting things about creating shapes in Photoshop. I used to think that you could only create standard shapes like ovals, rectangles, squares, and circles. However I recently learned that Photoshop gives you the ability to take these standard shapes and modify them to make new shapes that are very appealing. The way that this is accomplished is by selecting the path of the shape and manipulating it to create a completely new and different shape.

The first thing that you need to do is create a shape like a rectangle or an oval. Then choose the direct selection tool (white arrow), and select the path around the shape. You will know that you have selected the path, because you will see anchor points at the corners of the shape. Once you see the anchor points you will be able to click the anchor points and use them to resize and redesign the shape. The best thing about using paths to change the shape’s design is that the shape maintains its crisp lines, and looks just as good as a standard shape. How are you able to do this? The reason these changes are so clean is that the shape is vector based, and not pixel based, so you are able to just manipulate the vectors that comprise the shape. Another great thing about editing a shape in this way is that whatever formatting you have used on the shape will not be affected by modifying the path. If you have a gradient fill on the shape it will be modified as you modify the path of the shape, and it will maintain the same look as before you modified the shape. Now that you know how to modify the path of a shape you are no longer limited by the standard shapes that appear in the tools palette. Use your freedom wisely, and take this new found knowledge to you computer so you can create graphics that everyone else will envy for a change.

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Fix Skin Color in a Picture - A Photoshop Tutorial

Fix Skin Color in a Picture - A Photoshop Tutorial
By Jason Hillman

A lot of common issues that I see with photos are that the skin color always seems to be off a little. In the photos that I see, the reds seem to take over the skin color areas of the person that is being photographed. In this tutorial you are going to learn how to get the skin color back to normal without affecting the entire image.

To begin with, you are going to need some basic Photoshop knowledge to accomplish this fix. The only things that we are going to be dealing with to fix the skin color in a picture are the new adjustment layers and layer masks. That is all that is needed to do this simple, yet effective fix.

The first thing that you need to do is to choose a picture that you want to fix the skin color on and open in Photoshop. I do want to warn you that this will not totally fix photos that the skin color is off really bad. You only want to use the fix for photos that have a slight to moderate problem.

The next step is to make a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer on top of your original picture. You can do this by clicking on the icon below the layers that looks like a half colored in circle, and clicking on Hue/Saturation. This will bring up the Hue/Saturation window and make it on its own new layer.

Next, with the Hue/Saturation window still open, you want to determine which color is overriding your skin color. Like I said previously, I seem to have the problem with the reds, so I am going to choose the reds for my picture. You can choose the color that you need to in order to fix the skin color in your picture. You can choose the color using the drop down menu in the Hue/Saturation window.

Next, take the Saturation slider and slide it to the left until the skin color looks pretty good, or the best that you can get it without looking fake. Don’t worry about the other parts of the picture right now. Just concentrate on the skin color. We will fix the background colors next.

Once you are satisfied with your skin color, click OK to close out of the Hue/Saturation window, and you will see your new layer above your original picture. If you notice though, the adjustment that you made affected the entire image. To get that back restored to normal, click on the layer mask part of the new layer, and grab your brush tool. Make sure that your foreground color is set to black, and you have a large enough brush so that you are not brushing the background back a long time.

Now, using black, brush in the parts of the photo that you want to restore back to normal. I usually brush in the whole picture except the skin areas that I wanted to fix. This gives me the most realistic look. You are now done with the Photoshop tutorial on how to fix skin color in a picture.

If you found this article helpful, be sure to check out other great tutorials at Tutorials4You

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Tips For Using Photoshop when Creating a Web Site

Tips For Using Photoshop when Creating a Web Site
By Gabriel J. Adams

Photoshop is a wonderful tool for creating web sites. It allows even a novice the ability to create a fully functional web site without much knowledge of HTML or JavaScript. You can create an entire web page template with Photoshop, and then use Image Ready to slice up the image and create the HTML for you. Or you can use Photoshop to create just the navigation for your web site, or to optimize images on your web site. No matter how you use Photoshop, it will definitely make your web site look much nicer, and also help it to run faster.

Photoshop can help you to create an entire web site without coding much HTML by hand. You can draw a complete web site in Photoshop, and then transfer your image into Image Ready so that you can slice up the image into smaller elements, and then save the images and the corresponding HTML to render the page very easily. Then all you have to do is use you’re newly created web site and entire content into the blank spaces that you have left in the template. After you have added the content to your pages, you will be ready to post your new web site to the web.

When I am creating web sites I use Photoshop to create the navigation for the web site and also to optimize all of the images, so that my web site will load faster. I usually create buttons for the navigation, and then create rollover effects from within Image Ready. This saves me quite a bit of time, because all of the JavaScript for the mouse over effects are done for me, which allows me to work on the more advanced coding of the pages. Even if you want to create all of the navigation and layout of your web site without Photoshop, then you should at least use Photoshop to optimize your images so that you web site loads within a reasonable amount of time.

Photoshop can give you 3 different optimized views of a particular image, and tell you how fast it will load on a particular connection speed. Then you can choose which optimized image you would like to use based on the ratio between how good the picture looks and how fast it loads. Without optimizing your images your web site will perform very slowly and visitors will be less likely to wait. You can create a web site on your own by hand coding the entire site, but using Photoshop will make creating your web site much easier and more appealing.

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Photoshop Plug-ins: Making Photoshop Even More Powerful

Photoshop Plug-ins: Making Photoshop Even More Powerful
By Gabriel J. Adams

Adobe’s Photoshop software is a very powerful image editing program that is by far the market leader for editing image files. I use Photoshop extensively when creating, and editing images for the web sites that I design. Almost all professional photographers and printers also use Photoshop to create all of the wonderful images that appear in magazines, billboards, and even on television. I am not the best artist in the world, but with Photoshop I have enough power to create brilliant images with tools that are built-in to the software.

The coolest thing about Photoshop is that even as powerful as it is out of the box, there are many different plug-ins to make Photoshop even more powerful. The Photoshop plug-ins can be grouped into a few major categories which include 3D, color management, digital asset management, photographic, retouching, and special effects.

The Photoshop plug-ins which are available can help perform tasks much faster and more efficiently than performing these tasks by hand. The 3D plug-ins are used to create 3D images and type very quickly and elegantly. The color management Photoshop plug-ins can create new colors to correspond to the printer that you are using, or the monitor that you are using to create your graphics. The digital asset management plug-ins are used to organize all of the digital images that you have created so that finding the correct image is much easier than without it. The photographic ones give many different professional lens techniques that you can apply to any picture to create amazing effects.

The retouching plug-ins can intelligently change the contrast, color, sharpness, and many other common filters to make a picture look as crisp as possible. The special effects plug-ins are my favorite, because they can make a rather plain image into something fantastic. If you use Photoshop on a regular basis, then you need to look at some of the plug-ins that are available, because they can make your life much easier, and your graphics look much better.

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What Can a Free Photo Shop Download Do For Me?

What Can a Free Photo Shop Download Do For Me?
By Alberto Martinez Miller

When it comes to exploring the world of graphic design, a free photo shop download will certainly come in handy. Whether you are a beginner, intermediate user, or expert, there are plenty of ways to enhance your skills with the software program that brings newsletters, photos, and graphics to life. Today, the Internet is filled with plenty of free photo shop download opportunities for computer users to explore.

As you sit in front of your PC or type away on your Mac, you never know when a free photo shop download will make life much easier for you. With the changes in technology and the way the world now uses the computer to tweak digital camera prints or create greeting cards at home, software is needed to execute these activities. Photoshop is one of the most popular software applications on the market, but how do you know if it is for you?

Depending on the software title, you could be spending more than $100 on a selection that may or may not complete the kind of tasks you wish to accomplish. Sometimes, the application is great, but a little too advanced for your taste. When you are interested in checking out the line of Adobe products, a free photo shop download helps you test-drive the goods before committing your finances.

A free photo shop download allows you to see the kind of skills needed to operate the software. After a trial period, you can decide whether or not the software will satisfy your needs. Not only does a free photo shop download permit you to navigate the ins and outs of an application, but may also provide free photo shop tutorials to help you create a wide-range of projects and achieve a variety of graphic design goals. This type of free photo shop download also helps save money for the individual that often gets into the habit of purchasing a self-help manual for their software applications.

The best part about most free photo shop downloads for tutorials is that many offer animation and colorful screen shots that present step-by-step instructions in a slow, easy-to-follow manner. Many individuals have learned how to effectively use the toolbox, filters, and adjust colors – all by using a free photo shop download. Once you find just the right photo shop download for free, navigating the application becomes much easier, allowing you to make the most informed software purchase.

Alberto Martinez is a successful affiliate marketer, who regularly makes a healthy living from the Internet. If you want a great video tutorial about Adobe Photo Shop, he recommends the following site: http://thefeeder.info/adtrackz/go.php?c=photoshoparticle.

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