Getting Greater Use From Photoshop®
Contributed by Lindsey Michael Miller
The world of designing through Adobe® products can be a hard beast to master. Most people who are used to the ease of programs like Microsoft® Word, and other Microsoft or Apple® computer programs are in for a big surprise when they take the next step to the Adobe line. Many people who have been using Photoshop for years still do not utilize all the tools to their fullest capacities.
Adobe products are often difficult to navigate. First, you have to figure out what the program can do, and then you have to figure out how to make the program do it. For those who have been navigating the program, and feel a tad lost, here are eight tips/tools to help you use it to a greater degree.
- Correcting Camera Mistakes.
Everyone occasionally makes mistakes while taking photos, and if you missed them on the screen or you’re using a film camera, this can be a devastating mistake. Fortunately, Photoshop has some features that will fix these problems. First, you can use the crop tool to gain something salvageable from a photo that has a finger mark over it, or there’s something else in the picture you don’t want. You’ll then want to use the enlarge wizard to bring it back to a normal size. For that awful red eye, select the eyedropper tool to change the color of the red parts of the iris.
- Creating Text Effects.
There are millions of things you can produce with your text using Photoshop. One of them is the type mask tool, which can shape a picture into actual text. It’s a cool effect, and it’s becoming popular for t-shirts lately.
- Restoring Old Pictures.
Many people have lots of old photographs that they’d like to see restored. Taking them to professionals can be greatly expensive, though. You can do it yourself by using the healing brush, clone stamp, and patch tool. These tools will take out most of the tears and cracks while leaving the authenticity of the photo intact.
- Creating Works of Art.
If you have blank walls that you’ve always wanted filled with interesting works of art, there are several tools in Photoshop that can make your photos appear as if they were paintings. There are even many artists and professional photographers using these tools to take their art through several different mediums. You can choose from a number of the artistic and brush stroke filters that will “artisize” your photo. If you’re going to hang them up, you’ll want to use high-quality photo or art paper.
- Placing Graphics in Video Streams.
People who have been using video production programs usually utilize this tool, because it adds effects to their video by layering art or photography with it. Several video editing programs actually allow you to import Photoshop or .jpg files into the video.
- Creating Covers.
You can use tools like layer via cut, and other high-end applications that allow you to combine text, graphics, and pictures to make covers for various things. These are tools often utilized for magazine covers, as well as CD and DVD covers.
- Splicing.
One of the most popular tools being used currently is the ability to combine things and people into pictures that aren’t actually there. I once saw a “real” photograph that had the Eiffel Tower, the Tower of London, and the Empire State Building all in the same city area. This can be a fun and creative tool you could possibly use to, say, show you and the President shaking hands, or Mt. Everest jutting up from your backyard. The possibilities are as endless as your imagination. All you need to do is crop and remove certain parts from some pictures and paste them into others.
- Putting Text in Pictures.
One of the things that you can do with text is place it over objects such as cars, houses, and anything else to make it look like it was always there to begin with. Move the text over onto the object, use the move tool to adjust the text to the size of the photo, change the opacity to fit with the picture, and you’ve got a whole new photo. You can put logos on racecars, your name on your house, or just about anything.
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About the Author:
Lindsey Michael Miller is a writer and freelance journalist living in Brooklyn, New York and writes articles for newspapers and magazines around the country. He’s currently working on a MFA in creative writing at Long Island University and recently published his first book entitled The Circus.
This article is intended for general informational purposes and does not provide legal or other professional advice. All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. Please read our disclaimer for additional terms and conditions governing access to and use of this article.
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