Practical Photoshop March 2020

“Welcome to issue 108 of Practical Photoshop! If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get a whole year for just $19.99?” This issue we’ve been taking a look at some of our favourite Photoshop tools, and finding out how they can work harder for you. Elsewhere, we have an guide to quick selections, plus tutorials on how to tease out landscape details and create our car cover. james.paterson@futurenet.com www.digitalcameraworld.com WATCH THE VIDEO http://tiny.cc/h9bbjy DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES To download this issue's files, type the following link into your web browser on your PC or Mac: http://bit.ly/pho_108 FIND US HERE… http://bit.ly/practweet http://bit.ly/pracface…

WATCH THE VIDEO bit.ly/2pqdlsz The Pen Tool is the go-to choice for smooth, precise cutouts, which makes it useful for numerous design and photographic tasks. But tucked away within the tool is a handy option called the Curvature Pen Tool, which offers a much gentler learning curve than the standard Pen Tool. A simple combination of clicks and double-clicks makes the tool very easy to master, and you can create wonderful customizable shapes – like the fish here – in seconds. Here’s how it works… 01 MAKE A SHAPE Grab the Curvature Pen Tool from the toolbar. Choose Shape in the tool options. Click twice to make two points, creating a straight line with the tool. Click a third time to begin making a curve from the line. Continue clicking to add further…

You probably know that you can create all sorts of basic 3D shapes in Photoshop - but did you know you can also animate those shapes? 3D objects can be animated in much the same way as 2D objects with the Timeline Panel. Here are the basics… 01 EXTRUDE TO 3D Select the main fish shape layer and go to 3D > New 3D Extrusion From Selected Layer. Go to the Properties Panel, set Extrusion to 0, then highlight the Caps tab and set Angle to 90 and Strength to 40 to create a simple bulbous fish shape. Shift-click between the top and bottom materials in the 3D Panel, then choose a material for the object in Properties. 02 SET MATERIALS AND LIGHT Click Infinite Light and adjust the angle of the light. Experiment…

The Merge Panorama command in Camera Raw and Lightroom is one of the best ways to stitch several files into a detail-rich panorama, but sometimes the edges of the frame can look messy. For a while now the Merge Panorama command has offered a handy Boundary Warp feature that stretches the edges of the frame to fill in any areas of transparency. Recently a feature has been added that, rather than stretching the existing pixels, instead uses Content-Aware Fill to generate new pixels based on the surroundings. It’s a handy new feature that offers greater control over crafting panoramas.…

The Brush Tool offers far more than just the simple circular brush tip that many of us use day to day. There are all kinds of wonderful features hidden within. Here are three of our favorites, used in combination to create an eye-catching pattern. 01 CREATE CUSTOM BRUSH TIPS You can turn any shape, any image, or any part of an image you like into a brush tip. All you need is an object against a pure white backdrop, so either shoot an object like the moth here against white or use the selection tools to isolate an object then fill the background with white. (It needs to be completely white, otherwise the rectangular edges of the frame will show up in the brush tip.) Once the image is prepared, drag a…

Available by clicking the gradient preview when the Gradient Tool is selected, the Gradient Editor is a great tool for customizing your gradients. Not only can you alter the colors, add color stops and fine-tune the transitions between them, you can also experiment with funs settings like Noise, which transforms your gradient into a random set of colored streaks. Here we’ve set Type to Noise and increased Roughness, then used Transparency and Restrict Colors. Next we used the Angle Gradient Style to make a starburst effect, then blurred the edges with Filter > Blur Gallery> Iris Blur, and finally used Filter> Distort > Twirl to bend the shape.…