Practical Photoshop May 2020

“Welcome to issue 110 of Practical Photoshop! If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe subscribe and get a whole year for just $19.99?” During these strange times, it’s vital to keep our minds active and find new ways to stimulate our creativity, even if we have to do so while confined to our homes. So this issue, we look at a host of Photoshop tricks and techniques that wil help you to get through lockdown, and on to better times. James Paterson, Editor • james.paterson@futurenet.com www.digitalcameraworld.com HIGHLIGHTS: WHAT’S INSIDE… TRY SOME HOME’SHOPPING A host of editing projects to keep you busy at home CREATIVE PORTRAIT EFFECTS Learn how to send your portraits up in smoke TAKE CONTROL OF COLOR Master the Hue/Saturation command DODGE AND BURN YOUR PHOTOS Enhance your mono images with this essential skill LIGHTROOM…

Open any image and make a new empty layer above the Background layer. Grab the Mixer Brush and go to the tool options at the top. Check Sample All Layers, click the preset dropdown and pick Very Wet. Enable the Clean Brush icon and turn off the Load Brush After Each Stroke icon. Select a rough-edged brush tip from the brush picker and start painting on the empty layer to smudge the colors. Use short, sharp strokes to blend colors, following the lines and shapes in the scene. A pen and tablet come in very handy as you can change the angle and shape of bristle brush tips as you paint. WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3bpg9Zh…

Why not create a funny meme or e-card to send to a friend or family member and put a smile on their face? In this quick tutorial we’ll look at how to cut out the subject with the Object Selection Tool, then add a vivid background color before styling the text. To begin, open the image into Photoshop then grab the Object Selection Tool from the toolbar and drag a box over the subject to select it. Click the Add Mask icon to hide the background behind a mask. Make a new layer and drag below the other, then go to Edit > Fill, choose a color and click OK. Finally, grab the Type Tool and type your message, then use the Character Panel (Window > Character) to control the font, size…

It might be difficult to get out and about to shoot new landscapes right now, but if you’re anything like us, you probably have some landscape photos on your hard drive that you’ve yet to properly process. There could be incredible potential hidden within your files, just waiting for the right tools to tease it out. Straight out of camera, a landscape can often look a little flat – this is specially true if you shoot in raw, as raws are initially duller than JPEGs, which are processed in-camera. Skies in particular can lack punch and detail, as they tend to come out slightly overexposed in most landscapes. However, with simple tools in Camera Raw we can enhance a dull sky and balance it out with the land below. Use the Graduated…

If you have an image library full of old photos of your kids or family, then now is a great time to sort through them and choose a few to present as a collage. This is easy to do with Photoshop’s Frame Tool… 01 CREATE SHAPES Go to File > New in Photoshop to create a new document and adjust the sizing to match your needs – here we’ve opted for a 12 x 12-inch square. Next, grab the Shape Tool and use it to draw rectangles, squares or any other shapes you like for your image windows. 02 DROP IN YOUR PHOTOS Right-click a Shape layer and select Convert To Frame from the resulting pop-menu, then drag and drop an image into the frame from Bridge. Adjust the photo’s position so that the…

Many of us are finding it difficult to get out and shoot new photos, but that doesn’t mean you can’t experiment on images created by others. There are lots of excellent free resources for high-resolution images available online. One of our favorites is the Nasa website (https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery), which has a treasure trove of gorgeous, highly detailed photos. Why not download a few and start experimenting in Photoshop? Here we’ve used the Liquify Tool (Filter> Liquify) and the Twirl Filter (Filter > Distort > Twirl) on an image of a planet to create a colorful swirling abstract.…